"What makes it stupid?" she asked.
I kept my eyes on the road. "Let's start with the uniform."
"Those knickers and plastic hats."
I nodded. "And the game itself, smashing into each other at full speed, pushing an odd-shaped ball a hundred yards, back and forth, according to a set of arbitrary rules. Only one forward pass per down, can't touch a receiver when the ball's in the air, offensive line can't hold but they all do. Viewed objectively, it's a pretty stupid game and a pretty stupid way to make a living."
Her eyes brightened. "But the smashing was a release of hostility like steam from a kettle. Or is there another reason you chose a profession certain to cause you anxiety and conflict? That's a classic counter-phobic attitude, you know, taking pleasure in precisely the activity that arouses anxiety. And when you derive satisfaction from triumphing over the anxiety, it's just a manifestation of a manic defense."
"Something like a pass prevent?"
"More like an all-out blitz."
My foot slipped off the gas pedal and I gaped at her, astounded.
She shrugged. "I've done a little research on your game, that's all."
"Why?"
"To better understand you. Why do you suppose you derived pleasure from the smashing and hitting?"
"Isn't my fifty minutes up, doctor?"
"Please. Don't joke your way out of this. We're making progress concerning the omnipotence you felt from mastering your fear of pain and failure."
"I never felt omnipotent getting blind-sided by the tight end."
She settled back into her seat, annoyed. "Perhaps that's all we can accomplish for today."
We sat in silence for a few moments, and then she pointed to the left to keep me from missing the turn toward Chipping Camden, ancestral home of the Maxson clan. If I'd stayed on the highway, we'd have headed straight for Stratford-on-Avon, and my mind wandered to Professor Prince and whether he ever played Hamlet in his meanderings.
After a while Pam Maxson asked, "You don't want to explore what's under the surface, do you?"
That started something buzzing in the back of my mind. What was it?
"On the flight over here," I said, stirring up a fuzzy memory, "I dreamed about you."
"Oh!" She straightened, tugging at the harness restraint. She was genuinely excited, whether from professional or personal curiosity I still didn't know.
"Yes, but it's hard to remember. I fell asleep thinking about you and woke up the same way, and in between…"
"Yes, yes. Think about it."
"You were in Miami. You must have been, because it was very warm. And we were on the beach."
She raised an eyebrow. "We?"
"You and me. I was rigging a sailboard."
She gave me a quizzical look.
"A Windsurfer," I said. "It was one of those spring days, a strong warm wind from the east, whitecaps on the water, sand blowing down the beach. I was tying the boom to the mast, and you were next to me. Yes, I see it now, in a bikini!"
"Indeed?"
"A red bikini, and your hair was blowing downwind. And you were saying something. What the hell was it?"
She didn't know and I didn't either, but I dredged it up, or was I making it up? Dreams are so fuzzy, who can tell? I thought of George in Virginia Woolf, unable, or unwilling, to distinguish truth from illusion. The thought was there, so I spit it out. "You said, 'Jake, I can't hold on.'"
She leaned closer. "Hold on to what, or to whom?"
I wrinkled my forehead and thought some more. "I don't know. That's all I can remember. But you were frightened, and so was I."
"The sensation of falling is a common dream experience, but you seem to have transferred the anxiety to me. Quite interesting."
She thought about it a while, so I concentrated on the road, which by now had shrunken to two undersized lanes. On either side were rolling farmlands, alternate patches of brown and green, an occasional herd of sheep grazing on grassy slopes. Tractors hauling plows chugged along the road, hogging both sides and crowding me toward the ditch on the left.
After a few moments Pam Maxson said, "Freud wrote that dreams often express a repressed, unconscious wish from childhood."
"Makes sense. Ever since puberty, I wanted to spend time with girls in bikinis."
Her emerald glance chided me. "You're being too literal. The unconscious wish is repressed, so it cannot be given direct expression even in a dream. The dream must distort the wish, so the dreamer need not face the cost of recognizing the true wish, which has been disguised."
"You're saying I don't really have a repressed desire to see you in a bikini on a windswept beach?"
"No, but it represents something. The bikini may signify that you wish to see me stripped bare-"
"I can buy that."
"— Stripped of the barriers each of us erects to protect ourselves. The color red can signify violence or bloodshed. As for what you heard, perhaps you have a desire to see me fall, a metaphor for fail."
"Why would I?"
She considered it. "I don't know, are you somehow threatened by me?"
"Intrigued, yes. Threatened, no. I'd like to get to know you. And not just in my dreams."
She smiled and sat back, alone in her thoughts.
It was slow going as I followed her directions up a winding road. The asphalt turned to gravel, and as the road narrowed and overgrown shrubs clawed at each side of the Rover, the surface became brown dirt, pocked by holes. After bouncing through a few of the axle breakers, I heard a stirring in the backseat. Charlie Riggs was stretching like a bearded cat.
"There it is," Pam said, pointing up a hill.
"Now, that didn't take long at all," Charlie mumbled, leaning over the front seat to take a peek.
I pulled into a gravel driveway that led to a large limestone house topped by a thatched roof. Pam caught me staring at the shaggy top of her home. "Our insulation," she said. "The reeds are stacked a foot thick and nailed down by thousands of wooden stakes. Keeps us warm in the winter and cool in the summer. Only needs to be replaced every sixty years or so, but the fire insurance is quite exorbitant."
"Splendid, just splendid," Charlie was saying.
"Shall we?" Pam asked, gesturing toward the house. "I've told Mum all about you."
"You, singular or plural?" I ventured.
"Plural," she answered with the biggest smile to date. Then she darted close and kissed me. It wasn't a kiss that would lose a PG-rating in Hollywood. It was more of a whisk of lip across cheek, but my spirits soared to the top of the thatched roof where a weather vane pointed west. "Gracious," Pam said. "It's nearly tea time. Let's see if Mum still remembers how to make a Bakewell tart."
We headed up a flagstone path to a huge front door. It came to me then, a nagging question from earlier in the day. "Why would the royal family be killing prostitutes?" I asked her.
"It had to do with Prince Albert, called Eddy in the Court. He was the son of King Edward VII and Alexandra. He was in line to be king. But he was known to be bisexual, and there were scandals involving relationships with boys. Those were fairly easy to hush up. Not so easy was the rumor that he had surreptitiously married a young Catholic shop girl, who gave birth to a baby girl. The royal family is said to have spirited the shop girl off to an insane asylum, kidnapped the child, and forcibly returned Eddy to the Court. All was accomplished very efficiently, except there was a witness. A friend of the shop girclass="underline" Mary Jane Kelly."
"The last Ripper victim," Charlie said.
"Yes. She was an East End harlot."
"But five women were killed," I said.
"The others were the smoke screen, necessary to create the myth of a Ripper indiscriminately killing prostitutes."
"The royal family had five women killed to protect the Prince's reputation?" I asked, incredulous.