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group of about twenty people, all clad in voluminous mackintoshes. The mackintoshes were opaque, with the result that the only evidence that they were unclad underneath were the bare ankles sticking out below the lower skirts of the raincoats. The heads of the nudists were bare, though, and their hair was plas-tered to their skulls. They looked very wet and very uncomfortable.
“Welcome to the picnic,” said a tall man. “The ladies’
changing tent is over there. The men are in that one.”
Pat made her way to the tent and drew aside the flap. Inside, a middle-aged woman was in the process of buttoning up the front of her mackintosh.
“This rain is such a pest,” said the woman. “But we shall have our picnic come hell or high water.”
Pat nodded. She slipped out of her clothes and donned her mackintosh. She did not feel at all exposed in this new garb; and indeed she was not.
“You’ll need a bag for those clothes of yours,” said the woman helpfully. “Here’s a Jenners bag for you.”
The sight of the plastic bag, stamped with the familiar Jenners sign, was a reassurance to Pat in these unfamiliar and challenging circumstances. There was something about the name Jenners that provided the comfort one needed in dubious situations. An occasion on which you were asked to take off your clothes and put them in a Jenners bag was inherently less threatening than an occasion in which one was asked to put them in any other bag.
Pat thanked the woman and stuffed her clothing into the bag.
Then, leaving the bag in the tent, alongside a number of other bags (mostly from Jenners), she went out into the rain. On the grass ahead of her, in a cluster around a small portable table, a group of respectably-covered, mackintosh-clad picnickers were sipping on glasses of fruit punch. Pat was offered a glass and joined the group.
“Your first time at one of our little gatherings?” asked a man on Pat’s left.
She looked at him. He was wearing a large brown raincoat,
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the collar of which was turned up around his neck. He had a small moustache which was now wet through. Little streams of water ran off the edges of the moustache and onto his cheeks.
“Yes,” she replied. “I came here with a friend. I’m not really . . .”
The man cut her short. “We have such tremendous fun,” he said. “Last month we went to Tantallon and had a picnic in the dunes. Unfortunately, there was a terrible biting wind and we all ended up wearing sou’westers, but we did our best. On most occasions we at least manage to go about bare-footed, even if that’s about it. That’s the way nudism is in Scotland, I suppose.
We can’t actually remove our clothes. But everybody is very understanding about that.”
Pat was about to ask what the point was, but the man continued. “Are you interested in stamps?” he asked.
Pat shook her head. “Not really,” she said.
“Pity,” he said. “I find stamps absolutely fascinating. I have a very fine collection. Do you not collect anything?”
“Not really,” said Pat.
“I used to collect birds’ eggs when I was a boy,” he went on.
“But then that became rather a bad thing to do and I gave up.
So many people were raiding nests that some species were becoming a bit threatened. So I moved on to playing-cards and then to share certificates. That’s my current enthusiasm.
Scriptology. I go for South American railway bonds – that sort of thing. They have beautiful designs. Quite beautiful.”
Pat looked into her fruit punch. Drops of rain were falling into it, creating tiny circles. Underfoot, the grass was becoming sodden; and now, from the east, a wind had started to blow. She looked about her. Peter was nowhere to be seen. But that did not matter, because she did not want to see him any more. She felt nothing for him, no interest, no antipathy, nothing.
She turned to the man beside her. “I have to go home,” she said impulsively. “Goodbye.”
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Dr Fairbairn was grateful to Irene for making him face up to the guilt that had been plaguing him for so many years. He had suppressed the memory of his professional breach, and had done so effectively. Or so he told himself. The problem was that he knew full well that repression of that sort merely allowed the uncomfortable memory to do its work at another level. And it was inevitable that this would become apparent at a later stage, creating tension between the external Dr Fairbairn, the one the world saw, and the internal Dr Fairbairn, the one hidden from the world by that blue linen jacket with its special crumple-resistant qualities.
On the day that Irene had forced him to admit to himself, and to her, that he had actually struck his celebrated patient, Wee Fraser, Dr Fairbairn returned to his flat in Sciennes in the late afternoon and prepared himself a round of tomato sandwiches and a pot of tea. The flat was empty when he went in as his wife worked long hours and tended not to come home until well after seven. For this reason, they usually dined late –
sometimes not until after nine – and Dr Fairbairn found it necessary to have a snack to keep hunger at bay.
Dr Fairbairn did the cooking. He had done this throughout their marriage, not only to show that he was a “new
