I suppose I do. Most people think of teddy bears as being rather attractive, cuddly creatures.” He paused. “Do you know that song about teddy bears, Bertie?”
“The Teddy Bears’ Picnic?”
“Exactly. Do you know the words for it, Bertie?”
Bertie thought for a moment. “If you go down to the woods today . . .”
“You’re sure of a big surprise! ” continued Dr Fairbairn. “If you go down to the woods today/ You’d better go in disguise. And so on.
It’s a nice song, isn’t it Bertie?”
“Yes,” said Bertie. “But it’s a bit sad, too, isn’t it?”
Dr Fairbairn leaned forward. This was interesting. “Sad, Bertie? Why is The Teddy Bears’ Picnic sad?”
“Because some of the teddy bears will not get a treat,” said Bertie. “Only those who have been good. That’s what the song says. Every bear who’s ever been good/ Is sure of a treat today. What about the other bears?”
Dr Fairbairn’s eyes widened and he scribbled a note on a pad of paper before him. “They get nothing, I’m afraid. Do you think that you would get something if you went on a picnic, Bertie?”
“No,” said Bertie. “I would not. The teddy bears who set fire to their Daddies’ copies of The Guardian will get nothing at that picnic. Nothing at all.”
There was a silence. Then Dr Fairbairn asked another question.
“Why did you set fire to Daddy’s copy of The Guardian, Bertie? Did you do that because guardian is another word for parent? Was The Guardian your Daddy because Daddy is your guardian?”
Bertie thought for a moment. Dr Fairbairn was clearly mad, but he would have to keep talking to him; otherwise the psychotherapist might suddenly kill both him and his mother.
“No,” he said. “I like Daddy. I don’t want to set fire to Daddy.”
“And do you like The Guardian?” pressed Dr Fairbairn.
“No,” said Bertie. “I don’t like The Guardian.”
“Why?” asked Dr Fairbairn.
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“Because it’s always telling you what you should think,” said Bertie. “Just like Mummy.”
98. Irene and Dr Fairbairn Converse With Bertie sent off to the waiting room where he might occupy himself with an old copy of Scottish Field, Irene and Dr Fairbairn shared a cup of strong coffee in the consulting room, mulling over the outcome of Bertie’s forty minutes of intense conversation with his therapist.
“That bit about teddy bears was most interesting,” said Dr Fairbairn, thoughtfully. “He had constructed all sorts of anxieties around that perfectly simple account of a bears’ picnic.
Quite remarkable.”
“Very strange,” said Irene.
“And as for that exchange over The Guardian,” went on Dr Fairbairn. “I was astonished that he should see you as overly directional. Quite astonished.”
“Absolutely,” said Irene. “I’ve never pushed him to do anything. All his little enthusiasms, his Italian, his saxophone, are of his own choosing. I’ve merely facilitated.”
“Of course,” said Dr Fairbairn hurriedly. “I knew as much.
But then children misread things so badly. But it’s certainly nothing for you to worry yourself about.”
He paused, placing his coffee cup down on its saucer. “But then that dream he spoke about was rather fascinating, wasn’t it?
The one in which he saw a train going into a tunnel. That was interesting, wasn’t it?”
“Indeed,” said Irene. “But then, Bertie has always had this thing about trains. He goes on and on about them. I don’t think there’s any particular symbolism in his case – he really is dreaming about trains qua trains. Other boys may be dreaming about . . . well about other things when they dream about trains.
But not Bertie.”
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“But what about tunnels?” asked Dr Fairbairn.
“We have one in Scotland Street,” said Irene. “There’s a tunnel under the road. But nobody’s allowed to go into it.”
“Ah,” said Dr Fairbairn. “A forbidden tunnel! That’s very significant!”
“It’s closed,” said Irene.
“A forbidden tunnel would be,” mused Dr Fairbairn.
They both thought about this for a moment, and then Dr Fairbairn, reaching out for his cup of coffee, returned to the subject of dreams. “I have never underestimated the revelatory power of the dream,” he said. “It is the most perfect documentary of the unconscious. The film script of both the id and the ego – dancing their terrible dance, orchestrated by the sleeping mind. Don’t you think?”
“Oh, I do,” said Irene. “And do you analyse your own dreams, Dr Fairbairn?”
“Most certainly,” he replied. “May I reveal one to you?”
“But, of course.” Irene loved this. It must be so lonely being Dr Fairbairn and having so few patients – perhaps none, apart from herself – with whom he could communicate on a basis of intellectual and psychoanalytical equality.
“My dream,” said Dr Fairbairn, “occurred some years ago –
many years in fact, and yet my memory of it is utterly vivid. In this dream I was somewhere in the West – Argyll possibly – and staying in a large house by the edge of a sea loch. The house was a couple of hundred yards from the edge of the loch, and it was set about with grass of the most extraordinary verdant colour.
And this grass was touched with the golden light, as of the morning sun.
“The woman who lived in this house had a name, unlike so many people who come to us in our dreams. She was called Mrs Macgregor – I remember that very distinctly – and she was kind to the guests. There were other people there too, but I did not know them. Mrs Macgregor was gentle and welcoming
– she made a tray of tea and then took me gently by the hand and led me across the lawn to a shed beside the loch. And I can remember the smell of the air, which had that tangle of seaweed Irene and Dr Fairbairn Converse
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that you get in the West and that softness too. And I did not want her to let go of my hand.
“We came to the shed and she opened it for me, and do you know, there inside was a lovingly preserved art-nouveau typesetting machine. And I marvelled at this and turned round, and Mrs Macgregor was walking away from me, back towards the house, and I felt a great sense of loss. And that is when I awoke, and the house and the grass and the sea loch faded, but left me with the most extraordinary sense of peace – as if I had been vouchsafed a vision.
“Many years later, I was in a restaurant in Edinburgh, with a largish group of people after a meeting. We were sitting there waiting for our dinner to be served and the subject of dreams arose. I decided to narrate my dream, and there was a sudden hush in the restaurant. Everybody had started to listen to it – the other diners, the waiters, the Italian proprietor of the restaurant, Pasquale, as he was called – everybody.
“And there was a complete silence when I finished. Then, one of the other members of the party – a most distinguished Edinburgh psychiatrist, broke the silence. He said: Mrs Macgregor is your mother!
“And of course Henry was right, and everybody in the restaurant started to talk again, loudly, with relief, perhaps, because they were reassured that their mothers were with them too – their mothers had not gone away.”
Irene was touched by this story, and she was silent too, as had been the diners in that restaurant. She wondered whether she dared tell Dr Fairbairn about her own dream, that had come to her only a few nights previously, in which she had been in the Floatarium, in the flotation tank, and there had been a knocking on the door, and she had opened the lid and seen a blonde child standing outside, like that figure of Cupid in the painting, Love Locked Out. And now she realised that BLONDE