The Godforsaken Daughter Read Online Free PDF Page B

wondering about her home life. She had the posture of a ballet dancer, her ringless fingers striking the typewriter keys with exacting diligence. He’d never had the luxury of a personal secretary. At the Mater, there was a pool of secretaries—mostly young women—who kept the wheels of administration turning in a large office on the ground floor. The Rosewood Clinic was different; being smaller, it had more of a community atmosphere, which was a welcome change.
    The cases that came his way were no different, however; the vagaries of the human condition presented themselves in a litany of all-too-common disorders. Broken individuals, some more fractured than others, all wishing to be returned to their true selves under the attentive gaze and ready ear of the therapist.
    Those outpatients who couldn’t be helped at Rosewood would be referred for committal to St. Ita’s, the sprawling mental institution outside Derry City. It was Henry’s task to assess referrals from GPs in the Killoran area.
    The patients within the walls of St. Ita’s, in common with the Mater Infirmorum, were mainly women. Women sought help more readily than men. Women attempted suicide more often than men; but, sadly, too many males would rather die at their own hand than seek help. In Henry’s experience, those trends had remained unchanged.
    “The political situation has added significantly to our workload,” Dr. Balby informed him on their first meeting, tapping the bowl of his briar-wood pipe. “But I suppose that isn’t news to you, having practiced in Belfast for so long.”
    Balby, tall and stooped with a craggy face, and assertive hair more suited to an American news anchor than a workaday doctor, should by rights have retired long ago. The more Henry listened to him, the more the older man reinforced this view. But, as with so many members of his profession, work was his lifeblood. It was hard to let go. Balby had assured him that his planned paper would “rev olutionize the whole damned business” of psychiatry, and would “make people sit up and take notice.” Henry had to admire his confidence and zeal.
    “Victims of the Troubles?” he said now. “Yes, I’ve seen my fair share.”
    He was sitting in Balby’s office, on the opposite side of a commodious desk. Its top surface, a gleaming plane of varnished walnut, was remarkable for its lack of paperwork. A Newton’s Cradle sat at one side. He found himself staring at it while wondering whether Balby didn’t believe in taking notes or was simply fastidious.
    “Edie does all that for me. Shorthand skills second to none.”
    “I beg your pardon?”
    “My secretary out there,” Balby said, nodding at the door. “Yours, too, now that you’re here for the next few months.” He struck a match and rekindled the pipe. “You were wondering about the lack of paperwork on my desk? Can’t stand paperwork. It’s all in here ,” he said, tapping his right temple.
    Two perfect puffs of smoke escaped the pipe bowl and rose toward the ceiling. Henry decoded the message in the Apache smoke-signal language of his beloved boyhood Westerns. One puff for attention. Two puffs: all fine. Three: something wrong.
    “Isn’t that a bit intrusive for the patient?” Henry said, not minding if he sounded presumptive.
    “Not a bit of it. Edie might as well be a piece of furniture as far as most of them are concerned. She has access to every case file, so she knows them all already. Why wouldn’t she? It’s her job.”
    “I take your point.” But he could not really hold with his colleague’s view. It was difficult enough for a patient to confide his innermost secrets to one stranger without having another in the room at the same time.
    “That damn Janov and his primal-scream nonsense. There’s a glut of them now, coming our way to join the bombers. A pack decamped to Burtonport, across the border there in Donegal, ten years ago. The townspeople had enough and hunted them. So, what