When she met Jared, therefore, it took him little time and few lies to persuade her that, in the aftermath of devolution, local politics might prove to be a more interesting arena. Because she didn't really care about that either. Much more to the point was the fact that Jared struck her as a self-possessed individual and she knew that was exactly what she wanted to be. So she's been working for London ever since.
Every decision Karen has made, therefore, has been based on this simple equation but, if she thinks about it (which she tries not to) and if she's honest with herself (which she is), she's rarely been happy. Every step she has taken has been to travel down a road lined with contentment and yet all these steps have more or less disappointed (no different, apparently, from the game of golf). And if she's often failed to notice this, it's only because she'd already set her sights on the next horizon. She considers Tom's analysis of her favourite American movies and maybe he has a point after all. Because getting the boy, getting the job, getting the high-school prom dress… they've all proved to be false dawns. If anything, she realizes that the happiness she has experienced has come in brief snatches and in fact was mostly snatched with Tom – their first holiday together, a picnic in Bushey Park, the night he got back from a PGCE training course and she knew she'd missed him so much and loved him so utterly. So why had he gone and let her down? Certainly she knows that happiness is not a by-product of what she does now; not after yesterday.
Yesterday Jared called her into his office and there was something different in his manner; an embarrassment, perhaps. He didn't get up or kiss her cheek but suggested, awkwardly, that she might ‘pull up a pew’; almost as if they'd never met.
He asked her what she thought of the ‘whole pigeon situation’. She hadn't known how to react to that so she smiled and said, ‘I didn't realize it was exactly a situation.’
Jared nodded very seriously and told her they'd been getting hundreds of complaints about pigeons flying headlong into blocks of flats, dropping dead out of trees, harassing steeplejacks, crane operators and park keepers, and settling in groups on children's windowsills and squawking at all hours of the night. Karen struggled not to crack up and managed to suggest that this was surely a problem for the London boroughs – local pest control, that sort of thing. But Jared said, ‘We need to be seen to do something, to take a position.’ And the look on his face and the tone of his voice stunned her to silence at the prospect of what she realized was coming next.
He told her that she was being taken off the transport committee to, in Jared's words, ‘head-up pigeons’. He even had the cheek to imply that this was in some way a promotion and Karen didn't know whether to laugh or cry. Although, in fact, she was so angry that she was dry of mouth and eyes anyway. When, however, her boss/boyfriend used the phrase ‘Pigeon Czar’, that was the final straw and she stood up stiffly and stalked to the door. She turned and said, ‘You…’ She was so exasperated that she couldn't get out the second word but it didn't much matter because saying it was only for her own benefit anyway. And she knew what it was, all right.
Karen gets up. It's been more than half an hour now and she's had enough of waiting. It looks like Tom's let her down too. And though Tom, of course, once let her down worse than anyone, she's surprised nonetheless. The coffeeshop is still jammed and there are so many conversations going on and she's not part of any of them. She's feeling sorry for herself and suddenly very lonely. She tucks her mobile into the breast pocket of her suit as usual. She thinks of how Jared always says it ‘spoils the line’. Dick.
She steps out from behind the table and she's about to leave when she notices that a pigeon has wandered in through the open door. She bursts out laughing.
This pigeon is a healthy-looking bird, fat and slate grey with the swagger of a beat policeman. It saunters around the entrance for a while, its head bobbing left and right as though disapprovingly checking out the clientele. Apart from Karen, nobody seems to have noticed and it ruffles its feathers a couple of times as if put out by the lack of attention. It is, of course, unusual to see a pigeon in a coffeeshop but Karen thinks wryly that, if this is the extent of the ‘pigeon situation’, she can probably cope.
Disgruntled, the pigeon hops out of the door. As the pigeon leaves, Tom comes in. He sees Karen straight away and raises a hand but there's no apology, no mea culpa in his expression. In fact, if anything, he looks kind of cocky. She immediately dispels any thought of discussing Jared let alone Kush. But they must talk about Murray.
18
Getting on with it
Tom was feeling better than he had for a very long time; the best he'd felt since the horrors of breaking up with Karen, anyway. No. Even longer than that. Because Tom was feeling so good that he could even admit to himself that things hadn't been great for a while before they'd actually split. Previously, Tom had found this a difficult idea to acknowledge because, in his desperate certainty, he'd been keen to accept all responsibility for what had happened; to lay all the blame on his mistake, his infidelity. But he was now coming to terms with the proposition that such an explanation was really just an easy way out – and not just for her but for him too. After all, the story of a perfect relationship that he'd screwed up with one error, tragic and fateful, was easier to bear than the idea of a true love that they'd both neglected until it began to wear, unravel and finally (and prosaically) fall apart. So Tom was feeling unburdened and it granted him a lightness of step; as if he were walking on the moon and pushing off too hard might see him sail away into space. In some ways this was frightening but, for the moment, he felt nothing but exhilaration.
He'd just had his final session with Tejananda and this had been his decision rather than the therapist's. In fact, Tejananda had been quite put out (albeit in a very understated, Buddhist kind of way) and this was why he was late.
During the session, Tom related everything Murray had told him in their conversation last night. Not the stuff about the bank job, of course (because he wasn't sure about the niceties of client confidentiality when it came to armed robbery), but the stuff that was relevant to his state of mind; specifically the talk of Karen, specifically of Karen and Murray, specifically of their last day at LMT.
He told Tejananda how upset he'd been and he listed the emotions that had fizzed through him. He'd felt betrayed, of course, but somehow that had proved to be a brief pain. The deeper agony was one of emasculation that left him feeling inadequate and, more to the point, with a bizarre and profound sensation of loss, as if his identity as a man had literally been taken away. It hadn't helped that Murray had been so calm; not exactly unapologetic but surprisingly unfazed (considering this was a secret that had been rigorously protected for a decade).
Tejananda flicked through his notebook. ‘And yet Murray was very judgemental about your relationship with Freda?’
‘Freya,’ Tom corrected him. ‘And it wasn't exactly a relationship.’ He shook his head as though the mannerism could provoke a sense of irony as opposed to vice versa. ‘Murray said that was different. Because I hadn't actually wanted to have sex with Freya anyway.’
Tejananda nodded as if he understood perfectly and commented, ‘Desire defines us. Desire destroys us.’ Because when he didn't know what to say but felt he had to say something he had a tendency, common among therapists, to get a little gnomic.
Tom then told him how his feelings of emasculation had given way to anger. In fact, he'd never been so angry and Murray's ongoing placidity had only provoked him. In the end, Tom had completely lost his rag and lashed out. It hadn't been a typical scrap between combatants who don't really know how to fight, a chaos of arms and legs that inevitably ends in stalemate and exhaustion. Rather, Tom had thrown one clean jab that caught Murray below his left eye and sent him flying off his chair. He described in proud and lascivious detail the sound of his knuckles against Murray's flesh, the sight of Murray sprawling on the pub carpet and the way his eye had swollen and closed with almost supernatural speed.
<
br /> Tom said that, now he reflected upon the incident, he realized he'd never felt superior to Murray before and it felt good. Tejananda muttered something about anger as a necessary and functional expression of… something or other. He swallowed the end of this aphorism and it drowned somewhere in the back of his throat.
‘So!’ The therapist sat forward, spinning his ballpoint on an index finger. ‘How do you feel about Karen now?’
‘About Karen?’ Tom looked puzzled. Like that was a question he hadn't considered. ‘Like I always felt. I mean, some things are meant to be, aren't they? This is about me. I feel differently about me.’
‘And how do you feel about you?’
‘I don't know.’ Tom frowned and then, slowly, the expression dissolved and relaxed into the broadest of smiles. ‘Better.’
Only at the end of his allotted time, when Tejananda took out his Palm Pilot to schedule a further appointment, did Tom admit that he wasn't planning on another visit. ‘OK,’ Tejananda nodded as if he'd been expecting this. ‘If you don't mind my asking, what led you to such a… a decision?’
Tom shrugged. ‘I guess I'm feeling better. I thought it was time to… to just get on with it, know what I mean?’
‘I do. I do know what you mean. And that's good, isn't it? That's good.’
‘Right then.’
Tejananda then tried to explain that, in fact, they still had a lot of work to do, plenty to address.
‘Do you think so?’ Tom sounded surprised.
‘I do. I do think so.’
He said he suspected Tom was experiencing the brief euphoria that was so typically a corollary of the revelation of a Moment of Truth. In fact, this conversation with Murray, this new knowledge, had most likely triggered a shift in the nature of Tom's understanding of his relationship with Karen. Perhaps, within the mental framework – ‘the brainwork’, if you will – in which they'd been talking, it represented the movement from devotion to selfishness.
Tom said, ‘Really? If anything I would have thought it was the other way round.’
Tejananda shook his head. Apparently Tom was missing the point. It didn't matter which way round, the point was that this Moment of Truth had sparked change and who knew what the repercussions might be? For example, Tom had frequently talked about his relationship with Karen in terms of Murray, that is to say bilaterally. Did he remember that? Did he remember Tejananda's use of the word ‘bilateral’? Good. Because how, in the light of this new knowledge, would he now represent the relationship? What stories would he now tell, about himself, about Karen, about Murray? How had those stories changed?
Tom said he didn't know but guessed he'd find out. And he was OK with that. Besides, he claimed he'd never really got this whole bilateral thing anyway. This was, of course, a lie but basically he'd had enough of talking, hadn't he.
Tejananda's veil of composure was starting to slip. There was a tightness at the corners of his mouth and his gaze of beatific calm was beginning to pinch around the eyes. Was this fellow being wilfully obtuse?
What he was trying to explain, he explained, was that Tom's trust had been completely broken. In fact, he'd asked Tom in a previous session whether he trusted Murray and Tom had said he did. Did Tom remember that? Yes? And now that trust, that faith, whether selfish, devoted or whatever, had been utterly – the therapist paused here – trampled.
‘I know,’ Tom said and Tejananda was reassured to see a stricken look crumple his patient's face. It was, however, quickly blinked away. ‘But, like I said, I guess I've just got to get on with it. And I feel different, you know? I feel a real certainty. I feel like I've reached that stage you were talking about. What was it called? The Die is Cast theory.’
‘Quite. But I'm sure you remember that the Die is Cast was always an explanation of perception rather than truth. It's about perceived immutability when, in fact, change is always possible.’
‘Exactly!’ Tom exclaimed. ‘That's exactly what I'm hoping for. Because how else could Karen change her mind?’
‘And that's still what you want?’
‘Of course it's what I want. The Die is Cast.’
As far as Tom was concerned, this was the last word. Tejananda, however, had other ideas and insisted on trying out several further arguments as to why they needed future sessions. Frankly, the more the therapist said, the more Tom was convinced he'd made the right decision. The way Tom saw it, if a therapist claimed you should continue seeing them over and above your own judgement, then they either knew you better than you knew yourself (in which case you were probably a whole lot more screwed up than you'd realized) or they were actually something of a charlatan. Tom, who knew he wasn't very screwed up, was beginning to suspect the latter. Or, to put it another way, he was coming to understand that what he'd mistaken for devotion on Tejananda's part was, in fact, selfishness.
By the time Tom finally left the West End practice, therefore (half an hour late), he felt even better than he had when he'd gone in. ‘Unburdened’ was a good way of putting it (since he certainly felt released from guilt and worrying and, now, worrying about worrying). However, with connotations only of the removal of bad stuff, ‘unburdened’ didn't sound quite positive enough. ‘Elated’: that was better. After all, in the last couple of days he'd stood toe to toe with Murray (literally) and won, and toe to toe with his therapist (metaphorically) and won that too. He knew that both feelings of superiority were almost certainly temporary (and, in the case of Murray and his disclosure, undoubtedly flawed) but wasn't that all the more reason to enjoy them? In fact, he struggled to distinguish which victory was more satisfying. His dealings with Murray were clearly the more significant but they were nonetheless rooted in dark emotions and problems as yet unsolved. But with Tejananda? It was a cheap success, sure, but there was something delicious about seeing a Buddhist therapist, whose very nature was calm and aloof authority, reduced to ill-concealed, if understated, irritation and bullshit. Whatever. He was certainly looking forward to seeing Karen anyway because he had a thing or two he wanted to say to her. He wasn't entirely sure what one thing or the other thing might be but there was a thing or two, no doubt.
When he walked into the coffeeshop, however, his lightness immediately vanished, if only temporarily. He saw Karen standing by a table and she looked slightly dishevelled. Her power suit appeared somehow too big for her and one knee was kinked, as though about to buckle. Her mouth was frozen, as if in spasm, in a ghoulish smile like a snapshot of someone reluctantly laughing at themselves. Strands of hair, loose from the ponytail that generally gave her the appearance of businesslike severity, now inelegantly framed eyes that were sunken and exhausted.
Tom felt his heart pop. She looked completely familiar and completely unrecognizable all at once. He felt like he was seeing someone for the first time in the flesh whom he'd previously met only in his dreams. Or perhaps the other way round. She looked, he thought, vulnerable in a way that only those who don't know how to be vulnerable can.
She said, ‘You're late. You're really late.’
‘Sorry. I was with my therapist.’
‘Your therapist? You're not still doing that, are you?’ She was defensive, catty. ‘You must be the only school teacher in the country who can afford a therapist. Dad paying, is he?’
‘It was the last session,’ Tom said and he smiled. ‘I'm cured.’
Reluctantly, Karen smiled too. ‘Yeah? What was wrong with you?’
‘Not sure. But I'm better and that's the main thing. Success.’
‘Success,’ she nodded. ‘Exactly.’
‘Exactly.’
Tom went and bought coffee. Karen didn't want another one but she accepted it anyway. The taste of it made not just her mouth but her whole insides feel filthy. She sipped at it resolutely while Tom, who'd regained most of his levity, small-talked with some animation. He asked whether she'd been in to Freya Franklin Hats. She had. Impressive or what? If anybody deserved a bit of success, it must be Freya. He asked w
hether she'd seen Emma and how she was doing. Karen said Emma was doing good, actually; seemed to be feeling a whole lot better. ‘You see?’ Tom smiled. ‘We're all feeling better. It must be in the stars.’ He told her that he'd run in to Tariq the other day and he was a lot more chilled too. He was heading for bankruptcy, of course, but at least he and Emma were getting on OK again, yeah? It must have been tough on both of them when Emma was so sick. Karen shook her head and said vaguely that she hardly thought that was the whole problem. Right, Tom nodded and took a deep mouthful of coffee.
Karen was beginning to relax and when he said, ‘What about you? How's life in the corridors of power?’ she forced a chuckle and told him all about her new position. She knew she was opening herself up to piss-take but had decided she didn't care.
In fact, though, Tom genuinely seemed to think it was quite an opportunity. ‘Come on!’ she scoffed. ‘The Pigeon Czar? Are you having a laugh?’
But he protested his seriousness. ‘I don't know,’ he said. ‘The pigeons are behaving very strangely at the moment. Who knows what's going to kick off?’ Tariq claimed that businessmen had begun to carry umbrellas to beat off any attack and he related a story that Ami had told him about a manic-depressive pigeon she'd found in Hyde Park. Murray had wrung its neck.
‘Murray did that?’
Tom shrugged. ‘Yeah.’
‘Actually, there was one in here just before you.’
‘One what?’
‘A pigeon.’
‘In here? What was it doing?’
‘No idea. It just kind of swaggered around a bit; like it was casing the joint.’ Karen laughed. She still thought her new job was 100 per cent bogus and she still doubted the sincerity of Tom's enthusiasm but she felt a little better nonetheless; so much so that when Tom asked her, ‘And how's Jared?’ she managed, ‘You know. OK’, without even thinking about it.
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