Naomi and Her Friends: An Andrew Maccata Novel

Copyright © 2011, 2014 by Alan Morrison-Topping.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Rev. date: 09/08/2014

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Contents

Introduction

1.    Prologue

2.    Three Conversations

3.    Arrivals

4.    Mornings

5.    Naomi

6.    Transport

7.    Mrs Joanides and Aglaia

8.    Naomi and a Local Man

9.    Dinner and Tourists

10.    Cuts, Bruises, and Honest Eyes

11.    Faded Glory

12.    A Cultural Excursion

13.    The Square

14.    Aftermath

15.    Interrogation in the Sun

16.    Naomi’s Recuperation

17.    Hospitality

18.    Recovery

19.    Naomi’s Home

20.    The Village

21.    A Package

22.    May Day—Protomayia

23.    Theory and Practice

24.    Home

25.    A Day at the Beach

26.    Sound Advice and Bad News

27.    Waiting

28.    Thinking Time

29.    Good News

30.    Expectations

31.    Violence and Passion

32.    Empathy

33.    His Earthbound Representative

34.    Follow Up

35.    Once Is Not Enough

36.    Morgue and More Questions

37.    A Temple Revisited

38.    Check Up

39.    Titos

40.    Not so Silly Miss Silly Hat

41.    Dangerous Game

42.    The Hephæstion

43.    Missing

44.    What Happened

45.    Milios

46.    Small Consolation

47.    Announcement

48.    Denouncement

49.    Betrayal

50.    Redemption

51.    Solution, not Absolution

52.    Answers, not Expiation

53.    Renewal

54.    Professional and Other Opinions

55.    Last Word?

Acknowledgements

Footnotes

Introduction

N o one can ever really empathise completely with another; we never know just how they feel about things, no matter how we may attempt to sympathise. We cannot put ourselves in their skin, experience their pain, and then withdraw and advise; the most we can ever hope for is that our earnest commitment, some would call it love, is sufficient to do the same thing. In this book is a message for all those who are happy: to continue to be so, for all those who cannot.

1

Prologue

T he heat from the late-morning sun was causing the creosote to seep from the sleepers, its pungent essence rising up and in through the open window from which a teenager leaned out. It was possible then, people being considered sensible enough to know both when they should not lean out and when the weather required windows to be closed. The train lurched forward with the simultaneous release of its brakes as the locomotive was started. The adventure began. The boy retook his seat, continuing to watch the yard and its siding through the still-open window. Soon the ferrous giants of nineteenth century high-tech would be speeding past him and his sandwich box under a sky full of a later century’s technology.

Lucky really, his generation, born on the cusp of this change, and to have seen both the rising parabola of the new alongside that falling of the old. All this mattered somehow at that age. Before jobs. Before sex. Before meaningful exams. Before loss. He wondered whether all this would be lost or whether out in space clever beings would one day locate the light rays reaching them; a vision, not the real thing, though Einstein may have provided an argument there. The boy considered the part of the universe where those light rays began their journey to be his part. He was there. Some of him would always be there. Pity that Einstein died before he found a way to go back. Maybe he did and went, and considered it best not to tell, thought the boy. Maybe that’s where he is! Or maybe some things are better left in their time and place, or is it space? Maybe that’s the way it was, and is, intended. Reality to be enjoyed properly in its time but still celebrated in another—this was possible surely: a question for the physics master, and perhaps the philosophy lecturer.

Odd how modern-looking they still seem now, when he views his old albums electronically online! Perhaps it’s the completeness of them, no wasted design space, ergo not old-fashioned since they appear still functional. And the effect of the approaching mass and noise all seemed right.

He unpacked his old Halina 35X and then guessed but also calculated the exposure from a pocket diary of tables (light meters in-camera were few, and those separate units available were expensive!). The boy was transfixed as the approaching mass entered the zone and filled the frame, slowly at first and then faster. Click! Frozen in time, the image will last longer than the subject: the real thing that speeds past him into its short remaining future. Birdsong. Sulphurous fumes on a slight breeze. All quiet again. Like the disappearing subject, time the destroyer of order, inexorable and merciless had already moved on.

2

Three Conversations

1: The Doctor

‘Morning, Doc!’

‘Glad you could finally make it!’

‘Well, I’m busy, Simon!’

‘Not for much longer, Andrew!’

‘What?’

‘The dead have no scheduling problems, and have already used their… er… ha… last window of opportunity!’

‘Who?’

‘Bad news, Andrew, but comes with a choice!’

‘A choice?’

‘Sit and for once, listen to me. The results are positive. You have a problem which will slowly kill you, and you don’t have a lot of time to sift your choices.’

‘Doc, I feel a little down, that’s all. Now stop this. I have things to do today, and I need something.’

‘Not any more Andrew. I am giving you something else: choices!’

‘Yes, yes, right. Let’s do this first if we have to, so choices. And they are?’

‘Well in effect, only two: live or probably die prematurely!’

Andrew he had called me—formal for him, my nickname was his usual form of address. My friend and doctor watched me for a response. I didn’t believe him and ventured to speak, but before I could form a word, he continued, ‘clivum lubricum!’

‘Doc, for crying out loud!’

‘Slippery slope, Andrew!’

Uncertain of his Latin declension, I challenged his earlier comment, ‘anyway that’s only two possible results, so one choice surely!’

‘The, as you insist, choice? Hmm, well they are, or rather it is between carry on to die from speed at work, or at speed in your fancy motor, or…’

‘Or?’ I interrupted, in love with work and my car but anxious to consider the alternative to their destroying me.

‘Or,’ he paused to flick aside the flap of his white coat, enabling him to lean further forward in his chair towards me. He scratched his chin and looked at me over his half-rimmed spectacles and continued, ‘or leave it all, and I mean all, behind. Whatever you have been doing or using must stop now. I mean everything, including work. You have money. You’ve been there and done it. You’ve known women, so you can die happy, like next year, or you can live out a useful existence putting something back. First though you must correct this downward slide.’

‘Doc, come on, we’ve discussed this before, and I said I would try…’

He slowly raised his hand in front of my face to stop my dissent and waited. I stopped. He blinked slowly, his gaze fixed, then lowering his hand, he resumed. ‘It’s your depression and mood swings which are behind the other damage, so it has to be a two-pronged attack. We go for the cause, and we treat the results of your self-neglect. Well, actually, Andrew, three prongs, because we first have to decide if de-tox and withdrawal are first required. You, however, must commit to this programme. Your depression is, of course, related to your sad shock last year, but we both know you were already abusing stuff, and then the drink, though not excessive, didn’t help. Bit like opening a cupboard door slowly at first, and then quickly when everything falls out in your lap! You, unfortunately, have a bit of a mix in your lap! I told a poor teenager’s mother last week that her daughter was pretty much a paranoid schizophrenic, part autistic, with a smattering of Asperger’s—you are somewhere along that line…’

‘I am? And a line of what?’’

‘. . . not a line of anything you’re used to, but what you would call a taxonomy of autism traits…’

‘I would?’

‘. . . er, yes, soon to be lumped together with other autism disorders I believe, as an A S D in the next D S M . . . er… number five I think, as with ICD10. Anyway, Andrew I use this last to illustrate your behaviour, which we’ll come to later. I do not in fact believe you are a chronic sufferer, but we will research that. You are not far behind the girl’s psychotic interlude with the mix quotient, though happily way behind on intensity. Nevertheless, not good and add in the depression you suffered even before the substances plus stress at work and in your personal life, and that’s about where you are!’

‘And your prognosis, Doc, for where I will be?’

‘I have told you, the result of your continued neglect is certain—it’s just a matter of when, and that is up to Him, and in this you will have no choice. It might be correctable, and thus the only real decision you have to make is whether or not to start the correction process!’

‘Shit! I mean, it might be correctable? What exactly is it?’ D S M and A S D! Doc I haven’t included in my neglect anything that…’

‘Andrew, one’s a manual for me, the other acronym is for you: Autistic Spectrum Disorder.’

‘Really!’

‘Your psychotic interlude may or may not be a rising tide on waters you have always splashed about in. It could be new, caused by your other direct—what you would call ‘normal’ or physical—health deterioration. Simultaneous peaking of your bipolar state, the worry, your rage, your liver’s deterioration, which we may just have spotted in time, no pun intended Andrew, may well result in your body just giving up, or sadly, you may just want to help the process along. If we add the stuff you have been using to the mix as I have called it, then whether or not you wish to short-circuit the process, you may not get the chance, because your body will certainly very soon make that decision for you.

‘I must seem like your motor mechanic Andrew, suggesting the worst before we get inside and have a look. However, we have been inside as far as is physically possible, and only the approaching liver problem seems so far to be worrying, though it’s not cirrhosis, which would be pretty much irreversible. The rest requires a very different way of accessing a very different ‘inside’. I don’t believe you are an alcoholic just because of your liver. I am not convinced we need to go down the de-tox route with benzodiazepines…’

‘What?’

‘Substitutions—we kid the brain and control the results of their use towards withdrawal. But these sedative-hypnotics are not always the route to recovery and abstinence, which is usually required for alcoholics but may not be in your case. You see Andrew with you we just don’t know. All the symptoms, like a rattling suddenly heard in your car, are of course there, but when we get you up on the ramp there’s nothing definite: an abuser not an addict, a heavy drinker, well yes but not an alcoholic; but requiring medication to stop? I don’t think so.’

‘Like my garage, you don’t seem very sure about anything—except the bill!’

‘Well, you won’t be picking up the tab this time! I have been your friend a long time, Red.’ He used my nickname; he was becoming personal, softening the message? ‘And I have told you to slow down. I am not just a gay old doctor. My concern has always been as a friend. You have never been the object of my particular persuasion. I have always admired and respected you for your liberal views and support when others would shun me. So this news is bad for me too. But this needs to be said.’

‘So?’

‘Well, it’s a case of stop-go really.’

‘Stop pratting about and tell me!’

‘You must stop the abuse, stop the drink, and go and get help.’

‘I thought you are my help, but can’t help anyway!’

‘That’s because you won’t report any definite symptoms, and I cannot find signs of anything with which I can help you, and why I think the other route to the real you is where we should be looking! And it’s a bit more than a catharsis of body or mind Red. My guess is that apart from the liver, with which I can help, your real problem from which the rest stem is what you never completely talk about. More serious than I can deal with, Red. You are a complicated guy. Your analyst will be able to sell a book if she corrects you!’

‘She? I don’t have one. How do you know it will be a she?’

‘Because I have already unofficially referred you for a chat. The next step is a formal meeting between you and her. She will keep me in the loop if, that is, you agree to my sending the notes.’

‘Doc, I am in your hands. Now let me sign and get back to work!’

‘Oh no, Red, you’re not going back!’

‘How’s that?’

‘Resign today!’

‘Today!’

‘Today! Your personal motto "salve lucrum you will just have to dump Andrew; rather a case of your money or your life" now, ha, I like that,’ and he smiled and nodded to some invisible mentor, before turning his now serious face back toward me. ‘You must stop the abuse now. You could get to Switzerland and a clinic, though they will probably be too expensive or too late, or… maybe both. My own plan in such a situation would be to crash out to a new society, simple or poverty-stricken places—plenty to choose from! See the other side: often concern for others regenerates the cells. We don’t know why any more than we know why astrology can be right. Why do many of those who die at the wheel do so once they have parked safely? Why does a child’s written plea to its mother not to die from cancer reverse such a process? My profession’s answer: these things happen! We just don’t know why.’

‘Written plea… what the f . . ?’

‘Moira maybe?’

‘Who?’

‘All factual examples Red!’

‘Yes, I should have known…’

‘Get to the sun, lounge, then engage with real people, leave the city life behind, or… well, think I’ve laboured that point, don’t you?’

He was going into one! Always a dramatic delivery from the doc but then always erudite, always. I didn’t, of course, need to resign. There was a long period of paid absence, then reduced sick pay, and all the medical insurance benefits, but the doc had made his point. He could, as the firm’s medical adviser, and under the terms of my contract, declare me unfit for work. However, I wasn’t convinced. ‘Are you serious? I mean, there are other guys downtown…’

‘Red, we are all different. Even if our current leaders believe we are all equal, we’re just not the same. You have managed to con us all and ward off serious damage until now. Your family medical background is healthy and tough; therefore, your body can take more than a lot of bigger and apparently tougher blokes. Your organs may just recover. You, however, have also the other problem, which we have now recently begun to address. The one is now feeding off the other. You can, of course, go on, and many in your situation choose to do just that: your blokes downtown. It leads to health complications in their not too far distant future and usually to their premature deaths, sometimes sadly by their own hands. That’s if they last that long for suicide to be an option!’

‘A whole new use for my last window of opportunity!’

‘Amusing as usual Red, but not funny!’

‘Thanks, Doc!’

‘Don’t thank me, Red. Just surprise us all and for once, take advice. You are one of the lucky ones. Your, shall we say, neglect is just still, I believe, correctable.’

‘I’ll need to think about this.’

‘I don’t think you have heard a word I have said! This is not one of your damn negotiations downtown! You are not as far gone as the teenager. I am happy to refer you and to put forward as your GP a suggestion to your analyst that the medication and daily lifestyle be self-regulating. By that, I mean we will let you take the pills yourself, but you will be monitored, because the hard-hitters, those are the ones that actually work and which we are allowed to use, have side effects. For this, you will need to report regularly to a local GP or a clinic, who will return the results of mood and blood tests to your own doctor, me, and your analyst. There will be also medication to fight the effects of the medication! It’s a tortuous route, Andrew, trial and error in part and requiring your complete involvement! We have to ensure the various medications are not only effective, but also compatible. The days of my prescribing lithium, quetiapine and the like and your arbitrarily deciding whether to take the medication are out now. There will be a dietary regimen too and other advice regarding side effects whilst you are repairing. You are not a danger to others, nor do I believe, despite your depression, that self-harm or suicide are issues here. You are too damned cross! Your analyst will be the final arbiter, however, on these points. I will strongly state my observations and opinions to her. But it’s serious, Red, and I am that much,’ he pinched the air as he said, ‘from having you sent to a clinic, not sectioned, which would be down to someone else anyway, but not far off.’

He became calm again, and I thought he might be enjoying my state of shock. He seemed to have exhausted his metaphors, innuendo, and examples, but I was wrong!

‘Easter soon, Andrew. Renewal. What the ancient Greeks celebrated with their Anthesteria festival in their month of Anthesterion, from their Attic calendar, they used several. Mainly a wine-drinking bash, would have suited you, but rebirth and renewal were important. The class roles in society were reversed or at least merged for the three day festival.’

‘What on earth…’

‘It means the help joined in—what I alluded to earlier—nothing’s new eh, it was already ancient when they where whooping it up in 500BC! You could do worse than to consider the idea of rebirth yourself. The dice are already rolling, but just and only just loaded in your favour. Nemesis is just hovering, you have been granted a reprieve. Don’t waste it!’

I knew, of course, there would be a reckoning, but one never believes it will come: like death, like growing up, like growing old, something I would not now, at least, have to endure. Being ‘sectioned’ though, was nonsense, just the doc putting the fear of God into me. Along with one’s own medical history, the doc often delivered a tablet of that of the ancients! Nemesis, for crying out loud! And who was bloody Moira! With Simon’s agreement to a twenty-four hour delay of his report, I went back to the desk that afternoon to a pile of problems from around the world distilled onto paper for me to solve, invitations to parties that week and a cheeky note from our new female team member, screwing her way to the top. I loosened my tie and removed my jacket. Leaning on the desk, head in hands, I contemplated a simpler life without this comfort zone around me—swapping cash and my, what had the doc called my car, ‘fancy motor’ for an extended life. I looked up as the door opened, and my secretary leaned in to make some inane comment about my boozy lunches and how she was tired of shoring me up. In fairness to her, no one knew that morning about my senior manager’s referral of my behaviour and state of health to the firm’s expensive medical support team. An acceptable absence this time. ‘So am I,’ I said and swept the files, pens, cups and laptop off my desk. No longer amused by the eccentric antics of a once successful boss, my assistant left, and I then pulled and emptied the drawers onto the carpet and, hands on hips, kicked somewhat unsuccessfully the light paper away from me. A few colleagues were now at my still-open door, heads tilted to watch. ‘Yes?’ I shouted.

‘Nothing, Red,’ they replied sheepishly and in unison and left. ‘A deal going wrong,’ they would tell each other, or ‘Red will sort them out as usual, lucky bastard,’ and ‘How do they let him get away with it?’ Decisions! How did an old boss once put it, when I was just starting out: ‘What’s the worst thing that can happen if you decide to go ahead with this deal, and could you live with that result if it happened? If you could accept the worst-case result, then yes, go ahead.’ The doc had made it plain that it was rather should I decide not to go ahead that I would be unable, quite literally, to ‘live with it!’ So, die, or live a different life for a bit longer? Somewhat undeservingly, in a moment of despair not quite as deep as that which, a year before, had driven me to this low point, I chose life. In the event, it was a life of the quality I would not have known were it not for my previous indiscretions and neglect induced by circumstances for which, at least, I was not wholly responsible. A life that I would succeed in squeezing into the time I had been re-allotted. Like my taking a view on a balance sheet and obtaining a stay of execution from the liquidator, I had been granted a reprieve by the Great Liquidator. I was not a believer then.

2: The Employer

‘Sorry about Sybil, Boss,’ I sincerely said, without a hint of grovelling, ‘but I had just reached the end.’

‘Andrew, Sybil is OK. Sybil was born OK! What we used say about you! And Sybil will be OK! She is going to miss you, you bugger. You can’t stay with us, you know, Andrew!’

‘I was good once.’

‘For your money, you have to be good all the time.’

‘Thanks!’

‘Andrew, you are finished unless you sort yourself out. I understand your doctor was even more specific.’

‘Yes, I know. He was.’

‘Of course, I am sorry but be reasonable. You have done your bit. You can’t go on forever. And if you don’t change, you won’t have that option anyway!’

‘I know. I know.’

‘You have a fair amount coming to you, or you can leave it with us. Up to you. H R will deal with the numbers for you, but they are good, as you know. References for you, for work, in the future that is, are no problem, but you must clean yourself up first. It’s not as if you’re being shown the door, Red. There’s a long period in your contract of financial support as you know. The firm’s insurance will cover some of the medical bills for a year or two, but your circumstances will not find them burdensome, surely!’

‘H R—hyperbole and rhetoric department! You seem to have decided already, but that’s all right. No. No problem with funds. No problem there at least, and I too have decided.’

‘What?’

‘To take the doc’s advice.’

‘Good man!’

‘Yep. It’s the right thing to do. I have a choice, he said, but not much of one! I mean I have no kids etc., but there are other family who just might miss me or who will one day rely on me.’

‘Kids etc! Andrew, really, your assessment of relationships…’

‘You know, I can be right up there like the old days, solving the problems before others recognise them! I see myself as another me. Then, I’m so far down, Boss, it’s black, I can taste it, a real thing, you know! Sometimes it’s physical pain. Very odd. Can’t explain.’

‘Yes, you changed last year…’

‘Let’s not go there, please,’ I said, and unconsciously placed my tongue against the roof of my mouth and concentrated for a moment upon my interviewer perhaps being naked behind his desk. It worked.

‘Hmm. Red… ?’

‘Oh. Yes, Boss?’

‘Medication? For your moods, I mean.’

‘Lithium, quetiapine, and all that stuff. I had last year refused it.’

‘Andrew…’

‘Well, it’s a false answer, like the other stuff, but prescribed.’

‘But everyone needs help now and then, and if you are just chemicals as you believe, you cynical bastard, then why not get the mix right?’

‘Good point, but now the doc says it’s the only way forward, with, what did he call them, hard-hitters, serious stuff!’

‘Do it, Andrew, just to get on your feet. Then do it alone if you must.’

‘Oh, it will be alone.’

‘Yes, no surprise there. You’ll stay in touch? You have lots of friends here.’

‘Of course. And thanks for the references.’

‘No problem, Red. As you know, I just tell it how it is. You were good, and I am sure you will be again.’

‘Better go, before I change my mind.’

‘Where to, exactly?’

‘Oh, you’ll know. I am not going to disappear.’

‘By the way, could I suggest a style for a note to your clients, or are you up to it yourself?’

‘No problem!’

‘Very well. Get on with it. Let’s make your convalescence begin, shall we say, the end of the month if you want. That suit your plans?’

‘Why not the end of the week?’

‘Well, if you are sure—will you be able to hand over in that time?’

‘Yes, I have decided, and our new girl has been monitoring my stuff.’

‘Red, whatever our differences in the past, I will miss you as we all will. Hard to find a challenging bugger like you again.’

‘I know! If I could bottle and market me, my dependants would be rich!’

‘Not as a footballer though!’

‘How’s that?’

‘Your paper-kicking exercise, like a one-legged man in an arse-kicking contest. Your secretary told me!’

‘Yes, poor Sybil. We are friends again now!’

‘Red, yes, you two. A double act emulated by all the junior teams. She loved it!’

‘Yes, we were quite an act! Will she be all right? I mean a position… ?’

‘Andrew, of course, but good of you to ask. No, the Sybils of this world are becoming harder to find. She is a marketable commodity! As you… once were… anyway…’

‘Yes. Things can change so quickly. She used to say you never know what’s round the next corner. No point in planning too far ahead in life…’

‘Sybil, no planning? You do surprise me, Red!’

‘No, not Sybil… not Sybil.’

‘Red… Red, are you all right?’

‘Sorry, Boss. Yes, just a flashback, that’s all.’

‘I would say, let’s have a drink before… you know… but maybe lunch…’

‘We’ll see.’

‘Easter already! Well no problem regarding vacation cover this time—I wonder how Sybil will get on with the ‘new girl’ as you call her!’

‘I would like to be a fly on my old wall when she loses her first argument!’

‘What, Sybil?’

‘No boss, the new girl!’

‘Andrew, I really think you have made the best decision, but I suppose it will be a while before you agree! Nevertheless, I hope, no believe, you’ll become a new man, or at the very least the old Red.’

‘Yes. Easter. Renewal!’

3: The Analyst

‘Mr Maccata, welcome. Do sit. I’m Sheila Dewsbury. Pleased to meet you at last.’ My analyst walked back behind her desk after admitting me to her ‘space’ by a smile and a warm handshake. As I sat, I folded my arms and crossed my legs in time-honoured defensive mode, and awaited her attempt to ‘neutralise’ my tension, whilst I considered the person who was going to write a book about me. Half marks though, because she returned behind the barrier of her desk, upon which were more half-rimmed spectacles. No Montblanc fountain pen. No leather-bound notebook. The genuine antique desk’s top did though support some basic analysts’ tools: just a few scraps of paper and a felt-tip with which to dissect and record ‘me’. So, no fancy trappings, just brainwork, two marks more then.

‘Hi. No fees clock?’ I asked.

‘This is not a chess game. My Breitling Starliner will be adequate to both calculate and time our introductory period together: the first exploratory hour and it’s free, but if I need to raise fees, it will be through your firm’s insurance company!’

Breitling watch, but a felt-tip! Ah! So the other good stuff she doesn’t bring to work! I thought. Perhaps forty plus, average height and average-looking, but already so far up the ladder. Bright, or just lucky? Maybe she’s just bright and lucky, not taxable commodities, yet! My incisive inner voice cut through my envy. Ms Dewsbury, hands lightly clasped, rested her bronzed forearms on the desk, her M&S cardigan sleeves pulled halfway back over the cuffs of her pastel shirt, open several buttons from the neck. Her shoulder length black hair fell forward to partly obscure both her expression and her not inconsiderable cleavage, and she thus avoided eye contact. She knew that as a salesperson, and a male, I would automatically be drawn in by all this to overcome what I would perceive as her reticence. Clever then. ‘Right. Well. Morning, Doctor!’

‘Mr Maccata, I wonder, do you have a pen, I feel so silly, but mine appears to have dried out after my last fearfully long session!’ Very clever Ms Dewsbury, I thought. I would, of course, have to unfold my arms and open my jacket to oblige, and thereby relax; and one cannot lean forward with one’s legs crossed—nine out of ten so far. I obliged on cue and smiled, uncrossing my legs and placing my hands in my lap. She eyed me curiously, were we going to fence, or had she in fact not noticed my game?

‘Oh, thank you. Yes. Well, we both know why we are here, but you know more than me. You are an intelligent and successful man, so I won’t go down the let’s see how that makes us feel route, and there is no group to share anything with. Just you, and me.’ She then straightened her athletic frame slightly and engaged steady eye contact—blue-grey and hard, an analyst then. Like you! My inner voice succinctly described my new adversary. ‘Andrew, may I call you Andrew? I am a doc, as you put it, a few times over, but Sheila will suffice in here!’

‘Yes, ma’am. Sorry. OK. Sheila.’ I smirked.

‘Bit different, you on the other side of a desk, soliciting help, I assume.’

‘Yes, you are right. My turn to squirm!’

‘Just a shrewd guess, Andrew, we haven’t started yet! You know, you mustn’t despise me for the letters after my name and that plaque on the door.’

‘What? Oh no, Doc, Sheila, of course not.’

‘Of course, yes, Andrew. Everyone does at first, but you, you are qualified. I mean not just a clever lad made good, you have a professional set of letters too, I believe!’

‘Well, yes I do but…’

‘Would it surprise you to know that I am hopeless with maths and money, wouldn’t know where to begin, so whilst not resenting you, I accept that we are a little alike, yes?’

‘I don’t understand…’

‘Mr Maccata, Andrew, we proceed together with this, is what I am trying to say.’

‘Agreed, Doctor… Sheila,’ I said, and we exchanged a smile, which relaxed the initial tense situation.

‘Easter soon Andrew, any plans, are you… religious?’

‘Not really, not an atheist but… it’s just that sometimes… anyway, plans, no plans. I’m going away for a while.’

‘Oh, will we have time to meet beforehand?’

‘Perhaps. I have also to see Simon of course.’

‘Your doctor, Simon Powers, I know him. He’s a bright lad too. Saw the problem right away and got as much going as his field permits.’ With all this brightness about, I thought, one might query why we should all need each other!

‘Simon and me, we are friends, Sheila.’

‘Just as well, I understand Simon can be, well, forthright!’

‘He tells it how it is,’ I said, ‘surprised he’s got so far in this sycophantic paradise called the UK.’

‘And this bothers you?’ Sheila asked, leaning back in her chair.

‘Have we started?’ I asked, also leaning back; I wanted to tick the bloody boxes of a questionnaire and get out.

‘I believe we have, Andrew. So, here is how I think it will go: you tell me what is bothering you, I sit nonchalantly listening to your lies and then, hiding my frustration, I ask more questions and eventually we share the truth. I prescribe, usually, medication, as well as therapy. You respond or not. We try something else until it works. Then we monitor, you improve and, usually, you slip right back into society courtesy of me and medical science. But…’

‘But? You even sound like our mutual friend!’

‘But in a case such as I believe right now yours to be, there will always be a need for medication, no matter how small that will seem compared to the beginning of the correction process.’

‘We try something else until it works. How many doctorates did you say you have?’

‘Andrew, the mind, and even the body, which we think we have, as you might say sussed, are very intricate and complicated mechanisms. It’s like taking a pogo stick to a Rolls Royce to discover why you can park it on a showroom carpet without finding oil drips the next day. There is in short more we don’t know than that which we do know, or presently have the skills to discover!’

‘Well, glad you are confident, Doc.’

‘Sheila! And I am confident, Andrew.’

‘Sorry, Sheila. I am just so washed… up.’

‘No worries, Andrew, here, use these. Weep if you need to. It’s permitted in here my friend and, by the way, that part of you is completely normal and, in fact, necessary,’ she said, whilst taking from her desk drawer a tissue box. Sheila gently pushed the box forward with the fingers of her left hand, a supplicating palm uppermost, thus not differentiating me from herself with a pointed finger, but again including me with openness of a palm, and further by taking a tissue herself. Clever. Scarlet nail colouring to offset the black cardigan and pastel shirt, warm, but also both professional and tidy, like her mind, I shouldn’t wonder, and, I noticed now I was becoming relaxed, like her figure. I wondered just how much of our short few minutes together was completely constructed, or just coincidentally working for her; whether some clients would be ‘a red cardigan hour’ or some a ‘prim and buttoned to the neck’ session. I accepted a tissue; she continued. ‘Now, having read the notes, which I have done with your written permission as you know, I can see why your doctor has referred you to me, because I specialise in this field. This is an exploratory interview. If you decide not to go further with me, it will end in this room. Understood?’

‘That’s fine, Sheila. If the doc says you are the man… well, you catch my drift.’

‘Yes, Andrew, I think I do. You have probably had problems from an early age. Don’t worry. I start most of my interviews with the same line, people prefer someone else to blame…’

‘Freud—isn’t he the one who turned what do you expect with a mother like that into an oeuvre de sa vie, his life’s work!’

‘So, a reader; well it’s Kraepelin in the limelight again now—heard of him? More up your street I would think Andrew,’ the she abruptly changed direction: ‘three is your number is it? It’s all right Andrew, you’ve repeated several motor actions in series of three since you entered the room.’ I nodded slowly, holding up in turn three, then five and then seven fingers. ‘We call it…’ she began, but then asked, ‘this is not new, but recently recurred?’ Again I nodded, wondering how she could know. ‘I think your character tells me you fight this compulsion, when it threatens those you care about, shout at it, beat it down and win… with the help of olanzapine, fluoxetine… for some time until recently… but it’s not just numbers is it? More serious some times? I believe it’s more serious than OCD… something else directing you?’ I smiled in agreement and shifted in my chair, three times; not just a tidy figure, this Dewsbury woman. ‘And this, the real problem started a year ago, from what I have read here. Well, any comment?’ She turned at right angles to me, the arm-rests of her chair supporting her elbows, and she joined her hands at the fingers and relaxed for a moment in what I had always assumed was ‘analyst pose’ (even I did it!).Then turning her head demurely back towards me, and looking along her shoulder line like a fashion model for the very ensemble she wore, she said softly, ‘Andrew, if we are to continue together, I do have to ask that question how does that make us feel, because that’s where we start, I believe.’ She turned her head away from me again, to contemplate her nails, or her cuffs, then lowering her hypnotic voice even further she re-took, ‘well, what