Dr Fairbairn stared at his friend. Pin envy. He had been about to tell her of the common pathology of those who reacted with violent antipathy towards smug people. A lot of people were like that; the mere presence of a smug person made them livid. But Smugness Explained 247
he decided that it was perhaps best not to mention that aspect of it just at that moment.
“Smug people are completely satisfied with themselves,” said Dr Fairbairn. “In that respect they are similar to narcissists. The narcissist is incapable of feeling bad about anything that he does because he is, in his own estimation, so obviously perfect. Smug people don’t necessarily feel that way about themselves. They are very contented with what they have, and they may appear self-righteous, but the really salient feature of smugness is its sense of being satisfied and complete.”
Dr Fairbairn paused. One day, he thought, he would write a paper on smugness. He would need, though, to find a few more patients to write about, but the problem with smug people was that they never sought analysis. And why should they? They had everything they wanted. So perhaps he should write about something else altogether; he should look for another patient, one undergoing regular treatment. He thought for a moment . . .
“Would you mind . . . ?” he suddenly asked Irene. “Would you mind if one of these days I wrote about Bertie? I would change his name, of course, so that nobody would know it was him. But he is a rather interesting case, you know.”
Irene gave a little squeal of delight. “Of course I wouldn’t mind,” she exclaimed. “It would be wonderful to be able to share Bertie with the world. Just as Little Hans’s father allowed us to hear about Little Hans’s castration anxieties and all that business with the dray horses and the giraffe. Imagine if he had refused Freud permission to write about his son. Imagine that.”
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 head-butted 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 absolu-tion – 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 articu-late 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 she found lying on the kitchen table and had been astonished by the terms used by the tasting panel. One whisky was described as smelling of school jotters; another smelled like a doctor’s bag (or what doctor’s bags used to smell like). She had never seen Matthew drink whisky, but he later 250 An Evening of Scottish Art
explained to her that he had been given the membership by his father, who was an enthusiast of whisky.
And then she had never seen Matthew reading Scottish Field before, but that is what he liked to do, sitting in a chair in the corner of the drawing room, paging through the glossy magazine. He liked the social pages, he said, with their pictures of people looking into the camera, smiling, happy to be included.
“I’ve never been in,” he said to Pat. “Or never been in properly. My left shoulder was, once, when there was a photograph of a charity ball down in Ayrshire. I was standing just to the side of a group who were being photographed and you could see my shoulder. It was definitely me. I have a green formal kilt jacket, you see, and that was shown. It was quite clear, actually.”
“That was bad luck,” said Pat.
“Yes,” said Matthew. “You have to be somebody like Timothy Clifford to get into Scottish Field. Either that, or you have to know the photographers who take these things. I don’t.”
Pat thought for a moment. “We could have an opening at the gallery. We could have a big event and ask all these people.
Then, when they came, the photographers could hardly cut you out of your own party.”
Matthew thought for a moment. “Yes, that’s quite a good idea.” He paused. “I hope that you don’t think I sit here and worry about not being in Scottish Field. I have got better things to think about, you know.”