by H K Thompson
Evelyn thought that Tess was so far attributing her anxiety to the journey and not what she would find at the end of it. The reality of seeing Stephen was coming closer with every mile she travelled. How much of her mounting anxiety about the journey and her worries about accommodation at the end of it were her anxiety about Stephen? Let’s see, she concluded as she turned her attention back to Tess. She realised that the session was moving quickly and that they were halfway through their time. She had been absorbed by the story and had found herself wondering where it was leading, just as Tess must have done on the road over the Cambrian Mountains.
“I got back into the car and drove in the direction of Aberaeron via this place called Llangeitho and hoped the light would last. I was worried about getting down the coast before it got dark. I had to find the road to Llangeitho and then find my way to Aberaeron. I was going cross-country because there is no other way to go. I set off from the square with my book of maps on the front seat trying to follow the roads. I found my turns alright, but I had to stop a couple of times to check where I was and decide which way to go. The roads were still twisting and up and down. In fact they became more so. Eventually I came down a steep hill and suddenly I was at the coast road with the sea right there in front of me. I turned left and headed south, passing through Aberaeron. I wanted to stop and have a break but it was two o’clock and I could see the sun, what there was of it, falling towards the sea. I drove on towards Cardigan down a long stretch of road that moved closer then further from the sea. There wasn’t much traffic so it was an easy drive.
By the time I got to Cardigan I was tired and feeling not quite with it, so I decided to stop and get something to eat and drink. I drove into the town and parked by the harbour and found a cafe that was quiet, almost empty. I sat and had some tea and cake and felt my mind focusing again. I’d needed a rest. I’d come a long way. I knew that Newport wasn’t far, which made getting back into the car easier. My fuel gauge was going down fast by this time so, after I’d driven out of Cardigan, I eventually found a petrol station and filled up. I’d no idea if there were any more petrol stations along this road or in Newport and I needed to be prepared for whatever driving I might have to do.
It was getting dark by the time I reached the Newport town sign and I saw a small hotel on the right as I went into the town. They did an evening meal. I parked on their drive and went in to see if they had a room for the night. They did and I chose one at the back of the building looking over the garden. I liked the place and the room was cosy and warm and with its own lovely little bathroom. I felt at home. I booked a table for the evening meal, unpacked my bag and went out to take in the surroundings. I had no idea at that point how I was going to find Stephen but I decided I would ask in the hotel as a starting point. I took a lane down the side of the hotel and ended up by the water. This was the estuary, I was sure of it, that Stephen had mentioned to my mother in the postcard.
The tide was in and I could see the water lapping up, covering the mud. I was amazed at how fast it came up. After about a minute the land that I had been standing on was inundated and I had to step back to keep my feet dry. It was very quiet there. I could hear a few waterbirds warbling across the water. There was a white house built on the rocky bank of the estuary, opposite. I was on a path and I took it as far as the harbour. There were boats tied up and the wires were banging and rattling against the masts in the breeze from the sea. I could hear the waves breaking on the beach and on rocks. I stood and smelt the sea air and felt revived.”
Evelyn was drifting with the detail of the scene. The feeling with which Tess described the landscape transported her to similar places she had known. She tuned out for half a minute then came back to her senses with a jolt. She had not heard what Tess had been saying.
“…through the town instead of along the path to get the lie of the land. It was dark by then but I felt I needed to know the place, that in some way that would help me find Stephen. I realised that I did want to find him although I didn’t know why. Perhaps I was curious.”
Tess stopped and looked at Evelyn as if she knew that she had lost her attention. Evelyn had not heard what she had been saying; she had missed a section of the narrative. She hoped that what she had missed was not crucial to the story. She said nothing, hoping that Tess would continue. Tess looked at her for a moment longer. In rebuke? Evelyn wondered. Then she carried on:
“The street lights were on and I came up the road past what looked like an old council estate and then some older stone-built houses and came to the T-junction with the main road, the one that carries on to Fishguard. I turned left towards the hotel. There was no one about. And then past the main shopping street. The Spar shop was still open. I could see its lights shining on the pavement. And down the incline to the hotel. By this time it was nearly time for dinner. I said hello to the cook as I went past the kitchen, up the stairs and back to my warm room. I didn’t think I could afford to stay there for more than two or three nights. Anyway, I had a quick shower and changed and went down to eat. The meal was wonderful and the waitress was very friendly. I realised that I liked small, friendly hotels and I liked having good food cooked for me. I felt it doing me good, to be there and being looked after. At the end of the meal the waitress, who was called Sian, asked me if I was on holiday. I told her that I was looking for my brother who lived somewhere round here but I didn’t have an address. I told her that he’d mentioned the sea, an estuary and a mountain that was well known and Sian said he probably meant Carningli, the Hill of the Angels. She said it stood at the back of the town and that I’d have seen it when I arrived, on my left. I vaguely remembered its outline against the sky when I drove in but she said I’d see it in the morning. She said that the road past the mountain went up at the back of the town and there were quite a few cottages and houses up there, some of them way off the road. Perhaps he lived in one of those. I said it wasn’t much to go on but his name was Stephen Dawson. She didn’t recognise the name but she said I could ask in the town and she’d ask Carol and Geoff, the owners here, if they knew him.
I felt encouraged by her and I felt better for eating and for being in a warm, friendly place. I went upstairs and made some tea in my room and turned the telly on. I lay in bed and watched it, preparing myself, I think, for whatever tomorrow would bring.” Tess paused.
From the moment she had looked up and realised Evelyn had not been listening to her, Tess had continued to look straight at her, holding her look, making sure that Evelyn did not drift away again. It seemed to Evelyn to be both a reasonable and bold assertiveness, given her lapse. She held her look, meeting Tess’s demand for her presence.
“I hear everything you’re saying,” Evelyn reassured her.
“I know you are now. I feel as if I’ve been telling you this long and detailed story because I’m putting off the bit that really matters. I have to work myself up to it because I don’t know how I’m going to handle it when I get there.”
She looked solemn and unsure, the small child in her needing Evelyn’s reassurance and strength in order to continue. Tess breathed in and sighed a long sigh and said:
“The next morning I got up looking forward to breakfast, psyching myself for what I had to do. I’d only booked in for one night so first I checked that they had a room for two or three nights. They did and they asked if I wanted dinner that night. I said I did. Geoff said he hadn’t heard of my brother but that there was a man on his own who lived in quite a remote cottage up the Glasnant Road. He’d asked his mother-in-law who’d heard of someone like that. She knew just about everyone else but not my brother. He suggested I ask at the Post Office up the road, turn right out of the hotel. I said thanks and headed off up the street. It was about ten o’clock and I passed a wholefood shop and went in and bought something for lunch. Be prepared. I went into the Post Office and waited in a short queue. When I finally got to the counter I asked if they knew of a Stephen Dawson, perhaps somewhere up the Glasnant Road,
and the woman behind the window gave me a quizzical look and enquired why I wanted to find him. I said I was his sister. She said, ‘Oh’, and said someone called Dawson lived at Hafod Fach, right off the road at the top of the hill and down the other side. She’d never seen him. The drive was opposite a conifer plantation with a dry stone wall running along the road. She said that she thought it was a very rough track. I thanked her and asked how far it was. Was it walking distance? And she said, ‘It’s a good walk, about five miles.’ It was sunny that morning so I decided to walk and I asked her, ‘How do I find the Glasnant Road?’ She said, ‘Up past the Spar and bear left and keep going up.’”
Tess paused and said: “How much time is there left?”
“About ten minutes,” Evelyn replied, looking at the clock behind Tess.
“OK. As I came out of the Post Office I looked up, remembering about the hill. Behind the town I could see the side of a hill, the one called the Hill of the Angels. At least I thought it must be. There was rather a strange building at the back of the town as the road began to rise that looked like a castle, half a ruin, but there were windows that had curtains so part of it was lived in. As I walked up to the back of the town the road – the Glasnant Road – began to climb. It was a still day and the sun was shining but it was cold. I was wrapped up against the cold and as I climbed I began to get warm. After about twenty minutes I realised that the hill with the castle on it was not Carningli and that the real hill was to my right, up to the right of the road. It was high, with craggy outcrops on the top. It was brown in the winter sunshine, so many shades of brown. Beautiful like a sparrow is, subtly, without any showing off. Eventually I came to the top of the rise and the road began to fall away downhill. On my right I could see the small plantation of conifers ahead of me and a dry stone wall running along the road. The wall had tumbled down in places and opposite one of the tumbledown bits there was a gateway. The gate was off its hinges and open, propped up against some trees and shrubs, at an angle. I thought that must be the way into Stephen’s place.”
Evelyn spoke: “Tess, I think this would be a good place to stop.”
Tess stood and said: “Have a good weekend.”
Evelyn noted that it was the first time that Tess had exchanged any pleasantry with her. It indicated a confidence that had been lacking so far. It was perhaps as if telling the story in itself was creating a stronger, more confident and assertive person. She recalled Tess’s silent rebuke about her lapse of concentration and recognised that Tess was growing and developing as she shared her story. She had arrived at Stephen’s gate and was about to walk in.
*
Tess came away from the session with a feeling of elation. Telling the story about her journey, simple so far, had been freeing in a way she had not experienced before. She could put this down to the measured flow and fluency with which the story was coming out. There were fewer pauses. It was if the whole account of what had happened last winter in West Wales was sitting inside her waiting to be made sense of. She had felt anxious as she began to give her account, but now the anxiety had evaporated. It was as if, by grasping the things that she feared and getting to grips with them in the present, something almost transformational was happening. She did not understand why this should happen, she only knew that it did.
Evelyn’s presence seemed to give her freedom. She rarely interrupted her flow and rhythm, nor did she question the events of her story. She was neither impatient nor judgemental and it was the absence of judgement and criticism that surprised and thrilled her. Every time she felt Evelyn’s acceptance it was as if something that had been hard-wired into her mind was melting, dissolved by the warmth of affirmation and encouragement that filled the session room. Then she understood the nature of transformation. She had answered her own question. It was as simple as being accepted without conditions by another person. And it was not as if Evelyn never challenged her. It was just that in her challenges she brought simply a succinct perception of what was going on. Although the challenges when they came were sharp and sometimes painful, the pain of them was in their accuracy and dispassion. They were never done to humiliate. That was a combination that she found very rewarding. It was restoring her ability to trust even though she knew that the world was not like this, not like in the sessions with Evelyn.
*
Tuesday came after the now familiar pattern of the weekend for both women, Evelyn at home, cooking, cleaning, reading the paper, shopping, catching up with Paul. For Tess it was the now pleasant routine of an institutional time out: her walks with Mark, Louise and Judith which had become a regular event, meals at regular times and the shared duties of washing up and drying, then some television and for some of the patients, visits from friends and relatives. For Tess there were never visits and it made her sad that a whole dimension to her life had never existed and never been enjoyed.
Tess attended her next session with the same feeling of purposefulness that had been growing over the past weeks, since she began the therapy regime. When she entered the door to the session room she smiled at Evelyn and took her place on her chair. Evelyn smiled in response and noted this change to her demeanour.
Tess began after a few minutes, as if preparing herself for the next chapter of her story, a chapter that Evelyn guessed would be more difficult than the previous ones. She picked up again exactly where she had left off.
“I stood at the entrance and saw an old sign half-hidden by the undergrowth. I pulled it out. It was wooden with white lettering that had half-worn away. It said ‘Hafod Fach’ and I knew I’d found my brother. You see, Evelyn, I’d begun to realise that I was intrigued to see him. I hadn’t seen him for a long time. I was curious as well as anxious. I can remember wondering as I walked slowly down the potholed and overgrown track how long it had been since I’d seen him. I realised that it had to be at least fifteen years. I’d had no real contact with him at all, and only heard about him through my mother, and then not very often. She didn’t really keep in touch with me and I didn’t keep in touch with her either. She used to send me a card on my birthday if I’d let her know where I was living, and once I visited her at Christmas but it was pretty awful.
I think when I did that I was still looking for a mother. It was a terrible failure. She was her usual critical and ungiving self. By the time I left – and I left earlier than I said I would because I was so desperate to get away from her – I felt like a deprived and needy child, painfully disappointed and angry with myself for having looked for love where I knew there wasn’t any. I remember at the time thinking that I still hadn’t given up hope, that I was still trying to find some human emotion in her. I was trying to find a sign, Evelyn, that she was human. But there wasn’t one. I left angry and full of resentment. I was upset for days, weeks after and I was clinging on so tight to the hope. Then one day I realised what I was doing and let the hope go. It was that simple.
When that had sunk in I felt free and I had to keep reminding myself to let go because every time I forgot what had happened I’d find myself clinging on again, angry and disappointed. Then I’d have to let go all over again and feel the relief. After a long time, several months, the whole thing wore off. I was clinging less and my expectations of my mother changed. It was a grinding process, clinging on, letting go, and eventually, I suppose, something just shifted inside me and now I don’t cling to anything in the same way. And I feel so much better for that.”
Evelyn was concentrating hard on both the story Tess was now telling and her growing interpretation of it. What she was thinking was that Tess’s ability to reflect on what had happened in the past as well as her insight at the time of the events indicated strongly to her that not only was Tess now describing past events with real insight, but she was also able to interpret herself as she talked about these events. Her ability to interpret herself, understand at a deeper level what had happened, was becoming evident. For Evelyn, that indicated that Tess was building self-awareness and a maturity that ha
d been held back. The act of simply talking about herself was having the desired effect. Evelyn knew that by taking charge of her own growing understanding without drowning in self-consciousness (always a danger with therapy) she was beginning to develop a stronger sense of her own identity. She said:
“I appreciate your awareness of what was happening and how you’re able to interpret things that happened in your life for yourself and, in that way, to understand them more deeply. That to me is a sign of how you’ve grown in the short time that I’ve known you.”
Tess looked at her intently. She was mulling over in her mind the implications of what had been said to her. She looked puzzled momentarily then said:
“Thank you.” She was silent for a few minutes, then added: “That seems to mean a lot to me.”
Evelyn could see her eyes well up and then Tess looked down as if to protect her own emotions. For a minute or two she breathed slowly, then sighed and looked up, resuming her story.
“The track was long and overgrown. It went downhill into a small valley and I could see, hidden at the bottom, was a cottage with a couple of outbuildings. It looked tumbledown and not looked after. I stood on the track and looked for a few minutes, taking in the setting. It was beautiful. The sun was out and shining on a lovely winter landscape. There were fields on both sides of the track with tussocks of grass, and shrubs and trees. The fields were edged with dry stone walls, low ones. As I continued along the track I could see there was an old van parked by the cottage and as I got closer I could see that at least two of the tyres were flat and the body was rusting. There were some hens scratching about outside one of the small barns where they must have lived. There was a broken- down door, half off its hinges, and I could see a hen house inside. I was in a sort of yard. There were some cobbles but most of it was muddy. I picked my way across it to the cottage. The front door was ajar, painted green originally but now almost completely without paint. It looked dry and cracked and it probably wouldn’t have been possible to close it. I thought of the draught and the cold at that time of year. I’d noticed one sign of life though, apart from the hens. There was some smoke coming out of the chimney. It looked like wood smoke.