He got out of Kenya that evening. He left a message for James McCree, who had come down to the conference from Uganda, to apologise and say that an urgent problem had called him back to the UK.
Suffocation accompanied him in the aeroplane. One word pressed in on him: flattery. He forced himself to face it: she thought his sentiments towards her were cheap, calculating and manipulative. She had precipitately reassessed him. But he was surprised that, as overwhelming as his feelings of loss were, he felt little indignation. She might be right – perhaps his infatuation had been nothing more than self-serving.
At home Michael washed and changed, and went straight to work. Keeping sane was his priority, and he decided that hard work was the only prophylaxis. If he stopped to think he feared he would howl like a demented animal.
He took the stairs up the nine floors to the surgical office, rather than jump into a cubicle of the paternoster that travelled in a continuous loop up one side of the lift shaft and down the other.
June, his secretary, jumped as he burst through the door. ‘Oh, I’ve got you down as back on Thursday.’
‘Sorry, June, change of plan. What’s in my in-tray?’
‘I’ve not sorted it yet – you’ve surprised me. Anyway, here it is.’
She handed him a wire basket full of letters to sign, memos from the administration, referrals from general practitioners and a few unopened envelopes marked confidential.
‘You’ve got a letter from Uganda.’
He looked at the address. The hand was large, almost childlike, with some words in capitals and some in lower case:
Dr LACY
DOCTOR
SAINT Tomas HOSPITAL
London
GREAT Britain
‘I’m surprised it got here,’ June said.
Michael dismissed it. ‘Probably someone asking for money.’ As soon as he had said it, he froze. Fate grant it was not Zachye requesting more cash. ‘I’ll take the lot through to my office.’
His office overlooked the River Thames. When the wind was right he could hear the tour boats. ‘To our right is St Thomas’s Hospital, founded in 1275, but on its present site since 1871 . . . To our left are the Houses of Parliament . . .’
He closed the door, picked up the letter knife from his desk, took the envelope over to the window and turned it over. There was no return address but three strips of brown box-tape covered the flap as if the sender was determined that it should not reveal its contents accidentally. The envelope ripped as he peeled back the tape. He pulled out a piece of paper torn from a lined exercise book. The writing was uneven, like the address.
Dear Doctor
I hope you are well and romance is progressing to your satisfaction. K went away and so I could not fulfil my side of the matter hastily. Fortunately he came back this week for a holiday. You will understand me.
Michael looked through the razor-edged Venetian blinds at the slug of grey water beneath him. Understand? Oh God! He grabbed the blind with one hand but it collapsed under his palm. His eyelid started to twitch. He read the rest of the letter.
You are a honourable man so I am asking you to fulfil your obligations to me. The money you have been sending has been welcome but is not enough according to our agreement. Now I have complied most fully I am looking for your early convenience on the matter.
With felicitations and sincere greetings,
A Ojera (you will understand me)
He stuffed the letter and envelope into his trouser pocket and stared down through the slits of the blind into the river below. A barge was vomiting black smoke from its chimney. They might have been black feathers. He pressed his fingers against his eyes until they hurt. When he took his hands away the Houses of Parliament on the opposite bank of the river broke free of the earth like a giant airship, before crashing down again. Vertigo made him stagger back.
He made for the door and almost collided with June in the corridor. He heard himself say, ‘June – apologies – not feeling well – picked up something tropical. Going home.’
‘You shouldn’t rush about so much, Mr Lacey. Knowing you, I’m sure you’ll be back tomorrow.’
He nodded at her mechanically, made his way to the stairwell and threw himself into the paternoster. As he passed each floor he wondered if he could stick his head out at the right moment and decapitate himself. They said it was impossible, but he might succeed if he was determined. Somehow he missed the ground floor and went around the bottom of the loop through a grimy basement groaning with the meshing of teeth and the strain of belts and pulleys.
When he found himself at home again he immediately made a fire in the grate and burnt the letter and envelope. That’s what a murderer does, he told himself.
‘Human misery would be intolerable if it was not diluted in time,’ he had read somewhere, but now time had stopped.
Sitting in a chair, rocking, he watched the letter and envelope burn; the tape on the envelope contorted and smoked heavily before melting. The shape of a feather emerged from the blackening letter. An ashy fetish had found its way in; had breached the walls of his white, ice-hard house. He carried on rocking for two days, only getting up to pee and to quench his thirst from the tap. On the second day he heard the phone ring several times. He saw visions of fire, of guns, of shapes in the night. He saw Felice trying to offer milk to her husband, but he found himself snatching the milk away from her before she could put it to Stanley’s lips. Nil by mouth, nil by mouth, he heard himself scold. Keep to the rules. Scientific rules. They’re there for a reason.
On the third day he drank the contents of his drinks cabinet.
They came for him – he didn’t know when.
At first they told him that his precipitate psychosis arose from an encephalitic inflammation of the brain (not countenancing what Audrey told him in a dream – her black hair flew wild, her lips and fingernails a gipsy red – that it might be a combustion of the mind: the buried embers of grief, smouldering for two decades, blown on anew), but when his tapped spinal fluid had been spun of its secrets in the laboratory centrifuges he was transferred to the psychiatry department of his own hospital.
Thirteen
He felt himself emerging from a thick smog; dust, smoke, feathers clogged his nose and mouth, so that he had to blow and spit. He flapped his arms about to clear the air.
‘Whoa, Mr Lacey, it’s OK. You’re OK.’
Two bulky male nurses were escorting him to a side room.
‘Here we are, Mr Lacey.’
‘And who are you?’ he asked.
‘We’re here to help you.’
‘You’ve got your own room.’
‘I’ve never met you before,’ Michael said. ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing? Take my money but leave me enough for the taxi. Lay off! Where’s security? Look, you’re making me late for outpatients.’
‘Everything’s OK, Mr Lacey, sit down here.’ They had their hands on his upper arms and started to manoeuvre him around.
‘Lay off!’ he shouted. ‘You’re trying to stop me saving lives.’ He shoved one of his assailants and lunged for the door. It was locked. ‘Security!’ he shouted. He felt their heavy hands on his shoulders and turned to face them. ‘I’m not a weakling, you know.’ He let fly with his fists.
They floored him and crushed him, big knees in the small of his back, his right arm stapled to the floor. They hauled down his trousers. ‘You’re perverted!’ he screamed. He felt a hornet shoot its poison into his buttock.
He was a patient of a venerable professor who had taught him as a student; elevated enough for Michael, when calmer, to let him interview him. The professor’s department held that, as the brain is jellied chemistry, all talking therapies are just holding devices until medical science advances enough to discover which colouring to add to the jelly to change its complexion. Michael was clearly lacking in molecules with hydroxyl and amine side arms. Agitated depression was its mental manifestation, the depletion triggered b
y some environmental event or genetic switch. But so what? Boost the chemical and the trigger was irrelevant.
In moments of relative lucidity, when the fire temporarily flared out, this professorial analysis made sense to Michael; it explained what had happened in logical terms that he could understand, although it troubled him that chemicals could not neutralise the past and what he had done, and could not alter Felice’s opinion of him. He had already tried ethanol on the third day of his insanity.
A woman, whom he thought might have been his mother, appeared to him one night, a long way off, but she could not be reached.
An indeterminate time later the medication had dampened the flames enough for him to be allowed home under supervision. He was surprised, and found tears of gratitude threatening, when Naomi visited after she had finished work one day. She looked elegant and tall in her dark trouser suit, blonde hair cut short and neat, quite the lawyer. He was quiet and apprehensive but she came in cheerily, kissing him strongly on the cheek.
‘Jeepers, Michael, you’ve given me a fright. I didn’t realise when we last spoke that you were getting ill.’
She insisted he sat down (although he preferred to pace) while she made him a drink. He perched on the edge of a chair in the dining room next to the kitchen, trying to remember when his illness had started. Perhaps he had been ill for years.
‘It’s kind of you to visit. I don’t deserve it.’
She was making such a noise with the cupboards, cutlery and cups that it sounded as if she was eagerly demolishing his kitchen.
‘Oh Michael, you’re not all bad, you know! Remind me where you keep your tea bags.’
‘I might need a lawyer, Naomi. Will you represent me?’
‘Found them.’ There was the sound of pottery cracking. ‘Oops.’
‘Of course, if you’d rather recommend someone else . . .’
‘Don’t worry, I’ll replace your pot. Now you see why I always eat out.’
He heard the tap being turned on too far and splashing out of the sink.
‘Aw, shucks.’
‘Naomi, I’m going to need legal help.’
More slamming and banging. Eventually she said, ‘They were just trying to help, you know. Just trying to make you better.’
‘I’m serious, Naomi, you don’t know the half of it.’
She came through with one mug of super-strong tea and placed it in front of him as if it was a medicinal gruel. She sat herself down opposite him, straight backed.
He said, ‘Aren’t you having . . . ?’
She interrupted, ‘I ought to say, Michael, I’ve got a new boyfriend.’
Michael stared into his mug. He thought she was going to lay a hand on his arm, but if she was she changed her mind, and flattened her thin fingers on the table. At last he said, ‘I’m pleased for you. I’m sorry I wasn’t able to be what you wanted.’
She looked as if she was about to contradict him, but he said, ‘No secrets between you, I expect. That was our problem, but you know that, don’t you? My inability to open up.’
‘Oh Michael, I don’t blame you at all. We all know it’s hard to talk about … mental illness.’
He glanced up at her. There was concern. She pitied him. There was no point in disabusing her.
She left soon after that and wouldn’t let him walk her to her car. ‘Best for you to stay in and rest, I think.’
He was sure he would never see her again.
Whether it was part of his madness, or a rational search for pardon, he set out as an explorer of London’s churches. Most were empty but sometimes he found an island of faith. He sat at the back, ignoring any attempts by any worshipper to engage with him. He found African diasporas, come via the West Indies to the West End, singing of being washed in the blood of the Lamb. He fled when the minister yelled, ‘there is someone here tonight who has been possessed by a devil. Yes, Looord, someone who has been to Africa, invited a spirit to enter. I see a fetish – a black fowl. The Looord is calling you to come forward to receive the laying on of hands.’
He found tiny Anglican congregations populated by people so old that they seemed to have grey socks pulled over the faces. He was startled by triumphant middle class evangelicals. He tried to make himself comfortable on the pews of small Baptist chapels where humble men sat next to gentle women, faces peaceful, bathed in the scriptures. He listened to alien chants in a Greek Orthodox church, although he retained a distaste for ‘bells and smells’ from his Protestant schooling. He read Chesterton, Weil, Kierkegaard, Barth. He dismissed the East as too far from the African soul. He shopped for New Age beliefs, closely studied horoscopes, read the writing on the walls of public toilets – until he was admitted back onto the ward.
He heard mention of ECT but the professor insisted that other medication be tried first. ‘I don’t want to risk electrocuting whatever makes his hands do their fine work,’ the professor said to his senior registrar outside his room. Michael lifted his hands in front of him as he lay in his bed and saw them tremble. He doubted he would ever operate again.
For three weeks he lay there, or sat slumped, inert, in a chair, taking the pills. Sometimes faint voices came to him: people who loved him when he was a child, although he could not make out their faces or what they whispered. That made him anxious.
And then one morning he woke to find himself in a new calm – although detached – state. It felt, at last, as if the correct receptors had been stimulated. A switch had been tripped.
He dressed himself. When the professor dropped in on his daily round, Michael was standing by the window wondering who had been doing his work while he had been away, and feeling embarrassed at what had happened to him. How could he ever show his face again? The sooner he put on a mask and got back into the operating theatre, the better.
‘Ah, good morning, Michael. Are you going somewhere?’
Michael’s overnight bag was beside his bed, ready packed. He had paced up and down beside his bed for an hour, thinking that on his own ward rounds he would have seen all his patients by now; wondering where the professor had got to.
‘John, I’m completely cured. Time for me to get back to work.’
‘Well . . . good . . . but I think we’ll need to take that slowly.’
‘On the contrary, the sooner I return the less chance there is of a relapse. I’ll ring June and find out if there’s a list this afternoon.’
‘I wasn’t thinking of . . . quite that soon,’ the professor said.
Typical psychiatrist: unable to make snap decisions, Michael thought, and said, ‘Come on, John. Now I’m better you can’t expect me to occupy some half-existence. It’ll set me back.’
‘Unfortunately, there are regulatory committees to convince.’
‘And who chairs those committees, professor?’
‘Point taken, but . . .’
He was interrupted by a bang on the door, and in came Doug. He was in his theatre greens and wore pink clogs and his Disney cap.
‘Sorry – am I interrupting? Had a few moments before Smithy Smythe’s list and thought I’d drop in to taunt the madman.’
‘Thank God you’ve come,’ Michael said. ‘I’m trying to convince the professor here that I’m saner now than I ever was. I’m . . . well . . . purged, and – what do they say? – a rounded human being again. I want to start back at work today, but the professor’s telling me that I can’t even start tomorrow.’
‘Prof, I’m whomped,’ Doug said, ‘The guy’s a bloody genius. I’d let him operate on my nana, right now. Let him do a list with me first if you like.’
Michael and Doug were bigger than the professor, and it was two professional opinions against one. He looked intimidated. ‘Well, perhaps we’d better sit down and talk things through.’
The professor had greater powers than Michael had anticipated: it was six weeks before he was allowed to operate again. At first he worked with intense concentration, and silently, a hush falling on those who worked with him. Even
Doug pretended to be busy at the top end. Later, finding his hands dependable and their reuse restorative, he regained a work rhythm. The professor commented: ‘Good. You’ve dug a rut; now stay in it.’
Months later, and with no relapse, he found that he had developed a spark of motivation to take up the McCrees’ offer, in their Christmas card, to stay in their croft near Arisaig in the western highlands of Scotland. The croft overlooked the islands of Rhum, Eigg and Muck. The absurdity of the names drew him.
He stayed a night with James and Audrey in Glasgow on his way up to their croft. They were back for good now. Audrey had insisted on returning to look after her father who had suffered a stroke. She kissed Michael warmly and James greeted him like a lost soulmate. James could not stop reminiscing about Uganda but Audrey was more interested in showing off her garden. She had plumped out a little and was relaxed, comfortable in a knitted Fair Isle cardigan and a tweed skirt of old-fashioned earthy colours.
At dinner James said he was sorry to hear that Michael had been ‘off-colour’. Michael made little of his illness, but Audrey was too perceptive.
‘We’ve all been there, Michael.’
James told him he just needed a break. Audrey seemed to have guessed that his depression had been hooked into his feelings for Felice and avoided mentioning her, but James said, ‘Felice got her masters, I gather. Bright girl.’
Michael nodded once.
‘Before I forget,’ James said, ‘You remember that man who tried to con us into putting money into his account?’
‘I do.’
‘I saw his face in the newspaper before we left – arrested for armed robbery. That was curious enough to see, but when I read on I discovered that he’d been caught in Kabutiiti’s residence. Mind you, crime’s so rampant that very few escape being a victim. Still – I’d met the man myself.’
The Ghosts of Eden Page 33