Love Over Scotland (27 page)

77. Angus Impresses Antonia

Antonia Collie, bound for dinner in Angus Lordie’s Drummond Place flat, but none too enthusiastic about the prospect, left Domenica’s flat shortly before twenty-to-eight that evening. She imagined that it would take her not much more than five minutes to walk up the street and round the corner, which would mean that she would arrive at about the right time for a seven-thirty invitation. In the event, it took her only two minutes to reach the top of Scotland Street, from which point the walk to Angus Lordie’s front door would require only another forty-five seconds. So, rather than arrive too early, she decided to walk round the square once before ringing his doorbell. These things might not seem important, but Antonia thought that they were, and she was right, and Immanuel Kant, famous for the utter regularity of his walks around Königsberg, would doubtlessly have agreed with her.

Unknown to Antonia, her host was at that moment peering out of the window of his drawing room, which looked over the gardens in the middle of the square. He had finished his preparations in the kitchen, and had moved into the drawing room, taking with him Cyril and the second bottle of Brunello di Montalcino. Angus had not intended to have more than one or two glasses of wine while cooking the dinner, but he had found that the sheer quality of the Brunello had dictated otherwise. The contents of the first bottle had slipped down almost unnoticed, and now the second bottle was seriously broached.

He was now in an extremely good mood. The sinking feeling which he had experienced earlier on at the thought of entertaining Antonia had been replaced by a rather more positive attitude. In fact, now he was looking forward to her arrival, as he hoped to show her a recently-acquired Alberto Morrocco still-life, a present from an old friend. It had been a handsome gift, and Angus had given the painting pride of place on his walls. Antonia, he thought, was bound to like it, just as he imagined that she would in due course approve of the portrait he was planning of the retired lawyer Ramsey Dunbarton. Angus Lordie knew Ramsey Dunbarton from the Scottish Arts Club, where they occasionally had lunch at the same table. He found Ramsey’s conversation somewhat dull–in fact, extremely dull, for most of the time–but he was a tolerant man and was prepared to put up with long-winded stories about Morningside as he ate his lunch, provided that the subject could be changed by the time they went upstairs for coffee. In a rash moment, Angus had offered to paint Ramsey’s portrait, and the offer had been immediately accepted. Ramsey had taken out his diary and said: “When? Will next week do? Monday morning?”

Now, looking out of his window, he saw the figure of a woman come up from the top of Scotland Street and hesitate. He thought that it might be Antonia, but then his long vision was not very good at night and he could not make out the woman’s features. He saw her hesitate, look about her, and then start to stroll around the square. That was interesting, he thought. “That woman has an agenda,” he said to Cyril, who was sitting on the carpet in the middle of the room looking up at the light. Cyril cocked his head in his master’s direction in acknowledgement of the comment addressed to him, and then resumed his contemplation of the light. Angus poured himself another glass of Brunello.

Angus was still at his window when Antonia completed her walk round the square and arrived outside his door. He was now very interested in the behaviour of this woman, but when the doorbell rang shortly thereafter he realised that it was, after all, Antonia. But why would she have gone for a walk round the square? Killing time, of course. He looked at his watch. Yes, that was it. How considerate of her.

He went into his hall to operate the buzzer that would open the door onto the street. Then, going out onto the landing, he looked down into the stairwell.

“Come on up!” he called out, and added: “Yoo hoo!” His voice echoed rather satisfactorily against the stone walls and stairway and so he decided to call out again. “Hoots toots!” he shouted, using the exact phrase which David Balfour’s uncle used when he received his nephew in the House of Shaws. Would Antonia get the reference, he wondered? Did she know her Robert Louis Stevenson? Of course, this stair was considerably safer than that up which Balfour’s uncle had sent him; there were no voids here into which one might step. So Angus shouted out to Antonia as she began her climb up to his floor: “No voids! Don’t worry! This is not the House of Shaws!” Unfortunately, his voice was slightly slurred and he ended up shouting something which sounded rather like “This is not a house of whores”. Or so it seemed to Antonia, who paused and looked up in puzzlement.

Angus met her at his doorway. “Antonia, my dear,” he said, reaching out to kiss her on the cheek. “You are very welcome. Totally welcome.”

She glanced at him sideways as she took off her coat. “I hope that I’m not late,” she said.

“But not at all,” said Angus, taking the coat. “My mother had a coat like this, you know. Virtually identical. In fact, this could be the very coat. Remarkable. Hers was in slightly better condition, I believe, but otherwise pretty similar. Amazing. Shows that fashion doesn’t change, does it?” He paused. “My mother’s dead, you see.”

Antonia smiled, but said nothing.

“
On y va
,” said Angus. “Let’s go through to the drawing room. You’ve met Cyril, of course. He’s my dog. Got a gold tooth, you know. Do you mind dogs, Antonia? Because if you do, I can send him out. Or should I say: Do you mind men? Because if you do, I can be sent out and Cyril can stay! Hah!”

Antonia smiled again, but more weakly.

“By the way,” said Angus, “I saw you walking round the square. I didn’t know it was you. And you know what?–I thought you were a streetwalker. I really did! Shows how wrong one can be–at a distance.”

78. The Third Person

“Purely a social call,” said Irene as she put her head round Dr Fairbairn’s door. “I was passing by, you see, and they said downstairs that you had no patients until twelve o’clock. So I thought…”

Dr Hugo Fairbairn, seated behind his desk and absorbed, until then, in an unbound copy of
The International Journal of Psychoanalysis
, greeted her warmly.

“But there’s no need to justify yourself,” he said. “Not that you entered apologetically, of course. You’re not one of those people who announces themselves with: ‘It’s only me’.”

Irene slipped, uninvited, into the chair in front of the psychotherapist’s desk. “But does anybody really say that?” she asked.

Dr Fairbairn nodded. “They certainly do. And it shows a fairly profound lack of self-esteem. If one says: ‘It’s me’, then one is merely stating a fact. It is, indeed, you. But if you qualify it by saying that it’s only you, then you’re saying that it could be somebody more significant. Wouldn’t you agree?”

Irene did agree. She agreed with most of Dr Fairbairn’s pronouncements, and wished, in fact, that she herself had made them.

“You see,” went on Dr Fairbairn, “how we announce ourselves is very revealing. J.M. Barrie, you know, used to enter his mother’s room saying: ‘It’s not him, it’s me’. He was referring, of course, to David, his brother who died. And that shaped, and indeed explained, everything about his later life. All the psychopathology. The creation of Peter Pan. Everything.”

“Very sad,” said Irene.

“Yes,” said Dr Fairbairn. “Very. And then there’s the interesting question of those who use the third person about themselves.”

“Oh,” said Irene, vaguely. It occurred to her that she used the third person on occasion when talking to Bertie. She said things such as: “Mummy is watching, Bertie. Mummy is watching Bertie very closely.” That was using the third person, was it not? In fact, it was a double use of the third person; first (I, mother figure) became third, as did second (you, son). What did this reveal about Irene? she asked herself. No, deliberate play; what does that reveal about me?

“Yes,” said Dr Fairbairn. “I knew somebody once who did this all the time. He was called George, and he said things like: ‘George is very much hoping to see you tomorrow.’ Or: ‘George had a very good time yesterday.’ It was very strange.”

“Why did he do it?” Irene asked.

Dr Fairbairn looked up at the ceiling, which was a sign, Irene had noted, of an impending insight. “It’s a form of dissociative splitting of the self,” he said. “Or that’s what it is in the most extreme cases. It’s as if a decision has been taken that there are two persons–the person whose actions and thoughts are reported and the person who does the reporting. So if you’re George and you say that George has done something, then it’s as if you’re speaking from the perspective of another person altogether, an observer.”

Irene thought about that for a moment. “I can see that,” she said. “But this self-bifurcation?”

Dr Fairbairn leaned forward and made an emphatic gesture with his right hand. “Ah!” he said. “Two possibilities. One is that it’s a defensive withdrawal from a threatening social reality. I don’t like what I see in the world and so I stand back for a while and let the alter ego get on with it. I take a breather, so to speak.”

“And the other possibility?” asked Irene.

“Smugness,” said Dr Fairbairn. “Have you noticed something about the people who do it? Well, I have. They’re often smug.”

Irene hesitated. She had been about to say that she sometimes referred to herself in the third person when talking to Bertie, but she was going to suggest that it was different with children. Adults spoke to children in the third person because it provided the child with a key to the understanding of a social world which would otherwise be too subjective. The extraction of the subjective element in the situation conveyed to the child the understanding that the social world involved impersonal, objectified transactions between people. In other words, we were all role players, and the child may as well get used to that fact.

That was what she was going to say, but she could not say it now. Smug? Was she smug? Of course not.

Dr Fairbairn leaned back in his chair, pulling at the cuffs of his blue linen jacket. “Smugness is a very interesting concept,” he said slowly. “You may know that there’s a fascinating literature on it. Not a very extensive one, but very, very interesting.”

He reached for the journal which he had been reading when Irene entered the room. “Right here,” he said. “As it happens. Much of this issue is devoted to the topic. Fascinating stuff.”

Irene listened attentively. She knew that it was disloyal, but she could not help but compare Dr Fairbairn with Stuart. The worlds of the two men were surely about as different as one could imagine. Indeed, there were so few men like Dr Fairbairn–so few men who could talk with such ease and insight about matters such as these. It was like being with an artist who simply saw the world in a different way; saw colours and shades that others just did not see. Proust must have been like that too. He saw everything, and then everything behind everything. Behind the simplest thing, even inanimate objects, there was a wealth of associations that only somebody like Proust could see. So it was with Dr Fairbairn, and for a moment it made Irene feel a great sense of regret. Had she married somebody like this, then her daily lot would have been so different. She would have been able to explore the world with him in a way in which she would never be able to do with Stuart. Stuart lived in a world of statistics and brute facts. Dr Fairbairn inhabited a realm of emotions and human possibilities. They were so utterly different–two sides of a mountain range, she thought, and I am on the wrong one.

She told herself that she should not waste these precious minutes with Dr Fairbairn in thinking about what might be, but which was not. So she said to him: “Do tell me about smugness.”

79. Smugness Explained

“Have you ever encountered a really smug person?” asked Dr Fairbairn, fixing his gaze on Irene as she sat before him in his consulting room. Not that this was a consultation; this was a conversation, and a rather enjoyable one, with no therapeutic purpose.

Irene thought for a moment. Who, in her circle, was smug? But then, she thought, do I really have a circle? She was not at all sure that she did.

“Plenty,” she said. “This city is full of smug people. Always has been.”

Dr Fairbairn laughed. “Of course it is,” he said. “But can you think of anybody in particular?”

Irene’s mind had now alighted on one or two examples. Yes, he was smug all right. And as for her…“Well, there’s a certain facial expression,” began Irene.

Dr Fairbairn cut her short. “There might be, but not always. If there is, it’s the expression of oral satiety. The smug person has what he really wants, the good object, which is the…Of course, you know all about that. So he has it and he feels utterly fulfilled. He isn’t really interested in anything else–not really. That’s why smug people never talk about you–they talk about themselves. Have you noticed that?”

Irene had. She was now thinking of a cousin of hers, a man whom it had never occurred to her to label as smug, but that is what he was. He was insufferably smug, now that one came to think about it. And it was quite true; when they met, which was relatively infrequently, he never once asked her about herself but spoke only of himself and his plans.

“I have a cousin,” she said. “He’s extremely smug.” She paused. “And do you know, he makes me want to prick him with a pin. Yes, I have this terrible pin urge.”

Dr Fairbairn stared at his friend. Pin envy. He had been about to tell her of the common pathology of those who reacted with violent antipathy towards smug people. A lot of people were like that; the mere presence of a smug person made them livid. But he decided that it was perhaps best not to mention that aspect of it just at that moment.

“Smug people are completely satisfied with themselves,” said Dr Fairbairn. “In that respect they are similar to narcissists. The narcissist is incapable of feeling bad about anything that he does because he is, in his own estimation, so obviously perfect. Smug people don’t necessarily feel that way about themselves. They are very contented with what they have, and they may appear self-righteous, but the really salient feature of smugness is its sense of being satisfied and complete.”

Dr Fairbairn paused. One day, he thought, he would write a paper on smugness. He would need, though, to find a few more patients to write about, but the problem with smug people was that they never sought analysis. And why should they? They had everything they wanted. So perhaps he should write about something else altogether; he should look for another patient, one undergoing regular treatment. He thought for a moment…

“Would you mind…?” he suddenly asked Irene. “Would you mind if one of these days I wrote about Bertie? I would change his name, of course, so that nobody would know it was him. But he is a rather interesting case, you know.”

Irene gave a little squeal of delight. “Of course I wouldn’t mind,” she exclaimed. “It would be wonderful to be able to share Bertie with the world. Just as Little Hans’s father allowed us to hear about Little Hans’s castration anxieties and all that business with the dray horses and the giraffe. Imagine if he had refused Freud permission to write about his son. Imagine that.”

Dr Fairbairn agreed. It would have been a terrible loss. But at the same time, there was always the danger that a famous analysand might find himself discovered much later on. Irene should be aware of that.

“I should warn you,” he said, “that sometimes people track down these famous patients, even after years have passed. Remember what happened to the Wolf Man.” He paused. “And of course, Little Hans himself visited Freud later, when he was nineteen.”

“And?” prompted Irene.

“He–Little Hans–had forgotten everything. Horses. Giraffe. All forgotten. Indeed, he recognised nothing in the analysis.”

“How interesting,” said Irene. “Of course you already have at least one famous patient. You have Wee Fraser.” She paused; Wee Fraser was dangerous territory. “You were going to track him down, weren’t you? Did you ever find him?”

Dr Fairbairn stiffened. Up to this point he had been fiddling with the cuffs of his blue linen jacket; now his hands dropped to his sides and he stared fixedly ahead. He had located his famous patient, now fifteen or so, and had risen to his feet to make amends for having smacked him in the early analysis (when Wee Fraser had put the toy pigs upside down), only to be head-butted for his pains by the unpleasant adolescent. But then, to his profound shame, he had responded by striking Wee Fraser on the chin, breaking his jaw.

“I found him,” he said. “I found him, and then…”

Irene leaned forward. “You asked his forgiveness?”

Dr Fairbairn looked miserable. “I wish I could say that I had. Alas, the truth is the rather to the contrary.”

“How much to the contrary?” pressed Irene.

“Completely,” said Dr Fairbairn.

Irene held up a hand. “I do not want to hear what happened,” she said. “We can all make mistakes. We can all do things that we didn’t plan to do.”

Dr Fairbairn looked at her with gratitude. Here was absolution–of a sort. “Yes,” he said. “We all do things that we didn’t plan to do. How right you are.” He paused, and stood up. Moving to the window behind his desk, he looked out over the Queen Street Gardens. “Yes, I have done many things I did not intend to do. That is the human condition.”

“Many things?” asked Irene.

“Yes,” said Dr Fairbairn, turning round again. “Such as…” But then he stopped.

Irene waited for him to continue, but Dr Fairbairn had become silent. He looked up at the ceiling, and Irene followed his gaze. But there was nothing to be seen there, and so they both lowered their eyes.

He is so unhappy, thought Irene. He is so unresolved.