Listening In

by Kevin Chandler

Genres: General Fiction; Coming of Age; Literary Fiction

Synopsis

Listening In allows the reader to eavesdrop behind the closed door of the therapy room, where private and personal lives are stripped bare. Forty-something Patrick Chime is a talented therapist but terrible husband. When a client demands Patrick's personal, as well as professional, involvement in his life, he is forced to evaluate not only the true worth of the therapy but also the cost to him of a life spent listening in. As his world starts to unravel, and he learns more about his client's obsessions with the artist Degas and internet sex, Patrick comes to appreciate the parallels between therapy and prostitution and starts to question which is more genuine...

Release date: September 15, 2011

Publisher: Accent Press

Print pages: 305

Sample

Chapter One

December 23rd …

WHEN YOU EARN YOUR living by the hour providing an intimate service for total strangers, you develop a keen feel for the passage of time, and he sensed that hers was almost up. A deft glance at the clock confirmed as much and he smiled inwardly. He watched in silence as she filled out his cheque, savouring the elegant swirls of permanent black glimpsed beneath the blood red flashes of her nails. She had barely completed the signature when a raft of hail clattered the window, putting paid to his reverie and making her shudder to the core; such child-like reaction in so painstakingly beautiful a woman he found almost touching. Loosing the cheque, she wafted it back and forth, pursed her lips and blew long and seductively across the surface as if it were a hot tasty morsel she was preparing to pop into an infant’s mouth. He found himself both engrossed and amused by this ritual, despite her eyes for once being trained, not on him, but on events outside.

“There,” and satisfied the ink was dry she gave the cutest smile. “I must say I like your taste in paintings,” Gina declared, gesturing to the two Degas prints upon the wall between their chairs, as she leaned forward to hand him the cheque, forcing him to avert his eyes from the first subtle hint of her cleavage. “Far more conducive than the weather.”

Seeing no need to apologise for the weather, and resisting his desire to enquire what she saw in the Degas prints, he simply thanked her politely, stashed his fee inside his week-to-a-view diary, confirmed time and date of her next appointment and led her out into reception. Hearing her groan as another blast of hail scatter-gunned the pane, he turned to be confronted by her handbag, proffered as she made to don the black p.v.c. trench-coat draped across her arm. Ignoring the bag, he seized the coat and held it open invitingly. He noticed how her body acquiesced, the way her spine arched towards him allowing her shoulders to press against the heels of his palms much as a cat brushes the legs of its owner, and for one fleeting moment, he almost regretted not taking the handbag after all. Raising the collar about her neck she craned to look back at him.

“Mmm, the perfect gentlemen, thank you, Patrick,” she purred, and her eyes cast him a kiss, “… and to think, one of my girlfriends told me to watch out; she said ‘therapist’ also spells ‘the rapist’!”

Patrick’s smile was tight-lipped.

Despite Gina’s long coat depriving him of his customary glimpse of her fine legs, his eyes followed her along the landing until she disappeared from view down the stairs, at which point he quietly closed the office door and retreated to the safety of his desk. Removing her file, he opened its buff cover and shook his head. No sooner had he written the date than there was a loud knock on the outer door and he let out a sigh. ‘What is it this time,’ he thought, rising wearily from his chair, ‘car keys, fountain pen, or the card for her next appointment? Any ploy to exact a little more than her due, and of course, it always works.’

“Neil!” Patrick’s jaw dropped. “I thought you were …”

“Dead? We’re all dead, Patrick, it’s just that some of us don’t know it yet. I imagine you still allow half an hour between clients? By the way … she’s hot! How do you keep your eyes trained on her psyche when what you really want is to look up her skirt? Well, are you going to let me in or do we have to conduct our conversation on the doorstep?”

Patrick closed his mouth, swallowed hard and swung the door wide allowing his deceased ex-client to step across the threshold where they both loitered uncomfortably.

“Er, shall we, go through …?” Somehow Patrick stuttered out the words that seemed required by his role as host.

“To the therapy room? I know I haven’t got an appointment, but I hoped I could rely on a good pro like you turning a trick for a sad old punter like me? It’ll be just like old times, eh, Patrick?”

They settled in their accustomed positions and Patrick’s hands fidgeted for something to grasp. Normally at the start of a session he would place his diary, symbolising both the promise, and limitations, of the therapeutic alliance, down upon the coffee table and commence proceedings with his customary word of introduction, ‘Welcome’. But this was no scheduled appointment and his diary lay alongside Gina’s notes out there on the desk. Instead, Patrick’s elbows located the flat wooden arms of his therapy chair, allowing his hands to interlock and support his chin in a futile effort to establish a degree of comfort. Duly settled, he focused upon the young man whose own hands lay quiet and still in his lap, from which the long, black nozzle of a silencer lay trained in Patrick’s direction.

“Neil, that’s not funny.”

“Quite right.”

“Is that thing real?” Patrick enquired softly.

“Real as that hole in your wall,” replied Neil, shifting his head a touch to the right. Patrick half-turned to follow Neil’s line of sight and as he did so a muffled crack rang out and a neat hole appeared in the wall just behind his head surrounded by a ring of crazed plaster. In slow motion, Patrick’s hands parted, lowered and gripped the arms of his chair as if they were handrails on a rope-bridge.

“Neil …” Patrick had no idea how the sentence would end, let alone this impromptu session with a dead client. Suddenly, Neil’s words came back to him, ‘We’re all dead, Patrick, it’s just that some of us don’t know it yet.’ And Patrick realised his own life was about to end in the very place where he had chosen to live the best of it, here in his therapy room, staring down a barrel of malaise.

Chapter Two

Two months earlier …

MOST WOMEN LEARN THAT there are two things to be wary of criticising in a man: his driving and the size of his penis; but then Patrick Chime was not your typical man. His Saab convertible had seen better days, and, should a boy racer cut him up, Patrick would simply emit a self-satisfied sigh at having no need of reckless point-scoring to shore up his maleness. As for his genitals, he knew there was nothing the matter with his cock even if Maggie no longer cherished its presence inside her. Besides, Patrick understood better than most men that female sexual desire and fulfilment owe less to the gauge of a man’s penis than to the sensitivity of his tongue, whichever use he puts it to. No, as far as criticism was concerned, Patrick’s Achilles heel was not to be found in his garage, or in his underpants, but in the fact that despite total strangers happily paying substantial sums of money to have him hear their woes, his own wife’s abiding complaint was that he never really listened.

The spat with Maggie culminated in Patrick departing for work half an hour earlier than usual, un-availed of breakfast and leaving no goodbye in his wake. Along the three-mile route he sought comfort voicing every obscenity he could think of for the wife whose ace had already trumped the lot. The exercise at least served to let off steam and by the time he tired of repeating himself he had reached the roundabout a half-mile from his destination, the converted West Yorkshire woollen mill that was home to a wine merchant, reproduction furniture hall, fitness centre & café, craft shop, computer repairer, upholsterer, and nail salon-cum-tanning centre, as well as his own consulting rooms tucked away up on the second floor. Parking in his assigned place, nose-to-the-wall, rather than reversing in as was his custom in the days when he held more enthusiasm for the homeward journey, he snatched the keys from the ignition, climbed out and gave the door an unnecessarily harsh slam. Such was the closest Patrick ever dared veer towards domestic violence.

Examining the pile of post on the mat behind the mill’s outer door, he removed the single item addressed to him and carried it up to his small suite of rooms. After inserting his key he gave the brass plate outside his office door its customary affectionate tap, PATRICK CHIME, M.A., MBACP ~ Therapeutic Counselling and Supervision Services, Est. 1994, and stepped into an intense ray of light as the low autumnal sun streamed through the IKEA wooden blinds. He adjusted the angle of the slats, set up the espresso machine and tore open the envelope to reveal, not as he’d hoped, a cheque from an ex-client who had reneged on their final appointment still owing him for two sessions, but circulars for two forthcoming training courses: Transpersonal Agendas in the Therapeutic Alliance: An Experiential Workshop and Maximising Your Potential: How to Establish a Successful Private Practice. The waste-bin was already full but the heel of Patrick’s boot easily created the necessary space.

He poured his first coffee of the day, whose absence of crema caused him to swill it down the sink and set about grinding fresh beans. His second attempt proved satisfactory and he wandered through to the therapy room and settled by the window to overlook the still quiet car park. He preferred this time of day, before the other outlets opened and the stream of delivery vans, wine buffs, tan seekers and middle-aged wives bent on showing their reluctant husbands the reproduction table that would go a treat in their hallway, began to arrive. Even then, he was able to shut most of it out, his domain a calm, still point in the busy material whirl. He treasured the look of surprise whenever a new client crossed the threshold to be struck by the airy light, the soft hues, warm sofas, unassuming desk, and tidy kitchen corner of the reception area; and on into the inner sanctum of the therapy room, with its deep secure armchairs, the wall adorned by two carefully chosen prints: the agony of inter-personal estrangement portrayed by Edgar Degas’ L’Absinthe, contrasting so well with the precious pearl of intimacy, captured in Au Café, by the same artist. Installed in place when he first opened his private practice, he felt they symbolised the essence of what his work is about, the struggle between intimacy and isolation, and he was always pleased when a client passed comment on them. Given the motley exterior of the rest of the mill, Patrick knew it was hard not to be impressed by the insulated little world he had created up here, conveying such promise of the peace and harmony lacking in his clients’ lives. Of course, some arrived so wrapped in their own misery they failed to notice much at all on their first visit. But even for those with such little awareness of their surroundings, Patrick held faith that something of the care he had invested in creating this therapeutic haven might still permeate their psyche.

Patrick leaned on the windowsill, his face warmed by the autumnal sun and bathed in contentment at the course his professional life had taken until a new tear in the Saab’s soft-top claimed his attention. Its paintwork faded and scratched and with repair bills mounting, it really was time to sell, and he sighed, anticipating no satisfaction at all in the once-a-decade process of changing his means of transport. He conjured images of lines of men in W.H. Smith, as still as statues, poring over What Car, Exchange & Mart, and Auto Trader as if they were porn magazines. His contempt was razor-edged, but, as always, the manufactured sense of his own superiority failed to deliver the required measure of reassurance. For one whose business was largely about helping people cope with change, Patrick found change remarkably difficult to manage in his own life.

He checked his watch. Twenty-five past eight, the exact time Nuala’s bus leaves for sixth form college, the bus he reminded her of every morning as she dawdled and chattered her way through breakfast. ‘Bus minus five!’ he’d chirp, as if he was really not that bothered whether or not she caught it. And he remembered that today she would not be running for the bus, for she was in halls at Newcastle University, fresher year, probably still in bed, and quite possibly not alone. Chasing the idea from his mind, he substituted a vision of the empty nest at the top of the cul-de-sac that he shared with Maggie. His thoughts climbed the stairs to Nuala’s room. It remained ‘Nuala’s room’ despite Maggie’s suggestion that they should re-decorate and turn it into a guest room. It was home to Bruno, Rabbit, & Mole, no longer required in Nuala’s new grown-up life and left scattered on the floor until retrieved by Patrick and arranged in a neat, harmonious line across the bedspread. He wandered through to their bedroom, with its unmade bed and army of shoes sprawled lazily underneath, almost incognito under a veil of dust. Every so often, Maggie made noises about getting a cleaning lady, but, to Patrick’s relief, such intrusion into the narrow confines of their intimacy somehow never came to pass.

He recalled that morning’s conflict; it was over the gasman, coming to service their troublesome central-heating boiler. A week ago Maggie had asked Patrick to be home to let him in as she had a corporate golf day arranged with clients and would be out until late. He had agreed, and, of course, had forgotten all about it until she reminded him as he prepared breakfast.

“… But I can’t. I’ve got clients booked in!”

He registered the contempt in her stare, the exasperated sigh, and the way she strode from the kitchen leaving him standing by the worktop, half an eye on the toaster he had absent-mindedly neglected to switch on. He was still considering how to respond when her voice drifted back from the hall, as clinical and mechanical as the answering machine into which she was reciting her message.

“Mrs Chime here, I’m sorry to inform you I must cancel the boiler service arranged for this afternoon, I’m afraid my husband can’t get his act together. I’ll ring you later to book another time. Goodbye.”

‘O.T.T.,’ he thought, but it provided sufficient impetus for a retaliatory strike and he ventured out into the hall.

“Was that really necessary?”

“You think not? Well, next time, you do it!” she snapped. “You know the trouble with you, Pat? You never bloody listen! You spend too much time living inside your own fucking head!”

Patrick’s mouth gaped like a fish out of water but no sound emerged. If it had, it is unlikely Maggie would have heard, for she was already climbing the stairs to gather up her golf attire. And so, lacking the resolve to chase after her, stand toe to toe and slug it out, Patrick did the one other manly thing he could think of, grabbed jacket and car keys and stormed out of the house.

Patrick didn’t need to puzzle long over the episode, he already knew which barbs carried most poison: ‘… my husband can’t get his act together … the trouble with you … never bloody listen … living inside your fucking head’, all laced with that sneering tone of voice. What made these jibes all the more uncomfortable was his suspicion that they carried a sizeable measure of truth. It was becoming clear to Patrick that it wasn’t only his car that needed serious attention, and he sighed once again, knowing only too well that some things in life are easier than others to repair. ‘The M.O.T runs out in the New Year,’ he reminded himself. ‘I’ll decide what to do then and just patch-up the soft-top for now. As for my marriage …’

Patrick glanced at his watch, reached for the diary and prepared to face his first client of the day.

Meanwhile, back at the house, Maggie had locked up, set the alarm, and was out on the drive carefully arranging her golf clubs and shoes, and a small holdall containing towel, toilet bag, change of clothes and underwear, in the boot of her VW. Maggie was indeed setting off to play around, but as on previous occasions over recent months, she would not be setting foot on any golf course.

Chapter Three

THROUGHOUT THE SESSION, PATRICK observed Neil retreating deeper and deeper into himself until he sat like a leaden weight, chin on his chest, eyes offering no further contact. An armchair away, Patrick watched and waited. A minute passed but felt like more. Silence, it’s such a rare commodity nowadays, as Patrick likes to tell new student counsellors, one that most new entrants to his profession find difficult. Most quickly learn to bite their tongues, some even take foolish pride in never being the one to break the silence, but few truly come to terms with either the lack of stimulation, or the delegation of responsibility, in allowing silence to run its course.

“I didn’t wanna come today,” Neil muttered at last, his voice drained of any semblance of enthusiasm.

Patrick nodded, allowing a further silence to elapse.

“So, why did you?” he enquired at last, when it became apparent more was needed.

“What, cancel at short notice and get a bill from you for half-fee?” Neil groused through half-open lips, stealing the briefest glance at his inquisitor before resuming his former pose.

“Is the money the only reason you decided to show up?” asked Patrick.

“I could ask you the same thing!” he muttered under his breath.

“Why don’t you?” said Patrick, provocatively.

Neil just squirmed in his seat and did not rise to the challenge.

“Look, I know you’re trying to help,” he said at last, “but it just isn’t getting any better.”

“What’s not getting any better?” asked Patrick.

Neil sighed in exasperation.

“The way I feel!”

“And what’s wrong with the way you feel?”

“Christ, don’t you listen?” spat Neil, seizing the chance to express some justifiable anger, “I’ve been telling you for weeks, I’m miserable, I’m fed up, everyone else’s relationships work out, why don’t mine?”

Pat’s eyes widened ostentatiously.

“Everyone else’s? Have you seen the divorce figures lately?”

Neil shifted uncomfortably, glanced at Patrick, looked away, then back at his close tormentor, and for a moment Patrick wondered if he’d pushed Neil too far. Early thirties, bit of a short-arse, prematurely balding, designer-suit but ill-fitting, and permanently anguished; it was never quite clear who Neil despised most, himself, or the world of successful men he aspired, and conspicuously failed, to join. Patrick’s tease had stretched what little rapport they’d established to its limits. Grudgingly, Neil let out a snort, which soon dissolved into a laugh; a laugh that grew loud and prolonged, triggering a half-smile in Patrick, until he realised that Neil was not only laughing, but also crying. Patrick waited, wondering whether to speak, just as Neil slumped forward and began rocking to and fro, his arms wrapped around himself like a straitjacket, and his bitter lament squeezed out about between sobs.

“I just … want to know … when I’ll feel better … can’t bear, the thought … of … going on like this … not knowing; I just want to know … when I’ll feel better!” This last almost a shriek.

“I know you do, Neil” replied Patrick, leaning forward, “and I realise you’re very unhappy, and I wish I had a magic wand that would conjure up an answer, so I could tell you, ‘Here Neil, such and such a date, this is when you’ll feel better, this is when you’ll be happy …’ But I haven’t fucking got one, have I? And what’s more, you know I haven’t, and that’s why you didn’t want to come here today and why inside you’re so angry, because, like all the other significant people in your life, Neil, I’m a let-down. I’m a disappointment to you.”

On hearing this, something gave inside Neil, his chest heaved, he gulped a lungful of air as if it was his last, and his sobs began again, but meatier now, closer to the bone. Throughout Neil’s torment, Patrick remained still, bound by the dutiful, helpless regard of a father paying silent witness to a son’s pain. He thought he recognised Neil’s tears; they were tears for what might have been; tears for the love a son expects will always be denied; tears for the love he doesn’t believe he deserves and, should he ever stumble across it, most probably would not trust.

Minutes passed, and only when Neil had set about wiping his eyes and runny nose with his clenched fist, did Patrick reach out and nudge the box of tissues across the coffee table. Neil pulled out one, then another, and his chest gave another mighty heave before he spoke.

“I battle all the time, I keep telling myself to keep trying, to listen to what you say to me, to not give up on this; and then another part of me says, don’t listen to you, don’t keep coming here, you don’t really care, all I mean to you is forty-five quid an hour for sitting there doing nothing. And that’s why I nearly didn’t come today.”

Now it was Patrick’s turn to sigh.

“This is the crux, isn’t it, Neil? Can you believe that you really mean something to another human being? Do I really give a shit about you? Do I really want you to feel better? Because once you do, you won’t need to come any more, and I’ll lose what you see as my weekly supply of money for old rope.”

For once, Neil was watching as well as listening.

“Well, do you? Do you give a shit?” he asked tentatively, and looked away before he could receive any answer, clenching his teeth so as not to cry again.

Patrick waited before responding,

“Well, what do you think?” he asked, softly.

“You always do that, turn stuff back to me,” Neil complained.

“And if I told you whether or not I gave a shit, would you believe me?”

“You’re doing it again, turning it all back to me!”

“Yes, it’s my job, to make you think,” Patrick said firmly, and felt a twinge of discomfort at the note of self-satisfaction he recognised in his own voice, as if he’d just made the telling point in the argument.

“Some job!” Neil sneered, shaking his head.

“It pays,” replied Patrick, tilting his head, coquettishly.

Neil responded like a flash, his laser stare locking onto Patrick’s features in fearful search of a fond father, while Patrick’s heart accelerated as a lifetime’s doubt and hope hovered between the two men. Neither spoke, until Patrick saw Neil’s eyes soften and fill.

“Same time next week, Neil?” asked Patrick, kindly, and with a tentative smile.

The younger man nodded.

“I’ll be here,” he whispered, and reached inside his jacket pocket for the money.

“Me too,” said Patrick, leaning across to receive it.

Patrick sat at his desk in the corner of the reception room. He had already written the date and the words Neil, In There, Disappointment, Anger, Trust, and now sat back staring at the page. One of the things Patrick loved about therapy was the opportunity, indeed the necessity, to ponder the meanings of language. Since commencing his training in the days before management consultants turned the stuffy old Marriage Guidance Council into image-conscious Relate, he had heard his trainers and fellow students speak readily of ‘going into therapy’. Interesting how no one ever speaks of going into counselling. People have counselling, but enter therapy. It is a distinction that used to irritate Patrick, seeing it as pretension on the part of those who clothe and elevate themselves in the title ‘therapist’, as if their customers, in buying time and thoughtful attention from a fellow human being, in addition to being re-branded as ‘clients’, must pass through some kind of portal, into a holy of holies where the therapist holds court. For much of his career he had stuck to the term ‘counselling’, more down to earth, less grandiose. But as years went by Patrick observed how the counselling profession too, seduced by business opportunities and society’s spray-on counselling response to various traumas, had fallen in love with itself, and he was now much less enamoured of it. He gave a sigh. ‘Whatever you choose to call it,’ he thought to himself, ‘there are times when it’s not sufficient to simply come along and talk about your problems, those very problems have to be experienced and addressed first-hand in the therapeutic relationship. That’s what Neil did this morning, and it was far from comfortable for him. Come to think of it, it wasn’t too cosy for me either, for, until this morning, I can’t say I much liked him.’

Patrick scribbled a large ‘S’ at the foot of the page, signifying, ‘Take to supervision!’, filed the sheet away in the buff folder and checked his diary … 10:30 a.m. Grace.

Out along the ring road, two cars were heading in opposite directions, each driven by a female occupant en route to a secret assignation. The black Volkswagen Passat travelled the faster of the two, its thirty-nine-year-old driver already aware of the first rush of anticipation stirring between her legs. Glancing at the rear-view mirror, nothing close behind, she then craned her neck to check her make-up and was pleased that, having long since come to terms with guilt, her eyes easily held her stare. She did not notice the silver Audi pass by on the other carriageway, driven by a woman of similar age and attractiveness, a woman also on a mission, a woman close to the edge.

Chapter Four

THE SESSION WITH NEIL served to take Patrick’s mind off Maggie’s verbal assault but irritation kicked in once more as he sat awaiting the arrival of his new client. The jibe that he ‘never listened’ was easy to deal with. Now, if she’d only charged him with being a ‘poor listener’, or stuck to the key issue by challenging him on why he’d forgotten that particular request; but in opting for exaggeration to stress her point Maggie had merely undermined her own case, enabling him to dispatch the accusation with a flurry, way beyond the boundary. Next up, ‘the trouble with you …’ A cheap shot, like a fast bowler sending down a bouncer at a tail-ender; intimidating, but hardly a tactic to be proud of. Patrick was warming to this post-match analysis and starting to feel a little better. Next up, ‘… spend too much time living inside your own fucking head’. Clean bowled, middle stump, no appeal necessary, or allowed. Patrick’s undoing was what is referred to in his trade as ‘attending to process over content’. Fascination with process, it’s what made him a half-decent therapist, and such an infuriating husband.

The knock was so quiet he wondered if he might have missed an earlier one, but she said not. Patrick’s antennae set to work: dark hair cut in a smart bob, cradled by raised collar of long camel coat (unbuttoned), limp handshake, cold hand, light make-up, black pencil skirt, good shoes, dark eyes, tentative smile.

“You must be Grace …”

“Grace...R-Reynolds, that’s right.” And he detected a tremor in her voice as she stumbled over the first syllable of her surname.

“I nearly said Darling!”

“I’m sorry …” said Patrick, thrown by such an inappropriate endearment, and at such an early stage in proceedings.

“Darling … my maiden name, after my father’s great heroine and namesake ever since he learned about her at primary school: Grace Darling, the lighthouse keeper’s daughter up on the Northumberland coast? She rowed out with her father in a storm to save the lives of sailors shipwrecked on rocks a mile off shore. Well, my father was so impressed by the story he persuaded my mother to name me Grace.”

Patrick could see she was gabbling but decided to go with the flow, at least until they had sat down.

“And how do you feel about being named after another man’s daughter, albeit a famous heroine?” he asked, closing the office door and drawing her further inside.

“I like it, but I’m glad he drew the line at Grace, her middle name was ‘Horsely’. Anyway, I haven’t been a ‘Darling’ for sixteen years so I don’t know what made me almost say it ju. . .