Main Street

She could tell from his face, 'you were expecting a man?' A faint nod, seemingly intimidated, agreed this question. 'It's the name, Terry Ireland, my parents wanted a boy, so much so, that to spite that extra X chromosome, the insisted on calling me Terry, not even a feminine version, say with an i, but just plain Terry, to make matters worse all though my life the treated me as a boy, got kind of hard round puberty as you can imagine. Then when I got married to a man, of course that finally threw them, and they decided to die in a terrible car crash. But hey, that's life, I mean death. And to be honest it hasn't done me too much harm, I mean it made me go in to the predominantly male field of psychiatry, I guess it helped saying Terry on my CV so it wasn't discarded immediately. I always wondered if it was men's attitudes that stopped women going far in psychiatry, women are great listeners on the whole.' It was here he interrupted.

'Perhaps it's the fact that women often talk too much, yourself obviously excluded.' His sarcasm, if it was sarcasm, was subtle and wasted on her. 'Though perhaps if I can move away from the door and sit down, it would be more comfortable all round.' After a couple of seconds organising seats, he spoke again. 'I'm Matthew Temple, as I guess, or rather hope you already know.'

'Yes,' then without checking her notes, 'referred to me by Dr Lawson, a most distinguished colleague. So what can I do for you?'

Until now, the whole situation had been rather awkward, Matthew on the whole was not a forward person, probably why at thirty four he was still a basic run-of-the-mill accountant, never married, no serious relationships for many years, and just a single cat. It was fortunate therefore that he was beginning to feel at ease, surprisingly in the company of woman, and a not unattractive woman, though in her forties, and she did look it, if you took the time to notice, she was still quite attractive, in the 'I will grow old gracefully, but I'm not old yet' kind of way. She had that kind of motherly look, not the real motherly look, but the TV and film look, where it's some big star who's finally realised the big money love interest parts are not being offered, so she'll give playing the love interests mother a try, and a splendid job she was doing to. As for the room, this also helped to ease his nerves, he always imagined an excess of leather and an abundance of books an idea he always thought would be imposing and claustrophobic. The books were there but the leather not, instead comfortable seats in a material he had neither felt before or will again, but at this time, loved completely. It had only been several seconds since the question had been asked, and already he'd forgotten it. 'Er,' he mumbled as he racked his brains for the faintest of recollections of the original query, and then he remembered, 'dreams, well in particular a single dream, I get it every night it stays there in my head, like a ghost, it haunts me.' A rather strange analogy he'd made up there, but at the time it seemed appropriate.

'A haunting dream, nothing too unusual about it. Why don't you recount it, see if I can make any sense out of it.'

With the minimum amount of reluctance Matthew started. 'I'm walking along a street, in a town, it's kind of busy, traffic going by continually, people shuffling beside me, in the way shoppers do. The shops, though I don't really notice them are, as far as I can tell, normal, though I can't name a single one of them. And as I'm walking I'm getting this feeling in my head that there's something wrong, maybe that I shouldn't be here, or that I should and I should be doing something else. But I ignore it, I walk on. The people increase in number, I'm struggling to keep going forward, then, and only then I realise that everyone else is walking in the opposite direction, walking to from where I came, and so I worry, I'm worrying that I've missed something I should have seen or done, but I don't want to turn round and walk with them, I want to keep on my path to where ever it is I'm going. Then out of the corner of my eye I see a kid, he's around four, maybe five, blond hair, blue anorak, he's standing in the road, and his mum is on the pavement just looking at him. Then I see the lorry, a heavy articulated one, driving straight at the child, it's not slowing, it's speeding up. The woman's still looking at her child, I want to shout but nothing comes out, I try to run to help him, but my feet won't move. And then I remember everyone else, the crowded street, surely someone will help him, but no they ignore him, they've seen him I know, I saw there glances, but they just ignore him. And I look back at the child, but he's not in the road any more, the lorry is halfway down the street, the kid lies bleeding, crying, dying on the pavement flung aside as the lorry hit him. Only now can I move. Only now can I run to him, but it's too late. Just too late.' Then with a faint tinge of emotion he raises his hand to his eye, wipes away a tear, and speaks again. 'Then I wake up.'

To be continued...

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Page last updated on 28th October 1998

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