Making Things Better by Anita Brookner Page A

had achieved a way of life— moneyed, cultivated—which would have been denied to his father. He had overcome his father’s constraints. Freud knew that his father would have had no access to the sort of excursion he was taking; therefore he had in a sense betrayed him, outclassed him. The theory is very beautiful, don’t you agree? I too have gone beyond my father, who was a hard-working and unhappy man. Do you think I might have experienced something similar?’
    â€˜When did you last have your blood pressure checked?’
    â€˜Oh, some time ago. Your predecessor, Dr Jordan . . . What happened to him, by the way? A young man . . .’
    â€˜He went to Devizes to take over his father-in-law’s practice. Couldn’t wait to get out of London. The pressures on GPs in London are formidable.’
    â€˜Yes, one hears a lot about that.’
    â€˜I’ll just check. Roll up your sleeve, would you?’
    On the wall behind the doctor’s desk hung an inept watercolour of boats at sunset.
    â€˜Your own work?’ he enquired politely.
    â€˜My wife’s.’
    â€˜Ah.’
    â€˜Our house is full of them. It’s rather high, I’m afraid. Too high. I’ll give you something for that.’
    He consulted his computer. ‘I see that Dr Jordan prescribed glyceryl trinitrate. Have you used it at all?’
    â€˜Those pills one puts under the tongue? No. I don’t use anything. I prefer not to. I think I only saw him once. Dr Jordan, I mean.’
    â€˜They will help you if you have a similar experience again. Silly to ignore the pills. They are there to help you.’
    â€˜Oh, I carry them around with me.’ He patted his pocket. ‘But I prefer to know what’s happening to me. What, in fact, is happening to me? I’m not really ill.’
    â€˜You are not a young man. Have there been other episodes?’
    â€˜Not really. A little faintness sometimes. I’ve only consulted a doctor once, I think.’
    Again he thought of the German doctor in Baden-Baden, who had literally laid on hands. Herz placed a protective hand over his heart. The doctor did not see the gesture, being occupied with his computer. In that instant Herz determined not to consult him again. He was no doubt quite adequate, but in Herz’s opinion did not have the artistic, even the poetic sympathy that would enable him to understand another’s malaise. And his malaise lingered, not in any physical sense, but again in the shape of a cloud on his mental horizon. All his life he had been, not robust, but resistant to illness, obliged to spare others the knowledge of his own weaknesses. And there had been weaknesses, but overcoming them so as not to disturb his parents, even his wife, had been his overriding preoccupation. In this way he had built up a certain immunity to physical distress, though conscious all the time that such defences could be breached. So far he had not succumbed to major illnesses, for which he could take no credit, or to minor ones, for which he could. In his experience a good night’s sleep would enable him to fight another day, and generally he had been proved correct, but lately he had slept badly and sometimes woke in a panic, his heart knocking. It was at times like these, in the very early morning, that he was grateful that he lived alone, could perform the morning rituals slowly, during which time his heart would settle down. As the day wore on he experienced no further tremors, put such tremors down to a nightmare from which he had not woken, but which had been sufficiently disturbing as to make itself known in the form of an inchoate disturbance, largely of the senses. He told himself that altered perception, such as that occasioned by a nightmare, might have physical reverberations. At the same time he was anxious to capture any information that might have been vouchsafed to him in the course of that forgotten dream.
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