One of the cardinal rules of psychoanalysis, as her stepfather often reiterated, was that one didn’t meet patients in social situations.
Maybe bed didn’t count, Leo told herself with bleak humour.
15
The black sedan drove them sedately through the evening quiet of Camden Town and past the university buildings and small terraced hotels of Gower Street. Aron Field plied her with questions about Becca and as she talked about her daughter, Leo realized just how happy she was to see him. He brought with him a bounded world of the familiar. After these weeks of living on a teetering edge, she entered it with gratitude.
‘So what brings you to London, Leonora?’ he asked when they had moved into the bustle of the West End. ‘I hope it’s something exciting. A new friend?’ he raised an eyebrow in a parody of innuendo. ‘Or a British deal for your Merry Wives?’
‘No, no nothing like that.’ Leo sighed despite herself.
‘You’ll forgive me. I’m a meddling old man.’
‘It’s not that.’
Leo looked out at the passing crowds, at the pictures on the front of the Coliseum. Like their conversation, the traffic had ground to a standstill.
‘Should we get out and walk the rest of the way? We’re almost at the Savoy.’
‘I’ve never been there, you know.’
‘Nothing but the best for Leonora H..’ Aron Field put his arm through hers with old-fashioned politeness and guided her through the fray. ‘We shall be four. I hope you’ll like the company.’
Leo was no longer listening. Halfway down William 1Vth Street, stretched a long billboard ranked with posters. Each of them bore the heading, Missing Person. She stopped and gazed into the faces of young men and women. They were ordinary snapshots, but the descriptions beneath them gave them a heart-rending quality. There was Joel, five foot nine and sandy haired, who had left home at the age of sixteen, four years ago, and whose mother begged for his return, underlining that all was forgiven. There was Angie, a delicate seventeen, who had disappeared only 3 months ago on the way to her school in Bath. There was Alan White, an upright-looking 48-year-old, whose wife and daughters, wished for some sign. There was Jerome, a black youth with vast eyes and a mop of short dreads who had vanished in Tower Hamlets over a year ago.
Tears leapt into Leo’s eyes. So many missing. So many missed.
‘What’s wrong Leonora?’ Aron Field’s voice reached her as if from a great distance. ‘Is there someone you recognise here?’
Leo shook her head. ‘I’m worrying about a friend of mine. That’s why I wanted to see Paola Webster.’
‘Is she missing? How old is she?’
Leo began to explain as they walked. ‘How difficult for you,’ Aron exclaimed, when she had told him a little. ‘The sense of betrayal, the breaking of a trust.’
‘That’s not what I feel,’ Leo interrupted too sharply. ‘Well, that’s only a tiny part of it. I just know something has happened to her.’
‘She’s an adult, so let’s hope it isn’t something terrible. If it’s an episode of some kind, she could be in a hospital. Have the police checked?’
Leo nodded.
‘Put it out of your mind for now, Leo. This is such a grand place. It deserves to be enjoyed.’ He waved his arm with a proprietorial gesture over the sweep of the Savoy lobby. ‘Like stepping back into my youth. My parents used to take me here.’ He chuckled. ‘And I think it’s changed less than I have. So this is my hotel, whenever I come to London.’
Leo could suddenly see him as a shy little boy, dreamy hooded eyes gazing out of that round face, as he walked slowly down the stairs into the mirrored splendour of the lounge and half disappeared into a capacious chair.
‘Frank Sinatra used to stay here,’ he confided. ‘Come, let’s sit where we can see all the comings and goings and we’ll order drinks while we wait for our friends. But perhaps you’d like to powder your nose first…or whatever it is that ladies do these days.’
Leo smiled at his innocent excitement, asked him to order a whisky and soda for her and left him for a moment. When she returned she saw him conferring with the Maitre D’ at the entrance to the restaurant. He was back instantly.
‘All arranged. And here are our drinks.’ He raised his glass to her. ‘To Leonora H. Let us hope your friend is soon returned to you.’ He took a sip from his glass, then bent towards her across the low table. ‘I had a patient once whose wife went missing, Leonora. She vanished just like that,’ he snapped his fingers. ‘Between sessions, as they say.’ His face took on an air of theatrical self-mockery. ‘My patient was beside himself. He contacted the police, did all the necessary, and on the couch he started to talk, for the first time really, about his wife. I could see, as he spoke, all the hints she had given him about her leaving, but he hadn’t heard. He had closed himself off, been blind and deaf to her. I tried to jog him into awareness. About a month later he had a letter from his wife. She was in California with a lover, but the line he quoted to me asked whether he had noticed her absence. He was quite shocked at that.’ Aron laughed. ‘But I can see from your face that this example provides no solace. I’m in the wrong case.’
‘I think you are,’ Leo said gently, though guilt whisked through her. She, too, had not been alert enough to Isabel.
He gave her a rueful look, then broke into a wave. ‘Here are our friends.’
Looking up, Leo wished the walls would swallow her. She froze into her chair.
Aron Field was oblivious. He walked forward to hug an elderly woman with a smooth cap of white hair and shook hands with the man at her side. ‘So good of you to offer to pick Emily up on your way,’ Leo heard him say. And then they were all in front of her.
‘Leo, this is Emily Robson, my dearest friend in London and a grande dame of our profession and Daniel Lukas only recently met at a conference, but much admired not only for his sterling work with adolescents, but for his writings. And this fine young woman here is Leo Holland, better known as Leonora H, who produces one of Manhattan’s wittiest comic strips. I hope you’ll all like each other.’
Aron’s introductions seemed to go on for ever.
‘Leo Holland.’ Daniel Lukas’s voice played over Leo’s name with only a hint of scepticism. ‘I believe we’ve already met.’
Leo raised her eyes to his. His face was unsmiling, but his hand was stretched towards her and she shook it before she had found her voice.
‘Yes, I believe we have,’ she echoed with a glimmer of bravado. ‘Was it earlier this evening, at the party?’
‘It could well have been.’
He played into her charade, just as she had played into his. But for a split second, Leo had the sense that he suspected her of having connived to set up this meeting.
‘Such a wonderful surprise to have Dr. Field in London,’ she said and then quickly turned her attention to Emily Robson. The woman had a remarkable delicacy of feature, like a porcelain doll whose hair had accidentally been dyed white. There was a quietness about her, too, which seemed to emit calming waves. As they moved into the restaurant, Leo tried to stay within their reach. She owed it to Aron not to ruin his dinner.
At the table, Aron placed her opposite Daniel so that every time she looked up, she was forced to confront him. She kept her eyes pinioned first to the tablecloth, then to the menu, which was so difficult to take in that with a laugh that sounded false to her own ears, she girlishly asked Aron to order for her. Their conversation floated somewhere above her, as distant as the sparkling diners at other tables or the lights which played through the far windows.
When she tuned in, Aron seemed to be bemoaning the fact that in the United States, psychoanalysis was no longer the respected field it had once been, largely because of the insurance companies which wouldn’t pay for its necessary extent, but for other reasons too. People just wanted quick fixes, wanted their symptoms removed, when that was, after all, only a beginning.
Leo couldn’t tell if Daniel agreed with hi
m. His tone was rather flat. What she heard was a statement about a burgeoning field for the talking cure, which had grown so broad and diverse that it was perhaps being killed off by its very success. Killed off, too, by a rush to medicalise any form of even marginally eccentric or annoying behaviour. Fidgety children now suffered from attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and were put in the care of doctors who prescribed Ritalin. Moody women who irritated a largely male cohort of psychiatrists were given a convenient malady, PMS or pre-menstrual syndrome. Teenagers rebelling against parents and at odds with themselves and the received world both developed or were diagnosed with depression or anorexia.
Leo found herself interested. She wished she could shed the combination of nervousness, embarrassment and guilt which had tied her tongue in knots. The lobster bisque in front of her might as well have been rank sewage for all she could taste of it. She reprimanded herself. Whatever threat she had uttered to Daniel on leaving him Friday, there was no need for her to feel like this. After all, it was Daniel and his kin who made up the rules, who forced this discomfort on her, not the other way around. If she had met her doctor on a similar occasion, there would have been no problem. But then neither did she tell her doctor the things she had told Daniel.
Leo bolted her wine, noticed only with her second glass that it was a wine intended for savouring and tried to do so.
‘The men are boring you with all their shop-talk, aren’t they Leo?’ Emily Robson’s soft voice broke into her thoughts. ‘They’re terrible once they get started.’ The older woman gave her a smile which had a hint of both complicity and mischief.
‘No, no. Not at all.’ Leo hesitated. ‘It’s fascinating, this notion that our culture promotes illness. Relieves us of responsibilities by naming a disorder and providing a cure. But aren’t you all, as shrinks, colluding. You know, Aron, the friend I came to visit here, the one I was telling you about, she was in analysis with Dr. Lukas. And I’m afraid it might have made her ill.’
In the long silence which met her statement, Leo watched the uncomfortable exchange of glances round the table. Daniel was tapping out an inaudible rhythm on the table with his fork.
‘Though I think she left him for Paola Webster.’ It was a question, but Daniel didn’t respond. Instead Aron Field stepped in to oil the wheels of conversation.
‘Not a choice I would necessarily have recommended.’
In the way Daniel now met her eyes, Leo found her confirmation. But he wouldn’t hold her gaze. Instead he listened to Aron who was repeating to the others what Leo had told him about Isabel’s disappearance.
‘So she just vanished from one day to the next?’ Emily said softly. ‘Like those mad French travellers at the turn of the last century. They just had to take off and go. A veritable fugue which was both insanity and provided relief from the suffocating provincialism of their everyday lives.’
‘Emily thinks,’ Aron offered a gloss, ‘that there are fashions in psychic illness. That’s not to deny their reality or suffering, but simply to say that the overt symptoms which signal disturbance change. We no longer have the grand hysterics of Charcot’s Salpêtrière. We have multiple personality disorder instead. Or war neuroses transmutes itself into gulf war syndrome. The age combines with doctors and patients to produce a certain kind of disorder.’
‘Yes. I can see that. But Isabel wasn’t mad.’
‘What picture do you have in your mind when you say that word?’ Aron asked.
Leo saw a woman lying listlessly on a bed, only moving to tear her hair out in great wadges. Her face was a silent scream. She saw a man wielding an axe over a huddled figure.
‘None,’ she said and added more, confidently, ‘Certainly not Isabel.’
‘Well, since she’s Australian, maybe she just went walkabout.’ Aron’s smile was well-intentioned. ‘And she’ll come back when she’s ready.’
Leo shook her head. ‘There’s a chance that she went out to investigate a story and met with trouble. A story about genetically modified substances. Foods, I think.’
‘Yes.’ Daniel met her on it. ‘Isabel had been interested in all that for some time. Before it all became a media item. I suggested to her that her interest was a mask. A genetic cover-up. What she was masking was an interest in the other kinds of genes. Roots, you might say.’
They all stared at him. He went on, heedless. ‘She countered me by accusing me of being a paid-up member of the Freudian temple, one built on the ills of the family. So, of course, I would have to say what I said.’
‘An interesting patient,’ Aron murmured.
‘She was writing a book about being one. On being a patient. A story about all of you.’ Leo threw down the gauntlet publicly. She studied Daniel’s face for a reaction.
There was a controlled smile on it. ‘I hope she finishes it. That, too, will be interesting. Though inevitably an embarrassment to the profession.’
Emily surveyed him. ‘You’re very sanguine about all this, Daniel.’
He shrugged. ‘It isn’t in my control.’
‘Daniel is right,’ Aron intervened. ‘Whatever the scandal people may want to draw from it, a book that contests our work only proves how adamantly secular the so-called Freudian temple is. We do not indoctrinate our patients. Not like those new-age therapists with their uniform beliefs. Monastic, that’s what they are.’ Aron was suddenly passionate. ‘They create disciples. Create believers. A monastic community of believers instead of a simple troubled family, whatever its internal warfare. Much harder to escape a cult. Especially when drugs are on hand to keep you placid and happy.’
Leo wanted to turn the conversation back to Isabel. ‘I don’t know whether Isabel explored that angle. All I know is that she’s vanished. And another friend of hers is dead.’
Aron gasped. ‘You didn’t tell me that, Leonora.’
She nodded dismally. ‘The added complication is that she was also using a false name. Iris Morgenstern.’
‘Iris Morgenstern, did you say?’ Daniel addressed her.
She looked at him. His eyes glimmered with some knowledge she didn’t understand. ‘Yes. Did she mention that name to you in her analysis?’
‘Leonora,’ Aron rebuked her. ‘You know better than to put a direct question like that. After all those years with Sam. Sam Gould is Leo’s stepfather,’ he explained to the others.
‘It’s all right Dr. Field. I don’t mind.’ Daniel intervened. ‘In fact Isabel did mention that name once. It’s rather unusual. So I remembered it - though we did stop seeing each other early in the autumn.’
He seemed to be waiting for Leo to challenge him. Instead she said, ‘Do you think Paola Webster would know something?’
Daniel grinned at her. It gave his face an open and engaging quality, as if shutters had been opened to sunlight. It struck Leo as the only spontaneous expression she had ever had from him. It made him attractive in a way she hadn’t imagined - like a man who might enjoy football or mountain walks instead of on an endless teasing out of meanings in the privacy of darkened rooms.
‘You could ask her. But don’t say I sent you.’
‘Why?’
The waiter arrived with their second course before she could press him, summoned perhaps by Aron’s baleful glance. The large plates with their artful display of food and colour usurped everyone’s attention. Surreptitiously, Leo watched Daniel. Was he to be trusted she wondered? He hadn’t after all betrayed her in any way to Aron or Emily.
As he caught her gaze, she felt warmth creeping up her cheeks. She made some excited comment about the food, the place, and felt increasingly like an awkward school girl who couldn’t strike quite the right tone.
‘Tell us about your cartoon strip, Leo. Have you put an analyst, in it? Emily Robson suddenly asked.
‘I wouldn’t dare. But a lot of therapists have walk-on parts - aromatherapists, hypnotherapists, reflexologists, yoga therapists, beauty therapists, chakra counsellors, take your pick.’
Aron la
ughed. He began to entertain them with a rendition of some of Leo’s characters which was so theatrically apt, that Leo found herself giggling. The wine helped. ‘Maybe you can pose for a walk-on part as an analyst, Aron,’ she heard herself saying.
‘I’d be honoured. How would you caption me?
‘As an expert on love and hate, maybe.’
‘Don’t forget grief and hurt. And giving and taking.’
‘Done.’
They had moved a long way from Leo’s preoccupations. Oddly, it was Daniel who brought them back.
‘I was just thinking, Leo. Do you know whether the police thoroughly checked out the possibility that Isabel left the country. Went back to Australia perhaps? I did suggest that to them.’
‘I imagine so. But missing persons don’t seem to be a priority, unless they’re children.’ After all these weeks of refusing her questions, Leo was a little taken aback at his sudden interest in Isabel. ‘Do you think that’s what she did? Because if she did, she didn’t contact her aunt there. I’ve spoken to her.’
He shrugged. ‘It’s possible. It’s a big country. And she wouldn’t have had to leave from London. It wouldn’t be unlike Isabel to spend a weekend in Amsterdam or wherever and fly from there, on impulse.’
Amsterdam. Norfolk leapt into Leo’s mind. Doubts attacked her so thick and fast, that her voice sounded strangled. ‘Why wouldn’t she let me know?’
‘That’s something I really don’t have an answer to.’
As he said it, Daniel wondered whether his words were quite true. When Emily had talked about the fugues of the so-called mad travellers, he had had a sudden acute sense of Isabel. Paola’s intense ministrations coupled with Leo’s friendly concern, now so evidently an acute and perhaps justifiable anxiety, could well have pushed Isabel into flight. Isabel would have liked neither the dependence their care signalled nor the one it demanded from her in return. It was all too close to home - a childhood home.
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