Morgan
A cough. I wipe my eyes and look up. Dad stands in the dark at the other end of the kitchen table. He says, ‘I didn’t hear you go back to bed.’
I say, ‘You look like a ghost.’
He says, ‘Light a candle.’
‘No.’
‘Don’t tell your mother—’
‘I don’t tell her anything.’
‘—that I gave away a plank.’
I push my hair back and smooth it down neatly. I choose to try being a psychologist. ‘You don’t want her to be disturbed.’ I put my palms together.
‘No.’ He sighs.
Psychologists make people talk. I wonder if he will. He isn’t looking at me. I say, ‘Does she think there would be damage if we weren’t so trapped?’
He sits down opposite me, puts his elbows on the table. He glances at me, and away. He looks like he’s been caught. He says, ‘She wants to live like this.’
‘It’s some dream, to know no one.’
‘She can’t cope with other people’s emotions.’
I nod, wisely. ‘I’ve noticed.’
‘She finds them unsettling.’
‘It’s unsettling that we’re alone and you’re talking like her.’
‘What?’
‘There’s a word for that – mirroring? It’s in the psychology book.’
His voice is louder. ‘It’s not an appropriate word when she’s not here to mirror. So you’ve read a book and you think you can diagnose her?’
We stare at each other in the dark.
I look away. ‘I don’t want to.’
He says again, ‘You think you can diagnose her?’
Outside the window, I can see the pink fence, dim in the dark. I say, quietly, ‘Have you heard of narcissism?’
Now he’s looking at the fence through the window. He says, ‘You’d do better just to see her as vulnerable, in need of our care, rather than fitting her to a list of symptoms. She needs empathy.’
‘She needs empathy?’
‘What point is there in analysing her?’
‘I need a case study. Our family might be my only one. If it is, I won’t be a very good psychologist.’
‘We don’t need one.’
I lean forwards and he looks back at me. I say, ‘Did she ever see a real psychologist?’
‘She wouldn’t have wanted to. She doesn’t want to be … dissected. Sampled or discussed.’
‘Well, she’s probably deeply happy that we live on an island with no psychologists. Unless everyone who lives here is a psychologist. But then, I wouldn’t know, would I?’
‘She has every right to expect our understanding.’
‘And I don’t?’
‘If I was a real psychologist, I’d say, there’s no danger.’
He pauses. ‘Don’t attempt to diagnose her. It won’t do her, or you, any good.’
‘Has she always been this focussed on herself – is it her ego—’
‘Her ego?’
‘—or her id?’
‘What about them?’
‘That make her this … emotionally—’
‘I don’t want to discuss her like this.’
‘But we never discuss anything.’
‘We’re talking now.’
I stare out of the window again. ‘So, this is you, speaking to me. And you’re still not telling me anything.’
‘She’s become more … fragile over the years. Her emotions have been jarred, become set at some young age when she was too often left alone. Some parents are more … attentive than others. These things are learned through generations.’
‘So, what is she passing on to me, and Hazel, and Ash – that parents should have temper tantrums whenever their children do anything that upsets them?’
‘You could at least try to understand her.’
I sigh. ‘I am trying. She felt unloved. Is she loved enough now?’
‘We bring towards us, so often, that which we are most afraid of.’
‘Is that a quotation?’
‘I don’t remember.’
‘You asked that woman, the plank woman, about—’
‘Don’t tell your mother that either. She’ll find it …’
‘Disturbing. That someone wanted something from us other than burial. Disturbing that you know something that’s happening here. So tell me. I won’t be disturbed.’
‘They don’t teach boys to read here. Your mother finds that idea threatening. She thinks that if men are treated like simple beasts, that’s how they’ll behave.’
‘Has she ever encountered a simple beast?’
‘In her nightmares.’
‘She has nightmares?’
‘Always.’ His eyes stare at his hands. His fingers drum on the table.
I ask, ‘What do they do?’
‘Who?’ He raises his eyebrows.
I spread out my palms in a psychologically open gesture. ‘The beasts in her nightmares. What do they do?’
‘Turn their backs—’
‘That doesn’t sound like a nightmare, it sounds like body language.’
‘—because they want to eat her up, but they don’t love her enough. They would rather die of hunger.’
‘Are you saying she wants to be eaten?’
‘Have you ever had a dream where you’re shouting and screaming for something you desperately need, only to find that all the people turn away, and their backs are hairy, ridged, frightening to you?’
‘No. There’s no point in analysing my dreams. They’re all the same thing happening over and over again.’
‘Until you do, you won’t understand her.’
‘Do you?’
He shudders. ‘She says our dreams are tied together.’
‘And are they?’
He meshes his fingers, glances up at me. ‘What?’
‘The men who live here. The men who can’t read. Are they really like beasts? When you bury them, are their backs hairy, from a lack of literacy? Is there a collective noun for men with hairy backs?’
‘Keep your voice down. Not that I’ve encountered.’
‘In the garden at home. Our real home, do you remember telling me that earthworms were …’
‘I may have said they were cautious.’
‘You said they were discreet. You’ve forgotten.’
‘You’re testing me.’
‘I’m just confirming whether your long-term memory is working or not. Or perhaps testing my own. I was trying to ask, what were you saying to the plank woman about some men?’
‘The drain was blocked.’ He pauses.
I tap my fingers on the table.
He says, ‘Your mother sent me out to the smithy – she needed a rod to unblock it. The smithy talked. And I’ve overheard passers-by, whispers—’
‘So you don’t deny the whispers are there?’
‘She says the people on this island don’t understand her. She believes we don’t listen. No wonder she needs this safety. Can you imagine how it must feel for her, believing no one ever hears her?’
‘But she talks all the time. She doesn’t listen, so she can’t tell when we hear her.’
‘Give her time.’
‘How many years does she need?’
‘As many as it takes.’ He slides his chair out and stands up. His dressing gown is still wet from the rain.
I say, ‘Aren’t you cold?’
He says, ‘I do understand how you feel. It might not always seem that way, to you, but—’
‘It doesn’t. You side with her. Is there a shadow side of both of you – has her shadow put yours in a corner, to play with?’
He stands in front of the kitchen doorway and I can only just see his face. He says, ‘You have been reading that book, haven’t you?’
‘Devouring it.’
He glances over his shoulder at the doorway, coughs and says, ‘In the past, I persuaded her into situations I shouldn’t have. As a child, my family had nothing. I saw opportunities and was blinded by my own … greed. The outcome was … she became … terribly frightened. Fear can become trapped within someone who is already vulnerable, even if the actual danger was eradicated, by us leaving the mainland.’ He nods at me, ‘And yes, sometimes feeling this amount of guilt is not unlike having a shadow.’
‘I think I would be a good psychologist. Thank you for telling me something. What situations did you persuade her into?’
His face fades into the darkness of the hallway and his feet creak away up the stairs.