The House on the Cliff Read Online Free PDF

counting, until I reach ten.” He breathed in sharply. He opened his eyes again. “And that’s when I wake up.”
    He passed a hand over his face, resting his palm for a moment over his eyes. Once again it was a slightly melodramatic gesture, but I thought I saw something genuine in it, something that I’d seen before with troubled clients. It’s a particular kind of body language that speaks of exhaustion and defeat, of witnessing unresolved conflict on a daily basis. Conflict that you can’t control, that makes your life a misery. It’s the opposite of trying to create drama out of nothing. It’s a kind of resigned stoicism. When you see it in young children it can be heartbreaking.
    Gwydion was looking at me expectantly. Having told me his dream, he evidently thought I was about to give him chapter and verse on the meaning of it, like some kind of shaman. I suppose he wasn’t far wrong. We psychotherapists are shamans of a sort. After all, Freud’s first major work was a book on the interpretation of dreams. And if that’s not shamanic, I don’t know what is.
    “Well, what do you make of it, Gwydion?”
    Gwydion looked irritated. “You’re supposed to tell me, aren’t you?”
    “Am I?”
    “Well, of course you are.”
    I sympathized with his irritation. All this “reflecting back” can get on your nerves. Parroting people’s questions back to them. Repeating their confused, and confusing, statements. But unfortunately it’s part and parcel of the way I work. Because I believe my clients know a lot more about themselves than I ever will. So it’s not my job to tell them what’s lurking in their unconscious. I simply try to make it possible for them to tell me what they know about themselves. And some things that they don’t know they know, because they’ve never tried to explain them to anyone.
    “I’d like to hear your own thoughts first.” I paused. “You say it’s a dream you’ve ‘been having.’ ”
    “Yes. A recurring dream. It gets worse when I’m tense.”
    I thought for a moment. “You say that, in the dream, you want to shout for help, but you feel you mustn’t. Why’s that, do you think?”
    “Well, that’s probably to do with my father. I grew up frightened of him. He was a drunk with a filthy temper.” He frowned. “Everyone knew, of course, but nobody cared. He got away with it, because of his reputation.”
    “Reputation?”
    “My father is Evan Morgan. The theater director. You must have heard of him.”
    I nodded. The name was familiar, but not being much of a theatergoer, I didn’t know much about him.
    “Evan’s a great man. Supposedly. But as a father he’s always been a complete bastard.” Gwydion spoke without anger. Or a kind of anger that was so old that it had lost its fire. “He’s never taken the slightest interest in me. Or my mother. He’s always been too busy working. And screwing his secretaries. Personal assistants, he calls them now. The latest one’s younger than me.”
    I nodded. There was nothing to say in response to this piece of information. A “how awful” or an “oh dear” might have been appropriate in a social context, but this was a therapeutic encounter, as it’s called in the trade, and such lightweight commiserations were out of place.
    Gwydion sighed. “But I didn’t come here to talk about him. Everything always comes back to him. This is about me.”
    I nodded again.
    “The thing is,” he went on, “I really want to get to the end of this dream. I keep thinking, if only I didn’t wake up before the end, I could find out what happened. And then maybe I could get myself sorted.”
    “And what would that mean to you? Getting yourself sorted?”
    “Well, being able to get a decent night’s sleep, for a start. Being able to concentrate properly in the daytime so I can learn my lines. Not having to worry about whether I’ll be able to handle this button business when it comes to dress rehearsal.” He shrugged.