“All right.”
“But when you do start remembering all the people in your life, what will happen to me? I mean, I was thinking last night, now I’m an important person in your mind …”
“You are, you are, I promise you, Violet.”
“But when it all comes back, I’ll be one of—hundreds?”
“Perhaps it won’t come back.”
“When it does, will you want to be my friend?”
“I am sure I will.”
“But she won’t.”
“Are you sure of that?”
“Yes. I saw her both of the times she came to see you. I was the one who took her in to you, and showed her the way and everything. That was when I was being co-operative and amenable.”
“She is very attractive. He has good taste, the Professor has.”
“Is she what you would choose now, do you think?”
“I wouldn’t mind. I wouldn’t mind at all if I could just go off with her as if I had just met her.”
“But you have only just met her.”
“I know when I’m with her that she is telling me the truth. She hates me, you see.”
“Yes, she does. But it’s not you she hates so much. She hates her life.”
“Are you sure of that?”
“Yes. I saw her face. I took a good close look, both times. I knew what she was feeling.”
“Tell me then.”
“She’s like my mother.”
“But perhaps everyone is?”
“No. Because if that is true it means you are like my father, and you aren’t, you aren’t, you aren’t.”
“Don’t cry then.”
“I don’t cry. Never. Or if I do, it isn’t me that’s crying. I can watch myself cry—it’s not worth anything, not like real sorrow … she was crying like anything last time.”
“They say I lost my memory because I feel guilty.”
“Do you?”
“I think I feel guilty because I lost my memory. I do feel very deeply indeed that it is irresponsible to lose one’s memory.”
“If you feel that, you haven’t lost your memory, but you have only lost some facts, some events.”
“Oh yes, I do tell myself that. But there’s something else. Yes. There’s something I have to remember. I have to.”
“But don’t get excited, it makes it worse.”
“I’ve been here over two months, Violet.”
“Don’t let them send you to that place. Don’t.”
“But if I refuse to go, they say I’ll have to have shock.”
Both of them, the middle-aged man and the pretty girl, turned to look at a person, a woman, who sat in a chair a few feet away, watching the television. The programme had at last started. Then they looked at another person, a middle-aged man, and then at another, and so on, around the room. The people their glances were isolating in this way had had shock treatments, or were in the course of having them.
There was no method of treatment that caused more emotion in the wards, more fear. Yet of the people in that room, more than half had had the electric current switched through their brains. Although some of the new drugs that were being used were as powerful as electric shocks, and although as little was known about their effects as was known about shock treatment, these new drugs did not provoke nearly as much fearful comment and speculation.
“Brian Smith says he knows to a week when he is going to have to come in and have another set of shocks,” she said.
“Mrs. Jones told me she couldn’t bear the thought of living without them,” he agreed.
There was a considerable silence.
“Roger is going out next week,” she said at last. “He says he will be looking for a flat to share. He says we can go and live with him if we like, until we find a place of our own.”
“Oh good. That’s very kind. Yes, I’m sure that would be the best thing for both of us.”
Well now Professor.
Well now Doctor Y?
I’ve got you another two weeks. But it wasn’t easy and I am afraid it’s the last extension possible. It would be so much easier if you didn’t show your dislike of Doctor X so strongly. It is quite irrational you know. I understand that among the patients I’m a goody and he is a baddy. It’s like schoolchildren.
I don’t dislike him.
But you never say a word to him.
There is nothing I can say. He’s not there.
Well, well.
Doctor Y, have you thought at all of what I suggested?
Oh, come now, Professor!
I’d look after her. You don’t imagine … I understand her. All she needs is to be allowed to behave like a little girl.
You fancy yourself as a nursery maid?
Or as her father.
It doesn’t matter what I think, anyway. It wouldn’t be possible. She has two fathers, two mothers, three sisters and a brother. As I know to my sorrow.
But it’s not illegal?
No. But you’d find the whole lot buzzing around you day and night. No, it’s better she stays here where she is allowed to be a little girl without the benefit of her relations.
It is very strange to me, Doctor Y. You say you’d be delighted if I went to stay with Miles Bovey. Or with Rosemary Baines.
Both have said they’d be happy to have you stay with them as long as it would help. Mr. Bovey has a cottage in Wales, he says. It would be quiet for you. And Miss Baines sounds a reasonable type of woman.
And yet I don’t know either of them.
You said you did remember wandering around by yourself that night when you got to Miss Baines?
A little. Not much. It isn’t the wandering around that is the point. No. The point is—there was something I had to remember. Have to remember. I know that. I was looking for something. Somebody.
Yourself?
Words. That’s a word. To you that means one thing, but it’s different to me.
You think you’ll remember if you share a flat with Violet?
I don’t know. But you see, she’s now—do you understand? She’s not like a person in a dream. She can’t suddenly turn into something else—and make up a past for me.
I don’t think either Miles Bovey or Miss Baines would make up a past for you. And above all, it wouldn’t be an emotional pressure, as it might be if you went home too soon.
I don’t know why I can never make you understand. I can get Violet to understand everything I say.
Are you sure she’s not behaving as a small girl would—playing at grownups?
I am sure sometimes, yes. But she is not just a small girl, Doctor Y. Emotionally yes, of course. But in other ways she understands things you don’t.
Well, I’m sorry. What do you want me to do? I can say to you that I agree it might help both you and Violet to spend a period of convalescence together. I could say that. But I am sure there would be other opinions. Not least from her parents. All four of them.
She’s twenty-one.
Legally.
So that’s that.
If you and Violet left tomorrow and set up a ménage together you wouldn’t be stopped physically. But I guarantee she’d come running back to us inside a week.
To be protected from me?
From her feelings about you, first of all. And mostly because of her family.
But why should they know?
It’s extremely easy to find out where people are these days. There is an industry to do just that.
All right Doctor. Then I have one choice the less. And the one that I’ll end up with is my wife and family.
In the end, yes. Because that’s where you belong.
Tell me, was there a point in your life that was a real turning point? You could have chosen to do something else?
No, I think my life has been pretty mapped out for me by circumstances.
But when you think of yourself, you don’t think of yourself as your circumstances, surely.
I could have done othe
r things, of course. But I’ve been the same person.
Then why do I have to be Professor Thingabob? And I’m not Felicity’s husband and the father of James and Philip. Suppose I had gone back to Yugoslavia after the war and married Vera? She was Konstantina’s close friend.
Look Professor, whether I understand you or not doesn’t make any difference, you know. There are certain roads open to you. I want to list them again—right?
Why don’t you see?
You can go home. Your wife says she’ll be happy, any time you decide to go home. We think this would be a mistake as you are now. We don’t know but we think it is possible that your home or your wife or your children set you off in the first place.
It was nothing to do with Felicity. It was to do with …
Go on, catch it—to do with what?
It went. How can I not remember? How? It’s just there, always. I feel I could catch it by suddenly turning my head, it’s so close. Like a shadow out of the corner of my eye.
And it is not your wife or your home?
No. I know the nature of it very well. I keep telling you that. The kind of thing it is—I know that. But not exactly what. There’s something else I ought to be doing. Something different. I know that, and I have to…
I’m going on with the alternatives. The second one is that you could stay with a friend, either Miles Bovey or Rosemary Baines, since they have both offered …
But you say I don’t know Rosemary Baines, I met her once at a public meeting, and she wrote me that letter you showed me. Sometimes I do think that there is something there for me. Last time I read her letter yes, I did think—but how can I be sure? It is so easy to be trapped. I’m trapped here. I might find that another trap and …
I’m going on. But that is my advice—try a friend for a short time. They are less exacting than families and …
Friends. Friends, yes. Real friends. Friends are not for comforting and licking each other’s muzzles and saying how nice you are, how kind. Friends are for fighting, they are for …
I am going on. If you decide not to go home, and decide not to stay with a friend, there’s the North Catchment Hospital in two weeks from now. And there you would find the same conditions as here …
Everyone says much worse.
The same, I mean, for your choices. Because if you wanted to leave there, you’d be in the same position exactly as you are now. The same alternatives.
It’s not a question of alternatives. It’s a question of remembering.
I’m going on. Or you can agree to have shock therapy. I’ve already gone into the pros and cons pretty thoroughly. It has to be shock, because you haven’t responded to the alternative drugs.
Tell me.
The essence of it in my opinion is that I don’t think it would do you any harm, and it may have the effect of making you remember.
Remember what, that’s the point!
Or it may leave you exactly as you are now.
When you give people electric shock treatment you don’t know, not really, what it does.
No. But we do know there are thousands, probably millions by now, of people who would be too depressed to go on living without it.
I’m not depressed, Doctor. I am not.
Well, well.
And if you were in my place, you’d have the electric shock treatment?
Yes I would. You’ll probably come to that in the end. That’s my view. It is also the view of Doctor X. You have had the drugs we use instead of shock. None has worked with you. Nothing has worked. You had lost your memory when you came in, and you still have no memory. So what shall we do?
But I have two weeks more here?
Yes.
Of course I might remember in that time.
Yes, you might. Would you like to try writing things down again? A tape-recorder?
My room in college looks out into a small court. The court is square and has white walls. There are various plants in tubs and pots. The wall opposite my door is the retaining wall of the garden above it. Honeysuckle dangles down over this wall from that garden. Last summer the honeysuckle let down two long tendrils side by side, but separated from each other by about a yard. The two green dangling sprays look attractive on the white wall. It is the nature of honeysuckle to look for a support, a wall or a trellis or another plant. There is nothing on that wall for it to fasten itself to. But there is a camellia in a pot in the corner. I noticed that the strand of honeysuckle nearer the camellia was swaying back and forth in wider sweeps than the strand further away. At first I thought that for some reason the wind or a breeze was reaching this strand to make it move more than the other—though this seemed unlikely because it was the strand on the outer side of the wall nearer the entrance which was more vulnerable to wind or air passing. Or at least it would be reasonable to think so. But there was no doubt that it was the inner strand which moved faster and in wider sweeps, in its efforts to reach and fasten itself on to the camellia. I sat there last summer a good deal, watching. It was really a remarkable sight. After watching for a few minutes, the faster moving strand began to seem like an arm or a part of some sea animal, as it swayed back and forth, trying to reach the camellia. Day after day passed, but no matter how hard the honeysuckle tendril tried, it could not reach the camellia. Then I moved the pot with the camellia in it inwards a few inches, and sat to watch how the honeysuckle finally managed to latch itself on, helped by a small breeze.
Then I moved the camellia back again, into its corner, though by now I was so involved with the efforts of the honeysuckle to find a support it was like taking away food from a creature. I marked the length of the honeysuckle on the wall with chalk. But it had become autumn, and the plant had stopped lengthening itself for that year.
One afternoon I looked up from my desk and saw that the honeysuckle had swung itself far enough to lay a tight tendril around a branch of the camellia. It had been a stormy night. And the tendril or arm of the honeysuckle that was farther away had been swung up by the wind past the camellia-loving tendril to lay hold of a trellis high on the wall. So now both tendrils were fastened and made pretty loops of green on the wall. But then in a few days there was another strong wind, and the outer tendril lost its hold on the trellis and fell down. Now, hanging down by itself, it began a slow determined swinging to reach its sister tendril that was hanging down on the wall, but curving away, since this inner one was fastened to the camellia. As I watched one afternoon, I saw how a small breeze took this outer strand to hook on to the inner one, but the combined weight of the two was too much for the still tentative clasp of the tendril on the camellia, and now both sprays fell back and dangled down the wall.
We were all back where we started.
Both again started their slow aspiring swinging back and forth, back and forth, more or less, according to whether there was a wind. But they were never entirely still. Even on a windless day, the sprays would be in perpetual light movement, the one closer to the camellia moving more than the other.
I used to sit and watch and I asked myself if the honeysuckle sprays “remembered” how one of them had been able to reach the high trellis on the night of the strong wind, and the other how it had found a host in the camellia. After all, the genus honeysuckle “remembers” that it must hold fast on to something or other, and it knows how it must swing back and forth inside the attraction of another plant which becomes its host. And what of the camellia? Does it lean over as far as it can to help the honeysuckle to reach it? Surely the camellia cannot be indifferent to the efforts of the honeysuckle?
By the time the autumn ended, the honeysuckle spray had several times reached the camellia, with the aid of light breezes, and had several times been pulled away again, either by too strong a breeze, or because of its sister strand adding its weight to it.
And all the times between, when the inner strand was not attached to the camellia, it hung there, lightly quivering, always in subtle movement, waiting as it swung for the wi
nd, as a surfer adjusts the balance of his body for an expected wave.
Sometimes, watching, I could feel the process on that wall as a unity: the movement of the honeysuckle spray, the waiting camellia, and the breeze which was not visible at all, except as it lifted the honeysuckle spray up and close to the camellia.
It was not: The honeysuckle spray swings and reaches the camellia.
It was not: The wind blows the spray on to its host.
The two things are the same.
Not until the spring came, when the honeysuckle spray lengthened its growth, and achieved a wider swing, was it certain of a really solid grasp of the camellia.
Now I see a third part of the process.
Not only: The movement of the spray made it reach the camellia,
Or: The wind blew it so it could reach the camellia,
But: The further growth of the honeysuckle made it possible to reach the camellia.
But the element in which this process exists is—Time.
Time is the whole point. Timing.
The surfer on the wave. The plant swinging in the wind. And it’s just the same with—well, everything, and that’s what I have to say, Doctor. Why can’t you see that?
It was ten at night in a ward or room shared by the Professor and three other men. The ward was cosy, with its pink curtains drawn. The Professor was reading that day’s Times. Outside was a wild night, noisy with wind.
Of the other three patients, two were already asleep, their bedside lights off, and one was listening to the radio through headphones.
A girl came into the ward. She wore flowered little-girl pyjamas, and a white fluffy dressing gown. Her señorita’s hair was now loosed from the formal bun, but she had pulled it back and tied it at the nape of her neck, making it a brown bush caught neatly by a pink ribbon bow. She was everything that was proper and right, but poor girl, she could not help herself and now the shock inherent in Miss Violet Stoke’s presence was because the little girl had a sad, knowledgeable woman’s face. She sat on the Professor’s bed and lowered her voice to say furiously: “Is it true?”
“Yes, I suppose so.”
“But why? Don’t. Please don’t. Oh please please don’t.”
Briefing for a Descent Into Hell Page 24