I take a sip of scotch and feel it burn my esophagus. Jock watches through a stream of smoke, waiting for an answer. Instead of feeling angry or at fault, I have a bizarre sense of disappointment. How could Julianne have asked Jock a question like that? Why didn’t she ask me directly?
Jock is still waiting for an answer. He sees my discomfort and begins to laugh, shaking his head like a wet dog.
I want to say,
“It’s none of my business, of course,” he says, gloating. “But if she walks out on you I’ll be there to comfort her.”
He’s not joking. He’d be sniffing around Julianne in a flash.
I quickly change the subject. “Bobby Moran— how much do you know about him?”
Jock rocks his tumbler back and forth. “No more than you do.”
“There’s no mention in the medical notes about any previous psychiatric treatment.”
“What makes you think there has been any?”
“He quoted a question to me from a Mental Status Examination. I think he’s been evaluated before.”
“Did you ask him?”
“He wouldn’t talk about it.”
Jock’s face is a study of quiet contemplation, which looks as though it’s been practiced in the mirror. Just when I think he might add something constructive, he shrugs. “He’s an odd fucker, that’s for sure.”
“Is that a professional opinion?”
He grunts. “Most of my patients are unconscious when I spend time with them. I prefer it that way.”
11
A plumber’s van is parked in front of the house. The sliding door is open and inside there are trays stacked one on top of the other, with silver and brass fittings, corners, s-bends and plastic couplings.
The company name is attached to the side panels on magnetized mats— D. J. Morgan Plumbers and Gas Fitters. I find him in the kitchen, having a cup of tea and trying to catch a glimpse of Julianne’s breasts beneath her v-neck top. His apprentice is outside in the garden showing Charlie how to juggle a football with her knees and feet.
“This is our plumber, D.J.,” says Julianne.
Getting lazily to his feet, he nods a greeting, without taking his hands from his pockets. He’s in his mid- thirties, tanned and fit, with dark wet-looking hair combed back from his forehead. He looks like one of those tradesmen you see on lifestyle shows, renovating houses or doing makeovers. I can see him asking himself what a woman like Julianne’s doing with someone like me.
“Why don’t you show Joe what you showed me?”
The plumber acknowledges her with the slightest dip of his head. I follow him to the basement door, which is secured with a bolt. Narrow wooden steps lead down to the concrete floor. A low-wattage bulb is fixed to the wall. Dark beams and bricks soak up the light.
I have lived in this house for four years and the plumber already knows the basement better than I do. With a genial openness, he points out various pipes above our heads, explaining the gas and water system.
I contemplate asking him a question, but I know from experience not to advertise my ignorance around tradesmen. I am not a handyman; I have no interest in DIY, which is why I can still count to twenty on my fingers and toes.
D.J. nudges the boiler with the toe of his work boot. The inference is clear. It’s useless, junk, a joke.
“So how much is this going to cost?” I ask, after getting lost halfway through his briefing.
He exhales slowly and begins listing the things that need replacing.
“How much for labor?”
“Depends how long it takes.”
“How long will it take?”
“Can’t say until I check all the radiators.” He casually picks up an old bag of plaster, turned solid by the damp, and tosses it to one side. It would have taken two of me to move it. Then he glances at my feet. I am standing in a puddle of water that is soaking through the stitching of my shoes.
Mumbling something about keeping costs down, I retreat upstairs and try not to imagine him sniggering behind my back. Julianne hands me a cup of lukewarm tea— the last of the pot.
“Everything OK?”
“Fine. Where did you find him?” I whisper.
“He put a flyer through the mailbox.”
“References?”
She rolls her eyes. “He did the Reynolds’ new bathroom at number 74.”
The plumbers carry their tools outside to the van and Charlie tosses her ball in the garden shed. Her hair is pulled back into a ponytail and her cheeks are flushed with the cold. Julianne scolds her for getting grass stains on her school tights.
“They’ll come out in the wash,” says Charlie.
“And how would you know?”
“They always do.”
Charlie turns and gives me a hug. “Feel my nose.”
“Brrrrrrr! Cold nose, warm heart.”
“Can Sam stay over tonight?”
“That depends. Is Sam a boy or a girl?”
“Daaaad!” Charlie screws up her face.
Julianne interrupts. “You have football tomorrow.”
“What about next weekend?”
“Grandma and Grandpa are coming down.”
Charlie’s face brightens as mine falls. I had totally forgotten. God’s-personal-physician-in-waiting is giving a talk to an international medical conference. It will be a triumph, of course. He will be offered all sorts of honorary positions and part-time consultancies, which he will graciously refuse because travel wearies him. I will sit in silence through all of this, feeling as though I am thirteen again.
My father has a brilliant medical mind. There isn’t a modern medical textbook that doesn’t mention his name. He has written papers that have changed the way paramedics treat accident victims and altered the standard procedures of battlefield medics.
My great-grandfather was a founding member of the General Medical Council and my grandfather its longest serving chairman. He established his reputation as an administrator rather than as a surgeon, but the name is still writ large in the history of medical ethics.
This is where I come in— or don’t come in. After having three daughters, I was the long-awaited son. As such, I was expected to carry on the medical dynasty, but instead I broke the chain. In modern parlance that makes me the weakest link.
In the four years that it took me to get my degree, my father never once missed an opportunity to call me “Mr. Psychologist” or to make cracks about couches and inkblot tests. And when my thesis on agoraphobia was published in the
A comparable silence has greeted every stage of my career since then and my flaws have mounted steadily until he’s come to regard me as his own personal failure.
I have carried Bobby’s notes home with me in a battered briefcase. Before dinner I pour myself a drink and attempt to settle down to an hour or two of work.
With Bobby I seem to be up against something impenetrably mysterious. His paranoia and random acts of
