Therapy

essentially a test of stamina and self-discipline. He (or she) had a strict notion of what was correct pilgrim behaviour (no staying in hotels, for instance) and was very competitive with others on the road. The true pilgrim was the religious pilgrim, religious in the Kierkegaardian sense. To Kierkegaard, Christianity was “absurd”: if it were entirely rational, there would be no merit in believing it. The whole point was that you chose to believe without rational compulsion — you made a leap into the void and in the process chose yourself. Walking a thousand miles to the shrine of Santiago without knowing whether there was anybody actually buried there was such a leap. The aesthetic pilgrim didn’t pretend to be a true pilgrim. The ethical pilgrim was always worrying whether he was a true pilgrim. The true pilgrim just did it.
    “Cut! Great. Thanks very much,” said the director. “Get him to sign a release, Linda.”
    Linda smiled at me, with pen poised over her clip board. “You’ll get twenty-five pounds if we use it,” she said “What’s your name, please?”
    “Laurence Passmore,” I said.
    The sound man looked up sharply from his equipment. “Not Tubby Passmore?” I nodded, he slapped his thigh. “I knew I’d seen you somewhere before. It was in the Heartland canteen, a couple of years ago. Hey, David!” he called to the director, who was walking away in search of another victim, “Guess who this is — Tubby Passmore, the writer. The People Next Door.” He turned back to me: “Great show, I never miss it when I’m at home.”
    The director turned round slowly. “Oh no,” he said, and mimed shooting himself in the head with his forefinger. “So you were just taking the piss?” He laughed ruefully. “We really fell for it.”
    “I wasn’t taking the piss,” I said. But I don’t think he believed me.
     
    The days passed in a slow, regular rhythm. We rose early, so that Maureen could set off in the cool of the early morning. She usually arrived at our rendezvous around noon. After a long, leisurely Spanish lunch we retired for a siesta and slept through the heat of the afternoon, coming to life again in the evening, when we would take the air with the natives, snacking in tapas bars and sampling the local vino. I can’t describe how at ease I felt in Maureen’s company, how quickly we seemed to resume our old familiarity. Although we talked a lot, we were often content to be together in a companionable silence, as if we were enjoying the sunset years of a long happy life together. Other people certainly assumed we were a married couple, or at least a couple; and the hotel staff always looked mildly surprised that we were occupying separate rooms.
     
    One night, after she had been talking at some length about Damien, apparently in good spirits, even laughing as she recalled some childish misadventure he had had, I heard her weeping in the room next to mine, through the thin partition wall of the no-star hotel where we were staying. I tapped on her door and, finding it unlocked, went in. A street-lamp outside the window shed a dim illumination into the room through the curtains. Maureen was a humped shape that stirred and rearranged itself on the bed against one wall. “Is that you, Tubby?” she said.
    “I thought I heard you crying,” I said. I groped my way across the room, stumbled over a chair beside the bed, and sat down on it. “Are you alright?”
    “It was talking about Damien,” she said. “I keep thinking I’ve got over it, and then I find I haven’t.” She began to cry again. I felt for her hand and held it. She squeezed it gratefully.
    “I could hug you, if that would help,” I said.
    “No, I’m alright,” she said.
    “I’d like to. I’d like to very much,” I said.
    “I don’t think it would be a good idea, Tubby.”
    “I’m not suggesting we do anything else,” I said. “Just a cuddle. It’ll help you go to sleep.”
    I lay down beside her on the bed, outside the blanket and sheet, and put my arm round her waist. She turned over on to her side, with her back to me, and I curled myself around her soft ample bottom. She stopped crying, and her breathing became regular. We both fell asleep.
    I woke, I didn’t know how many hours later. The night air had grown cool, and my feet were chilled. I sat up and rubbed them. Maureen stirred. “What is it?” she said.
    “Nothing.Just a bit cold. Can I come under the bedclothes?”
    She didn’t