Maddie

by Claire Rayner

  ‘Yes, Mr Fordyce, two of these difficult cases are yours, are they not? Ah – let’s see –’ And he pulled the file towards him again and began rifling importantly among them. ‘Ah, here we are. Jimmy Teague, on Ward Six – that is your ward, is it not, Mr Fordyce? – and Ted ah – Meakins, I think it is. Both your patients, then. And been here at Greenhill since the middle nineteen-fifties, as I see. Not been able to rehabilitate them, then, Mr Fordyce, for all your new methods of therapy?’ And he looked at the pugnacious little man with a malicious glint and grinned.

  ‘Hell, I’m not rising to bait as stinkin’ as that, Gresham!’ Jimmy said disgustedly. ‘Those two poor bastards were ruined well before I was able to get the care of them. Both had lobotomies in the early fifties. Would you believe it, Dr Labosky? Brain surgery! Chopped their bloody brains in half and then expect us to be able to rehabilitate them! That’s psychiatry for you!’

  ‘That was psychiatry for you,’ Joe said equably. ‘Thank God fasting for the past tense. They’d stopped it before I came on the scene too, but they left their messes behind. I’m not sure there’s a lot you can do with those two chaps, Gresham. I know them both well enough – and I have to tell you they’re heavy going. They could never cope in a hostel and as for families of their own – who knows? Have they ever had any visitors, Jimmy?’

  ‘Is the Pope a Catholic?’ Jimmy gave a little crack of laughter. ‘Not like you to ask daft questions, Dr L.’

  ‘I thank you for the vote of confidence. No, I thought not. Well, it might be worth digging out the old records to see what we can discover about them. Maybe they too can be found to be the residents of other boroughs and Mr Gresham can do some of his magic shuffling of the books, hmm? If not – well, David Michaels at the Octagon Hospital in East Anglia is doing some research on brain-damaged individuals and I might be able to get him to take these two chaps into one of his cohorts. They’d come to no harm, Xavier,’ he added hastily as the black man lifted his head sharply. ‘All they do at the Octagon is try to teach brain-damaged people various skills and measure the rate at which they learn. It’s stimulating and possibly therapeutic for the patients and they get excellent physical care while they’re there. They’ve got a big grant from one of the foundations, lucky bastards, so the research’ll go on for years – it’ll see Teague and Meakins out. So, see what you can do, Jimmy, hmm? We’ll find a solution for those two that won’t upset any of you, I promise.’

  ‘Which leaves just one problem,’ Gresham said in great satisfaction. ‘And that was the one –’

  ‘Yes,’ Joe said and turned his head to look at Annie. ‘That was the one I thought Miss Matthews might be able to help us with.’

  ‘I can’t do anything,’ Annie said abruptly, and her voice sounded harsh even in her own ears. ‘I have too much to do at home –’

  ‘What?’ Joe lifted his brows at her.

  ‘I’ve just moved in,’ she said, trying not to sound defensive. ‘You know that perfectly well. I had to sell the house when my mother died and get a flat. And now I’ve moved in and I’ve still so much to do –’

  ‘Nothing that won’t wait,’ Joe said and again produced that grin of his and she felt her own lips tighten in response. ‘You’ve been there four months already, and you should be tolerably settled by now. A brand-new flat, after all –’

  He was right, of course. He always damned well was, that was the trouble. It had been he who had chivvied her into selling the old house, which was absurdly too big for her, and anyway was in the way of the new development that was happening in that part of the suburb, he who had seen to it that she had sold at a ridiculously high price and then found a new flat for her, filled with every modern convenience she could ever need, at half the price she had got for her house. What with that and the surprisingly large sum of money Jennifer had left, she was well off. ‘No need to worry about money at all, any more,’ Joe had said. ‘A woman of independent means, that’s you, more’s the pity.’

  And she had refused to ask him what he meant by that, because she knew perfectly well. He wanted her to have some purpose in life, something to get up for in the mornings, to make life worth living. If she didn’t have to earn her keep, what else was there? So he had made her come on to the close-down committee, as patients’ representative, refusing to take no for an answer, and what could she do? The awful heaviness of her inertia worked for him against her. So here she sat, knowing she couldn’t argue with him on whatever it was he wanted her to do now, any more than she had been able to unpack the massive tea chests and boxes full of Jen’s things that still lay about the flat, quite untouched. Home was anything but comfortable and pleasant, so there wasn’t even a desire to be there to act as spur to any resistance to him.

  ‘So,’ Joe went on inexorably, ‘I’m sure you can cope with this task. I’ll explain, with your permission, Gresham?’ And not waiting for an answer he leaned across and picked up Gresham’s file and then turned to Annie, speaking to her as though there were no one else there at all apart from themselves.

  ‘This patient, Annie, is a woman called Maddie. As far as we can tell she was admitted to Greenhill in 1953, transferred here from a general hospital in Southampton. I can’t tell you why, because the current notes don’t include the information.’

  ‘So?’ Annie said. ‘What has this to do with me?’

  ‘We need the information.’ Gresham could bear his exclusion no longer. ‘Until we know more about her and where she came from, we can’t make – er – arrangements for her further care.’

  ‘One of the hostels?’ Annie didn’t want any task at all, wanted nothing more to do with this committee, this hospital, or its patients, than she had to have. She was only here because Joe Labosky had bullied her. ‘Can’t she go to a hostel?’

  ‘Certainly not!’ That was Betty Barber, the female nurse representative. ‘She’s not fit for that sort of care at all. My nurses will be on their own in that environment with no medical or para-medical backup, and that means that patients have to be fully ambient, cooperative, and with a certain amount of sense about them. This one – no way can she come to a hostel! You’d have a nursing strike on your hands if she did, and so I warn you – I’ve told you from the start we won’t have those very sick people sent out hugger-mugger and willy-nilly this way and –’

  ‘No one is sending anyone anywhere that is not suitable, Miss Barber,’ Joe said soothingly. ‘That is why I want Miss Matthews to concern herself with this patient. A patient of yours, is she not? Yes, of course – you tell Annie, will you, what the problems are?’

  And he leaned back in his chair in a practised fashion and at once Betty Barber launched herself into an account of her patient. It really is too easy, Joe thought as he watched and listened, to manipulate people. Maybe I ought to give up psychiatry and go into industry and make my bloody fortune instead of sitting here in this dilapidated place allowing myself to be coerced into supporting a system of pushing patients around just so that the damned government can sell off a valuable hospital site for cash – and he made a grimace at himself and turned to watch Annie’s reaction to what Betty was telling her.

  ‘She’s a helpless old thing, poor Maddie,’ Betty was saying importantly. ‘Well, maybe not that helpless at that. There’s malice in her, and sharpness. She certainly gets her own way, which is to do nothing and get the other patients to wait on her. I can’t get her to join in on any of the ward activities, she won’t respond to anything, not occupational therapy or drama or music or art or anything. Just sits there in the corner day after day rocking. Never speaks, never looks at anyone. Just rocks. Done it for years, as far as I know. I’ve been here fifteen and it’s all I’ve ever seen her do. Poor soul!’

  ‘What – I mean, why is she like that? What’s wrong with her?’ Annie threw a sudden terrified glance at Joe and he heard the words that were in her head as loudly as if she had spoken them, and he leaned forwards at once to speak directly to her.

  ‘
There is no dementia, Annie,’ he said quietly. ‘No senility, no evidence of brain damage. I’ve checked her frequently. This is not a case of Alzheimer’s or anything like that. Be sure of it. This lady has simply withdrawn herself totally. I don’t believe it to be an organic problem, though some of my colleagues have thought so. She’s been labelled as schizophrenia, catatonia, you name it, someone’s thought of it. But I think it’s totally functional. She needs to find out how to relate to someone, how to speak again. She’s been an elective mute for thirty-five years, but that doesn’t mean she wouldn’t have something to say to the right person. I think it could be you.’

  ‘Why me? Why – haven’t – I’ve got enough –’ she began and then, suddenly aware that there were after all other people present, subsided, her face red.

  ‘Because I think you can help her.’ Joe got to his feet. ‘That’s why. And we need you to do it. If it isn’t done now, I don’t know what will happen to Maddie. She’s not a suitable candidate for the Octagon, and even Gresham can’t fiddle the books to dispose of her. No one can say whether she’s happy or miserable, she’s so unresponsive, but I can’t help thinking that moving her without trying to sort out something about her would be tantamount to killing her. And though that would be one way of making sure the DHSS got their millions for this valuable development site, I doubt many of us would regard it as an ideal solution. Not even you, Gresham, hmm?’ and he smiled at Gresham with such warmth that he said, ‘What? Oh, yes, absolutely, Dr Labosky,’ without realising what he was saying.

  ‘She’s on the ground floor of the West Pavilion, Annie. I want to talk to Mr Fordyce about the Octagon arrangements, but I’ll take you over there and introduce you – for want of a better word – to Maddie if you’ll just wait for me. I’m sure you’ll find her a most interesting project.’ And he nodded at Gresham and lifted his chin at Jimmy Fordyce, with whom he left the room as the rest of the committee got to its collective feet and went away, leaving Gresham furiously collecting his papers and aware that yet again that bloody psychiatrist had made him look – and what was worse feel – like an office boy.

  And Annie, sitting staring down at her hands on her lap, was equally furious with herself for letting Joe bulldoze her once again into an action she didn’t want, and not knowing what she could do about it.

  I feel like the East Pavilion, she thought then, as Gresham at last left, and she was alone in the room. I’m being eaten up by a prehistoric monster, and its name is Joe Labosky.

  3

  August 1949

  Maddie, planning. Maddie sitting up in bed in her pretty pink room in the flat overlooking Regent’s Park, wrapped in her pink frilled dressing gown and drinking hot chocolate and planning. All round her there is silence; Daddy gone to the races at the White City to watch his own dogs run, his favourite way to spend an evening lately, and Ambrose out heaven knows where, no one in but Maddie, because even the housekeeper has gone to drink coffee with some of the other Displaced Persons who clean the flats in the block. A good chance to think and plan and perhaps, act. And she sips her chocolate, lovely chocolate Daddy got from America, and thinks hard.

  And it is the chocolate that gives her the idea she needs and she puts down the cup on the bedside table and lies back with her hands behind her head and stares up at the ceiling, laughing inside her head. She’s been brave enough to get this far, she can be brave enough to go the rest of the way. Can’t she?

  And then she remembers last night, and it gets difficult, because somehow it never works out precisely the way you want it to. Sometimes better, occasionally worse, but always different.

  All these months of working at it. All these months of getting theatre tickets and arranging dinners in restaurants for three or four couples so that she and Jay can be one of them. All these months of asking him to come with her to sort out her car and to advise her on dealing with the mechanics, pretending she had no one to help her and praying no one would say anything in front of him that would show her father had already dealt with it all. All these months of accidentally happening to be where he was, at other people’s houses and the nightclubs she had found out he liked. But it had worked eventually, and there they had been at Nancy Lewis’s party on Midsummer Eve and when everyone had started necking she had drawn him to the only free sofa left and curled up there with him and at last he’d behaved as he was supposed to, holding her close and kissing her and making her feel unbelievably good. It wasn’t as good yet as it was going to be, but oh, it was good enough for the present!

  And at last he had started to ask her out, and she didn’t have to work quite so hard at it, and they had dates like other people, when he made the plans and met her at Swan and Edgar’s or at the Piccadilly Hotel, because of course it was out of the question that he should ever collect her at the flat, or bring her home afterwards, in case Daddy saw him. It was all wonderful now.

  But not wonderful enough. It wasn’t enough just to go out on dates; he had to be brought completely under her spell – she liked the sound of that phrase and thought it again – completely under her spell, and adore her as much as she adored him. But last night –

  And now, suddenly, the chocolate she was drinking had given her an idea, showed her how she could make him hers as he was meant to be, totally and completely, and she rolled out of bed and ran into the drawing room to the telephone.

  He was, glory be, there at home in his flat in St John’s Wood, and she curled herself small in the armchair and breathed into the mouthpiece, ‘Hello, my darling!’

  ‘Oh, hi,’ he said after a moment. ‘How are you?’ He sounded distant and a little flat, but that was the problem with a telephone. You couldn’t touch people, make them look at you, make them really feel you were necessary to them, on the telephone.

  ‘Lonely. How about you?’

  ‘Mmm? Oh, no, not really. Busy in fact. Doing a few chores.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Oh, letters home. You know, those sort of chores. My mother gets bothered if she doesn’t get a letter every other day. I make her settle for one a week, but it has to be at least that. So I’d better –’

  ‘I was thinking – you remember what I was saying to you last night?’

  ‘Now, listen, Maddie, I told you. You’re a crazy kid, and –’

  ‘Don’t you like me? Don’t you want me to be happy? And don’t you want me to make you happy? Hmm?’ She made her voice as deep and throaty as she could, and then laughed softly. ‘Listen, Jay, listen to me carefully – I’m stroking you, just like I did last night. Remember? The back of your neck, first, and then your shoulders. Very soft and very light, just stroking you – feel it? And now my fingers are slipping and sliding, and I’m stroking your back, down across your shoulder blades and now I’m there – just there in the small of your back, just under the belt of your trousers – feel it? My fingers, soft and ve–ry smooth, stroking and touching you – feel it?’

  She knew it was working, because he was so silent and she went on, talking softly, describing what she was doing and then suddenly he laughed, a thick sort of laugh and said, ‘Jeez, Maddie, you are one hell of a crazy kid, the things you think of. Will you stop that?’

  ‘Don’t you like it?’

  ‘You know damn well I do. Too much. You ought to be ashamed of yourself –’

  ‘Why? Because I love you?’

  ‘Listen, Maddie, I told you last night, it’s crazy. You’re a great girl, believe me, but I can’t even begin to think about – what would your Pa say? You can’t fool me, you know, with your stories. He’d go mad if he thought you had a beau. And if he found it was me you were after –’

  ‘He’ll have to face it sooner or later. I’m grown up, almost twenty now and –’

  ‘Not for another six months. You don’t get your own money for another year and a half, you’re just a kid. And anyway, your family and mine – it’s just not on the cards. Even if –’

  ‘Even if nothing,’ she said it qui
ckly, scared of what he might have been meaning to say, refusing even to think about that. ‘And I told you, Daddy’ll have to come round. I can be patient. To get married, I mean, I can wait. Eighteen months – it’s no time, not if we can be together and do things together – not like last night.’ Again her voice dropped. ‘More than last night.’

  ‘Listen, Maddie, you’ve got to stop this sort of talk. I tried to tell you, didn’t I? But will you listen? Like hell you will. I never said a word to you, not ever, that anyone could take to mean I was saying we should –’

  ‘I said it all,’ she said immediately. ‘I know. I promise I won’t ever say it was your idea. It’s mine. I love you. I told you, I love you and that’s all there is to it. I want you more than I’ve ever wanted anything in the whole world, and – and I always get what I want in the end.’

  Daddy had taught her that, a long time ago. If you want something, go and get it, he’d say. Never sit there and hope it’ll come to you. Only schmucks do that. You have to go and make it come to you. You can do a bit of hoping along the way to keep your spirits up, but if you want it, you can have it. You’ve a right to it. That’s what Daddy said and she knew he was right.

  There was a little silence. ‘I thought I knew people who were go-getters,’ he said at length. ‘But you’re something else. And such a kid!’

  ‘Don’t call me that,’ she said sharply. ‘I’m a woman, not a child. Don’t call me that.’

  ‘I’ve never even met a woman like you. Listen, didn’t anyone ever tell you men don’t like ballcrushers? That they like to make the running?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You see what I mean? A kid. You don’t even know what you don’t know. Didn’t anyone ever tell you that a feller likes to get his own girls?’

  ‘A man chases a girl until she catches him,’ she sang softly and laughed. ‘I don’t care what other people do. I used to read about it in the magazines, listen to the girls talking, tried to do what they said, but not any more. Now I know my father’s got the right idea. Make up your mind what you want and then go and get it, he says. And I want you. I love you. Don’t you love me?’