Stranger Still

by Marilyn Messik

  I smiled, “Isn’t that supposed to be the caveman instinct? But it looks lovely, so well worth the extra time.”

  “Thanks. I’m off for lunch now, Hilary wants me back by 2.00, can I get you anything?”

  “No, I’m fine. What’s that?” She’d taken a notebook from the side of the switchboard and I thought maybe Hilary had introduced, as was her wont, one of her efficiency-improving schemes which usually turned out to be more bother than they were worth.

  Joy glanced up, “Silly really, Trevor likes me to keep a note of when I go out and when I get back, that way when we get home and I tell him about my day, I don’t forget things. You know me, mind like a sieve.”

  I laughed, “Thank goodness, thought it was one of Hilary’s strategies.” We grinned at each other, and I turned for the stairs, mind already on the limited details I had for my next appointment. “See you later,” I said, and she raised a hand as she went out the door.

  I thought Brenda and Hilary were definitely mistaken, Joy was deliriously happy, proof of which was she didn’t mind falling in with Trevor’s thinking on most things. It wouldn’t suit me; if David had suggested such a notebook I’d have made a swift counter proposal as to where he might want to store it - but everyone’s different and if Joy was worried or unhappy in any way I’d have seen it.

  The front door bell rang, the door was unlocked but I turned to go and answer it anyway. As I moved past the reception desk, something Joy had said, bounced back at me - mind like a sieve – well that was rubbish, she was the only one who had the complete office address book in her head, I’d lost count of the times I’d heard Hilary or Martin yell through for a number or name, instantly supplied. I thought I mustn’t forget to say that to her, praise where praise is due and all that, but by the time I’d finished with my next appointment, Joy’s sieve had been temporarily overtaken.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  The mid-forties woman I ushered upstairs and settled in my office was in, what Grandma used to term, ‘a right old two and eight’. Well-dressed; black pencil skirt and a grey angora jumper beneath her coat, make-up carefully applied but there was a darker smudge of foundation on her upper cheek which she’d neglected to rub in. It gave her an odd vulnerability, but I felt I didn’t know her well enough to point it out. She peeled off a pair of black leather gloves, placed them neatly across her handbag clasp, placed that on the desk, moved it to the floor, then picked it up again to extract a tissue that she didn’t use, just held crumpled in her hand. She smoothed subtly highlighted brown hair cut sharply to just below her chin, checking it wasn’t wind-blown. It wasn’t, so she finally had to answer my ‘how can I help?’ She started the way most people did; different wording, same worries, hopeful and pessimistic at the same time.

  “I honestly don’t think there’s anything you can do,” she said. She was well-spoken, low-toned, “I don’t expect it’s even something you would do, but someone told me...” she tailed off and I reached for my notebook and pen. I rarely took notes, I’d always found whilst busy jotting, something important had been said which I’d missed, and I’d long ago given up my shorthand which had been indecipherable anyway, but the notebook indicated efficiency and attention being paid.

  “Let’s start with your name?” I suggested.

  “Jane.”

  “Jane?”

  “Air,” she supplied. I glanced up and saw a woman who’d had far too many years of jokes; “Married name,” she said resignedly. “And spelt a-i-r.”

  I didn’t like what I was feeling from her, the external twitchiness was as nothing compared to that within, although she was doing her level best to damp it down. It was impossible to make any sense of her thoughts which were chasing their tails in a frenetically repetitive, viciously disruptive circle over which she had little or no control; no wonder she looked exhausted.

  “What is it you think I won’t be able to do?” I asked gently. She jumped, as if in that second or two she’d forgotten I was there. She pulled her attention back with an effort and didn’t answer directly.

  “Actually, it’s Dr Air, I’m a Clinical Psychologist. I have a successful practice,” she added, “fully paid up member of The British Psychological Society, that’s me.” She shook her head slightly, “Why am I telling you this?” it wasn’t a question that demanded an answer, so I waited. I knew why, did she? “It’s because it’s important to me that you know who I am...” she stopped and swallowed, an audible click in a dry throat, “or was.”

  “Let me chase up some tea,” I said, getting to my feet, but a brief knock on the door heralded Brenda with what was needed. Depositing the tray, she straightened, smiled then spotted the foundation mark.

  “Here,” she extracted a tissue from her pocket, “you’ve got a smudge, my love.” She handed it over, indicating where it was needed, nodded as it was dealt with and hurried out again, taking a lot of the tension with her. We laughed and I said,

  “My staff really don’t know the meaning of boundaries; I am so sorry.”

  “Don’t be, if she hadn’t said, I’d have waltzed around all day looking like a lemon!”

  “So, Dr Air…”

  “Make it Jane.” Ashamed, frightened and confused, she’d set out who she was, but that wasn’t who she felt like.

  “Jane.” I agreed, but her attention had drifted again. She was on some kind of medication; it wasn’t helping; only adding to the confusion.

  I followed in Brenda’s gung-ho footsteps, “What are you taking?”

  She didn’t seem to think it was an outrageous question, “Amitriptyline, anti-depressant. My GP says the way I’m feeling is common at my time of life,” she shook her head, “I went to see her for advice, so...”

  “Not helping?”

  “God no, making it worse.”

  “Tell me,” I suggested. She closed her eyes and I saw the effort she made to put thoughts in recountable order, “Just start with whatever comes into your head, we’ll sort it out after.” She opened her eyes and for a moment, the woman behind the drugs and worry broke through as she laughed,

  “Exactly what I say to my patients.”

  “Well then, you’ve seen it work, go for it.”

  She nodded, “I’m seeing things.”

  “Anything in particular?”

  “Insects… I’m seeing insects and nobody believes me,” she paused, “I’ve had the pest control people in, I’ve had the house deep-cleaned from top to bottom, same with my car, I’ve washed and re-washed every piece of clothing I have, and I’ve had so much dry cleaning done I’ve had to start using different places, because after a while they start eyeing you suspiciously,” she looked up with a wry smile, “you’re a kind of last resort.”

  “Who suggested me?”

  “Susan McCrae,”

  “She’s your GP?”

  “No, a friend, we go way back to schooldays. She sort of mentioned you once.”

  “Sort of?” I asked with trepidation.

  “We went out for dinner a few weeks ago, once or twice a year we do that, just the two of us for a catch up, don’t talk that much in-between, we’re both busy and neither of us is really the chatty type. Anyway, this was ages ago, only a few weeks after Devlin came out of hospital, she was still pretty shaken up, that’s when your name came up.” A pause for some tea, “Sorry, dry mouth, it’s the pills, horrid,” she ran her tongue over her lips and continued, “Susan said, and she’s one of the most level-headed women I know, she said there was something she couldn’t explain about what had happened with Devlin, said she didn’t know how, but she thought it was something you did, that got him back.”

  Young Devlin had got himself knocked down by a car and a devastating head injury had put him in a coma. I hadn’t worked miracles, simply gone into his head to see what was what. By pure chance I knew something that had shocked him dreadfully in the past, I used it. I gave him such a terrible fright that his survival instinct kicked right in and yanked him back to consciousness.
In truth, he’d saved himself. I shook my head, all my ‘keep it under wraps’ reflexes to the fore.

  “Honestly I can’t claim credit, I just happened to be there when he came out of it. Can I ask you a couple of questions?” her face had fallen a little, I’m not sure what she’d expected me to say. From what she’d told me and from what she hadn’t, I knew she was a highly intelligent, motivated woman, used to being on top of things. She had a well-managed life, a successful practice and a solid reputation in her own field. The last few weeks had taken her from fear to bewilderment to disbelief to doubting everything she knew. She couldn’t believe that now, she was sitting in an Office Services place, above a travel agent, on the vaguest of recommendations. I was indeed, in her mind, the last resort and she was already running through excuses she could use to leave as soon as possible without being rude.

  But amidst all of this, nowhere in her head could I find or feel the unmistakeable signs of mental illness. In a lifetime of recognising and steering clear of risk I was usually, not always, but usually able to recognise deviation from the norm. The first sign was a mind either far too hot or way too cold - it wasn’t an absolute, but it was an indicator. When the temperature wasn’t right, I knew to be wary. In Jane’s case, I couldn’t feel or see anything other than acute anxiety, panic she was struggling to hold at bay and fear she wouldn’t be able to. She took a breath and started talking.

  She’d been married, was now divorced - but reasonably so. It was a relationship that had run its course and morphed gently into friendship with little friction, and they met up every few months for a meal or the theatre. All very civilised. There was one daughter, now at University and Jane lived a life tightly under her own control, that’s how she liked it. She was a doer, a fixer, the person others brought problems to.

  The stupid insect thing had started almost without her noticing. In fact, she was hard pushed to say exactly when. Nobody takes that much notice of the odd couple of autumn wasps near the end of their time, tipsily aimless on rotten fruit and she only recalled them when, a few days later there was an unpleasant cluster of flies wedged in a corner of the window in her consulting room. Probably around half a dozen fat bluebottles, all clumped together buzzing, one or other occasionally rising for a few seconds before returning to the heaving pile. Odd; not ideal, but easily and swiftly scooped out the opened window with a coned newspaper.

  At home, later that week or maybe it was the next week, she really couldn’t be sure – an exceptionally solid, dark-brown spider squatted comfortably in the middle of the shower tray one morning. She wouldn’t have been thrilled to have stepped on it unexpectedly, and obviously that wouldn’t have been great for the spider either, so she’d done the business with glass and card, put it out of the window, had her shower and turning to rinse off shampoo, come face to face with it again, this time, at eye level on the inside of the shower door. It gave her a nasty fright, before she ticked herself off – wasn’t there a thing about spiders usually being in twos, this almost certainly wasn’t the same one come back bearing a grudge. She wasn’t keen on spiders and certainly not on such an up close and personal basis, but she wasn’t phobic or anything like that it was just a nuisance.

  And then her daughter had come home for the weekend, not so much Jane said, for some mother and daughter time, more because she had an obscene amount of washing. Sitting in the garden, enjoying a quick lunch, relishing the last hurrah of an Indian Summer, and a precious if predictably brief chat with Emma, there was suddenly an orderly parade of ants marching briskly over the plate of sandwiches they were sharing. Exclaiming in annoyance, Jane leant forward to brush them off and remove the top layer of sandwiches onto a tissue. Em, stretched back in her chair, tanned legs stretched out and going on forever, asked lazily what she was doing. Jane, tutting and brushing the odd small black straggler off the table, said it was a good thing at least one of them had an eye on lunch or it would all have been spoilt. Em said she hadn’t seen any ants and Jane said well, there you are, didn’t that just prove her point.

  I leaned forward to interrupt and the woman sitting across from me shook her head.

  “No, wait, let me finish first.” I sat back, and she took another sip of tea, a breath and continued.

  The following day, Em was heading back to Bristol, she had a lift with a friend, not a boyfriend she’d insisted, Pete. He came into the house, nice boy, to carry Emma’s overfilled case. As he turned to go, clinging to the back of his light green tee-shirt, were several ladybirds. Moving out of a goodbye-Em hug, Jane brushed them off for him. Ladybirds - pretty harmless, right? But not a great fashion statement she’d joked. Pete thanked her and Jane started the usual mother stuff; drive carefully; should they take some Mars bars and apples for the journey; had Em remembered the bits of washing still drying over the radiator in the kitchen? The several ladybirds were now milling around on the hallway floor, vivid red and black on grey-veined stone tiles. Jane moved them gently aside with a sandalled toe, so they didn’t get trampled, said she’d get a dustpan and brush in a minute and put them outside. Emma looked down, said she couldn’t see any ladybirds and sharp, because she was concerned, turned to Pete for confirmation. Pete embarrassed and unsure of his ground agreed, he couldn’t see any either.

  “I passed it off with the kids,” Jane said, “laughed, told them to ignore me, new glasses probably needed,” but I could see Emma was worried. Pete said they’d probably flown away, taken fright when I knocked them off, quoted that old ladybird, ladybird fly away home thing.

  “And had they?” I asked.

  She shook her head, “Still on the floor, more of them by then; swarming, climbing over each other, little ladybird hillocks of movement. I waved the kids off, shut the door and…” the memory briefly twisted her mouth in distaste, “and I knelt down, put both my hands on them, lots of rigid little bodies squirming; and the smell, there’s a particular smell when they’re frightened, distinctive, unmistakeable.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I went into the kitchen, poured myself a very large white wine.”

  “And then?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Did you clear them away? From the hall, I mean?” she shook her head, “they weren’t there when I went back with a mop.”

  “And since?”

  “Well no more ladybirds, but I have had worms, wasps, silverfish and wood lice.”

  “And nobody… ?”

  She cut in resignedly, “... sees what I see. Friends, colleagues, my ex, I don’t say anything anymore,” she sighed, more a sob than a sigh but kept her voice even, “I’m not just losing my mind, I’m losing me.”

  “And now?” I asked, although I knew. Through her eyes I could see, indeed hear, the buzz of two chunky house flies criss-crossing and cruising a leisurely flight path; hitting the window and circling around and back to hit heftily again.

  “Flies; there,” she indicated with a nod, I turned to look.

  “Don’t bother, you won’t see them.” She was right, I didn’t. I turned back to her. She was holding herself together but only just.

  “I’ve taken time off,” she said. “A colleague’s seeing my patients. These pills are doing nothing other than knocking me out. I don’t know what’s real and what’s not anymore.” She leaned forward a little because it was so important to make me understand. “You see, I’m the one who copes, who sorts out everybody else, that’s who I am. Except now I’m not. I know my next step has to be a psychiatrist who’ll listen to what I’m seeing, and take me down the pharmacology route - heavy duty stuff - no option, it’d be my professional recommendation too, and honestly I don’t even know why I’ve come here.” She wound down, refusing to let loose the sob working its way up her throat.

  She was telling the truth; I’d felt the unpleasantness of swarming ladybird bodies under my hands. I could see the flies she was seeing. I didn’t for one moment think she was delusional and I was prepared to take a guess at wh
at was going on, but not why.

  “I don’t think you’re ill in any way,” I said slowly, thinking it through, “just stressed, very! So, if we accept that as true, there has to be some other explanation, however odd.

  “You believe me?”

  “I believe you believe what you’re seeing,” I said and saw a fractional loosening of her tension. “Are there any current or past patients who might wish you ill, maybe someone felt you hadn’t helped them or helped enough?

  She frowned, “What on earth could that have to do with this?”

  “Probably nothing, humour me,” I said. She nodded but I felt her disappointment and resignation. I’d just confirmed what she already thought. I was another dead-end, but she didn’t have the strength to argue. She closed her eyes momentarily, and I was delighted to see her going methodically through a filing cabinet kept as immaculately in her head as in her office – gotta love a well-tended filing cabinet. We sat silently for a while, as I went through her records with her. There were a lot of them but in her head, at the forefront, were the very few she felt she hadn’t served well, and out of those there were only two she hesitated over.

  She looked up, “Only a couple of cases...” she paused, thinking, and nodded briefly, more in reassurance to herself than to me, “I’m good at what I do but look, this is a waste of time. You must know I can’t tell you anything – confidentiality, and even if I could, this couldn’t possibly just be someone playing a practical joke?” I didn’t answer immediately; I was considering the couple she’d pinpointed.

  One was a middle-aged man, Civil Service, sudden onset of severe panic attacks. Fighting an immovably stiff upper lip all his life, over a few sessions he clearly saw and acknowledged the pressure cooker he’d created for himself. He was grateful, and then more than that and transference moved to fixation. Confident she could handle it – this wasn’t the first time – Jane was wrong. He was out on bail after twice breaking into her house, when he killed himself. So she was right, he wasn’t relevant now.