Disordered Minds

invented a background for his parents because he was ashamed of them-became obscured even in his own mind. It was easier to embroider fantasies of popularity and forced exile than to question his own timidity and his yearning to be respected. He'd even grown comfortable in the role of victim, gaining strength from it by logging each new slight on his tally stick of revenge.

At what point he decided to convert fantasy to fact, he didn't know. When he gained the place at Oxford? When he started aping the long vowels and clear diction of the upper middle class? When he realized that an appearance of wealth was almost as valuable as wealth itself? Or that the myth of good breeding was easily established by the simple expedient of cutting his family out of his life? Perhaps there was no defining moment, perhaps his descent into pathological deceit had been so gradual that no lie had ever seemed shocking enough to call a halt.

'Why do you push people away? Are you afraid, they're going to see your flaws? What's the big deal, anyway? No one's , perfect...'

He read the new placard outside the newsagent as he passed: 'U.S. accused of bully-boy diplomacy.' The pedant in him questioned the juxtaposition of 'bully-boy' and 'diplomacy.' The two were irreconcilable ... or should be. The one suggested brute ignorance, the other deft intelligence, though in a phoney war the rattling saber was a powerful propaganda tool for friend and foe alike.

Jonathan couldn't count the number of times his father had wept for the man he had become, but it hadn't changed his behavior. Fear of his heavy hand-a more potent weapon than the hand itself-had been the dominant discipline in both his marriage and his only child's upbringing. The injustice had been Jonathan's demented grandfather's regularly mistaking his growing grandson for his hated son-in-law. With a courage he'd never possessed, even in his prime, the old man had belabored the adolescent for the sins of the father while his mother held her finger to her lips and begged him with her eyes to let her Abba vent his spleen. 'It's good medicine,' she would say. 'Now he'll sleep.'

As he trudged on, contempt for his mother wound like a snake about Jonathan's heart. She was an ill-educated peasant who had fawned over her idiot father and paid lip service to her responsibilities to her son. What can I do? I'm just a woman. Clarence won't allow it ... Clarence will lose his temper ... Clarence has problems ... Clarence will hit me ... Clarence ... Clarence ... Clarence...

'Women make you so angry, Jon ... one day you'll cross the line and you won't know you've done it until it's too late...'

Trains came and went at Branksome Station, but Jonathan felt too ill to take any notice. He stood under cover, leaning against a wall, loose-limbed and swaying slightly, clutching his briefcase to his midriff and staring into the middle distance. As they left, several passengers reported an Arab-looking man, sweating profusely and behaving strangely. The acting station master assessed him carefully through a window and wondered what to do. He couldn't imagine that a suicide bomber would choose Branksome Station as a target, but he reminded himself that Palestinian bombers blew themselves up on buses; trains were just a different mode of transport. He was about to call the transport police when another passenger, a woman, approached the man and shook him by the hand.

'Are you all right?' the dark-haired woman asked Jonathan kindly as she reached for his right hand and clasped it warmly. She wore an expensive overcoat with the collar turned up and a cashmere scarf looped around her neck, obscuring the lower part of her face. 'You look as if you're about to fall over. Do you want some help?'

He glanced at her briefly, then reverted to staring across the track. Nausea threatened every time he moved his eyes. He'd persuaded himself it was weeks of sleepless nights followed by jet lag. It would pass, he'd been telling himself for nearly an hour. Everything passed eventually. But the gnawing pain in his stomach said it was something worse.

The woman moved in front of him. 'You need to talk to me,' she encouraged him. 'There are two policemen watching you.' She was pretty in a manufactured way-most of it was paint-but she looked genuinely concerned. Jonathan, who had seen die way everyone else had been giving him a wide berth, wondered why she was bothering with him.

Policemen...? He wedged his back more firmly against the wall. 'I'm all right,' he managed.

She laughed and touched a gloved hand to his arm as if she were greeting an old friend. 'You need to smile and play up a bit,' she said. 'They're very suspicious of you.' She tilted her head toward the platform entrance. 'They're behind the wall over there and they're afraid there's a bomb in your briefcase.'

A bomb...? The absurdity of the concept struck Jonathan forcibly even as he felt something give way inside his head-the first of the retaining walls that held his emotions in check. There was nothing in his briefcase except his wallet, letters about Howard Stamp, his ticket to the Royal Opera House and his passport. If a single lie unraveled... 'Why would they think that?'

'You're black,' she said bluntly, 'you're sweating like a pig and you look shit-scared. It doesn't take much these days to get the cops excited.'

Another wall collapsed. Why did everyone keep calling him black? Why did everyone keep likening him to a pig? Hysteria rocketed round his gut, searching for an exit, before converting into painful tears behind his eyes. He was scared and sweating because he didn't know what was happening to him. He tried to bolster the myth of jet lag. No one this tired could take the funeral of a murdered boy, anti-Arab bigotry, hostile immigration officers, tanks, soldiers, critical spinsters, dirty landlords ... war ... without suffering an emotional backlash. But he knew it wasn't true. The truth was that his fabricated personality was disintegrating in front of a total stranger because someone at last was showing him a little kindness.

The woman moved closer and he caught a waft of her scent. 'I guess you've had too much to drink, but if you don't want the cops poking their noses in, then talk to me, pretend we know each other ... even better, give me your briefcase.' She held out a hand. 'That's what's got them twitched. They'll go away if you let me open it.'

He handed it to her, suddenly dizzy. 'I'm not drunk.'

'You're giving a damn good impression.' She rested the case on her knee and flicked the latches, pulling the leather flap open so any watcher could see. Her scurrying fingers rummaged through the letters before she took them all out and handed them to him. 'Look at me,' she told him. 'Make out we've met on purpose. Select something and give it to me.'

He steeled himself to look down, quelling the sickness that rose in his throat. 'Who are you?'

'It doesn't matter. Just give me a piece of paper. Good.' She took the page and scanned it. 'Talk to me. Say rhubarb if you want, but at least give the impression that we're having a conversation.'

How did she know the police thought he had a bomb in his briefcase? 'Rhubarb?'

'Again.'