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109 pages

English

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'An utterly captivating curiosity'-- Caroline SmailesThere is Truth and there are Lies; there is Fiction and there is Fact; there is Life and there is Death.And then there are the Spaces in Between.Paris, 1968. Nicholas finds himself broke, without papers and on the verge of being deported back to England. Seeking to stay in France, Nicholas takes a three-month contract as an English tutor to the 17-year-old Imperial Highness Natalya. It is the perfect solution; free room and board, his wages saved, and a place to hide from police raids. All that is asked of Nicholas is too obey the lifestyle of the Victorian household and not to leave the house's grounds. It should have solved all his problems...The Spaces In Between details the experience of Nicholas as he finds himself an unwitting prisoner within an aristocratic household, apparently frozen in time, surrounded by macabre and eccentric personalities who seem determined to drag him to the point of insanity. Much deeper runs a question every reader is left to ponder - if this tale is fact and not fiction, then what motivation could have driven his tormenters?

Sujets

Philosophie et théologie

Memoir

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Publié par	Distributed by eBookpartnership
Date de parution	10 octobre 2022
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781912317950
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0150€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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COUNT COLLIN VAN REENAN
THE
SPACES
IN BETWEEN
Published by RedDoor www.reddoorpublishing.com
© 2018 Collin Van Reenan
The right of Collin Van Reenan to be identified as author of this Work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
ISBN 978-1-912317-95-0
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, copied in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise transmitted without written permission from the author
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Cover design: Patrick Knowles www.patrickknowlesdesign.com
Illustrations on pages xvi and xvii drawn by Graham Larwood Plans on page 12 provided by Danny Hope of Hope Design Studio Ltd
Typesetting: Tutis Innovative E-Solutions Pte. Ltd
To Sue, without whom nothing would be possible
‘Every man has reminiscences which he would not tell to everyone, but only to his friends.
‘He has other matters in his mind which he would not reveal even to his friends, but only to himself, and that in secret.
‘But there are other things that a man is afraid to tell, even to himself, and every decent man has a number of such things stored away in his mind.’
Dostoevsky, Notes from the Underground
Some people may consider this is a ghost story; others, like my father, a crime. Some would say that it describes the relentless descent into neurosis; others that it is the greatest love story they know.
Marie-Claire Gröller, Paris, 1970
Preface
‘This is one of those cases in which the imagination is baffled by the facts.’
W INSTON C HURCHILL
M y name is Marie-Claire Gröller, Doctor of Psychiatry. I deal with the neurotic, the psychotic and even the psychopathic, and I have many strange tales to tell; but none so utterly mysterious as the facts related in the following pages.
Normally (not a word that figures often in my profession), the rules of patient confidentiality would prevent such a story from ever leaving my files. There are, however, exceptions. In the case of dire need of the patient and with his full consent, it may be permitted to publish such details in the desperate hope that it may bring relief and closure for him.
In this case the patient is, moreover, also my friend.
His steadily deteriorating condition has forced me to take these unusual steps. Someone, somewhere, knows what happened, and could, if he or she had the courage to come forward, bring some sort of respite to a man who has suffered a great wrong and who is slowly sinking under the despair of not knowing why.
I first met the man (whom I shall call Nicholas) in late October 1968. After I qualified from the Sorbonne in Paris and spent two years at the Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital, in 1968 my parents helped me to open my own practice in a small town called Rueil-Malmaison, about fifteen minutes by car from the centre of Paris to the north-west, across the Seine and behind the beautiful Bois de Boulogne Park. The town was already well served by consultants in all aspects of medicine, and at first I struggled to find work. Patients are most often referred to psychiatrists by general practitioners, and they preferred established and experienced colleagues. There was also, at that time, a certain amount of prejudice against women in the medical profession.
Fortunately, a young doctor close to my own practice was very helpful to me (we later married) and sent me my first patient.
My father was a commissaire de police , a high rank in the police judiciaire , and used part of his retirement pension to set me up in practice. My cabinet or practice was rather humble, consisting simply of two rooms above a lingerie boutique on the Rue Paul Vaillant-Couturier, a few yards from the church where the Empress Joséphine is entombed. The first room, furnished only with a desk and filing cabinet, served as the reception, and the second, with just two armchairs and a small table, as my practice room. I had to act as my own receptionist and answer the telephone to make appointments.
It was nearly a week before I received my first call. Dr David wished to refer a young man. The patient claimed he was suffering from insomnia, but the doctor suspected he was in fact clinically depressed. This young man, who lived nearby, was not registered locally with any doctor and had asked Dr David merely for a prescription for sleeping tablets. However, his appearance, lack of appetite and general state of health suggested to the good doctor that the problem was in the mind rather than the body. Dr David warned me that, although his new patient had reluctantly agreed to see me, he was very reticent and wary when asked about his background.
Trying not to sound too eager, I arranged an appointment, and 10 a.m. the next day found me peeping surreptitiously through the blinds on the street side of my rooms. When the bell sounded, I felt a childlike and inappropriate excitement, and wondered if perhaps I should be consulting someone myself!
Heart racing, I admitted my first private patient and led the way upstairs.
It was only when we found ourselves next to my two armchairs that I really had a chance to look at my client. He waited politely for me to sit, and that gave me a chance to observe him. My first impressions were of a man about twenty-three or twenty-four years of age, of medium height and build. I also noted that he was wearing an expensive, elegant if rather shabby dark grey suit, beautifully cut but in a rather old-fashioned double-breasted style, which seemed to hang on him as though he had lost some weight since it was made. Unusually for the times, his hair was short – brown, wavy, but with some premature greying at the sides. The shape of his face, together with his fair complexion, suggested that he was a northern European. His deep-set grey eyes were ringed with dark shadows that suggested lack of sleep.
Uneasy at my perhaps too obvious scrutiny, he fidgeted, eyes on the floor; but then he looked up suddenly with a shy smile and I glimpsed – again unusually for those heavy-smoking, coffee-drinking times – perfect white teeth.
Introducing myself and explaining Dr David’s concern, I asked him outright if anything was troubling him. He fidgeted uneasily again and refused to meet my eyes. Finally, he said that he was unable to sleep well, following an ‘unsettling experience’ a few months previously. His appetite also seemed to have deserted him and he felt unable to relax. He lived alone and was currently unemployed, living on an allowance sent to him by his parents.
As I listened to his soft voice, I noted that his French was clear and his pronunciation precise – an educated French that was, I thought, very good. In fact too good; I was listening to someone who was not speaking his mother tongue. I looked again at the name on the file I had just created – ‘Nicholas Van R.’ – and assumed that I was dealing with a Belgian, from Flanders. When I enquired, however, he told me that he was in fact English, though his mother was Irish and his father’s family had connections in South Africa.
I continued to probe and learned that he had come to Paris aged thirteen because his mother wanted him to be educated in France. At first he had boarded at the Lycée Henri-IV, afterwards spending a couple of years at the University of Liège, Belgium, where he had relatives, and then about two years ago had started a humanities course at the Sorbonne, with the intention of becoming a journalist. The first year, he had studied existentialism under Professor Paul Genestier, whom he greatly admired, but in his second year his tuition was taken over by Professor Robert S.– H.–, who, although he treated him well, was not someone Nicholas had been able to warm to.
He stopped suddenly and looked up at me; again that shy smile.
‘You were going to tell me about your “unsettling experience”…’ I prompted.
‘Well…’ He hesitated. ‘I’m not actually sure it’s relevant…’
‘Please go on.’ I smiled back. I could see we were getting closer to the problem and I needed to keep the momentum going.
He was uncomfortable now and again refused to look at me. When he was not smiling, his face appeared gaunt, and the dark shadows around his eyes made him look older than his years.
‘Please… Nicholas, if I may call you that… I can’t help you if you don’t explain…’
Slowly, he began to resume his story.
‘Well, it all started to go wrong – for me, that is – just at the start of January of this year. My parents retired to South Africa, but for some complicated reason their bank accounts were frozen…some business court case, I was told. Suddenly, my allowance stopped. I didn’t have much in the way of savings but I found some evening work as a plongeur in various restaurants and was just about managing…by making all sorts of economies. But…’
He looked up at me.
‘But I didn’t have a work permit and, when my student visa expired in March, I didn’t have the funds to show to get it renewed. I was unhappy with my classes…I hadn’t taken to Professor S.– H.–, as I said, and I had problems meeting my rent. The final straw was the outbreak of the student riots in May. There was a lot of damage…the restaurants closed and I could no longer earn money. I lost my rooms and had to doss down with friends…I even stayed with the Professor, just for a few days, that’s how desperate I was. I think I lived on cafés au lait for a couple of weeks. Then –’
He stopped abruptly, and it was obvious that he was approaching something that made him uncomfortable.
‘Please go on, Nicholas. I’m here to listen.’
He looked hard at me, as if trying to decide whether he could trust me, looked down at the floor and then, very slowly, raised his eyes to mine, made his decision and began, haltingly, ‘Then Bruno…a friend…found an ad in Le Figaro …for an English tutor…to live in. It seemed the only answe