R.H.I. Page 8
‘He was with you in the cottage.’
She said, ‘Why didn’t you come in?’
‘You had company— I didn’t want to disturb you.’
‘And you wake here.’
‘Yes, I wake up at that point. I haven’t had the dream for a while now.’
‘Where have we come to, as far as understanding the dream is concerned?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Is it about your father’s death?’
‘I don’t know. Undoubtedly. Everything seems to be about my father’s death.’
‘Everything?’
She said, ‘I don’t understand. I hardly wish to see my daughter dead. It wakes me up in horror.’
‘It is challenging to understand a nightmare, of course. We should focus on the contents. Tell me the dream once more.’
She said, ‘The procession moves slowly through the street—which street?’
‘You looked in the window and saw us?’
‘I saw you through the window. I didn’t look in intentionally.’
‘Ernest, why did you come, anyway?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Was it part of my treatment?’
‘I don’t know. Undoubtedly. Everything is a part of your treatment.’
‘Everything?’
He said, ‘I want to help you. You’re a friend as well as a patient, Joan, and I thought of you there.’
‘You don’t have to excuse yourself. But you should have come in.’
‘I would have interrupted.’
‘Nonsense. It’s your cottage. You would have been welcome. Unless you …’
‘Well?’
Jones said, ‘Why ask which street?’
‘I am trying to focus on the contents.’
‘Which suggests to me that those very contents might be incidental. In the first telling, you hardly dwelt on the street or the noise of the procession. By focusing on these things now you are defending yourself against the dream’s real content, providing a distraction.’
‘Am I?’
‘Well, let us think about the funeral.’
‘I was away in Germany when—I mean it is so obviously the Queen’s procession. It was strange to come back to a new king—but Evelyn was there at the funeral and talked to me about it when we first met. And afterwards. Not long ago we were walking by Regent’s Park and passed a bookstore that was selling a commemorative photograph album of Victoria, and he insisted on going in to leaf through its pages. But I had no interest, Jones. It was like pictures from another world.’
‘Well, what would you have interrupted?’
Jones said, ‘I would have interrupted …’
‘Yes?’
‘In a way, maybe I would have interrupted something that was important.’
‘For my treatment?’
‘Yes.’
‘It’s as if you’d arranged for the soldier to be there.’
‘Why do you say that?’
‘Jones, how can every- thing—everything!—be part of my treatment? Every aspect of my life? The world, the man I met? The Queen and her death and her procession? The disasters, the floods and hurricanes of the world? That’s too much. This war, how can it relate to me? Ernest, it makes me the world, it perforates the thin boundary between me and the world.’
‘All this forms part of your dreams. The world is part of you, in your dreams. And you know the importance of dreams. In your dreams, you coincide with the world.’
‘What world?’
‘All lined up along the street. Actually it seemed strange to me that Evelyn should have been one of the crowd there.’
‘Why strange?’
‘Him amongst all those bodies, all standing still and mourning the loss of the Queen. When, what did she symbolise, Jones? Our parents and their world of repression. Aren’t we moving out of that?’
Jones didn’t answer immediately. Instead, the small sounds of his body, his breathing, the creaking of his chair. Finally: ‘Go on.’
She went on: ‘Finding Psychoanalysis was like a revelation. Don’t you see? A wake up from that.’
‘A wake up?’
‘From the Victorians. You must feel the same? That this is about change, about changing society for—but it’s all come to war, and …’
‘And?’ After a pause: ‘Was there something of the Victorians in your parents? In your father?’
She said, ‘And if this is part of my treatment, it means that it’s all under your control. As if you’ve arranged the world for me, so that I might get better.’
‘That’s absurd.’
‘Well, not literally. I’m not paranoid, and I don’t think you’ve arranged the world for me. But, in other ways, you have a command of the world that’s so impressive. It’s as if the world were not my dream, but your dream.’
He said, ‘My dream?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Joan?’
‘It feels as if you’ve dreamed the soldier for me. Don’t you see?’
‘Dreamed the soldier?’
‘As if what you might have interrupted, if you’d come into the cottage, was your own dream, something inside your head. As if you didn’t dare stumble on your …’
‘There was something of the Victorians in my mother. There still is. God, Jones, is it her I wish dead? It’s not really so simple, is it? That I wish to kill my mother, to gloat over her body, to see her times swept away? She stayed so much inside the house. She couldn’t understand anything of the rights of women.’ Then: ‘Listen to me, talking like an adolescent.’
‘Go on.’
‘No, of course she understood the suffrage movement. But I can just see her face tightening up every time I mentioned it. She even agreed, mostly, but then she’d sit and change the topic.’
‘And your father?’
‘Well, I hardly talked to him about it. He was already dead, anyway.’
‘Would you have talked to your father about suffrage, had he been alive?’
‘My … ?’ Then, after a pause: ‘Why did you invite him in, Joan?’
‘Are you angry?’
‘I think so.’
‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to do anything wrong.’
‘You didn’t do anything wrong.’
‘It was your cottage, your place. Did I misjudge when I …’
‘No.’
‘I went on the walks you recommended. But aside from that, I stayed so much inside the house.’
‘You didn’t need to …’
‘What? You said that I didn’t do anything wrong?’
‘Of course, Joan. I’m not here to judge you.’
‘Was it because he was a man? Because I was alone with a man?’
‘You’re alone with a man now. Of course it’s not that.’
‘Then what is it? You’re angry, you can’t accept something, but at the same time …’
‘It’s nothing.’
‘Yes, of course.’
He said, ‘I don’t believe you.’
She said, ‘I’m not being defensive.’
‘Can I tell you what I think? I think you are being defensive, and driving things away from considerations of your father. It seems, after all, to be his death that figures most highly in your symptoms. Or at least acts as an initial cause, since they first appeared after he died.’
‘Yes.’
‘There is something of the Victorians in all of our parents.’
‘Well, of course, this generation—’
‘What I mean is that I wonder if, to our children, we will be the Victorians. And our children, to our grandchildren. But are we so different from them? Our own repressions are perhaps just as strong.’
‘Do you believe that?’
‘How does your daughter see you?’
‘I don’t believe you. Can I tell you what I think? I think you are judging me, and you are afraid to. Or you are afraid of being angry, because of what it means.’
&nb
sp; ‘What does it mean?’
‘It means you will come too close to your wishes. You’ll see yourself laid bare. Isn’t that what it means, if your dreams express, in disguised form, the fulfilment of your wishes?’
‘Joan.’
‘I can’t say any more.’
‘You’re suspicious of me.’
‘I just wonder if you have looked hard at your own …’
‘I’ve been through my training analysis, as you know.’
‘And your wife?’
‘I’m not married. As you also know.’
‘Oh, Ernest, your common-law wife.’
‘And you know the situation there. Why are you turning to this?’
‘Yes, I know that you’re no longer, ah, married to her.’
A pause. Then: ‘I really don’t know.’
‘And that is hardly of interest here, except that she appears in your dream.’
‘I don’t know, Ernest. I’m afraid it’s really beyond me. Will I never get on top of—’
‘Firstly I wonder why the cart was so shaky. You said that its wheels seemed loose, as if it was an old cart at a peasant funeral. This is a detail that would hardly have come from your thoughts about the Queen’s procession.’
‘Yes, as if the child might be dropped from it at any time. It was shaking dangerously.’
‘And inside, the child looked like an old woman, or an old man.’
‘She did, Jones! I remember my shock when I first saw Diana; how small she was, but that with her wrinkles she was like an old man.’
‘Did you hold her?’
‘Yes, yes, I held her straight away.’
‘“Asway”?’
‘Are you jealous.’
‘Jealous!’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘But where is she now, Ernest? Aren’t you afraid that she has something of you?’
‘That’s none of my concern.’
‘Ernest, that’s it. You’re so tied up, so in control. You have a view of everything. You get to the heart of things. And still you don’t know why you came to the cottage, and can hardly even say why you sent me there in the first place. Was it supposed to be good for me as a patient? Was it supposed to be a kindness to a friend? And you of all people should be quite clear on the difference. And it’s you who suggests, now, that my treatment involves everything, the whole world. Your explanations are fine, but they leave me with nothing to hold on to.’
‘If that’s the case, then I’m sorry …’
‘Ernest?’
‘You were trying to say, you held her asway? You stammered on “away”.’
‘Ernest.’
‘You were nervous holding her?’
‘Of course, I had never held so small a child before. Is this what the dream is about? That I was nervous holding my child?’
‘I’m going to suggest something to you gently. This is only an idea. Your dream may represent a necessarily well-repressed wish to kill your child. Your fear of dropping her might actually be a wish, fairly directly represented, in fact.’
‘Ernest! Is that what’s going on?’
‘Yes. No, there’s more. No mother would want to kill her child, Joan. But you know that, at the same time, your child represents the phallus. You are given a child when you are given the phallus. The child is what is masculine in you. Your wish is to hide that. No, more: to destroy it.’
‘But more, I can’t help but think that your explanations are defences, against your desires. Where your desires lead you outside your own control, then the explanations expand to take in the whole world. That’s the only way you can justify yourself to yourself.’
‘Am I not allowed a ride in the country?’
‘You came, and looked in the window, and left. You were afraid of something, seeing something.’
‘I didn’t see anything. I saw you had company, and I didn’t want to intrude.’
‘I’m afraid to push this too far, Jones.’
He said, ‘For what it might reveal about you?’
She said, ‘Jones, no. Have you heard what I have been saying? For what it might reveal about you.’
‘What might it reveal?’
‘I don’t know. I can’t say.’
‘Oh. Yes. Yes.’
‘You agree?’
‘It seems to make sense. I want to efface what is masculine, what is powerful in me. I know that much. I am looking down on the child in the dream: a position of power, of control. It’s me shaking it, trying to appear shaky myself. But does Diana have to be part of this?’
‘Here is exactly where repression is so important, Joan. It is exactly where we become, as parents, the repressed Victorians.’
‘Maybe you’re right.’
‘I think you are terrified of your desire and your power. You’re terrified of out-competing your sickly father. But this dream has so much more. It will go further.’
‘Further! I’m already not sure I can face my daughter.’
‘Well. You might be right. We all have our repressions.’
‘You agree?’
‘Of course no one knows himself fully. The dark, unknowable secret, the un-analysable secret at the heart of every patient, and so forth.’
‘And so forth?’
‘You know all this.’
‘Are you in love with me?’
‘I can’t be your doctor if I’m in love with you.’
‘You can’t help me if you’re not.’
‘Nonsense.’
‘Are you at least my friend?’
‘Of course.’
‘But there’s a difference between that and my doctor.’
‘Yes.’
‘How can I live with that difference?’
28. (MEDEA: A STRUCTURE OF THE MIND.) Joan couldn’t help remarking, repeatedly, anew, on the new sensation that was in the room. The truth is, the doctor had been working with dangerous material: not just what was inside Joan, but what was hidden in people, including himself—and his grasp of that material could never be complete. Can anyone’s? This question is perhaps less about our depths than our ability to plumb them, etc. And what is hidden is not just within people but ‘between’ them, in the air, in their language, etc. It might alter the way light passes, the way perception works, the way things are built, so that ultimately the foundations of things are darkened and cavernous. And what does ‘ultimately’ mean, anyway?
Joan didn’t know. She had her daughter to face. The girl was to go to school shortly—maybe it was for the best. She went to Diana’s room that night. The room was already darkened, but Diana was not yet asleep. On the table by her bed, a postcard showing the mountains. In the dim light, Joan made out that Diana was transformed. She had a grin, directed at her mother. Was it just the light? The covers were half off the bed, revealing the girl’s body, or enough of it. What fit had caused her to throw them off? There was something moist about the girl’s grin, and glistening. That wasn’t the worst of it. The girl’s limbs had changed: the knees were on the backs of the legs so that the feet were sticking up into the air, like platforms, shin-height above the bed. The ceiling was too low. Her arms were too long, and multi-jointed, and useless, lying along the length of her body. The body made small movements: twitches. She was broken and useless. It seemed as if some part of her—a hand, a foot—might fling out at Joan. The child grinned at her, still, fixated, with love. Joan sat next to her. There was a fine film over the child’s body. Joan placed a hand on the arm, and felt the quivering bone underneath the skin. Diana couldn’t move, and, while touching her, nor could Joan. ‘Diana can’t move, and, while touching her, nor can I.’ Something enveloped her. ‘Something envelops me.’ She felt something coming on—one of her ‘turns’. Was it that? What had Jones done to her daughter? ‘What has Jones done to my daughter? I am caught for a second in a half-state, as if vibrating between two worlds, and it’s this that stops me moving. But, look, here, and only here, I have, at last, something new.’
But now, outside the room, standing still for a brief pause, she couldn’t bear that she had returned the child’s grin and touched that bone. Jones had laid it bare, and it couldn’t now be concealed again—there would be the knowledge of it, which no amount of forgetting would erase. Was it there in Joan’s child, certain to outlive her? What can we say about this ‘bone’? We might conclude that it was, as much as in Diana, in Joan herself. It quivered, was porous—it stuck. It lay like a corpse, trodden underfoot in the trenches by the horses of the enemy, but, horribly, still alive. We might also conclude something about Jones: that, however much he might have revealed it, he himself was unaware of it.
29. It was not long afterwards that he informed her that he was to be married. Joan wasn’t deceived: she knew the marriage was a kind of reaction formation, even if she didn’t know exactly what he reacted against. ‘Everything’ was connected after all. But his fiancée was real enough, or so Joan assumed. Everything had gone wrong. Who was this woman? Jones had turned to her, suddenly. And, to be fair, why not? It was perhaps a good move on Jones’s part: it normalised things and tidied them, and allowed their sessions to continue.
‘Who is she?’
‘She’s a musician. She’s Welsh!’
‘Oh. Good.’
‘Yes. I don’t think I could marry an English woman.’
‘I, um, yes.’
‘It’s the Celt in us, it contains depths.’
‘… that we English lack.’
‘Well, the English aren’t the same. Nothing personal.’
‘I haven’t taken offence.’
This was true enough. It was only a sign of something, of Jones’s attachment to this woman, but also of the fact that his engagement was a solution to something. Jones had withdrawn behind his borders, and was now, firmly, ‘Welsh’. What could that possibly mean? There was some allegiance to the totems of that nation—that vegetable they were always going on about, though this was hardly an ideal image of the Father. Joan, without quite deciding to, decided to be happy for him. She herself would be happy with her husband—as, indeed, she was. If the soldier had caused, for a time, a disturbance, a rupture—if he had, in a sense, invaded a world—now, suddenly, maybe too suddenly, that world was reinstated, reinforced. His engagement was a move in her treatment (hadn’t he indicated that EVERYTHING should be understood to be part of it?). He treated HER by ‘working’ on HIMSELF—his wedding was this work.