Fifty-Minute Hour

by Wendy Perriam

  ‘Will you lie down on the couch now, please.’

  ‘Okay,’ I say. ‘Why not? Though it’s hardly worth it, is it? I mean, it’s almost time to leave. Seems a waste of effort when I’ll be getting up again in less than half an hour. Though of course you probably haven’t realised what the time is. I know you wear a watch and there’s a clock here on the bureau, and another one right opposite your chair and a third …’ I pause for breath, bang down on the couch, leave my muddy shoes on. ‘But when you’re so busy with your lovers, or assassins – or whoever – it must be all too easy to lose track.’

  ‘I see you’re very angry with me.’

  ‘Angry? I’m not angry. Why should I be angry? I’m just the patient, aren’t I, so of course you can keep me waiting if it suits you? Make it longer next time. Yeah, go ahead. Take my whole damn session, if you want.’

  ‘When you were waiting downstairs, you were identifying me with your absent father, who often wasn’t there when you felt you really heeded him – sometimes just walked out, or disappeared.’

  ‘Oh, shit! That’s just too easy. I wish I’d never told you, if all you do is use it as an excuse. You fuck up my whole session and then blame my rotten father.’

  ‘Rotten father, Nial?’

  I don’t answer. What’s the point? Nothing’s ever his fault. If you’re a patient, then you’re wrong. And you’re wrong because your mother was inadequate and your father was a shit. What about his parents? Paragons, I suppose.

  The church clock booms from down the street, chiming the half-hour, which seems to underline my point that we’re wasting still more time. Though that clock is so hysterical, it needs an analyst itself Every time it strikes it really suffers, shuddering and rumbling first, then exploding with great howls of three-D pain. Since I leave dead on the hour, it seems to express my own despair that my time is up, and I’m banished for another half-millennium.

  I lie in twitchy silence. My own voice sounds too feeble after the shell-burst of the clock. I wish I were a clock – all that attention – people checking you each moment, looking at you constantly, needing you, for God’s sake, planning their whole life round what you say. I can hear John-Paul fumbling for his matches. God! I’d love a cigarette. It’s still really hard to have to smell the smoke, hear the whole extended ritual – the rustle of the packet, the explosion of the match, the sudden sucking in-breath, the long slow exhalation – and not be able to join him. I’ll just have to take it up again. What’s a tiny tumour compared with sharing something intimate, like we did in my first month? I even switched to Chesterfields, our two identical packets mating on the table, our two smokes wreathing, fusing. (The next month was unspeakable – enemas and x-rays, endless hours in outpatients’, withdrawal symptoms, cravings, and still not a word of sympathy from forty-five-a-day-at-least-John-Paul.)

  That man was smoking, the one who crashed downstairs, his cigarette brandished like a death-ray as he stormed towards the door. I long to find out who he was, but somehow I daren’t ask. If he’s a patient, then he’s special, since he’s the only one who’s ever beat the system and wangled extra time. I loathe the special patients, the psychotics and the Marys. Or he could be John-Paul’s lover, which would ruin everything. If John-Paul’s homosexual, then … I turn away. The thought is just too painful. I jab one shoe with the other, wishing for the billionth time that I wore size fives – or smaller. Perhaps he’s John-Paul’s son. They’re both very dark, with the same aristocratic cheekbones, and though the man was taller by a good two heads or more, the mother could be tall. Like me. Nice to think John-Paul preferred tall women, got turned on by big feet.

  I stare down at my hands, which are also big and clumsy; amazed to realise I’m still clutching the umbrella. I don’t recall bringing it up here, let alone lying on the couch with it. And why did John-Paul say nothing? You’d think he’d have an interest in umbrellas, not just the obvious phallic thing, but the whole idea of shelter, keeping dry. Though he’s so reticent at times, I could he here with a rhinoceros on my lap and he probably wouldn’t ask me where I’d got it, or inquire if we had problems in relating. I start stroking the umbrella, slowly, very gently. It’s not quite dead, just wounded – like the bird I wept all Sunday for, when I was only five. My father burnt that bird. Its heart was still (just) beating, but he said a cat would get it and it was probably very germy, so he threw it on the fire. I heard its screams years after.

  He was always burning things, my father. He burnt my passport once, when I’d booked a trip to Paris, and a photo of my boyfriend – a boy who really liked me, even liked my feet – and whom I rescued from the fire all scorched and charred and curling, and with both his own feet missing. Then he burnt a poem I’d written to a horse, which opened with a line about soft lips. I used to feed that horse with Smarties on my way to school and back, loved its hay-warm breath and velvet muzzle, the way it snorted through my fingers, kept nudging up against me. But my father just assumed that the soft lips were my boyfriend’s, so the poem was cremated, like the boy. (I still write poems sometimes, but not about soft lips.)

  Yet the bird hurt worst of all. It was the way he flung it, maybe, with a relish, almost pleasure, and the desperate way it tried to fight the fire, spluttering and struggling while the cruel flames licked and singed, then suddenly caved in, accepted death, broke up. I searched the cinders afterwards for a tiny bone, a feather, something I could keep, or maybe bury in the garden with a flower on top, a marker, but there was nothing, nothing – nothing but grey ash.

  I suddenly rear up, seize the pillow from the couch and fling it at John-Paul. ‘I hate you!’ I scream out, as I watch it hit his shoulder, then thud against the bookcase. I hurtle after it, start lobbing all his books out, slamming each one down – stupid lying textbooks, pretending to have answers to fire and death and fathers. John-Paul doesn’t speak, doesn’t move at all, just sits and quietly watches, as I keep banging, mauling books. ‘You don’t care!’ I shout. ‘If I killed myself right here in your room, you wouldn’t even notice, wouldn’t try to stop me. You’re just a block of stone – worse than stone, since you call yourself a human.’

  Still he doesn’t answer, doesn’t say a word. Who wants his lousy answers? The last time I went wild and chucked my lighter at him, he told me I was attacking the Bad Breast. He’s obviously got some hang-up about wanting to become a woman, envying their tits – worse than that – imagining he’s got tits. Okay, so he needs help, but so do I.

  I glance at his (flat) chest, up further to his face. There’s still a faint red mark where the lighter hit his forehead. So he isn’t stone – he’s flesh. My hands begin to falter as I dislodge a few more books. It must have hurt quite badly, and he didn’t even whimper, didn’t nag or threaten or refuse to go on seeing me. I drop one last small book, huddle in the corner. I’m horrible, disgusting; can feel my mind and body polluting his whole room. The patient who comes after me can probably smell my smell. Those four deodorants are absolutely pointless. The smell comes from inside me. I try to disappear, crouch right down on the floor; long to die and be reborn a completely different person – someone with ideals, who puts the world before their petty vicious self – a Mother Teresa, or Bob Geldof, or …

  Slowly, I uncurl myself, crawl back to the bookcase, start picking up the books, handling them very gently, as if they’re Mother Teresa’s lepers, soothing each one back. I’m aware of John-Paul’s eyes on me, but he doesn’t break the silence. ‘Pick me up!’ I’m shouting. ‘Put me back.’ I’m begging him to move, to get up from his chair and scoop me off the floor, lay me on the couch again, smooth my crumpled pages. I’m also saying sorry to him, searching for the sorry-words which include some sense of contact, like ‘opening one’s arms’, or ‘kiss and make up’. And yet he simply doesn’t hear. The silence just continues, though I’m screaming really loudly now, my voice so wild it’s shattering the windowpanes, startling the whole street. ‘Hold me, hold me, hold me, hold me, hold me.’
>
  ‘Shit!’ I say, out loud this time. He’s not just deaf, he’s stupid; doesn’t understand even when I act the scene, show him how it’s done. I retrieve the pillow, clutch it in my arms, hold it really fiercely, like a mother with her child – and all he does is light another cigarette, as if to prove his hands have more important things to do.

  I stretch out on the floor. The carpet’s very rough, scratchy and unkind, nags against my cheek. John-Paul clears his throat, which means he’s probably going to venture some remark, at last. I’ll kill him if it’s all that stuff we had a month ago, about how he’s holding me with his words, or with his presence in the room, although we can’t be physically in contact. It’s called ‘therapeutic holding’ in the books, and is the biggest of their cons, since they’re actually so scared of any real involvement, they just use jargon-phrases to cover up their coldness and detachment. It’s all so hypocritical. I mean, their constant talk of sex when they’re obviously quite terrified of any kind of touching and even choose to sit where nobody can see them, let alone reach out to them. Yet first they lead you on, persuade you to he down in a private dim-lit room, then try to strip you naked – at least metaphorically – penetrate you, break down your defences, use low and sexy tones; but just you try responding, try to make it real, and they’re screaming ‘Rape!’ and rushing for the door. It’s much the same with parents. All that stuff about breast-feeding, and bonding, and sharing the same genes, yet still they lock their laps up, double-glaze their hearts.

  I can suddenly see my father once again. He’s striding down the path and through the gate. Slam! He won’t be back tonight. I crawl upstairs, slump against my mother’s bedroom door. (They never slept together, not after I was born.) She used to nap all Sunday afternoons – napped through fire and death and shouting fathers. I stretch out on the carpet by her door. It’s rough and very bristly, hurts my face, prickles my bare knees. I’m still crying for my bird, crying very softly. Mustn’t wake her up, mustn’t make her ill again, so she has to go away. Mustn’t be a helpless, hopeless child.

  ‘You’re crying, Nial, because I’m a disappointing father, just like your original father.’

  ‘I’m not crying.’

  ‘So you wish to deny your tears?’

  ‘Look, I’ve got to leave,’ I say, half-getting up. I’m so humiliated I don’t know where to look. I haven’t got a handkerchief and John-Paul’s box of Kleenex is just beyond my reach. I think he keeps it there on purpose, to screw us patients up.

  His own voice is quite dispassionate. ‘I wonder if you’re confused about the time, or trying to retaliate, leaving early because I started late?’

  We’re back to where we started – me downstairs, alone; blanking into nothing, breaking into shards. ‘S … So you admit you started late?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘And you don’t care?’

  ‘Just like your father didn’t care.’

  I grope back to the couch, try to hide my face, can’t bear to have him see me all streaked and mussed and hideous. The silence only magnifies my snufflings, mocks those stupid little gasps which stab and hack my chest. At last, I hear him shift his chair, know he’s coming out with something – a phrase, a krugerrand. He sees every word as gold – his words, not the patients’.

  ‘Perhaps your tears are the most important contribution to the session. You haven’t been in touch with your emotions up to now, or at least not able to express them here, with me. So we could view this as something of a breakthrough.’

  A breakthrough! I roll over the right way, stare round the dark walls; my eyes still streaming, tears dripping into my mouth. The tears taste bitter, brackish, as if they’ve been kept inside so long they’ve turned rancid, even toxic. It’s awful crying stranded on one’s back. I feel totally exposed, like some rat in a laboratory being watched by the Experimenter, who remains outside my cage, observing grief, dissecting it, but declining to relieve it. I fight to gain control. Tears are far too truthful, say things too directly without the shift and snare of words.

  I shut my eyes, keep clutching my dead bird. I’m crying for my bird, that’s all, and you’re allowed to cry for Death. No it isn’t dead, it isn’t. I sprint towards the fire, snatch it from the flames, my scorched hands coaxing, soothing, imploring it to live. I can feel its feeble heartbeat stirring back to life, a faint flutter through my fingers, the grope of claw on palm. It’s even ruffling up its feathers now, making tiny jabbing movements with its beak. Then suddenly I freeze. I can hear my father coming back; heavy footsteps punishing the stairs, harsh voice bellowing threats. The door bursts open. A tall man with dark stubble but a haughty high-boned face is crashing right towards me, cigarette waving like a firebrand.

  ‘Go away!’ I shout, as I press the bird close against my chest, try to shield it with both hands, my own panicked heartbeat thumping out of time. ‘It’s still alive – alive!’

  Chapter Eight

  ‘So what’s your name?’ I ask, still half-running to keep up with him, and screwing up my face against the rain.

  ‘Seton.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Seton.’

  It’s difficult to hear him. The traffic’s very rackety and he slings his words like missiles, striding straight ahead and barely sparing me a glance. He’s obviously still angry, though I’m the one who should be mad. He just barged into my session, broke it up completely, docked my time both ends – not only really threw me when I first arrived, caused me all that jealousy and terror, but to come storming back a second time … I mean, I could have been a corpse for all he cared. He totally ignored me, prowled round and round the room like some wild and maddened animal, snarling accusations at John-Paul, even snatching up a heavy metal ashtray, as if about to hurl that too.

  I’m not quite sure what happened next, except John-Paul raised his voice and started bleating, sounded really vulnerable and shaky, so I just had to get away; felt more frightened by my All-Powerful Doctor’s weakness than by Seton’s threats and violence. I slipped down off the couch and through the door, hid in the small alcove at the bottom of the stairs, then when I heard them coming, I dashed into the street, ducked behind a van. John-Paul was trying to find me, calling out my name, but I simply couldn’t answer. He’d somehow lost his power, seemed just an ordinary man, even a pathetic one, with a strand of limp and greasy hair falling over his forehead, rain-spots on his jacket, creases in his suit. He never creases, ever, and his voice is always deep and calm, not raised or querulous, and his hair’s so clean and tidy, you’d think it was a wig. It was also most unsettling to see him outside in the street, competing with the traffic, dwarfed by ruthless buildings, heckled by the rain, instead of safe indoors and special, unchallenged on his plinth.

  I just held my breath and crouched down where I was, till he turned back to the tower again, about to disappear. But no … The man suddenly lunged forward out of nowhere, and tried to force his way inside; cannoned back, cursing, as the heavy door slammed shut. I rushed up and clutched hold of him – yes, a total stranger, right there in the street. Oh, I realise it was dangerous and I should have gone straight home, waited for the phone-call John-Paul was bound to make, gulped down a few Valium, even put myself to bed. But I was just too overwrought. And anyway, I couldn’t bear, the thought of being on my own, with John-Paul somehow gelded and my bedsit closing round me, so I clung on to this man as a lifeline, a distraction, a new link with John-Paul – a fellow patient, a violent rival sibling.

  ‘Look, I’m angry with him, too!’ I yelled. ‘We need to stick together. I mean, all us patients probably …’

  ‘Patient? Are you joking? I’d no more pay to see that shyster than make an appointment with a cut-throat.’ He sounded totally contemptuous, as if a patient was some lower form of life; but at least he didn’t push me off – even let me follow him as he swooped across the road and started striding down the street. It took me all my effort to keep up, since he was untrammelled in old trainers wh
ile I hobbled in new shoes. Yet the exertion calmed me down, removed the sense of struggle from my psyche to my legs, and after another hundred yards or so, I even plucked up courage to speak to him again. And now I’ve got his name – the ‘Seton’ part, at least. I limp on a bit further, dodging a large puddle and a black kid with a Dobermann, then ask him for his surname.

  ‘What?’ I shout again. A motorcycle’s revving past, colliding with his voice.

  ‘Cusack.’ He repeats it.

  I’m not sure how you spell that, but it’s Irish, isn’t it? Which means we may have Gaelic blood in common, as well as just John-Paul. Not that he looks Irish, rather Middle-European, with sallow skin, dark untidy hair and eyes the sludgy colour of black olives. Seton Cusack. I try it on my tongue. The two names don’t really harmonise, sound prickly and defiant.

  I was wrong about his age. He’s much older than I thought at first, and can’t be John-Paul’s son – looks nothing like him, actually, except for just their colouring. It was the clothes which fooled me – and the speed. He was acting young and dressed young, careering down the steps in skin-tight jeans, long hair. If you put him in a suit and sent him to the barber’s, then arranged him very stiffly in a chair, he wouldn’t look much younger than John-Paul. But why he’s so attractive is, in fact, his energy. There’s a dash and thrust about him – in his voice, his movements, body – as if he’s fuelled by something different from normal low-key people who creep along the B-roads while he scorches up the autostrada. Also, he’s so tall – six foot three, at least – which makes me feel more normal, an average sort of woman who doesn’t dwarf her men friends. I can actually look up to him, which I do a moment, catch his eye, and suddenly he’s laughing – a booming, crazy sort of laugh, as if the whole thing’s been a joke. He even stops, as if to give the laughter time to breathe, or share it with the news-vendor who’s screaming out ‘Jumbo-jet disaster – ninety-seven dead!’ I laugh myself, though mainly from sheer nerves. It’s been a pretty jumpy day, so far, and if I’ve cried, I’d better laugh, even up the score.