44 Scotland Street

We’re giving you the gift of freedom from gender roles.”

“Trains are free,” muttered Bertie.

Irene struggled to contain her frustration. It was not easy, but she succeeded. “Are they?” she asked gently. “Why are trains free, Bertie? Why do you say that?”

Bertie sighed. “Trains go out into the night. Remember Mr Auden’s poem, Mummy, the one you read to me once. This is the night mail crossing the border/ Bringing the cheque and the postal order.”

Irene nodded. She had given him W.H. Auden rather than A.A. Milne in the belief that the insights of Auden would be infinitely better for him than middle-class juvenile nonsense about being halfway up the stairs or changing the guard at Buckingham Palace and all the rest.

“I could read you more Auden, if you like,” she said. “There’s that lovely poem about . . .”

“Streams,” interrupted Bertie. “I’d like the poem about streams because he talks about two baby locomotives, remember it? He says the god of mortal doting is pulled over the lawn by two baby locomotives.”

Irene stared at Bertie. Where on earth did this obsession with trains come from? Neither she nor Stuart talked about trains very much, if ever, and yet he seemed to think of nothing else. She Bertie Begins Therapy

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closed her eyes for a moment and imagined herself arriving at Waverley Station at some time in the future, say ten years from now. And there, standing on the platform, notebook in hand, wearing a blue anorak, would be Bertie, trainspotting, in the company of several other Aspergeresque youths.

She left the room, the space, quietly. If there was nothing that could be done about it, then this retreat of Bertie into a rejection of everything she and Stuart stood for would be a bitter pill to swallow. But there was something they could do –

there was a great deal she could do. Therapy – solid, Kleinian therapy – would move Bertie through this dangerous period; therapy would deal with the envy and the other ego issues which were causing this flowering of hate and negativity. And then all would be well. Even if the therapy were to take a year – and she well understood how slow analysis could be – there would still be plenty of time to have Bertie’s ego development sorted out by the time he was due to begin at the Rudolf Steiner School. All that was required was love and patience; the love of a parent who knew that it was only too easy to become a harsh figure, and the patience of one who understood that bad behaviour was merely the product of frustrated longing for that which one wanted to love. Bertie wanted to love the Italian language and the saxophone; in his heart of hearts he associated those with that fundamental object of affection, the good breast, and he would return to a more fulfilling relationship with these things, the things of the mind and the soul, once he had resolved his Oedipal issues.

And so it was that Irene dressed Bertie in his best OshKosh dungarees and set off for an appointment with Dr Hugo Fairbairn at the Institute. They had time on their hands, and they took a circuitous route, walking along Abercromby Place so that they might look down into the gardens.

“Look, Bertie,” said Irene, pointing to a shrub that was displaying a riot of blossom. “Look at the little flowers on that bush.”

Bertie looked down, and then turned away sharply. “Mahonia,”

he said. “I hate mahonia. I hate flowers.”

164

The Rucksack of Guilt

Irene caught her breath. There was no doubt but that this visit to the therapist was coming not a moment too soon.

62. The Rucksack of Guilt

Dr Hugo Fairbairn was unrelated to the distinguished psychoanalyst Ronald Fairbairn, whose colourful son, the late Nicholas Fairbairn, had so enlivened the Scottish firmament with his surprising remarks and invigorating attitudes. Not many people now knew about Fairbairn pere, but his name still counted for something in the history of the psychoanalytical movement, along with names such as Winnicott, Ferenczi, and, of course, Klein. For Hugo Fairbairn, the name was something of a professional asset, as others would make the false assumption of relationship and assume that he was too modest to mention it.

This gave him authority in the psychoanalytical movement –

with its dynastic tendencies – and had undoubtedly helped him in establishing his practice. Aided by his name, his rise to eminence had been rapid; he had appeared on conference platforms at the Tavistock, and had been referred to in several articles in The Analytical Review. In due course, his elegantly- written case-history, Shattered to Pieces: Ego Dissolution in a Three-year-old Tyrant, had become something of a classic. Indeed, one reviewer had gone so far as to suggest that Fairbairn’s three- year-old tyrant, Wee Fraser, might be heading for the same sort of immortality as that famous patient whose analysis was written up by Freud – Little Hans, who had feared that the Viennese dray horses might bite him. This, of course, was a grossly inflated claim – no case, ever, anywhere, could be as important as those upon which Freud himself had pronounced – but it was still true that there were some very interesting aspects of Wee Fraser’s troubled psyche. This boy had none of Hans’s neurotic dreads

– and that was what made him so interesting. Rather than fear that he might be bitten, Wee Fraser had himself bitten a number The Rucksack of Guilt

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of others, including a Liberal Democratic councillor who had called at the door and Dr Fairbairn himself, thus eliciting that famous line in the case history: “The young patient then attempted the oral incorporation of the analyst.”

Irene, of course, had heard of Dr Fairbairn, and had attended a lecture which he had given on Wee Fraser at the Royal Scottish Museum. She had every confidence in him and in his ability to get to the heart of Bertie’s malaise, and she secretly entertained thoughts of Bertie in due course appearing in the psychoanalytical literature.

A Remarkably Talented Boy and his Problems in Adjusting to a Mediocre