Fifty-Minute Hour (16 page)

‘I'm not talking about my Mother,' he said slowly. ‘I'm talking about the cosmos.' He broke off instantly as he heard the faintest rustle from behind him – John-Paul lighting up. He hated the way they had to be positioned, so that John-Paul could see him, but not vice versa. It roused such painful memories. For many of his boyhood years his Mother had sat behind him, knitting coloured squares while he struggled with his homework. It had made him very tense, sapped his concentration as he'd listened to her breathing – the sighs or sudden in-breaths which meant she was displeased. She could see right through his back, knew when he was daydreaming or doodling in the margins. The knitted squares were something of a comfort, though – even if a mystery. She never joined them up to make scarves or shawls or blankets, just added to the ever-growing pile. Yet, nonetheless, they proved important in his life, endowed him with a sense of order, very early on: horizontals tallying with verticals, all angles ninety degrees. He wished John-Paul would knit. It might afford him some distraction, dilute his total concentration on his patient's feeble words.

‘But don't you see, Bryan, you have allowed your mother to become so all-embracing, so central in your life and in your psyche, that she now appears to constitute your world? So in talking about the cosmos, as you put it, you are, I think, talking about your mother, though you may feel the need to deny it.'

Bryan said nothing. He didn't like to contradict a doctor. It sounded rude, ungrateful, and anyway, it would only be called ‘denial'. The room seemed cold, unwelcoming, the couch hard beneath his back. He wished they could sit face to face, like friends. He hadn't any friends – well, a few acquaintances at work, and the woman in the paper-shop who always asked him how he was, but no one close or special. John-Paul was special, in a way, but so remote, so shadowy. He didn't even know his age. He was bad at people's ages. Both John-Paul and his Mother seemed old like rocks were old, or old like old cathedrals.

The silence felt unkind, yet he couldn't seem to fill it, despite the fact it cost so much – vintage-champagne-minutes simply pouring down the drain. Free association might sound fine in theory, but in practice it was difficult – nerve-racking, embarrassing, and probably very dangerous. He'd heard it called a sort of mental x-ray, and x-rays showed up frightening things like tumours, fractures, clots. Was his own mind cancerous, fractured or obstructed, ulcerated, haemorrhaging? And why did it remain a stubborn blank – even now, when his doctor radiologist was impatient for a picture, waiting for a shadow on the screen?

A real x-ray would be infinitely preferable. At least he would be given his instructions, clear and firm instructions, like swallowing his barium-meal in a series of swift gulps, or holding his breath and counting up to ten. Whereas therapy was vague and quite amorphous, left him always muddled and confused, longing for more structure in the sessions, some goal or sense of purpose, some objective he could grasp, a methodical instruction-sheet setting out the guidelines. Even after four long years, he had a strange uneasy feeling that he'd somehow missed the point and been doing things all wrong, wasted all those costly baffling sessions. He didn't even understand the jargon – terms like ‘splitting', ‘super-ego', or ‘ca-thexis', which remained nebulous but menacing, like the many mysterious concepts in his physics and astronomy books; a source of endless tribulation, yet impossible to pinpoint or define. Was it any wonder he lay awake most nights, when super-egos assaulted his frail psyche, and supernovae threatened further off?

He stared up at the ceiling, feeling quite demoralised, but still trying to find some topic he could broach. The ceiling offered nothing, so he examined all the in-trays in his head, all those pigeonholes and filing cabinets, which he always did his frantic best to organise and order, so that his anxieties were kept separate from his fears, his depressions from his phobias. Though even that was tricky. Most fears were depressing, so he often spent an hour or two nervously debating which section they should go in, or how large they had to loom before he refiled them under ‘Panic'. And some items fitted every slot – chaos, for example, which induced panic, fear, depression
and
anxiety.

‘Chaology,' he murmured, trying out the word aloud, which he'd never dared before.

‘I beg your pardon?'

‘It's a new word in the dictionary. I looked it up last week. It means the science of chaos. You can study chaos now, you see, like people study biology, or zoology, or all the other “ologies”. Which proves it's
there
– and growing.'

‘Bryan, it seems to me quite obvious that it's your
inner
world which is experiencing the chaos. We all tend to fear chaos when our own personal lives are threatened, so it may well be that since you've yielded all control to your mother, you feel you've returned to the powerless state of a child. I mean, it's surely not insignificant that you brought your toy snake with you today – a familiar object from your childhood, which once gave you comfort and security.'

Bryan glanced down at his side, still astonished by the fact that the snake was lying on the couch with him, its green head resting dumbly on the pillow, its red felt tongue lolling like a drunk's. However had it got here? He remembered sorting through his briefcase just last night, putting in his report on departmental stock control, his pakamac, his pilchard sandwiches, but not a green and yellow knitted snake. It had been knitted by his Auntie Anne, his mother's younger sister, when he was only four; had shared his life (and bedroom) ever since. It was now limp and rather lumpy, its stuffing semi-rotted from his constant childhood tears, one black button eye lost, its skin distinctly grubby. But he had to admit he was very much attached to it, couldn't simply chuck it out, or give it to a jumble sale. And anyway, he felt he owed it something, a refuge in its twilight years, when it had done so much for him when he was small. Even now, its one dim eye was fixed on him, imploring; its tail curled in towards itself, as if scared it might be docked. Yet if anyone at BRB should see it … He tensed in sudden horror. There was no privacy at work, not even in a briefcase, not even in a locker. He'd become an instant laughing stock – sniggers in the office, titters in the gents.

‘John-Paul,' he stuttered out, almost gagging on the name, yet using it deliberately to stress the importance of his request. ‘I … I wonder if I could leave it here, the snake? Oh, only for the day. I don't want to be a nuisance. I could pick it up this evening, if it wouldn't inconvenience you. It's just that …' The sentence petered out. How could he pick it up, when Friday was his class night? How could he brave the class at all, face Mary, face his Father? One hand groped blindly out, reaching for his snake, the comfort of its presence and its shape. He longed to pull the blankets over him, as he had done as a child, sob into its soft and yielding body.

He heard John-Paul shift his chair a fraction, do something with an ashtray. ‘So you wish to leave your phallus with me?'

Bryan felt a blush suffusing his whole body, like a painter with a roller slapping scarlet on a wall. He hated that word ‘phallus' which John-Paul would keep using and which made him feel inferior since he was sure he didn't have one. It sounded too important and definitely too large.
He
had something different – something English, insubstantial.

‘Snakes have always been a symbol of sexuality, in many different cultures – the upsurging life-force which can move with neither wings nor legs. I find it very interesting, and perhaps significant, that
your
snake is not only multi-coloured, but knitted in a complicated stitch. Which makes me feel your genitality is complex, in some way – and probably confused. You appear to be drawing my attention to your phallus at this moment – in fact, wanting to “leave it here”, which suggests you can't handle it yourself. Does your snake have any name, I wonder? What did you call it as a child?'

Bryan's blush had reached his ankles, now flooded down his feet. ‘Anne.'

‘
Anne
?'

Bryan nodded. He'd never been imaginative. Anne, to please his aunt.

‘So you feel your snake is female?'

‘No – well, yes. I mean …' He hadn't really thought about its gender. Everything was female in his home. It had seemed safer that way, natural.

‘In designating your phallus as female, you're obviously seeking to deny your masculinity.'

‘I haven't
got
a phallus,' Bryan said irritably, his eyes beginning to water as a new cloud of cigarette smoke drifted over his head. ‘I've got a …' Abruptly, he broke off, couldn't get the word out. There
wasn't
any word for the footling thing he kept between his legs. His Mother had studiously avoided all the words, even childish ones like ‘willie'; had always made him feel he shouldn't have that … that carbuncle, excrescence, cluttering up his underpants, when it was clearly very germy, probably highly dangerous, and certainly unnecessary. He'd never liked to touch it, even when relieving himself, felt he needed sugar-tongs as he stood above the toilet bowl, or perhaps extra-long chopsticks, specially sterilised.

‘So now you wish to castrate yourself?' John-Paul exhaled more smoke. ‘Isn't this the central issue? All your talk this week about sub-atomic particles is avoidance pure and simple.'

‘It's
not
.' Bryan wiped his eyes. ‘It's real. I mean, it
isn't
real. That's the point, the one I keep trying to explain. Nothing's real, not even basic matter.'

‘Yes, I think I understand. You feel a sense of unreality located in your body, and especially in your phallus, because you doubt your own masculine identity. This may spring from basic guilt, of course, which brings us back to your snake. Serpents have always been a symbol of temptation. I expect you read your Bible as a child – the story of the Fall, in Genesis. The snake created chaos in the world, shattered the serenity of Eden, as
your
guilt about your phallus is causing chaos in your own world, or at least a fear of chaos. And even in the Babylonian creation myths, which Genesis derives from, there's a sea-monster called Tiamat, who …'

Bryan had lost the thread. John-Paul was far too clever for him. He'd never even heard of the Babylonian creation myths, yet John-Paul just flung them in as if they were as common as Red Riding Hood. No, he mustn't think of wolves. He'd been a lustful wolf himself as far as Mary was concerned, had spent thirty-seven seconds gazing at her breasts – well, only through her blouse of course, but he'd imagined them
without
the blouse, or brassiere; seen himself alone with her while she undressed after the class – a hundred classes, actually, two hundred swelling breasts. John-Paul was right – he
did
feel sexual guilt, though he'd never laid a finger on her, not even in his fantasies, just gazed and gazed, and longed.

He could see her now, this instant, as the Winston Churchill Centre burgeoned into the Garden of Eden, an unchaotic sunny spot where Mary cavorted naked with her Adam. He cast himself as Adam, adding several inches to both his height and shoulder-width, and transforming his six chest-hairs to a dark and tangled pelt. Mary did resemble Eve, in fact, or at least the picture of her in his Children's Illustrated Bible – ‘Eve Banished from the Garden'. Her breasts had been enormous in the picture – or had seemed so in his boyhood – full and soft and rounded, yet trussed up very high, as if supported by some supernatural pulley. But a snake had been coiled round them, a terrifying serpent with a long forked tongue and scales. His Anne was nothing like that. Anne was just a friend, and a very old and loyal one, not dangerous, not a symbol. But if John-Paul didn't understand, then it was probably his fault again. He just wasn't bright enough, didn't have symbols, only cuddly toys; didn't read creation myths, just the
Daily Mail
.

‘What are you thinking, Bryan?'

He jumped. ‘Er … nothing.'

‘So you're still fixated on your sense of unreality?'

‘No, I'm …' Bryan fished desperately in the shallows of his mind, came up with a mermaid in a blue flower-patterned blouse. ‘I was … thinking about Mary.'

‘The Mother of God?'

‘Pardon?'

‘I assumed you meant the Virgin Mary, since we were just talking about Eden. Eve's been called the precursor of the Virgin, and of course her name in Hebrew means …'

Bryan swallowed. Precursor. Hebrew names. This was worse than Skerwin. ‘No, Mary's just a friend of mine.'

‘You have a friend called Mary? You've never mentioned her before.'

He nodded, shook his head, drooped back on the couch. ‘I don't know her, actually.'

‘Yet you just called her your friend.'

‘Well, she
might
have been a friend. We were getting on so well, you see. I think she really liked me. But then I saw my Father and …' Again, the words dried up. He could hardly bear to think that his Father hadn't recognised him. They were so physically alike – even Mary had remarked on it – but it wasn't only that. There was obviously a strong instinctual bond between all fathers and all sons. He'd experienced it himself on some deep and almost sacred level the instant he'd glimpsed Skerwin; hoped, assumed the tutor would reciprocate. It could have been so different – Skerwin pulling up his chair in the warm womb of the canteen, while he introduced his Father to his girlfriend – no, fiancée – Mary; drinks all round, to celebrate. Or perhaps knickerbocker glories. He'd never had one, ever, but they had figured very frequently in his boyhood fantasies: he and his (vague) Father sharing one long spoon, one foot-high fancy glass; all shyness, strangeness, melting as fast as the ice cream.