An Audience of Chairs

by Joan Clark

  The man who called himself Dr. Ridley stopped reading the file and without a trace of accent asked Moranna to tell him why she thought she was here. His excellent English troubled her. Surely Brezhnev’s brother would speak heavily accented English. Perhaps he wasn’t a brother at all but a double the KGB were using. He had asked a trick question she would answer, but without telling the truth.

  “My father advised me to come and so I came.”

  “Do you normally do what your father advises?”

  “Normally” was a trick word—he wanted to know what she regarded as normal.

  “Not necessarily but in this case I did because I was ready for a change.”

  “What sort of change?”

  “Oh, you know, a change in scenery. Although I haven’t seen it, I assume the view of the harbour from the hotel windows is superb.”

  He fell into the trap straight away. “This is not a hotel, Mrs. Fraser.”

  Obviously he lacked a sense of humour.

  “And we are not playing a game.”

  “So you say.”

  “Mrs. Fraser, if you are not prepared to co-operate, then we will postpone the interview until next week. I’m a busy man.”

  “I’m a busy woman,” Moranna said, having realized that espionage was full-time, challenging work. She was now convinced the doctor was being impersonated by an actor, a most convincing actor, but that was to be expected because the best spies were accomplished actors.

  The doctor closed the file and stood up. “Very well. If you wait outside, your floor nurse will show you to your room.” He picked up the telephone. She was dismissed.

  The floor nurse was not at all like the head nurse in The Shrike, a role Moranna had enjoyed playing at Acadia because it allowed her to be high-handed and overbearing with impunity. The nurse walking beside her on squeaky cork soles was soft-spoken and gentle, a slim brown-eyed woman with brown hair coiled in a bun at the base of her cap. “Call me Becky,” she said. Obviously she wasn’t with the KGB, no self-respecting spy would use such a childish name. “You’ll be sharing a room with two other Cape Bretoners, Charlotte and Francie. It won’t seem like two though, Francie’s pretty well out of it. It’s only fair to warn you. Some people are upset when they see her for the first time.”

  A victim of torture, Moranna thought, when she saw Francie. What secrets had the KGB wrung out of her before turning her into a vegetable? The woman lying motionless beneath the sheet looked old enough to have been in the Bolshevik Revolution, her face collapsed, her mouth open in a cavernous snore. If it weren’t for the snore she could have been mistaken for dead.

  “Your new roommate is here, Charlotte,” Becky said, and the large woman lying on the bed heaved herself onto her elbows and looked Moranna over. It was an appraising look that was neither friendly nor unfriendly, appearing as it did on the face of woman who had trained herself to expect almost anything.

  Becky opened the door of a small cupboard against the wall nearest the bed. “This is your locker and should fit your suitcase if you stand it on its end. You also have a bedside table drawer and a cubbyhole for your things, but if you have anything valuable, I advise you to take it down to the office.”

  “Or Elsie will steal it,” Charlotte said; she was now sitting on the edge of the bed. “Elsie thinks she’s Robin Hood and visits rooms at night taking things to give to others. She gets away with it because it’s an open ward.”

  “No need to worry, she’s harmless,” Becky said breezily. “Now I must go.” She looked at her watch. “Supper’s in fifteen minutes. Will you show Moranna the cafeteria, Charlotte?”

  Moranna relaxed slightly. She hadn’t been given a single room but it was unlikely that either of her roommates was a spy. Francie had probably been one but she was of no use to anyone now.

  Charlotte watched her studying Francie. “She shouldn’t be here,” she said. “She’s supposed to be in the committed ward, but I guess they’re full up over there.”

  There was a dip at the top of Francie’s forehead large enough to hold an egg. Moranna said, “She looks like she’s been tortured.”

  “A lobotomy.” Charlotte said. “They used to do them in here.”

  Supper was corn chowder, hot turkey sandwiches and rice pudding. The fact that it was a cafeteria didn’t mean there was a choice of food, it meant you put the food on the tray yourself while the cooks watched from behind the steam tables. Moranna was famished, having left the hamburger Murdoch bought her in New Glasgow untouched. She sat at the far end of a long table beneath the fluorescent lights, prodding the food with a spoon. “Try it,” Charlotte said. “It’s okay. Look.” She nodded toward half a dozen candy stripers eating their supper beneath a small window where natural light eked inside as if it was rationed. “All of us in here eat the same food, even the doctors and nurses.” If that’s the case, Moranna thought, the food must be safe, and picking up the bowl, she gulped down the chowder. “They notice if you don’t eat and put it down on your record,” Charlotte said conspiratorially. She squeezed a roll of fat at her waist. “That’s how I got this inner tube. The first thing I’m going do when I’m back home is go on a diet.”

  “When do you go home?”

  “After my next shock treatment. I’ve had five so far this time around and the doctor thinks the sixth one will do the trick.”

  Moranna was alarmed her roommate would accept shock treatment so matter-of-factly. She had no intention of accepting it herself. No one was going to fry her brain. Charlotte was obviously someone who was easily coerced, but then ordinary people were. Being ordinary, they lacked the intelligence required to recognize manipulation and Machiavellian schemes. There was a reason why spy work was called Intelligence, and the KGB spies would never succeed in fooling someone with her superior intelligence.

  That night Moranna lay in the dark imagining herself in the brainwashing room standing upright in a tank of cold water while messages boomed non-stop through a loudspeaker above her head. When she heard the night nurse coming along the corridor, she closed her eyes, faking sleep as the white flare of the flashlight swept across her face. Even after the nurse moved on, she kept her eyes shut in case the nurse doubled back for a second look.

  Later Moranna must have slept because when she opened her eyes again, Elsie was standing beside the bed. Moranna knew who she was because Charlotte had pointed her out in the cafeteria. Small and as thin and straight as a match, Elsie scarcely moved a muscle, not even her staring eyes. Moranna didn’t stare back but closed her eyes and feigned sleep. She expected to hear the bedside drawer or the locker being opened but she heard nothing except Francie’s bubbled snore and her own heart thumping against the mattress. Moranna was lying on her side, one hand on her handbag beneath the pillow: even so she was terrified Elsie would somehow be able to snatch the handbag away—knowing there was no safe keeping inside the temple of truth, she had rejected the suggestion that she take it down to the office for safe keeping. Already she was onto the reason for Elsie’s nighttime visits. Elsie was an instrument of the KGB, a human robot employed to brainwash people. How clever of Russian Intelligence to use a seemingly harmless old woman to control patients’ brains while they slept. Charlotte’s Robin Hood tale about stealing possessions to give away to others was a cover-up to conceal the fact that Elsie was attempting to rob patients’ thoughts so they could be substituted by those of the KGB. It was a diabolical scheme Moranna resisted by punching Elsie hard enough in the stomach that she whimpered and backed out of the room.

  On subsequent nights, after the nurse came and went, Moranna put her blankets and sheets on the floor and slept under the bed, her handbag beneath the pillow. After this, Elsie stayed away from the room for several nights and when she again ghosted in and stood beside the bed, she made no attempt to look under it and eventually moved on. When Charlotte asked why she slept on the floor, Moranna told her she had a back problem. She didn’t think her roommate was a spy, but being brainwashed, she
might let it slip to someone who was that Moranna knew the truth about Elsie.

  At the end of the week, Becky told Moranna that Dr. Ridley was prepared to see her again so that an assessment could be made and treatment begin. I’m not prepared to see him, Moranna replied, but not aloud since a refusal to see Brezhnev’s brother might arouse suspicion and put Duncan and the children in danger. She allowed Becky to lead her to the doctor’s office, where she sat down and waited.

  “How are you sleeping?”

  “Well enough.”

  The doctor showed his square grey teeth. “Don’t you find the floor uncomfortable?”

  Either Charlotte had blabbed or the night nurse had come back a second time.

  “It’s good for my back.”

  “Back problems aren’t mentioned in your file.” He smiled again. “You see, your family doctor provided me with the details of your family history.”

  “The back problem’s recent.”

  The imposter who called himself Dr. Ridley picked up a pencil and frowned at it, his bushy eyebrows meeting in the middle. “You know, we could continue playing cat and mouse, but I think the time has come for us to be frank with each other.”

  “Frank about what?”

  “About your mental illness. You are in a manic stage, which puts you in grave danger.”

  “How do you know what stage I’m in?”

  “You have been closely observed.”

  She hadn’t noticed the hidden cameras, but when she returned to the room after this meeting she would look for them. She was amazed that “the doctor” admitted to the surveillance. Obviously he didn’t know she was working with Duncan Deciding to play along with him without giving away her cover, she said, “What kind of danger am I supposed to be in?”

  “The danger of losing your life.” He frowned again and began doodling on a pad of paper, in code no doubt. “You do know your mother suicided, and that fact together with your own history means you are particularly susceptible to suicide.”

  “That’s a lie,” Moranna said. “You may think you are clever, Dr. Ridley, but I am cleverer than you.” Obviously he was claiming her mother had suicided because he intended to drown her too, probably in bathwater, and make it look like a suicide. “This hospital is a dangerous place. You know that as well as I do, and as long as I stay here my life will be in danger.”

  “What kind of danger?”

  “Don’t play games with me, Doctor. I know what you’re up to and I see through your schemes. You may pull the wool over some people’s eyes, but you won’t pull it over mine.”

  “There are no schemes, Moranna. The fact is you are safer here than anywhere else.” He put down the pencil and leaned across the desk in an attempt to appear confiding and sincere. “I want to help you get better. One way you can get better is to get plenty of rest. I’ve arranged for the night nurse to give you tranquilizers that will calm you down and help you sleep.”

  “I won’t take them.”

  “Don’t you want to see your daughters?” This was nothing more than a crude form of blackmail to force her to take the pills.

  “Of course I want to see them.”

  “Then the sooner you co-operate, the sooner you’ll be with them.”

  He had her cornered and there was no course of action but to pretend to go along with him. “I’ll co-operate,” she said and sighed to make it more convincing.

  When she got back to the room, only Francie was there—Charlotte played bingo in the afternoons. Moranna examined the door, the window, the radiator and the light switch, flicking it idly on and off before it occurred to her that the surveillance camera was inside the fluorescent lights. That was why the nurses frequently turned them on during the day and why Elsie was programmed to spy at night when the lights were off. Taking a pen from her purse, Moranna slid the bedside table to one side and, crouching down, began writing on the wall, recording what she knew about the spy ring operating in the hospital. She wrote small so the writing wouldn’t be detected once the bed table was back in place—although she was writing in code, she had to take every precaution. If something happened to her as a result of the treachery of the KGB, she wanted to pass on what she had learned to Duncan. Eventually, the housekeepers would move the bedside table and find the code, but it wouldn’t matter because by then she would be long gone, travelling with her children. She had found a hundred dollars in her handbag she couldn’t remember putting there and might be counterfeit. But she also had a further sixty-three dollars of her own money, which was enough to take the bus to Baddeck after she went to Chester and got the children back, something she intended to do one day soon.

  When Becky came around after supper with a little white pill in a paper cup, Moranna popped it into her mouth and tucked it beside a back tooth. “Come on. Swallow it down.” Moranna pretended to swallow. “It’s still there,” Becky laughed and said, “If you keep it in your mouth it will dissolve in your saliva so you might as well swallow it.” Moranna swallowed and fell asleep soon after. She was appalled when she woke in the morning and found herself sleeping on top of the bed. The next day she swallowed another pill, but the third pill she managed to keep inside her cheek. The nurse who had taken Becky’s shift was easier to fool, and Moranna had mastered the knack of pretending to swallow the pill. She was too clever to throw the pills in the wastebasket where they would be found. Instead, concealing herself beneath the bedcovers to avoid the surveillance cameras, she hid them inside her handbag.

  Every morning Moranna resolved to pack her few belongings and go to Chester and take Bonnie and Brianna back to Baddeck to await Duncan’s return, but she couldn’t summon the energy. Espionage work and the necessity of being alert to signs of subterfuge and torture tired her out and she spent most mornings and afternoons in bed. In spite of the fatigue, she continued taking the necessary precautions against being drugged, stowing pills in her handbag, examining the apples candy stripers brought round in the afternoons for hypodermic needle holes, eating the same food as Charlotte. She knew the food wasn’t drugged because if it were, Charlotte would be sleeping instead of playing bingo and watching television in the common room. Moranna avoided the common room—she wasn’t interested in television or socializing with people who were being duped by Russian spies.

  Hospital regulations required patients to shower regularly, but the effort required to collect clean underwear, towel, deodorant and soap was a chore Moranna avoided and Becky had to take her along the corridor to the showers. Handing Moranna a bottle of shampoo, she stood outside the shower curtain, to make sure the shampoo was used. “You have lovely hair,” she said encouragingly. “When it’s clean it’s easy to see you’re a natural blonde.” This past week her patient had been particularly silent and unforthcoming, and Becky was surprised when she heard her murmer, “I was once on the cover of a magazine.”

  The days drifted by until one afternoon Moranna, wakened by a hand on her shoulder, opened her eyes and saw Charlotte standing beside the bed, a jacket over her arm. “I wanted to say goodbye,” she said. “I’m going home. My daughter is waiting outside to drive me back to Mabou.”

  Moranna sat up. “You have a daughter?” She didn’t know a single thing about Charlotte’s other life.

  Charlotte beamed. “Yes, and a son.”

  “I have two daughters,” Moranna said.

  “I hope you see them soon.” Charlotte picked up her suitcase. “Good luck.”

  Moranna stood in the doorway, panic rising in her chest as she watched the bulky figure walk down the hallway. She asked herself who would test her food in the cafeteria and tell her what was safe to eat, who would warn her what to expect, who would take Charlotte’s bed? As soon as her roommate was out of sight, Moranna put on her pale blue skirt and sweater and packed her suitcase. Unwilling to be the only occupant in the room even for a day—Francie had been wheeled away some time ago to another part of the hospital—she had decided to move out. She had no intention of tellin
g the so-called doctor or anyone else that she was leaving, knowing they would do everything within their power to persuade her to change her mind. She penned a note to Becky, the only nurse in the hospital she decided she liked—I’ve gone. Don’t try to follow me. Moranna—and left it on the bed. Convinced the suitcase would handicap her escape, she returned it to the locker.

  Following the murky corridor to the end, she went downstairs to the main entrance and opened the door, ignoring the woman polishing the glass. Outside on the walkway, she passed a man pushing a mower across the lawn. She ignored him too while enjoying the smell of new mown grass. There was a nip of fall in the air, which surprised her.

  Once she reached the main road, she chose to follow a network of residential streets as a precaution against being followed, knowing that if she maintained a course roughly parallel to the harbour she would eventually come to the bridge. She reached the bridge during traffic hour and a quarter of the way across stopped to open her change purse and scatter the pills into the yawn of water below, not bothering to count their number, which was twenty-one. It was then she heard Dr. Ridley’s voice.

  “If you want your husband released from the KGB,” he said, “then you must throw yourself into the harbour.”

  Moranna whirled around, but no one was behind her or anywhere nearby. The person closest to her was a bearded man bent over the handlebars of a bicycle he was pedalling toward her. Was he the doctor? He didn’t look like the doctor, but as a spy he could disguise himself as anyone.