“Of course,” said the lawyer. Was there a gleam of pity in his eyes?
“I mean,” said Ralph, “you never know. Just keep your eyes peeled.”
“Certainly, certainly.” But Ralph knew that the lawyer wasn’t listening to him, he was thinking of something else. Again he felt the piercing terrible despair.
“Right then,” said the lawyer making his way through the involutions of the curtains which swelled around him like sails, like grave-clothes. He was ready to make his exit. Ralph wished to change his will again, to call him back, but the moment passed, and then he was gone, and the nurse was opening the curtains. The lawyer strode purposefully across the ward whose floor was as polished as himself. “I should phone,” thought Ralph, “I should tell Linda what I’ve done. I should tell her about the irony of it all.”
He rose from his bed and put on his dressing-gown and went to the bathroom. The white-faced man was there again staring into the mirror and again he went into the cubicle, locking the door in case his fellow patient attacked him. He was safe nowhere. Irony was no help in a place like this. It was lost on its residents. He glanced at the wall. More yellow strokes had been added in a crazy pattern. Fresh yellow strokes like lightning, like straws. Oh God, he was going out of his mind. Their inventions were endless, their skill in detail was phenomenal, far more brilliant than anything he had ever done. His mind felt dull beside theirs. He remembered Linda dancing on the boat, her vivid repertoire of theatre, creating dazzling props from the dullest of objects. Dancing, dancing. Of course she was masterminding this. How cruel they all were, they wouldn’t leave him alone for a minute. The colours swam in front of his eyes like a kaleidoscope, as once on the bus ages ago in Pula. He rose heavily to his feet and walked back into the ward. The white-faced man had disappeared again. He tried to read the Scotsman that his friend had brought him but couldn’t concentrate. He almost wept with rage and frustration.
As if from a great distance he heard the smart trim Nazi sister say to a nurse, “I could create a scene if I wanted to.” Then she smiled and it seemed as if she was laughing at him. He hated her because she had made him stop smoking on account of the oxygen machine. He hated when she stopped at his bed. She spoke so sarcastically to him, she relished her power so much. She was adept at her work, writing reports assiduously with a quick light hand.
“You’ll soon be back at your books,” she said sarcastically to him. “Won’t you?”
She didn’t really know who he was, he wished he could tell her about himself, about his infinite superiority, but his mind was too dull. He wished he could dazzle her with his wit, but he could think of nothing to say. He hated her so much, she was so self-satisfied and smug. “You’ll soon be out of here,” she said laughing and her tone was infinitely menacing. She was one of the ones who would have been happy in concentration camps. Her horizons were limited, she was sharp, tart, aseptic. He looked for the ring on her hand and saw none. And yet she had told him that she was married. Alert, quick, she dominated the ward in charge of the other nurses, the auxiliaries. He saw a man in a neat blue suit speaking to her. He had dark hair, a red face as of someone who lived in the open air. But he was clearly a psychologist. Bitch, thought Ralph, diamond-hearted bitch, how I hate you. You were the one who was looking across to me the other night when I was talking to Linda. It was as if you were saying to her, Everything will be all right. The plan is going fine. Nazi bitch. And you told me you were married when you aren’t. Otherwise where is your ring? You even told me about your daughter who was given a bad mark in English. What are you trying to do to me? In your white dress you look so clean, so pure, so careless of humanity, its stink and vomit. You hate humanity, that’s quite clear, you wouldn’t be so sarcastic otherwise. You should never have been a nurse at all, you are in the wrong profession.
He was told that he had an appointment with the visiting psychologist and was wheeled along in his dressing-gown by a large orderly. For a moment he was in the fresh air, just before he was deposited outside the psychologist’s room. She was waiting for him behind a desk, her eyes intent and it seemed to him cold. He was of course quite sure that she was not a psychologist at all.
“And how are we today?” she said, with what he thought a false bonhomie.
“Better,” he muttered.
“That’s good,” she said, studying him, and then some papers. “That’s very good.”
He sat upright, at attention before her like a small boy.
“I think we’ll have to think about the next step, don’t you?” She shuffled some papers like cards, letting the silence last for a long time, as if she expected him to say something. But he didn’t answer. He must be quiet and watchful. Her hair was snow-white and her glasses glittered icily.
“I think it is time to transfer you,” she said.
“The mental hospital?” he said.
“The Bayview,” she said.
And he knew that the Bayview was a mental hospital. And he knew too that he would never leave it, he would be buried in it. He had seen too many programmes on television which showed how people had been falsely incarcerated for years in mental hospitals.
He stared down at the floor submissively.
“We will have to get you well, won’t we?” she said.
Still he didn’t speak. “It won’t be long if everything goes according to plan,” she said. “Are you quite happy to go there and get well?”
“I suppose so.”
“Jolly good,” she said. “I think you should go there tomorrow. I’ll inform the sister.”
“Yes,” he said limply.
She scribbled on a piece of paper, intent, chilly, glacial.
“There is one thing,” she said. “You shouldn’t be making these worrying phone calls to your wife. She is under a great deal of pressure. And she loves you. Don’t you believe she loves you?”
“No,” he said.
“I see. Why then should she be visiting you? She has been to see me in tears.”
“She brought it on herself,” he muttered sullenly. “And in any case what is love?”
“I beg your pardon. What did you say?”
“Nothing.”
“I see.” She stared at him consideringly. He was quite sure that he was much brighter than this psychologist. For instance he had read Laing, he knew about mental illness and that it was caused by environment. And he knew that he himself wasn’t mentally ill. There were too many signs which indicated that his ideas and thoughts were correct. She must have had an amusing time dressing up as a psychologist seating herself behind this desk, watching him. There were some good actresses in this so-called hospital, no doubt about that. But then women enjoyed acting, they liked dressing up, trying on new clothes, jewellery. They were like wicked children.
“If there’s nothing else then,” she said in a raised questioning voice. He remained silent then got to his feet. He opened the door. Waiting there was the big man with the barrow. He sat in it, pulled the blanket over his legs, and was returned to his ward. After seeing the psychologist the ward was like home.
And to tell the truth he was frightened. What would a mental hospital be like? It would be full of violent madmen, some of whom might even attack him. If he wasn’t mad now he soon would be. In his mind he had a picture of an old Victorian building with flaky walls, and pale manic toothless faces staring at him. All the inmates would be dressed in long nightgowns. Sometimes if he was lucky he might be wheeled out to the lawn which always fronted these places. And he would shiver in a cold wind, a blanket about his thin pale legs. He would need all his courage to survive. And he was quite sure that Linda wouldn’t come to visit him at all: that was why the psychologist had mentioned the phone calls. She was preparing him for Linda’s absence. The last move in the game had been played, now he would be abandoned. As he thought of this he began to shiver uncontrollably and clasped his body in his arms, staring up at the ceiling. He had been manoeuvred into a corner, he shouldn’t
have opened his mouth at that interview. He shouldn’t have given that psychologist any chance of proving him mad.
The man in the next bed was clasping his head in his hands, the white-faced man was wandering about the ward from bed to bed but avoiding his. As he lay there he heard another patient being wheeled in and saw that it was the psychologist whom he had noticed earlier. He was now dressed in striped pyjamas and looked like any other patient. But only Ralph could see that he was really a psychologist set there to watch him. It could be no coincidence that he had appeared after he had seen the lady psychologist.
“Don’t think I don’t know who you are,” he said to himself. “I know you all right. You can’t deceive me.”
This was hell nor was he out of it. These were the unfathomable glacial caves with the wind blowing through them. And instead of guards in green capes there were nurses dressed in blue and white. The tune of ‘Irene Good Night’ hummed in his mind. It went back to those days when he had done his National Service. It seemed to haunt his life.
“Jump into the river and drown.” He remembered being in an army hospital with German measles and reading a book about the Middle Ages. That was his only experience of hospital previous to this. Even when he had been going down to Glasgow on that doomed train journey he had heard the tune beaten out on the wheels of the train louder and louder. And then again he had heard it in Yugoslavia, tinny, slightly wrong. He wouldn’t be surprised if there was a nurse called Irene in the hospital at that very moment.
The horror he had felt when he had found his novel notes scattered in a drawer after he had left them lying neatly on top of his desk! They were all scribbled and scrawled on violently. And then he had found the telephone book torn in two. Who would have thought Linda had such strength in her? On the other hand it might have been the taxi driver who had torn it, he had the strength. The horror he had felt when objects began to change their places. Never before had there been such horror. Apart from now, when he waited to go to the Mental Home, who did not deserve to be in one but on the contrary could see as in a chess game the moves that were being made.
He looked over to his left and saw that the psychologist had put on the headphones which were above the bed. He wouldn’t be listening to music, no, on the contrary he would be receiving his instructions, he would be keeping in touch with headquarters, with the nurses. He might even be listening to Linda’s voice at that very moment. True, he didn’t appear to be speaking but simply listening, his round apparently calm simple face quite expressionless.
Suddenly Ralph leaned over and said to the psychologist, “What are you in here for?”
The psychologist removed his headphones and said, “It’s the ray.”
“What ray?”
“It’s a ray I see. It’s here now.”
And all the time he smiled at Ralph with his deceptively rustic face. Of course he would invent a story, but imagine one as crude as a death ray! The psychologist too had a curiously rural accent as if he were a countryman. Of course a good actor could imitate any accent: and one would expect a psychologist to be citified, urbane. That was part of the trickery.
Suddenly he drew away from Ralph and put on his headphones again. A fat nurse was dragging the oxygen apparatus along the floor.
He wanted to phone and tell Linda what had happened, but he had already tried to phone and had got an Emergency Number, whatever that was. It was clear that in the interval of leaving the ward and walking to the phone which was in the corridor someone had made a communication and his call had been redirected. That would happen more and more: in the Mental Home he would probably not be allowed to phone at all. And Linda would not come to visit him.
As he turned round in his bed he saw that the psychologist was gazing at him intently, as if examining him.
And just at that moment also he saw that the hospital was crawling with ministers, like black beetles. They moved from bed to bed peering down at the patients. And then he realized that some of them were priests. One of the latter leaned over his bed and said, “How are you?”
“Fine,” he said. The eyes which pretended to be kind were in fact cold. The ministers gathered like vultures round dead bodies. Stocky, applecheeked, they were in fact dangerous enemies: they had been sent for to pass judgement on him, to pronounce him insane.
Then he saw the lawyer striding briskly across to his bed.
“I have made out the will,” he said. “You’d better sign it. I’ll get two witnesses.”
He signed and the lawyer passed the will to one of the ministers, a fat jovial fellow with a red face. The lawyer didn’t show the minister the provisions of the will at all, but placed his hand over the document. The minister scrawled his name quickly. So did a youth who was sitting on a chair talking to a patient in the next bed. So that was it: the lawyer didn’t really intend to execute the provisions of this will at all. It was all a pretence.
And where was Linda? Now as the final denouement had taken place she would never come again. He closed his eyes. The lawyer disappeared. The ministers and the priests moved like crows among the patients. Another of them leaned over him. He had a squint eye and his hand was fat and flabby. The slant yellow strokes on the cubicle wall dizzied and scarred his eyes. Even if Linda came he would not be able to keep his eyes open. The ministers swarmed about the ward, sucking sustenance from one white shrouded bed after another. They belonged among the dead. They were black bees among white roses. Linda hadn’t come, he was finally alone.
In the ambulance the following day there was only himself and the psychologist. He rocked from side to side, and, as he did so, he looked out of the window at the beautiful autumn colours of the day. There were ordinary people walking along the streets with shopping bags in their hands, a boy cycling invulnerably along, a youth and a girl strolling hand in hand. The world that he would never enter again, that he must leave forever behind him. How dear it was, how little he had taken account of its freedom in the past. They left the town and raced along beside a moorland with lochs in it, the untroubled blue of water. How splendid and fine it all was, that heartbreaking picture of serenity. The psychologist smiled at him but didn’t speak. Ralph drew his dressing-gown more closely about him as if he were cold. Now and again the ambulance driver waved to a passing van or bus, negligently, cordially.
They had been an hour on the road when they arrived at a large building, along whose side they drove. Eventually they were taken along to a room and told to wait there. Ralph looked up idly and saw that the lamp above the bed had been decorated with a Mexican hat: it was the only odd decoration in the room. This didn’t surprise him, it was only another incident in the war of nerves that was being waged against him. Suddenly he saw Linda walking along a corridor and then coming in.
“I raced after you in the car,” she said. He was astonished to find her there at all. This appearance didn’t seem part of the script he had worked out. According to the scenario he had modelled she should now be sitting with her fat lover drinking wine, being comfortable.
“What did you come here for?” he asked angrily.
“What do you mean what did I come here for? I had to see that you were all right.”
“Yes. Now that you have put me here.” He wanted to hurt her as badly as he could. He wanted to reduce his dependence on her but he couldn’t. He was glad that she had come but he couldn’t understand why. This of course was the reason for her visit: she wished to confirm that he had arrived in the Mental Home.
He looked up and saw a grey-haired woman patrolling the corridor. She was going round and round the quadrangle which formed the central core of the hospital. The woman was gaunt, silent, studious: he immediately christened her Lady Macbeth.
“Have you got everything you need?” said Linda anxiously.
“I don’t know. I don’t care.”
“I brought you some money. There might be a shop here.” She handed him over some money and he placed it in a locker.
“Do y
ou see that? That hat?” he said aggressively.
She considered it and said, “It’s odd right enough. The arm of the lamp looks broken.” She switched the lamp on and it emitted a pale light hardly to be seen in the daylight.
“At least it’s working,” she said.
“Why must it always be something of mine that has something wrong with it?” he asked.
“I don’t know. I don’t understand. Perhaps it was a nurse’s prank.”
“Huh.”
He was sure it wasn’t a nurse’s prank. There were too many wrong things, too many coincidences. But what was the inner meaning of leaving a Mexican hat? He was sure it must have some deep inner significance. An allegory, symbolism. But he couldn’t work it out.
“You had better go,” he said firmly.
“Is that what you want me to do?”
“Yes. That’s what I want you to do. You should never have come in the first place.”
She regarded him sadly. “I won’t be able to come so often now. This place is further away.”
“Naturally,” he said.
“But I’ll do my best.”
“I’m sure you will,” he said ironically. “How do you get sleep?”
“I don’t know,” she whispered. Her voice was very low as if there was something wrong with her throat. He was sure that the reason for this was that she was wearing a bug and she wanted only his comments to be picked up.
“I don’t want the nurses to hear us quarrelling,” she said.
“I don’t care,” he said. “I know what you’re at.”
“What do you think I’m at?”
“You have a bug,” he whispered. Linda rose to her feet angrily. She was almost weeping but he thought this was her good acting.
“You obviously don’t want me here,” she said.
“You’re right.”
But when she did go it was as if his whole life was draining away from him.
Shortly after she had gone a thin tall unsmiling man entered the ward and began to pace from his bed to the opposite wall and then back again. He did this with an obsessive pertinacity, remorselessly, as if he were an automaton. Ralph smiled defensively at him but he didn’t smile back. Again he felt fear as if this dour robot might attack him. First there was the grey-haired Lady Macbeth and now this tense unsmiling man from whom emanated an air of suppressed violence.
In the Middle of the Wood Page 14