‘Polly! Polly!’ he gasped. ‘I need to talk to you,’ he said – or at least these were the words he was intending to pronounce.
Polly just heard strange noises, and was alarmed by Billy’s dishevelled appearance. ‘Christ, Billy! Just leave me alone, will you? What the hell’s the matter with you?’
Polly was almost at the door and Billy had no choice but to take the handles of her wheelchair and push her back in the direction she’d come. She started to scream and Billy tried to calm her. He told her – or at least he was under the impression he was telling her this – that everything was going to be alright, that he was going to save her and make her understand their intended destiny, which, at this moment, appeared to be the far corner of the company car park.
Fortunately for Polly, six members of the Journals Department were returning from an early morning jog and heard her cries for help. (All were in training for the Zola Budd half marathon, an upcoming charity event to raise money for a local children’s hospice. The organisers of the run had thought the gimmick of runners competing barefooted would encourage sponsors to dig deeper into their pockets.)
Immediately, they changed direction and surrounded Billy and Polly, demanding to know what was happening. Polly told them she’d been kidnapped by a crazy man from Academic Sales and needed their help. Billy was unable to say anything. Not only was he still drunk and unable to form cogent sentences, but besieged by an army of bare feet he was now in the throes of a panic attack. He fell to the ground gasping for breath, and while one of the runners went to the office to summon help, the others stayed to watch over him – or, at least, watch him.
Slowly, Billy came round, but appeared oblivious to both his surroundings and the seriousness of his situation. His mouth felt incredibly dry and he licked his lips.
‘I could do with something to drink,’ he said. ‘Polly – put the kettle on, will you? We could all have tea before I drive home.’
That morning, Polly made a formal complaint to HR and Billy was suspended.
Therapy
Dr Haffenden diagnosed Billy as a non-psychotic stalker within thirty minutes of first meeting him, but it took a further three sessions for Billy to accept this uncomfortable truth and concede Dr Haffenden’s point that only governments and licensed private detectives had the right to monitor and follow people. Although Billy maintained his intention had never been to harm Polly, he now allowed that his unwanted attention and unwarranted behaviour might indeed have caused her distress, and for this he was both ashamed and truly sorry.
Dr Haffenden, however, was still unclear as to why Polly had become the object of Billy’s obsession, and on this subject the patient remained stubbornly reticent. If the cause of Billy’s neurosis remained undiscovered, it was likely he would relapse and repeat such behaviour. The key to a successful outcome was to unearth the cause, and rather than waste time digging deep into his patient’s psyche, Dr Haffenden decided instead to take the shovel and hit Billy over the head with it.
‘Why do people call you Billy?’ he asked.
‘It’s my name,’ Billy replied after a moment’s hesitation. ‘Was that a trick question, Dr Haffenden?’
‘I don’t use artifice, Billy,’ the behavioural therapist replied. ‘Professional relationships are built on trust, not trickery.’
Billy smiled at him uncertainly.
‘You’re forty-one years old, Billy, and yet you still go by a child’s name. Over time, most Billys become Bills. I’m just wondering why you didn’t.’
‘Our window cleaner’s called Bill,’ Billy replied.
Dr Haffenden pondered the reply and stared despairingly at the ceiling.
‘Do you ever feel emasculated by the name Billy, Billy?’
Why did Dr Haffenden have to use such big words, Billy wondered, and what did emasculate mean? Surely, he wasn’t talking about masking tape. They hadn’t even discussed his enthusiasm for DIY yet.
As if sensing Billy’s confusion, Dr Haffenden asked the question a different way: did he feel that his name deprived him of masculine vigour?
‘Do you mean in the bedroom?’ Billy asked guardedly.
‘In life generally, Billy,’ Dr Haffenden sighed.
‘Hmm, I don’t rightly know, Dr Haffenden. It’s something I’ve never really considered. I don’t think people think I’m gay or anything like that, if that’s what you mean.’
Dr Haffenden had yet to make up his mind whether Billy was a naïf or just slow on the uptake, and rather than pussyfoot around the issue any longer decided to take the bull by its horns.
‘Were you attracted to Polly because she was emasculated? And please don’t tell me that she isn’t a man because I already know that! I’m using the term loosely to cover her incapacitation. Were you attracted to Polly because she was in a wheelchair?’
Billy remained silent, debating whether to tell Dr Haffenden or not. He was tired of carrying the burden alone, confiding in no one. Their conversations, Dr Haffenden had assured him, were confidential and no different from him whispering his private fears into a hole in the back garden. What did he have to lose? He decided to tell his therapist the truth.
‘No,’ he said eventually. ‘It was because she didn’t have any feet. I’m scared of feet, Dr Haffenden.’
He waited nervously, wondering if the therapist would burst out laughing. Instead, Dr Haffenden stood up and shook him by the hand. ‘Billy,’ he said. ‘This is our breakthrough moment.
‘See you next week!’
Although Billy’s behaviour had been aberrant and reprehensible, it was also out of character, and the HR Department worried that his breakdown might have been caused by overwork. (It was generally recognised within the company that sub-middle management positions were not for the faint-hearted, and differed little from the situations of junior doctors.)
Rather than terminate Billy’s employment and run the risk of a possible lawsuit, the HR Department decided to suspend him on full pay for six months and arrange, through their private health insurers, for him to visit a therapist. If, after this time, his mental state had recovered and he still wished to work for the company, the situation would be revisited. (Their hope, however, was that once Billy did come to his senses, he would realise the impossibility of returning to the company and simply hand in his notice.)
Billy had been in no fit state to drive home on the day of the incident and had been forced to phone Jean and tell her he’d be returning the following day. He told her an unexpected meeting had cropped up that was too important for him not to attend.
‘You work too hard,’ Jean told him.
‘I know, love, I know,’ he replied. ‘But I think people are starting to take notice of me.’
How true that was.
Billy didn’t reveal to Jean that he’d been suspended from work, and neither did he tell his father. Instead, he followed his normal pattern of behaviour. On the days he would have worked from home, he went into the small room he used for an office and pretended to manipulate the sales screens he could no longer access; and, if Jean was in hearing range, he would have phantom conversations with lecturers and company personnel while listening to the sound of a dialling tone.
The days he would have travelled to the office he now visited Dr Haffenden in London; and on days he would have visited universities in the north of England, he drove into The Dales and went for long walks. Similarly, extended overnight trips to Scotland and Denmark now became either camping trips to the South Pennines or another cover for his increasing visits to Dr Haffenden, whose rooms were on the ground floor of a large house overlooking Battersea Park. The once hourly sessions with his therapist became two-hourly and, depending on their time of day, Billy would stay in a cheap B&B close to the British Museum the night before or the night after.
It had been a relief to admit his fear to the therapist, and an even gr
eater relief to learn that he wasn’t the only person in the world suffering from it. Podophobia, Dr Haffenden had told him, was an unusual condition but, like all phobias, could be cured by a process of systematic desensitisation. ‘It’s a slow business, Billy, but it works. The idea is to overcome your phobia by confronting each stage of it gradually. Once you realise that nothing bad happens to you, your fear of feet will subside and eventually disappear. Before we start though, I’m going to teach you some relaxation skills. The more relaxed you are, the more receptive you’ll be to the treatment.’
Dr Haffenden had then showed Billy how to focus on his breathing, and encouraged him to think happy thoughts while doing this. Once mastered, he said, the skill would see him through most of their sessions and could always be supplemented with anti-anxiety medicine on the few occasions it proved ineffective.
Before Billy left the office that particular day, Dr Haffenden had suggested they make a list of the various types of foot exposure that elicited Billy’s phobia and rank them by degrees of unpleasantness: from dressed feet to presumably deformed bare feet.
‘We’ll start with photographs, Billy, and then move on to the real thing,’ Dr Haffenden said. ‘One good thing about podophobia is that we can treat it here in the office. Most of the phobias I’ve treated have always involved visits to the zoo, and I’m about sick of that place.’
In the sessions that followed, Dr Haffenden showed Billy pictures of shoed feet, pictures of socked feet and pictures of bare feet. Billy responded well, and Dr Haffenden then asked Billy to touch his feet. ‘Breathe as I taught you, Billy. Deep breaths and happy thoughts, remember.’
Billy gingerly placed his hands on Dr Haffenden’s shoes and carefully traced the outline of his feet. He breathed deeply and thought of childhood trips to the seaside. The following week he repeated the exercise on his therapist’s socked feet.
It appeared that progress was being made, but when Billy returned to Dr Haffenden’s rooms the week after his father’s funeral – the week he was supposedly in Denmark – Billy told the therapist of a setback.
‘Katy came cartwheeling into the room with no socks and shoes on her feet and I lost it, Dr Haffenden. By now, that shouldn’t be happening, should it?’
‘Those were unusual circumstances, Billy,’ Dr Haffenden reassured him. ‘You’d just been to your father’s funeral and you were in the company of your brother for the first time in seven years. From what you’ve said of your relationship with him – and your wife’s hostility towards him – I’m not surprised your anxiety levels were high. Katy’s feet would have tipped the balance. I wouldn’t worry too much about it, if I were you. However, in the circumstances, I think it’s best if you take an anti-anxiety pill before touching my feet today. I’ll keep my socks on at first, but then I’m going to take them off. Remember, my feet are clean and they hold you no grudge.’
The exercise went better than either Billy or Dr Haffenden had expected: Billy didn’t freak out and the massage left the therapist feeling strangely relaxed. It was decided they would repeat the same exercise the following session and then Dr Haffenden would start the process of touching Billy’s feet: first shoed, then socked, then bare. Ultimately, the therapist wanted Billy to go for a pedicure.
‘That will be the final challenge, Billy. I can’t see any point in exposing you to truly deformed feet as even a person without podophobia would shy away from those.’
Driving home to pitch his tent in the remote South Pennines that day, Billy wracked his brains. Dr Haffenden had told him on several occasions that if he could remember the negative past experience that had caused his persistent fear of feet, then the healing process would quicken by leaps and bounds. Billy had suggested hypnotherapy as a means of discovering the cause, but the therapist had brushed the idea aside.
‘I doubt the efficacy of hypnotism, Billy. There’s too much false memory rattling around in a person’s brain to have faith in it. I’m not saying regression is totally futile, but it’s difficult to believe a person’s going to tell you anything insightful about his present life when he’s just been telling you how he was a big shot in some sixteenth-century fiefdom.’
Try as he may Billy couldn’t remember a thing. Instead of focusing on the problem any further, he determined to follow Dr Haffenden’s advice and touch as many feet as possible before the next session – without drawing undue attention to himself.
It was almost dark by the time he pitched his tent that night. Off and on, he’d been camping there for two months, in a field he’d first bivouacked in as a boy scout. He’d asked the farmer for permission and the farmer had willingly granted it, brushing aside Billy’s offer of money.
He unpacked his wash bag and went to the coldwater tap at the far end of the field, washed his face and cleaned his teeth. He returned to the tent and undressed, stared at his white feet and then gently massaged them. Things were looking up. He smiled contentedly and crawled into his sleeping bag. All in all, it had been a good day. He wondered what tomorrow would bring.
It brought Uncle Frank.
7
Robbery
Uncle Frank might have been deaf, but his vision had always been 20/20, and though his ideas were often demented, he himself wasn’t. There was, therefore, no reason to doubt that his uncle had seen Billy in the village that afternoon. But why, Greg wondered, was his brother pretending to be in Denmark?
He called Billy’s mobile and was instantly connected to the voicemail service. He decided against leaving a message and reluctantly dialled the number for Spinney Cottage, hoping that someone other than Jean would answer the phone.
It rang seven times and then Katy picked up.
‘Hello, who is this?’
‘It’s me, Katy: Uncle Greg.’
‘Hello, Uncle Greg. What’re you doing?’
‘I’m talking to you.’
‘I know that!’ Katy said. ‘I mean what were you doing before you phoned?’
‘I was with Uncle Frank. We drove out to a small village in the country and had pies and mushy peas for lunch.’
‘Was he grumpy?’
‘Of course he was grumpy. Uncle Frank’s always grumpy. That’s his charm.’
‘He’s deaf as well, isn’t he?’ Katy said.
‘Yes, he is, but he’s got good eyesight. Which reminds me, is your Daddy there?’
‘He’s in our house.’
‘I thought he might be. Can I have a quick word with him please?’
‘I’ve already told you, Uncle Greg. He’s in our house!’
The conversation was going in circles. Greg took a deep breath and asked Katy to put her mother on the phone.
Jean, who had obviously been hovering in the background, took the phone from Katy and spoke brusquely. ‘Hello, Greg. What do you want? We’re just about to eat dinner.’
‘I was wondering if I could have a quick word with Billy. I gather from Katy he’s in the house.’
‘Billy’s in Denmark,’ she replied. ‘He’s in Our House. He won’t be back until late tomorrow. Can I give him a message?’
It took a moment for Greg to equate Our House with Aarhus, Denmark’s second-largest city – if his A-level geography still served him well.
‘Just tell him to give me a call when he gets back, will you? For some reason, I thought he was back today.’
‘I’ll ask him to give you a call, Greg. Bye!’
The phone went dead.
‘Bitch!’ Greg muttered, and went upstairs to change his shirt.
The garment was soaked in perspiration and drool – most of it Uncle Frank’s – and was sticking to his back like an old-fashioned bathing suit. He pulled the shirt over his head and added it to the growing pile of laundry on the bedroom floor, and then went to the bathroom to wash his face and armpits in the basin.
He missed showering, and realised
that he admired his adoptive country more for its mastery of water pressure and shower heads than its ability to put a man on the moon. What he wouldn’t give for a shower in his own apartment!
He dried himself on a towel and then rummaged through his suitcase for a T-shirt. He was fast running out of clean clothes, but was unable to do any laundry until Billy showed him how to use the washing machine. And where the hell was Billy? He wasn’t in Denmark and he wasn’t at home.
Although he now understood Uncle Frank’s strange behaviour, his brother’s was still a mystery.
There was a radiancy to Lyle that evening, and Greg was pleased to see his father once more looking a picture of ghostly good health. He was wearing the same turquoise bustle back ball gown he’d worn the previous evening, but now had a mink stole draped over his shoulders.
‘You’re looking chipper, Dad,’ Greg said, rising from his chair. ‘I take it you managed to recharge your batteries.’
‘I did, son, and I’m feeling as good as new again. But sit down, will you. There’s no need to stand on my behalf – and you look as if you could do with a seat. What’s wrong?’
‘Oh… nothing much. I was just on the phone with Cyndi and she hung up on me. She thinks I should be home with her instead of fixing the house. She thinks I don’t care about her.’
‘And do you?’ Lyle asked.
‘Not really,’ Greg admitted. ‘I can’t see the two of us being together for much longer.’
Lyle sighed. ‘I wish you could find a nice girl and settle down, Greg. You don’t want to grow old and end up by yourself. I’d hate to think what my life would have been like if I hadn’t met your mother.’
‘Do you think Billy should have married Jean?’ Greg asked.
The Last of the Bowmans Page 17