‘And then something happened to spoil the fantasy?’
Gerry nodded. ‘I couldn’t find a lot of details, but Rufus wrote that Ma was “slighted” by Vivien Jenkins; the circumstances weren’t clear, but I gather Vivien openly denied knowing her. Ma was hurt and embarrassed, angry too, but—he thought—all right, until a month or so later he was advised she’d come up with some sort of plan to “put things right”.’
‘Ma told him that?’
‘No, I don’t think so …’ Gerry scanned the Post-it note. ‘He didn’t specify how he knew, but I got the impression—something in the way it was worded—that the information didn’t come directly from Ma.’ Laurel drew in the corner of her mouth, considering. The words ‘put things right’ made her mind cast back to her visit with Kitty Barker, in particular the old woman’s account of the night she and Ma went out dancing. Dolly’s wild over-the-top behaviour, the ‘plan’ she kept on about, the friend she’d brought with her—a girl she’d grown up with in Coventry. Laurel smoked thoughtfully. Dr Rufus’s daughter, it had to be, who’d gone home afterwards and told her father what she’d heard.
Laurel felt sorry for her mother then—to be denied by one friend, reported on by another; she could well remember the hot intensity of her own teenage daydreams and imaginings: it had been a relief when she became an actress and was able to funnel them into artistic creations. Dorothy, though, hadn’t had that opportunity …
‘So what happened, Gerry?’ she said. ‘Ma just let her fantasies go, snapped out of it?’ The word “snapped”, and Laurel remembered her mother’s crocodile story. That sort of change was exactly what she’d been suggesting in the tale, wasn’t it? A transition from the young Dolly of Kitty Barker’s London memories, to Dorothy Nicolson of Greenacres.
‘Yes.’
‘That can happen?’
He shrugged. ‘It can happen because it did happen. Ma’s the proof.’
Laurel shook her head at him in wonder. ‘You scientists really do believe whatever your proofs tell you.’
‘Of course. That’s why they’re called proofs.’
‘How, though, Gerry …’ Laurel needed more than that. ‘How did she shake off these … traits?’
‘Well, if we consult the theories of our good friend Lionel Rufus here, it would appear that although some people go on to develop a full-blown personality disorder, many simply outgrow the narcissistic traits of adolescence when they reach adulthood. Of most relevance to Ma’s situation, though, is his theory that a large traumatic event—you know, shock, or loss, or grief—something outside the direct personal sphere of the narcissistic person, can, in some cases, “cure” them.’
‘Put them back in touch with reality, you mean? Make them look outwards rather than inwards?’
‘Exactly.’
It was what they’d posited when they met that night in Cam-bridge: that Ma had been involved in something that turned out terribly, and she became a better person for it.
Gerry said, ‘I guess it’s the same as the rest of us—we grow and change depending on what life throws at us.’
Laurel nodded thoughtfully and finished her cigarette. Gerry was putting away his notebook and it seemed they’d reached the end of the road, but then something occurred to her. ‘You said before that Dr Rufus was studying fantasy as a defence mechanism. Defence against what, Gerry?’
‘Lots of things, though most notably Dr Rufus believed children who felt out of place within their families—you know, those who were held at a distance by their parents, made to feel odd or different, were susceptible to developing narcisstic traits as a form of self-protection.’
Laurel considered their mother’s reluctance to speak in detail about her past in Coventry, her family. She’d always accepted it was because Ma was too grief stricken by their loss; now, though, she wondered if her silence hadn’t been due in part to something else. I used to get in trouble when I was young, Laurel could remember her mother saying (usually when Laurel, herself, had misbehaved); I always felt different from my parents—I’m not sure they knew quite what to make of me. What if young Dorothy Smitham had never been happy at home? What if she’d felt an outsider all her life, and her loneliness had driven her to generate grand fantasies in a desperate attempt to fill the hole of need inside. What if it had all gone terribly wrong, and her dreams had come crashing down, and she’d had to live with the fact until finally she was permitted a second chance, an opportunity to