The World According to Bertie - Alexander Hanchett Smith [6]
‘And why . . .’ Pat began to ask.
‘The human mind,’ said Dr Macgregor, ‘is capable of infinite deception – both of others and of itself. If you began to think that somebody in your life was really another person in disguise, then you would have, I’m afraid, Fregoli’s Syndrome. You might begin to think that I was not really myself, but was a very accomplished actor.’
‘How strange.’
‘Yes, how strange,’ said Dr Macgregor. ‘But it gets even stranger. There’s another condition, one called Capgras Syndrome, where you believe that people you know have been replaced by imposters. The whole thing is a carefully orchestrated act put on by a team of imposters. That may be your best friend talking to you, but you’re not fooled! You know that it’s really an actor pretending to be your best friend.’
Pat laughed. ‘But it was Bruce,’ she said. ‘Or at least I thought it was.’
‘Then I’m sure it was,’ said Dr Macgregor. ‘You’re a very reliable witness of things. You always have been.’
But now it was Pat’s turn to doubt. ‘Isn’t it true, though, that the mind can fill in the details if it sees just one thing that it recognises? One of our lecturers said something about that. He was talking about how we look at paintings.’
‘It’s certainly true,’ said Dr Macgregor. ‘We want to reorganise the world, and that makes our brains jump the gun – sometimes. You look at a newspaper headline, take in one word, and before you know it your brain says: yes, that’s what it says. But it may not.’
Pat looked thoughtful. What had she seen? A rugby shirt. And a pair of trousers. Perhaps her mind had filled in the rest; filled in the hair with the gel; filled in the look of Bruce.
Dr Macgregor decided to get up from his chair. He stood, and then walked over to the window and looked out over the garden. The lawn was dry.
‘Don’t get mixed up with that young man again,’ he said quietly.
Pat looked up sharply. ‘I wasn’t planning to,’ she protested. ‘I really disliked him.’
Dr Macgregor nodded. ‘Maybe you did. But that type of person can be very destructive. They know how powerful their charm is. And they use it.’ He paused. ‘I don’t want you to be hurt. You know that, don’t you? That’s all that a father wants for his daughter. Or most of them. Fathers don’t want their daughters to get hurt. And yet they know that there are plenty of men only too ready to treat them badly. They know that.’
Pat thought that her father was being melodramatic. Bruce was no danger to her. He may have been in the past, but not now. She was like somebody who had been given an inoculation against an illness. She was immune to Bruce and his charms.
And yet she had felt unsettled when she saw him; it had been exciting. Would one feel that excitement if one was immune to somebody? She thought not.
Her father was looking at her now. ‘Are you going to seek him out?’ he asked.
Pat looked down at the ground. It was so easy to fob other people off with a denial, with a half-truth, but she could not do this to her father; not to this gentle psychiatrist who had seen her through all the little doubts and battles of childhood and adolescence. She could not hide the truth from him.
‘I think I’d like to see him,’ she said.
5. Past Definite; Future Uncertain
Domenica Macdonald, freelance anthropologist, native of Scotland Street, friend of Angus Lordie and Antonia Collie, owner of a custard-coloured Mercedes-Benz, citizen of Edinburgh; all of these were facets of the identity of the woman now striding up Scotland Street, a battered canvas shopping-bag hanging loosely from her left arm. But there was more: in addition to all of that, Domenica was now the author of a learned paper that had recently been accepted for publication in the prestigious journal Mankind Quarterly. This paper,