by Simon Parke
‘He will teach you.’
‘But what does he know? He sells fruit and perfume! And looks constantly over his shoulder!’
But he obeyed the angel.
Twenty Five
Two days before the Feast of Fools
‘Welcome to Mind Gains, Kate,’ said Barnabus.
First impressions of Kate Karter: a fight with age, hair dyed blond, late-50’s, large earrings, clothes of tossed-on elegance and weary-eyed make-up, like some former film star ‘glad to be out of the whole wretched business, darling’.
‘And all blessings and felicitations on you, young man.’
Barnabus felt the polite pushing away; the mannered declaration of distance. ‘That’s quite a greeting.’
‘One does one’s best.’
One? Royalty - or simply someone unsure of their identity? It would tie in with her surname, for really, who was called Karter with a ‘K’? Changed presumably for attention. As Frances said, everything is material for the therapist.
‘Do sit down.’
‘A rather wonderful setting.’
‘It is, isn’t it? We’re very lucky.’
They sat in the Long Room on the first floor, its dark wooden floor covered by occasional carpet. It was the lightest of the rooms in Henry House, catching the sun in the afternoon, as much as the leaden windows allowed. Elizabethan houses - and windows - were built before anyone thought a view was important. A good view was a roaring fire and a roasting pig, both of which tended to be indoors. Barnabus liked the room for the sense of space, a good climate for therapy.
‘Come far?’
He’d chosen not to look at Bella’s extensive documentation on each client. He preferred to risk the insight of the moment.
‘And there was me concerned the questions would all be rather problematic!’
‘That’s not something I can predict. What’s tricky for one is easy for another. It depends how familiar we are with self-exploration, I suppose. Is self-awareness a path you’ve been on for a while?’
‘All nonsense in my book.’
Kate Karter was the first of the clients taking part in the ‘Feast of Fools’ package.
‘So what brings you on this strange adventure? Given, as you say, that it’s all nonsense.’
Kate was looking for something and nothing in her bag which she still held, both shield and comfort.
‘Well, it isn’t a cry for help, if that’s what you’re thinking!’
‘Okay. Is that something you don’t do, cry for help?’
‘Why would I?’
‘No cries for help from Kate.’ Kate snorted.
‘Gave up on those a long time ago, darling. CWT!’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Complete Waste of Time.’ Barnabus allowed a pause.
‘Have I thrown you?’ she asked.
‘No, why do you say that?’
‘You went all quiet on me.’
‘I like quiet.’
‘I like the radio on.’
‘I think silence gives space for things to grow.’
‘Hah!’
‘You don’t agree?’
‘It doesn’t grow anything in me. Silence is a very barren land, darling. Well, that’s a face!’
‘The one I was born with, unfortunately.’ Kate looked in her bag again.
‘You seem very interested in what I’m doing,’ said Barnabus. ‘Why do you think that is?’
‘You needn’t screw it up, that’s all. I’m not that bad!’
‘I was just wondering something.’
‘Wondering what?’
‘Wondering why you gave up crying for help?’ She looked down again.
‘Nobody came.’
She spoke the words quietly, to the arm of the chair.
‘Nobody came?’
‘It doesn’t matter anyway.’
She was keen to hurry on.
‘It would matter to me, if no one came when I cried,’ said Barnabus.
‘It’s all in the past, done and very much dusted.’ Tears were building in her eyes.
‘Still powerful though,’ said Barnabus. ‘The past makes the present we now live.’
‘Shall we move on?’
She dabbed at her eyes, resuming control.
‘So what made you cry?’
‘Don’t we all, dear?’
‘I don’t know if we all do. I can only speak for myself.’ A short pause.
‘I’m no different from anyone else.’
‘You must have been sad.’
‘I wouldn’t call it crying.’
‘Is it difficult to be sad?’
‘Long time ago, young man; it’s all a long time ago and I’m getting bored of talking about it.’
‘Okay. Though you haven’t really spoken about it at all. It must feel frightening.’
‘Onwards and upwards is the best way.’
‘Is that what you say to yourself?’
‘Cast off dull sloth and joyful rise to pay the morning sacrifice!’’
‘Is that your line?’
‘A hymn we sung at school.’
‘Very bracing.’
‘Pretty good advice for those thinking of topping themselves.’
‘And are you?’
‘No. Much too busy.’
‘So you keep yourself busy.’
‘Best way. Can’t be doing with all this sitting around.’
‘So does it feel difficult to be sitting here now?’
‘We’re not going to be long, are we?’
‘We’ll be together only for as long as it suits us.’
‘I can’t stay long.’
‘Who knows, the time might be a gift to you.’
‘I’ll need to collect my husband soon.’
‘And his name?’
‘Gerald.’
‘Gerald.’
You learn a lot from the way someone says a name.
‘I collect him from school and don’t worry - he’s a teacher not a pupil! No toy boys for me!’
‘No.’
‘Well, you do hear stories... terrible stories.’
‘You look sad.’
‘I don’t do sadness, young man.’
‘Why’s that?’
‘Sadness is not allowed!’ she said in a voice that came from somewhere else. It was almost military in inflection, hard, as she looked at her watch.
‘Need to keep a check on the time,’ she said. ‘Gerald doesn’t like it when I’m late.’
She paused before adding:
‘Though really, who cares a fig what he thinks?’
She was fiddling with something in her bag. Barnabus watched her agitation. Freud believed that the analytic gaze must be ‘without memory and without desire’. There must be something innocent and neutral about the therapist, always refusing to categorise or solve. Instead, he advised, create space for the surprising discovery.
‘So how did you feel when no one came,’ he gently asked. ‘If you didn’t feel sad, how did you feel?’
‘You need to get some new questions.’
‘Oh?’
‘Definitely some new questions.’
That military inflection again, the other voice.
‘What’s wrong with the present ones?’
‘They’re annoying me, darling.’
Twenty Six
‘Therapists are just expensive friends, isn’t that what they say?’ Barnabus felt the assault of Virgil Bannaford straight away.
Chunky and unkempt, blond hair and embattled eyes, he sat restlessly in his chair, braced for conflict.
‘Well
, not on this occasion. I don’t believe you’ve paid anything.’
‘A free offer to draw us in, hoping for the big Kerching! down the line, eh?’
‘How about just a free offer?’
Barnabus heard his own hypocrisy... Frances would love some Kerching! But then he’d never imagined himself a messiah. And a little sparring was fine... it drew people like Virgil out from behind their defences.
‘Free offers don’t exist,’ said Virgil.
Appearances can deceive in therapy. They sat quietly together as the winter light dimmed gently across a room of faded sixteenth-century elegance. But it had the feel of a boxing ring, an illegal fight house, a sense of blows traded, bare knuckle and bloody, in a quest for domination.
‘That’s an interesting observation.’
‘It’s just how it is.’
‘That’s how you feel, Virgil? That no one’s ever been kind to you, simply because they like you?’
‘Everyone wants something, that’s all I’m saying.’
Virgil disappeared behind his defences again; Barnabus felt the drawbridge raised, with him on the wrong side of the moat.
‘And what do you want?’ asked Barnabus.
‘Nothing.’
‘You’ve come here for no reason?’
‘There’s nothing you can give me, old fellow, if that’s what you’re asking.’
‘Fair enough.’
There was an obvious question hanging in the air.
‘So why are you here?’
Virgil looked at him in a between-rounds sort of a way.
‘I’m not a fan of therapy, as you might have gathered, complete load of tosh.’
‘I had picked up on some aggression in you.’
‘Who’s being aggressive?’
‘I’d say you are.’
‘This isn’t aggressive, matey!’
‘I’m not feeling great warmth towards me.’
‘I haven’t started on you yet!’
‘There’s more to come?’
‘Therapy is just the indulgence of the worried well.’
‘Is that so?’
‘It bloody is from where I’m standing.’
‘Perhaps you’ve had bad experiences in your past and now want to destroy me.’
‘Bit strong, old man! Who’s saying anything about destruction?’
‘I’m only saying how it feels to be talking with you.’
‘I’ve given it a try, I can’t do fairer than that.’
‘You’ve given what a try?’
‘The therapy thing. I’ve been open-minded, came in here open-minded, always open to giving things a try.’
‘You imagine you came in here open-minded, Virgil?’
‘Of course.’
‘From where I’m sitting, you haven’t given anything a try.’
‘Your opinion.’
‘My feeling, yes. You’ve talked at me but not with me.’
‘Again your opinion.’
‘It feels as though you want to destroy me and I was wondering why?’
Virgil lurched forward on his chair.
‘Look, if you can’t take the banter, chummy, then you’re in the wrong job.’
‘This is banter?’ Virgil smiled wearily.
‘And what’s this banter about, Virgil?’ asked Barnabus.
‘Banter’s not about anything, matey! You should get out more, you really should.’
‘Matey’ could be such a hostile word.
‘That may be true, Virgil.’
‘Been making a dishonest living for too long!’
Barnabus breathed deeply, took the hit and calmed himself as the pugilist in the other seat waited.
‘Though from what I know about banter,’ continued Barnabus, allowing the hostility to pass through him, ‘at its heart is relationship, as opposed to attack. Do you have anything to offer apart from attack?’
Virgil contemplated him with turbulent eyes.
‘Look, I’ve ballsed up and I want my wife back,’ he said. Big change of direction.
‘She’s gone away?’
‘She wanted me out, I had a bit of business, nothing really.’
‘An affair?’
‘Total over-reaction on her part.’
‘Your wife was unhappy about the affair?’
‘Women!’
‘What about them?’
‘Over-reacting, I mean what’s the point?’
‘Was this the first time?’
‘I don’t see what that’s got to do with anything.’
‘I was just wondering why she was over-reacting, as you say.’
‘Not an endearing quality; give me a woman who doesn’t overreact. It pushes you away.’
‘Do you feel pushed away?’
‘She pushes me away and then wonders why I wander a little! Crazy. She’s a Medusa!’
‘So this wasn’t the first time?’
‘What’s this - the inquisition or something?’
‘Not a rack in sight... just a question.’
‘You’re supposed to be on my side.’
‘I am on your side, Virgil, and committed to your happiness - but the facts of the story are important.’
‘I’m giving you the facts.’
‘No, you’re giving me interpretations of the facts, your interpretations which are important; but the facts themselves matter too. Perhaps, for instance, if you’ve been repeatedly unfaithful to your wife, it explains some of what you call her over-reaction.’
‘Total over-reaction.’
‘So you say.’
‘This is going nowhere.’
‘Why do you say that?’
‘I get more sense from my bloody milkman.’
‘Do you mean our talk is making you feel uncomfortable?’
‘I’m not uncomfortable. I just don’t see what it’s achieving.’
‘What do you want it to achieve?’
‘I want my wife back.’
‘That’s not in my power.’
‘Let’s be honest, nothing much is in your power, matey.’ Matey again, as a weapon - but he hadn’t finished.
‘You’re about as effective as the Elizabethan doctors who wore the ground-up remains of dead toad round their waist, to ward off the plague! Thought themselves so bloody clever - but they didn’t last long!’
‘You sound angry,’ said Barnabus.
‘I’m not angry. I don’t get angry, no point in getting angry.’
‘You sound angry.’
‘I’m a peaceful guy. It’s you who seems to be having all the problems.’
Barnabus paused again.
‘So you’re full of peace and I’m full of problems?’
‘I wouldn’t want to be paying for this, put it like that!’
Virgil celebrated a clean punch through the defences of his opponent, like scoring a try from behind a ruck on the playing fields of Eton.
Barnabus sat quietly, heart beating hard, but again allowing the hit to pass through.
‘So as a guy who’s so full of peace, where do you put your rage?’ Nothing in Barnabus’ experience prepared him for the hostility that now contorted the face of Virgil Bannaford.
Twenty Seven
The three beards sat opposite Hafiz, black opposite red and gold, a table in between.
On the left was the Karim Khan, neatly bearded, precise fingertips attending to detail; on the right, the large lawyer Mubariz Muzaffar, who must have missed a fast or two along the way, sweating through his robes; and in the middle, a dead-eyed young man unknown to Hafiz, too still to be well, locked inside another world, where he was right and he was king
.
Hafiz was here to be questioned, and the first enquiry came from the smiling Karim:
‘So good of you to meet with us.’
‘A pleasure,’ said Hafiz. ‘So far, at least.’
‘And you must tell me, because Everyone wants to know: are you a poet or a mystic?’
Hafiz smiled in return. He’d been promised a chat about nothing and everything. How had the offer gone?
‘We must sit and talk Shams-Ud-Din, just to clarify things, nothing more,’ - this had been the tone of Karim. ‘Misunderstandings can arise, oh and how easily, and we don’t talk enough, we really don’t!’
And then came a suggested time for their chat, ‘after prayers, we could meet after prayers, fresh from the prostration of our unworthy selves before Allah. Share a coffee perhaps? Shams-Ud-Din, tell me you will join us?’
And so two days after the battering on the door, the interrogation began, interrogation by invitation and with a smiling question about whether he was a poet or mystic?
‘Is water liquid or wet?’ replies Hafiz.
Karim looks at Mubariz. The man in the middle looks at no one, still king in another land.
‘It would be foolish to declare for one above the other,’ says Karim, smoothly.
‘Indeed,’ says Hafiz.
Karim allows his opponent a small victory in the opening skirmish; he would not be a victor for long. The forces of orthodoxy were gaining strength in the court, leaving the poet an isolated figure. And of course his patron, Shah Shuja, had other things on his mind right now, much on his plate, so it seemed a good time to deal with the poet - God’s moment, you might say.
‘It’s a delight to see you, of course,’ says Karim.
‘Then perhaps you should remind your friend.’ Hafiz looks at Dead-Eyes.
‘The delight would appear to be passing him by,’ he adds, ‘which is a shame. I’m all for delight. And you, Mubariz?’
Twenty Eight
The large lawyer stares neutrally back at Hafiz. Delight is not his concern.
‘We find ourselves in some difficulty,’ says Karim, fingering one or two pieces of parchment on the table. ‘So many attacks on our faith, both beyond our borders and within.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that.’
‘The most worrying of attacks.’
‘Not from me, Karim, I assure you. It’s my business to celebrate God rather than assault him.’