A Psychiatrist, Screams

by Simon Parke

  ‘How understanding of you, Abbot - almost Barnabus-esque.’ She sways slightly.

  ‘But we’ll need to turn the gas off, Frances or there’s going to be an accident.’

  He’s beginning to feel sick.

  ‘Are you afraid of annihilation, Abbot?’

  ‘I don’t seek it, if that’s what you mean.’

  ‘But aren’t you meant to be cheerful in the face of death, off to a better place and all that?’

  ‘So they say.’

  ‘Oh they do, they do. Some of my favourite lines from Tudor history, spoken by Bishop Latimer to his friend Ridley shortly before they were burned at the stake by Queen Mary..’

  ‘You like your history, don’t you?’

  ‘I have a history degree.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Really.’

  ‘So many qualifications.’

  ‘Such fearless words: “Be of good cheer, Master Ridley and play the man; we shall this day light such a candle in England, as I hope, by God’s grace, shall never be put out!” Wonderful.’

  ‘They were brave words.’

  ‘An example to us all,’ said Frances, feeling for something in her pocket. ‘Words of hope from a time when hope still lived.’

  ‘It still does, Frances.’

  ‘For the religious in the room, perhaps... which rather narrows it down to one!’

  Abbot Peter feels eyes on him:

  ‘When death cannot be avoided,’ he says, ‘then we accept it. But this is not such an occasion.’

  ‘But will you like death?’

  ‘I don’t know if I’ll like death, Frances, I may do, hard to tell, evidence being sparse - but I do like life.’

  ‘You sound a bit of a fraud to me, no different to the rest of us.’

  ‘I also look after a little girl called Poppy. I’d miss her - perhaps she’d even miss me.’

  Frances laughs: ‘Bloody hell, what’s this - a Great Ormond Street Special?’

  She’s holding a box of matches in her hand, and adds:

  ‘You’ll be asking me to give generously next.’

  ‘No, I think it’s you we should be supporting.’

  ‘I’m a very lost cause, Abbot Peter,’ she says, taking out a match from the box. ‘And while not wishing to be ungrateful, I have to say I’ve grown rather tired of this place.’

  ‘It’s not been the best of times for you?’

  ‘It’s been the worst of times. Seemed such a good investment, it really did, but now I’d like nothing more than to give it all back to that appalling doctor.’

  ‘Appalling?’

  ‘Weak, like my father, another male disappointment.’

  ‘I’m sure a sale could be arranged.’

  ‘Where’s an estate agent when you need one?’

  ‘I know he’d love to buy it back off you, we spoke about it, he said how much he missed the place.’

  ‘Oh, so you’re the estate agent!’

  ‘And perhaps a fresh start would be good for everyone.’

  ‘At her Majesty’s pleasure, for the murder of Barnabus?’

  As Frances speaks, Tamsin watches only her hands and the match she holds.

  ‘Though I merely hastened the inevitable - I mean, it was hardly murder.’

  ‘A dog put out of its misery,’ thinks Tamsin, but Abbot Peter still wants to be friends.

  ‘I agree,’ he says, ‘strong case for leniency in my book.’

  ‘How do those Arthur Hugh Clough lines go?’ said Frances. “Thou shalt not kill - but need not strive officiously to keep alive”.’

  ‘You like his cynicism, Frances, I can understand that.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘He allows the bleak in you a voice, gives permission to the despair.’

  ‘Are we having a session?’

  ‘No, we’re just talking.’

  ‘If we are having a session, I should warn you, you won’t be getting paid.’

  ‘We’re just thinking about fresh starts,’ says Peter.

  ‘Never believe anyone who offers you a fresh start.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘One of the great marketing lies.’

  ‘Wasn’t that somewhere in the Mind Gains publicity?’

  ‘You say what you have to say.’

  ‘Then let’s do something very specific: how about a start free from all those pretend qualifications?’

  Frances reddens in the face as Peter adds:

  ‘You don’t need that nonsense now.’

  ‘That’s what the little prick Barnabus said: “In the ashes of our imagined qualifications will our true self be found”.’

  Frances moves towards the oven.

  ‘I prefer annihilation over fresh starts,’ she says, ‘annihilation is the best fresh start of all, and we should be standing in enough of a bomb now.’

  ‘Why us?’ asks Tamsin, her feet freezing, as the gas does its work.

  ‘Why include us in your death-wish?’

  There’s a pause. Frances looks at them blankly.

  ‘Because I don’t want to die alone, you can come with me.’

  But Tamsin doesn’t want to go with her. She says that everyone dies alone, we’re born alone, we die alone, and though Frances looks shocked, Tamsin isn’t done in that sealed kitchen:

  ‘It’s like those narcissistic fathers, who kill their children and then kill themselves: “Come and join me in my self-obsession, no really, you must, little Johnny!”.’

  Frances looks contrite, but decided.

  ‘I’d still enjoy company as I enter the unknown,’ she says.

  ‘But it’s not going to work,’ says Peter.

  ‘We’ll just have to see.’

  ‘This is a unique Elizabethan jewel.’ Frances laughs.

  ‘Please don’t bring the National Trust into it.’

  ‘It has very particular features.’

  ‘Oh I know, believe me. I’ve already heard from that nice constable about the priest hole off the chimney. Very clever.’

  ‘Well, there’s that, and - .’

  ‘Fascinating, no really, fascinating, but that’s enough, let’s do this before your police friends arrive. And I bet you God doesn’t exist. Winner takes all.’

  Frances strikes the match.

  Ninety One

  Tamsin flinches at sparking ignition.

  Flame! Nothing.

  Frances fumbles inside the box and strikes another. Flame!

  Nothing.

  ‘ “This is the way the world ends”,’ she says lighting a further match, but with less intent. ‘ “This is the way the world ends, this is the way the world ends, not with a bang but a whimper”.’

  Frances looks suddenly frail.

  ‘The uniqueness of Henry House,’ says Peter ‘lies in its two priest holes, the second behind the water closet and leading to the garden. Just here behind me.’

  ‘I’m so bored of the history,’ says Frances. ‘Someone said history is the new sex and that so isn’t true.’

  Tamsin looks round to see the hole, worked open earlier by the Abbot’s feet, and large enough for an adult and much fresh air to crawl through. Her cold feet had not been due to the gas.

  ‘Virgil showed it to me last night on a little tour of his old home... and thankfully revealed how to open it, with his foot.’

  Frances turns and runs from the room, into the hallway, the front door slamming behind her. Tamsin makes to move.

  ‘I think you can leave her, the place is surrounded,’ says Peter.

  ‘That’s a police line, and not always true.’

  ‘Eerie figures in the mist. I was watching through the window
while we spoke.’

  Tamsin’s raised eyebrows say ‘Bully for you.’

  ‘Why so shocked by police competence?’ says Peter, and after opening a window and throwing the gas canister through it, he suggests tea in the fresh air of the Long Room.

  ‘I’ll bring the milk,’ he says, looking inside the fridge. ‘We can bury Jung later.’

  ‘I’m not sure he’s dead,’ she replies. ‘He’s twitching.’

  Tamsin reaches inside the oven, removes the ailing Jung and carries him in a cradling palm to the porch where she kneels down, lays him on the ground and kills him with a rock.

  ‘Are you all right, Ma’am?’ asks a constable.

  ‘Better than Jung,’ she replies aimlessly, to a face of puzzled horror. An explanation is needed. ‘He was the Mind Gains budgie, Constable, but he wasn’t well.’

  ‘Right, Ma’am.’

  More explanation necessary.

  ‘He’d had a stroke and was then gassed. In the oven.’ Why is she getting involved in this conversation?

  ‘Right, Ma’am.’

  ‘Not by me, obviously. By the therapist who runs this place.’

  ‘Glad she’s not looking after me then.’ Fair point.

  ‘You can carry on with your duties now, Constable.’

  ‘Yes, Ma’am.’

  ‘When you’ve buried Jung.’

  ‘Me, Ma’am?’

  ‘Yes, Constable.’

  ‘Right, Ma’am. I can do that. I’ll find a trowel.’

  ‘You do that.’

  ‘Anywhere in particular?’

  ‘Oh, somewhere nice. Among those trees perhaps, beneath the pine cones.’

  ‘Yes, Ma’am’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘And his name was “Jung”, you say?’

  ‘Does it matter?’ Impatience is creeping in.

  ‘I like to say a few words, Ma’am.’

  ‘You do this sort of thing a lot?’

  ‘I once had a rat called Derek, Ma’am. Sad day when he died.’

  ‘I’m sure.’

  ‘He had to be put out of his misery as well. Not certain as to the manner of his death, my brother performed the act, I couldn’t do it myself, he was my older brother, braver than me... may have used a stone, I don’t know - perhaps I should ask him one day.’

  ‘Perhaps you should, Constable.’

  ‘But then something inside me doesn’t want to know. Funny that.’

  ‘Funny peculiar, perhaps.’

  ‘But I did say a few words over the grave, and that might be nice for Jung.’

  Frances is being guided to a police car while PC Lister, formerly drugged on the hall floor, walks in a dazed fashion across the fogbound lawn. It’s a slightly surreal scene. Presumably there is a paramedic close by; this is a competent police operation after all, no party hats.

  **

  The Abbot waited on the stairs while the mercy-killer washed her hands. She returned in a subdued mood.

  ‘Out, out damn spot!’ said Peter.

  ‘Not funny.’

  ‘Macbeth wasn’t a comedy.’

  ‘It had to be done.’

  ‘That’s what Lady Macbeth said.’

  Tamsin was unsettled and Peter softened.

  ‘I am joking. I know you had to do it.’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘And you should be feeling proud, Tamsin. I couldn’t have done that.’

  She needed those words, needed quiet reassurance.

  ‘I’ve never been in a mental health unit before,’ she said, looking towards the office.

  ‘Be grateful.’

  ‘But it does concern me that two out of three staff members - that’s 66 per cent of employees - are psychopaths. Let’s hope this isn’t a national statistic.’

  They made their way towards the Long Room.

  ‘Where better for a tree to hide than in the forest?’ said Peter.

  Ninety Two

  Henry House

  Six months later

  ‘I suppose it’s about closure,’ said Dr Minty.

  He stood in the Long Room and was fumbling for his lines.

  ‘Dreadful word, closure - and not really true anyway, because this isn’t about closure, it’s the opposite really - or at least it’s not only about closure.’

  ‘Get on with it!’ shouts Virgil and his father obliges, though without great confidence. He’s not good on his feet, and why should he be attention-grabbing and smart with his words? He was a doctor, not an estate agent and while he looked out on friendly faces - he wasn’t sure about the editor fellow, you could never tell with his face - they were not necessarily faces he knew well, or indeed wanted to know well.

  ‘This evening is really a thank you, I suppose.’

  ‘Well, make your mind up, you old ditherer!’

  The venue was Henry House, the Long Room, and gathered here, those who knew something of the journey - no, not ‘journey’, he’d said, ‘I’ll sound like one of those awful reality shows, but you know what I mean.’ And people did know what he meant, a doctor who’d made a mistake, left home before he was ready and had now come back with fresh energy to see what could be done. So perhaps his leaving had not been a mistake after all, this was his take on the matter. And some were here to wish him well with his new venture, while others were here because they’d suffered while he was away, caught up in the tragic Feast of Fools.

  Peter was offering Tamsin a running commentary:

  ‘Note the longing in Virgil: the son who walked out on his father at the age of fifteen, the son aching for a fight, yet aching also to come home.’ Virgil had remained on the side of friendly so far, but it was a close thing. ‘He wants to get back, wants to find something in his father he hasn’t found before - but he’s a man with large quantities of what is generally known as baggage.’

  ‘I just don’t see this baggage everyone talks about,’ says Tamsin.

  ‘Most dangerous when unseen.’

  And, for his part, Virgil was glad the Abbot fellow was here tonight, even if he did have a mysterious plane to catch.

  ‘I do have a plane to catch’ he’d said, which seemed a little unlikely, an Abbot in a plane? But Virgil hadn’t pressed, because you have to allow people their excuses - God, he’d told some lies in his time to get away from dull evenings.

  And next to the Abbot was that saucily attractive DI Tamsin Shah - certainly a looker, no question! - and then an older man, drifting to fat, who was apparently the Chief Inspector who oversaw the case that ended in jail sentences for Frances Pole, Bella Amal and Kate Karter: the case now known in the media as ‘The Feast of Fools Murder’. Typical, bloody typical!

  But Virgil was less pleased that Channing was present, odious man, truly odious - but to be fair, tonight was about gathering those touched by the events in some way. And he’d been here that night, in the commedia dell’arte as he called it, and caught in the wash like everyone else.

  ‘And as I think you all know,’ continued Dr Minty, ‘I have decided to come back and attempt something new here in Henry House.’

  ‘Ever thought of central heating?’

  Virgil again, enjoying the banter, enjoying the attention and not wrong. Much had changed in the world since the reign of Elizabeth I, including space travel and the diminishing popularity of pig’s head for tea, but the heating in Henry House had remained locked in time, where it was either big fire or big chill.

  ‘Well, anything’s possible,’ said his father, laughing.

  ‘Apparently he had a buy-back clause in the contract,’ whispers Rebecca to Ezekiel. ‘I’ve been following the story. He obviously wasn’t sure about the decision to leave.’

  ‘It’s a mistake to travel
too far in retirement,’ says her husband. ‘It is hard to make new friends.’

  Ezekiel remained fragile, still in shock after his banishment from the church. The elders had not taken kindly to his request that Patience be allowed to go her own way, without exorcism or any other extreme practices.

  ‘So we give her as a prize to Satan?’ they’d asked.

  And he didn’t even know if he believed in his request. They were his words, spoken by him at a difficult meeting with the Benders - that’s what Patience called the Elders, apparently, wilful girl - but it had been Rebecca’s ultimatum.

  ‘Stay married to them and you won’t stay married to me.’

  Prompt and ruthless banishment from the community of grace had followed.

  ‘You understand you leave us no choice,’ said friends.

  ‘I believe we all have a choice.’

  ‘Oh, you mean we might choose to embrace the devil, Ezekiel?’ Was he, Ezekiel, now the devil?

  The Roman Catholics excommunicate well, but Catholics, as Peter said, don’t do it nearly as well as Protestants... and in particular, the Seraphimic Church of the Blessed Elect in Uplifting Glory. Life-long friends of twenty years now looked away as they passed Ezekiel in the streets of Stormhaven; dinner invitations stopped in a moment. Yet Patience and Michael were both with him tonight, his children were with him by choice, and how many of the Benders could say that? So while strong pillars had collapsed, leaving him numb in the ruins and frightened, there was some treasure to be found in the rubble.

  Dr Minty continued: ‘So hopefully it’s about closure on a set of events triggered by my foolish departure.’

  Peter also disliked the word closure. That was for individuals to find in their own time, not something you could announce from the front.

  ‘But maybe sometimes we have to leave a thing, to discover its value!’

  Murmurs of general approval.

  ‘So I’ve asked Patience - Patience, where are you? That’s right, step forward a little! - I’ve asked Patience, funded by the newly set-up Barnabus Fund, to research how we might continue what Barnabus started. Lewes has therapists by the dozen, dripping from every golden drainpipe I’m told, but what about Stormhaven? Bit of a desert in my experience, especially for the young. So I’m thinking about a centre for children and young adults affected by trauma, a refuge centre for the emotionally abused. Patience already has some interest in that direction. New life for Henry House?’