A Superior Spectre

by Angela Meyer

  ‘And how is … how are the others?’ I ask. He frowns. How are the well youth? How are the learned and robust women and men? How are those who do not suffer visions, who pour champagne down their throats?

  Edward actually ignores the question. ‘It’s good we managed to put you in the acute ward, you know,’ he says, raising his chin, ‘as hereditary lunacy is still considered incurable. You should, technically, be in the chronic ward.’ He looks towards the building across from us, with its face-like façade. ‘It is not so nice over there.’ As though he has done me a favour.

  But I don’t understand. My father is not mad; my mother …

  ‘What do you mean,’ I say, ‘hereditary?’

  ‘It means to have inherited the traits of the parent …’

  ‘I know what the word means,’ I interrupt. ‘But my father and mother were never mad.’

  He cocks his head at me. ‘Oh … you don’t know.’ He looks truly sorry, but then brightens. ‘Maybe knowing is better. It may help you. I believe in patients aiding their own recovery.’

  ‘My father?’

  ‘I think you know it was not your father.’

  My head spins. I clutch the armrests of the wooden chair. I only remember my mother in bed – but it was a physical ailment, was it not? As I crawled upon that floor, and cried myself to sleep. What floods back to me now is an image of her lying rigidly still, and a fly landing on her face. She blinked but did not move. I swatted the fly away, tried to curl up with my head on her chest, on her scratchy dress. Her unresponsiveness. I had pushed this from my memory. I feel ill.

  ‘Why has this been kept from me?’

  ‘Perhaps there is some shame about it, in your family,’ says Edward. A sob wants to erupt, but I fear it. I fear that sedatives will be shoved down my throat the moment I show emotion. I need to be alone. But there is nowhere to be alone. Edward has a look of pity on his face.

  I must write to my father, and to my aunt, to ask them more about my mother. For how long was she mad? Is that why she and Father stayed in Edinburgh? Because in the Highlands there were no doctors with appropriate knowledge? But then the clear air, the animals, and so much to do with one’s hands …

  It’s possible that my father did not bring my mother back out of shame.

  No one wants to think such a terrible thing of their parent. But then … sending me off to the same fate, by making me go to Edinburgh. Or perhaps he saw it coming – and again he didn’t want it to happen around him. He has his own madness: a fear of insane women. I see how selfish, or how blind, my father is. How much he needs life to be easy. But I also hope I am wrong.

  I attempt to breathe deeply. Edward stands and I do too.

  ‘Let’s get you back to the ward,’ he says.

  He steers me by my upper arm from the office down an empty hallway, then unlocks the door to the corridor of my ward, which leads to a living area, dining area, and the dormitories. In the hall, a woman called Maude dances in a beam of sunlight. There is an excited commotion in the living area.

  ‘This is a kind of therapy we’re trialling,’ Edward says. ‘I think it’ll be just right for you.’ With that, he squeezes my arm and turns. I feel grateful for this moment of gentleness. People are not all one thing or the other. And sometimes they are only unkind because they think they have to be.

  I try to peer past the backs of other women – dressed in drab grey and dirty stripes, with oily hair falling out of rough buns, or almost-bald heads for those who have had their hair shaved off. And then I hear a woof. At the same time, I see a cat jump up into one of the far, tall windows, a woman’s gnarled hand reaching out to stroke it. The cat hisses and the woman backs away. Someone moves in front of me and there I see two dogs – old, and a complete mix of breeds, one tan-coloured, the other dark. They are being pawed by the women, and are panting happily as an attendant looks on, smiling.

  ‘What’s happening?’ I ask.

  ‘New friends, new friends!’ says Mavis, a woman in her mid-thirties who looks much older, whose belly flops about softly under her loose dress due to multiple pregnancies.

  The grief of learning about my mother still sits heavily upon me. But I crouch and one of the dogs, the tan one that is some kind of terrier, runs towards me. She jumps instantly to my face and licks it, her ears flattening against her skull, her big dark eyes soft.

  Bethea has been looking at me strangely today, as though she’s cottoned on to something. Cottoning on – is that an Australianism? If it is, I think it’s one of my favourites.

  ‘Bethea, you look as though you’ve cottoned on to something?’

  She gives me a sideways look. We are sitting in our usual chairs, mine with a whiff of Pine O Cleen but no shit. Then again, can I really trust my senses at this point? Today’s ache is reserved for the back – all across it, from my intestines, up my spine, to my shoulderblades. As though I’ve carried a large woman – Bethea, perhaps – over a threshold.

  When Faye and I got married I performed that gesture, but she was tiny and light. We laughed, as I’m sure couples do. You can’t imagine anyone taking it seriously. I watch the memory from a distance, like Jimmy Stewart’s character in Rear Window watching the newlyweds from his chair across the space of the courtyard. Just like those fictional newlyweds, Faye and I drew the blinds down and didn’t leave the room all weekend. I’ve never had such an appetite. For food, I mean, but yeah, probably for sex with a woman, too.

  Faye used to sometimes express feelings of inadequacy because she wasn’t fluid in her sexuality, like many of her friends. To her, being sexually fluid seemed like a political act. ‘I just don’t think about the sex part, with women,’ she’d say with disappointment.

  I always remained silent. I couldn’t even tell her that about me, that I was fluid, or bisexual – whatever label you want to give it. Maybe because she wished she was. But more likely because my feelings for men were so specific. Men, boys. I suppose I could have at least opened up to her about having same-sex attraction. But then I would have had to lie directly if she asked me whether I’d had any experiences in the area.

  But she would have asked me that anyway at some stage, right? All couples have that conversation: How many people have you slept with? Have you been with anyone of the same sex? Are you into anything kinky? All that stuff. I don’t remember. I guess it would have been early on and I guess I lied to her a lot.

  I can’t think about the fact she could still be searching. Wasting her money, wasting her life. Don’t care about me, Faye. You don’t know who I am.

  Bethea sits down her thriller, a completely different yellowed paperback than yesterday – she tears through them – and says, ‘I found your notes.’

  Cold replaces the hot pain in my back, travels right up my spine through to the tip of my head. I feel bile rise. ‘My notes …?’ Play dumb. Which ones, though? I have been keeping Leonora separate from my other thoughts, the horrible ‘me’ stuff. It feels as though that might help with my ‘infecting’ her, to keep them physically separate. I’m kidding myself, no doubt.

  ‘About the woman,’ Bethea says. ‘Is it a novel?’

  I clear my throat. ‘Well, I’m not sure. Just ideas at this stage.’

  ‘It’s very vivid, though. Didnae know you were a writer.’

  ‘I never have been before.’

  ‘Ha.’ She looks out the window. ‘Have ye had a close look at the books on tha’ lower shelf over there?’ she asks, with a sparkling grin I haven’t seen before, her tea-stained teeth all on show.

  I twist in my seat but can’t make them out. I stand, pain darting from hip to shoulder, and hobble over. There is a whole shelf of books – hardbacks, and different-sized paperbacks, with garish covers – written by one Bethea Scott.

  ‘Oh!’ I turn around, smiling, showing I’m impressed.

  I have to find somewhere better to hide the notes on Leonora. She is mine. It is obvious that Bethea writes pulp. Or wrote pulp. I cannot let her twist L
eonora’s story into some hand-wringing gothic romance that will move it away from the facts. Why couldn’t I be holed up with a literary novelist, with whom I could entrust the story? The handwritten notes don’t have all of the story, anyway. The earlier stuff is in William. I must find a way to get him working, as I can’t plug him in, and consolidate everything. And do what with it? Incriminate myself? No – it’s imperative, or else I might die and Bethea will fill in the blanks and tell it wrong.

  I never thought about the fact I could write it as a novel! No one will believe it is non-fiction anyway. I could consolidate everything and send it to a publisher – or at least a better writer. I will rack my brain. With me removed from all the notes, I’m sure it will read like a good Victorian tale.

  And that’s honouring Leonora, surely. And also acknowledging what I’ve done. Perhaps I’ll code in some warning about the technology for some clever person to find.

  But really I’m too sore to think about it. I slump back into the chair.

  ‘Any bestsellers among them?’ I ask Bethea.

  ‘Yes,’ she says proudly. ‘Escapades was translated into eight languages.’

  ‘Impressive,’ I say. ‘Is it a romance?’

  ‘Not entirely. I was quite well known for crossing genre boundaries. They often ended up pretty dark.’

  ‘Was?’

  ‘I’ve not written much since …’

  Since her husband died.

  ‘It’s nice to catch up on readin’,’ she says, waving the book in her hand. She shifts forward in her seat. ‘You want some eggs?’

  I don’t have an appetite today, but I say yes, as it’s something to do until I fall asleep again and be Leonora. I don’t dread the nights so much now that there’s another warm body in the house. I should be feeling worse about the institution … I put Leonora there.

  As Bethea is leaving the room, pulling down her wool jumper over her large arse, she calls out, ‘Oh, I forgot to tell ye, me nephew is coming tomorrow to help us out a bit. I need to get this garden cleared up.’

  ‘Oh?’ How old is he? I want to ask. ‘Staying here?’

  ‘Well, not sure, I think he’s got a friend on the isle; that’s really why he’s coming over.’ She’s paused in the doorway. ‘So he might be staying further north a bit, but sometimes he’ll stay here, yes. He’s a nice lad.’

  Lad. Young. But then that’s just what people say about people younger than them. A nephew. He could be thirty. Bethea is old, to my eyes. But maybe her sibling is much younger. I feel hope rising, despite myself. Hope at being able to sit, from afar mind you, and watch him tilling the grass. Tilling? This isn’t the nineteenth century, I forget. With a lawnmower, then, sinewed arms on display. It might be enough to finally do me away.

  In the letter to my father I asked about the nature of my mother’s illness. I wanted to know: did the mind affect the body, or the body affect the mind? Or does he believe these maladies were unrelated? How long did it last for, or how long did my father know about it? And what was done? I don’t want to ask if she suffered while dying. I have vague snatches of memory about her sickbed, and that is enough. It is simply too sad.

  I didn’t ask why he never told me. I don’t feel I can face the answer just yet.

  My conversation with Edward has had a strange effect. It has made me decide to at least entertain the idea that these visions are entirely my creation – even though I have never seen such things. The imagination is no doubt powerful. And if my mother suffered from lunacy then possibly I am doing so, too. Through my interests in the medical, I do know that in order to cure something its cause must first be found, and acknowledged. A tumour can only be removed if it is discovered that the symptoms in the person are due to the tumour. If I admit that I am mad, I can then find out what it takes to become well.

  The tan-coloured terrier, Crombie, has really taken to Mavis, and she talks to it like one of her children as it sits by her on the bed. Perhaps it can sense her losses.

  I wait and wait for the animals to come to me, not calling them because that would be selfish. I make eyes at them and receive a wag of the tail and sometimes a happy bark, but they remain mostly nestled in the arms of other patients. I understand. Those patients are in need. Have been through more. The dogs know this. The cat is partly there to chase away mice, but she does like to settle in and purr upon anyone sitting in a particular armchair in the living area.

  When we eat, around a long wooden table, the animals are shut out. We’ve all taken to eating much quicker – slurping the watery porridge or sliding meat down our throats – in order to have them back quicker. The pets are like royalty. They glow and are worshipped. Respected, too.

  Last night as I lay in bed, hearing whispers through the bricks, I felt anticipation. I moved in and out of sleep and witnessed his fantasies about who the nephew would be. No, how can I put this now that is healthier? I fantasised about who the boy would be. How old. Or I imagined the man’s fantasies from somewhere deep in myself.

  I am struggling with putting it like this. I long to be able to speak to my mother, to ask her what she went through. Did she hold another person within her mind, too?

  Perhaps collectively it is mad women who are imagining the future.

  Today is the day. But I seem not to be able to get out of bed. The pain has moved from my back down to my pelvis and my legs. When I don’t come down for breakfast Bethea brings me up a plate of sausages. She has her screen tucked into the small breast pocket of her jumper. I see it and suddenly crave all the images of the civilised world – flood me with them! Cary Grant’s smile, a silver skyscraper, a cricket pitch, a Vegas stripper, a Mustang, a Lichtenstein (and I hate Lichtenstein), an Ikea-white living room with ocean views – and the sounds, oh, the sounds of Gershwin’s ‘Rhapsody in Blue’, and then Brian Wilson, who loved that song, and then something sped up and electronic and entirely artificial. Something from 2024. Give them to me now.

  But it’s quiet and cold and close. And I’d feel like a child to ask. And I’m supposed to be denying myself. For whatever reason they’re made, I stick to those sorts of vows – of discipline, of deprivation – I always have. But something else occurs to me, too.

  ‘Bethea, how do you charge that?’ I ask, my mouth full of charred meat. There is no electricity on here. It is naturally the way I tried to exist on the other small island. The Rayburn heats water, and there is gas, and there are fires.

  ‘Solar, of course.’

  ‘Oh yes.’

  Does William have a solar panel? I look over to the box sitting in the corner of my room. Bethea is about to walk out.

  ‘I wonder …’ I say.

  She stops. Follows my eyes.

  ‘Do ye need it, though?’

  ‘I … dictated some notes,’ I say. Not telling her they relate to Leonora’s story. Bethea might become too curious. ‘Just memoir-type stuff.’

  ‘Oh?’

  Why does she look so interested? Oh God, now I’m going to die and she’ll know that, too. The secret nobody has known. Now I must find a way to get William on, so I can write up the notes related to Leonora – extract them from the other stuff, my figuring out of my disgusting self.

  And I do miss the way he – it – used to lie down on the bed next to me. As pathetic as that is.

  The pain turns to quick, minor cramps, and I sit the plate on the bedside table and lie all the way back down, flexing and pointing my feet to try to get the blood moving down there and ease them out. Bethea is fart-arsing around getting the place ready for her nephew.

  ‘How old is your nephew, Bethea?’ I call out as casually as possible.

  ‘T’be honest, I forget,’ she says with a laugh. I roll my eyes to myself in bed. ‘Last time I saw him he were mebbe about eleven.’ My cock immediately stirs. I pause in my flexing and pointing. ‘S’pose he might be about fourteen?’ she calls.

  Don’t walk in now, I think. Don’t walk in and see my reddened face, my beastly tongue hang
ing out.

  I wake to the sound of sobbing. The light comes in sharp, with dust motes dancing in its widening trajectory towards the floor. Mavis’ back shakes on the bed two down and across. The woman next to her mouths silent words at the roof, her hands in prayer position.

  ‘Come on, Crombie,’ Mavis says, then cries a little more. Crombie stays by the door, spread out near the beam of light.

  I sit up and experience a head spin. I didn’t eat enough yesterday, after reading my father’s letter. I stand very slowly and walk down the central aisle, touching Mavis on the shoulder but continuing on to the dog.

  I crouch. Crombie raises his head slowly, the red and yellow hairs around his lips wet with spittle. ‘What’s the matter, boy?’ He rests his head back on his front paws with a whimper.

  ‘Something’s wrong,’ says Mavis.

  ‘Shuddup,’ another woman yells, pulling a pillow over her ears.

  Did Mavis know, like this, when something was wrong with her children?

  I gently push the dog back so he is lying down with his tummy exposed. His teeth go for my hand and I wrench it back, though it was just a nip. His belly is extended. He has eaten something he shouldn’t have.

  Mavis continues to cry, and I shush her gently. ‘It’ll be all right, Mavis.’

  The attendant stands silently watching by the door. I don’t know this one; she seems to be new. She is young, as young as I am.

  ‘Do you know how I can find out what he’s eaten?’ I ask her.

  She shrugs. If I raise my voice, I may be deemed hysterical; I may risk being moved away from the animals, away from Mavis. I pet Crombie on the head and go over to Mavis. I sit on her bed and put an arm around her. The rest of the ward is awake now, too, looking at the dog, looking at us.

  ‘We’ll have to wait for breakfast,’ I say to Mavis. ‘Then we can ask for Crombie to be taken care of.’