Herring Girl Read online

  ‘Monk’s going for a good price at the moment,’ Paul says as some chat show appears on the telly. ‘But you’ve to go through that much by-catch to get them, it’s hardly worth it.’ Nana nods vaguely, eyes on the screen. She’s always yammering on about how he never talks to her, but look what happens when he does.

  Standing, sipping tea, he feels his mobile buzz in his pocket and takes it out. ‘This is Dr Charlton,’ says some woman in a posh raspy voice – and his heart does that thing: stops for a second, then dunts against his ribs like it’s been kick-started.

  ‘Is it Ben?’

  ‘He’s fine, Mr Dixon,’ says the woman. ‘He’s not ill and there hasn’t been an accident. But he came to see me yesterday requesting therapy. So I thought I should discuss it with you before proceeding.’

  Paul slides the phone shut, then strides over and grabs the remote to switch off the telly. ‘Did Ben say anything to you about going to a therapist?’

  Nana shrugs. ‘Never tells us a thing. But he’s at that age, isn’t he? What kind of therapist?’

  ‘Analytic psycho something. She wants to see me. “In her consulting room”, for fuck’s sake.’

  Paul feels a slight pressure building in his chest, like there’s too much air in there, like when you’ve been diving and come up a bit fast. He feels stupid, embarrassed. What’s going on with the bairn? He seemed fine last night. Tucking into his tikka marsala; jabbering away after the dive.

  ‘I doubt it’s owt to worry about,’ says Nana, licking sweet gunk from the back of her spoon. ‘Audrey Robson’s going to a therapist for her spider phobia. It got so she couldn’t go in the bathroom without Terry hoovering the Venetians and pouring boiling water down the plugholes.’

  ‘He could be up to all sorts on that computer,’ he says. ‘Locked inside that room.’

  She’s sneaked back the remote and put the chat show on mute. Paul wants to shake her; make her focus on what’s happening with her fucking grandson. ‘It’ll just be some hoo-hah with the school,’ she says. ‘That Gifted and Talented nonsense. That new Head’s always sending them on trips and that.’

  It’s not that, Paul knows. But it’s hopeless talking to his mam. She’s already distracted, flicking through channels with the sound off.

  ‘It’s because he’s an only child,’ she says – her pat answer for everything. ‘If he’d had a little brother to play with, maybes he wouldn’t be on the computer all hours.’ As if Paul and Nessa hadn’t spent five fucking years trying for another baby.

  ‘How’s Nessa getting on with that new wean?’ Nana asks: not to wind him up – she’s not that devious – more because what’s on her mind just pops out of her mouth without her thinking what effect it’ll have.

  Paul breathes out slowly. ‘Canny,’ he says. ‘Just started nursery.’

  When Nessa wrote that she was pregnant with the first one, Paul’s knees went weak, literally, just like they say when you get a shock.

  He hadn’t been that bothered when she buggered off, not really. Just bloody fuming that she’d upset the bairn – and pissed off that she’d made him look a prat in front of the lads. And her new bloke whisked her straight off to New Zealand, so at least they weren’t rubbing his nose in it.

  Then he got this letter out of the blue saying she was expecting, and giving the date. So he did his sums and worked out – surprise, surprise – that she was already three months gone when she moved out. And it just got to him, didn’t it? The idea of her bloke’s sperm doing their thing while she was sleeping right next to him in the fucking bed.

  It was like a double whammy, because Paul has a problem with his sperm. When Nessa couldn’t fall pregnant again after Ben, they went for tests; her first, then him when they couldn’t find anything. And it turned out his lads were slow swimmers and pegging out before they got to the egg. Plus they were deformed, loads of them – they showed him a photo they’d taken – with big heads, or bits missing. It was just as well she hadn’t fallen pregnant, they said, because there might have been a problem with the baby. So that was that.

  Then he got her letter from New Zealand. And it started him thinking about Ben. Because she’d fallen pregnant slap-bang no problem with her new bloke (Paul refuses to use his name, even to himself). But it took three years of trying before they had Ben. And it got him thinking, what if he’d always had this problem with his sperm, like from way back when he was a nipper? What if Nessa had been having it away with some other bloke behind his back, and kept quiet about it when she fell pregnant with Ben?

  He couldn’t get the thought out of his head. What if he wasn’t Ben’s real dad? He phoned Ness up in a lather, and she denied it of course. Still, it was all he could think of for ages; getting out all the old holiday snaps to see which bits of Ben looked like Nessa and which like him. He even got Nana to fetch round some photos of himself as a bairn to do a comparison. It was driving him nuts.

  Then Ben had his accident and it all kind of slotted into place. Like maybe this stuff about wanting to be a girl was something Ben had inherited from this other bloke? And it was a relief in a way, to think it wasn’t Paul’s fault, for having dud sperm or not being a proper role model or whatever. Then he read about DNA testing and decided to go for it to find out for sure.

  The results came back when he was off on the boat, so it was in a stack of post piled up on the hall table when he got home. He recognized the logo on the envelope straight away, but Ben was there just in from school and nattering on about something, so he shoved it in the drawer under the Yellow Pages. Then when he came to get it out later, he couldn’t bring himself to open it – even though it cost a packet to get the test done.

  The envelope’s still there where he left it, like a tab smouldering under a blanket. All he has to do is hoy off the blanket and the flame will leap out. He doesn’t know what he’ll feel when he opens it, one way or the other, but he knows there’ll be no going back.

  ‌Chapter Seven

  2007

  Paul recognizes Dr Charlton’s house. He must have seen it a million times from the boat: the cream tower at the end of that row of old houses on the top bank, with that weird thing on the roof. When he gets there, he sees it’s got one of them blue plaques on the wall, dated 1727, and he’s just started reading when this little bird of a woman pops out from behind a bush, puffing on a French ciggie.

  ‘They painted the whole building black at one point,’ she’s saying. ‘So it wouldn’t distract from the new lighthouse further along.’ She sticks out a hand for him to shake, and she’s in gloves, even though it’s the middle of summer. Funny, that. ‘May I offer you an espresso?’ she goes. ‘Or would you prefer a gin and tonic at this time of day? I’m afraid I don’t keep beer.’

  He follows her inside, to a room that’s like a cross between a posh antiques shop and one of them old railway waiting rooms. So the window and skirtings are dark maroon and there’s one of them fancy Axminster squares on the floor, like his great granny used to have. There’s a big scuffed leather-topped desk in one corner with one of them old captain’s chairs, and the mantelpiece is crowded with elephant ornaments, all sizes – from India by the looks of it, somewhere foreign anyway.

  Paul sits down on a big soft sofa and she perches in an armchair opposite with her gloved hands resting in her lap like she’s about to play the piano. The gloves are those fingerless jobs, the same dark green as her Doc Marten boots and that fringed paisley shawl. She’s got style, he’s got to hand it her – though God knows what century it’s from.

  The cream walls are jam-packed with books, with more piled up on the floor, and there’s a squashed-looking leather pouffe by the fireplace, where there’s one of those ancient coal-effect electric fires Paul thought didn’t exist anymore.

  ‘Before you ask,’ she’s saying, ‘Ben’s told me all about his gender dysphoria. That’s why he came to see me.’

  Paul takes a breath. Shit. So that’s what this is about. ‘But that was years ago,
’ he says. ‘He’s into sports and that now. Computers and diving and what have you.’

  ‘I’m afraid not, Mr Dixon. Your son’s simply learnt to hide his feelings and “gone underground” as it were. But from what he tells me, they’re as strong as ever – though it seems they’ve lost the hallucinatory features that must have been so alarming for you and your wife when he was younger.’

  ‘That Annie business, you mean.’ Christ, he’d nearly forgotten about that. Bairn bawling in his buggy down on Bell Street because there was a tyre factory where ‘Annie’s house’ should have been.

  ‘We talked quite a bit about Annie,’ she’s saying. ‘Your son’s a very unusual child, Mr Dixon. He displays a great deal of self-awareness, but I have to tell you that he has been extremely distressed for a very long time.’ And now she’s looking straight at him, a look with a weight behind it, for all that she’s hardly up to his oxter.

  ‘I can’t believe he came to see you without telling me.’

  ‘Ben’s afraid you’ll reject him.’ The look’s still there, pinning him down so he couldn’t get up off the sofa if he tried.

  ‘But I’ve never given him any reason—’

  ‘Children pick up nuances, Mr Dixon. Far more than we realize. Not just from what we tell them, but from how we react to things. And as I say, Ben’s an unusually perceptive child who’s desperate to gain your approval.’

  Paul shakes his head, to clear it. He keeps getting this picture of Ben at St James in his Toon Army gear, sat beside him and shouting for Shearer. ‘So he’s still on about all that stuff, about being a girl?’

  ‘Very much so,’ she says. ‘But if you are agreeable, I think I may be able to help him. Do you believe in the soul, Mr Dixon?’

  ‘What?’ Is she some kind of religious nut?

  She laughs then: a proper wide laugh with her head back. ‘Oh dear, I can see how that must sound. Don’t worry, Mr Dixon. I’m not planning to reclaim your son for Jesus.’ She looks younger when her solemn look goes, and quite attractive if you like the type – long skirt, amber brooch, and one of those heavy buns that’s really a thick plait wound round and round. But those green gloves – what’s that about?

  ‘To reassure you on that count, I am not affiliated to any kind of religious group, Christian or otherwise. I am a fully qualified Jungian therapist, with a doctorate in neuropsychology and over twenty-five years’ experience in the NHS and private practice.’ She waves vaguely in the direction of a load of framed certificates on the wall over the mantelpiece. ‘I lecture at universities up and down the country, and I’ve published three books and numerous papers in reputable journals.’

  She sounds almost bored as she recites all this; it’s obviously something she’s said over and over. But it helps to know she’s got a decent brain in there.

  ‘Ben tells me he has been to therapists in the past?’

  ‘Fat lot of good they did.’

  ‘Well, that’s why I’m hoping my approach might prove more helpful. In recent years I’ve found myself concentrating on my clients’ recall of what appear to be previous incarnations – past lives if you like – hence my rather inopportune mention of the soul. So it would help me to know whether this is an approach you’d find acceptable.’

  ‘Now just hold on there—’ Paul’s not sure he finds this acceptable at all.

  ‘I know it may sound rather far-fetched—’

  ‘Damn right.’ He should have known when he clapped eyes on those elephants that there was something off about the whole set up.

  ‘—but please bear with me a moment.’

  ‘Go on then,’ he says grudgingly. He’ll give her three minutes, he decides, and if she hasn’t convinced him by then, he’s off out of it.

  ‘Thank you. And I appreciate your candour. Believe me, you’re not the first person to find my approach somewhat unusual. But before I say anything else, I should stress that I’ve had a great deal of success with my clinical method. It enables me to achieve catharsis – that is, get to the heart of a client’s problem – far more rapidly than other methods I’ve used over the years.’

  ‘Go on,’ he says again, crossing his arms. If she’s trying to impress him, she’s got a long way to go.

  ‘Right, let’s start with the soul. Have you ever heard of a phenomenon called near-death experience?’

  ‘You mean all that seeing a white light, and going towards it?’

  ‘That’s part of it, yes. But I’m talking about the many reported cases of people on the point of dying – from a heart attack, perhaps – who are subsequently revived and recall floating above their bodies and seeing things they couldn’t possibly have seen from their hospital beds. There are even cases of blind people who were able to describe the clothing of the people who revived them.’

  ‘And you think it’s the person’s soul seeing those things.’

  ‘That’s not the only explanation, of course. It could be some kind of telepathic knowledge, for example, that’s only available to the unconscious brain. But the existence of something we might call a soul seems as good an explanation as any. And it’s the one I base my clinical practice on.’

  That’s when it starts to go really weird: when she starts talking about people dying and their souls lurking about, like at a bus stop, waiting to jump aboard the next baby to be born. Though she doesn’t put it like that, of course, because it’s all spouted in her posh boarding-school voice like it’s some Open University lecture on the telly. Anyway, it turns out that scientists have been studying this reincarnation business for years and, if she’s telling the truth, it looks like there could be something in it.

  ‘It’s worth reflecting,’ she’s saying now, ‘that ours is the first era in which humans have not simply assumed the existence of past lives, ancestor spirits and spirit possession – the latter of which I suspect is actually a manifestation of a past life intruding into the current one—’

  ‘So what’s all this got to do with Ben?’ Paul cuts her off mid-sentence. She might have persuaded him she’s not a nutter, but he can do without the lecture, thank you very much.

  ‘I believe your son may be the reincarnation of this girl he calls Annie. I think that may be why he has become obsessed with procuring gender reassignment surgery—’

  ‘Did you say surgery?’ Paul’s mind tilts dizzily for a second, and he’s back in the flat six years ago, pulling Ben’s blood-soaked pyjamas back up and wrapping his limp little body in his duvet, then charging down four flights of stairs with him in his arms, and the lad weighs nothing, nothing.

  ‘You’re not aware that Ben’s been investigating the possibility of surgery?’ Her voice has gone soft, so he knows it must be all over his face: the knife, all that blood, the shock of it. Bairn almost died, for fuck’s sake.

  Paul shakes his head dumbly.

  ‘One thing transsexuals complain of prior to surgery is a profound sense of having been born into the wrong body. Well I hypothesize that in some cases – Ben’s included – that may be exactly what’s happened.’ That weighted look is back on her face, making him focus on what she’s saying. But her brown eyes are kinder now, like they can see what he’s going through.

  ‘The doctors said it was hormones in the womb made him like that,’ he says. ‘Or something about how we were bringing him up – but he started on about Annie pretty much as soon as he could talk.’

  She nods, like this is par for the course. ‘All I can say is that I’ve treated several cases of gender dysphoria, and in my experience there can sometimes be powerful reasons in a past life that prevent a soul embracing its current physiological gender.’

  He takes a deep breath. ‘So how can you help Ben?’

  ‘Well, there are no guarantees, but with the majority of cases I’ve treated, I’ve found that once the precipitating past-life trauma has been identified – and recalled in full – many of the neurotic symptoms in the current life resolve.’

  Paul tries to weigh it all up. If
you think about what she’s saying logically, it’s completely barmy. Investigating someone who’s been dead for years as a way of curing someone who’s alive today. But the way she puts it, in her la-di-dah professor voice, makes it seem almost reasonable. Like it’s the obvious explanation for what’s been happening with the bairn.

  ‘So how does it work?’ he asks guardedly.

  ‘I put the client into a light trance, and follow his or her associations back into the relevant past life. In some cases the memories are very close to the surface, and only one or two sessions are required to access them. Sometimes it takes many sessions – if there’s more than one past life to explore, or if for some reason I meet resistance.’

  ‘So you could end up going right back to the Stone Age.’ He’s half joking, but she doesn’t take it like that.

  ‘Theoretically, yes, but that’s extremely rare. Statistically speaking there were relatively few humans alive during the Stone Age, so the odds of a soul today tracing its provenance back to a member of a Stone Age population would be many millions to one.’

  They’re starting to talk as though he’s agreed to the therapy, Paul realizes. ‘So what’s the down side?’ he asks bluntly, back-tracking a bit. ‘Isn’t it dangerous, hypnotizing a twelve-year-old?’

  ‘I am a highly qualified and experienced practitioner,’ she says, ‘and what I do is perfectly legal, but the client is vulnerable in any therapy. Having said that, it is my judgement that without help Ben could be in an even more vulnerable situation—’

  ‘What do you mean “vulnerable”?’

  She fixes her eyes on him again. ‘Mr Dixon, I believe your son has been very lonely and unhappy for a very long time. We know he’s tried to mutilate himself in the past, so there’s every reason to fear he might try to force the issue again – and of course he’s older now.’