The Virgin and the Whale

by Carl Nixon

‘One last thing. I hope you don’t mind if I ask who will be paying for my services?’

  ‘I will. I have some savings from my time overseas.’ Elizabeth does not say that the legal fees will be coming from the money she has put aside to secure a down-payment on a home for herself and Jack — and Jonathan, of course. Neither does she explain that, in all likelihood, if the case drags on her money will barely be adequate.

  ‘Good day to you, Mrs Whitman.’

  ‘And to you, Mr Burfoot.’

  As she rides the shaky tram back through the city, Elizabeth ponders the lawyer’s words about past and future. She had been telling the truth when she said that she hadn’t considered what would happen to Lucky if the legal challenge were successful, but now that the matter has been raised it is all she can think about. Somehow she had imagined that Lucky would simply stay in his room at Woodbridge, having daily baths and eating the meals that Mrs Booker prepared for him. The thought had been in the back of her mind that he would eventually develop interests, cultivate friendships, perhaps even find some type of employment. But as the tram rattles and bumps, stopping and starting with unpredictable shudders, she now realises that this is all a fairytale; one of those stories we tell ourselves about the future to act as both compass and map through uncharted waters.

  It is only five days later that Elizabeth receives a hand-delivered letter informing her that Mr Burfoot’s petition to the Magistrate’s Court has been accepted. A writ of habeas corpus has been issued to Sunnyside, and Lucky has been called to appear before a judge in two days’ time.

  forty-eight

  Lucky is brought before the Mansfield Magistrate’s Court at 11 a.m. on Friday the 8th of August 1919. Elizabeth is not permitted to be present, as the session is not open to the general public. Although Lucky has been at Sunnyside for only thirteen days, he appears to have lost weight. He sways slightly as he is led into the courtroom, which is unsurprising as the doctors have been giving him lithium almost since the moment he passed through the doors of the institution.

  The magistrate is, appropriately, named Laws. He slowly enters the court from a door behind the bench. Magistrate Laws appears much older than his sixty-two years. As he sits down his bones click and pop loudly enough to be heard by everyone in the room. Laws peers over the top of his spectacles at Lucky before looking down at his notes and the small group waits patiently while he shuffles through the paperwork. Eventually he looks up.

  ‘So, Mr Burfoot, I take it that you are to represent Mr Blackwell?’

  ‘Yes, Your Worship. We believe that he has been incarcerated illegally.’

  ‘Clearly. That after all is why we are here.’ Magistrate Laws swings his head around to the other lawyer in the room. ‘And you, Mr Fisk, you are here on behalf of Mr Blackwell’s wife, who I understand is the signatory to his committal paper and his undisputed closest living relative.’

  ‘Yes, Your Worship. I am also authorised to discuss with you the details of the reports on Mr Blackwell’s mental state written by Drs Parkinson, Buck and Judkins.’

  ‘Whose signatures I also see on the committal papers I have in front of me.’

  ‘That is correct, Your Worship.’

  ‘Well then, let us begin with you, Mr Burfoot.’

  Legal arguments are fired around the court room like artillery shells. Mr Burfoot argues that three doctors from the same institution, two of whom he has ascertained are reliant for their employment on the one whose assessment they are supporting, cannot be said to be ‘independent’ in the sense that the Act intends. His argument also has a second front, that memory loss is not a recognised mental illness. It is, however, a harder case to make. After ten minutes of his deep voice echoing around the court, Mr Burfoot concludes his arguments.

  Mr Robert Fisk of Mitcham and Fisk is everything that Mr Burfoot is not: young, slim, handsome. He smiles charmingly as he addresses Magistrate Laws. Mr Fisk can see no legal reason whatsoever why the two highly qualified and thoroughly professional experts nominated by Dr Parkinson should not have been used to assess Mr Blackwell’s mental health. The fact that the two men work alongside Dr Parkinson at Sunnyside is irrelevant. Their professional standards and personal ethics, which are above reproach, ensure that the good doctors are entirely independent in the sense that the lawmakers obviously intended. To suggest otherwise is an attack of the gravest kind upon both doctors’ professional integrity and their reputations. It is insinuated that separate legal proceedings on behalf of the good doctors may be forthcoming.

  Magistrate Laws eventually interrupts. ‘Thank you, Mr Fisk. I think I have the gist of your argument. How do you respond to Mr Burfoot’s claim that memory loss is not a mental illness?’

  ‘Quite simply, Your Worship. As the assessment from Dr Parkinson, which you have in front of you, shows, it is a fallacy that Mr Blackwell has had any true memory loss at all. Regrettably he is suffering from the easily identified illness of schizophrenia and as a result is delusional. As are many patients already receiving excellent treatment at Sunnyside.’

  ‘I see. Thank you, Mr Fisk. You may sit down. Mr Blackwell, I should like to ask you a few questions.’

  Lucky stands. He appears to be exhausted, his arms hanging by his sides. ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Your Worship, please. You’re not in the army now.’

  ‘Your Worship.’

  ‘Mr Burfoot has stated that as a result of a head wound received in France you cannot remember anything of your past. Is that true?’

  ‘I believe so, yes.’

  ‘You don’t sound very sure.’

  ‘It’s impossible to know exactly what you don’t know.’

  The magistrate nods his head. ‘Yes, I suppose it would be. Tell me about your first memory.’

  We have covered this ground before. Lucky tells the man as much as he can, although the questions are a lot more incisive and probing than those Elizabeth asked. After almost half an hour the magistrate concludes the session by thanking everyone present. He promises to deliver his decision within forty-eight hours.

  Three days later Elizabeth telephones Mr Burfoot at his office, as they had arranged. The lawyer’s voice booms down the line, forcing her to hold the receiver at a safer distance from her ear.

  ‘Good news, Mrs Whitman. The magistrate has ordered that Lucky be reassessed.’

  ‘But not released?’

  ‘No, but this is a very positive step. His Worship concluded that the three doctors were independent in a legal sense, but he also felt there was enough doubt as to the diagnosis of schizophrenia that Lucky should face a panel which will make the final decision about his mental health.’

  ‘Who will sit on this panel?’

  ‘Parkinson, unfortunately, and two others, but not doctors this time, and they are to be of the magistrate’s own choosing. He specifically states in his decision that neither will be connected to Sunnyside, nor are to be in any way beholden to the others.’ He chuckles. ‘That will be a bit of a slap in the face for young Mr Fisk. The new panel will convene in a month, on the 8th of September. It’s a Monday.’

  ‘So long? Will Lucky have to remain at Sunnyside?’

  ‘Unfortunately yes, in the meantime.’

  ‘We won then.’ She sounds uncertain.

  ‘The first round. You don’t sound very pleased.’

  ‘I suppose I am. It seems a lot of time and effort, and nothing’s really been achieved. They still might decide that Lucky should stay at Sunnyside.’

  ‘At least now he’ll get a fair hearing.’

  When Elizabeth hangs up, she looks blankly at the wall of the train station where she has come to use the public telephone. People move past her, their footsteps loud on the tiled floor. Even if these two new men do listen to Lucky with open minds it is hard for Elizabeth to see how he is going to avoid spending a long time locked up. After all, he is undeniably a man who has lost, if not all, then at least a significant part of his mind.

  forty-nine
/>   And what becomes of Lucky in the month while he waits for his future to be decided?

  He sits in his locked room at Sunnyside. It is a good room, as far as rooms in mental institutions go, on the north side of the main building with a view of the grounds. He wishes that he had an open fire but there is a large radiator mounted on the wall that runs all day and night. Lucky lies on his bed listening to the sounds it makes, clicks and creaks and deep metallic groans.

  He swallows the pills that the nurses give him every evening and again in the morning. They are white and red, two of each. They make his thoughts distant and as hard to catch as clouds.

  The only time he protests is when they try to shave his face.

  ‘Now, now, what’s all this fuss?’ asks Dr Parkinson, arriving slightly out of breath in Lucky’s room. He gestures to the two straining orderlies and they step away. Lucky is not even sure why he does not want them to shave him. He just knows that somehow it will diminish him.

  In the end, the doctor decides that it is not worth the fuss and allows Lucky to keep his beard. As the days pass it once again grows thick, eventually filling the gap between chin and throat. His hair reaches for his shoulders.

  He meets with Dr Parkinson every second day. These sessions follow a predictable pattern. The doctor asks him many seemingly different questions but the aim of each is the same: to persuade Lucky that he is someone he is not.

  As the days drag on, Lucky answers less and less often. He can see no point. Eventually he does nothing at these meetings except sit still, staring blankly at the floor. To anyone seeing him for the first time he might look like a ragged mystic searching for meaning in the patterns on the rug. Or a crazy man.

  The woman who calls herself his wife visits on several occasions. Lucky does not explode into shouts and curses in the way that he did at woodbridge. He cannot, however, see any point in her small talk. In the face of his lengthening silences, Mrs Blackwell inevitably stumbles and leans on the past for support. She cannot help herself.

  ‘Do you remember the time,’ she begins. Or, during another visit, reaching into her handbag, ‘I just happened to find this photograph in the library. Look, it’s of the day when you and I drove to the mountains to go ice skating.’

  The woman talks and talks, but it becomes clear, even to her, that Lucky is not listening. She perseveres but after a week her visits dwindle and eventually she ceases to visit him altogether. By then Lucky hardly notices.

  The hospital has a policy of allowing only immediate family to visit the patients. Elizabeth would not have been allowed to see Lucky even if Mrs Blackwell had not issued written instructions explicitly excluding her.

  One day — Lucky couldn’t say whether it was a Monday or a Sunday or any day in between — he hears a scraping sound and sees an envelope slipping beneath the door of his room. It is a letter from Elizabeth.

  We can only surmise, but it is likely that Elizabeth asked a favour of one of the nurses, perhaps someone she knew from another hospital. It is even possible that she bribed an orderly. Delivering a letter would involve only a small risk.

  Lucky opens the envelope and smooths out the single sheet of paper. Elizabeth writes to say that a date has been set to reassess his committal. She hopes that when his case is reviewed he will be released.

  Halfway down the page she begins a story:

  Once there was a man …

  Lucky reads the story several times. As he reads he can hear Elizabeth’s voice and see her face. For the first time in a long while there is something solid that his mind can latch onto.

  For the rest of the month, every morning after the orderly inspects his mouth to make sure that Lucky has swallowed his pills and then left, Lucky fumbles under the mattress and retrieves the hidden letter from Elizabeth.

  He reads the story again and again. It becomes his anchor.

  fifty

  Let’s jump ahead to the day of Lucky’s competency hearing. Do not imagine a crowded courtroom. Having ordered a new psychological assessment of Lucky and made the decision regarding the composition of the panel, the judiciary’s involvement is almost at an end. The hearing is convened in a nondescript meeting room at the Mansfield Town Hall. Lucky and Mr Burfoot sit on one side of a wide table facing the three men who are to decide Lucky’s future. An elderly female stenographer hunches at the end of the table focusing on the chattering keys of her machine.

  Mrs Blackwell is the only observer. She sits in one of the dozen chairs arranged in two rows close to the door, wearing a hat and a heavy woollen coat, which she does not remove. A fox stole is draped around her neck.

  Lucky stares across the table at the three men. On the face of it, they are a somewhat odd, even unpromising assortment. On the left is a layperson selected by the magistrate, a Professor Duvauchelle, a Frenchman who came to Mansfield four years earlier to escape the horrors of the war. Although only thirty-six, he is well known in the new field of art theory. Now he is lecturing at the Mansfield University. Monsieur Duvauchelle is, however, by this time regretting his decision to travel so far from the Old World. In fact, on the day of the hearing he is awaiting written word from several European universities to which he has applied for teaching positions. He will be profoundly relieved to return to a country where wine is not an exotic drink, horse racing is not considered high culture and vegetables are prepared in ways other than by boiling.

  The man seated in the middle of the three is a lawyer, Mr Pottinger, who has come down specially from the capital by train. He is sixty-three, and completely bald. There is a patch of dried egg yolk on the collar of his jacket, acquired in the dining room of the boarding house where he is staying. Mr Pottinger is prone to motion sickness and the combination the previous day of the rocking of the carriage and the sight of the ocean slopping backwards and forwards outside the window as the train hugged the coast had been enough to make him sick to his stomach. Even after a night’s sleep he is still feeling somewhat queasy. Occasionally he will grimace and pinch the bridge of his nose between finger and thumb and peer over the top of his spectacles at whoever is speaking, as though they had suddenly materialised in front of him in the most alarming and impolite way.

  The third member of the panel is, of course, Dr Parkinson.

  For obvious reasons, Elizabeth has stayed away from the hearing. Not the least of these is that Mrs Blackwell will be present. Elizabeth fears that there would be a scene if she were to appear.

  She is not very far way, however. She has taken the day off work. (By this time Elizabeth has returned to the hospital, much to her mother’s relief.) Mr Burfoot has told her where and when the hearing is to be held. She knows the route that someone leaving Sunnyside would most likely travel to get into the centre of the city. That is how she comes to be standing on the footpath on the corner of Lincoln and Queen streets as the black car carrying Lucky and Mrs Blackwell sweeps past.

  Years later, in her letter to her son, Elizabeth will write that she had to guess which side of the intersection would give her the best chance of catching Lucky’s eye. As the car approached she saw his face in profile and knew that she had guessed correctly.

  She did not shout or wave but willed him to turn his head, to see her.

  Perhaps it was that sense which tells us when we are being watched. Maybe Lucky was turning away from someone who was speaking to him from inside the car. Or was it the most unlikable of narrative devices, coincidence? The fact is that Lucky did turn his head towards her at that moment. He did see her.

  Their eyes met and Elizabeth smiled.

  And then the car moved on and they were once again parted.

  ‘My mother fell deeply in love with a man who had no memory.’

  If I must choose, than I will say that it was at that moment, when Lucky turned and looked at her, just for a few seconds, when their eyes met, that Elizabeth finally and irrevocably fell in love with him. It was then, despite everything, all the obstacles and doubts, that the cogs of her f
eelings clicked into place. The story of her life, the story she told to herself in her heart, changed forever as she stood on the footpath and watched the car disappear, Lucky’s face still as clear in her mind as if he were in front of her.

  During the hearing she waits on a park bench, in the weak sunshine of early spring, across the road from the town hall. Despite the complications her love will create, and her anxiety about the outcome of the hearing, despite a part of herself that is grieving for Jonathan and will always grieve as long as she is alive, Elizabeth is happy. No one said that love was easy. And if they did they were fools.

  Inside the room where the hearing is being held, the three men take it in turns to ask Lucky questions.

  ‘Do you deny that you are Paul Edward Blackwell?’

  And ‘Why is it that you call yourself by the name …’ Mr Pottinger checks his notes, ‘Lucky?’

  ‘What is your earliest memory?’ The Frenchman.

  ‘Isn’t it true that you hear voices?’ (That was Dr Parkinson. Lucky denies hearing anything beyond the usual babble.)

  ‘Why did you viciously attack and stab a man?’ (Parkinson again.)

  From the sublime: ‘How would you define love?’

  To the ridiculous: ‘Why do you wear a beard?’ and ‘How regular are your bowel movements?’ Both of these come from the Frenchman, who considers himself a budding Freudian.

  If the lethargy of the past month had remained, if Lucky had given monosyllabic answers or, worse, none at all, then his continuing incarceration would have been guaranteed. The only account of his responses comes second-hand through Elizabeth, who claimed in her letter to her son that Lucky knew what was at stake. She wrote that he rallied in an effort to save himself. The story that she had sent him in her smuggled letter may have provided inspiration; that was obviously its intention. Or maybe the sight of a smile glimpsed through a car window was enough. Sometimes small kindnesses can make all the difference. We will never know for certain.