by Neil M. Gunn
I had to stop there for a long time. It is now getting late. I have taken the tablets and in half an hour they’ll work. I am vexed that I have had to go back to the full dose, but I shan’t let that get the better of me. I don’t know why I have to go through with this thing, with this fellow Adam. I try to keep calm about it, but I am working through myself and must go. Not to go is to escape. I want to go through him, to separate him and understand. He is like myself in so many ways. He sees things as I do. But he goes beyond, and it is there I have to break him—in a dream sense to tear his chest open and separate the dark. I have got to know, and then I will be better, I will have conquered so much of my trouble, of what haunts me from the past. Anyone reading this would think I was quite mad. Even Ranald wouldn’t see that it is the madness of the world.
I’ll leave it for the morning to decide whether I’ll go with Adam to that place or not.
11
The sky is grey, and a grey day in the country affects me like a childhood Sabbath. I feel nervous, too, and weak, as if I were going through with some awful ordeal. I have a premonition of something dreadful. But it may work out quite the other way, and if it does, to-morrow I’ll dance, I’ll be free. Oh it will he lovely! I’ll weep on Greyface’s neck and give him all my sweet ration. Adam wants me to go with him beyond the small waterfall, in round the back of the mountain where there is a primeval country, he says, of moss hags and lochans. The burn comes from there. We all do, he said, with at once an infectious understanding, a hideous knowledge and his engaging smile. All I know is that I am taking the seven cats with me.
I don’t trust him. There is something dreadful in him as Farquhar’s cottage. But I can fight him. I am going.
Part Two
RELAPSE
1
Aunt Phemie stood by the station exit watching the people come off the train. It was the busiest train of the day, having travelled through the night from London to Perth, and now in the late forenoon a frowsy pallor hung about the released bodies and stared from the faces behind the carriage windows. It was a long train and, dodging the trundling trolleys, passengers converged on the exit where the ticket collector busily held them up. Single men, city clothes, commercial travellers—any one of them, she realised with dismay, might be Ranald. A couple of men looked at her questing eyes sharply. Then she saw him (tall, dark, distinguished—Nan had said), saw his eyes on her. She went forward. “You are Ranald Surrey?”
“And you are Aunt Phemie.”
He used her name with the cool ease that saved unnecessary fuss or bother. His handshake was friendly but brief.
“How is Nan?”
“Coming round, thank goodness.”
“That’s good.”
Aunt Phemie felt flustered as if she had been preparing herself to encounter warmth and anxiety, but here was the ticket collector. Ranald gave up his half ticket and followed her out into the station square where her battered twelve-year-old car was waiting. He had no luggage beyond the blue kitbag slung over a shoulder. As they got into the car she said, “I hope you didn’t mind my wiring for you, but—she was really very bad—and—well—it was difficult. She spoke about you so much.”
“What happened?”
Aunt Phemie got the engine going and threaded her way through the cars and buses. “It’s difficult to know exactly,” she said. “She was getting on well—and then she had this relapse.”
“But she is pulling round again?”
“Yes, I think so.” Aunt Phemie did not normally feel nervous or excited and this worried her. She cut in before a lorry too sharply and was aware that he knew it though he showed nothing. Indeed he was looking at the church, the hotels, the street traffic, the shops, observing her county town with a sort of casual thoroughness.
“Farming mostly, I suppose?” he said:
“Yes. Quite a busy place, especially on market days.”
“Do you do much of the business yourself?” He looked at her in an interested way.
She kept her eyes front. “Well, a bit. I have a very good grieve.”
“The man in charge? That makes a difference. So long,” he added with an understanding humour, “as he doesn’t feel himself too much in charge.” He observed the bills in front of the cinema.
“Oh, we manage,” she replied, her tone firming. For she had had precisely that difficulty with the grieve, who was over fifty, married, with six of a family.
“I’m sure you do,” he answered her at once.
“What makes you think so?”
“Just looking at you.”
She felt her face grow hot, for somehow he had got the compliment over very easily.
“You’ll be tired after travelling all night.”
“A bit,” he answered, “but I don’t mind. Did you send for me on your own?”
“Yes. Nan doesn’t know you’re coming. I hope you don’t mind?”
“She must have been pretty bad, then. Nerves?”
“Yes—with temperature complications.”
“Is she in bed?”
“Yes. The doctor said I should get a nurse—we have to watch night and day—but I was afraid of that, of a white stranger, especially at night. We got a woman from the cottages whom Nan knows. She is with her now.”
“The local medical?”
“Yes … Do you think we should have got a specialist?”
He thought for a moment. “Who could you get here, anyway?”
“We could always send for someone. But—just whom?”
“Uhm.”
“The only one I could think of was you.”
He remained thoughtful.
“I felt you must know a lot—apart from anything personal. Things must have happened which I don’t understand,” said Aunt Phemie in a rush. “There’s something troubling her which I can’t get at. At least I think there is. I don’t know.” And after only a momentary pause, she added, “I took it for granted you were fond of her. That’s why I sent for you.”
“It was difficult for me to get away, and you may be sure I wouldn’t have come if I hadn’t wanted to.” He spoke in an easy tone without emphasis, yet with a curious assurance of strength. She knew he was no more than twenty-eight. If he was really this cool casual sort of fish (she thought abruptly), however selfreliant, it would be terrible. She did not know where she was with him, hardly knew what to do. Before turning off the main road, she stopped the car.
“We had better think this out, think what we are going to do,” she said with an earnestness she tried to subdue.
“Yes. It would be better. You did not tell her I was coming because you thought it might upset her?”
“I thought it might excite her,” Aunt Phemie corrected him. “It would certainly have kept her from sleeping unless we dosed her too heavily. She would have been a wreck to-day.” As he did not reply at once, she asked, “Do you think you should see her now?”
“I think I might. If you like, we needn’t say that you wired for me. I have in fact got some business for Newcastle pushed forward, and have come here for three days before going there. If you can have me for so long?”
“Of course!” she said. “That’s fine. That will explain your appearance perfectly.” She nodded, suddenly relieved. “We can go in quietly and I can go up and prepare her.”
“Good.”
Aunt Phemie hesitated. “She has been writing you long letters. I mean you will know all about what she’s been doing or thinking here?”
“Well, she did write me one long letter, about thistledown and a man who appeared—one of her hallucinatory experiences. I suggested she should not give in to that sort of thing and it had a restraining effect. Her letters after that were more normal, like her old self. I thought she was coming along all right.”
“So she was,” said Aunt Phemie, “then something happened. Did she mention anything about an old man being murdered in a cottage?” She felt his eyes on her.
“Yes. But not much about it. Why
?”
“Well, naturally it upset her. You know how such a thing upsets us all in the country.”
“I suppose so,” he said thoughtfully. “So you think that’s the root cause of the relapse?”
Should she tell him of Adam? Or leave him to find out from Nan? Her mind went into a whirl. “I think so,” she said, “only I don’t know everything. Perhaps it would be better if you found out from Nan herself. It’s so difficult to know what’s real—or—not.”
“You would rather I found out from Nan; say to her that you told me nothing?”
He had read her mind. “To begin with, at least, I think that might be better,” she answered with an apparently thoughtful nod. “Don’t you?”
“I think so,” he agreed, and it was as if having concluded that bit of business they could now go on. She could not move.
“You mentioned a—a specialist. That’s worried me. I have felt the responsibility. I am very fond of Nan. Did you mean some mental specialist?”
“A psychoanalyst?”
“Well—yes.”
“I just wondered what you thought about it. I suppose I wondered if you thought there was anything wrong with the brain itself. I don’t. And I’m glad you don’t. As for the psychoanalyst——” He gave a small shrug and smiled. “She could have one of them later—but I doubt if she will.”
“Don’t you believe in them?”
“That’s a big subject.”
She was nettled now. “I know it is. But if there is something that’s worrying Nan, something deep, that she can’t quite get or formulate—well, from such simple knowledge of Freudian analysis as I possess, I think it at least possible that she might be helped to free her mind. Or do you not believe in Freud?”
He took out a packet of cigarettes. “Have one?”
She took one, saying she didn’t smoke very often. As he was lighting his own, she saw he looked tired and very pale and was on the point of suggesting they should drive on when he blew out a chestful of smoke. The bones in his face were finely shaped, the nose almost Greek; the eyebrows finely arched, the eyes hazel behind the dark lashes.
“About Freud,” he said, with the lazy air of one habitually used to speaking. “It’s a big subject. He’s done some marvellous analytical, clinical work. But when it comes to his theories about how the whole psyche works, then I don’t quite get him. All the pretty myths he makes up about the Oedipus complex and the Id and the Censor and so on, are to me just—the old bourgeois myths, not science. Ways of explaining the mind, as the Book of Genesis explains the world.” He blew a stream of smoke with a half thoughtful, half-amused expression. “He looks upon the individual as something that sort of grew miraculously—altogether apart from the social conditions which really have made him. To ignore man’s social-economic environment in trying to understand him is like ignoring his stomach when his digestion goes wrong.”
“And you’re sure you’re not being prejudiced by your own political theories—or myths?”
He laughed, quietly stretching his athletic body, and looked at her with what seemed a new interest. “That’s very neat,” he allowed. “It’s a matter, however, of fact, of scientifically finding a cause. We would have to argue that. But about Nan.” He smoked for a moment. “I’ll tell you quite frankly why I encouraged her to come here. As a result of what she went through in London, she had a nervous breakdown. As a result of that, to protect herself, she went back in her mind to earlier, happier conditions. She saw visions of things from long ago, her father working in a field, the security of her mother, attractive bits of scenery, and so on. She was escaping from a world with which she could not cope—a hellish world admittedly—and going back to an earlier security. This is what Freud very properly called an infantile regression. You’ll accept that?”
“Well?”
“But do you?”
“Nan insists she was not escaping.”
“And you agree?” He looked at her.
“We could argue that.”
“You really think it is arguable? For Nan has mentioned your work with children. I should respect your opinion.”
“I am not too sure about it. Nan is herself so conscious of the accusation of escaping that … didn’t she mention it, question you?”
“She did—in no uncertain terms. But then her resistance, the very fierceness of it, surely gives her away. It’s what you expect in an analysis when you touch the real or sore point. Isn’t it?”
“Perhaps. But I am not satisfied. The one thing such work as I did made clear to me was the tremendous difference between children—and between grown-ups, too, for that matter. However, we could go into that again. Just now I should like to know why you thought she should come here—in the condition you believed her to be in.”
Aunt Phemie’s tone was at last cool and firm. She poked some strands of pale gold hair up under the brim of her brown felt hat, brushed and blew cigarette ash from her green jumper and the lapel of a faded-green tweed jacket. She threw what remained of her cigarette out of the window. A sharpening mood from her Continental travel days had come back upon her.
“I thought she should come here,” Ranald explained, “because I reasoned it out that if she did find her early environment she might once again get put together; become well, and so be able to go on. Simply my own idea, for psychoanalysis is—well, an analysis, not a therapy. It doesn’t help Nan much for an analyst to show her the regressive nature of her own particular solution of her trouble if at the same time he cannot provide her with a better solution. And psychoanalysis can’t—at least so far as I know. That’s where it lets so many down. Or perhaps you don’t think so.”
“I think I catch your drift,” said Aunt Phemie.
He smiled and his eyes flickered on her for a moment, but she wasn’t looking at him. “It is complicated, too, when the neurotic’s own solution is known to the neurotic—and repudiated as a neurotic solution. That seems perhaps a bit involved,” he allowed.
“You mean Nan knows the argument.”
“Exactly. And she’s very intelligent. So it’s no good going on arguing with her. She is convinced she knows all about it—and can tell you a few things over and above! Yet the fact is she’s ill, and the neurotic nature of her illness seems only too clear. The only thing you can do then is help her out, or try to.”
“But then, by sending her here aren’t you in fact confirming her in her escape, her infantile regression?”
“Not altogether, because we re-establish the economic aspect—the actual environment in which at one time she did find health. After all, it seems simple to me that her nerves went because of the condition of things outside her. She didn’t become ill because of some internal mysterious affection of the ego. The world broke her. From that cause, certain mental effects followed.”
“You like logic.”
“It’s a hobby of mine.”
“Why did you send her here and not to her own home?”
“I didn’t do all the sending. But I strongly supported her notion of coming here.”
“Why?”
“Because she believed in you.”
“There doesn’t seem much left for me to say, does there?” said Aunt Phemie with a certain sparkle in her eyes, as she pressed the starting button.
2
As they drove into the cartshed, Aunt Phemie said, “The doctor is here.” She parked her car in a stall alongside two uptilted carts, opened her door and got out smartly. By the time Ranald had his kitbag slung to his shoulder, she was halfway to the entrance. At the entrance, she paused, glanced back at him and went on. When he got outside, she was already greeting the doctor who drew away from his car to meet her. Ranald went on slowly, prepared to stroll by, but she called him and introduced Dr. Baxter, an active man with a full face and dark-grey hair. His small eyes rested assessingly on Ranald for a moment even as he smiled, then he turned again to Aunt Phemie.
“Mr. Surrey is a particular friend of Nan’s,” s
he explained.
“Is that so?” acknowledged the doctor politely, glancing again at Ranald.
“How is she this morning?” Aunt Phemie’s tone was quiet and searching.
“Well——” The doctor’s reddish brows puckered. “There’s no temperature, but there’s a distinct exhaustion, depression. You’ll have to watch her pretty carefully. I feel fairly sure now there is nothing—physiologically wrong.”
“That’s good, that’s so much.” Aunt Phemie nodded in a businesslike way. There was a pause. “Do you think Mr. Surrey might help to—help her?”
“Well——” The doctor straightened himself, glanced away, looked at Ranald, and then at his own hand as it pulled his waistcoat down. He was distinctly well dressed. “I was going to warn you again against any form of excitement. Too sudden or strong an excitement might be definitely dangerous; would be. I had hoped you would be able to keep her quiet, rest her thoroughly, for at least a couple of days. By the way, you’ll have to get them to stop that dog howling.”
“What dog?” Asked Aunt Phemie.
The doctor looked at her. “I gather a dog was howling over at the cottages during the night.”
“Was there?” Aunt Phemie appeared to think a moment. “I’ll talk to the grieve about it.”
“It might be as well,” agreed the doctor. “I rather fancy,” he added cheerfully, “that it was a real dog.” He looked at Ranald. “You have travelled all night?”