Jan felt alone. None of the family now talked to him, except Ethan’s girlfriend, not even his own sister who also lived in England. Whatever he had thought before about taping the relationship back together again he knew was a fantasy. It was over. And so was his current research project. While Sally worked on getting him his new post in Canada he worked as a locum at a number of hospitals in London. He found it strange to be talking to sick people again, diagnosing their ailments, patching them back up. He felt like a mechanic on a conveyor belt.
Finally the day came for his interview. The flight over had been a drain, lots of turbulence and a three-hour delay at London Gatwick. He had five hours to get his act together and had taken a hotel room near the hospital to freshen and psyche himself up. One thing he had to keep reminding himself of was to not repeat his usual performance. At other interviews, three in London, one in Holland, two in Australia and one in Hong Kong, he’d got rattled early on by the aggressive line of questioning. They wanted to know why he had published certain things and not others. Why had he written an obscure book on aborigine medicine? What sort of question was that? Surely, it was up to him what he published. Then he showed his aggressive side back and revealed he wasn’t really a team player. Brushing his teeth in the tiny bathroom, he resolved to keep a tight reign on his tongue, be warm and sociable, but not too defensive as this was often misconstrued as offensive behaviour.
Nine in the morning, Canadian time, the interview commenced at eleven. Jan lay down on the hotel bed, setting his alarm for just half an hour ahead. The alarm awoke him in a middle of a dream. He’d been in a strange hospital outside the maternity ward, getting ready to go in and deliver at baby. But, before he could get through the doors, a woman appeared who was so enormous she became wedged in the door, so he couldn’t enter. The frustration was unbearable. Splintered images of this filtered through his mind as he slammed the alarm off, almost breaking the thing. He discarded the dream memories. One minute later Sally rang.
“Hi Jan, there’s been a slight hitch. Professor Jensen’s thinking of postponing the interview a couple of days. He wouldn’t tell me why, something pretty serious I think.”
Jan liked to control things. Throughout the entire relationship with Flo he’d been in control. She’d been ringing him constantly, but he’d told reception not to put her calls through. The mystery concerning Professor Jensen annoyed him intensely, but unlike in England he didn’t take it out on his woman. Instead he arranged to visit her ill son and then take her out to lunch. As he pulled the cork out of a second bottle of Jacob’s Creek, he remembered the dream and told Sally, knowing her latent interest in psychoanalysis that manifested itself after the imbibing of alcohol.
“So you think women are in some way preventing you from giving birth to something, something creative perhaps? That’s interesting. It appears you find your current life stale. All work and no play…”
He laughed this one off. He’d never thought he’d have to defer to a woman like this, but switching from a sadist to a masochist wasn’t too difficult. Somehow she was right. She must have sensed that he was chasing after something but always in the same way, so he never found what he was looking for.
Sally had a couple of days off so they spent the time before the interview visiting places that meant a lot to her in Toronto and the suburbs. She took him to old churches and he met friends that knew her parents. All her older family were dead, and he preferred this, it gave him more status. Knowing he could do nothing to make the interview come sooner, Jan managed to get into the beauty he was shown, realising this was important for Sally, for both of them. Canada held for him a sense of power that Australia once had. Jan was taken in by the way Sally managed to get people to do what she wanted. She never played the victim or the oppressor. She just had an air about her that made people do things.
The day of the interview Jan got his haircut. They took off more than he would have liked, with his large ears now making his head look life a trophy.
“At least you don’t look like an old hippy. Professor Jensen doesn’t like hippies.”
Jan sensed this Jensen guy was an old school old fool. It was surprising how many of them you met. They all thought they were clever, having carved out their little niche, but they may as well have been dead the amount of real thinking they did.
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