The Virgin and the Whale

by Carl Nixon

  ‘No, I haven’t.’

  A look of disappointment flicks across Mrs Blackwell’s face. ‘That is Dr Parkinson’s diagnosis.’

  ‘With all due respect to Dr Parkinson, he spoke to your husband for only a few minutes.’

  ‘Nonetheless, he is very experienced. He was something of a prodigy, I believe, the youngest ever medical school graduate in this country. Afterwards he studied in Europe under some of the top minds in his field.’

  ‘That doesn’t necessarily mean that he’s right about your husband.’

  ‘And you think that you are?’

  ‘When I was nursing in England, I saw many soldiers whose minds had snapped because of the terrible things that they’d seen and done. God knows how there weren’t more, considering. In fact, given the things they had to endure, insanity might well have been the only truly sane response.’ Mrs Blackwell looks at her blankly. ‘My point is that your husband is not like those men.’

  Mrs Blackwell sighs. ‘I’m sorry, but I must follow the best medical advice that is available.’

  ‘He simply can’t remember. That’s the root of everything that’s wrong with him. It’s not an illness.’

  ‘How can you be so certain?’

  ‘Because I’ve talked to him. He has convinced me. Your husband is a blank slate just waiting to be written on. He doesn’t belong in a mental hospital, any more than a child would. It’s experience he lacks, not sanity.’

  Mrs Blackwell holds up a hand. ‘Please. Dr Parkinson telephoned last evening.’

  ‘He is very persistent.’

  ‘I am certain that he just wants the best for Paul. He proposed a more detailed examination, at Sunnyside this time. I have agreed. I should also tell you that I have decided to follow whatever course of action the doctor thinks best.’

  ‘Including putting your husband in an institution?’

  ‘Yes, if he thinks that is called for.’

  ‘When your husband becomes difficult to manage, and I’m sure he will in a place like that, then they’ll undoubtedly give him sedatives.’

  ‘I’m sure the doctors will do nothing unless it is for the best.’

  Elizabeth stands. ‘I can see you are decided.’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘Is there nothing that I can say to change your mind?’

  ‘I’m afraid not. I apologise for the short term of your employment with us. Don’t worry, you will have no trouble being reinstated to your position at the hospital. I will arrange for you to be paid up until the end of next month — to compensate you for any inconvenience.’

  Elizabeth shakes her head. ‘I believe in being paid for the work that I do, no more, no less.’

  ‘Of course, as you say.’

  Elizabeth walks to the door where she pauses and turns back. ‘Mrs Blackwell, your husband should not be locked up in Sunnyside.’

  ‘I am sorry, my mind is made up.’

  ‘Then please allow me one last thing. I would be very grateful if I could accompany you to the examination. I would like to be there and perhaps make my case directly to Dr Parkinson.’

  Mrs Blackwell nods curtly. ‘All right. The appointment is tomorrow afternoon.’

  ‘So soon?’

  ‘Dr Parkinson thinks the case is most urgent.’

  ‘I’m sure he does.’

  thirty-two

  When it was completed in 1867, the institution was named the Mansfield Lunatic Asylum. I will not tarry over architectural exposition. It would be too easy — fish in a barrel — to describe the building as darkly Neo-Gothic, although technically that is the architectural style. To liken the tall windows to unlidded eyes staring dully out at the Blackwells’ car as it pulls up in front of the main building would not be fair. It is probably best to stick to the facts.

  The day is dominated by a low sky the colour of dirty concrete from which falls an intermittent drizzle. Martin Templeton holds the car door open for Mrs Blackwell with his good hand. His shoulder is bandaged, the arm supported by a sling. Elizabeth and Lucky leave the other side of the vehicle under their own steam.

  ‘Wait here please, Martin,’ says Mrs Blackwell.

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’ The driver shoots Lucky a dark look (and who can blame him?).

  Even though the institution has been renamed the much more felicitous Sunnyside, it still manages to loom over the three figures walking towards the entrance. The large wooden door is flanked by two lanterns, recently electrified. It may give a very slight creak as it swings open. Perhaps it does close rather heavily. But to say that the sound echoes down the corridor like hollow laughter, well, that is a bridge too far. Such descriptions belong to a model of mental institution that by 1919 was already antiquated.

  Elizabeth, Mrs Blackwell and Paul/Lucky (again, take your pick — you may have changed your mind at this stage) find themselves in a building which, in almost all particulars, is the same as any well-run hospital of the day. They are met at the reception desk by an attractive young nurse. She smiles warmly and, seeing Elizabeth’s uniform, gives a collegial nod.

  ‘Good morning,’ says Mrs Blackwell. ‘We have an appointment with Dr Parkinson.’

  The nurse refers to a typed list that is sitting on her desk. ‘Certainly, you must be the Blackwells. Please follow me.’

  She leads the trio along a corridor — neither narrow nor dim — past rooms that are not padlocked and from which come no screams or howls, not so much as a faint moan. They are shown into a waiting room with soft deep chairs and a mahogany coffee table on which sit several recent newspapers and periodicals.

  As is his habit, Lucky walks to the window and looks out. The drizzle has temporarily abated and a few patients are strolling in the grounds. None of them seems visibly distressed although one plain, freckled woman with a halo of red hair is sitting very still on a bench, as though listening to her own internal muse.

  They wait in silence until Dr Parkinson emerges from his office a few minutes later. He appears suddenly, apparently already smiling broadly before he enters the room.

  ‘Good morning, everyone.’

  Elizabeth almost expects the small group to chorus ‘Good morning, Dr Parkinson’ in the high voices of a class of five year olds.

  Mrs Blackwell stands and offers her hand. She seems relieved to see the doctor. ‘Good morning. It is very kind of you to take us so soon.’

  He beams. ‘Not at all.’

  Lucky remains by the window and does not acknowledge the doctor at all. Elizabeth confines herself to a small nod. If Dr Parkinson is surprised to see her here he does not show it. He continues to address himself directly to Mrs Blackwell. ‘As I said on the telephone, this will be a more detailed assessment. It’s really just an interview between Paul and myself. I’ll be asking a series of questions, running some tests, nothing too rigorous.’

  At the use of the name Paul, Lucky gives the doctor a look of the most intense dislike. Elizabeth catches his eye and shakes her head very slightly.

  ‘If you ladies would like to wait here, it would be best if I saw Paul alone in my office. Mr Blackwell, do you mind?’

  Again Lucky makes eye contact with Elizabeth and this time she nods. He follows the doctor into the adjoining office.

  thirty-three

  Elizabeth has done her best to prepare Lucky for this interview. ‘It’s very important that you don’t lose your temper.’

  ‘Why. Will he beat me?’

  They had been together, earlier that day, in the billiard room at Woodbridge. Lucky had been curious about the game and Elizabeth had explained how to play as best she could. They took turns hitting the white ball with the cues, knocking it into the coloured balls, which rolled over the green felt, clinking against one another but seldom falling into the pockets unless by chance.

  ‘No, he’s not allowed to beat you. But he could persuade Mrs Blackwell to send you to live at Sunnyside.’

  ‘And if I said that I didn’t want to go?’

  ‘You wouldn�
��t have a choice.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘It’s the law. It’s called being committed. You wouldn’t like it there.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘You wouldn’t have any freedom. You certainly couldn’t just come and go, not even from your room.’

  ‘This prison or that one, what’s the difference?’ Lucky struck the white ball with sudden force and it ricocheted around the table.

  ‘Trust me, you would prefer it here.’

  ‘With you?’ He looked at her curiously.

  ‘Yes.’ Her gaze faltered and broke.

  ‘Good.’

  He gave her one of his rare smiles and she was suddenly flustered. It was her turn at the table. She fumbled with her cue and barely managed to hit the white ball into the blue. ‘The very worst thing to do would be to get angry.’

  ‘Then this doctor shouldn’t insist that I am someone that I am not.’ His voice was already rising.

  ‘Listen,’ said Elizabeth, ‘won’t you consider telling him what he wants to hear, that you are Paul Blackwell?’

  ‘No, I can’t.’

  ‘But why not? It would be so easy.’

  ‘Who I am, who I believe that I am, is all I have. There is nothing else in the entire world I can call my own. I cannot give that up.’

  Elizabeth nodded. ‘In that case I want to tell you another story.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘Just listen. At the start of the war there was a man who was a conscientious objector.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Someone who refuses to fight because he doesn’t believe in violence, especially killing, no matter what the circumstances.’

  Lucky absorbed this eccentricity without comment.

  ‘When this man refused to join the army he was arrested and locked up in a special prison for a long time. Soldiers forced him and other men like him to dig trenches and then fill them in again. They made him go on long marches in all sorts of weather and perform other pointless but difficult tasks. Some of the guards taunted the man, called him a coward, even struck him.

  ‘A handful of the other men in the prison could not stand the conditions and eventually broke down. They agreed to go to the war to fight, but this man never did.

  ‘After almost a year in the prison he was put on a ship and sent to France anyway. The sailors taunted him even more than the guards at the prison camp. They called him a traitor and a coward and gave him food crawling with weevils. They kept him locked in a small cell far below the deck, even during a violent storm that came close to sinking the ship.

  ‘When the ship arrived in France the man was immediately taken to the front. The soldiers guarding him spat on him and one slapped him hard across the cheek but the man didn’t say a word. He was taken into no-man’s-land and tied to a special stake. The way he was tied made it painful even to stand. It was winter and there was a bitter wind. But he never complained or condemned the soldiers who tied him. That happened every day for almost two weeks.’ Elizabeth paused.

  ‘What happened to him?’ asked Lucky

  ‘Even the soldiers realised that the man was going to die before he agreed to fight. He was brought before a major and asked if he would become a stretcher bearer, one of those men who went out under fire and brought back the wounded. The man said he would think about it. The next day he agreed, as long as he did not have to carry a gun.

  ‘That’s how he came to eventually help some of the same soldiers who had taunted and tortured him. He would go where no one else dared. Every time a cry of “stretcher bearer” was heard he would risk his life. Everyone agreed that they’d never met a braver man.’

  Lucky put his cue down on the billiard table. ‘You want me to be more like the man in your story.’

  ‘You can take from it what you want. That’s how stories are.’

  ‘That one seems rather obvious. Did you know this man?’

  ‘I heard about him.’

  ‘And what if I take nothing from your story?’

  Elizabeth gave a small shrug. ‘That’s your choice.’

  thirty-four

  When telling a story, what is left out is just as important as what is included. That sounds nonsensical, but it is true.

  Some storytellers make the mistake of including everything. If there is a kitchen in the story, then its sink is a model in 304 grade stainless steel — bought on sale from a well-known plumbing supplies shop in Smith Street, undermounted, with welded double bowls, an overflow and incorporating a rack where dishes can drain.

  Tedious.

  ‘But what happens next?’ becomes the reader’s increasingly testy refrain.

  Too much of that sort of thing and the book inevitably gets put on the bedside table, never to be reopened. The same can be said of countless digressions from the story. Storytelling is a juggling act.

  I mention the subject because the question has arisen of what happens between Lucky and Dr Parkinson during their interview. The historical facts of this meeting have been lost and so it must be decided how much detail is necessary. Would it help or hinder our story to describe the psychiatrist’s office as being panelled in dark oak? Or should the room be spartan, with only a desk and a few neatly aligned medical texts on a dusted shelf? Or cluttered with books, papers, files, the accrued stubs of pencils; crammed to the gunwales with psychiatric bric-à-brac lying willy-nilly. A model of a human head could be a nice touch, the regions of the brain labelled like countries on a map.

  Although Rorschach’s test was formulated two years later, in 1921, and wasn’t commonly used for several years after that, psychiatrists had been asking patients to interpret indistinct images for many years. It might help with the story to go into some detail about the cards that the doctor holds up in front of Lucky, an ink blot on each one. Or should Lucky’s responses to those ambiguous stains be skimmed over as lightly as a flat stone bouncing across the surface of a pond?

  ‘A cat.

  ‘A lizard.

  ‘Two women arguing.

  ‘A muddy field with a broken tree.

  ‘I don’t know — it looks like nothing. Well then, I suppose a heart.’

  Perhaps there is also a series of questions the answers to which are: ‘Yes. Yes. No. Yes. No. Yes. I’m not sure. All right, no. Yes. Yes.’

  The important part of this episode, the part that absolutely cannot be left out, is what Dr Parkinson concludes from his interview. After forty minutes, he emerges from his office. Mrs Blackwell and Elizabeth have been sitting still and silent as stumps. Both women rise to their feet at the same time.

  ‘I have asked Paul to wait in my office. Mrs Blackwell, can I speak to you in private?’

  ‘Actually, I would like Mrs Whitman to hear what you have to say, Doctor.’

  He frowns and seems on the point of arguing. ‘Very well.’ The doctor pauses for a moment, either to collect his thoughts or for dramatic effect, it is difficult to be sure. ‘I have confirmed my earlier diagnosis of schizophrenia.’

  Of course you have, thinks Elizabeth.

  ‘It is my professional opinion that your husband’s memory loss is not organic in origin but has come about as a result of the mental trauma that he suffered in the trenches. I am convinced that a period of treatment and convalescence here at Sunnyside will eventually restore Paul’s memory.’

  Mrs Blackwell looks relieved. ‘You determined this by scientific testing?’

  ‘I can assure you that I have employed the most modern scientific methods at my disposal. I am one hundred per cent confident that my diagnosis is the correct one.’

  ‘Do you really think that you can bring back the man that I married?’ Her look is imploring.

  ‘I think that there is a good chance, yes, although I make no promises. As I have explained to you already, we have some remarkably effective new methods.’

  ‘Barbiturates.’ Elizabeth speaks for the first time. ‘Mrs Blackwell has mentioned those.’

  ‘Yes
. There have been significant advances in the development of pharmaceuticals in the last few years.’

  ‘And when would you like to start Paul’s treatment?’ asks Mrs Blackwell.

  ‘Today, immediately. The sooner we begin, the sooner your husband will be restored to you.’

  Elizabeth finds that she cannot stay an observer any longer. ‘And what if you’re mistaken, Doctor? What if Mr Blackwell’s memory loss has been caused by his wound? What impact will strong sedatives have on him then?’

  For a fleeting second Dr Parkinson looks uneasy and then his professional countenance slides back into place. ‘I do not believe that I am wrong, Mrs Whitman.’

  ‘But what if you are?’ insists Elizabeth.

  Dr Parkinson ignores her question. He turns back to Mrs Blackwell, who has been watching the exchange uneasily. ‘It is up to you to make the final decision.’

  Mrs Blackwell takes a deep breath and draws herself up. ‘I have been thinking about this very carefully. Mrs Whitman, you have brought about a great change for the better in Paul in a very short time and I am grateful. But now it seems clear to me that I must trust to a more learned judgement than your own.’

  ‘But I’m sure …’ begins Elizabeth.

  A slender hand is held up. ‘No. I’m sorry. Paul will come to Sunnyside.’

  For a moment the room is very still.

  ‘Mrs Blackwell,’ says Elizabeth, as calmly as she can manage. ‘I understand that you’ve been forced to make a very difficult decision. You must of course side with the most persuasive argument. However, I still don’t believe that Sunnyside is the right place for your husband.’

  Dr Parkinson can contain himself no longer and his pale eyes flash. ‘I am not in the habit of having my diagnoses second-guessed by nurses.’

  Elizabeth keeps her eyes fixed on Mrs Blackwell’s. ‘As a great favour to me, can I please ask that your husband remain under my care at Woodbridge for just a while longer.’