Love Over Scotland - Alexander Hanchett Smith [119]
Dr Fairbairn agreed. It would have been a terrible loss. But at the same time, there was always the danger that a famous analysand might find himself discovered much later on. Irene should be aware of that.
“I should warn you,” he said, “that sometimes people track down these famous patients, even after years have passed. Remember what happened to the Wolf Man.” He paused. “And of course, Little Hans himself visited Freud later, when he was nineteen.”
248 Smugness Explained
“And?” prompted Irene.
“He – Little Hans – had forgotten everything. Horses. Giraffe. All forgotten. Indeed, he recognised nothing in the analysis.”
“How interesting,” said Irene. “Of course you already have at least one famous patient. You have Wee Fraser.” She paused; Wee Fraser was dangerous territory. “You were going to track him down, weren’t you? Did you ever find him?”
Dr Fairbairn stiffened. Up to this point he had been fiddling with the cuffs of his blue linen jacket; now his hands dropped to his sides and he stared fixedly ahead. He had located his famous patient, now fifteen or so, and had risen to his feet to make amends for having smacked him in the early analysis (when Wee Fraser had put the toy pigs upside down), only to be headbutted for his pains by the unpleasant adolescent. But then, to his profound shame, he had responded by striking Wee Fraser on the chin, breaking his jaw.
“I found him,” he said. “ I found him, and then . . .”
Irene leaned forward. “You asked his forgiveness?”
Dr Fairbairn looked miserable. “I wish I could say that I had. Alas, the truth is the rather to the contrary.”
“How much to the contrary?” pressed Irene.
“Completely,” said Dr Fairbairn.
Irene held up a hand. “I do not want to hear what happened,”
she said. “We can all make mistakes. We can all do things that we didn’t plan to do.”
Dr Fairbairn looked at her with gratitude. Here was absolution – of a sort. “Yes,” he said. “We all do things that we didn’t plan to do. How right you are.” He paused, and stood up. Moving to the window behind his desk, he looked out over the Queen Street Gardens. “Yes, I have done many things I did not intend to do. That is the human condition.”
“Many things?” asked Irene.
“Yes,” said Dr Fairbairn, turning round again. “Such as . . .”
But then he stopped.
Irene waited for him to continue, but Dr Fairbairn had become silent. He looked up at the ceiling, and Irene followed An Evening of Scottish Art 249
his gaze. But there was nothing to be seen there, and so they both lowered their eyes.
He is so unhappy, thought Irene. He is so unresolved. 80. An Evening of Scottish Art
Neither Matthew nor Pat said anything about the unfortunate incident in the bathroom, although neither of them was quick to forget it. Both learned something from the experience. Matthew now knew to lock the door and to remember that he was no longer alone in the flat. This meant that he should be careful about breaking out into song – as he occasionally liked to do – or uttering the odd mild expletive if he stubbed his toe on the corner of the kitchen dresser or if he dropped part of an egg shell into the omelette mixture. For her part, Pat learned to assume that a closed door meant that the bathroom was not free, and she learned, too, that Matthew was a sensitive person, easily embarrassed and not always able to articulate the causes of his embarrassment. And for both of them, there was also the lesson that living together, even merely as flatmates, was a process of discovery. For although we are at our most secure – in one sense – in our own homes, we are also at our most vulnerable, for the social persona, the one we carry with us out into the world, cannot be worn at home all the time. That is where resides the real self, the self that can be so easily hurt.
There were things about Matthew that Pat had not suspected. She had not imagined that he was a member of the Scotch Malt Whisky Society and received its newsletters with all those curious descriptions of the flavour of whiskies. She had paged through one of these which