Deception aka Sanctum

I said yes, I definitely could, but Susie didn’t believe me. She teased me, alluding to a raunchy lesbian experience she’d had in the sixth form. She said it was with Tina, a buxom girl we’d bumped into at a party once. She wore tight trousers and a fluffy bra; I couldn’t stop staring at her tits. This irritated Susie, but Tina looked like a prostitute. Did I remember her? I gri

The point is that in abstract I agree with a no-entry policy for seventh rooms, but in this raw reality I’d rip the plaster off these walls to find out what was going on. I’d face the fact that Susie was in love with him, admit she killed him and cut his tongue out, deal with every sordid detail because I suspect- and I might well be wrong- but I suspect that I wouldn’t feel just as bad if I knew the truth.

What am I looking for in here anyway? The truth? A fact? Her motive? At the moment, on a day-to-day, hour-to-hour basis, I think, speculate, wonder about Susie’s motives more than any other single thing. Yet motive is the most slippery of truths. After an utterly honest, undefensive, unpropagandizing three months of incessant talk, a brilliant, insightful psychiatrist couldn’t hope to uncover my true motives for taking an unsatisfactory dump this morning. They could call it tension, stress, a mother complex, and I could call it a desire for world peace. All of them could be equally true. It could be a fleeting vitamin deficiency or a dream I don’t remember having. I know this and still I’m wasting time trying to determine what someone else’s motives were for a series of out-of-character actions months ago. I’m up here for hours at a time searching for a completely unknowable quality.

In conclusion, my being here is both wrong and pointless. And still I’m here, scrabbling through the rubble.

A good, true husband would want his wife to be autonomous, could comfortably allow her to leave questions unanswered, and I used to. I loved being so sure of her. I loved having a wife who could go off to a conference and come in and grunt, “Hello” without elaborating. I was proud that she was free to make her own choices, and so was I. Now pain and insecurity make me want to control her, like the arsehole men who kill their wives and girlfriends in the prison-lovers book. I could never have anticipated this hurting and preoccupying me so much. I don’t want Susie to be free to do things that make me feel like this. I don’t want her to have free will at all. If I could, I would rip the free will from her, rip it out and keep it from her.

No one who knew what this feels like could assent to it. In a way it’s proof that God doesn’t exist. If there were a God, and he did love the world, he wouldn’t have given us free will. He would have anticipated this feeling, deemed free will a flaw, and taken it out. Maybe there is a God but he simply doesn’t care what we feel or how much it hurts, in which case any and all pleas for succor or help from him are just about as useful as a nun’s cunt.

God forgive me. That’s the worst curse I’ve ever read or said or heard of.

chapter nineteen

MUM AND DAD CAME DOWN TO THE KITCHEN AS I WAS FINISHING my porridge this morning. They tumbled bleary-eyed into the room as though afraid to have left me alone during the hours of darkness. By my watch it was six-forty-five. It’s an insult to insomniacs, voluntarily getting up at that time. I went upstairs and found Margie standing in her cot, good as gold, chewing Lizzie Limber Legs and watching her mobile. When I got back down, Trisha had appeared. They were all sitting around the table together, chatting politely. They look a bit scary in the mornings because nighttime dehydration and pillow-creasage exaggerate their wrinkled smiles into horribly sarcastic sneers.

I gave Margie a piece of toast and let her run off into the living room, and then I took a deep breath and turned to the assembled crowd. I told them that I had something to say to all of them: I greatly appreciated their coming to support me, but I wanted them to go home now and let me get Margie back into a routine. Susie will be home soon, I said, and everything will be back to normal. They stared at me, dumbfounded at my gall. Mum was a

“I think Trisha should go,” she said. “She has been here for a whole week-”

Determined to be evenhanded, I interrupted her. “No, I want you all to go. I didn’t invite you. This is the worst imaginable time for me to have visitors.”

“ Lachlan,” she said patronizingly, “you’re not well enough for us to go home.”

“Mum,” I said, closing my eyes. “I am perfectly well.”

She huffed disbelievingly, and her voice rose to a familiar brain-gouging pitch. “LACH-LAN,” she said angrily, “your eyes are bright red. It is clear that you are under a lot of strain. To be quite honest, and I don’t mean this in a bad way, I’m actually afraid to leave you alone with the child. There, I’ve said it. You’re not sleeping, you’re being very moody-”

“I CANNOT SLEEP BECAUSE YOU’RE IN MY BED,” I shouted, dropping a plate to the floor. It broke and spiky shards shot across the kitchen floor. “When I can get to sleep, you wake me at six a.m. Having you here is driving me crazy. Just get out, will you? Will you all just get out and leave me alone?”

Trisha deliberately misunderstood and said, “Cheer up,” weakly. Speechless with impotent rage, I picked up her cup and threw it at the wall. The toffee-brown tea splattered across the white emulsion, flecking at the outer edges. They all looked suddenly very old and brittle. In the living room Margie put the television on. An interviewer was questioning someone about a bombing in the Middle East.

“Young man,” said Mum, “it’s about flipping well time blah blah blah.” I can’t remember her exact words, but I was supposed to shape up, ship out, and something something. I wasn’t listening, I was sitting at the table, sagging and bent, wishing I were asleep or at least wi

Trisha stood up suddenly. It’s easy to forget how tall she is. She stands about five eight, which isn’t eugenically freakish or anything, but in Scotland, where all the women are tiny (smallest in Europe), and especially among older women, she seems supernaturally long. I was only half listening, so this is a paraphrase. “I think Lachlan has done incredibly well. I think he deserves a little peace and quiet now. The very least we can do is go and stay at a hotel.”

I don’t even think it was just to piss Mum off, either. I think she believed it.

“I don’t need you to tell me what to do, you sneaky prig,” Mum shouted, and I covered my face. Name-calling. Always death to rational argument. “I think I know what’s best for my own son.”

“I’m not telling you what to do,” said long tall Trisha. “I’m telling you my opinion as to what we should do. I think we should leave him in peace and be supportive from a distance.”

“From a distance?” Mum was really fired up now. Dad and I have both seen this scenario a hundred times. When Mum gets past a certain degree of a