Fifty-Minute Hour (36 page)

Bryan brushed aside the Kleenex box, dashed headlong down the stairs and out through the front door. ‘I won't forget it –
ever
,' he called hysterically to no one. ‘Or your bottom drawer.' He slammed the gate behind him, was swallowed up in darkness.

It's one-eighteen exactly. Just fifty-two minutes left – no, fifty-one, if I arrive a minute early, which John-Paul can't object to, when I haven't seen him for over a whole month now, missed seventeen separate sessions, which add up to a total of eight hundred and fifty minutes. It's Monday, perfect Monday, and I'm sitting in the College of Technology, not in my usual cramped and smelly toilet, but in their new and bright canteen. I've actually eaten lunch, the first time ever before an appointment with John-Paul. The lunch was celebratory. I even bought some wine, which they sell in miniature bottles like the ones you get on airlines. My bags are piled all around me – supermarket carriers full of groceries and polishes, disinfectants, cleaners. This is my new start. I spent the whole weekend blanked out – sleeping, sleeping, sleeping, as if to compensate for all my midnight pacing the week or two before, or perhaps to make the minutes pass more quickly, let go that aching count.

I woke refreshed and healthy, as if I'd slept through the whole winter into spring; intend to
make
it spring – to eat, and even cook, again; scour my filthy room, purify it, purge it; remove the stink and scars. I bought all the soaps and scourers on my long walk to the tower, so I can start this afternoon, as soon as I get home from my appointment – also bought a clutch of presents for John-Paul. If he tells me they're a recompense, he's right. I bought them to apologise for doubting him; for believing he had dogs and wives and mistresses; labelling him a con-man and a fraud. I chose him really special things, not mere sweets and biscuits, but precious books, silk ties. I had to pay by credit card, since I haven't any cash. Money is a problem. I really need to give up all my clients, so I'm pure for him, and celibate, as now he is himself. I'm wearing white, as a promise of that purity – new white pristine clothes.

I drain my glass of wine, scoop out the last half-spoonful of matching white iced sorbet, gather up my parcels, dawdle down the stairs. No one stops me, or asks me what I'm doing, what right I have to eat in their canteen. Today I have rights everywhere, nowhere locked or banned. It isn't even raining, but a perfect winter's day; the sun weak but convalescent, the December sky the colour of a puffin's egg. I pass my last half-hour walking slowly, very slowly, down the road beside the tower, the words of Luke, 15, chiming in my head – the story of the Prodigal Son. I know those words almost off by heart; used to read the Gospels in my teens – secretly and shamefully, since my father viewed the Bible as a salacious dangerous book. It always meant so much to me, the emotion of that Father, his obvious love, compassion, the way he could forgive. My own father would have left me grovelling with the pigs, feeding off their husks. (One trendy modern version calls them ‘bean-pods', but ‘husks' is so much better, suggests their utter worthlessness, their empty barren dryness.)

‘And he would fain have filled his belly with the husks that the swine did eat.' I repeat that quaint archaic ‘fain', roll it round my tongue like one of John-Paul's toffees; continue with the story. ‘But when he was yet a great way off, his Father saw him and had compassion, and ran and fell on his neck and kissed him. And the son said unto him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven, and in thy sight, and am no more worthy to be called thy son.” '

I've forgotten the next line, except I know the Father summoned all his servants, urged them to dress his son in finery, put a ring on his finger and shoes on his feet, kill the fatted calf for him. ‘For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found.' There was never a Prodigal Daughter – no girls at all, or even wife, or none that I remember.

I pause a moment, put my shopping down, run my hands across my short cropped hair. John-Paul will know me as his son, run to meet me, kill the fatted calf for me. The husks are over, finished; the cold nights with the swine. I cross the street, jog towards the tower, bags and parcels banging at my knees. It's still only 2.06, but he'll give me those four minutes – a present like the fatted calf, the ring.

I stop in queasy shock. Someone else is encroaching on the tower, not just a casual passer-by, but someone striding right up to the door, about to press the buzzer. No – ‘someone else' is wrong, far too vague and flat a word for the slim and striking female who's trespassing on my own square foot of pavement, one hand reaching up still, while she pauses, checks her watch. She looks roughly my own age, though there the resemblance ends. She's the sort of girl you have to turn and stare at – not a pale-blue Mary, submissive and demure, but confident and coltish, with long athletic legs and a tiny show-off waist. Her clothes make mine look cheap. She's wearing daring purple, which clashes quite superbly with her shout of auburn hair, outglares my pallid white. I lunge towards her, grab her hand before it courts the bell-push. She pivots round, astonished, and I meet her crafty eyes, that subtle greenish-greyish shade which elude all definitions save ‘special' and ‘enchanting'.

‘What the hell?' she snaps.

Aggressive, too, I see. I stand my ground, inform her very coldly that ten past two on Monday is my appointment, actually – has been for eight months.

‘I'm sorry, but it's mine now. John-Paul is expecting me. I was told to come at ten past two today.'

I can't bear to hear her speak, her husky Sloane-ish voice, the way she says ‘John-Paul' with that air of gloating certainty, that hint of pure possession. She shakes my hand off roughly, reaches for the buzzer. I hear it answer ‘Yes'; hear her give her name: Beata. I
loathe
the name – arty and pretentious – press the bell myself, push up right against her, as I yell my own name: ‘NIAL!' Then I spring at her, tug her coil of hair, claw her face, pinion both her arms. She's crying. So am I. The only difference is she looks gorgeous when she cries, her huge eyes brimming, melting.

The door suddenly bursts open, and I half-fall against John-Paul. It's a double shock to see him. First, he looks quite different from the John-Paul I remember – taller and more tetchy – and second, he's at ground-level, instead of high up in his room. He never ventures down to greet a patient, always summons us to him. I cling on to him desperately, terrified he'll vanish. ‘It's
my
appointment – mine. You can't give it away.'

He fends me off immediately, tries to reassure Beata, who's still standing on the step. ‘Come in please, Beata. Would you go upstairs and wait for me.'

‘
No
!' I shout. His words are like a blow. He's hit me in the stomach, injured me internally. The world goes black a moment as I sway against the wall; hear his voice so steady and impassive I'm tempted to attack it, claw it open, find out if it's human.

‘Sit down,' he says to me, gesturing to the small hard chair in the cold and grudging foyer. No ‘please', no name at all. He said ‘please' to Beata, used her name caressingly, with affection, almost intimacy. I'm just a lump of nothing, a scrap of dirty paper which blew in at his door. I don't sit down – I can't – but dash towards the staircase to watch Beata groping slowly up, her auburn hair trembling down her back, her tight immodest skirt hampering her progress. I start calling up the stairs, begging her to give me her appointment, insisting that I'll pay for it – double, triple, anything she asks. I'm pleading with her, grovelling, shaking with cold fear. If John-Paul turns me out, I'm not sure I can …

‘Nial!' he raps, more sharply now; propels me from the staircase towards the nearest chair, seats me forcibly, pressing on my shoulders, so I can't get up again. He's stronger than he looks, and his grip is really hurting, but I don't resist at all. His hands are on my body. He's touching me, in contact, his warm breath meeting mine. I've craved that touch for naked starving months, longed to be this close to him. Tears splash on my hands. I'm only close as a prisoner would be close – a prisoner to her gaoler, a convict to her guard. He'll touch Beata in quite a different way, not hold her down, restrain her, but stretch out on the couch with her, lap her in his arms. I scrub my eyes, try to speak through hurting racking sobs.

‘She … She's no right to go up there. She's stolen my appointment. This time's
mine
on Monday.'

‘Nial, you know quite well you told me in your letter that you wished to terminate your therapy, refused even to discuss it with me. And you appear to have forgotten that when I wrote to say we should meet at least once more, and that I'd keep your appointments free for you, in case you changed your mind, you replied quite categorically that you were leaving London and going back to Shropshire, had already found a cottage there, and were departing on the third. In fact, I'm most surprised to see you here at all.'

‘I
never
wrote! You're lying.'

‘You wrote three separate times, Nial, three letters in a row.'

‘Well, the letters were just lies then – stupid crazy lies.'

‘I'm afraid I'm not a mind-reader.'

‘But that's your job – you ought to be. It was obvious they were lies.'

‘What seems to me more obvious is that you're unaware at present of the difference between reality and its opposite.'

He sounds so cold, sarcastic, and he's no longer even touching me; has shifted back a pace or two, as if my body somehow taints him. I long to be Beata, so I could make him press back close; own her velvet voice, which matches his. My own voice comes out spiteful – hessian, rough sacking.

‘You're dying to get rid of me, that's all. You know I couldn't leave you, and that I'd fall apart if you ever moved away. I suppose that's what you want, though – to have me just crack up. You gave away my session to that … that woman, so you can fondle her and stroke her and tell her she's your favourite. And I notice she came early, which you've never let
me
do. A whole four minutes early, so you'll have more time to…'

‘I realise you're extremely overwrought, Nial. I'm also genuinely sorry that you've made this journey for no purpose, especially if you've come all the way from Shropshire. You're welcome to sit down here until you've calmed yourself, but I just have to start my session now.'

‘Start your
screwing
, don't you mean?'

He doesn't answer, just turns abruptly on his heel, and starts striding up the stairs. I dash after him, still shouting, try to block his way. I hate myself, hate the things I'm yelling; want to say I'm sorry, want to just be quiet, but all the gentle harmless words are squashed and almost smothered, dying like myself.

‘Nial, if you continue in this fashion, I shall have to call an ambulance, which I don't think you would like.'

I sink down on the steps, silent now, defeated. The stone is hard and chilly, like his voice; seems to shrink from any contact with my flesh. So he'd allow me to be carted off by a gang of total strangers, abandoned in some heartless institution. It's happened once already, so he knows how cruel his words are, knows just what he's threatening. My head slumps on my knees. No point fighting any more, no point even pleading. I fix all my concentration on his footsteps, listen to them fade; strain to hear the whinny of the door, which always creaks on opening, steel myself for its curt and hurtful slam. Then I hear the catch turn – the final shaming insult. He never locks his door. He's not only excluding me, he's insisting on his privacy, so he can strip that girl and enter her. He probably sleeps with half his patients – the little ones, the loved ones; invites them to his home, cradles and caresses them. They're good, you see, and beautiful; never made their mothers ill or drove their fathers out; weren't a disappointment from the womb.

I limp downstairs, one step, one step, one step, like a child. My carrier bags are lying on their sides, retching half their contents. They look lonely and abandoned, very sick. I pick them up and nurse them, sort them into piles, smooth the crumpled ties out, swathe things back in tissue. John-Paul told me I could stay here until I'd calmed myself. I'm feeling calm already, sorting out my shopping, rearranging bags.

‘The ties are yours, John-Paul,' I say. ‘And this book of Sanskrit love poetry, and the ones on modern art. And please do take the food – share it with Beata. I chose some quite exotic things, so you can have a proper love-feast. No, don't refuse – I'd like you to, and anyway, I shan't be eating myself, not now, not any more. All I need is just these soaps and cleaners. I know my clothes are white, John-Paul, but underneath I'm dirty, really filthy black. Which is why you didn't want me in your room. It's okay, I understand. I don't blame you at all. Stay there with Beata. She's clean and very good; Daddy's little good girl. Hold her really close to you, dry her pretty eyes.'

My own eyes are dry, and dirty, as I push the heavy door, pick up just one carrier, step out into brilliant mocking sunshine.

‘Mary? Are you all right? What's happened? Why didn't you ring for an electrician if the lights fused?'

‘They … didn't.'

‘What are you doing groping in the dark, then?'

‘I thought candles would be more romantic, darling.'

‘Romantic! For Christ's sake, put the lights on and pour me a stiff Scotch. I've had the devil of a day and a bloody awful journey home on top of it – a signals failure at Wimbledon, or so the moron said who calls himself a guard. More likely a go-slow. They never do a stroke of work, those layabouts. Down, Horatio!' James pushed the dog away, fumbled for the light-switch in the hall.