Pat Barker - The Eye in the Door

‘No, I agree, they don’t. I was a socialist then, I’m a socialist now. As far as the war goes, I don’t have to prove my patriotism to you . I didn’t offer you a job. I’m sorry if you told your wife I did, but that’s your responsibility, not mine. Now bugger off and leave me alone.’

Prior walked away. He was aware of Spragge shouting, but was too angry to hear what he said. He thought Spragge might follow him, and that if he did there would be a fight. Spragge was taller, but older and flabbier. And he didn’t care anyway. He wanted a fight. Spragge’s face floated in front of him: the slightly bulbous nose, the sheen of sweat, the enlarged pores around the nostrils, the tufts of grey hair protruding from them. He’d never experienced such intense awareness of another person’s body before, except in sex. What he felt was not simple dislike, but an intimate, obsessive, deeply physical hatred.

Back in the flat he rinsed his face in cold water and, trembling slightly, lay down on the bed. He plumped the pillows up behind him and groped in the pocket of his tunic for a cigarette. Weren’t any. Then he remerabered he’d been wearing his greatcoat. He got up, checked the pockets and found a packet of cigars. He didn’t smoke cigars. But he must have bought them, and either smoked or offered them to somebody else, because there were two missing from the pack. Just as he must have arranged to meet Spragge. Spragge wouldn’t have lied about that. It was too blatant, too easily discounted. No, he’d made the appointment all right. God knows when, or why.

He got up from the bed, feeling the palms of his hands sticky. He went to the front door and locked it, then stood with his back to it, looking down the dark corridor to the half-open door of his bedroom, feeling a momentary relief at being locked in, though he quickly realized this was nonsense. Whatever it was he needed to be afraid of, it was on this side of the door.

After a pause, Rivers asked, ‘Have there been any further episodes since then?’

‘Yes, but I don’t think any of them involved other people. I don’t think they did.’ Prior’s mouth twisted. ‘How would I know?’

‘Nobody’s said anything?’

‘No.’

‘How many?’

‘Seven.’

‘As many as that?’

Prior looked away.

‘How long do they last?’

‘Longest, three hours. Shortest… I don’t know. Twenty minutes? The long ones are frightening because you don’t know what you’ve done…’ He attempted a laugh. ‘You just know you’ve had plenty of time to do it.’

‘I don’t think you should assume you’ve done anything wrong.’

‘Don’t you? Well, if it’s so bloody good, why do I need to forget it?’

Rivers waited a while. ‘What do you think you might have done?’

‘I don’t know, do I? Nipped across to Whitechapel and ripped up a few prostitutes.’

Silence.

‘Look ,’ Prior said, with the air of one attempting to engage the village idiot in rational discourse, ‘you know as well as I do that that…’ He flung himself back in his chair. ‘I’m not going to do this, I just refuse.’

Rivers waited.

Still not looking at him, Prior said, or rather chanted, ‘I have certain impulses which I do not give way to except in strict moderation and at the other person’s request. At least, in this state I don’t. I’m simply pointing out that in the the the the other state I might not be so fucking scrupulous. And don’t look at me like that.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘You think this is a load of self-dramatizing rubbish, don’t you?’

Rivers said carefully, ‘I think you’ve been alone with the problem too long.’

‘There’s nothing ridiculous in anything I’ve said.’

Rivers looked at the pale, proud, wintry face and caught a sigh. ‘I certainly wouldn’t call it ridiculous.’

‘The fact is I don’t know and neither do you, so you’re in no position to pontificate.’

Silence. Rivers said, ‘How are the nightmares?’

‘Bad. Oh, I had one you’ll like. I was was walking along a path in a kind of desert and straight ahead of me was an eyeball. Not this size.’ Prior’s cheeks twitched like boiling porridge. ‘Huge. And alive. And it was directly in front of me and I knew this time it was going to get me.’ He smiled. ‘Do whatever it is eyeballs do. Fortunately, there was a river running along beside the path, so I leapt into the river and I was all right.’ He gazed straight at Rivers. ‘But then I suppose all your patients jump into fucking rivers sooner or later, don’t they?’

The antagonism was startling. They might have been back at Craiglockhart, at the beginning of Prior’s treatment. ‘How did you feel about being in the river?’

‘Fine. It sang to me, a sort of lullaby, it kept telling me I was going to be all right and I was all right — as long as I stayed in the river.’

‘You didn’t feel you wanted to get out?’

‘In the dream? No. Now, YES.’

Rivers spread his hands. ‘Your coming here is entirely voluntary.’

‘With that degree of dependency? Of course it’s not fucking voluntary.’ He started to say something else and bit it back. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Don’t be, there’s no need.’ Suddenly Rivers leant across the desk. ‘I’m not here to be liked.’

‘I am sorry,’ Prior said, his face and voice hardening. ‘I thought I was supposed to be accepting my emotions? Well, my emotion is that I’m sorry.’

‘In that case I accept your apology.’

A pause. ‘Do you know what I do when I come round from one of these spells? I look at my hands because I half expect to see them covered in hair.’

Rivers made no comment.

‘You’ve read Jekyll and Hyde?’

‘Yes.’ Rivers had been waiting for the reference. Patients who suffered from fugue states invariably referred to the dissociated state — jocularly, but not without fear — as ‘Hyde’. ‘In real life, you know, the fugue state is — well, I was going to say “never”, but, in fact, there is one case — is almost never the darker side of the personality. Usually it’s no more than a difference in mood.’

‘But we don’t know . You see, the conversation I’m trying not to have is the one where I point out that you could find out in five minutes flat and you say, “Yes, I know, but I won’t do it.”’

Silence.

‘Well? ’

‘I’m sorry, I thought you said you didn’t want that conversation.’

‘You know, for somebody who isn’t here to be liked you have the most wonderful manner. You used hypnosis at Craiglockhart.’

‘Yes, but in that case we could check the memory. You see, one of the things people who believe in… the extensive use of hypnosis claim — well, they don’t even claim it, they assume it — is that memories recovered in that way are genuine memories. But they’re very often not. They can be fantasies, or they can be responses to suggestions from the therapist. Because one’s constantly making suggestions, and the ones you’re not aware of making — not conscious of — are by far the most powerful. And that’s dangerous because most therapists are interested in dissociated states and so they — unconsciously of course — encourage the patient further down that path. And one can’t avoid doing it. Even if one excludes everything else, there’s still the enlargement of the pupils of the eyes.’

Prior leant forward and peered. ‘Yours are enlarged.’

Rivers took a deep breath. ‘You can get your memory back by the same methods we used at Craiglockhart. You were very good at it.’