Asylum

by Patrick Mcgrath

  The house was strangely silent that night. Summer was long over and the weather was damp and misty. The house seemed too large for them, and they drifted about it like strangers in an empty hotel. Max was unable properly to begin his punitive campaign, perhaps, she thought, because the magnitude of her guilt awed him. That she should still eat, and drink, and move from room to room, burdened as she was with sin, this struck him dumb with amazement and even a sort of admiration. He could not quite believe that she wasn’t crawling about on her hands and knees, weeping and tearing her hair out and begging his forgiveness. He was aghast with a sort of furtive pleasure that she didn’t behave with shame, which made her in his eyes more shameful still, and so compounded his sick delight in the whole sordid performance. It was a cool evening but she took her drink onto the back lawn and stood staring out into the darkness. She heard him behind her in the house, moving about, getting ready.

  She made up the bed in the spare room, and she could tell he thought she was sparing him the embarrassment of having to refuse to sleep with her. Nothing of the sort, it was her decision, had she wished to sleep in her own bed she would have done so. She wasn’t afraid of him, and she wasn’t going to do his work for him. If she was to be punished he would have to do it himself. How would he do it? She didn’t trouble herself with his problems. She felt the ground tremble beneath her feet and the abyss begin to open.

  For the next few days everything seemed imbued with a solemn, heavy formality. She remembers one wet afternoon lying a long time in a hot bath with a gin and tonic then drifting about the house, going from room to room, doing nothing, not bored, just passive, numb. She went into Charlie’s room and lay on the bed, and she must have fallen asleep, for that’s where Max found her when he came home from work. He was, as usual, irritable, but there was something else, his mood was compounded with an anxiety that came from a source other than her.

  “What’s the matter?” she said. “What’s happened? Is it Charlie?”

  He was leaning against the door frame. He pulled out his cigarettes. He wasn’t looking at her.

  “Are you sure you’re interested?”

  “Of course I’m interested. Tell me.”

  She was sitting on the side of the bed. Max lit his cigarette, tilted his head back and blew smoke at the ceiling.

  “You’ve finished me,” he said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “He’s fired me.”

  She didn’t know what to say.

  “Oh, he can’t do that.”

  He rubbed his face and sighed.

  “Don’t you want to know why I’ve become an embarrassment to the hospital? Why the fact that my wife ran away with an absconding patient makes me a liability?”

  He was suddenly angry.

  “What will you do?” she said.

  He didn’t speak for a few moments. He was simmering silently once more.

  “Jack believes the hospital’s mission will be compromised if I remain on the staff.”

  She yawned.

  “There’s a ham,” she said.

  He looked away and shook his head then went downstairs. She heard him go into his study. He didn’t come out for the rest of the evening, and he was still in there when she went to bed. She was terribly tired.

  The next morning she telephoned Charlie. He had been staying with Brenda and she hadn’t seen him yet, but she’d called him every day. He was hurt, of course he was hurt; she’d gone away without preparing him for her departure and he’d naturally felt abandoned. He must have thought it was his fault, she said; until, that is, his guilty bewilderment was given definition by Max and Brenda, so that by now he’d be blaming her for his unhappiness. But she knew he wanted to come home. He wanted to love his mother, and to know that she loved him. Brenda, however, was being obstructive.

  “He’s not here,” she said, and Stella knew she was lying.

  “Let me talk to him, Brenda,” she said.

  “He was very upset last night. I think you should let him come to terms with this whole thing gradually.”

  “Just put him on, please.”

  “Have you really thought what’s best for him?”

  “Please don’t interfere. Let me talk to him.”

  Silence then, and a few moments later Charlie was on the line.

  “Mummy?”

  “Hello, darling. What have you been doing?”

  “Oh, going to see things. I want to come home now.”

  She drove through with Max in the afternoon to meet the train. Max was silent. Stella was sure he would want a divorce, but he had said nothing yet and she certainly had no intention of raising the topic. She didn’t want any fresh upheaval, she wanted a haven, and time to heal, for she realized that she was still in shock and the pain of losing Edgar had not properly begun to make itself felt yet.

  Charlie was nervous when he got off the train. But then, as they came together, all four of them, for Brenda was with him, on the platform, and Stella crouched and took his hands, he fell into her arms and kissed her on the lips. She glanced up and caught the look that Brenda shot Max, the lift of a thin plucked eyebrow.

  The car was parked just outside the station. Charlie and his mother went first, hand in hand, with Max and Brenda following. Stella said she felt as though a great weight had been lifted from her. It seemed to her that if Charlie and she were all right then some semblance of a normal life could be sustained. Max would continue to stew quietly in his own watery juices, and Brenda would doubtless tell her smart Knightsbridge friends that her son was married to a slut, but none of that could touch her, none of it mattered.

  She took him up to his room while Max gave his mother a drink in the drawing room.

  “I’m so happy you’ve come home,” she told him while he got ready for bed and she hung up his clothes.

  “Are you going to London again?”

  “No, I’ll never go away again. I’m very very sorry. Do you forgive me?”

  She sat on the bed as he buttoned his pajamas. He turned to her and again kissed her. She hugged him tight; she clasped his plump little body close to hers and wondered how she could ever have left him. She told him how much she’d missed him, and the tears flowed. Charlie was a gentleman; he comforted her; as she sobbed out her remorse he stroked her hair and solemnly told her that everything was all right now, and please not to cry.

  That night she was flooded with memories of Edgar. Why that night? The crust of numbness on her heart, why did it crack open that night? She thought it was because Charlie was back, and loving Charlie roused her to the other, greater love, and so the loss and longing came. She had gone up to the spare room, her room, straight after dinner, and left Max to give his mother coffee and drive her to the station. The meal had been eaten in an atmosphere of ghastly politeness, nobody willing to give voice to the terrible currents roiling among them; there was only the clatter of cutlery on china as they ate ham and boiled potatoes, with Brenda murmuring civilized banalities all the more difficult to respond to because they assumed the family’s continued residence here on the estate: Max had not yet told her he had lost his job. Too ashamed to, Stella supposed; she was glad of it, that he hadn’t told his mother yet; Brenda would of course blame her, see her as the ruin of her son, and Stella simply wasn’t strong enough to cope with that yet. So there they sat, the family, that cool autumn evening, and Brenda made the small talk that held at bay the silence that loomed in the corners of the room and threatened to tear them to pieces. She fled upstairs as soon as she decently could. Nobody thanked her for the meal.

  After looking in on the sleeping Charlie she lay on her bed and a wave of pain swept through her and left her feeling desolate and tearful. Later she stood at the open window, a cardigan around her shoulders, for the night was cool, and hugged herself and remembered the nights they’d had in London, and how alive she’d been, alive with passion for that poor disturbed man and for the life they’d led those few glorious weeks until it fell a
part. Where was he now? She held him clearly in her mind’s eye, and though it gave her a jolt of pain to do this she wouldn’t let him go. She knew then that this would not end quickly. She heard Max and Brenda leave the house, and she heard the car. Some time later she heard Max come back in and turn the lights off and come upstairs. He paused on the landing; thank God he didn’t tap on her door.

  They had their talk the next day. Max initiated it. She was alone in the kitchen when he came home from the hospital at noon. He said they had to talk in the study and it wasn’t possible to say no. He didn’t seem angry, nor was he heavy with resentment, just weary and troubled and sad, and she almost felt sorry for him. She wiped her hands on a dish towel and followed him down the hall and into the study.

  “Sit down,” he said. “I’ve been thinking about our future.”

  Obediently she sat down and waited for what he had to say.

  “I’ve started to look for a job. There are a number of possibilities. Staff jobs, not superintendencies. I’m not regarded as a particularly good prospect for a position of responsibility just at the moment.”

  This was allowed to hang in the air for a few seconds.

  “I’m afraid we shan’t be living in London.”

  This too hung in the air. He regarded her with a cool, studied expression, as though she were a specimen. He wanted a response.

  “What a pity,” she murmured.

  “Quite.”

  He frowned as he busied himself with cigarettes and matches. He didn’t offer her one.

  “Can’t be helped, I’m afraid. You’ve brought this one on your own head.”

  “Could I have a cigarette, please?”

  “I’m sorry; of course.”

  They smoked.

  “Stella, I take it you do wish to continue living with me? If you have other plans I’ll of course hear what they are. Naturally Charlie would stay with me. Have you made other plans?”

  “I have no plans, Max.”

  “We are still married. We’ll talk about what happened when you’re ready. I don’t see any point in trying to rush you. You seem to be in a state of shock still. In the meantime I suggest we try to put up as good a front as we can.”

  She said nothing.

  “I think we can at least try and treat each other with common decency. God knows it’s hard enough for me. You hurt me very badly, Stella.”

  “I made you look a fool, you mean.”

  “No, that’s not what I mean.”

  He struggled to contain his irritation.

  “That’s not what I mean,” he repeated. “We will talk it all through in good time. Not now. Now, I suggest, we simply make some preliminary agreements. I think it best if you continue to sleep in the spare room. And I think you should take responsibility for the house, the cooking and cleaning and so on. I’ll find a job and see to the move. I suggest we take it a day at a time and try and rebuild some sort of a life.”

  There was a tree outside the study window. Most of its leaves had fallen already, though a few were still drifting down.

  “Do you agree with what I’ve said?”

  “Yes.”

  He took off his spectacles and rubbed his face.

  “I suppose it’s too much to ask that you make an effort to make this work?”

  “I will look after the house.”

  “That isn’t what I meant. Never mind.”

  He glanced at his watch and said he must go back. They both rose. They stood there a moment in the middle of the room face to face. He seemed on the point of saying something more but the telephone rang. He picked it up.

  “Hello?”

  Silence.

  “Hello?”

  After a moment or two he replaced the receiver.

  “Who was that?”

  “Nobody there.”

  She knew it was him.

  Three days later Max told her he was applying for a staff job in a mental hospital in north Wales. He imagined, he said, that it was his for the asking. She knew what he was telling her: he was too good for it. He had not yet told his mother about any of this. She wondered how he’d break it to her. Would he tell her he’d been ruined by a slut?

  Memories of Edgar would take her by surprise, catch her unawares and leave her gasping with pain as though kicked in the stomach. But the pain was tempered now by her conviction that he was trying to reach her, by the spurt of hope this aroused. Though when Max was at home she found it impossible to sustain even a numbed façade. She believes he knew what was going on, any psychiatrist could diagnose a broken heart at this close range. He didn’t attempt sympathy, and she hated him simply because he wasn’t Edgar. He wasn’t Edgar, yet he was there, and because he was there he was hateful. It was unfair but there was nothing she could do about it. When she didn’t hate him actively she was filled with a blank, dead, unfeeling indifference that she recognized as a form of passive aggression. Had she not been so exhausted she couldn’t have tolerated living like this. But she needed shelter, and she needed Charlie, so she shuffled through her days and kept the house going and waited without interest for what north Wales would bring, and at the same time felt her heart leap every time the phone rang.

  But it was never him. The weather grew darker and wetter and the prospect of winter gave her an odd sense of comfort. For one who craved sleep, the chilling air and the lengthening nights promised an easy drift into darkness. She thought she might wake up in the spring, if she had the inclination. Sleep promised oblivion, and that would at least release her from the constant hovering phantom of Edgar. Where was he? Often she lay on her bed, or wandered in the garden, these damp autumn days, and constructed scenes of his return, their reunion—would he reappear, or would he send for her as he had before? And wouldn’t she go? Wouldn’t she do it again, without hesitation? She didn’t know. She didn’t know.

  Though what lay most immediately ahead was the storm she must face when Brenda was told the news. Max was reluctant to do it, this was clear, and kept putting it off; but it couldn’t be put off forever. He drove up to Cledwyn a few days later and came back less dispirited than Stella had expected. He said there were interesting possibilities. Interesting in what way, she asked him. Oh, he said, the hospital. It’s run by a man I used to know. He has some good ideas. He wants to make changes.

  “Where will we live, Max?”

  “I thought we might buy a farmhouse and fix it up,” he said. “They have big stone farmhouses up there. Quite handsome in their way. It might be fun.”

  Since when had Max wanted fun? Ambition thwarted, was he attempting a new philosophy of life, one that involved fun? It appeared the work would not be as grim as he had anticipated, therefore he would have fun; or he would during the day, at least, while he was at the hospital. As to whether he would have fun when he came home in the evening, that was a different question.

  “What did you say?” he said.

  “I said, Why not?”

  They were in the dining room finishing the wine after supper. Charlie had gone up to his room to read.

  “When will you tell Brenda?” she said.

  Max had produced a weary sigh when she said, Why not? He expected enthusiasm from her, or at least an attempt at it. He felt that if he was trying to sustain the appearance of domestic normality, then surely she, as the one who had so violently disrupted that normality in the first place, could do the same. But he knew it did no good to get angry with her. Hence the sigh.

  “I think I’ll call her tonight,” he said. “Get it over with.”

  “She’ll be terribly disappointed.”

  “I’ll try and soften it. But she’ll be horrified at the idea of us being in north Wales.”

  “Not us. Just you and Charlie. She won’t mind me being up there.”

  He didn’t trouble to contradict her. He took his glass and went off down the hall to the study. He closed the door behind him.

  She sat at the table, oddly lethargic, unwilling to move. How Brenda woul
d hate her now, she thought, the woman who was dragging her son and grandson into exile with her. Dragging them down, depriving her of them. Yes, she would hate her more than ever.

  It didn’t go well, she could see this as soon as Max emerged from the study. He sat down heavily and to Stella’s mild surprise filled his glass again.

  “We won’t have a farmhouse to fix up,” he said. He couldn’t meet her eyes.

  “Oh?”

  “If we go to Cledwyn we don’t see another penny from her.”

  “What about your salary?”

  “The salary won’t begin to support the way we live. Staff psychiatrist in a little bin in the back of beyond—”

  He was ashen as he contemplated their imminent poverty Stella remembers feeling as indifferent to this as she was to everything else at that time. Then something occurred to her.

  “Max,” she said. “If you divorced me. If you and Charlie went to Cledwyn without me. Would she cut you off then?”

  He didn’t answer. This meant no.

  “I see,” she said. “She’s given you the choice. Get rid of Stella or there’s no more money”

  Still he said nothing.

  “It’s me or her, Max,” she said. “Up to you.”

  Poor Max. She almost felt sorry for him. What a position his mother had put him in. Though he didn’t have any real choice at all. Having made up his mind to do the gallant thing, he couldn’t change course for money. It was a matter of principle.

  “We can keep the car, I suppose?” she said.

  He looked up at her then, bitterness and disgust twisting his weary features.

  “Yes, Stella. We can keep the car.”

  She didn’t care. “Well, that’s something,” she said.

  She began to pack up their things. It was mindless work, and it was predicated on the idea of a family that moved from place to place and cohered throughout. But what bound them together, what sort of future made this thinkable? She could conceive of none, but felt she had no alternative. So she wrapped their china and glassware and put it in cardboard boxes, taped up the boxes and labeled them. Then their pictures, their clothes, their bedding, all packed up, all labeled. Mrs. Bain helped her, not because she wanted to, for she didn’t, she made that clear, but because she thought she should. Room by room their possessions went into boxes and packing crates and cabin trunks and suitcases, and it somehow felt like a proper thing to be doing, this packing up of the old life to ship it elsewhere.