As It Happened, page 36
‘Someone with more good intentions you’d have to crawl a fucking long way, I can tell you, to find.’
‘Maybe,’ Maddox said, ‘I’m the same.’
‘Think so?’ Isaacson said. ‘I haven’t noticed,’ adding, ‘If your friend needs advice, vis-à-vis the Council, she’s only got to ring. Don’t ask her to come round. I’ve enough to deal with at present. Remember the Camden Town tube has a definite edge.’
‘I’m inclined to see it all,’ Maddox said, as he got up, his legs and back aching more than he’d been previously aware, ‘in the form of contracts. There’s a contract for me to live. Taken out without my knowledge, signed on my behalf, not by me. There’s an endless stream of contracts that flows from it. To do with family. Friends. Jobs. Education. With everything I think and do and feel. Endlessly we endorse, renege, or renegotiate, or endeavour to. Like, for instance, the contract I have with you. Similarly, the one you have with Cavendish. Unilaterally, we absent ourselves from some, as others do with us. Always at a price. I absented myself from the primary one in attempting to take my life. Taylor’s contract, too, with his family, even with himself, he decided was null and void. Hamlet,’ he went on, perplexed as to why he was suddenly so engaged, ‘is composed of nothing else. It’s the terms of these contracts that we’re preoccupied by throughout our lives. In my case, the initiating one.’
Isaacson was looking up at him with an expression less of surprise than amusement: the trivialisation of something – Maddox wasn’t sure what – was now involved, he feeling the compression of the springs against his back and thighs even though he was now standing, crossing to the door with the curious sensation the couch was strapped to his shoulders.
Isaacson, reaching into his cardigan pocket, had produced another cigarette. Lighting it with a match, waving the flame before him, he said, ‘The contractual world is your invention. Make an appointment.’
‘I’ll think about it.’
‘Not too long.’ He threw the match, still burning, into the hearth. ‘I have a secretary, but she’s rarely here. My wife, as you can see, is no fucking good.’
Hearing a sound behind him as he opened the door he turned to see Isaacson getting out of his chair. ‘Look at this,’ he said, crossing to the desk.
Pulling open a drawer he searched in it for several seconds, taking out several sheets of paper from which, finally, he extracted a photograph. Yellowed, folded over at the corner, he straightened it, fiercely, before holding it out. ‘What do you think?’
A young man in uniform was standing to attention, the head, close-cropped, thrust up powerfully from the square-set shoulders, the arms thrust down, the hands fisted, the thumbs to the front. ‘A contract, too, in its own sort of way.’
‘You,’ Maddox said.
‘Korea. Before I got hit. The thought of it might do some good. After Jerusalem, of course.’
His thumb closed over the photograph, returning it to the drawer. ‘See you sometime,’ he added, ‘if you so decide,’ turning back to his chair.
After letting himself out of the front door, Maddox glanced across at the front room window: the shape of the desk and the chair behind it were visible between the tasselled curtains, Isaacson, having returned to the desk, was stooping over the typewriter, attempting to decipher the print on the rolled-in sheet of paper. A moment later, as Maddox turned away, he was surprised to see the figure he identified as Doctor Death approaching from the direction of Notting Hill, he nodding, startled, as the figure passed, receiving a nod of acknowledgement in return – glancing back before he’d gone much further to see the figure mounting the steps to Isaacson’s door, the door opening immediately he rang and, with a look in his direction, its head bowing, the figure stepping inside.
15
Paul had rung him the morning of the interview to tell him the time of the appointment, he, Maddox, having been with Simone the previous day, apart from the afternoon which he’d spent wandering on Hampstead Heath. ‘Why don’t you get an answering machine?’ his brother had complained. ‘Move into the twenty-first fucking century. Or even the twentieth, come to that. I go to all this trouble with what is evidently a booked-up man and you’re not around to speak to or be left a message.’ There’d been barely an hour to get to Notting Hill. ‘Get a taxi.’
‘The tube will be quick enough,’ he said.
‘Tell him your symptoms. Don’t, for fuck’s sake, talk about God, metaphysics, or the fucking universe.’ After a moment, he added, ‘Nor art. Don’t fuck it up like you did with Simone.’
‘I’m hardly likely to,’ he said. ‘He’s a man.’
‘I’m not sure how much I should be reassured by that,’ his brother said. ‘Tell him you tried to kill yourself and what does he think. Put him in the picture.’
‘Maybe I should take you with me,’ Maddox said. ‘You can slip in the things you think I’ve missed out.’
‘If I had time I would. At least, see you got there. This is not religion. No sins against God, Jesus, or the Holy Ghost.’
‘Am I becoming religious?’ he asked.
‘You are,’ his brother said. ‘Spiritual. I’ve been through all that fucking racket. I don’t want to see you do the same.’
‘I’ll do my best,’ he said.
‘That’s all I ask.’ His brother had paused. ‘The guilt you feel about Taylor. Maybe you could tell him you screwed his wife. His wife got killed. Maybe that played a part in it. Give him,’ he went on, ‘the total picture. Don’t, for fuck’s sake, mention art.’
‘Right.’
‘Remember how much it costs.’
‘How much does it cost?’
‘That’s my problem. Rather,’ he added, ‘it’s in my gift. Remember he’s strong on cranks. Two fucking minutes and they’re out. Get a cab. He’s written several books.’
‘What on?’
‘Psychology, for fuck’s sake. How should I know? Remember I love you. Sarah loves you. Everybody loves you. Ask him what’s going to stop you pissing around.’
‘Right.’
No further remonstration to be queried or required.
Now, returning, he rang Simone: midday, she was on her answering machine. He left a message, cryptic, confused, and decided he’d go and see her between patients. Rarely did he go up, however, without having arranged it beforehand.
He let himself in with his key and heard Mrs Beaumont’s voice in the room on the right. The door to Simone’s consulting-room was open. Replacing the phone as he came in, she said, ‘Simone’s out with her lawyer. She has her next appointment in an hour,’ looking at a watch pinned to the front of her dress.
‘I’ll be upstairs,’ he said. ‘I’ll wait.’
The cat had come in with him: it preceded him up the stairs, hesitating at intervals to see if he would follow. In the kitchen he got out its food, spooned some into its bowl, and wondered what else he might do.
Finally, stifling a temptation to flick on her television, he went onto the roof. The sky was clear, streaked with vapour trails: the roof umbrella was open above the table, an extra chair arranged there as if, in his absence, Simone had had visitors. An ashtray, with stubs, suggested it was someone she didn’t know: one of the stubs was marked with lipstick. Odd, he reflected, she hadn’t cleared it away: normally she was allergic to smoking.
He sat in the shade, the cat emerging after a while, sitting, licking its face with its paw, looking up at him, whenever he stirred, before resuming. He was still confused from his encounter with Isaacson, and, further, by his ‘contractual’ outburst – and confused, even more, by the appearance of Cavendish, unable to recall whether this was the name he’d used with Simone. Also, the strange connection with Viklund. Was it Dan, after all, who had advised his brother: even made the contact, arranging the appointment, explaining Paul’s skittishness on the phone?
The more he reflected on what had taken place the more perplexed he felt, the heat rising at the back of his neck, the same familiar sensation in the region of his stomach, symptoms synonymous with the helplessness he associated with the absence of Simone and the realisation of how much, increasingly, he relied on her. Until he described the encounter to her he wouldn’t be sure what his reaction should be – gazing across the roofs, getting up at one point to examine the horizon to the south, noting the smear of the upland, the television mast at Crystal Palace, reassuring himself they were still in place, the planes circling overhead, their engines whining in their descent to Heathrow. Perhaps he could talk to Mrs Beaumont, or go down and sleep before Simone returned, having glanced in the bedroom at the turned-down bed on the way up (what had the visitors made of that?). Regularly, from below, came the telephone ringing: occasionally, he assumed, it was picked up by Mrs Beaumont, the sound terminating abruptly. Other times, presumably, as when he had rung, she’d allowed the machine to record. He was, he was aware, in a state of suspense, a feeling generated by his encounter with Isaacson, and his own peculiar, departing speech, but more certainly by Cavendish appearing as he left.
When, some time later, he heard Simone’s steps on the stairs, he stood up, anxiety flooding out in anticipation.
She must have gone to the bathroom; then he heard her voice on the telephone, talking from the living-room, she presumably having come up to make a call out of earshot of Mrs Beaumont, he standing at the roof door, his head craned to catch her tone, his anxiety increasing.
Her voice paused, after an evident farewell to the speaker at the other end, then, in a fresh tone – alert, expectant, startled, even – she spoke to someone else.
He went back to the seat, his attention returning to the sky. Moments later, agitated, perplexed, he crossed to the parapet at the rear of the roof. There, beyond a metal railing, lay a drop of – he estimated – thirty feet into the tiny yard at the back of the house, a lightless well around the perimeter of which grew a desultory bed of flowers. In seconds, should he feel summoned in that direction, whatever he was feeling now – whatever he had ever felt – would be at an end, the sensation of release restoring him in a wave of reassurance: even now, an act of vengeance, ostensibly on himself but, more defencelessly, on those he loved and who loved him in return. Again and again, he had imagined Taylor sedating the children’s drinks at bedtime: the look in their eyes: the familiarity of their smell after a bath: talcum, scented soap: the intimacy of their nightclothes: the total dependency on him and his wife: the affectionate embrace before going to bed, he hurrying them along, impatient, before the sedative took hold. And then his wife: she, too, preparing for bed (‘let’s make it,’ he saying, ‘an early night’), the children, by this time, fast asleep, drugged, mouths open, snoring.
The affectionate kiss on each forehead as he tucked them in, ‘for the last time’: everything normal – a natural extension, what he was about to do, of everyday life.
Into the bedroom where his wife was undressing, the realisation, having planned it, he must kill her first, the knife secreted beneath the pillow, taking it out (‘look what I’m doing: none of this is real: not only it mustn’t but it cannot happen’), she turning at a sound, incredulous as she sees his look (a prank, a game, a simulation), the blade gripped in his hand, realising, terrifyingly, blindly, the unrehearsed intention, the end of everything in their (previously) loving world.
Her resistance, the first blow delivered, the sifting sound as the blade went in: so soft, so easy, her fighting-back, the scream, unexpected, unlike anything he (or she) had previously heard: the withdrawal, the suction: the fear the children had been roused, he looking round, the door empty: unreal, unlike anything (still) he had imagined (‘because of that it is not occurring’), her strength expiring, resignation, a weird acceptance (why give up, he reflects, as quickly as that?), her chest, her throat, her head (the end of everything, time itself), the blood determining he mustn’t stop (all this will be retrieved, go back to normal), onto his hand, his arm, his face: into her throat, her head, her leg, her hip (into anywhere he liked: will she live like this for ever, will she not, dear Jesus, dear God, dear Beccie, come back to life?), he cutting her throat, her wrists, she not resisting, pretending dead (even now the dream is over: none of this, in fact, occurs). Once more in the chest, deep and central (see how easy, once you try), departing, reassured, for the children’s bedroom (beyond where any other being can reach), not to falter, execute his masterpiece, plunging in the blade (in his mind the event completed), the upheaval of the (childish) body at the blade’s withdrawal, the stillness (of the girl, the boy), the repetition of the blow in each (this I created, this I destroy), the subsidiary blows, ensuring they won’t suffer (more than I, for instance, am suffering now), returning to the bedroom to be quite sure (I shall live like this for ever), the rope, the noose, already prepared, suspended from the banister rail, going back to each bedroom, listening by each mouth for breath (the absurdity of stillness, the absurdity of death), returning to the landing (all is over): all I have to do is drop …
The cracking of wood above his head, the searing pain around his neck, the smell of blood inside his nose, the banging at the window, door (all is not over: everything is lost).
Feeling her hand, then her arm on his shoulder: the pressure of her lips against his neck, turning to her, smelling her scent, the fragrance of her hair (the world is redeemable): what, he reflected, had he done to deserve it?
‘I didn’t know you were coming, Matt,’ her face alight, the unexpectedness of his arrival, forewarned by Mrs Beaumont, enlivening her, delighting her, occasioning her to laugh.
‘I’ve been to see this character my brother recommended.’
‘Already?’
‘I wasn’t at home yesterday to receive the message. I had an hour to get there. I’d better give him your e-mail or fax, or get a machine myself.’
‘That’s what I’ve told you!’ delighted. ‘How did it go?’
‘Have we time to talk?’ she looking at her watch, he bemused, turned over by his imaging of death, prospecting, in the process, he reflected, his own: his mother’s, his father’s. Odd, her reassurance, her warmth.
‘What was his name?’
‘Isaacson.’
‘Not Michael?’
‘I don’t know his Christian name.’
‘His given name.’ She had taken his hand, leading him to the table, absent-mindedly shifting the ashtray, about to tip its contents into the flowers, then, equally abruptly, pushing it across the table.
‘Who on earth recommended him?’
‘Someone my brother knows. It might even have been Viklund, he reluctant to do it directly. He knew Isaacson, evidently, in the past. Now you mention it, I must have heard of him. Michael Isaacson. It’s not an area I had much time for …’
She waited; when he didn’t continue, she said, ‘Has he taken you on?’
‘He left it to me.’
‘He being willing.’
‘Since he does most of the talking I assumed that he was.’
‘Did you talk about us?’
‘Sure.’
‘By name?’
‘No.’ He paused. ‘The odd thing was, when I came out, your complainant, Death, was going in.’
For a while he thought she wouldn’t respond: he had seen the look before, but never so fiercely presented: something of a child turning on its abuser.
‘The other curious thing,’ he added. ‘They spoke about him before he arrived, Isaacson and his wife. They said his name was Cavendish.’
Still gazing at him, his hand was released: he watched her arm retreat across the table. The cat, delighted by her return, had followed her up: leaping onto her lap, it settled down, purring, her fingers, absently, moving to and fro across its back. ‘That’s odd.’
‘He’s a serial analysand,’ he said. ‘Or, better still, a serial complainant, giving a different name with each.’
‘I’ve had the former, but not the latter,’ she said, still withdrawn. ‘A first time, I suppose, for everything.’
‘If I go back I can mention it to him,’ he said.
‘Where’s he live?’ Her gaze returned to him, leaning back, as if to survey him from a distance.
‘Notting Hill.’
‘Did you get on?’
‘He and his wife can’t leave each other alone. Particularly when someone else is around, a minimal routine of minimal abuse. He was wounded in Korea, and only mentioned it, I thought, as a play on the word career. Fucked up, was his general view. Therapy, otherwise,’ he went on, ‘turned on its head, he doing the talking. To a degree, I suspect, he’s given up, doing it for amusement. A couple of sessions with me and that’ll be that distraction over. You therapise him and, in the process, therapise yourself, appeared to be his message. For some unaccountable reason, when I was leaving, I started off about contracts, Hamlet a play mirroring a life comprised of little if nothing else. Since coming back all I can think about is Taylor. I mentioned him. He, Isaacson, had been told to stand by in his defence, but wasn’t called after Taylor’s counsel had seen his c.v. As for Cavendish,’ he paused. ‘He said he was full of good intentions.’
A chortling sound inside her throat: pain of an otherwise incommunicable nature.
He then realised, astonished, she was laughing.
‘Did you tell him about the NMC?’
‘I did.’
About to respond, looking down at the cat, examining its fur, she was distracted by the ringing of the doorbell below.
‘I’d better go down.’
The cat sprang away as she stood.
‘I won’t be free until this evening,’ she added. ‘I was seeing someone, but I can cancel it.’
‘I’d like to come up,’ he said, disturbed by her departure.
‘I’ll see you this evening,’ she said, and was gone.
For a while he regarded the empty door, the cat having followed her through it; then, rising, he crossed once more to the edge of the roof. There was a ringing in his ears, heat flooding up from his chest, the imagery of the morning returning, the distorted figure of the analyst, the expression on the face in the photograph, surprised he should have thought to show him, the innocence, the alertness, the good intent, the inference of something having been maligned, the contrast with what was Isaacson now. And Taylor: the imaging of that, death in another form. And Cavendish.
