a little better, and when you’re not acting like a
spoiled baby, I like spending time here with you.”
He
snorts again. “Mair pish! Naeb’dy wants tae spend time wi me, and I
don’t need yer pity. I dinna need nosey wee quines like you
interfering with my life, people who think they ken better than me
what I want, what I need.”
“ And what is it you need, Colin?”
“ Ta be left alone! Obviously a concept alien ta ye as ye
canna respect a polite request ta leave, so I’ll tell ye straight
instead, in words of one syllable only. SOD-OFF! Go on! Away wi ye
and take yer sanctimonious hoity toity psychobabble wi ye—” He
reels away and in a few awkward strides he is inside the hut. “And
don’t come back!”
The door
slams closed.
Grace,
stung by the ferocity of this unexpected turn of events, stares
mutedly at the newly vacated Colin shaped space. She waits silently
for the door to open and for him to re-emerge to apologise, but he
does not.
When
after ten long minutes Colin does finally venture outside again,
she has gone.
Chapter 14
“ I think I stuffed it up,” Grace says, clutching the fat red
cushion to her stomach.
Mal, as
always, sits opposite her, his expression immutable,
inscrutable.
Like patience on a monument, he smiles at grief.
“ How so?” he says.
She
squeezes the cushion. “We were having such a nice time, relaxing by
the stream. I was reading and he was just sitting there under the
tree, having a doze I think, and there were birds and sunshine and
- and I opened my big fat mouth and said something and ruined it
all.”
Silence.
“ Why don’t you tell me everything?”
And so
she does, from when they settled down at the stream, via her attack
of verbal diarrhoea, through to the slamming of the hut door, and
Mal listens without interrupting her, nodding in all the right
places.
“ So have a screwed it all up? Is that it … over? Do I have
to go back to the drawing board and start again?”
Mal
interlaces his fingers, forming a little church, thumbs crossed
over to make the door, index fingers pressed together to make the
steeple resting against his pursed lips.
“ I don’t think so,” he says. “I think what you have here is
simply a representation of your own deep-seated insecurity, your
worries about whether this therapy is the right thing for you, your
uncertainties about whether it’s going to work. Even though
you think you are fully committed to the therapy, somewhere in your
subconscious there is that little glowing ember of
doubt.”
“ So Colin’s reaction to my suggesting that nothing was real,
of asking if he was in therapy, his telling me to go away, his
refusal to discuss it, or go to the gate … that’s my Doubting
Thomas making himself known, and I was simply arguing with
myself?”
“ Yup.”
“ So what do I do? I don’t want to not go there any more. I
like it there. I like what it was doing to me, how it made me feel.
I like –”
“ You like Colin?”
She
squeezes the cushion so tightly the seam is in danger of giving
way. “Yes, I do, but when I told him I liked spending time with
him, it just made him angrier.” She curls her top lip. “Couldn’t
have helped that I accused him of acting like a spoiled baby,
though, could it?”
“ Probably not.”
Mal
strokes the finger steeple through his beard and down this throat.
“You can do one of two things,” he says. “A, you walk away from the
whole thing and write it off as an experiment gone sour and we try
something else. That’s the easy option, the coward’s way
out–”
“ Or?
“ Or, B, you give yourself a couple of days to think about
it, to let things settle, to get things straight in your mind, and
then go back, find Colin, tell him how you feel. It’s your place, he’s your creation, and you
are in control. If he doesn’t like it, that’s his
problem.”
“ It’s all so confusing, Mal. The sensations I’m getting.
They are all so real.” She
spoiled baby, I like spending time here with you.”
He
snorts again. “Mair pish! Naeb’dy wants tae spend time wi me, and I
don’t need yer pity. I dinna need nosey wee quines like you
interfering with my life, people who think they ken better than me
what I want, what I need.”
“ And what is it you need, Colin?”
“ Ta be left alone! Obviously a concept alien ta ye as ye
canna respect a polite request ta leave, so I’ll tell ye straight
instead, in words of one syllable only. SOD-OFF! Go on! Away wi ye
and take yer sanctimonious hoity toity psychobabble wi ye—” He
reels away and in a few awkward strides he is inside the hut. “And
don’t come back!”
The door
slams closed.
Grace,
stung by the ferocity of this unexpected turn of events, stares
mutedly at the newly vacated Colin shaped space. She waits silently
for the door to open and for him to re-emerge to apologise, but he
does not.
When
after ten long minutes Colin does finally venture outside again,
she has gone.
Chapter 14
“ I think I stuffed it up,” Grace says, clutching the fat red
cushion to her stomach.
Mal, as
always, sits opposite her, his expression immutable,
inscrutable.
Like patience on a monument, he smiles at grief.
“ How so?” he says.
She
squeezes the cushion. “We were having such a nice time, relaxing by
the stream. I was reading and he was just sitting there under the
tree, having a doze I think, and there were birds and sunshine and
- and I opened my big fat mouth and said something and ruined it
all.”
Silence.
“ Why don’t you tell me everything?”
And so
she does, from when they settled down at the stream, via her attack
of verbal diarrhoea, through to the slamming of the hut door, and
Mal listens without interrupting her, nodding in all the right
places.
“ So have a screwed it all up? Is that it … over? Do I have
to go back to the drawing board and start again?”
Mal
interlaces his fingers, forming a little church, thumbs crossed
over to make the door, index fingers pressed together to make the
steeple resting against his pursed lips.
“ I don’t think so,” he says. “I think what you have here is
simply a representation of your own deep-seated insecurity, your
worries about whether this therapy is the right thing for you, your
uncertainties about whether it’s going to work. Even though
you think you are fully committed to the therapy, somewhere in your
subconscious there is that little glowing ember of
doubt.”
“ So Colin’s reaction to my suggesting that nothing was real,
of asking if he was in therapy, his telling me to go away, his
refusal to discuss it, or go to the gate … that’s my Doubting
Thomas making himself known, and I was simply arguing with
myself?”
“ Yup.”
“ So what do I do? I don’t want to not go there any more. I
like it there. I like what it was doing to me, how it made me feel.
I like –”
“ You like Colin?”
She
squeezes the cushion so tightly the seam is in danger of giving
way. “Yes, I do, but when I told him I liked spending time with
him, it just made him angrier.” She curls her top lip. “Couldn’t
have helped that I accused him of acting like a spoiled baby,
though, could it?”
“ Probably not.”
Mal
strokes the finger steeple through his beard and down this throat.
“You can do one of two things,” he says. “A, you walk away from the
whole thing and write it off as an experiment gone sour and we try
something else. That’s the easy option, the coward’s way
out–”
“ Or?
“ Or, B, you give yourself a couple of days to think about
it, to let things settle, to get things straight in your mind, and
then go back, find Colin, tell him how you feel. It’s your place, he’s your creation, and you
are in control. If he doesn’t like it, that’s his
problem.”
“ It’s all so confusing, Mal. The sensations I’m getting.
They are all so real.” She
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