A journey into Freud

BROADCAST NEWS Deborah Thomas
PEOPLE in horror movies often deserve everything they get. Take, for example, the Poltergeist films. A young family live in a house that suddenly and violently turns against them. In particular their television set is intent upon devouring their lovely little daughter. Anyone with any sense would, of course, turn off the TV at once and move out within the week. But no — the Poltergeist family have to stay put, and glued to the box. Is it any wonder it all ends in tears?
This week's Screen Two (BBC2, Sunday) was rather like that. Called Do Not Disturb, it was written by Timberlake Wertenbaker, who is big in the theatre but new to television. The action centred on a group of literary tourists crawling all over the Norfolk birthplace of a turn-of-the-century ghost story writer called Eleanor Mont.
All the warnings were there for the taking. Locals repeatedly insisted that Ms Mont was a private sort of a person who would have resented the intrusion. The words "do not disturb" were etched on her gravestone. The tourists were undeterred.
When they set off across a dangerous stretch of tidal creeks in search of the setting for one of Ms Mont's stories you just sat back and wondered which of them it would be that sank into the treacherous mud.
Mind you, the literary trippers had brought with them enough fear and disappointment for several volumes of Philip Larkin. Rose could not reconcile her memories of a childhood in Zimbabwe with the dull reality of her marriage. A glamorous Euro-intellectual with a sexy accent and a "Golden Bough" obsession was there to exorcise a student love affair which had once brought her to this part of Norfolk. So, no shortage of spooks, even without the intervention of Eleanor Mont, who may or may not have popped up at the end to entice Rose to her muddy death. Were any of them real? This remained as unsure as the pilgrims' attempt to make Ms Mont's biography elucidate her writings, or vice versa.
Such a quest was nicely satirised when a Cambridge lecturer came up to give them an evening lecture. From the stories he extrapolated a life story for Ms Mont far racier than the quiet spinsterhood suggested by the parish records. He seemed vindicated when an old dear approached the tour leader in a pub and introduced herself as Ms Mont's granddaughter, drawing her lineage from an illicit liaison between the bookish spinster and the local landowner.
For a moment you thought you were meant to swallow the Cambridge chap's Freudian textual analysis — until the lady said that she had gleaned her information from a recent visit to the village of a "Cambridge professor".
His brand of literary criticism had proved most useful as the fuel to a sad old woman's fantasies. In the end, reading and living seemed to be acts with
equal potential for selfdeception, and the tour leader paid for her mistake in exploiting the tourists' enthusiasms by contracting a case if logophobia so severe she could barely read a street name. Now, what would Freud have made or that?
The Week Ahead
Sunday, March 24 12.00 Encounter, ITV. "In Evangelism — is it good news?" Peter Cotterell, Principal of the London Bible College and former missionary in Ethiopiinvestigates what the churches are trying to do in the decade of evangelism.
23.30 Seeds of Faith, Radio 4. The story of Mary Magdalene.
Friday, March 29 10.02 Good Friday Meditation, Radio 4.