The Dog Who Came in From the Cold

  James made the first move to patch things up with Caroline. “That risotto,” he said over the telephone.

  “What risotto?”

  “The risotto I was going to make for you before …” Before what? He searched for the right word. “Before our misunderstanding.”

  Caroline was brisk. “Oh,” she said, “don’t worry about that. That’s all over.” But not for Dee, she thought. She had yet to confront Dee about her duplicity in not confessing that she had gone out to dinner with James. But she would, she thought, when the time was right. On the other hand … poor Dee, with all her vitamins and colonic irrigation and the rest of it; she was very rarely invited out by anybody to anything, and it seemed churlish to begrudge her a little treat with James. No, she would not confront her; she would, instead, forgive her, or, at the most, make a brief reference now and then to the Poule au Pot, just so that Dee would know that she knew all about it. Forgiveness was all very well, but one should not allow others to get away with everything.

  “Are you listening, Caroline?”

  “Yes, yes. My thoughts were just wandering a bit. You were saying something about a risotto.”

  James sighed. Caroline lacked focus. Yet we all had our faults, and even he … What were his faults? Indecision? Uncertainty about who he was? “I’d rather like to come round and make it for you this evening. I’ll get the shopping.”

  Caroline hesitated. She was not sure whether she wanted to see James that evening. There were some times which seemed right for seeing James, and some which did not. That particular evening was of indeterminate status … “Oh, all right.” She realised that she sounded rude, and corrected herself. One should not be ungrateful for offers to cook risotto …

  James was punctual, and Caroline let him in. He had with him a green carrier bag bulging with risotto ingredients. From out of the top of the bag the neck of a wine bottle peeped. Caroline leaned forward and planted a kiss on his cheek. She did it automatically, and then, realising what she had just done, for a moment afterwards was prepared for him to recoil. He did not.

  James smiled. Extracting the bottle of wine from the bag, he held it up to show her. “See this?” he said. “This is not your average supermarket stuff. This is …” He looked at the label. “Chateau Greysac 2005. And 2005, Caroline, was a very good year for Médoc. I read that. There’s a chap called Will Lyons who writes about wines. He said that 2005 was an excellent year. He knows what he’s talking about.”

  Caroline laughed. “What was I doing in 2005? Just started uni. Same for you.”

  They moved through to the kitchen, where James started to unpack the rest of the contents of the bag. “We were so young,” he said. “Positively callow.”

  Yes, thought Caroline, I was; and the things I wore …

  James took a corkscrew from the cutlery drawer. “I must buy you a new one of these,” he said. “This one has had it. You have to be really strong to get the cork out.” He strained as he tugged at the cork, and Caroline found herself thinking: No, he’s not all that strong. He’s nice, but he’s not strong. But then you did not necessarily expect physical strength in someone like James, and she was not sure that she wanted it anyway. He was nice exactly as he was, with that profile of his and those eyelashes … She looked away. She felt a sudden strong tug of desire, and she was not sure that it was right, that it would lead to a place where she wanted to be.

  Having at last extracted the cork from the bottle, James poured wine into two glasses. “We can taste this while I’m preparing dinner,” he said. “I love cooking with wine.” He smiled at her and raised his glass. “To you,” he said.

  “And to you.”

  She tasted the wine. There was an edge of tannin to it, something sharp, and she frowned. James noticed, and told her that this would go in seconds, once the air got to it. “It’ll be perfect,” he said.

  And then he started to cry. At first Caroline said nothing, did nothing, such was her surprise, but then she put down her glass and went to him. She took his glass lest he spill the Chateau Greysac, and put it down on the table. She took him in her arms, embracing him, letting his head nestle against her shoulder.

  “James,” she whispered. “Don’t cry, James. Don’t cry.”

  “I’m sorry,” he sobbed. “I come for dinner at your house, and I start to cry.”

  “Ssh!” She put a finger to his lips. She felt the moisture of his tears. “What’s wrong?”

  She need not have asked the question; she knew, of course, what was wrong, and had known from the beginning, from virtually the first day when they had found themselves sitting next to one another in a lecture. She knew then, and she should have trusted her instinct. But she had not, because she felt that somewhere there must be a man who could be her soul mate, with whom she could talk about the things that really mattered to her, who would see the world in the same way. James was all of that – she could tell straight away – and, in her delight at finding him, she had ignored what should have been so very obvious. Now she had upset him, because she had encouraged him to be someone he was not.

  She patted him gently on the back, a small gesture of reassurance, as one would comfort a child.

  “It’s my fault,” she said. “I should never have let you think that it was possible. I was so selfish.”

  She heard his muffled protest. “No. It wasn’t your fault. It’s nobody’s. It’s just …”

  “It is. I should have said from the beginning, we’re just going to be friends. It would have been easy, but I was just thinking of myself – as usual.”

  James drew away from her, although her arms were still around him. He looked at her. Again, she felt desire; she could not help herself. He is so beautiful, she thought. My own Botticelli. A Renaissance princeling incarnate, and in my arms, and …

  “It’s not what you think,” he said. ‘You think that I … Well, it’s not like that. The real truth is something different.”

  Caroline waited for him to continue.

  “I don’t … I don’t like boys. That’s not it.”

  She stared at him. “You like girls then …”

  He shook his head. “Not in that way.”

  “So …”

  “Oh, Caroline, how can I explain it? I like neither. Can’t you understand? I just want to be your friend. I just want us to be like this, well, indefinitely, and I know that it’s terribly unfair on you because you’re going to want a lover and all the rest. And then there won’t be any room for me in your life – how could there be?”

  She released him from her embrace. “I want us to be friends too, you know. I want that as well.”

  “Yes, I know. But you’re going to want more. You’re going to want more than that, and Caroline, oh, it’s so hard to know how to say this. But I suppose I should just come right out with it.” He hesitated. “I’m just not into the physical side of things. I’m just not.”

  Chapter 40: Morphic Resonance

  Terence Moongrove – mystic, dreamer, Porsche-owner – led his sister to her bedroom on the first floor of his Queen Anne house outside Cheltenham. “I’ve put you in Uncle Eric’s room,” he said. “I know you like the view from that window. And I’ve asked Mrs Rivers to put some flowers in the vase that Uncle Eric once threw at that man who came to ask if we would vote for him. Do you remember? The man said something political to Uncle Eric and he threw the vase. Just like that. Bang. It was a jolly dangerous thing to do and Daddy was furious, really furious.”

  Berthea did remember, and smiled at the recollection. “Uncle Eric wasn’t quite right. I think the man realised, and was very good about it. They get an awful lot of rudeness on the doorstep when they go canvassing.”

  “I’m not surprised,” said Terence. “You’re eating your soup and some silly politician comes and rings the bell and asks if you’ll give him your vote. Really! Do they seriously think that anything they can say in a few minutes on the doorstep is going to change the way you were going to vote??
?? They were now at the top of the stairs, and he paused. “Do you think Oedipus does much canvassing?”

  “I doubt it,” said Berthea. “Oedipus doesn’t exactly exert himself, as we well know.”

  “I know he’s your son,” said Terence. “And I know he’s my nephew. And I also know I shouldn’t say things like this, but I’d hate to answer the door and find Oedipus standing there asking for my vote. I really would.”

  “Yes,” said Berthea. “Not an attractive thought. What would you do?”

  Terence gave it a moment’s consideration. “I’d give him a jolly good push,” he said. “I’d push him off the step and say, ‘I’m not voting for you, you Sam!’”

  Berthea frowned. “What’s a Sam?”

  “I’m not at all sure,” said Terence. “But it fits Oedipus. And a lot of other politicians.”

  “Maybe.”

  They made their way to the end of the corridor where an open door led into an airy, square room. The curtains were pulled back and the late afternoon sun was streaming in. “Lovely,” said Berthea. “And Mrs Rivers has done those nice flowers there. I must thank her.”

  “She likes you,” said Terence. “She always has. And here, I’ve put out some magazines for you to read. This one is really interesting. There’s an article in it about morphic resonance. Do you know what that is?”

  Berthea glanced at the cover of the magazine. “No, I don’t, I’m afraid. I’m a bit hazy about these things, Terence. It’s not really my—”

  Her brother interrupted her. “That’s because you haven’t bothered to find out. If you did, you’d learn an awful lot, Berthy, you really would.”

  She sighed. “Time, you know …”

  “Well, I can tell you all about morphic resonance, as it happens,” said Terence. “It’s the idea that living things have a morphic field around them that determines how they will develop.”

  Berthea rolled her eyes. Terence was always looking for something, and as a result seized upon any theory he encountered. Morphic fields. “Have I got one?” she asked. “Have I got a morphic field?”

  Terence smiled. “Of course you have, Berthy. Your morphic field is part of the human morphic field. All the experiences of mankind are …” He waved a hand in the air, in the direction of Cheltenham. “All our experiences are out there in the vast morphic field made up of all our memories. You’re part of that.”

  “Sounds somewhat Jungian to me.”

  Terence’s eyes shone with enthusiasm. “But of course it is! That’s exactly what it is. Jung talked about the collective unconscious. That’s the same thing, really, as what Rupert Sheldrake talks about.”

  “Rupert Sheldrake?”

  Terence paged through the magazine. Coming to a photograph, he showed it to Berthea. “That’s him. That’s Rupert Sheldrake. He wrote a jolly clever book, you know. A New Science of Life. He says that each species has a collective memory, and this collective memory influences how we behave.”

  Berthea stared at her brother. She had often wondered at how little he was able to remember other than this sort of thing. “Can you give me an example?” she asked.

  “Yes, I can,” said Terence. “And it’s a really exciting example. You know that during the war—”

  “Which war?” interrupted Berthea. “We’ve had so many.”

  “The big one,” said Terence. “The Second World War. During the war, there was no aluminium for the tops of milk bottles. So they had to use a different system, and that was jolly bad news for the sparrows, who had got used to pecking off the tops of the bottles and having a sip at the cream on the milk.”

  “Can’t have made themselves very popular,” said Berthea.

  Terence ignored this. “Well, for six years or however long it was there were no foil caps like that. So all sparrows forgot how to do it because the sparrows that would have remembered those foil bottle tops were dead. There was a whole new generation of sparrows that knew nothing about how to get cream by pecking at the tops.”

  Berthea’s eyes glazed over.

  “And then,” Terence continued, “when the war was over, they brought back those foil bottle tops. And you know what, Berthy? You know what?”

  She forced herself to concentrate. “No. What?”

  Terence paused for dramatic effect. Then, with the air of one revealing a resounding truth, he said, “The sparrows immediately knew what to do! They pecked at the bottle tops straight away!”

  “Their collective memory?”

  “Of course,” said Terence. “What else could it have been?”

  “Smell,” suggested Berthea. “They smelled the cream.”

  “No,” said Terence abruptly. “Impossible. It was morphic resonance. They picked it up from their collective morphic field. It’s in Rupert Sheldrake’s book. You read it for yourself.”

  Berthea stared up at the ceiling. “But if it’s part of our collective memory,” she said, “why would I have to look it up? I’d know it.”

  Terence frowned. “You’re being very unhelpful, Berthy. You’re just trying to wind me up. You’re a naughty old psychologist!”

  “Psychiatrist,” said Berthea.

  “Same difference,” said Terence, pouting.

  “No,” said Berthea, “it isn’t. The difference is MB, ChB, MRCPsych. That’s the difference.”

  Chapter 41: May Contain Nuts

  Terence left Berthea with a strict instruction to be in the drawing room by a quarter to seven at the latest, when he would serve pre-prandial martinis. The mention of martinis gave rise to an exchange of warning glances, but nothing was said; both remembered the last time that Terence had mixed the cocktails, when the conversation had gone perhaps a little further than was wise, with fantasies on the theme of how best to dispose of Oedipus Snark. That would not recur, or at least not in the company of others, who might not understand the length and depth and breadth of the provocation offered by Oedipus over the years.

  At about twenty to seven, Berthea left her room. She wanted to be punctual because she knew that Terence, who was otherwise vague in the extreme, nonetheless took punctuality very seriously, just as Auden had. Martinis, in Auden’s household, were served on the dot of six, and woe betide any guests who were late. Berthea had often wondered about this: Auden was messy – his study filled with piles of paper, unwashed glasses, cigarette stubs – and yet out of such chaos came order, of thought, of metre and of cocktails. Perhaps it was something to do with notions of outer and inner cleanliness; Berthea had read that some travelling people – gypsies, as they used fondly to be known – liked the inside of their caravans to be spotless while the surrounds, the grass upon which they camped, would often be … well, less than spotless, bless them. And it was frequently the case, she knew from professional experience, that people whose lives were disordered in some respect had one or two areas of their existence where they were punctilious and highly observant. Such people might expect high standards from others and were capable of flying into a rage over some petty lapse by an official or a friend. Yet they could not see that they themselves were guilty of exactly the same lapses, and much worse.

  Terence was not like that. As far as Berthea could tell, he had no passive–aggressive traits at all: he was not afraid of intimacy, he never lied, he was not given to sulking. Terence was a bit of an enigma for Berthea; he was certainly not normal, in the way in which most of us were normal – a very fuzzy concept, of course – but he was not abnormal, in the way Oedipus was. Oedipus was psychopathic simpliciter, or, in plain English, bad, and it was indicative of his condition that he had no insight at all into how bad he was. Which should not surprise us, thought Berthea – those most in need of help simply cannot see that need.

  Plain English was useful, and she defended it, but had to accept that when it came to the human personality in all its complexity one had to resort to technical terms. Plain English terms did not allow for nuance: talk of “madness” was very unhelpful, not because it disparaged th
ose unfortunates who were afflicted by it, but because its brush was far too broad. One could not lump the psychotic together with the mildly neurotic; one could not put the mildly depressed alongside those suffering from vivid delusions. And yet Berthea sometimes felt that the ordinary, vulgar terms for mental disorder expressed an essential truth, and were cathartic, too, for those who worked in the field. She had heard a colleague refer quite affectionately to a patient as “completely bananas”. One would not find the term “bananas” in that diagnostic vade mecum, the DSM-IV, but the psychiatrist who used it felt momentarily less oppressed by his calling simply because the word defused the tension and the sadness. Similarly, the term “doolally”, which people used for those who lost their place, seemed less clinical, less frightening than the conventional diagnostic sentence.

  That same colleague, irreverent as he was – and therefore level-headed and popular – had once remarked, as he and Berthea drove together past a psychiatric clinic, “I think I should put a sign outside the place saying May contain nuts.” Berthea had laughed, and had woken up that night and laughed again at the recollection of his wonderful remark. Laughter, so rarely prescribed by any clinician, was surely the most therapeutic thing in the world. And now, she had read, there were studies to prove it – something the drug companies would not be happy about, since laughter was free, could be administered by anybody, and had no negative side-effects.