THE PERILS OF SANITY

Paul Sayer

Description

THE PERILS OF SANITY tells the story of Olivia Rowntree, 73, who is approaching the tenth anniversary of her husband Leonard's death. Her GP, an old friend of Leonard's, has referred her for counselling for which she sees no need. But privately Olivia knows that all of her lifelong certainties about love, family and God, seem to be losing their meaning. And when she reaches a critical moment in her faith in herself and humanity, salvation turns up in the unlikely form of a homeless young man.In this powerful novel, award-winning author Paul Sayer offers a rare insight into the heart and mind of a woman nearing the end of her life, calling into question every contemporary presumption about human ageing and the dying of the light.

Informations

• Publié par: Paul Sayer
• Date de parution: 09 septembre 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781839783678
• Langue: English

Extrait

First published by Paul Sayer, 2021
Paul Sayer, 2021
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Also by Paul Sayer
Novels
The Comforts of Madness
Howling at the Moon
The Absolution Game
The Storm Bringer
The God Child
Men in Rage
Like So Totally
The True Adventures of Richard Turpin
PAUL SAYER - Some reviews of earlier work
The Comforts of Madness
New York Times - Like Franz Kafka s The Hunger Artist The Comforts of Madness is wild, extreme and slightly unbelievable, yet it rings absolutely true.
The Independent - Undoubtedly gripping and, in the best way, shocking.
New York Newsday - The Comforts of Madness is surely sad but enthralling in its excellence.
The Times - Sayer s extraordinary achievement is to have combined a deep imaginative empathy with a vigorously unsociological broadside on the treatment of the mentally ill, and to have done so quite without sentimentality.
Los Angeles Times - THE COMFORTS OF MADNESS compares to Camus s The Stranger
The Absolution Game
Evening Standard - The Absolution Game reaffirms Whitbread-winner Sayer s talent as a storyteller and master craftsman.
The Storm Bringer
The Times - He writes with the effortless subtlety and confidence of an old master Subtly, and without smugness, he leads us towards events that always appear inevitable and wholly predictable, only to change direction at the last moment and shatter our complacent illusions.
Daily Telegraph - Sayer is a master of both emotional and physical geography.
The God Child
The Times - Sayer is a subtle moralist with an eye for the stranger byways of vice and virtue, and The God Child gives fresh evidence of his talent and seriousness. Helen Dunmore.
Sunday Telegraph - A pulsating read, shot through with intelligence and feeling.
Men In Rage
Literary Review - Wise, rigorous and psychologically compelling Men in Rage is an important novel for a society unable to cope with rage. Paul Sayer s writing has all the strength and grace to delineate the dramatics inherent in this emotion.
To a man from Hull , a gentleman in every letter of the word.
The Perils of Sanity
1
She looked too young for this. Too sweet for gravity.
The blonde hair trimmed to the shoulders. Just so. Baby lips, the downy neck. That tender hollow above the breastbone where tiny chicks might nest. Her skin such heavenly material. A superior creature, as the young are. And rightly so. Everything is best for them. Meant for them. Even the atmosphere: the two of them were breathing the same air, yet really it belonged to her.
We re not the chocolate people, said Olivia.
Sorry?
The name, Rowntree. You know, Smarties and all that. Famous around here, of course. Or it used to be. No, we re not one of those. Leonard s family was from Oxfordshire.
Your husband Leonard.
The mauve dress. Old for her. Or chosen for that reason? To bring a little of the elusive solemnity. Like the faux coral necklace.
My husband, yes.
The woman, Caitlin, wrote nothing down. Olivia had expected that, thinking she might already have a mental picture of what her new patient might be like, gleaned from the doctor who d referred her: Ted McManus, Olivia s private GP. For sure, Olivia knew how people saw her and had seen her all her life: blunt and functional, the accent a bit plummy. And look at the weight on her. Caitlin, in seconds, would have divined these and many other things. And maybe, somewhere along the line, she might let her new patient in on the secret of what was meant to be the matter with her. Though Olivia was not holding her breath on that score. No need for any fuss. Or any of this at all. She was fine. She got by. What else did you need at her age?
When Olivia was told, by Ted s secretary, that this meeting had been arranged, she had not envisioned the clich of reclining on a chaise longue with her listener, a bearded eastern European man, sitting somewhere behind her, nodding sagely while she recalled the intimate events of her life, searching for some key incident, the answer to it all. That old chestnut. No, and there was no sofa here, just two high-backed chairs covered in studded green leather on which she and Caitlin were sitting face to face. Meant to be at ease, though it felt a little too companionable: they could never be friends. But it was of the zeitgeist, it seemed, with no barriers to hide behind. Olivia felt a pool of solitude forming around her and she wished she d kept her bag on her lap: it would have been something to hold on to. But she d put it down beside the chair and she would feel a fool if she tried to pick it up again. So, she remained with her arms crossed beneath her flopping old boobs, comfortless. And wondering what exactly Caitlin was: a psychiatrist, a psychoanalyst? No one had said.
Leonard died, said Caitlin.
He did.
How long - She waved her pretty fingers in the air. Like the tendrils of a sea anemone, feeling for prey.
Oh, nearly ten years ago.
Ten years.
About that.
Olivia looked down at her own ancient houndstooth skirt which, like all her clothes, was as old as the century. Then some. And her patent burgundy courts pinching her bunions, her ankles filled with water and bulging over the sides. Who wore shoes like that, these days? She would have much preferred her old trainers, and why not? Who would give a damn? Inches away, across the carpet, Caitlin s slender feet were crossed in naked, narcissistic repose, in purple ballet flats with tiny bows on the front.
Blue-green eyes. The cat s lashes.
I ll have to ask you, something, Olivia said.
Sure, anything.
Well, you see, I m not certain why I m here. Olivia smiled, a little sourly. I don t think I asked for this meeting at all.
Why do you think you re here?
Honestly, my darling, I couldn t say. I believe it was some idea of my doctor s, Ted McManus. An old friend. Has been for donkeys. But he s poor at explaining himself, even with those who pay his bills.
He must have thought there was some need. Some incident.
Well, I had a little crash in my car.
Really?
Yes, Olivia said, keeping her bogus smile, tilting her head. Thinking Caitlin must know all this. Slipped off the road and into a silly ditch. Banged my head, which Ted probably thinks altered my reasoning in some way. I mean, I know I m getting on -
How old are you, Olivia?
Seventy-three, my love. Hasn t anyone told you that? Or is knowing my age some test to see if I m still in possession of my marbles, the full bag, so to speak?
It s not a test. Caitlin smiled, pleasantly enough, and the temperature in the room rose a degree or two. Tell me about Leonard.
Oh, you know, the family were all in money, stockbroking, banking and the like. And he became an accountant. Following suit, I suppose.
Olivia knew this was not enough, but it should be, at least on the subject of his occupation. Leonard was a totter-up of numbers. He did people s books for them. Told their financial story in the most beneficial way he could and submitted this narrative to the inland revenue. Whichever way you explained it, there was little you could say about accountancy that would hold people s attention for long. It was the most boring occupation in the world. Everyone knew that.
His death was sudden, said Caitlin.
Yes.
Can you remember your feelings when you were given the news that he d died?
Shock, of course, said Olivia. Absolutely shocking. It was so out of the blue.
Caitlin paused, perhaps hoping for some elaboration. But Olivia avoided her gaze and looked about the room at the pale-blue emulsioned walls, the half-lifted venetian blinds. God, the things people must say in rooms like this. The outpourings of the depressed and the desperate, and no doubt plenty of well-off old biddies like Olivia who - Who what? Who only came for a sympathetic ear? Someone whose attention they could buy for an hour, once a fortnight. Who had lost their direction in life. Did Olivia need a direction at her age? As for her accident, she was over that by the next day, bar a little fuzziness in her right eye that was improving all the time. Couldn t everyone just forget it now? She looked at a yucca standing in a Wedgewood blue pot on a chest of drawers, wondering who polished its leaves to such a high shine. Perhaps Caitlin herself, when the office was empty and she paced the floor in her purple pumps, thinking lofty thoughts.
You were a teacher, said Caitlin.
A long time ago, my love. Many moons.
What did you teach?
Music, part-time. Primary school. I was freelance.
Did you enjoy it?
I did, very much, Olivia said, though what this had to do with anything was beyond her.
Why did you stop?
Cuts in the school budgets, that was usually the reason. Music is a luxury in state education, an indulgence of the dreaming mind. Learning about economics and computers and all that, they re the necessities now.
Did your mother work?
Oh beluga, here it comes, thought Olivia. The first mention of her parents, the precursor to some dreary catechism about her childhood, an excuse for the woman to root around in Olivia s past, like a surgeon probing for lumps in the vital organs. Olivia had never subscribed to the idea that all your travails began in the nursery.
My mother was a vicar s wife. She ran the house and helped in my father s parish.
Your father was a vi