by Paul Sayer
It was an amusing incident, I suppose. But I was not quite myself during those days. My blood lay heavy like mercury inside me, surging at times, making me weary and feverish. Then the wintry weather returned with some kind of vengeance, a retaliation against everyone who had been hoping to forget it.
NINETEEN
Often I would be left in the hall, looking out of the window at the snow falling and suddenly melting in the returning warmth of the suppressed spring. Everyone went about their business in a cool, lethargic way, suggesting some kind of hiatus, a waiting for something I couldn’t quite understand. It mattered little to me, of course - they would do with me what they would - but a dry fear would often drift through me that I might be left in this place for a long time yet, suffering John’s faltering enthusiasm and painful treatments. I could not have stood that.
But I needn’t have worried.
Some time on, when the weather had eased and at last brought a genuine promise of spring, I was hustled into the lounge by the Major. He seemed very excited. ‘I know what they did to you,’ he said. ‘They got warned off about using that drug after the Kaufmann inquest. Bastards. Don’t let them get to you, Peter, you’re doing fine. Don’t let them take you apart. Shouldn’t be much longer now. I drafted a letter the other day. I’d read it to you if I could be sure this place wasn’t bugged. Later, maybe. Come on, let’s get out in God’s fine weather. He’s on our side, you know, God, good old egg that He is. Bugger me, I’m in a good mood. Haven’t slept since I wrote that grand epistle. Out of it, let’s go.’
He pushed me along the path to the clearing. To my surprise I found virtually all the other residents there - I hadn’t seen them leave the house, but so much I could put down to my preposterous self-preoccupation. The Major left me beside a small hole, at the bottom of which was a dark puddle. He pushed a hoe into my hand. ‘Just for effect old man,’ he said, winking, his face beaming under his spiked, wild hair.
The others were sitting around the big square of land rarely speaking, wishing, no doubt, that they had not been pressganged into this labour which could hardly have suited such as the triplets, who were sitting on a log toying with each others’ fingernails and hair. The Major rushed about the plot chivvying everyone, talking about which type of crop might be suitable in which position, not caring if anyone objected, quickly acquiescing if anyone remarked on the futility of the exercise. But his overall demeanour would not be denied - he was sort of happy, excessively so; I knew, I had an eye for such things.
The sun rose high and the few that had actually started some kind of work became bored and distracted and began rolling cigarettes and wandering off into the woods. The Major was digging a hole and paid scant attention to their comings and goings. Then Tom arrived, lured from his kitchen by the warm air and the light in which he seemed to take great pleasure.
The Major welcomed the old man with a broad smile and a handshake. Tom good-humouredly extended his own hand and the two sat on a pile of stones. They made a joke about using me as a scarecrow and seemed easy in each other’s company. Tom brought a packet of cigarettes from his cardigan pocket and offered one to the Major, who declined, saying he preferred to roll his own. I realized that Tom was a little embarrassed to be seen in such comfortable company with the Major, though he disguised it well, returning the man’s flippant comments with much tact and conviviality. Had I thought about it, I should not have thought the two had anything in common at all, but such is the way among people like us - we are thrown together in odd, explosive mixtures, and in the name of survival it seems that relationships must somehow be formed. The rest of the residents slowly reappeared from the woods, drawn, perhaps, by Tom’s fibrous voice, wondering about being caught idle by this ancillary member of the house staff, unsure of the implications, uncertain as to whether or not they should start work again. Eventually they settled for playing a game, pitching stones into a circle drawn on a piece of bare earth. They were a poor lot, really. They had done nothing, even I could see that. Tom did not seem inclined to make a fuss, though, preferring a quiet conversation with the Major, ignoring the others save for an occasional glance in their direction. Then the Major stood and paced the weed-strewn ground, kicking at things, making an odd noise half-way between a cough and a laugh.
I saw him first. John. His brown, round outline wove through the undergrowth behind the slender fingers of a stand of birch trees. I wanted to push the hoe I was holding to the ground, to let it fall, warn the others somehow, since I was the only one, I felt, who saw something amiss in their behaviour. But I could not help them, those people - my friends? Sundry black clouds - I do not add this for effect - were coursing through the sky as John emerged into the patchy sunlight, coming quickly among us.
‘So,’ he said, ‘this is how you abuse the trust I’ve placed in you, idling, wasting your time, and mine.’ The other residents continued with their game, not knowing what else to do with themselves. ‘Tom,’ he said, ‘I am surprised. You of all people. Perhaps the time has come when we must reconsider your employment with us. Maybe you should be thinking about going back to the hospital. You have not quite been yourself lately, have you?’
Tom looked downcast. He rubbed the back of his neck and couldn’t bear to look at the Director. The Major clicked stones in the palm of his hand while the others, one by one, stopped their game to listen to John.
‘Here,’ John said. ‘All of you. You must listen to me. This concerns everyone connected with the One World Rehabilitation Centre.’ He drew a piece of paper from the pocket of his jacket. ‘We have’, he said, ‘one among us who seems to doubt the integrity of the service you’re offered here, in our house, this place, this last hope in all your lives. Someone in our small company has taken it upon himself to complain, if it can be called a complaint, to the high authorities, the board responsible for the fiscal and moral provisions for One World. If a single word of these outrageous allegations were true, then I might offer praise for this man’s initiative. But this -’ he held up the paper at arm’s length and quoted: ‘They beat us up and shove us down in the cellar. If we are sick and cannot control ourselves then we are deprived of food. Privileges, such as free access to the toilets, are given meanly. They are out to break us, come what may. You know how many people die here, you must have it on record somewhere. If you haven’t then I will supply the information. The people who run this place are tyrants. The poor souls in their care fear every waking moment that they too will be singled out for torture. They are sick, we all are. You’ve got to investigate.’
‘Is this’, John asked, ‘how you choose to repay our kindness? Our genius? You among us? Are you listening? Well, I have news for you. This morning I’ve been in a meeting with two representatives of the board and they will be back later to interview the rest of you. As for the author of this absurd and baseless testimony, I must inform him that they have looked scrupulously into his medical history and recommended that he be removed from the Centre immediately, to some more open place where his subversive activity can be scrutinized in detail.’
He clattered spades, forks and trowels into a pile. ‘Right, everyone, back to the house. Come on. Move it.’ Tom dutifully made for me and had already released the brake on the chair when John interrupted, ‘Not him. He can stay here a while.’ The Major stepped forward, anger boiling in the dark veins under the dust on his face. ‘But why?’ he said. ‘Why him? You’ve got something to answer for, you bastard.’ He lunged for John, but his clawing hands stopped inches short of their target. The colour fell from him and he dropped to the ground sobbing, his voice retching and ebbing. John looked down at him, a mildness settling his contorted expression, a shifty satisfaction glowing out of him. The others had already begun picking their way among the trees to the path that led back to the house. John stooped to help the Major back to his feet. ‘Stephen,’ he said, ‘don’t take on so. We’ll still care for you. Somehow we’ll repair the damage. Have faith in us. Trust us. We can make
good again, can’t we?’ ‘Yes,’ said the Major, snuffling. ‘Yes, I think we can.’ ‘Good boy,’ said John. ‘Now away with you back to the house and we’ll have a long chat about it all, eh?’ ‘Yes,’ said the Major. ‘A long talk. I’d like that.’ He ran off to join the rest. Tom, who had been waiting at the edge of the clearing, took his arm and guided him away.
John watched them go then turned to me. His eyes were on fire. ‘God, but you’re a cunning bastard,’ he said. ‘If I were not a scientific man I’d say you were the Devil himself. What evil you carry around in you. How do you do it? What demon’s secret have you learned? Tell me. Tell me now, you bastard. Tell me!’
He grabbed at my clothing and lifted me from the chair. I felt the heat from his face. He held me up in the air and shook me. Then he let me fall to the ground and walked away.
A long time passed. Pellets of water fell from the sky, followed by hail and a beating wind in this, the last whiplash of a vengeful winter. Voices came to the trees, old voices, familiar, one of them perhaps my father’s, telling me I should stand and fight the monster in this storm. But I couldn’t believe it was him, could not interest myself in the mad spirits wheeling about in the air around me. I was a child again. And I was old too, older than I could ever have imagined. I saw myself lying prostrate across my own grave. I shall drown in this mud, I thought. And somehow, somehow it would be no more than I deserved.
TWENTY
I was before a face, a huge face etched in stone, seas of eye, a face that was the glum recipient of stories, thousands of stories, and I was a tiny thing in front of it, irritating its contours, a fly on a giant screen filled with its shine and impassivity. It breathed softly. It stifled a belch and retreated, twitching, some way off across the room, far enough to resume its normal proportions, its reassuring human design. A man. A man in a white coat. ‘Interesting,’ he said, addressing a colleague. ‘Read the history, it’ll stir your imagination. I’ve not seen the likes of him before. He excites me, the romantic in me. How old would you say he is? Yes, I know. Difficult, isn’t it? And Christ, isn’t he thin? Can’t be seventy pounds. Where would he find the strength to fight a sickness like this? You will, of course, have already diagnosed broncho-pneumonia. The crepitations are very pronounced. On the dementia wards we call it the old man’s friend. How long would you give a case like this? No voluntary movements? A ridiculous diet? Dehydrated? Thinner than a shadow? A still life in bone, hair, and awful flesh? What would you say? Come on. The relatives are at your throat, wanting to prepare for mourning. Twenty-four hours? Half a week? If you want me to answer seriously for you, I would say that this man should not now be alive. Whatever you say would be wrong. This is beyond medicine, if the history’s to be believed. The soul is mentioned in no textbook, yet the dreamer in me would say it’s the most singularly influential factor in health, illness, dying, survival. And here we have a remarkable example of a soul, in there, in that rag doll of a man, there’s still an appetite for life, a will to carry on. Look! Look at the blood results. Look here at the observations. Where does it come from? The articles we could write, the tests we could perform - surgery maybe, since I hear he has no family, no one to claim him. Or perhaps not,’ he said, with a smile. He beckoned his companion, his student, to accompany him to the next bed.
Instruments tinkled on a tray somewhere nearby. I saw a tube running into my arm from a plastic bag filled with clear fluid. A female nurse drew back the curtain and came to my bedside. ‘Wakey, wakey, sleepy one,’ she said. She laid a tray on the locker next to my head. She shook a thermometer and slipped it under my arm, folding my hand across my naked chest. She smiled briefly as she took my pulse, and then entered something on a chart she plucked from the end of the bed. From under a towel on the tray she produced a bowl full of something steamy. She began spooning the stuff up to my mouth but my lips would not part, my chin clamped up against the rest of my head. The hot liquid dribbled from the sides of my mouth, down my cheeks and into the hollows where my shoulders began. She poked a sharp fingernail into my mouth and tried to lever it open. Then she withdrew her finger and with it came a tooth and a little blood. She sat back and assumed a stern expression, dropping the tooth, with some distaste, in the tray. Behind her hard looks I sensed a little uncertainty. ‘All right, then,’ she said, ‘we’ll try again, shall we?’ She offered the spoon again, and the same happened. ‘Well, if that’s the way you want it.’ She put the spoon down on the tray, picked up a big syringe and drew the hot liquid from the bowl, forcing the beak of the instrument into the side of my mouth opposite to where she had found the tooth. The sweet fluid issued into my mouth, chafed at my throat, then disappeared inside me. ‘That’s better,’ she said. ‘Now, once more.’
I could not say how long I had been in that place, that ordinary hospital peopled by normal cases with only physical sicknesses. I don’t know where it was or how I’d been brought there. I also remembered little of my fate at the hands of the storm as it beat down on me in the open space in the woods. It may have been nothing more than a shower, I never was much of a judge of such things. I guessed it had been a long time ago, and that I’d certainly slept for days, weeks maybe, though what had brought me back to life was as puzzling to me as it was to the doctor who had been treating me. And there was another question which dwelt briefly in my mind: Why had the Major signed my name at the bottom of his letter to the authorities? Of course, I would never know, but then what did I know about anything that went on in the minds of the people around me? Nothing.
I was never to return to the One World Rehabilitation Centre and I was never to learn its fate or that of the people in it. No one ever thought to tell me.
This hospital was a good, careworn place and I believe I should have been quite happy to spend what remained of my days hooked up to the plastic bag, waiting for whatever end Nature might have in store for me. But it was not to be. As soon as I was well enough, that is according to their standards, a psychiatrist was called to interview me. I, of course, said nothing. He quickly took the hint and the next thing I heard was him standing at the nurses’ station ringing round various places trying to get me in somewhere. And one morning I was taken to a waiting ambulance. The journey was short, and before the vehicle stopped I had a reasonable idea of my destination, for out of the clear glass at the top of the windows I saw large, familiar black bricks, the flat red of a laundry building, trees whose outline was as intimate to me as the dry skin on my hands.
They stopped and opened the doors to lift me down under the glare of the Head Nurse. ‘Inside,’ he said.
TWENTY-ONE
Much had changed on the Admission Ward during my absence. Tanya had gone, and many of the young men too, their places taken by others who had quickly acquired their predecessors’ habits.
I was taken from the ambulance and wheeled straight through to the dormitory where, according to their quaint procedure of dehumanization, I was stripped and placed in night clothes which I would wear for the next seventy-two hours. This rule was imposed throughout, no matter what the nature of each case might be. My property, such as it was, was duly recorded and taken away somewhere, I don’t know where. Then I was left beside a bed until the evening when I was summarily retrieved from the locked dormitory and taken through to the dining-room. A large, familiar, syringe was produced. I was beset by a crushing depression, the reason for which I couldn’t understand.
The following day Beckerminster came to where I was sitting in the day-room. ‘How are you, Peter? How’ve they been looking after you these last few months? Cat still got your tongue?’ he said, with a chuckle. He put his hand on my shoulder. ‘Not to worry old man,’ he said. ‘Not to worry. You’re safe here.’
Perhaps the only remarkable thing about the day after my return was the fact that it coincided with the readmission of someone at first only vaguely familiar. They began by calling him Mr Doultas, and then later, Roger. He was very agitated and difficult to control. He sat quietly f
or only a few minutes, then he began turning over tables and the young men came in force to take him away somewhere. He was, of course, the man who had occupied the bed next to mine on my previous stay in this place. He had survived, it seemed, though I don’t think he was quite the same as he had been before he took the blade to himself. Part of his brain had gone with the heavy loss of blood, that was certain. His arrival both puzzled me and lifted my spirits. Beckerminster’s friendliness and the nurses’ residual detachment led me to the conclusion that I was not being held to blame for this man’s attempted suicide - they were bearing no grudge and seemed to have quite forgotten the way my departure and his unobserved, self-inflicted harm had lain side by side, incidents on the same bad day. But then this was a busy place and many strange things could happen in the space of a day.