Unbearable Lightness of Scones

10. A Setback for the Bertie Project

In the consulting room of Dr. Hugo Fairbairn, the distinguished psychotherapist and author of Shattered to Pieces: Ego Dissolution in a Three-Year-Old Tyrant, Irene sat on the opposite side of the desk, staring at Dr. Fairbairn uncomprehendingly.

“A chair?” she said, eventually. “A chair?”

Dr. Fairbairn beamed back at her. “I wanted you to be one of the first to know,” he said. “I shall, of course, be writing to all my patients, and there may even be something in the press about it…” He broke off, smiling in a self-deprecatory way. “Not that I’m newsworthy, of course, but the fact of the matter is that Aberdeen has decided to create the first chair of child psychotherapy at a Scottish university and, well, they’ve very kindly chosen me.”

Irene struggled to pull herself together. “But why can’t you do this here in Edinburgh? What’s wrong with Edinburgh University or any of the other universities we’ve got here? Queen Margaret University – they go in for that sort of thing, don’t they? Health sciences and so on. Why don’t you be a professor there? Or Napier University? What about them? They’ve got that film school or whatever – they’re forward-looking.”

Dr. Fairbairn smiled. He appreciated such praise from Irene, but he wondered if she knew much about the mechanisms of getting a university chair. “It’s not that simple,” he explained. “There’s nothing available in Edinburgh at the moment. Maybe some time in the future, but now… well, it’s Aberdeen who have taken the step. And I must say I do feel somewhat flattered.”

Irene decided to change tack. “Flattered by being offered a chair? Come now, Hugo, somebody of your eminence… A chair is not even a sideways move; you have far bigger fish to fry…”

Dr. Fairbairn frowned. Was it possible that Irene did not know what a singular honour it was to be asked to become a chair? What did she think chairs were for? Sitting in?

“There will be a great deal for me to do in Aberdeen,” he said slowly. “They would specifically like to raise their profile in psychotherapeutic studies. They know about…” He paused, as if modesty prevented the mention of his book, but decided to continue. “Shattered to Pieces. It has, I believe, been used as a textbook in Aberdeen.”

Irene snorted. “Aberdeen! What do they know in Aberdeen?”

Dr. Fairbairn’s expression now began to show signs of irritation. “A great deal, I would have thought,” he said. “It is one of our most distinguished pre-Reformation universities. It is a very prestigious institution.”

“Oh, I know all that,” said Irene quickly. “It’s the place I was thinking of.”

“And the city too,” said Dr. Fairbairn. “As a city, Aberdeen has an illustrious history. It’s a very significant place.”

“And very cold too,” Irene interjected.

For a few moments nothing was said. Irene reached out and picked up a pencil that was lying on Dr. Fairbairn’s desk. “Of course there are other considerations,” she said, almost casually.

Dr. Fairbairn watched her. He said nothing.

“I would have thought that you would have rather too many commitments in Edinburgh to leave,” she said.

He waited. Then, in a hesitant voice, “Such as?”

“Oh, your practice?” said Irene airily. “Your patients. Wee Fraser…” She was not going to mention Bertie… yet.

“Wee Fraser is no longer a patient,” said Dr. Fairbairn defensively. “He is a former patient with whom I have not had any dealings for some considerable time.”

That was not true, of course, and he knew it; but by dealings he meant professional dealings, and the punch to the jaw that he had administered – in a moment of madness, and in response to being head-butted by the now adolescent Wee Fraser – on the Burdiehouse bus did not count as a professional dealing.

Irene knew about his burden of guilt. She knew full well – because he had, in a moment of weakness, told her all about it – she knew of how he had gently smacked Wee Fraser when the boy, then three, had bitten him in the course of play therapy involving small farm animals. Dr. Fairbairn had suggested to Fraser that the miniature pigs with which the small boy was playing (or, more correctly, enacting his inner psychic dramas) were upside down. Wee Fraser had obstinately insisted that the pigs’ legs should point upwards and, when corrected again by Dr. Fairbairn, had bitten the psychotherapist. Anybody, even St. Nicholas of Myra, the patron saint of children, might be tempted to slap a child in such circumstances – and Irene conceded that; indeed there was an entire school of psychotherapy, Cause-Effect Theory, which held that people needed to know that unpleasant consequences flowed from unpleasant acts. This theory, however, had been widely discredited, and Dr. Fairbairn should never have raised a hand to the biting child. That was crystal clear. Psychotherapists did not slap their patients, and the metaphorical rucksack of guilt that Dr. Fairbairn carried with him was entirely his own fault.

“Well, Wee Fraser is neither here nor there,” said Irene, adding, “perhaps.” Irene’s knowledge of Dr. Fairbairn’s guilt gave her some leverage over him; she would not want Wee Fraser to be completely forgotten.

Dr. Fairbairn said nothing. He was looking out of the window, in the direction of Aberdeen, which lay several hours to the north. There would be a great deal of psychopathology in Aberdeen, he imagined, but people might be unwilling to talk about it very much. If Californians were at one end of the spectrum of willingness to talk about personal problems, Aberdonians were at the other. It was a form of verbal retention, he thought; one did not want to part with the words unnecessarily. Words needed to be hoarded, at least in the verbal stage. He thought of a possible title for a paper, “Verbal Retention in a Cold Climate.” That was rather good, even if not as good as Shattered to Pieces, a title of which he was inordinately proud. It was quite in the league of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas or Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

Irene was watching him look out of the window. She had not imagined that Bertie’s psychotherapy would come to a premature end and that she would be deprived of these comfortable conversations with this fascinating man in his wrinkle-resistant blue linen jacket. Suddenly she felt very lonely. Who would there be to talk to now? Her husband?

Her words came out unbidden. “And what about Bertie? What about the Bertie project? Weren’t you going to write him up?”

Before he could reply, she added, “And then there’s Ulysses.”