The Censor, page 10
The way Humphrey bridled at, or dodged, the real issues, the sexual issues, was also worrying. Price knew his reputation as a watchdog of the public morals and had even smiled at the public nickname ‘Auntie Hump’, pronounced with the northern short A to make it the derisive ‘Anti-Hump’. But it was hardly a matter for jokes. During the short time Price spent with him, Humphrey had displayed the iceberg tip of a deep neurosis. Could it boil down to the simple truism that the man who rants loudly against something is inadequate and unable to cope with the realities of that which he shouts against? There was certainly a fear in discussing sex normally. From where did the fear stem?
The desk set buzzed and his receptionist’s voice came through, calm and placid.
‘Lady Carmichael is here.’
‘Give me five minutes and then bring her straight up.’
Dorothy sat, her mood detached, in the large waiting room with its big leather chairs, the polished table replete with copies of Country Life, The Field and Newsweek. It was not so different, she reflected, to her dentist’s room three doors down the street. Except, perhaps, the paintings were different. At the dentist’s they were little insipid watercolours: yachts and harbours squeezed into the mounts as though they were executed as miniatures of land and seascapes really demanding oils and massive space.
Here, the paintings were bolder. Abstracts, slashing and filling their canvases with riot, colour, sensuality, ferment. For a second the detached mask which she had painstakingly created, dropped away filling her with a gush of anxiety.
At first she had flatly refused to see this man. She held herself in check, however, and did not allow her temper to flair. Straightforward argument was more to the point than the crimson bloodshot rage that would follow the bursting of her anger.
She wanted a divorce. Humphrey pointed out that financially she had nothing and a divorce was out of the question for either of them. What he desired was a medical prescription, a dose of magic that would placate her, keeping at bay all the possible damage that a divorce, and its resultant publicity, might collapse on his precious public image.
Eventually she tried to stand back from the argument, allowing his words to flow over her while she began to reason silently. Gradually she came to the conclusion that a few sessions with Price would, however disturbing, be to her advantage. After all he was a professional man and unlikely to be one of Humphrey’s puppet minions. If, during the gouging visits to this psychiatrist, she played her scenes, the interrogatory dialogue, with caution, edging the sympathy in her own direction, she might still come out on top: leap over the horns of the bull and get her divorce.
She now saw the proposed analytical sessions as ‘scenes’: playacting which had to be approached with a certain style and method.
So, in the end, she capitulated to the endless circular arguments of Humphrey and retired to the safety of her room with its light blue screen-print wallpaper, the eighteenth century reproduction furnishings and the Manet she had brought up from the dining room, its traditional place during Humphrey’s father’s time, when her private bedroom was being redesigned three years before.
As she entered, it was the muted colours of the Manet that first caught Dorothy’s eye, oddly reflected in the dull screen of the portable television. She closed the door and turned to look at the painting, conscious of the fact that it was the only real thing in the room: an inevitable boating scene with the women prone and languid, sensual hands dipping into green water, the men stiff, self-conscious, perhaps only using the girls as wordless human dictaphones that would never play back.
For a flash she saw herself as a romantic character caught in the lonely web of her life with Humphrey: the kind of heroine who had peopled her childhood games, garbed from the dressing-up box in discarded nightdress (it was always a nightdress she recalled), garlanded with a wreath of stiff, small white cotton flowers on green wrapped wire, all that remained of some wedding launched sunlit in the gay twenties on champagne and tiny triangled cucumber sandwiches and smoked salmon. Tiny feet on the springy lawn. Spats and cigarette holders. And, on the perimeters, small pink virgin bridesmaids, tottering or toddling, white cotton flowers mixed into their soft untouchable middle class hair.
At eleven or twelve, that forgotten garland was a ring of magic, transforming her into the maid betrayed by a golden suitor who smelled of almonds and fresh perspiration (a wicked thought), now lost in some war of constant chivalry: like a war in which violins sobbed between the shrieking shells. Long ago now. So long and yet so clear. The urge to return to youth and childhood plucked with a terrible strength.
She turned away towards the dressing table with a slight shudder reaching through to the marrow of her bones. It was time to prepare for the wedding night with this mind doctor on whose couch she would spread herself. Against it, Dorothy set about building the protective mask she would need around her deepest fears; carefully choosing her wardrobe, decorating her person, withdrawing into those trivial escape routes and rituals of plumage which engulf the stream of consciousness and hold away boredom for the wealthy pampered woman, or wilful wayward girl.
Taking into account the time of day, circumstances, and the effect she wished to create, Dorothy decided to make her first impact on Price wearing a simple matching grey dress and coat, cut on classical lines, over a coffee underset heavy with lace, selected with care in case he should wish to make a physical examination.
The effect shifted the balance of confidence in her favour so that even now, in the waiting room, on the edge of what might be a numbing experience, she could ward off the leaping pangs of anxiety and, even with the tensions that were always part of her, allow them to penetrate for only a fraction of time.
The receptionist, crisp in white overall and bleached hair, took her up the wide staircase, tapped at the door and announced, ‘Lady Carmichael.’
It was a masculine room, decorated and furnished by one individual, but with no unified conception. A lot of leather; Georgian-style desk; a deep dark blue predominant in the decor, reflected in the heavy glass ashtrays and the trio of glass pieces that stood on the bookcase, breaking up the soldiered ranks of bindings.
The man behind the desk looked fifty but could have been less: bald on top with the remaining hair smoothly groomed, greying at the sides; firm features; a pencil moustache which did not please her: moustaches were among the things she least liked. Her mother had once told her that men grew moustaches against a defect in character, or as a barrier. Strangely, while Dorothy usually threw all of her mother’s council as far away as possible, she had believed this one for the remainder of her days.
Price had a strong jaw line though; brown eyes, alert and interesting. His hand extended towards her as he rose with an encouraging smile.
‘Do sit down Lady Carmichael. I’m Gerald Price. Cigarette?’
She waved away what she took to be too obvious a method of putting her at ease. A silence followed, during which she sensed the first stirrings of embarrassment. She knew that unless she broke it, this silence could last for ever.
‘Don’t I have to lie down on a couch or something?’ She was surprised at the brusqueness in her voice and regretted the remark almost as quickly as it was made.
‘Not unless you’re feeling particularly ill. You’re not are you?’
‘No.’
He chuckled. ‘Then I think we can dispense with the couch.’ He leaned back in his chair. ‘You know, there are a lot of fables and old wives tales about people like me. If we are to believe them, particularly the popular press and a certain type of novelist, all our patients lie on leather couches and recount their dreams; our lady patients and homosexuals fall in love with us, a malady known to the trade as transference; and, the best of the lot, all psychiatrists are mad. Well, my patients hardly ever get to lie on a couch; as far as I am aware, I have only encountered three true cases of transference during my entire career; as for being a little mad, I subscribe to the theory that, in the strict sense of the word, ninety-nine per cent of the world is mad.’
‘And you are numbered with the other one per cent.’
He laughed. ‘Perceptive Lady Dorothy.’
In the pause he took a printed form from the stationery box and drew it towards him, reaching into his pocket for a fountain pen and looking up at her. ‘Unfortunately I have to keep some records and it would be better if we got that part over with first.’
They went through the routine: her full name, date of birth, medical history.
When she gave her birth date Dorothy noted with some pleasure that he looked up with raised eyebrows for a second, then nodded to himself.
She answered the questions truthfully and mechanically, in the end not noticing that he had stopped writing until he said, ‘And why have you come to see me?’
‘Because my husband wanted me to see a psychiatrist.’ The words ran from her before she could stop, like the other facts about measles and her appendectomy. She coughed before continuing. ‘You were recommended, by George Militant I suppose. I gather my husband’s seen you. To be honest I didn’t want to come.’
‘Then why did you?’
‘Because my husband wanted it.’
‘And you always do all your husband asks?’
‘No, but in the circumstances ...’ She trailed off.
Price quickly cut in. ‘Your husband has been to see me. He told me a story. About you. He said you’d been away at a health farm. That you returned to him unexpectedly in the small hours of the morning, in a distressed condition. You told him that you had picked up a man in a London hotel; that you had gone to bed with him and that he’d died whilst making love to you. You walked away from that situation, returning to your husband for help. Is that right?’
She nodded.
‘There is no need to be embarrassed, but I’d like to hear that same story from you.’
‘But that’s not all. There’s ...’
‘Just that one story. As it happened. I need to hear it from you.’
She struggled at first, knowing that if she let go she would be telling him far more than she intended. But slowly the words took control and came tumbling out in a pile of detail: the bedroom carpet, the colour of the tiles in the bathroom, the look of Russell Cook as he prepared to take her, the look of him dead, the exact order she had tumbled her clothes into the suitcase, and the precise number of paces from the bedroom door to the lift: things she had not consciously recalled. When she finished talking she sat staring at her lap, knowing that he was sitting, hands folded, eyes on her, while she could not bear to look at him.
‘So why have you come to see me?’ It was not a question directed at her. He was thinking aloud. ‘Your husband wanted you to come. But if you were really against it, the proverbial wild horses wouldn’t have brought you here. No Lady Dorothy, you needed to tell me the story. And there’s little in it that calls for a psychiatrist’s help. Women in their late forties and early fifties are prone to do strange things. It is the time when they most easily “go off the rails”, as my dear mother used to say. A sudden surge of sexual need which leaves a trail of guilt in its wake is not in itself abnormal. You probably have increased guilt and a certain amount of shock ...’
‘No.’ She raised a hand, clawing as if to stop him physically.
‘You don’t feel guilty?’ Price asked gently.
‘Only of being found out. Of having to go to Humphrey. I’ve never felt what I’d call guilt before.’
‘Before?’ His query crammed with patience, as one speaks to a child.
‘I’ve done it all before.’
‘Yes.’ Totally clinical.
‘I’ve picked up men just like the last time. The whole business. Lots of times.’
‘I see,’ he nodded quietly. ‘Then this has a pattern. How long’s it been going on?’
‘Picking up men? About five years I suppose. Before that there were people at parties. It goes right back.’
‘Before your marriage?’
‘Long before. My whole life. I didn’t come to you for help. I came because I want a divorce. I thought perhaps you might recommend it if you knew some of the ...’
‘Lady Dorothy.’ He held out his hands, fingers wide. ‘Just think for a moment. Think what you’ve told me in these short minutes. You are a woman of ...’ He glanced down at his notes. ‘Forty-eight. One set of circumstances, involving an unfortunate sexual escapade, has been the springboard to this visit. You’re now saying that you’ve been promiscuous since you were a young girl? Is that what you’re saying?’
‘Yes.’
‘And at this late date you want a divorce.’
‘Yes.’
He was silent for a moment. ‘I’m not a lawyer. And none of it makes sense. You’ve been married for ... thirty years? If I’m to believe you, it means that throughout that entire time you have been what I can only term extravagantly unfaithful to a husband who is noted for an almost puritanical stand on moral matters.’
Was it really thirty years? Time moved so fast. The days and months threaded like badly edited film blurred and ripping through her mind.
‘It’s true though,’ she said.
‘But,’ his tone was almost flippant, ‘how on earth did you manage it? We must discover. We must get details. Why did you not go for a divorce before this? And why, why, why marriage in the first place? Escape?’
‘I wanted ...’ she stumbled. ‘Love. Affection. Children.’ She locked onto this last. ‘I wanted children.’ A burst of knowledge as though she had found the talisman.
‘You wanted children? Did you? Or was that another kind of escape?’
She believed it. Was it that a kind of physical love for her children might ease the ache constantly in her loins? She knew the precise moment when Charles had been conceived. Humphrey’s leave in the early summer of 1940.
They had married in January and Humphrey left three weeks later to do his course which ended with a commission in the RNVR and a land-lubber’s job throughout the war. He came home on leave around the beginning of May, the phoney war still shimmering on and the world had not yet begun to break into pieces.
She pursued Humphrey in the house and in their bed, while he used the excuses of an hysterical woman: a headache; dog tired; waiting downstairs, captive within his wretched books, until he could be sure that she was asleep. And through it all her mind festered in the warm gentle heat that was to become ferocious, with the sky smoke-streaked and the scent of death mingling with summer flowers. Soft nostalgia.
Then, one afternoon she cornered him in the bedroom; stripped in front of him, a fast peeling, fingers deft with buttons, zips and eyes; caught hold of his shoulders, dragged him onto their bed, soothed and fondled him until his limpness turned to something approaching strength. Then, climbing astride, like a male, she worked until he injected her with his share of Charles.
Then, seven weeks after Charles’s birth there was Gavin Braithwaite. The memory was cemented to that of having Charles, though she had forgotten his name until now. Flight Lieutenant Braithwaite and the bombs erupting on London; searchlights piercing the night while he pierced and they shuddered together. She remembered the pain because she said it was like being a virgin again and he said it was like taking a virgin though she doubted if he had ever had that experience; and one night Humphrey telephoned while Gavin was on her and she had let him ram and ram at her while she talked calmly to Humphrey.
‘You really wanted children did you?’ Price asked again.
Yes, she wanted them and had them, but what had she seen and what did she know of them? Even in austerity England there was always a nanny; at one time a brace of nannies. The blue uniforms from Harrods and the brimmed hats; a smell of starch and baby powder. Just a little nappy rash madam, soon take care of that. Standing in the nursery ready for an evening out at the Hungaria or one of those places. Then school. Dere Mummy, we have to write to you on Sundays. Mr Burber reads our letters. He is very nice. Are you coming for sports day? I have three friends and came twelfth in Latin last week. I miss you and ...
Her memory retained no sharp pictures of a happy mother watching the children grow: tending them, loving them, teaching. Theirs was not that kind of family.
Price looked at her hard, waiting. The tears came easily, emotionally, without words. When she pulled herself together he said, ‘I think you’ve come to the right place. If you’ve had a problem for so long ... It’s been a great load for you to carry on your own. Would you like to rest? Come into my clinic for a few weeks? It’ll be quiet there. We can sort the thing out together.’
At first, the idea of the clinic appealed to her, then she swiftly rejected it. Any kind of hospitalisation might turn out to be a term of imprisonment. True there would be escape, but that had been her way for too long.
‘No, I’ll manage,’ she said calmly.
‘There’s a lot of ground to cover. You’ll have to be most patient with me and we’ll have to go back a long way.’ He knew that he had only touched the iceberg tip.
They began at once, and Dorothy was grateful that he talked about sex, her kind of sex: the treadmill of male after male after male, as though it was the everyday problem of all women.
When she left, with another appointment for Thursday, she already admitted to a relaxing of tension. Just talking about it in a way she had not sought was disturbing, but it had helped. She was not the freak that somehow she had subconsciously imagined.
