Whispers Through a Megaphone (3 page)

R
alph was in his consulting room in the centre of town, drinking coffee by the window. He watched a woman in the street below, clacking along in flip-flops, sipping cider from a can. Then a young man in a pinstriped suit, a woman and a child, three conspiratorial teenagers nudging each other.

It was Saturday morning. 9.30 a.m. His birthday.

Some people love birthdays. Not Ralph. He has always hated them, now more than ever. The spotlight, the
pretence
. That’s why he was at work, standing by the window, watching a man selling the
Big Issue
, a woman jogging in Lycra.

He thought about his parents, remembered all the birthday parties they threw for him, the house full of balloons and children and pass-the-parcel. “Never waste an opportunity to celebrate,” his mother said, her hands on his face. “We know you’d rather sit on your own, but relationships are everything, Ralph.”

He turned around and looked at the room. A desk and a wooden chair. A white fireplace. Two leather armchairs facing each other. This was where it happened—the conversation that formed the centrepiece of his working life.

Before becoming a psychotherapist, Ralph worked as a gardener. He was happy doing odd jobs for odd people who hovered in the background while he worked, chatting about the flowers and the weather and then, charmed by his softness and discretion, about their innermost thoughts. Sadie didn’t like being married to a gardener. She didn’t like him working for odd people who hovered in their gardens. She said it was beneath him, his face would age quickly in the sun, and soil would remain lodged in his fingernails.

“Why can’t you set up a proper business and work for bigger clients? You could get a decent van with a company logo on the side. A tree would be nice. A grey van with a big white tree. Oh yes, I can see you driving through town in one of those.”

“What a waste of money. I’m fine as I am.”

“You spend all day
talking
.”

“Yes, but I get paid for it, don’t I? And I get plenty of work from personal recommendations. I don’t need a bloody logo.”

After years of weeding, digging and planting, of discussing dreams and anxieties and the knottiness of self-awareness, Ralph realized that he was, in fact, doing more talking than gardening. Egged on by one of his clients, a psychoanalyst named John Potter, he picked up a leaflet about psychotherapy courses. The training sounded expensive and intrusive, but John Potter assured him that all the best things in life were expensive and intrusive. (This led John to recall an energetic weekend in Amsterdam, which cost him two thousand pounds and triggered an episode of angina, but it was worth it.) And besides, he could study one day a week and continue with his gardening. What did he have to lose, apart from his savings?

Sadie was keen. “I’d like to say my husband is a psychotherapist,” she said.

“What does that even mean?” he said.

Seven years later, he emerged from his training with a master’s degree and a stomach ulcer. He rented a consulting room in town and gave up his gardening. He spent his weekdays in that room, listening to people’s stories, searching for patterns in their thoughts, feelings and behaviour, until a few months ago, when he had a small epiphany with a client named Jilly Perkins.

“And so I’ve realized,” said Jilly, flicking her highlighted hair, “that I like to be free. I just need it. I like to take on short commitments, because that way the end of the tunnel is always in sight. It’s nothing to do with fear of commitment. I just need to be able to see the end of the tunnel.” She leant forward and looked him in the eye. “It’s who I am,” she said. It sounded like a threat.

The end of the tunnel, he thought. That’s where the light lives.
That’s
where it’s been hiding. Tunnel vision, darkness and darkness, tunnelling through pockets of time.

Jilly Perkins was a genius. Ralph wanted to tell her this, but she hated compliments. They filled her with wind and suspicion. This was the issue they planned to work on next, and in the meantime she had a handbag jammed full of Wind-eze capsules. “I love Wind-eze,” she said. “I think of them as mints with benefits.”

Ralph stifled his compliment by slapping his leg. Jilly laughed. She had never seen her therapist look so happy. In fact, had she ever seen him look happy? Does a person have to look happy to be happy? And what does happy mean anyway? She sighed. The questions had dispersed her happiness like small hammers hitting a row of pills. A wave of melancholy carried another insight:
Happiness is easily dispersed, Jilly Perkins. Just you remember that. Don’t question everything. Don’t forget the small hammers
.

That evening, inspired by Jilly’s tunnels, Ralph wrote new text for his practice leaflet:

Moving to short-term work was a step down a tunnel towards a light. He was on his way out of a profession, edging backwards, coming undone. His clients weren’t to blame. They were brave and open and he admired their attempts to make sense of themselves. He simply wished they were plants.

Ralph sat at his desk. The building was quiet. No one else was here. He looked at the photo above his desk: a bluebell wood in Guernsey.

His mobile rang. It was Sadie.

“Where are you?”

“I’m at work.”

“Really?”

“I had some paperwork to do.”

“Really?”

“Why do you keep saying
really
?”

“It’s your birthday.”

“I went for a run, so I thought I’d call in and finish a few things off.”

“A run?”

“Yes.”

“What things?”

“Admin.”

“I woke up and you weren’t here.”

“Sorry. I should have left a note.”

“No, you should have stayed. I bought croissants.”

“I’ll be home soon. An hour at the most.”

“We need to get the house ready for the party.”

“I know.”

“People are arriving in ten hours.”

Ralph laughed.

“What are you laughing at?”

“Ten hours is a long time.”

“Only a man would say that.”

“What?”

“A man who doesn’t feel responsible for cleaning the house, preparing the food, sorting the drinks, hanging the decorations.”

“Sadie, you paid a cleaner to come in. The place is immaculate. I’ll be home later this morning and we’ll sort the food then, okay?”

“Well make sure you are.”

After ending the call, Sadie realized that she hadn’t wished him a happy birthday. Never mind, she would do it later when she gave him his presents. She spread out her arms and legs, enjoying the coolness of the sheet as she rolled onto Ralph’s side of the bed and pressed her face into his pillow. She stayed in that position for five minutes, thinking about the party, thinking about what had to be done, thinking about Kristin Hart.

Yesterday, during his final session with Jilly before her two-week holiday in Cornwall with Trevor the Great Dane, Ralph had discovered something disturbing about his wife.

“I like your jumper,” said Jilly.

“Do you? It’s a bit old.”

“Did your mother knit it for you?”

“Sorry?”

Jilly blushed. What a leakage, what a spill. Clean it up quickly. Make it disappear. “Some people’s mothers knit jumpers for them, don’t they?” she said, wriggling in her chair.

“You seem a bit embarrassed, Jilly.”

“It’s not my fault.”

“What isn’t?”

“If your wife puts it all online, you can’t expect us not to look.”

Ralph squinted, frowned, put one hand on his chest.

“Your wife, Sadie.”

“How do you know my wife?”

“When we started working together, I Googled you.”

“Why did you do that?”

“It’s what people do. I’m not weird.”

Ralph glanced at the floor, then looked at Jilly. “And?”

“I found your wife’s blog and Twitter page. I started following them. I follow your sons on Twitter too.”

“What?”

“I’m not the only one.”

Ralph’s mouth fell open. Jilly wanted to get close and peer into it, preferably with a tiny torch. How many fillings did he have? Were his teeth really his own?

“You’re stalking me?”

“Absolutely not. I’m not really interested in
you
. Well I am, but you know what I mean. I’m interested in your wife. Not in a dodgy way, if you know what I’m saying.”

Ralph’s stomach hurt. It was probably his ulcer. Sadie had a blog? He knew about the ceaseless tweeting but a blog as well? Where did she find the time? Were
all
his clients following his wife on Twitter? Were they following each other? For an intelligent woman, Sadie was being shockingly stupid. Didn’t she realize the impact this would have? How unprofessional he would look? How he couldn’t possibly work with clients who knew the intimate details of his private life?

Then he woke up. He woke from the sluggishness, the naivety. He opened his eyes and saw moments with clients who had seemed so perceptive, so smart—clients who guessed that he was
probably
married,
probably
had children,
probably
had
no idea how it felt to be divorced. How dare they slip
probably
into their sentences when they knew for certain? He had never noticed his wife, perched in his consulting room, tweeting in the background of every fifty-minute hour.

Well blow me, he thought. Then his mind was full of Abba, knowing me and knowing you, and he closed his eyes and listened, really listened.

“Sadie hates that jumper,” said Jilly. “But she’s probably just jealous of your mother. Do you ever worry that Sadie’s having an affair with her friend Kristin? I’m a little suspicious, to be honest.”

“Jilly, you’re always suspicious. That’s why you came to therapy in the first place.”

“Just because I’m always suspicious doesn’t mean there isn’t something shifty going on.”

They sat in silence for a while, looking at the floor, looking at each other.

“Are you aware that sometimes you slip into a vacant state?” she said. “It’s all right, though, I don’t mind. It’s your kindness that soothes me, not your interpretations.”

“Are you trying to change the subject?” he said.

“Probably,” she said.

She was right about the vacant states. They had been happening for a long time. How else would he have survived all those childhood parties? Not to mention all the singing and dancing and
embracing life
.

“Embrace it, Ralph,” his mother said, while dancing and sipping a sherry. “You can’t just read the
Beano
, life’s too short, get up off that beanbag and dance.”

Ralph looked at the clock. He had spent the entire morning staring out of the window and doodling. By now, Sadie would
be fuming. The kitchen would be full of bumper-size packets of party food and bottles of champagne. She was probably balancing on a chair in the garden, hanging the old paper lanterns that she always dragged out for summer parties. He hadn’t told her about his session with Jilly Perkins. He was carrying his anger around as though it was something delicate, something precious, something he had only just found after years of looking.

Before leaving his consulting room, Ralph looked down at the doodles scattered on his desk. Some lyrics to ‘Alexandra Leaving’ by Leonard Cohen. A rough sketch of Julie Parsley holding a microphone. The words
happy birthday to me
.

S
ix months into his affair with Frances Delaney, the headmaster knocked on Miriam’s bedroom door and walked straight in. He was holding a Walkman and a pair of headphones. She was sitting on her bed, reading a letter from her grandmother. “This is for you,” he said. He pulled something out of his pocket. “I also brought you this.” It was a cassette. Cliff Richard. The corner of the box was chipped. “You’re a lucky girl,” he said. The room was full of old smoke. He was wearing a brown corduroy jacket with leather patches on the elbows and mustard fingerless gloves. There were no batteries inside the Walkman.

Miriam is watching the ten o’clock news and wondering why newsreaders never sniff, sneeze or blow their noses. Do they take special pills? Do they have special noses? It seems rather suspicious. Are they robots? Mechanical clones with acceptable accents and inactive noses? These newsreaders are calm, dispassionate, unruffled by the terrible events occurring all over the world. They have clean clothes, tidy hair, inexpressive
eyes. They don’t show emotion, they don’t upset us, but Miriam doesn’t buy it. The newsreaders disturb her. These people are the bearers of unspeakable news, so where is their shock and disgust? If they were really sane, they would look haunted and dishevelled as they spoke of murder, war and debt.

Beware the madness that looks like sanity, thinks Miriam. It is
everywhere
.

She switches off the television. Bye-bye newsreader. Bye-bye members of the public who have been asked to make a comment about something that has happened out in the world. (He was such a lovely boy he really was. Are they trying to make us homeless, is that what’s going on? My husband shouldn’t have to live like this—this isn’t living, it’s constant pain. When will this government realize that our teenagers are being bullied online and they are killing themselves,
they are actually killing themselves
.)

Trees rustle in the wind.

Water drips from a tap.

The house creaks.

Someone walks past the house, whistling a tune, then they are gone.

Miriam wonders if the tune was ‘Careless Whisper’ by George Michael.

There is no one to say this to.

She can hear her own breath.

(It sounds like sorrow.)

She frowns.

Blinks.

This used to be easier.

The passing of time.

The slowing down and the

slowing down.

Now it hits her in the stomach.

It makes her throat hurt.

Move Miriam.

Move
.

(Listen to yourself.)

Move
.

She gets up and walks through to the kitchen.

That’s better
.

Makes a hot chocolate, takes it up to bed.

She sits and stares at her bedroom curtains, pink and cream, made by her mother twenty years ago.

These curtains have never fully closed. The outside world leaks in. The inside world leaks out.

I am the whispering wind, she thinks. I am the small breaking wave. But human? I just don’t know.

Imagine a woman abseiling down the side of a cliff. When she looks up at the person holding the rope, she sees that there is no one there. At that moment, halfway up and halfway down, she realizes that this has been the story of her life. She has never been alone and there has never been anyone there. This is Miriam’s dream when she finally falls asleep after drinking her hot chocolate, after reading an old letter from her grandmother, after crying about nothing in particular.