Dream of Darkness, page 7
We shall see. And if you’re going to see this in the near future, I must finish, or else I’ll miss the boy with the cleft stick.
Vita, I refuse to congratulate you on this new job you’ve got, (a) because you’re so vague about it. I’m sure it must have something to do with watching rats running around mazes which you know I hate, and (b) because it’s taking you off to America and preventing you from visiting us here. I know you’re not crazy about Nigel and it must nark you that I am, but I promise not to show it if you tell your bosses that you can’t fly with your back to the sun and have to travel to the States via Africa. Do try, darling.
My love to all who deserve it. If you see Mary Marsden tell her I’ve hardly opened a book since I’ve been here, but I’m continually thinking unutterably deep Laurentian thoughts!’
And, of course, my fondest love to you, dear Vita, Sarah.
7
Essex had a different sky, a different air, and, though the Blackwater at Maldon was already tidal, it promised a very different sea from the one that Celia had urged her into every morning.
Vita Gray imposed no such strict physical regimen.
‘Do what you will,’ she said. ‘Only, let me know if you’re going off by yourself. And try to keep a record of what you see, what you think; not everything, just anything that strikes you as worth noting.’
‘Why?’ asked Sairey.
‘To help me understand the cast of your mind, that’s all,’ said Vita. But Sairey did not altogether believe her. She’d told Vita about the incident on Camber Sands which had preceded the return of the Dream, and she guessed that the older woman wanted to keep a check on her activities, without seeming to do so.
Already the shift of location had resulted in a slackening-off of the nightmares. Vita corrected her when she said this.
‘Not “resulted in” but ‘been coincident with”,’ she said.
‘Oh, Vita, sometimes you sound a real old pedant!’ laughed Sairey.
‘Do I? Pedantry is often the name the slipshod give to the words of the precise,’ said Vita. ‘Your mother used to call me pedantic, too.’
‘Did she?’ Sairey felt her usual impulse to slide away from talk of her mother but this time she forced herself to say, ‘And did you think she was slipshod, too?’
‘Too?’ said Vita. ‘I try always to say what I mean, Sairey, but there’s no legislating for sloppy listening. But yes, to be honest, I did think Sarah was slipshod in certain ways, though I only ever said that to her once.’
‘When she told you she was going to be married,’ Sairey guessed.
‘You’re right,’ said Vita, after a tiny pause. ‘You see how very sharp your mind can be. Again, just like your mother’s.’
‘But not when it came to marriage?’
‘I didn’t think so.’
‘Why? Because of Daddy? Or were you jealous?’ blurted out Sairey.
‘I think that last question could be more precise,’ said Vita.
‘All right,’ snapped Sairey, furious at not being able to match Vita’s control. ‘Were you in love with Mummy? Is that precise enough for you?’
‘It’s certainly vehement enough. No, I was not. Though, of course, I did love her. I think that leaves just one question unanswered. “Because of Daddy?” you asked. Yes, partly. There now, I think that does it. Anything more?’
‘Not for the moment,’ said Sairey. ‘Vita, why do you do it? Why do you treat me like a little child asking foolish questions?’
‘I’m sorry that’s how you feel,’ said Vita Gray. ‘But you’re wrong. You feel like that because I am treating you as an equal. I could make you feel as if you were being treated as an equal, but only by approaching you as a child. It’s easy for me not to make you angry. What’s hard is for you not to get angry. Sairey, I think it’s time we got down to some serious work. Would you like to come to the consulting room?’
She led the way upstairs, to a room at the back of the old clapboard house. It was a long rectangular room, low-ceilinged, like the rest of the building. A wide, shallow window was heavily curtained so that Vita had to switch on the lights as they entered. The lighting was concealed, casting a dim, suffused glow not much this side of crepuscular. The carpet and curtains were dull beige, and the walls were painted mushroom and hung with a couple of fuzzy abstracts which looked as if they’d been painted with a sponge. At one end was an office desk with a swivel chair behind it. At the other end were three armchairs upholstered in dark tan leather. They were oddly arranged, two quite close and facing each other, the third a little apart and facing the end wall, on which hung a school-room clock.
‘Sit down,’ said Vita.
Was it a test?
‘It’s not a test,’ said Vita. ‘Sit there.’
As Sairey sat in one of the two chairs facing each other, Vita went to the desk and pulled open a drawer. A moment later she came and sat opposite Sairey. In her hand was a portable cassette recorder.
‘What do you think of my consulting room?’ she asked, checking the sound level.
‘It’s very … neutral.’
‘Good, we don’t want a room taking sides, do we?’
‘I didn’t realize you worked here, Vita. I mean on a regular basis.’
‘You thought you were uniquely privileged, did you? Don’t be piqued. Sometimes my work requires a degree of confidentiality that can’t be guaranteed in London. Here, I’m not a well-known consultant psychiatrist, I’m merely that slightly dotty old Mrs Gray’s slightly dottier daughter.’
‘This is your family house, you mean?’
‘Yes. I was brought up here.’
‘I didn’t know. Did Mummy ever come here?’
‘Yes. She used to come and stay in the vacation sometimes. My own mother was alive then, of course. Oddly, I lost her at the same time as you lost yours.’
‘I didn’t know.’
‘Why should you? She was very fit for her age, loved to walk around the estuary. It’s strangely beautiful down there. You must go. But take care. Those long levels of wet mud can be almost hypnotic with the sun glancing off them. It’s easy to forget the tide. Mother did. Then she panicked. Got stuck in the mud. The tide came up, and she drowned.’
‘Vita, how dreadful!’ exclaimed Sairey. ‘No one ever said.’
‘What was there to say? Sarah, your mother, was killed at almost exactly the same time. I would have flown straight out in normal circumstances, but it wasn’t possible. There was too much to do here.’
It sounded almost like an apology, but the topic was clearly exhausted for the moment as Vita proceeded to say briskly, ‘Let me give you a full picture of what will go on here. Normally, we shall sit as we’re sitting now, facing each other. Sometimes I’ll ask you to sit in that chair where you won’t be able to see me as we talk. And sometimes if the situation seems to require a touch of official distancing, I will sit behind the desk. I’m telling you all this so that your active little mind won’t be burrowing away after my motives all the time. We have to have an equal trust. The recorder will provide us with a record, so there can never be any doubt as to what precisely was said, though of course there may be debate about meaning. All right?’
‘Vita,’ said Sairey uneasily, ‘where is all this leading?’
The older woman held up the recorder and switched it on. She spoke the date and the time then set the machine on the table between them.
‘Where do you think it’s leading, Sairey?’ she asked.
‘I don’t know. It’s like trying to find a way through a labyrinth,’ said Sairey, self-consciously dramatic, still aware of the recorder.
‘A way? Which way?’
‘Is there more than one way?’
‘There’s a way out. And there’s a way to the centre.’
‘You mean to the monster? Is that how you see yourself, Vita? As a dragon-killer?’ said Sairey, trying for mockery.
‘Not necessarily,’ said Vita. ‘It’s too easy to forget, in all branches of medicine, that there’s nothing can be killed inside you that isn’t part of you. Let’s talk about your dream, Sairey.’
They talked on, and off, for the next few days. Sairey could discern little pattern in their talks, but she found that she looked forward to them. She admitted to this rather shamefacedly and was rewarded by one of Vita’s rare smiles.
‘You have a curiously puritanical notion of medicine,’ she said. ‘If it’s not nasty, it can’t be doing you any good! Your mother was the same. Whatever you did for pleasure should be explored to the full, but whatever you did for your health had got to be painful.’
‘Am I really like her?’ asked Sairey.
‘Do you feel as if you are?’
‘How on earth should I know that? All I know about her is what people have said, and that hasn’t been much!’
‘I expect people were worried about hurting you,’ said Vita. ‘But don’t underestimate how much you know about Sarah. You came out of her. You spent more time with her in those first five years of your life than with any other person then or since, and she with you.’
‘I was a baby, an infant. That’s not knowing, that’s just dependency!’
‘That’s a motive for learning, isn’t it? The need to know.’
‘I thought that was a security term for limiting knowledge, not extending it.’
Vita said, ‘Knowledge is like water. You can map out boundaries, but lines on paper don’t hinder currents and tides. People must start understanding this.’
‘In security?’
‘In psychology. Sairey, would you like to hear yesterday’s tape?’
Sairey hesitated in her reply. Vita’s normal technique was to wait for desires to emerge, wishes to be stated. She must have strong motives for making the suggestion herself, and Sairey relished this brief moment of control. But she lacked the will to say no, which in any case would only mean postponement. Better to accede with dignity now than feel herself nudged into it later.
‘All right,’ she said.
They listened for half an hour. Sairey was aghast. At first, she sounded more or less like she expected to sound, a young woman talking to an elder about her life, her hopes, her fears, her likes and dislikes, then gradually she became less coherent, more emotional, and towards the end there was a long silence of perhaps a minute where it seemed she had lost the power of speech altogether. Then Vita’s voice said, ‘All right, Sairey. That will do for today,’ and her own voice, sounding quite normal again, replied, ‘Oh, good. It looked as if the sun was going to come out earlier. I thought I’d take the rowing boat out and see how that family of coots is getting on.’ Then Vita pronounced the date and time and the tape went dead.
‘Well?’ said Vita.
‘I was awful!’ exclaimed Sairey.
‘It wasn’t an audition,’ said Vita.
‘That makes it worse. I mean, that was really me, wasn’t it? How can you bear to spend so much time listening to such drivel?’
‘I wouldn’t call it drivel,’ said Vita.
‘No? The best thing in it was when I finally gave up and shut up at the end. Vita, I don’t remember that at all, that’s what makes it even worse. Was I just sitting there with my mouth open, drooling? That’s what it sounded like.’
‘No,’ said Vita. ‘The truth is, you were hypnotized.’
‘I was what?’ Sairey looked at the other woman in amazement.
Vita said, ‘Hypnotism is a technique I sometimes find useful. But, of course, I would never use it without the patient’s permission.’
‘You didn’t have my permission!’ said Sairey indignantly.
‘No. But I wasn’t using the technique as part of your treatment. Yet. I said that it wasn’t an audition, but in a way that’s precisely what it was. Not everyone is susceptible to hypnosis, so, where possible, I like to be sure in advance that it is feasible before worrying people by suggesting it. You would, I believe, make an excellent subject. But rest assured, if you refuse, I won’t try to put you under again. Not that it would be very easy, now you’ve been alerted.’
‘You mean if you’d wanted you could have had me quacking like a duck or singing “Rule Britannia”, like they do in the theatre?’
‘That’s almost as offensive as pointing out to an anaesthetist that he could slip between the sheets with you once you’d gone under,’ said Vita caustically.
‘You know what an anaesthetist is doing when he starts doping you,’ retorted Sairey. ‘Look, Vita, this is a bit of a shock. What exactly is it you want to do with me?’
‘I want to take you further into the labyrinth,’ said Vita Gray. ‘We’re already in there, beyond the reach of simple memory. And I’m beginning to feel that I’m getting beyond the point where dreams cast sufficient light.’
‘You mean you want to take me back to childhood? Like in the movies?’
‘I’m not sure which movie you’re referring to,’ said Vita. ‘I know of none which doesn’t sensationalize, or worse, trivialize the technique.’
‘Is it dangerous?’
‘Not in the sense I think you mean,’ said Vita hesitantly. ‘I certainly don’t anticipate unearthing a previous incarnation or putting you in touch with the Devil. But there’s a danger in expecting too much. Often the technique merely seems to reinforce the mind’s subconscious defences. And sometimes the realization that the past isn’t dead, but still lives within us, can be devastating.’
Sairey rose and went to the window and drew back the curtain to let in a haze of lemony sunlight. From here she could see the Blackwater winding towards the estuary, where the mudbanks basked like sleeping whales. Somewhere along its course, one summer day a thousand years ago, the English had defended a ford against marauding Vikings. There’d been no difficulty in holding them at bay till the English leader, over-confident of his strength, had permitted the enemy to cross and fight on equal terms. A short time later, his force was routed and he himself was dead.
Why should she feel this old story as some kind of parable?
‘The past still exists, you say?’ she delayed.
‘Somewhere, though it’s not always possible to find it.’
‘But if it exists, then it doesn’t. I mean you can’t have a past that isn’t past.’
‘I’m not a semiologist,’ said Vita. ‘Just a simple psychiatrist.’
‘When would we start?’ asked Sairey.
‘I think we’ve started already.’
Sairey didn’t argue, but slowly drew the curtains across the uneasy sunlight.
‘Where shall we start?’ she asked.
‘East Africa, 1971, the year you and your mother arrived in Nairobi. Do you remember much about Nairobi?’
‘Nothing.’
‘No? You were just a baby, of course, but a little older when you moved to Kampala. Do you recall anything about Kampala?’
‘Just that it’s where Mummy died.’ The effort of keeping her voice controlled produced a slight tremor, but Vita didn’t seem to notice.
‘But you’ll have read something about Uganda, I’m sure. About Obote and Amin and the coup and the reign of terror and the hostages at Entebbe …’
‘No! Nothing!’
‘Nothing? You surprise me. I thought that school history courses had shaken off their old prejudices.’
‘Not the kind of school Daddy sent me to,’ said Sairey aggressively. ‘Vita, can we get on? I mean, don’t you want soft music, flashing lights …’
‘A jewel on a pendulum, swinging before your eyes? That can help, a focus, a point of concentration. Perhaps we shall need it, perhaps we shall not. I didn’t need it last time but then you didn’t know I was trying to hypnotize you. Now you’re on your guard, even though your conscious mind has agreed to co-operate. The voice alone may not be relaxing enough, the voice and this warm room and this comfortable chair and the river outside winding slowly to the sea … are you sure you’ve read nothing about Uganda, about Obote and Amin and the coup and the reign of terror and the hostages at Entebbe …’
‘Yes, of course I’ve read about them,’ admitted Sairey wearily.
‘But you can’t remember anything about your own time in Africa?’
‘No. I can’t remember.’
‘Of course you can’t. Not at your age. You were only a baby then. Let’s go back through those years. Nice and slowly, no need to rush, you’re seventeen … sixteen … fifteen … say the figures with me … fourteen … thirteen … twelve … ten …’
‘Ten,’ said Sairey, ‘nine … eight … seven … six … five … four …’
‘… three … two … one …’said Vita softly. ‘And now the year is nineteen seventy-one …’
‘… nineteen seventy-one …’
8
Sairey stood by the window and looked out towards the river, from which the morning mist had given up the struggle to arise. Behind her, for the third time, the tape of last night’s hypnosis session played.
‘There’s a light in the air, moving. I want to catch it.’
‘Just one light? A flame, maybe?’
‘Yes. A flame. It’s quite close. I’m in Daddy’s arms. And then he blows. I feel his breath. And the light goes out. People laugh. But I want the light back. I struggle and he gives me to Mummy and she takes me away from the noise to a place where there’s nothing but me and Mummy and a great darkness full of air and strange faraway sounds …’
Sairey switched off the machine. She and Vita had agreed that it would be best for Sairey not to hear these tapes immediately, but to listen to them the following day when she would be fresh and Vita would have had time to analyse and interpret.
There was a tap at the door, but Vita did not come in till Sairey called out, ‘OK.’
The older woman had two cups of coffee in her hands. Sairey drank greedily, then burst out, ‘Was that really me remembering my birthday?’
‘Remembering?’ said Vita doubtfully. ‘Yes, but just because this is recorded under hypnosis, don’t think that your memory’s precise as a tape. The technique can bring back forgotten tunes, but it can’t remaster them to get rid of all the hiss and crackle and distortion.’
