A Continental Therapist

Ginny sat in the tiny dark waiting room listening to the lorries thundering past. If the room had been full the clients would have touched knees. As it was, there was just one dark haired woman sitting under the high window. Their appointments were at the same time so they often found themselves sitting in silence on a Monday morning after a brief ‘hello’. Today the woman was more pale than usual, and more forthcoming.

 “It’s not a good day. My brother’s wife … she was killed in the bombing on Thursday.” Ginny remembered the submerged chaos and panic in the tube stations, the crunched double decker bus at Tavistock Square.

 “I’m very sorry.”

The door opened. The woman’s therapist had come to collect her. She closed the door quietly behind her and Ginny tried to imagine, for a minute, what these days must be like for her. She looked and sounded eastern European. To have to deal with a tragedy far from home? It put another slant on Ginny’s predicament. At least she was in her own country.

 The door opened again. Ginny’s therapist, Neilia, was very fair and probably in her early forties. She wore exquisite clothes and footwear. Ginny would follow her up the stairs, marvelling at the pleats in her blouse, or the complicated ties on her canvas shoes.

She sat in the chair opposite Neilia’s. There was a box of tissues on the table beside her and a flaking plane tree sprawling at the open window. Neilia never spoke first.

“A woman in the waiting room lost her sister-in-law in the bombings.”

“Not a very good start to your session.” Ginny hadn’t thought about it like that.

She began to talk. The tears welled up uncontrollably. She wondered where all these tears would go if she didn’t come to her weekly sessions.

“Why are you crying?”

“My life was all mapped out. We were going to backpack round Australia. We were going to plant raspberry canes. We were going to get a cat!” She cried again.

“What is it that hurts?”

 “The rug pulled from under me. Knowing I can’t have his child. Knowing I’m going to loose my best friend.” She paused. “And I’m supposed to go on being calm, being caring, until he dies!”

“You’re being very hard on yourself. You’re grieving, and that’s very necessary.”

“I look at Michael some days … In him are all the times we’ve ever spent together. When he goes there’ll be just me to remember.”

 Ginny acquired wisdom in that room more quickly than in any other. She filled it so full of her torment and terror that she was convinced she would drown them both. But Neilia kept a very professional distance. Ginny was intrigued by her.

“Do you have children?” she asked at the end of the session.

“The therapy works best if you don’t know my personal details.” Ginny thought she might have children because she took school holidays.

 “You have a beautiful voice,” said Ginny.

“Thank you.”

“I think you’re Scandinavian.”

Neilia thought for a few seconds.

 “Continental.” This was as far as she would go – an answer of sorts.

Ginny drove home the long way round. She wanted to see as many trees in blossom as she could. She wanted to see white blossom against black trunks, pink blossom bowing branches, cerise buds tightly shut.

She had left Michael sitting at the kitchen table with a pile of seed compost, twelve plastic plant pots and a packet of old fashioned sweet peas. The table was just as she’d left it. Michael was stretched out on the sofa in the living room channel flicking. Ginny felt a slice of guilt at having talked about him with Neilia.

That night Michael had the strength to hold Ginny close. She nestled into his chest and pulled up the duvet under her chin.

“I can’t bear to think of you lying like this with anyone else.” Michael’s voice had lost some of its roundness and depth.

“Don’t think about it.”

“I know I’m supposed to say find someone else. Be happy. But I can’t.”

“Why should you?”

 “Because I’m your husband and I should want the best for you.”

 “I want the best of you now. Stroke my hair like you used to do.”

Ginny could feel his fingers making ridges in her hair, smoothing her scalp. She closed her eyes and lived for a moment in the sensation. Then gradually Michael’s fingers fell from her hair. Ginny opened her eyes and leaned on her elbow to look into his face. Michael’s breathing became deeper. He snored gently.

•

Ginny’s last session with Neilia was three weeks after Michael’s funeral. She found herself mildly irritated by Neilia’s anonymity. Neilia knew her most intimate secrets. Ginny didn’t talk about herself easily and she knew nothing about Neilia; apart from her white blonde hair, her carefully chosen skirts, her silky voice and her psychodynamic credentials. What was her home life like? Who sat with her at the dinner table?

For long minutes of that hour Ginny sat and looked at the electric blue and acid green flecks in her brown woollen trousers. It felt like a kind of defiance. Yes, she was paying for Neilia’s time, but that didn’t mean they had to always be talking. Ginny needed stillness to absorb the events of the last month. But after a while Ginny couldn’t help but vocalize her thoughts.

 “Everyone is being very kind. Especially anyone older than Michael. As though they feel awkward at still being alive.” She paused. “The day of the funeral was the only day that week it didn’t rain.”

“How are you spending your time?”

“I walk. A different park each day. It’s hard to stay in and be alone. I can’t concentrate enough to read. Last night I made him his favourite meal. King prawns sautéed in butter with chilli, ginger and garlic.”

There was another pause. An ice cream van played ‘Greensleeves’ in a nearby street.

“I want to try and go back to work next week. They’ve been so good. I’m afraid if I don’t go back now I never will.”

 The hands of the clock closed the hour. Ginny paid her cheque and made to leave. Neilia always saw her to the door downstairs.

At the bottom of the stairs Ginny wondered how to say goodbye. This woman had lived with her through the most precipitous stage of her life.

“Can I give you a hug?” asked Ginny.

“A handshake.”

They shook hands and looked into each other’s eyes.

 “Take good care of yourself,” said Neilia.

“Thank you.”

 Ginny walked into the street. She didn’t cry when she got back into her car.

 It was the following Saturday that Ginny saw Neilia. She’d parked outside a newsagent on the high street; there was some paperwork of Michael’s she needed to photocopy. The shop assistant had kept her waiting to pay while he finished a call on his mobile. She got into her car and slammed the door. There, on the other side of the road, was Neilia with a fair-haired man and two fair-haired children. He was trying to keep one child from escaping the pushchair. Neilia was holding the other as he kicked his legs out in front of him. Neilia leaned over the pushchair and talked earnestly to the man who was now bending down and tackling the straps.

Ginny was shocked by the whole tableau – the closeness of their unit, the similarity of their colouring, even by the fact that the man looked twenty years older than Neilia. Ginny was used to her undivided attention. She was used to sitting with her in a silent room with a moss green carpet. She’d never expected to observe her closely guarded private life.

 Ginny didn’t want to be seen. That she’d been afforded this glimpse was unsettling. It added another ending. Instead of the cool handshake, there was now a light breeze, traffic fumes, and this precarious moment between them.