Joe XIII – Sisters

‘The trouble with all that school stuff we were talking about before’ Joe begins, ‘I believe it’s all based on early childhood experiences, and as you pointed out at the beginning, even if you can change how you react later on it can still be there, in your subconscious, affecting everything you do, undermining your confidence. A lot of what Freud said has been discredited since, but I think that part holds true. I don’t envy you.’
He sits, hunched, looking about, I don’t know what’s coming next.
‘All the same’ he says, ‘it doesn’t seem enough, considering what came next. There has to be something else.’
‘Like what?’
‘I can’t tell – some childhood trauma? Something your parents did? Some other family member? Do you see what I’m getting at?’
‘But maybe that’s just how I was’ I shrug. ‘Maybe I was born that way.’
‘What? Thinking you were a useless prat and everything you did was probably wrong? Oh yes, children are born like that all the time.’
‘Maybe it was school then’ I say. ‘I think things were alright before I went to school.’
‘Do you remember anything from before you went to school?’
‘I know we lived on a farm. It was a little place out in the country. I don’t know exactly where. Apparently I was always running down the garden in all weathers with no clothes on. Justine says they used to call me nature boy. I remember there was a big garden. I used to come in freezing, covered in mud and scratches and grazes and bruises but I never complained about it – I just carried on. That’s what they told me. I don’t think anybody remembers much about that time do they?’
‘Just as well sometimes’ he says. He seems sort of angry – I’m not sure what about. I don’t know if I’ve said something wrong. I mean, they weren’t bad parents. Maybe I was just difficult. I don’t know. I don’t miss them at all – I know that. I feel terrible about that. I feel like I should miss them but I don’t. I miss my sisters.
‘Do you want to know about my sisters?’ I say, conversationally.
‘Er... yes, I do actually. Tell me.’ He looks relieved to change the subject. ‘They were quite a bit older than you weren’t they?’
‘My first memories of them they already seemed like adults to me. I suppose they were just teenagers but they seemed so... grown up. And they had all these really exciting friends round and all this amazing music was going on in the next room. They let me stay in with them sometimes if I was quiet. I loved that.’
‘And they helped look after you?’
‘When my dad was at work. I have this memory of the three of us on the sofa and I’m squashed in between them in my pyjamas, like a little puppy or something, and I can feel that fatty bit over Amelia’s hips through the horrible acrylic material she’s got on and I was just fiddling with it and making her giggle. She wasn’t fat – both of them were quite slim, but she was nice and soft too. And she had this really strong smell – I think my head was right up under her arm pit and I was so warm, and it was dark except for the gas fire and I remember thinking “I want to be here for ever”. I think I must have been about four.’
‘So they’d have been, what? In their mid teens?’
‘About that.’
‘Describe them for me.’
This is good. I like talking about my sisters. ‘Well, Justine was the older one, about twelve when I was born. She was quite tall, nearly six foot I think, and she had very straight red hair and this very long, very serious sort of face and you’d think she was really going to give you a hard time and then she’d say something ridiculous and it was just hilarious. She was quite a serious person though. She wanted to go to university but changed her mind. I don’t know why. She was the one that looked after me most. Mum used to say she was the one that could be trusted. I think a lot of people were a bit scared of her but she was always good with me.
And then with Amelia, the younger one, she had this long dark hair, like mum, and really lovely dark eyes. I loved her eyes – they were almost black sometimes, the irises. I used to love watching her getting ready to go out, putting on her make-up and getting dressed. She was always going out and getting into trouble, having to phone dad to come and fetch her in the middle of the night. But she did look after me sometimes too. Nothing bad ever happened.’
‘What happened when they left home?’
‘Oh god, that was terrible. I was about ten I think when Amelia got married, and then Justine moved out soon after. It was just horrible. Mum said I made a terrible fuss about it. They were trying to get me to cheer up for ages.’
‘How did they do that, cheer you up I mean?’
‘Oh, I don’t know. They just, you know, told me to go out more, make some proper friends my own age...’
‘Which you did?’
‘Not really. I don’t really remember. It doesn’t matter...’
I can feel him watching me. I focus hard on the legs of the table – curved, shiny.
‘Just take it easy Gabriel’ he says. Joe has that worried look on his face again. I wish he wouldn’t. He sits and looks at me for quite a while.
‘Do you want to go on?’ he says quietly.
‘I don’t know’ I say. And I don’t. I don’t know anything. He lets me go.
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Joe II – The reality of it all

‘Zo...’ said Joe in a cod Viennese accent, ‘tell me about your childhood’.
He was wearing a plastic Groucho Marx nose, moustache and glasses and was pretending to smoke a fat pen. I didn’t smile. For all I knew this was how people normally behaved in the after life, but Joe assured me it was supposed to be a joke. ‘Never mind’ he said, putting the mask on the table. ‘You ok?’ he continued more seriously, almost apologetically. I shrugged.
‘Ok. Part of what happens here’ he continued, ‘is you get the chance to look at your life, think about what’s really important, try to make some sense of it.’
I suppose I was looking a bit blankly at him. Anyway, he leaned forward. ‘Is it about, for example, beauty, or love, or truth?’ he suggested ‘or having a career or a vocation perhaps or, I don’t know, is it about “making a difference” as they say? Hmm? You know, standing up for what you believe. Stuff like that. Or is it just about hedonism – getting what you can get out of life, just living for yourself, sex, money, sensation, experience. Do you see what I mean?’ I nodded but I didn’t know what to say.
‘You’re very young’ he said unexpectedly. ‘Too young really.’ I was a bit offended. I was nearly nineteen. I’d read Plato, and Sartre and Oscar Wilde for God’s sake.
‘I do understand’ I said, more peevishly than I’d have liked. Why can’t I stick up for myself without sounding like I’m sulking?
‘Of course you do Gabriel’ he said but he was thinking about something else.
‘My parents’ he said eventually, ‘they thought life was all about duty – doing what you had to do, that and the church. They thought life was all about having to give an account of yourself to God at the end. I have no idea what they make of all this.’
‘What about you?’ I said.
He looked a little sideways at me and I knew he didn’t really want to talk about himself so I said ‘It doesn’t matter, you know, if...’ I shrugged and he looked away, towards the window and we sat in silence for a while.
‘Anyway’ he said at last, clapping his hands on his knees. ‘Now’s a good time to consider all that. Think about what you want, what’s important to you. And think about who you are, deep down.’
‘Some,’ he added, nodding toward the door ‘choose not to, but it’s a great opportunity. I recommend it to you. Have you ever been to a therapist, counsellor, whatever?’ I shook my head. ‘Ever read any psychology?’
‘I read some Freud’ I said.
‘Oh. Good. What did you read?’ he sat forward in his chair eagerly.
‘I don’t remember. It was a book about him from the public library. Sorry’
‘No, that’s cool. At least you know something about it. You wouldn’t believe some of the... Anyway, what did you make of it?’
I said I vaguely remembered some things about the sub-conscious, the id and the ego and superego and infant sexuality. I mumbled some stuff about what I thought about that - about how so much of a person’s life was set in the first few years and how it keeps coming back to mess things up later on. He told me that I’d basically got it and how that made things a lot simpler for him. He told me his degree had been in psychology, partly anyway, and that he was always amazed how people tried to get through life, get married, have children and so on without ever thinking about what was going on in their heads, far less checking what other people had worked out about it previously. ‘It’s like driving a car without ever looking under the hood to see where all the grinding noises and sparks are coming from’ he said with exasperation. ‘So, really, I mean it, ‘tell me about your childhood’’.
‘Where do I start?’
‘At the beginning? When? Where?’
‘Brighton, England, February 24th 1966.’
‘Ah, Pisces’ he said portentously.
‘What does that mean?’
‘Probably nothing, but you never know. Which was pretty much what I concluded in my dissertation: “Astrology and Psychology”. Anyway, do go on. Brothers, sisters?’
‘Two sisters, nine and twelve years older than me. I was a bit of a mistake.’
‘That’s an unfortunate way to put it, don’t you think?’
‘How do you mean?’ But I knew exactly what he meant. I’d said it like that deliberately.
‘Do you think your parents saw you as a mistake?’
‘Well, they were getting on a bit’, I smiled ‘well, late thirties. I don’t think they thought they were old... but you know what I mean. Mum was running a nursing agency and Dad – um – was busy. They didn’t need another kid running around the place messing their things up did they?’
‘But it wasn’t your fault?’
‘No no.’ Now I felt disloyal and ungrateful. ‘I know they did their best and everything. It was ok.’

He takes a moment – gives me a hard look, as they say.
‘Forgive me’ he says at last ‘but you don’t seem to be taking any of this very seriously – what happened to you, the effect on your friends, your family...’
I want to say ‘Hah! What friends? What family?’ I want to say ‘Well serves them right. Those shit heads’ll have to take me seriously now.’ But I know they won’t. They’ll just think it’s yet another stupid thing I’ve done. And they’ll be right.
I expect Joe to tut and be very ‘patient’ with me but he doesn’t. He looks into my face with an expression like he might cry any moment himself and says softly ‘Good God Gabriel. You basically killed yourself – at eighteen years old. You don’t seem to understand. That’s not a cry for help.’ He shakes his head slowly, wondering. ‘What happened to you?’ he says and I can feel the tears welling up again. He passes me a tissue from the box on the table. I sit and sniff for a while, feeling sorry for myself. Then I say ‘My sisters were good with me.’
‘And what were their names?’
‘Justine and Amelia...’
‘Tell me about them.’
‘Well, I don’t know, they were just... when I was little... I...’
And the next thing I know I find myself crying, tears pouring from my eyes onto my knees, then my whole body hunching forward in the armchair with deep groaning noises coming from my chest. Everybody must have heard. I started to slap the side of my head over and over, trying to stop this stupid howling but I couldn’t. I could see their faces, looking down at me, Justine and Amelia, the way it must have been when they found my body. I’d caused so much hurt. I couldn’t stand it.
Later, I felt Joe’s hand gently but firmly holding my wrist to stop me hitting myself, I tried to pull away, but not very strongly and I ended up slumping forward against him, my head in his lap, his trouser legs saturated from my tears. It felt a little embarrassing, but really I didn’t care enough to move. Eventually I sat back, but he stayed squatting in front of me, holding a tissue for my face. The sobbing subsided and I took some deep breaths. I sat back. I felt absolutely spent. He sat back. That was when I noticed someone else in the room. It was the young woman who’d first shown me to my cabin standing by the door. They both looked concerned, but not horrified as I’d expected. In fact they didn’t seem at all surprised by my behaviour, which was reassuring. Eventually she – Angie – left and Joe waited for me to settle.
‘Do you want to go on a bit more?’ he asked gently. I felt drained but oddly at peace. ‘You don’t have to today, or at all, if you don’t want to.’
‘No, I’d like to. Maybe another time. Could I have a drink?’
‘Not a whiskey?’ he said smiling.
‘Not a whiskey’ I confirmed.
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