The Sleep Room

by F. R. Tallis

  Now, here’s the rub: it turns out that a patient called Celia Jones was killed when St Dunstan’s Asylum in Stepney was destroyed by the Luftwaffe back in January 1941. I worked there once and have fond memories of the Superintendent, a Dr Wilson, who sported bushy side-whiskers and dressed like an eminent Victorian. All of the staff were killed, including dear old Wilson. As you can imagine, things must have been pretty chaotic that night, and what with survivors being shunted here, there and everywhere, I suppose it isn’t surprising that errors were made. All the documentation must have been lost in the fire. Anyway, I have very good reason to believe that the patient I have hitherto called Celia Jones is in fact an unknown person, who was mistaken for the real Celia Jones after the tragedy. If her stuporous state persists, then her true identity will remain a complete mystery – and I can’t abide mysteries: this one more so than others, because even a negligible improvement in her condition would probably result in her being able to tell us who she really is. Any suggestions?

  I hope that you and Daphne are both well. Elspeth sends her love.

  Kind regards

  Peter

  Dr Peter Bevington

  Director of Services

  PS I heard you on the wireless last night. I’m so glad you showed that couch merchant up to be such a fraud. You could hear the panic in his voice. Personifications in the unconscious! What clap-trap! I thought Freudians were bad enough but these Jungians really take the biscuit!

  7

  The heath seemed to darken earlier with each passing day. Flocks of birds rose up from the grazing marsh, creating living whirlpools that unravelled in a southerly direction, the trailblazers peeling off shadowy pennants of concentrated activity. The softly undulating horizon, hazy and indistinct, was tinged with russet and magenta, like pigment diffusing through the saturated paper of a watercolour.

  As the new season advanced, Jane and I continued to meet in secret. She would creep up to my rooms at least twice a week, and on one occasion we dared to spend an entire Sunday together.

  We were lying in bed, enjoying the lazy, self-satisfied torpor of exhausted lovers, and talking in short, unconnected bursts, when I mentioned the patients in the sleep room and how I wanted to know more about their histories. Jane rolled over on to her front and looked at me with her exquisite green eyes: some mascara had fallen onto one of her cheeks and she was looking irresistibly sluttish.

  ‘Interesting,’ she said, maintaining her steady gaze.

  ‘What is?’

  ‘That you should be so curious about the lives of others.’

  ‘I’m a psychiatrist,’ I laughed.

  ‘Yes, but . . .’ She reached out for her packet of cigarettes. After lighting one she placed the filtered tip between my parted lips. ‘You know a lot about me, but I don’t know anything about you.’

  ‘Well, there’s not a lot to tell.’

  ‘You never mention your parents, your family.’

  ‘Girlfriends?’ I cut in, playfully.

  She snatched the cigarette out of my mouth, inhaled deeply and blew smoke in my face. ‘Not necessarily.’

  ‘All right, what do you want to hear?’

  ‘The usual things – the things that people talk about when they’re getting to know each other.’

  ‘I think we’re pretty well acquainted already,’ I teased, squeezing her buttocks. ‘Don’t you?’

  She looked upwards and assumed an expression of mock exasperation. ‘You know exactly what I mean!’

  ‘And I thought I was doing you a favour.’

  ‘A favour?’

  ‘Sparing you the detail. It’s pretty boring stuff.’

  ‘I don’t care if it’s boring.’

  ‘You’re just saying that.’

  ‘No, I’m not.’

  I sighed. ‘Very well then. If you insist. But when I’m done, don’t say I didn’t warn you.’ She offered me the cigarette again and I took a few more drags. After collecting my thoughts, I said, ‘To begin at the beginning.’ I was quoting the first line of a play that I had listened to on the wireless. For some reason it had become lodged in my memory. I repeated it again, ‘To begin at the beginning.’ Jane knocked my ribs, as she might a gramophone player when the record on the turntable gets stuck. ‘I don’t remember a great deal about growing up, but I think I was a reasonably happy child. We lived in Canterbury, where my father was a GP. He was well-liked by his patients but he could be rather reserved at home: not cold exactly, but not terribly demonstrative either. I don’t think he was unusual in this respect. It’s just the way men of his generation are. What else can I say about him? He’s a decent man, dependable, hardworking – a safe pair of hands. My mother is a very different kind of person. Lively, capricious, a little on the nervy side perhaps, with a dry sense of humour that often escapes my father’s notice: they’re an unlikely match really. She left school when she was only fourteen. Even so, she’s a great reader and passionate about poetry. She used to make me rote-learn screeds of Keats and Coleridge: “In Xanadu did Kubla Khan, A stately pleasure-dome decree . . .” and so on. I haven’t forgotten a word. When the war ended my mother and father moved to Bournemouth. My father still practises.’

  ‘Do you see them very often?’

  ‘Not as much as I should.’

  ‘Don’t you get on?’

  ‘They’re perfectly pleasant. It’s just . . .’

  ‘What?’

  ‘There’s so little time.’

  ‘Would I like your mother?’

  ‘Yes. Actually she’s quite amusing. Some would say eccentric, and getting more so as she gets older.’

  I talked about school, Cambridge, national service and Edinburgh. As I spoke, I became acutely aware of the fact that my rather studious life was, by and large, embarrassingly void of significant incident, and it occurred to me that I was probably more like my earnest, reliable father than I cared to acknowledge. I omitted mention of any girlfriends and Jane didn’t press me to make any revelations – which was refreshing. My former lovers were positively obsessed with the subject. Even Sheila had displayed some curiosity, albeit of an oddly detached variety.

  When I had finished, I folded my arms and said, ‘There. Are you satisfied now?’

  Jane leaned forward and kissed me.

  Then after a lengthy pause she said, ‘You don’t find it easy talking about yourself, do you?’

  She was more perceptive than I had given her credit for.

  ‘Is it such a bad thing,’ I smiled, somewhat insincerely, ‘to be interested in other people – other lives – rather than your own?’

  ‘No,’ she said, ‘I suppose not.’

  Before she could ask me any more questions, I returned her kiss, and continued kissing her until our mutual excitement made further conversation impossible.

  When night fell I made sure that nobody was on the stairs, or in the vestibule, and signalled for Jane to follow. She pecked me on the cheek and tiptoed to the front door. A moment later, she was gone.

  Although Jane continued to occupy my thoughts for much of the time, I was still troubled by what had happened when we had spent our first night together. The shadowy figure that I had observed blocking the moonlight could be reasoned away with the help of a medical dictionary, but the sound of twelve volumes hitting the floor with great force (which both of us had heard) and the circumstantial evidence of the broken spines could not be so easily dismissed. There seemed to be no natural explanation.

  I knew all about poltergeists or ‘noisy spirits’. Their defining feature was the power to move physical objects. I had read about them with naive relish and uncritical enthusiasm as a boy; however, I had never expected in my wildest imaginings to experience such phenomena myself.

  As I tentatively opened my mind to possibilities beyond the remit of science, I found myself recalling a number of perplexing incidents that I had hitherto ignored, or more accurately failed to give proper consideration: the sigh that I had heard in the ba
throom, the biro that had dropped on the landing, Mary Williams’s odd behaviour, and the two wedding rings – one having vanished, the other having suddenly appeared. I was even prepared to reconsider Michael Chapman’s claim that his bed moved.

  The idea of the dead returning to annoy the living by performing small acts of mischief had always struck me as being faintly absurd. Even so, I was obliged to reserve judgement because, no matter how hard I tried, I could not think of a plausible alternative that would account equally well for all of the facts. To my surprise, arriving at this conclusion was accompanied by a sense of relief. It was as though I had been inadvertently (or dare I say unconsciously) resisting a supernatural explanation, and that maintaining this attitude had been effortful. At the same time, I was not willing to abandon logic altogether. I had generated a hypothesis and now, by rights, it should be tested. Undertaking some sort of experiment was, of course, out of the question, but I could still gather information and look for meaningful connections.

  I remembered how Maitland had acted like a tour guide when the two Americans had visited Wyldehope: how he had drawn Rosenberg and Stratton’s attention to the carved banisters on the main staircase, and pointed out the suit of armour from the ‘fifteenth century’. And back in London, during my interview at the Braxton Club, Maitland had spoken knowledgeably about the building’s recent past. Consequently, the next time I saw him I pretended to be interested in the carvings, and asked him how he had come to discover that they were the work of Robert Greenford. My intention had been to steer the conversation towards the topic of Wyldehope’s history, so that any further questions concerning the hospital’s previous occupants would not appear conspicuous. As it turned out, such artful premeditation was completely unnecessary.

  ‘I learned about Greenford from a book,’ said Maitland.

  ‘About the Pre-Raphaelites?’

  ‘No. They don’t appeal to me. I find their choice of subjects rather whimsical, don’t you? Knights, angels, fairies!’

  He seemed to sink into a state of contemptuous abstraction and I had to remind him of my initial question: ‘This book . . . the one that mentioned Greenford. What was it about?’

  ‘Wyldehope,’ he replied. ‘I found it stuffed behind a row of cricketing almanacs in the men’s recreation room.’

  ‘Who wrote it?’

  ‘A chap who was convalescing here during the Great War, a historian by profession. I suppose he must have been bored stiff and in need of diversion. You can borrow it if you wish. But it’s very dry.’

  Later that day, Maitland handed me a slim volume bound in faded yellow cloth. The title was barely legible: Wyldehope Hall: A Victorian Hunting Lodge. Below this was the author’s name, Hubert Spence. It was published by George G. Harrap & Company, Kingsway, London.

  A brief introduction explained the author’s circumstances and this was followed by a description of the building and its principal features. There was a section on ‘House Contents’ which, at the time of writing, included canvases by Rossetti and Burne-Jones, a rare Chinese cabinet and a seventeenth-century Swiss clock mounted in a case of gilded bronze, but the majority of the text concerned Sir Gerald Gathercole, the man who had built Wyldehope, and his architect, Robert Lyle. The story of the Gathercole family, from humble beginnings in the seventeenth century to ennoblement by the time of the Great War, was detailed in a torturously dull ‘Appendix’; however, I read nothing that would account for the persistent return of restless or vengeful spirits. There were no murders, suspicious deaths, broken promises or dubious ancestors known to have dabbled in the dark arts. Only a tiresome chronicle of merchant-class industry, commercial success, philanthropy, and eventual admission into the upper echelons of society. It was very disappointing.

  Even so, I was not discouraged from pursuing other lines of enquiry.

  The following Friday, Jane came up to my rooms again. We were lying in bed, gossiping about the other nurses, when I made some comments concerning Mary Williams. ‘Have you noticed how jittery she is? How she’s always on edge?’ I then went on to describe how Mary had wheeled around on the sleep-room staircase, acting as if someone had pulled her hair. I was hoping that this account of the incident would encourage Jane to make some relevant disclosures of her own, but all she said was, ‘You are kind, worrying about Mary. Yes, she is a bit nervous. I’ll try to talk to her more, be more friendly, and look out for her when Sister Jenkins is on the warpath.’

  ‘Did you know,’ I tried again, ‘that she brings a prayer book with her when she’s doing night shifts in the sleep room?’

  ‘No,’ Jane said, ‘I didn’t.’ She sounded a little puzzled.

  ‘I wonder why?’

  ‘She’s religious,’ said Jane, in a tone of voice that carried a hint of impatience. ‘Isn’t it obvious?’

  I was tempted to tell Jane about the evening I had found Mary crying, but this seemed too disrespectful, an unwarranted violation of the girl’s privacy.

  Still undeterred, I sought out Michael Chapman.

  We had continued to play chess together on a regular basis, and as a result Chapman’s game had improved dramatically. It was no longer necessary to let him win: he was quite capable of beating me even when I was doing my best. This I took to be a good sign, indicative of increased powers of concentration and the restoration of ordered thought. He was still a very sick man, but I was now inclined to take what he said more seriously.

  As usual, the recreation room was empty. Someone was snoring loudly on the ward.

  Chapman eyed the board, twitched a few times, and said, ‘To establish a rook on the seventh rank is a great advantage; to get two rooks on that rank is deadly.’ He rubbed his hands together as if the friction he produced would hasten my demise. His rooks had been sweeping up and down, annihilating my pawns and threatening checkmate.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘My prospects are not good.’

  Chapman chuckled. ‘Dr Richardson, they are nonexistent. Will you concede defeat now?’

  ‘No, not just yet.’ Chapman shook his head. His expression combined impatience with mirth. I attempted to get my king out of danger and Chapman removed another pawn. It took him only two more moves to achieve a decisive victory.

  ‘Well done, Michael,’ I said, shaking his hand. ‘An impressive performance.’

  He dismissed my congratulatory remarks and toyed with the cord of his dressing gown. A low sun revealed every detail of his deeply creviced face. I offered him a cigarette, which he accepted, and we smoked for a while in companionable silence.

  Eventually, I cleared my throat and said, ‘Michael?’ He turned to look at me. ‘Some time ago you asked me why it was that the nurses moved your bed at night.’

  ‘Yes,’ he replied, extending the syllable warily.

  ‘I told you that you must have been dreaming. Does it still happen?’

  His head jerked to one side before it returned to its original position. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Tell me about it. Tell me what happens.’

  ‘I wake up . . . it’s dark . . . and the bed is moving.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Backwards and forwards.’

  ‘If it’s dark, how do you know that it’s a nurse?’

  He rested a finger on his lower lip: ‘Who else would come into my room and move my bed?’

  ‘Have you ever thought it might be . . .’ I hesitated before saying, ‘Someone else?’

  ‘Another patient?’

  ‘No. Not exactly.’

  ‘Then who?’ Chapman’s brow creased and I realized I might be confusing him. The conversation was proving more difficult than I had expected.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I apologized. ‘I just wanted to . . .’ Again I hesitated before concluding, ‘I just wanted to make sure that you were getting enough sleep. That’s all. I’ll have a word with the nurses.’

  Chapman seemed to shrink. A tic appeared on his cheek and he glanced back over his shoulder. I had clearly upset him and I felt ashamed o
f myself for putting my own needs before those of my patient.

  That evening, seated in my study, I was still feeling guilty about Chapman. Moreover, I began to doubt the wisdom of having embarked upon an ad-hoc psychical investigation. I had learned nothing new, and if I continued asking odd questions, there was a risk that I might end up looking like a fool. It is ironic – given what happened next – that by the time I went to bed I had convinced myself that I should forget about poltergeists, put more effort into my relationship with Jane, begin a new research project, and get on with my job.

  Sleep came gently, lapping at the fringes of consciousness, taking away my thoughts until all that remained was the pleasing absence of mind that precedes extinction.

  I awoke with a start. There was absolute silence, but I was sure that there had been a sound: a sound loud enough to rouse me. A reverberation of some kind seemed to persist in the air. I switched on the lamp and sat still for a moment, listening. Timbers creaked and I may have heard the scuttling of tiny clawed feet behind the skirting. I got out of bed and stood in the hallway. A loose door handle opposite began to rattle and I reached out to touch it. When my fingers made contact with the brass, it stopped – but when I let go again the vibration continued. There was nothing remarkable about this. The effect was clearly attributable to currents of air; however, I then noticed that the door of my study was ajar – and this was less easily explained. I had shut it before going to bed. Indeed, I could remember pushing the divide between the sunken panels and the satisfying ‘click’ of the spring mechanism engaging. Wyldehope was a draughty old building, but I had never known a shut door to be blown open. My progress down the hallway seemed to take far too long, as if I had overestimated the length of my stride. As I positioned myself just outside the study, the darkness within did not give up any of its secrets.

  ‘Hello?’ I said softly. ‘Hello. Is there anybody there?’ I stepped over the threshold and turned the light on. My lower jaw dropped, and I stood there, gaping like an idiot. It was as if the room had been recently occupied by drunken revellers. The chair by the bureau had toppled over and the floor was covered with what at first sight appeared to be confetti. I knelt down, scooped up a handful, and immediately realized it wasn’t confetti at all, but ordinary writing paper that had been torn into tiny squares. Fragments of my handwriting were clearly visible. I was looking at the fair copy of my final Edinburgh experiment.