Part Twenty-Seven
John couldn't quite believe that Tuesday evening had rolled around again so quickly. It seemed barely five minutes since he'd walked out of that clinic, yet here he was going back there again. Perhaps this was because he'd thought about virtually nothing else in the last few days, his anger and humiliation even haunting him in his sleep. As he drew up in the car park of the psychology clinic, he had half a mind to turn round and drive away, to hide forever from her probing questions and her manipulative thrust of absolute honesty. But he couldn't do it, because if he did, if he turned round and made some feeble excuse for never going back, he would feel infinitely more pathetic than she could ever make him feel during a session. The therapy had been his idea, no one else's, therefore he owed it at least to himself to continue with it. With this resolve in mind, he got out of the car and announced himself at the desk.
When they were again sitting opposite each other in the consulting room, Helen gave him a smile. "If I'm honest," She told him carefully. "I didn't actually expect to see you here again." "And I nearly didn't come back," He told her with a slight smile of his own. "How did you feel after last week?" She asked, thinking that this would also tell her why he had been so reticent about returning. "Erm, I felt a bit disjointed," He said eventually. "As though I'd been taken apart, and not put back together in quite the right way. I've barely thought about anything else this last week, and I've alternated between being angry with you for doing this to me, and angry with myself for starting it in the first place." "Angry with me for doing what to you?" Helen asked, John's reaction being extremely common amongst her patients. "After just one hour of talking to you, I told you something that made me feel immensely vulnerable, and I didn't like that you'd found it so easy to make me do that." "Why does telling me that you need to feel loved, make you feel so vulnerable?" Helen asked him quietly, observing the flinch as she repeated his words of the week before. "Don't shrink away from it, Judge," She told him firmly. "Those were your very words, words that you said with your back to me, so that I wouldn't see how much it hurt to say them. Needing to feel loved, doesn't make you a bad person, because it's something that we all need, though not many of us are prepared to admit it. So don't be afraid of saying it. You need to accept that needing to feel loved, doesn't automatically make you a weaker, lesser human being."
John sat in silence for a little while, fervently struggling to organise his thoughts to her assertion. "I think I see it as a weakness," He said eventually. "Because being loved can so easily lead to being hurt. I love Jo, and I love George, yet I know that I am capable of hurting both of them enormously. They are also both fairly adept at returning the favour, yet they both say they love me." "When you sleep with someone," Helen asked him calmly. "Whether it's someone you've known for years, or only for a couple of hours, what is it you're actually after? Is it real love, plus all the added complications that come with it, or is it simply the pretence of love?" "When I'm with someone I've picked up in a bar, or at a conference, for example," John replied carefully, realising too late that the listing of a conference as a pick up venue wasn't perhaps the best move he'd ever made. "I'm definitely only looking for the pretence, the feeling, because the women I go to bed with in those types of situations, are almost instantly forgettable." "Is that because of how they are in bed, or their personalities, or what?" John had to think about this for a moment. "I wouldn't pick someone up if she didn't interest me on an intellectual level," He answered. "And I certainly wouldn't pick her up if she wasn't physically attractive. As to her sexual skill or lack of it, that's obviously not something I can really estimate in advance, and to be honest, it isn't really an issue. If she is particularly good at what she does, then this is naturally a very welcome bonus, but if she isn't, it's not something I try to dwell on. I see the female body as something to be worshipped in its entirety, and giving a woman pleasure as opposed to simply taking it for myself is simply how I tend to behave with women." "Why?" Helen asked, thinking that some of the men she had known in her time could learn a lot from this man. "Because the female body was made for receiving pleasure," John told her succinctly. "But I suppose you could say that to do that for a woman, makes me feel special, wanted." "It makes you feel needed," Helen corrected him quietly. "And that's something you're terrified of not feeling, isn't it." "Yes," He agreed, not looking at her.
"Tell me why you have two women currently on the go?" She surprised him by asking. "It was Jo's idea, believe it or not." "I'm not asking why they agreed to it," Helen replied, halting him in his tracks. "I'm asking why you agreed to it." "Because in spite of the fact that I seem to have loved Jo for years, part of me still loved, and still does love George. I could never entirely close the door on what we'd once had, even though the years that I was married to her, represent some of the worst times either of us have been through." "Tell me," Helen encouraged him gently. "When our daughter, Charlie, was born," John began a little reluctantly. "George didn't love her. It wasn't her fault, not something she could help, but she thought it made her a bad mother. George stopped eating, and by the time Charlie was six months old, and I finally discovered what George was doing to herself, she was down to five and a half stone. When I managed to persuade her to tell me why she was starving herself, I think for a time I wished I hadn't asked. I didn't understand how she couldn't love her own daughter, but at the same time I knew I shouldn't blame her for it. George was carrying around more than enough guilt of her own, without any added burden from me. I knew something was wrong, because she wouldn't let me anywhere near her. It wasn't just that she wouldn't let me make love to her, which during the first few months after the birth of a baby is pretty normal, but she wouldn't even let me hold her." "How did that make you feel?" Helen asked, seeing the cracks beginning to appear in his iron facade. "I thought she didn't love me any more," He replied half ashamedly. "Whereas it was George who thought I couldn't possibly love her, if I found out that she didn't love Charlie. For that first week, after she told me why she'd stopped eating, I really thought that she might try to kill herself, and that terrified me. I would hardly let her out of my sight, and I removed everything lethal from the house. I couldn't have borne it if I'd lost her. Not just for me, but for Charlie too. It wasn't George's fault that she couldn't love her own daughter, but even less was it Charlie's. I desperately didn't want Charlie to lose her mother in the same way I had."
John stopped, his flood of words suddenly faltering as he realised what he'd said. It had taken Rachel Crawchek six weeks to get this far, yet inside the space of two sessions, Helen had drawn this out of him with no difficulty whatsoever. Helen just watched him, this latest little fact having somewhat shocked her. So, John's mother had committed suicide. Well, that really did explain an awful lot. But she wasn't about to go easy on him, just because he had unwittingly handed over the key to his main source of heartache. He had to explain this for himself, not have her do it for him. "How old were you?" She asked into the resulting silence. "Ten," He told her curtly, every possible barrier slamming into place like the clang of a cell door. "Do you know why she killed herself?" "She was very depressed," John told her almost clinically. "Why else would anyone want to kill themselves?" "Why do you think she was depressed?" Helen persisted, unwilling to let go of the reins at this stage. "Why is that remotely relevant?" John countered back, his instinct to argue now well established. "You're not going to rattle me, Judge," Helen promised him blithely. "Do you want a bet?" John replied before he could think better of it. "Okay, let's try this from another angle," Helen said, still appearing calm on the surface, though she was inwardly shaking her head with frustration. "Why don't you want to talk to me about your mother?" "Because she has absolutely nothing to do with why I'm here," John said stonily. "My mother having killed herself when I was a child, and my inability to stop going to bed with other women, even though I have two beautiful women to keep me happy, aren't in any way connected." "I don't agree with you," Helen replied quietly, her calm, utterly relaxed demeanour winding him up even further. "Whether you do or don't agree with me is hardly the point," John told her icily. "Because my childhood is not up for discussion." "You really don't like someone else calling the shots, do you," She said almost contemplatively, seeing the anger rising like a vapour around him. Then, when he didn't answer, she said, "You see, the more you insist that your childhood has nothing to do with the behaviour that you've exhibited for the last forty years, the more I think it does. Tell me, am I doing what your last therapist did? Did she get around to persuading you to talk about your mother, and is that why you slept with her, because you couldn't deal with it?" Her voice might have been relatively quiet, but her words still felt like taunts to him, the frighteningly accurate arrow tips of accusation that he couldn't escape from, no matter how hard he tried.
Getting up from his chair, he strode purposefully towards the door, meaning to walk out of the room, out of the clinic, and never again go back. "Sit down," She said, still sounding calm and collected. But as he clearly intended to ignore her, she slipped unthinkingly back into the tone of voice she had once used as Governor of G wing. "Sit in that chair!" She almost shouted at him, causing him to turn round, and do exactly as she'd told him to do. He stared at her, never having suspected that she would pull rank on him, lose her cool in order to force him to do her bidding. All the anger seemed to have gone out of him with the pistol shot of her command, and now he simply sat and watched her. "I'm sorry," She said, really sounding rather sheepish. "I sometimes forget that I'm not still a Wing Governor. I once said the exact same thing to Nikki, after she'd had a fight with Shell Dockley." "Well, I hope that I'm not in danger of ever doing that," John said with a slight smile. "Tell me what you're so afraid of?" Helen prompted him gently. "You were right," He said a little heavily. "Rachel did get as far as you have, in fact she managed to take it a little further, even though it took her six weeks to do it. She made me feel incredibly vulnerable, and I am, terrified of feeling like that again." He had hesitated over the right adjective, but Helen could see that he meant every syllable. "If talking about your mother makes you cry, that really doesn't matter, you know, Judge," Helen told him kindly, observing the slight flush that rose to his cheeks. "It's a perfectly natural process," She continued. "And it's a sign that you're beginning to grieve, something I don't think you've ever done, not properly anyway." "I had to seduce Rachel, in order to regain control of the feelings she was trying to drag out of me," He explained a little hoarsely. "I know," Helen replied quietly. "And you came to me, because you knew that I wouldn't even let you consider that possibility. One thought in that direction and you're out the door," She added with a little smile. Then, tentatively she added, "Tell me about your mother." This simple encouragement, these few kind words, with neither threat nor promise attached to them, seemed to release the block on his tongue.
"I don't know why my mother was depressed," He began slowly, not looking at Helen for fear he would see pity in her eyes. "She killed herself, by taking sleeping pills on top of a bottle of scotch. I was ten, and my sister was twelve. After it happened, my father withdrew from us, emotionally, I mean. It's funny, but when I split up with George, she did exactly the same thing, keeping all her feelings inside where they could only hurt herself, or at least that's what she thought. Charlie developed the not so charming little name of 'The Ice Maiden' for George, which is a pretty good description of how my father was to me and my sister. I remember, after my mother died, I kept returning to this place we used to go, whenever there was a thunderstorm. The perfume she always wore smelled of vanilla. I can remember that smell, every time I think of her." There were tears shining in his eyes now, but they hadn't yet begun to fall. Helen silently watched him, waiting for him to go on, but he didn't, as though mortally afraid of betraying his vulnerability in front of her. "Your mother, was the first woman who told you she loved you, and yet then left you, wasn't she," Helen said into the silence, suddenly seeing with total clarity the source of all John's insecurities. "It wasn't her fault," John tried to insist, his voice unsteady with grief. "I'm not trying to accord her any blame, Judge," Helen told him gently. "But I think it's where everything began to go wrong." "I just wish I knew why she had to do it," He said, the pain of not knowing clear in his voice. "That's what you're frightened of, isn't it," Helen clarified. "Loving someone that much again, and them leaving you like she did." "George nearly did, more than once," He surprised Helen by saying. "Not just after Charlie was born, but last April, after the row we had about her and Karen. But for Jo's timely intervention, George wouldn't be here now." Helen couldn't prevent her eyes from widening. Jesus, she'd known absolutely nothing about this at the time, which showed just how much could go on unnoticed under the surface. "The only thing that's ever stopped George from actually going through with it, is because she knows what it would do to me. But thinking that she'd lost me for good back in April, she didn't think she had any other option." "Tell me what frightened you most, about the prospect of George killing herself after Charlie was born?" "I didn't want Charlie to end up like me, wondering for the rest of her life, why her mother had left her behind." In the resulting silence, Helen wanted to reach out to him, to tell him that he was doing fantastically well, and that he was being incredibly brave to do this, but she couldn't. This man exuded so much pain, so much buried anguish, that for a moment she thought it might make her cry. But, eventually pulling herself together, she said, "Well, I think we'll leave it there for this week. You look exhausted." "You don't look much better," John told her, for the first time wondering just how much this was taking out of her too. "It's been a long day," She told him evasively. "Now, I can't fit you in for another fortnight. Will that be okay?" "I think a fortnight's break from severe mental torture won't do me any harm in the least," He said dryly, thinking that he would need at least two weeks to recover.