A Psychiatrist, Screams Read online

  Title Page

  A PSYCHIATRIST, SCREAMS

  An Abbot Peter Mystery

  by

  Simon Parke

  Publisher Information

  First published in 2013 by

  Darton, Longman and Todd Ltd

  1 Spencer Court

  140 - 142 Wandsworth High Street

  London SW18 4JJ

  Digital edition converted and distributed in 2013 by

  Andrews UK Limited

  www.andrewsuk.com

  © 2013 Simon Parke

  The right of Simon Parke to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. Any person who does so may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  Dedication

  To the flower

  who grows through the wall

  Thanks

  My thanks to Shellie Wright, Elizabeth Spradbery (the Queen of Commas) and David Moloney, who were all kind enough to read and comment on the text along the way.

  And to all at DLT for their various and remarkable skills ... and their madcap willingness to venture further with Abbot Peter.

  ‘Neurotics complain of their illness but they make the most of it; and when it comes to taking it away from them they will defend it like a lioness her young.’

  Sigmund Freud in a letter to Martha Bernays

  Act One

  The goal of psychoanalysis is the movement from misery to ordinary human unhappiness.

  Sigmund Freud

  One

  Stormhaven, England

  Halloween night

  early twenty-first century

  Although seven clowns started the evening alive, only six still breathed by the evening’s end. And while everyone saw the murderer and knew the murderer, no one knew their name.

  The Lord of Misrule had seen to that.

  They’d seen to everything at the Feast of Fools.

  Two

  Shiraz, Persia

  1389

  ‘Believe me, Behrouz, death is a favour to us!’ said the plump Hafiz, seated on the divan.

  ‘If you say so, master.’

  Behrouz was glad of a break from his inky toils and the concentration they required.

  ‘Your disbelief is poorly disguised, Behrouz.’

  ‘I speak as I find.’

  ‘Then clearly you haven’t found very much.’

  A gauntlet was laid down, which Behrouz picked up.

  ‘I’ve just never regarded death as a favour.’

  How could death ever be a favour? It was a ridiculous idea. His master may write fine lines - very fine, some of them - but that didn’t mean he had to agree with him. It was a professional relationship, poet and copyist. They must concur over text and punctuation, but not about the mystery of death. If you had to agree about death, who really would you be friends with?

  ‘Then in what manner have you regarded death?’ asked the poet in his flowery silks of red and gold.

  ‘Not as a favour, that’s for sure.’

  ‘Already established, I think.’

  ‘Definitely not as a favour.’ Patience, Hafiz, patience.

  ‘So how?’ asks Hafiz gently.

  ‘No sane person regards death as a favour.’

  The poet was a joyful presence, almost always, perhaps content more than joyful, for who can always be joyful? But he was distracted today, with much on his mind.

  ‘Well, that is most strange,’ he says.

  It was strange to Hafiz that someone should not regard death as a favour.

  ‘Why would I?’ comes the firm reply.

  Behrouz has been getting bolder of late. When first employed, he was in awe of this smooth-skinned wordsmith, but lives now in another land, a truer land, a land of respect, trust... and constant disagreement.

  ‘Why would you, Behrouz?’

  The tone is incredulous, as though the answer is sitting on his lap in a robe of bejewelled gold.

  ‘Death is the end of our painful marriage with cruel beauty! A most divine favour, surely?’

  The calligrapher looks out across the courtyard and ponders his evening meal.

  ‘Perhaps for poets but not for copyists,’ he says.

  ‘We are no different.’

  ‘You are different. There’s no fancy longing for death among tradesmen, believe me.’

  The poet shakes his head.

  ‘You need more delight in your life, Behrouz.’

  ‘I’ll settle for more wine.’

  ‘God’s beauty is a great deal more intoxicating.’

  ‘So you keep saying.’

  ‘And no hangover, no demons in your head the day after!’

  ‘I find the red very adequate.’

  For the first time in a while, a long while, concern crosses the face of the poet - a blue sky touched by cloud. And he has his reasons.

  Hafiz has been court poet for more years than he can remember - not true, he remembers them all and not all have been easy, far from it. But as he sits with Behrouz sipping rose sherbet, he does ponder what it all means. These moments come, not often but sometimes, moments when we breathe deeply and wonder: what does it all add up to? Or was subtraction a better approach to the meaning of life? What must he take away or lose to see things more clearly?

  Hafiz was sixty-four years of age - imagine it! Sixty-four years of breathing this earth’s fine air and now celebrated by many for his wonderful words - oh, yes, this Persian poet could write, very popular around town!

  But behind his words lay much unresolved, much unhealed; and too many times in these palace rooms he’d quite failed to redeem the present from his sadness. That we’ll return to, sadness can always be postponed. But for now, here in this moment, the harder edge of fear cuts at his life.

  ‘My life’s work is under threat,’ as he’d said to Behrouz just yesterday and he believed it. There were rumours, plots and grudges out there, poison brewed and stirred. As courtiers have always known, forget the dark forest-a royal palace is the most dangerous place to live.

  ‘So how are we doing?’ he asks, with a deliberately casual air. No pressure.

  ‘Do you mean “How am I doing”?’

  Behrouz is definitely standing up for himself more these days, Hafiz has noticed; in fact he barely ever sits down. And this independence is to be applauded by the poet, if not always with great merriment. You can get used to wide-eyed admiration and miss it when it’s gone.

  ‘It’s a partnership, surely?’ he says. ‘I compose the poems, you copy them.’

  ‘Then we’re going as fast as we can.’

  ‘That’s good, very good,’ he says, pondering the minaret skyline.

  ‘You press more than usual,’ says Behrouz.

  ‘You think so?’

  ‘You do not usually press in this manner.’

  ‘Then forgive me - but perhaps work harder nonetheless.’

  ‘I do believe you’re worried!’

  ‘Worried? Maybe. If I press - and I do press, I know; I know I press - I press because
these stiffening hands of mine cannot hold a pen for more than a minute... and because of that dear bastard Karim.’

  ‘Karim - is he the slight one?’

  ‘In body but not influence - and he snarls at my heretic heels.’

  ‘Not a good enemy, I hear.’

  ‘A bad enemy, brim-full of hate. And I suspect - no, I’m certain - there’s no time to lose. They are coming for me, Behrouz, I smell it in the air.’

  ‘I’m writing as fast as I can.’

  ‘Of course you are, so who could ask more?’

  ‘You?’

  Hafiz smiles.

  ‘Well, maybe I could ask for a little bit more. Speed is of the essence.’

  ‘But speed must share the carriage with legibility.’

  ‘You become a poet yourself!’

  Behrouz is quietly pleased with the line. He would use it when next with colleagues.

  ‘Our deadline?’ he asks.

  ‘By tomorrow night, please.’

  ‘Tomorrow night?’

  ‘Possible?’

  ‘I will try.’

  ‘And then your journey starts, my friend.’

  ‘I know, I know.’

  ‘Even if mine must end.’

  There is fear in his words. Death may be a favour - but it doesn’t mean we have to desire it.

  Three

  Monday, 3 November

  ‘So what does “Mind Gains” mean to you?’ says the pushy female over the phone.

  ‘Mind games?’

  ‘Mind Gains.’

  ‘Mind Gains?’ says a male in a monk’s habit that still contains desert sand. ‘Well, it’s a mental health clinic recently opened in Stormhaven.’

  ‘Of which you are a trustee?’

  ‘I am, yes.’

  ‘So you know the place well?’

  ‘I know the place to a degree. I’m not sure I know it well.’

  ‘Why do you have to qualify everything?’

  ‘I prefer accuracy to headlines.’

  ‘It’s irritating.’

  ‘Good.’

  The inquisitor, with an urgent agenda this morning, returns to the matter in hand. Her agenda is always urgent.

  ‘So what do you know of Mind Gains?’

  ‘A better question, more open.’

  ‘And the answer?’

  ‘One AGM so far, a wander round its premises in the remarkable Henry House, a few chats with users and staff... a very nice cleaner there called Pat.’

  ‘You fancy her?’

  ‘She should probably be running the place.’

  ‘You do fancy her.’

  ‘She’s a leader.’

  ‘Only held back by the broom in her hand and a complete lack of qualifications?’

  The inquisitor likes her qualifications, something of a personal treasure, something for the mantelpiece, for display.

  ‘And I suppose,’ says the man, reflecting further on the clinic, ‘I’m an occasional shoulder for Barnabus Hope to cry on.’

  ‘Barnabus Hope, co-director?’

  ‘The same.’

  ‘So you know him well?’

  ‘I know him quite well.’

  Not this again. Is a straight answer a sin?

  ‘And why was he crying?’ she asks.

  The question is fast out of the blocks, like an eager whippet. The Mind Gains clinic is important but Barnabus Hope even more so.

  ‘Oh well, nothing really. It’s a metaphor.’

  ‘You mean he wasn’t crying?’

  ‘Oh no, he was crying - but crying on the inside.’

  ‘On the inside?’

  ‘I’m not sure if that counts as crying, though it’s common enough.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Why do people cry? How long have you got?’

  ‘I mean, what made Barnabus cry?’ Now there’s an intimate question.

  ‘He has certain difficulties at the clinic, but -’

  ‘What sort of difficulties?’

  ‘For God’s sake!’ thinks Peter. Too many questions, one after another, like some long and tedious form to be filled.

  ‘Oh, the usual sort in the mental health trade.’

  ‘And what are the usual sort? It’s not familiar territory.’

  ‘Well, obviously it’s never the clients who are mad - it’s the staff.’

  ‘Any in particular?’

  ‘As I’ve said, I’m really not an expert on the internal relationships at the clinic.’

  ‘You see everything, Abbot - stop obfuscating.’

  ‘You’ve bought a dictionary since we last met.’

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘Relationships at Mind Gains?’

  ‘In your own time.’

  ‘It’s not an easy relationship between Barnabus and his fellow director, Frances Pole.’

  ‘Why not?’

  Was this how it was on University Challenge? He’d seen the programme, his first experience of TV, while house-sitting for a nun last year. How she came to have a house, he wasn’t sure, but then he was an Abbot and he had a house, though not a house as nice as the nun’s nook with its aromatic oil sticks and huge TV. And as for University Challenge, what really was the point? He’d sat watching in increasing bewilderment: knowledge for the sake of knowledge, knowledge without understanding, endless questions fired low and hard for no other reason than points on a board and the limp applause of family and friends. Questions were worth more than that, and he’d been glad to return to the silence of his own front room. Back with the inquisition, however, he was now attempting an answer:

  ‘I suppose Frances comes from a different therapeutic tradition to Barnabus.’

  ‘Psychologists at war?’

  ‘Maybe. There are different schools in the world of mind health and that can create tensions. Remember Freud and Jung.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘It’s of no great consequence.’

  He shouldn’t have mentioned Freud and Jung.

  ‘It may help me to know,’ she says, sensing his reluctance. The Abbot sighs.

  ‘They started as master and pupil, father and son, in a way. But difference of therapeutic approach began to divide them as humans.’

  ‘What sort of difference?’

  ‘Where to start?’

  ‘The beginning?’

  ‘There isn’t one. But Freud believed the principal driving force behind men and women’s activities was repressed sexuality.’

  ‘Everything’s a penis?’ Ignore that for now.

  ‘So for Freud, it was unfulfilled sexuality that led to pathological conditions, whereas Jung, his former disciple, cast the net a little wider, believed that sex was just one of the many forces that drives humans.’

  ‘Ambition?’

  ‘Maybe. Jung saw the human need to achieve individuation as the most important drive.’

  ‘Indi what?’

  ‘Individuation, the search for full knowledge of the self. The goal of the therapist, according to Jung, is to help the client recognize the work of the unconscious and thereby guide them towards becoming a more whole person.’

  ‘You’re losing me.’

  ‘Why don’t we leave Freud and Jung in their graves?’

  ‘Good idea. We need to get on.’

  She was all for leaving people in their graves, especially if their dug-up bodies held up an investigation.

  ‘We were talking about Barnabus’s difficult relationship with Frances.’

  The Abbot’s mind returns to Henry House and the Mind Gains clinic.

  ‘Sometimes we simply struggle with people.’

  ‘So it wasn’
t just rival theories with these two?’

  ‘Our wars are never about our theories, they’re about ourselves. We may buy the same newspaper as someone or share a passion for Persian miniatures - but somehow, and for some reason, we simply don’t get on. And that’s how it is between Barnabus and Frances... who can, I know, appear a rather unhealed soul.’

  A slight pause, hardly a pause at all.

  ‘What are you doing now?’ she asks.

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘What are you doing now?’

  ‘Holding the phone. Though really, who isn’t?’

  ‘Who isn’t what?’

  ‘Who isn’t a rather unhealed soul?’

  ‘Well, me for a start!’ she says. The Abbot laughs.

  ‘I applaud your self-confidence Tamsin, even if I weep for your self-awareness.’

  Abbot Peter is in his early sixties with a heart rate of forty-one beats per minute, due to a strange passion for running. He likes running, always has, even in the desert. He’d completed the Saharan marathon on six separate occasions and one day, and may it be soon, his nervous English doctor will stop sending him to hospital for yet another heart scan, and just accept that he’s fit for his age.

  Doctor: ‘Your pulse rate is low.’

  Abbot: ‘Yes, I run. It often is low with runners.’ Doctor: ‘Even so.’

  Abbot: ‘It’s been low for many years.’ Doctor: ‘Perhaps a check-up would be wise.’ Frustrated Abbot: ‘Another one?’

  ‘We just want to be sure.’

  ‘I think we are, aren’t we?’

  ‘Feeling okay otherwise?’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘You seem tense, there could be something more here. Can you locate a specific pain?’

  Peter could, but it would have upset the doctor; and like all truly dangerous people, she meant well.

  In between hospital visits, he was an Abbot in retirement from the desert, and spoke now with Tamsin Shah, both a Detective Inspector here in East Sussex and his recently discovered niece. Twenty-five years of Peter’s life had been spent in the rock and sand of Middle Egypt, where he’d been Abbot of the monastery of St James-the-Less. But life is change and sometimes the change is surprising. Like the nun, he too had a house, a small affair on the seafront in Stormhaven. It had been the unexpected gift of a deceased relation he’d neither heard of nor met; but being homeless in the desert at the time, it was one received with gratitude. He’d now been a resident on the south coast of England for two years and was growing to love the sea, as he’d once loved the sand.