Bedlam Burning

by Geoff Nicholson

  I began by reading Lone Riders of the High Mesas, determined to find in it some of the literary merit that its now missing cover had suggested to Alicia it didn’t possess. It was probably the first cowboy novel I’d tackled since I was a kid, and maybe it was my mood, or simply because I was so starved of reading material, but I actually thought it was fairly entertaining. I decided I’d recommend it to the patients, maybe get them to write a cowboy story of their own. Why not? It would be a welcome change from their own obsessions. Then I remembered that they were now free to write whatever they chose, whatever that meant.

  After Lone Riders I planned to read a couple of detective novels, a travelogue about the Sudan, and a love story with a motor-racing background set in and around Brooklands in the 1920s. None of these looked as though it was going to be a great book, and not all of them promised even to be good reads, but I was looking forward to them a lot. They would help to pass the time, keep my mind ticking over, involve me in acts of the imagination, however humble.

  But in the event, I still didn’t feel able to sit in the hut all day, every day, reading and indulging myself. I had to try to be useful. I wanted to make myself available to the patients, to get to know them better and allow them to get to know me. Some patients were more forthcoming than others. Charity, Raymond, Charles Manning, Byron and Anders, had revealed themselves one way or another, though to what extent I was seeing their true selves was debatable.

  Next I got to know Maureen a little. On the surface she was one of the clinic’s less intriguing specimens, and I was perhaps a little ashamed of the way I judged her as boring and not worthy of attention. She was just a fat woman in football kit. How interesting could that be? And when I discovered that she was also the woman who did such gardening as got done around the grounds, that didn’t make her seem much more appealing. In those days, gardening struck me as a woefully middle-aged, tedious activity, the kind of hobby your mother had. Yet, in a curious way, Maureen’s very lack of appeal, and my initial inclination to dismiss her made me that much more determined to befriend her.

  I came across her working at a flowerbed with a rake in her hand, although she used the rake clumsily and looked very unsure of herself. On seeing me she became desperately self-conscious and hugged the rake to her stomach as though she thought I’d come to take it from her and tell her she was doing it all wrong. I smiled mildly and tried to appear benevolent.

  ‘Hi,’ I said. ‘How’s it going?’

  It was a simple, polite question that required a simple polite answer. ‘Fine’ would have sufficed. But at the Kincaid Clinic we were not in the realm of the simple and polite, and so Maureen pivoted her head in slow confusion and replied, ‘Very, very, very, very badly.’

  I hoped it was the gardening that was going badly rather than her life or therapy, and strangely enough my hopes were fulfilled.

  ‘I’m having a bit of trouble with seed,’ Maureen said.

  ‘Seed?’ I enquired. I was treading carefully. Thoughts of orgies were not entirely absent from my mind.

  ‘I’ve got these seeds, you see,’ she replied, and she showed me three tiny foil envelopes. I was relieved. ‘I know what seeds they are. This one’s poppies, this one’s hollyhocks, this one’s heart’s-ease. I know what they’re called but I don’t know what they look like.’

  ‘Don’t you have the seed packets?’

  ‘Of course not,’ she said, and I realised why not. Seed packets show pictures of the flowers that the seeds turn into. Kincaid was running a tight ship.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ I said, trying to sound reassuring. ‘They never come up looking the way they do on the packet.’

  I spoke with moderate confidence about this, since it was something my mother often mentioned. She was always trying to grow things and being disappointed at the results, but Maureen was not reassured.

  ‘But do you know what these flowers look like? Can you describe them for me?’ she asked.

  ‘I’ll try,’ I said. ‘But you must know what poppies are like.’

  Maureen shook her head.

  ‘You know,’ I said. ‘Poppy day. Flanders Field. They’re red and sort of flat and floppy. With a black centre. Big seed head. Opium. You must know.’

  ‘Yes?’ Maureen said, clearly meaning ‘No’.

  I realised that my verbal invocation of the natural world might be lacking, but I was doing my best, and I couldn’t believe she didn’t know what poppies looked like.

  ‘Perhaps I used to know but now I’ve forgotten,’ she said wistfully. ‘I’ve forgotten so much. Are they tall?’

  ‘Tallish,’ I agreed, wanting to sound positive, ‘but nowhere near as tall as hollyhocks. Those things can be as tall as a man.’

  Maureen looked stunned by this idea, as though she were imagining some monstrous flora from outer space. I tried to say there was nothing outlandish or threatening about them, that hollyhocks were very English, very traditional, very friendly, but that only confused her further. She now looked at me as though I was speaking a foreign language.

  ‘So what about heart’s-ease?’ she asked.

  ‘Now there you have me,’ I admitted. I had absolutely no idea what heart’s-ease looked like. ‘My mother would know. I’ll ask her next time I speak to her.’

  ‘Mothers,’ Maureen said glumly and I knew better than to ask. But I didn’t have to. ‘I don’t have a mother.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that.’

  ‘I used to have one but she died.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘I killed her actually. It was an accident. I think it was. We argued. All the time. She said I was wasting my time hanging around football grounds. Not fit to be her daughter. Suddenly there was a knife in my hand. Then everything went red; like I was surrounded by Arsenal shirts or Manchester United or Barnsley. Then I came here. I think that’s what happened. I can’t remember. I’m sorry. I probably shouldn’t have told you.’

  ‘Probably you shouldn’t,’ I said, and she looked duly chastised.

  I must say I didn’t believe her. Why? I suppose because she sounded too glib about it, didn’t provide enough detail, didn’t bring enough emotional weight to her account. Besides, she just didn’t look the type. I knew that was naive of me, but I also thought that a genuine mother-killer would surely be locked up somewhere a lot more secure than the Kincaid Clinic.

  ‘Tell you what,’ I said. ‘I’ll see if there are any gardening books in the library.’

  I couldn’t remember whether there were or not. If so, they had no doubt once contained illustrations. These would now be gone, and the likelihood of the books containing simple verbal descriptions of flowers seemed a slender one. Perhaps Maureen sensed this. She said, ‘I suppose I could just sow the seeds and wait and see what happens.’

  ‘That might work.’

  ‘Then again it might not,’ she said.

  I agreed that was true too, and as I left her she was spading great lumps of earth in a furious, purposeful manner as though she might be digging a grave.

  17

  Not all my encounters with the patients were so informal. Sometimes I actually seemed to be involved in the work of the clinic. Kincaid had decided to show me just how effective Kincaidian Therapy was, and so I was sitting in his office looking at some genuine Rorschach ink blots. I’d never seen any before. They were on big white cards and they came in various rich, saturated colours. I’d always imagined that any old blots would do, but no. Apparently there are ten specially designed, standardised blots they show to all patients so that results can be equally standardised.

  As I looked at the cards, I was trying very hard not to ‘see’ anything lurking in them, but that was next to impossible. I saw rabbits and insects and devils. I refused to wonder what this meant and I certainly wasn’t going to tell Kincaid what I was seeing. Not that he would have been interested. I wasn’t the subject of study here.

  ‘I want you to listen to a recording,’ he said, and he slipped a tape i
nto a little cassette recorder.

  I heard Kincaid’s voice on the tape, thin and metallic now, stating a time and date, some months earlier, and saying he was about to start an interview with Max, the man I had come to think of as our resident drunk.

  ‘Just as a matter of interest,’ I asked, ‘where does Max get his drink?’

  ‘An addict will always find a way,’ Kincaid said enigmatically. Then the Kincaid on tape said, ‘I’m now showing Max the first inkblot. What do you see here, Max?’

  Max’s voice sounded slurred as he said, ‘I see a spider. Well, maybe not so much a spider, maybe more like an iceberg, or a car crash, or two men having a sword fight, or a small explosion in a fireworks factory, or an organ, not a church organ or a Hammond organ, but an internal organ, a spleen or a pancreas or something like that.’

  Kincaid listened to the tape and from the look on his face you’d have thought he was hearing one of the more tragic monologues from world literature.

  ‘I see a golf course,’ Max’s voice continued, ‘an underground cavern, torn upholstery, boxing gloves, a punctured car tyre, wood grain, a tractor pulling a plough, fingerprints, a kind of hat, a cheese grater, the inside of an old valve radio, a carburettor, an orchid, Siamese twins, a man carrying a wedding cake.’

  On the tape Kincaid’s voice asked, ‘Do you really see these things, Max?’

  ‘Yes. Don’t you?’ Max replied.

  ‘No,’ said Kincaid. ‘I don’t, as a matter of fact.’

  ‘So are you implying I’m not really seeing them either?’

  A good point, I thought. True enough, I found it hard to believe that Max or anybody else could really look at those cards and see boxing gloves or icebergs or Siamese twins. Actually, I thought he was just taking the piss, but I also thought that when you’re encouraging a patient to see things that by definition aren’t ‘really’ there, it’s a bit churlish to then question what he says he’s seeing. It also occurred to me that what Max pretended to be seeing might be every bit as psychologically revealing as what he was actually seeing.

  Kincaid stopped the tape. ‘You find it as depressing as I do,’ he said, and I didn’t contradict him. ‘But now let’s see the Max of today.’

  At some secret, silent cue Max walked into the office. We had only spoken in passing but he was familiar enough to me. I’d seen him staggering or slumped or sleeping at various locations around the clinic. He was unshaven now, unwashed, his clothes were creased and stained, and his shoulders were heavily flecked with what appeared to be sawdust. He was trying to walk steadily, to look as though he was in control, the way drunks sometimes do when confronted by authority. He sat down with great formality although I could detect a lack of alignment in his eyes, a looseness in the way he placed his hands on his knees, and I thought Kincaid must surely be able to detect it too.

  ‘Now, Max,’ Kincaid said. ‘I’d like you to look at this ink blot.’

  He held up the first card and Max stared at it for a long time, his mouth twisting until he said, ‘No, I can’t see anything in that one.’

  Kincaid held up a second card and Max stared hard again, as though he was really trying to make something out, to find some hidden image or message, but he just couldn’t do it.

  ‘No, nothing there either,’ he said.

  Kincaid beamed as he held up a third card. Max stared longest of all at this one, until it seemed to me his eyes lost their focus completely, as if he’d drifted off in some alcoholic reverie and forgotten what he was supposed to be doing, but he pulled himself together and said, ‘No, doctor, I don’t see a thing. Sorry.’

  ‘There’s nothing to be sorry about,’ said Kincaid excitedly. ‘Nothing at all.’

  I found myself in a state of some disbelief. Could this procedure be quite as simplistic as it seemed? Could Kincaid really be so gullible? Seeing images in the blots was ‘bad’, not seeing them was ‘good.’ Could that genuinely count as proof that Kincaidian Therapy was working? The old Max on the tape saw images in the blots and that was a sign of his madness. The new Max in front of me saw nothing, so he must be sane. Please!

  Then Kincaid held up the fourth card. Max stared once again, and this time looked pained, as though he might be experiencing severe stomach cramps. But at last, apparently much against his will, he had to let it all out.

  He said, ‘All right, all right, I admit it. I see truffles, waterfalls, shaving brushes, human ears, stampeding buffalo, piles of dirty laundry, circuit boards, brown-paper packages tied up with string …’

  Kincaid gathered up the cards and put them face-down on his desk. The session was over. Kincaid’s face signalled disappointment yet also a stoic, if wounded, bravery.

  ‘How did I do, doc?’ Max asked brightly. ‘How many did I get right? Have I won a goldfish?’

  This was proof enough to me that Max was still taking the piss. If I’d been Kincaid I’d have been tempted to abuse my position and given Max a few unnecessarily painful injections and maybe a course of fierce laxatives, but Kincaid was a true professional. He said, ‘You can go away now, Max, while Mr Collins and I evaluate these results.’

  Max put one foot in front of the other, heel to toe, swaying a little, and repeated the procedure as many times as were required to get himself out of the office.

  ‘Interesting, yes?’ Kincaid said, once he’d gone.

  ‘I suppose so,’ I said.

  ‘Max hasn’t been entirely freed from the bondage of images, but compared with his condition a few months ago he’s improved remarkably.’

  I didn’t want to argue with Kincaid, yet I couldn’t stop myself saying, ‘But wasn’t he just drunk?’

  Kincaid looked at me condescendingly.

  ‘Max has many problems,’ he said. ‘Alcohol is his rather pathetic way of coping.’

  ‘And what happens when he starts seeing pink elephants?’ I asked.

  Kincaid was no better at spotting my cheap jokes than he had been at spotting Max’s piss-taking. ‘Then I’ll know I’ve failed,’ he said solemnly.

  Soon after, I came across Max again, in a less medical setting. He was lying beside the path that led from the Communication Room to the dried-up fountain. His eyes were closed, mouth open, legs curled under him in a position that would have been excruciating for anyone who wasn’t anaesthetised by drink. I couldn’t just leave him there, so I shook him awake and said, ‘Would you like me to help you get back to your room?’

  He flickered back to consciousness and nodded. My motives for helping him weren’t entirely altruistic. I had quite a curiosity to see how the patients lived. This would be a way of seeing inside one of their rooms.

  I got Max into the clinic and to his own front door. We both hesitated on the threshold and I wondered if perhaps the patients’ rooms were forbidden territory, but nobody had told me so, and Max said at last, ‘Won’t you step inside for a night cap?’ It was four in the afternoon, but I said I would.

  I had no picture of what Max’s room would be like; and however hard I’d tried I’d never have imagined the reality. I stepped inside and it was for all the world like entering a tiny, perfect replica of a rustic English pub. There was a free-standing wooden bar in one corner. Behind it were bottles and glasses and optics, an ice bucket, a row of tankards, and in front was a single wrought-iron, marble-topped pub table with three chairs around it, and one of the chairs was occupied. Sita, the silent Indian woman, was sitting there, staring placidly into a glass of colourless liquid, her white muslin sari trailing to the ground, where it hung in an expanse of sawdust.

  ‘You’ve met Sita,’ Max said by way of introduction. ‘Our resident enigma.’

  ‘Hello, Sita,’ I said, though naturally she didn’t reply.

  ‘Just because Sita doesn’t say anything doesn’t mean she’s got nothing to say,’ Max insisted.

  ‘Doesn’t it?’ I asked.

  Max was surprised by my question, and he appeared to be giving the matter intense, if brief, consideratio
n before he said, ‘Oh all right, maybe it does mean that.’

  Sita sipped her drink. Although I got the feeling she’d been there a good long time, she didn’t look remotely drunk, and when her eyes acknowledged my presence they were clear and lucid. I was surprised to find her there at all. If I’d been asked to speculate about who among the patients might be a secret drinker, or a boozing companion for Max, Sita wouldn’t even have crossed my mind.

  I looked around at the pub paraphernalia on the walls, nothing figurative, no hunting scenes or sporting prints, but there were lucky horseshoes, antique carpentry tools, some brewing equipment. I’d seen many less convincing attempts at creating an olde worlde pub atmosphere.

  ‘This is amazing,’ I said.

  ‘You won’t tell anybody about it, will you?’ said Max. ‘This is just our little secret.’

  I said that was fine by me, but I found it hard to believe we were the only ones in on the secret. How could you possibly set up a replica pub in your hospital room without anyone knowing?

  ‘Where do you sleep?’ I asked, noticing that there was no bed in the room, not in itself so very surprising since it would undoubtedly have spoiled the pub effect.

  ‘Where I fall,’ Max said. Yes, well that explained the sawdust on the shoulders. Then he adopted the style of a genial pub landlord. ‘What’s your poison, Gregory? Will you be having the usual?’

  ‘I don’t really have a usual,’ I said.

  ‘Well, I usually serve whisky,’ he said, and he slopped whisky into a thick-bottomed glass for me. ‘This’ll soon have you feeling frisky.’

  I looked at the whisky bottle. The label had been largely scraped off, perhaps because of its pictorial elements, but enough of it remained to be identifiable. It was White Horse. ‘Is this your usual brand as well?’ I asked.

  Max shrugged. It was all the same to him and he poured himself a drink much larger than mine and launched into a convoluted story about some occasion when he was drunk in Leith. I wasn’t really listening, since I was wondering if this bottle of whisky was the one that had been in my missing holdall. There was clearly no way of telling. White Horse wasn’t exactly an uncommon brand, and even if we’d been dealing with some rare single malt the evidence that this bottle was mine would still only have been circumstantial. But I thought it was a bit of a coincidence. And I thought too that if my whisky had survived, then maybe some of the rest of my stuff might also have survived; in which case, where was it?