Walls of Silence: a stunning historical thriller you won't be able to put down

by Ruth Wade

  Nothing for the longest of times. Then: ‘Mummy?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What do you want me to talk about?’

  ‘The night of the fire. Tell me what you remember.’

  ‘It is dark ... I’m hot ... I am all wrapped in the sheet ... There is a funny smell ...’

  Her voice was rattling from somewhere deep inside her chest.

  ‘It tickles my face, and I cough and cough ...’

  Her tone had become frantic.

  ‘... I start to cry and the door opens and there you are ... the air is getting hotter and hotter and I can’t breathe and the inside of my mouth stings but I can’t close it ... and you’re holding me tight, and we’re running and running out of the room and down the stairs ... then I’m flying and it’s like when I’m on the swings only much, much higher and faster, and I want to laugh and shout for you to watch me but I can’t see you anymore ... then I fall from the sky, and the ground is hard and hot and everything is orange and red and there is a sound in my ears. The blanket is getting tighter and tighter and hotter, and I can’t move and it sticks me down and there is a smell that won’t go away, and I can’t hear you and the middle of me is empty, and it hurts and hurts and hurts ... I want you to make it go away ...’

  Her sobs contained all the torment of a lifetime of forgotten pain. When the last echoes had died away and Stephen could once more hear the rain slashing on the window, he took a handkerchief from his pocket and gently dried Edith’s face. Her eyes remained shut but he could see her lids shimmer with movement and knew that she was still – but only just – in her hypnotic trance. He guessed that he wouldn’t have long.

  ‘Where are you now, Edith? Tell me what you can see.’

  ‘A green wall.’

  ‘What can you hear, Edith?’

  ‘Walking. Lots and lots and lots of walking.’

  ‘What else?’

  ‘Laughing.’

  ‘Who is laughing?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘What else?’

  ‘Crying.’

  ‘Who is it who is crying?’

  ‘Me.’

  ‘What can you smell, Edith?’

  ‘Soap. And prickles. And a hot smell that never goes away.’

  ‘What is in your mouth?’

  ‘Nothing ... a taste ...’

  ‘What do you feel?’

  ‘Sad ...’

  ‘Is that why you cry?’

  ‘Yes ... no ... I hurt ... that’s why I cry.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘All over.’

  ‘I want you to think deep inside yourself, Edith. I want you to stay where you are in the hospital after the fire, but I want you to go deeper and take a look at what it is that is causing you so much pain. You don’t have to touch it but I want you to move it with your mind into a big box that you wrap up with string, nice and tight. Now I want you to pick up the box and carry it out for me.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Yes, Edith. Bring it out for me and put the box on the floor by the window where a warm ray of sunshine can reach into every corner. I’ll undo the string for you ... There, it’s open now. I want you to look and tell me what you see. Whatever it is, it’s in the box and is no longer a part of you and can do you no more harm.’

  ‘It is.’

  ‘It is what?’

  ‘It is a part of me.’

  ‘What is it, Edith? Tell me what you see in the box.’

  She didn’t answer.

  ‘You can hold it away from you as far as you want but you must take it out for me.’

  Silence.

  ‘Bring it clear from the box and put it down on the floor. Then come back and stand beside me and tell me what you see.’

  Her breathing became snatched and punctuated by fluttery wheezes. Stephen took a moment to lay his fingers on her neck and check her pulse. At the contact, Edith’s eyes sprang open.

  ‘Father ...’

  ‘He’s not here, Edith, I am.’

  ‘Dead ... he wants me …’

  Stephen jerked his head up as the door to the room was thrust open and the light from the corridor streamed in. Edith screamed.

  ‘GET OUT! GET OUT, MAN!’

  ‘I didn’t know she’d be having company; I thought as she’d be on her own ...’

  The door clicked shut behind a red-faced PC Billings but before Stephen could steady his breathing once more Edith Potter’s body had become rigid and he knew her mind had finally taken refuge in a place where she could never be hurt again.

  *

  Once he was sure she was physically stable, Stephen stepped out of the room. As he suspected, the off-duty constable was waiting for him.

  ‘I left explicit instructions that I was never – in any circumstances – to be disturbed whilst I was working with her.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Dr Maynard, truly I am, but I’ve only a minute or two this visit as we’re on our way to pay a call on Mrs Billings’ mother and I didn’t want to go wasting time reporting to the office in the main building. There wasn’t any way for me to be knowing you was here.’

  ‘Do you have any idea of what you’ve just done?’

  He leaned wearily against the wall then rubbed his palm across his face. He had been so close. Only a short while longer and he would’ve been able to release Edith from her self-imposed prison. But there was no chance now that she would ever allow herself to make contact again. The thin thread of free will her mind had stubbornly clung onto had vanished under the overwhelming need to protect her secret. Her catatonia was at last complete. And permanent. His one chance had been and gone.

  Stephen accepted a cigarette.

  He was stubbing out the remnants of a second before he trusted his voice enough to speak his thoughts.

  ‘Edith Potter is free from distress now. Whatever it was she was so desperate to keep locked inside has won. She wanted no one else to know it, she herself had no conscious awareness of what it was until the second you barged into the room. Then, when she faced it, she knew it so terrible she’d rather lose her mind than accept it. There’s nothing more I can do.’

  ‘That’s as maybe but I’ll be keeping her cottage ticking over as before all the same. You don’t know Miss Potter like I do; I’ll be wagering my best boots that she ain’t given up and she’ll be back to see to her roses before too long.’

  Stephen wished he could share in even a little of the man’s blind faith. He patted the constable briefly on the arm then walked down the corridor towards the door.

  PART III

  LONDON

  SEPTEMBER 1927

  The play of motives passes through all kinds of vicissitudes as the alternative courses of action and their consequences are more fully apprehended to the self.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Stephen took a moment to pause in front of the window. It was childish and vain, it was true, but he knew the soft sunshine gave his hair an interesting depth and colour. The pretty young student certainly seemed to think so; she was gazing at him with the same rapture with which she hung on his every word. He allowed himself a smile as he looked down at his notes. Another year of this and on the back of his triumph with the British Psychological Society, he would be sure to be offered the post of Head of Clinical Practice – a guarantee of being awarded a professorship. In preparation he’d grown a beard to give him gravitas and match his status as a ground-breaking psychoanalyst. He was ready to receive every honour they wished to bestow.

  ‘Well, if there aren’t any questions,’ he raised an eyebrow in the direction of the female student, ‘then I suggest we move on to the next case. But before you write up your treatment plans for this one, I urge you to read my piece on the similarities between the repression of war experience and catatonia when it comes out in next month’s Journal of Psychology.’

  He was inordinately proud of the way he’d said that: authoritative but dismissingly casual as if having his work published was an everyday
occurrence. The gaggle around him began to glide towards the door to the private room just down the corridor. A voice stopped him as he made to join them.

  ‘Dr Maynard. A telephone call.’

  ‘I’m in the middle of rounds. Get them to leave a message.’

  ‘I tried that but he says it’s important.’

  Stephen sighed and waved his students on with his sheaf of notes. ‘I’ll be with you in a second. Try your hand at observation while you’re waiting and see what you can ascertain as to’ he checked the next name on his list, ‘Mr Black’s state of mind. No asking him any questions though, that would be cheating. Can I trust you?’

  The shining faces and solemn nods he received confirmed – as if he didn’t know it already – that he really was a very good mentor.

  *

  ‘Hello. Can I help you?’

  ‘Dr Maynard? Dr Stephen Maynard?’

  ‘Speaking.’

  ‘Victor Johns here.’

  The smell of the place came back to him first.

  ‘No instant recall? Can’t say that I blame you, we’d all put Lewes Asylum out of our heads as quickly as possible if we could.’

  That he hadn’t been able to accomplish – much as he wanted to – but he had managed to lock the memories away under the pressure of hard work. Except now the image of Edith Potter lying there dead to the world loomed up, large and menacing. He tugged at the hairs fringing his bottom lip. It was a habit he’d acquired in times of stress; he’d have to learn to resist the impulse or else start shaving again if he didn’t want to look as if he had the mange.

  ‘Dr Johns ... yes ... yes, of course. How are you? I’m sorry but you’ll have to make this quick, I’ve a room full of students staring at a patient like cats eyeing up a goldfish in a bowl.’

  Stephen could hear him taking a long draw on a cigarette.

  ‘In that case I’ll jump the pleasantries and cut to the chase. Edith Potter. We’ve had a bit of a breakthrough with her.’

  ‘What do you mean a breakthrough?’

  ‘Well ...’ Another puff on the cigarette. ‘I read the conclusions you drew very thoroughly and decided that your insights about the parallels with shell-shock were spot on. So I continued with the cold baths and electric therapy, and added a dietary regime of my own devising, and she’s come back to us.’

  ‘What?’

  Stephen winced and looked down to see a clutch of wiry brown beard hairs rooted to his fingertips.

  ‘She’s been out of her stupor for almost eight weeks now. I wanted to wait until I was sure she wouldn’t relapse before ringing you. But ...’

  Stephen could hear him smiling.

  ‘I think that, between us, we’ve effected a cure.’

  ‘Are you out of your senses, man?’

  Stephen was aware his voice was bouncing around the tight little office but he couldn’t seem to control it.

  ‘There is no cure for the root of her psychosis. The catatonia was merely the symptom. Now you’ve gone and removed that, the poor woman’s mind will be plunged into a veritable living hell. How could you have been so bloody ... bloody ... irresponsible?’

  He could feel the sharp intake of breath travelling down the wire; this was the last reaction the man had expected. But he’d had it coming to him; Dr Johns may be the director of a lunatic asylum but he wasn’t a trained psychoanalyst, wasn’t even experienced as a practitioner in the field of dissociation and concomitant catatonia.

  Stephen felt the heat of hypocrisy flare in his cheeks as he remembered how incompetently green he’d been himself when he’d first walked through the asylum gates nine months ago. But that was as maybe, he’d become something of an expert since then and he knew as surely as he could feel the constriction in his lungs, that the man’s meddling amounted to an almost criminal act. A spasm of heartburn forced a trickle of bile into the back of Stephen’s throat as Edith’s admission that her father had wished her dead reverberated in his head with all the clarity of a fire alarm.

  ‘I’m sorry, Dr Johns, but there seems to be some sort of commotion going on that needs my attention.’ He dropped the receiver back into its cradle.

  *

  Stephen’s room was right under the eaves at the top of the house. It was little more than a poky attic with the light barely feeling its way through the grimy windows. In it there was a bed, a small wardrobe, a washstand, some bookshelves, and a desk and chair. He may be on his way up to the top of his profession but that didn’t mean he could afford anything better in the heart of London; and he had to be within walking distance of the clinic in case one of his patients had a psychotic episode in the night and he was wanted in an emergency.

  Tonight the telephone downstairs in the hall had been mercifully silent but that hadn’t meant he’d had any uninterrupted sleep. He’d been tossing and turning for hours, and when he finally gave in and wrenched his eyelids open, his pyjamas were stuck to his skin with sweat.

  His hand groped on the floor beside the bed for the alarm clock. He picked it up and squinted at the luminous face. Three-thirty. Dead slap bang in the middle of the mournful hour when his blood sugar would be at its lowest and his bodily processes merely ticking over. He didn’t need this. What he needed was some quality sleep so he would be refreshed and alert to face the full day of patients he had ahead of him. Maybe a snort of whisky would help quiet his racing mind and loosen the tension in his muscles. He disentangled his legs from the sheet and shuffled across the room to the wardrobe. The linoleum was cold and clammy under his bare feet and he involuntarily thought of corpses. He shuddered. Wasn’t that what he’d been dreaming about?

  He’d been locked in a room somewhere – a sun-filled high-ceilinged room with a crystal chandelier, and a grand piano in one corner. And there’d been an armchair. Its high back was facing him and he was walking towards it ... no, he’d been dancing towards it. Waltzing to something by Strauss being played on the piano. Except there was no one at the keyboard. But that didn’t bother him. The music was clear and precise and played with such feeling he wanted nothing more than to have a partner draped in his arms. And she was over there. He imagined her face as she sat patiently, a delicious smile stretching her ruby lips as she anticipated his hand being held out to her, then being pulled up to become as weightless as he was. It was the young student. Margaret was her name, but he’d call her Maggie. The top of her head would graze his clavicle and she’d nestle in the crook of his arm so sweetly. And he raised himself onto the balls of his feet and whirled lightly once more. The girl’s hair looked silky in the sunlight, the lowest curls bobbing on her shoulders. One last pirouette and he was standing in front of her, his arm stretched out to wrap her in his embrace.

  But it was Edith Potter waiting for him. Edith Potter with her cadaverous face and empty eyes. She’d grinned and exposed green furry teeth; fat black bluebottles zipped out from behind them and buzzed around his face. He’d screamed. He’d screamed and begged her to leave him alone. And then he’d woken up.

  God, how he wished he hadn’t been able to recall it all so vividly. His hand was shaking as he wrenched open the wardrobe door and fumbled inside for the bottle nestling behind his pair of Sunday-best black shoes. His fingers closed around the smooth neck and he scurried back to bed, not even bothering to search for the glass he knew was somewhere amongst the books and papers on his desk. He prised out the stopper and took a swig. The top of the bottle clinked painfully against his teeth. He wiped his lips with the back of his hand as he waited for the burning sensation to dull in his throat, and the edges of his consciousness to be softened by the drug.

  Why couldn’t Dr Johns have left well alone? Left her in blessed ignorance. And why had the asylum director felt the need to ring up the clinic to tell him about it? Perhaps he’d had what they jokingly called on the wards, a Jesus-raising-Lazarus moment? Stephen supposed he could understand the man’s excitement and need to boast about his success to someone, but why in God’s name had he c
hosen him of all people? Couldn’t he have confined himself to walking down the corridors of his dreadful place shouting hallelujah? But he was being unjust, unkind, and unfair. Every doctor worth his salt would be proud of an achievement so momentous as bringing someone out of a catatonic stupor – after all, he’d nearly accomplished it and had poured all his self-congratulation into a paper that had astounded his peers with the unambiguous nature of its conclusions.

  Only Dr Johns hadn’t known the truth. But now Edith Potter did. And it was because of him and his need to prove to himself that he’d been right about how no secret was too terrible for a mind not to be forced to face it. If he’d bothered to employ a little imagination instead of being so hell-bent on achieving his goal he might’ve realised Dr Potter would blame the child for his wife’s death. Then, when her father had been murdered, how her mind would have regarded that as a symbolic act of revengeful patricide – leaving her with a double burden of guilt. That was what she now had to live with. Thanks to the great Dr Stephen Maynard. His ambition. Compounded by his negligence. And, lastly – and this was the most damning of all – his abandoning of her once he’d had all he needed and could turn her into the case study that had established his reputation and kick-started his rise to eminence.

  Stephen wrapped the eiderdown around his shoulders and waited for his teeth to stop chattering. And for the dawn to come and release him.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Stephen felt the familiar prickle on the back of his neck; it had been seven years since he’d worked his apprenticeship at the Tavistock Clinic under Dr Crichton-Miller but, back here again, he could feel the great man looking over his shoulder and telling him that he wasn’t quite coming up to scratch. The talk this evening was The Resurfacing of Latent Trauma and its Guises. He hadn’t recognised the name of the speaker when he’d seen the details pinned to the notice-board but it was a topic that had been skirting the edges of his mind ever since Dr Johns’ telephone call. The room was hot and airless. If the man hadn’t made any startling revelations about the research he’d been engaged in by now, then he wasn’t going to and this was a waste of valuable drinking time.