hair, a tangle last night, was now perfectly smooth and shining, gathered in a long braid. Shivering uncontrollably yesterday, she was today a picture of grace, her chin held high over her long neck. Only her lips remained slightly swollen where she had been struck.
From my black bag I removed several notebooks, along with a variety of pens and inks. These were not for myself but for Miss Acton, so she could communicate with me by writing. Following Freud's advice, I never took notes during an analytic session but transcribed the conversation from memory afterward.
'Good morning, Miss Acton,' I said. 'These are for you.'
'Thank you,' she said. 'Which one shall I use?'
'Whichever is — ' I began, before the obvious fact took hold. 'You can speak.'
'Mrs Biggs,' she said, 'will you pour the doctor some tea?'
I declined the tea. To the annoyance I felt at having been taken by surprise was now added the realization that I was a doctor capable of resenting a patient for improving without my assistance. 'Have you also recovered your memory?' I asked.
'No. But your friend, the old doctor, said it would all come back naturally, didn't he?'
'Dr Freud said your voice was likely to come back naturally, Miss Acton, not your memory.' This was a strange thing for me to say, given that I wasn't at all sure I had it right.
'I hate Shakespeare,' she replied.
She kept her eyes on mine, but I saw what had prompted this inconsequent remark. My copy of Hamlet was poking out of the stack of notebooks I had offered her. I retrieved the play, putting it back in my bag. I was tempted to ask why she hated Shakespeare but thought better of it. 'Shall we begin your treatment, Miss Acton?'
Sighing like a patient who had seen too many doctors, she turned and looked out the window, offering her back to me. Evidently the girl thought I was going to use my stethoscope on her or perhaps examine her wounds. I informed her that we were only going to talk.
She exchanged a skeptical glance with Mrs Biggs. 'What sort of treatment is that, Doctor?' she asked.
'It is called psychoanalysis. It's very simple. I must ask your servant to excuse us. Then, if you will be so good as to lie down, Miss Acton, I will ask you questions. You need only say whatever comes into your mind in response. Please don't be concerned if what occurs to you seems irrelevant or unresponsive or even impolite. Just say the first thing that comes to mind, whatever it is.'
She blinked at me. 'You are joking.'
'Not at all.' It took several minutes to overcome the girl's hesitation — and then several more to overcome her servant's declaration that she had never heard of such a thing — but at last Mrs Biggs was persuaded to go and Miss Acton to recline on her sofa. She adjusted her scarf, straightened the skirt of her dress, and looked appropriately uncomfortable. I asked if the injuries to her back troubled her; she said no. Positioning myself on a chair out of her sight, I began. 'Can you tell me what you dreamt last night?'
'I beg your pardon?'
'I am sure you heard me, Miss Acton.'
'I don't see what my dreams have to do with it.'
'Our dreams,' I explained, 'are composed of fragments from the previous day's experiences. Any dream you recall may help us recover your memory.'
'What if I don't want to?' she asked.
'You had a dream you would prefer not to describe?'
'I didn't say that,' she said. 'What if I don't want to remember? You all assume I want to remember.'
'I assume you don't want to remember. If you wanted to remember, you would.'
'What is that supposed to mean?' She sat up, glaring at me with undisguised hostility. As a rule, I am not often hated by people I have only recently met; this case appeared to be an exception. 'You think I am pretending?'
'Not pretending, Miss Acton. Sometimes we don't want to remember events because they are too painful. So we shut them out, especially childhood memories.'
'I am not a child.'
'I know that,' I said. 'I meant you may have memories from years ago that you are keeping out of your consciousness.'
'What are you talking about? I was attacked yesterday, not years ago.'
'Yes, and that is why I have asked you about your dreams last night.'
She looked at me suspiciously, but with considerable cajoling I induced her to lie down again. Gazing at the ceiling, she said, 'Do you ask your other female patients to describe their dreams, Doctor?'
'Yes.'
'How entertaining that must be,' she remarked. 'But what if their dreams are very dull? Do they invent more interesting ones?'
'Please don't be concerned about that.'
'About what?'
'About your dreams being dull,' I answered.
'I didn't have any dreams. You must adore Ophelia.'
'I'm sorry?'
'For her docility. All of Shakespeare's women are fools, but Ophelia is the worst.'
This took me aback. I suppose I always have adored Ophelia. In fact, everything I know of women, I feel I learned from Shakespeare. Miss Acton was obviously changing the subject, and while one can of course be waylaid, it is sometimes useful in analysis to play along with these evasions, since they often lead back to the crux of the matter. 'What is your objection to Ophelia?' I asked.
'She kills herself because her father died — her stupid, pointless father. Would you kill yourself if your father died?'
'My father did die.'
Her hand shot to her mouth. 'Forgive me.'
'And I did kill myself,' I added. 'I don't see what's so unusual about it.'
She smiled.
'When you think about yesterday's events, Miss Acton, what comes to mind?'
'Nothing comes to mind,' she said. 'I believe that's what it means to have amnesia.'
The girl's resistance did not surprise me. The one piece of advice Freud had given me was not to be put off too easily. In hysterical amnesia, some deeply forbidden and long-forgotten episode from the patient's past, stirred into life by a recent event, presses at her consciousness, which in turn fights back with all its strength to keep out the inadmissible memory. Psychoanalysis takes the side of memory against the forces of suppression; it therefore provokes immediate and sometimes intense hostility.
'There is never nothing in one's mind,' I said. 'What is in yours, at this moment?'
'Right now?'
'Yes: don't reflect; just speak it.'
'All right. Your father didn't die. He committed suicide.'
There was a momentary silence. 'How did you know that?'
'Clara Banwell told me.'
'Who?'
'George Banwell's wife,' she said. 'Do you know Mr Banwell?'
'No.'
'He is a friend of my father's. Clara took me to the horse show last year. We saw you there. Were you at Mrs Fish's ball last night?'
I acknowledged the fact.
'You are wondering if my family was invited,' she said, 'but you are afraid to ask, for fear that we were not.'
'No, Miss Acton. I was wondering how Mrs Banwell knew the circumstances of my father's death.'
'Is it awkward when people know?'
'Are you trying to make things awkward?'
'Clara says all the girls find it fascinating — your having a father who killed himself. They think it gives you
