After a while a man came in with a stethoscope hung over his neck like a snake.
“I’m Doctor Malone,” he said in an Irish accent. “If you will wait here for a moment I’ll be back for you.” Of course he was another spy pretending to be a psychologist. He was handsome, debonair, careless. Suddenly it occurred to Ralph that this was Linda’s lover, and not the taxi driver: the whole plot smelt of a psychologist’s expertise. And this too was why Linda had come. The plan had been evolved from this very place: he had made a mistake: he hadn’t fully realized the complexity of it.
He waited and waited while the thin tense man paced up and down, counting his steps, and when the doctor didn’t come he decided that he would go to bed, even though he hadn’t been told to. He sat up in bed and watched the relentless repetitive journey of his room mate who completely ignored him. The doctor had left his stethoscope on a neighbouring bed: there was silence everywhere, an oppressive silence. In the middle of it he could hear through the open window the humming of bees. Could he escape from here? Some people had. He couldn’t sign himself out, that was certain. He wanted to write something but he couldn’t for firstly he couldn’t find pen and paper and secondly his concentration had gone.
After a while the doctor came back and said cheerfully, “Come along now if you please.”
They sat in chairs opposite each other. The psychologist told him a story as the doctor in the hospital had done and he answered the questions correctly. He was told to remember a certain address which this time was 56 Osborne Street. He analysed it in his mind but couldn’t find any connections hanging to it. The psychologist asked him about his novels but he didn’t want to talk about them: he knew that Malone hadn’t read any of them anyway. The whole place was very quiet: he could hear no violent noises, no mad ravings. The sun shone pleasantly through the windows.
“When will I be out of here?” he asked abruptly.
“Not long,” said the psychologist smiling. “Not too long at all.” What a Celtic liar you are, thought Ralph. You are like all the Celts, a gentle hypocrite.
“Two weeks?” he probed.
“I wouldn’t know about that, not at all,” said the psychologist, still smiling. Ralph stared unsmilingly back. In fact he couldn’t smile at all nowadays. If he tried to, he felt that his face would crack. He felt like an agent under interrogation: he didn’t want to give anything away. Dr Malone took him back to his own room and Ralph pointed to the stethoscope lying on the bed.
“I would forget my own head,” said the psychologist.
The thin man was still pacing obsessively up and down. Ralph wanted to ask him about the Mexican hat but decided not to. Suddenly with a brutally quick movement the thin man left the room and Ralph was alone in the overwhelming silence. He waited as if he expected that at any moment a violent madman would burst in, and kill him. The buzzing of the bee was loud in his head which felt as if it would break into pieces. He saw Lady Macbeth on her endless peregrinations. Who would have thought that she had so much blood in her? He stared down at his pyjamas whose stripes matched the stripes of the bee, yellow and black. A breeze stirred the curtains. It occurred to him that they had left him alone like this so that he would attempt to escape but he wasn’t going to give them that pleasure.
He stared through the window. Two men with shaven heads and faces as blank and square as loaves were bending down, putting leaves in a wheelbarrow. They gave him a feeling of terrifying desolation. He knew at once that they were patients from the bad wards: they looked inhuman, their movements jerky as in an ancient silent film.
He turned away from the window. The psychologist, whom he had travelled with in the ambulance, was just coming in. He smiled at him and walked over and sat on his bed in the corner. It was all beginning again.
Having a desire to pee he walked along the corridor in search of a bathroom. He found one and went in. There was a man standing there washing his face. Ralph stared into the mirror: his face had become small like a monkey’s and his eyes fixed and dull. He thought, So this is what a madman looks like. In the waste of the glass he looked frightened and brutal and vulnerable, all at the same time. He walked slowly back to his room.
The psychologist was sitting on his bed.
“Do you see that ray?” he said.
“No.” said Ralph. “I don’t see any ray. Where did you see it?”
“It’s coming in through the window.”
“I don’t see anything,” said Ralph.
“I have been here before,” said the psychologist. “I took aspirins.”
“Oh?”
“I was working too hard. I work on a farm.”
“Aspirins,” said Ralph. “I took sleeping tablets. They found me lying in the middle of a wood. I nearly died,” he concluded proudly.
“Aspirins I took,” said the psychologist. “I work on a farm,” he repeated. “Like hell you do,” said Ralph to himself. “Do you think I’m simple?”
“I was here for three weeks,” said the psychologist. “They’re telling me they’re sending me to Glasgow to have a look at my head.”
“What treatment is that?” said Ralph.
“I don’t know.”
“I’d refuse that,” said Ralph. “I don’t want them to tamper with my brain. If they do that to you, you become like an idiot.”
The psychologist didn’t answer. It was as if he had used up all his words for the moment.
Ralph felt that he was crossing swords with this psychologist who was pretending to be a farm worker. Why, look at his brow, it was too high for a farm worker’s. The psychologist placed all his possessions tidily in his locker. Everything he had was neat and new. His shaving gear was in a black leather case.
Ralph felt like a small boy going to school for the first time. Even now the memory was sharp in his mind. He was wearing short trousers and his knees were bony and pale. There were prefects in uniform all about him. There was a smell of carbolic from the floors and light pouring through the windows as here. The season too was autumn.
The psychologist stared at his ray and then he too went to the bathroom.
That night Ralph sat in the television room along with four or five others, some of whom were sitting silent staring straight ahead of them, some of whom were talking. In the middle of a programme about nurses he suddenly saw three Japanese entering, and speaking in their own language: their faces looked alien and threatening. He knew that this wasn’t part of the programme and was about to leave, feeling uneasy and disoriented when a nurse sat beside him and said, “I’m afraid you’ll have to change your room tonight if that’s all right. I should like to tell you about it. I’ll be back later.” He turned his face away from the television set and waited for a long time but she didn’t come. Later he walked along the corridor to his room. Finding no one there he sat down on his bed. He thought he might phone Linda but decided against it: he was no longer going to be a beggar asking for love. But he felt lonely and dispirited. The fact that the nurse hadn’t come to the television room as she had promised bothered him. And he didn’t like the idea of changing his room, which was much more comfortable and modern than he had expected. It was true that the patients didn’t speak much but they did not look menacing and almost brutal, as the men collecting the autumn leaves had done.
A tall man strode along the corridor carrying a shaving case. He stopped and looked in.
“Hullo,” he said. “My name’s Heydrich.”
“Heydrich?”
“They say that Heydrich is dead but I am Heydrich,” the man repeated proudly. “I’ll tell you something,” he said confidentially. “Hitler was far too lenient with the Jews. If it had been me I would have put them up against a wall and shot the lot of them. That’s what they deserved. I told him that but he wouldn’t listen.” All the time he was talking he looked smiling and pleasant and normal, and Ralph felt the ward spinning about him.
“I keep a Webley at home. I was home for a weekend last weekend. H
ave you just come? I haven’t seen you before.”
“That’s right,” said Ralph. “I came today but they tell me I have to change rooms.”
“If I had control here that wouldn’t happen,” said the tall man. “There are too many Jews about. They’re everywhere. Have you met Mr Manson yet? He’s a scientist. He’s very clever.”
“No, I haven’t.”
“He talks at our meetings, you know. I never say very much. They don’t believe I’m Heydrich. They want me to go home but I want to stay here. I’ve been here before. I was here five years ago, and there was a bulb missing from the bathroom. It’s still missing. I don’t want to go home. There aren’t so many Jews here as you get outside. You’ll like Bobby.”
“Bobby?”
“He’s the male nurse. He’s the one who keeps our razors.”
Ralph stared at him.
“Didn’t you know. They take your razor from you and they keep it in the office. When you want a shave in the morning you have to collect it.”
“Should I hand it in just now then?”
“You can leave it for a while. I’m going to have a shower. I like to keep clean. That was one of the troubles with the Jews. They never washed, they smelt. In the Reich cleanliness was very important. I can’t stand dirt.”
Suddenly Ralph said, “Do you know anything about a Mexican hat?”
“Mexican hat?”
“Yes, if you look up there you’ll see a Mexican hat. And there’s something wrong with the arm of the lamp. It’s been twisted.”
“I don’t know about that. There might have been a fancy dress party. I don’t like that myself. I prefer efficiency. Take yesterday now. The food in the canteen was rotten. I told the supervisor that she should put the staff up against the wall and shoot them. She reported me. It’s very important to be efficient. That’s how the Reich became so great. Sometimes in the office they can’t find your razor right away or they put the wrong name on it. I gave them a row about that. But they are quite nice usually and I didn’t notice any Jews among them. I like it here. I don’t want to go home. I’ve been here five months. The other time it was four months.”
“Can you get newspapers here?”
“I don’t get one. I used to get the Record but I stopped it. I’m not sure if they bring newspapers now. Some of us are allowed down town you know. You could ask someone to bring you one back from the shop.”
“When will we be allowed down town?”
“It might be a week or two. Or more. I go to the canteen but I don’t often go down town.”
“Canteen?”
“There’s a canteen. You can buy cigarettes and sweets there. I’ll show you where it is if you like.”
At that moment Ralph saw a procession of men walking along the corridor, each carrying a cup of coffee or tea. He didn’t want to mention it to the tall man in case he was imagining it. The men were holding the cups steady, staring ahead as if they were part of a moving frieze.
Heydrich? How could anyone be Heydrich? On the other hand the man might have been sent to further disorientate him. He was sure that Linda was now the Irish psychologist’s lover and that they were staying together in a flat in this very town. If he phoned her she would not be at home.
“Can you phone from here?” he asked the tall man.
“There’s a phone in the corridor. It’s outside the television room.”
“I think I’ll walk along then.”
“See you,” said the tall man waving his white towel. He must have decided that I’m not a Jew, thought Ralph.
When Ralph phoned it was a long time before anyone answered. Finally he recognized the voice of his mother-inlaw.
“Where’s Linda?” he asked.
“She’s in bed.” His mother-in-law sounded hostile.
“I don’t believe it. I don’t believe she’s there at all.”
“She’s tired. She’s in bed.” He slammed the phone down and walked back along the corridor. Of course she wasn’t in bed. She had organized this with the Irish psychologist from the very beginning. He remembered her saying once, “I’ve always wanted to be a nurse.” Maybe she had meant that she wanted to work in a hospital like this. “They do a useful job. Their work is more important than yours.”
“I give pleasure to people,” he had said defensively.
“Well, maybe, but you’re an élitist. You prefer books to people deep down.”
“That’s right,” he had said. “Their conversation is more interesting.”
He had never understood ‘ordinary’ people. For instance they were very conscious of precedence: no one was more reactionary than an ‘ordinary’ person. Once on a train travelling to Edinburgh he had met a drunk who had said to him, “I don’t like you. You think I’m not good enough for you. But I’ll tell you something, I’m better than you.” The drunk had thrust his face at him like a damp torch and he had finally retreated to another compartment. Ordinary people were like another race: they read the Sun and the Star.
But he was sure that Linda had turned against him, against his egotism, his élitism. The Irish psychologist hadn’t looked at all élitist but rather cheerful and relaxed. He couldn’t bear the thought that Linda should be with him. Nor could he bear the thought that he would never be able to read again.
Through the window he could see birds flying about in the twilight. On the lawn there was an exotic tree with pink blossoms, but he couldn’t identify it. It had a thick trunk and the blossoms flamed like candles. He didn’t know much about trees or birds: all he knew about was words. Of course Linda was not in bed and that business about tiredness was an excuse. The light faded from the sky: he thought he could hear the distant sound of the television set.
A handicapped girl who walked to one side like a ship in a storm ran pale-faced to him and said, “Are you Mr Simmons?”
“Yes.”
“There’s a phone call for you.”
He knew it was from Linda but he didn’t want to answer it. His mother-in-law would have phoned the Irish psychologist’s flat and Linda would now be phoning from there. He was determined that he wouldn’t phone her but in spite of his decision he found himself walking quickly along the corridor with the reproductions of Picasso and Klee on the walls. He picked up the phone. Her voice sounded far away and gentle.
“I just got up,” she said. She sounded punch drunk. But then she was a good actress.
“Where are you phoning from?” he asked.
“Where do you think I’m phoning from?”
“All right. Put the phone down and I’ll dial your number,” he said.
“If you want.” And he did what he had said. The phone rang and she answered it. But he was sure that engineers had been hired to construct this piece of trickery: he wasn’t speaking to the house at all. Linda’s voice sounded far too remote and wavering. She began to weep at the other end of the phone. Satisfied, he put the phone down slowly.
That night he was shifted into another room where there was a full complement of patients, that is, four including himself. Nurses came in with a trolley and doled out tablets: and in the morning they were wakened at half-past six. He had to go along to the office to collect his razor, and he shaved with the others silently in the bathroom. When he returned to his room two young nurses were trying to waken the young boy in the adjacent bed.
“Come on now, Ronny,” they pleaded with him. But he crouched under the bedclothes and wouldn’t obey them.
“Now, Ronny,” said one of the sisters who came in at this point as if she was doing it quite often, “you must get out of your bed like the rest. Otherwise you know what will happen.” But he turned away from her, burying his head in the pillow. After a while the sister went out.
In the opposite bed to Ralph was a squat man of about sixty or so who had a white moustache like a ghostly officer from the First World War: he made up his bed very meticulously, a towel still draped about his neck. Ralph made up his own bed though he wasn’t ve
ry satisfied with it; however he left it as it was.
“Look, I’ll show you how you to it,” said the man who introduced himself as Hugh, Hugh Green. “You didn’t tuck it in at the bottom, you see.” He padded about in his bedroom slippers.
The youth turned and tossed restlessly in his bed. The psychologist, who had been shifted into this room as well, replaced the shaving articles in his leather case. Ralph was reminded again of his days in boarding school.
“Did you sleep well?” said Hugh Green.
“Yes.”
“I sleep till four o’clock in the morning. After that I don’t sleep at all.” Hugh went and pulled the bedclothes away from the youth.
“This is Ronny,” he said. “He never gets up in the morning. And he’s very noisy when he is up, aren’t you, Ronny? He won’t take his tablets,” said Hugh. Ralph glanced across to Ronny’s locker. On it there was a bottle of orangeade and a record called ‘Breakdown’. The title of the record worried him as if it had been placed there like a theatrical prop to remind him of his illness. Hugh took out a cigarette and began to smoke. Restlessly he went out into the corridor and came back again. He slid his feet along as if he were on wheels.
“Have you been here before?” said Ralph to him.
“Yes, I took aspirins. I was here for three weeks about five years ago.”
It occurred to Ralph that all the people he had met had tried to commit suicide by means of an overdose: he wondered if the youth had done the same. Surely this wasn’t a coincidence. On the contrary everything was a reminder of his own attempted suicide. He sat on his bed staring dully at the floor. Hugh padded out into the corridor again smoking furiously. The psychologist took a bag of sweets from his locker and offered them but Ralph didn’t take any. Suddenly the sister came in again in a rush of white and blue.
In the Middle of the Wood Page 15