The spell in Bewleys was broken by the arrival at my table of a beautiful psychiatrist – who lost no time in interpreting my dreams, writes MICHAEL HARDING
I WAS DRINKING a mug of tea in the theatre space in Bewleys Café on Grafton Street last Sunday morning, alone among the dark wooden tables and upturned chairs, when a tall elderly woman walked in.
She stared with seeming disapproval at the green walls and the red curtains.
“May I join you? she asked.
I said, the restaurant is downstairs.
She said, “I know. But I came up to speak with you.” I pulled a chair off a table, so that we could both sit by the window.
She was holding a large cappuccino.
“It’s bedlam downstairs,” she said: “There’s a ruck of Welsh chaps at the counter, and they all insist on ordering an English breakfast. The waitresses keep telling them that over here we call it an Irish breakfast.” I asked her what I could do for her.
She said, “I was just wondering if you are as melancholic in real life as you appear to be in ‘The Irish Times’.” I began to realise that it wasn’t the curtains or the walls she disapproved of; it was me!
“I wasted my youth talking nonsense, instead of pursuing love,” I replied. “Of course I’m melancholic.” We were at the window, looking down on the street, where young girls were wandering about, in Welsh jerseys, like lovable Telly Tubbies who had just lost their soothers; and sleep still in their eyes.
The lady beside me was wearing a black coat, and a red scarf. She had a long aquiline nose and elegant fingers. She said she was a psychiatrist, so I told her about a dream I had the previous night.
“I was in a mosque,” I said, “which was unusual, because I usually dream of Christian churches.”
“You may be unconsciously questioning your own identity,” she said.
“Is that bad?” I wondered.
“Extremely good,” she declared.
I said, “There’s more.” She sipped her cappuccino, and then settled herself to listen.
“In the dream,” I said, “the mosque was an enormous empty space, and I was alone in the middle of it. Then a man and a woman came in and sat on the carpet in front of me. The man was holding a baby. The woman spread out a black shawl on the floor and the man placed the baby on the shawl. The baby was made of porcelain; and as I watched, the baby’s head broke off, and fell away, and a white liquid, like milk, flowed from its neck.” The psychiatrist observed me, like a hawk.
“The dream upset me,” I confessed. Her eyes stayed on me. She was sitting very still beside the window. The sun cast a shaft of light on the side of her face. She had blue eyes behind small round spectacles, and strands of silver hair fell across her forehead; she was extremely beautiful.
A young man with sallow skin was playing a box-accordion on the street below. I had put €1 in his hat as I came in earlier, but now I felt he had some connection with the psychiatrist.
“Do you often dream of children like that?” she asked.
I said, “No; occasionally I dream of a little girl, but she is always doing somersaults and playing games.”
The lady couldn’t take her eyes off the street musician. I feared she might gallop down the three flights of stairs and rush out onto the street and devour him for her lunch.
“So what do you think, doctor?” I asked.
“I think there may be issues regarding your childhood,” she declared, “that require immediate attention.” Then she got up to go. At the door she spoke again.
“And you must read Freud; as soon as possible. You’re missing far too much!” Clearly a directive that could not be ignored, so I went straight to a bookshop and purchased a huge volume, and I was reading it on the Sligo train at 4pm, although I couldn’t understand a word of it.
But a young American woman with a rucksack and huge white teeth leaned across the little table between us and asked me was I studying psychiatry.
I said, “No, I’m just unwell.” She smiled, and while I continued to read, I noticed that she continued to glance at me occasionally, until I rose to disembark at Mullingar. And I felt a bit sad that I wasn’t going all the way to Sligo.