Nothing to do with me

“…the world is just a great Bedlam, where those who are more mad, lock up those that are less” Thomas Tyron


I have just come back from a session with Amanda. She had a black eye. I said to her – how did you get that?
- I trod on a garden rake, she replied.

I don’t believe her. Clive told me that he was passing her office yesterday and her and her brother were going at it ding dong. You could hear them shouting and swearing through the closed door. I think he has punched her.
Now I don’t hold with that – hitting a woman. Despite all our rows, I have never hit Georgina – and that’s not because she is bigger than me.

Anyway, my session with Amanda went very well. She asked me about when my dad came home from the war – remember I had not seen him for five years.
I was in the house with my friend, Andrew. And I can remember being all excited, mostly about what he might have brought me back from Egypt. I was also slightly embarrassed because I did not know how I was supposed to treat this ‘stranger’ who was now suddenly a part of our household.
I watched him unpack his kitbag in the kitchen. He handed me a penknife. Straightaway I went out into the shed with Andrew, and cut my finger. It was not some sort of symbolic act; I was trying it out on a piece of wood and it must have slipped.
Amanda gave me a strange look, and made a note on her pad. Oh I know what she was thinking – there are no such things as accidents. Well maybe not.
It bled quite a lot; nowadays I would have been taken down the ‘casualty’ to have it stitched but in those days no one would have dared to knock on the door of the ‘Cottage Hospital’ unannounced, unless you’d had you’d had your leg severed by a tram. The hospital was run by a formidable woman – her name was spoken in awe in the village – ‘Matron Bone’. If she told you it didn’t hurt, it didn’t.
A swell of emotion rises as I remember all of this and my eyes are wet. Amanda gets up and comes over to me. She is so close her perfume fills my head. What is going on here!