The Possessions of Doctor Forrest

by Richard T. Kelly

  Still, I didn’t feel I had properly guided her to a safer place in her mind at the point where she discharged herself, unwilling to spend any more of her father’s money. But her return to Blakedene now – though clearly no cause for celebration – affords us a precious second chance.

  August 30th

  A day of great commotion, and unhappy revelation. What to make of it?

  The morning’s drive out to Blakedene was deceptively calm, assisted by the new Blessed CD of Dido and Aeneas. As I came up the snaking driveway through the lawns I saw Lawrence engaged in that wistful last mowing of summer. His work has been superb these past months, the grounds have shone, from the rose arbours and pergolas to the gazebos and garden walkways. The begonia is still pink and sweet-smelling, the blue-mauve floribunda roses still copious, the purple-starred clematis dense round the trellises. Even the old woods beyond our walls seem somehow improved by Lawrence’s eye. In all, my spirits were good as I climbed the front steps. Then I heard my name called from on high, winced upward past the sun’s glare to the veranda, saw Eloise waving a limp, rueful hand at me.

  I went directly up the main stairs and out to where she sat, wearing a faded pale-blue tee-shirt, denim skirt and sandals, smoking moodily, her free fingers dancing over the tabletop onto an old Gallimard paperback of Gide’s L’Immoraliste. ‘I’m revisiting my adolescence,’ she murmured. ‘There was a time I wouldn’t touch anything that wasn’t by a dead French homosexual …’ But she seemed to be avoiding my eye. I concede, I’ve struggled somewhat to see past her ‘new look’: the regrettable fact in her records (though unacknowledged between us) that after her last admission here she checked into the Forrest Clinic for some ‘work’. Only minor refinements, for sure, and yet everything in her face appears somehow more sculpted at the tip – her upper lip a perfect wave, nose newly retroussé, a curved elegance from cheekbone to jaw-line. Even her hair, formerly sunflower-blonde, thick and worn tied, is now a long sleek bob like bottled gold. Her eyes, though, remain the same – small, aqua-green, strangely pained. It’s those eyes, that pain, which keep me focused on the care she requires.

  We were meant to adjourn to my office, but as she collected her things and I surveyed the view from the veranda I saw a vehicle tearing up the bends of the approach to the building – a white transit van, spraying gravel all about, having somehow negotiated security at the gate. It growled to a halt on the far side of the fountain, by which time Eloise was by me at the balustrade, peering down at the source of the disturbance. A man spilled out of the driver door – tall, black, 30-ish? – made as if to stomp up the front steps, then, spying us, ran back into our full view below. ‘Oh God …’, I heard Eloise exhale.

  ‘Ellie!’ he shouted. ‘Ellie! Come down, will you?’

  ‘Leon, what are you doing?’ As ‘Leon’ shook a finger at her, so she gesticulated back. Goran was swiftly out of doors and bearing down on him, but the hand he laid on the intruder was shrugged off brusquely, and so I dashed down as fast as I could. Eloise, mercifully, didn’t follow.

  Yet by the time I was jogging across the gravel this Leon was stood by Goran in a pose of utter cool and affability, even though Goran’s own posture was riven by tension from top to toe. As I reached them Leon extended his hand to me, smiling broadly. And I realised how very handsome he was, how deeply winning that smile.

  ‘Yeah, you’re the doc, right? The geez looking after my Ellie?’

  After a moment’s consideration I took the hand, to Goran’s clear unease. The fellow introduced himself, ‘Leon Worrell’ also the name emblazoned on the side of his van, advertising a carpentry and floor-sanding business. He offered me a cigarette, but that I wasn’t having. And so he explained – in a manner hopping and hard to follow, polite nonetheless – that he had only come here to check on the wellbeing of his ‘girl’, the haste and excitation on account of his having come at speed from the main Keaton residence in London, where – after persistent enquiries – he had gleaned from Lady Nicole that Eloise was checked into my clinic.

  ‘Just man to man, I gotta ask, now I’m here’ – and he touched my arm – ‘can I go say hello? Could you give me that much, doc?’ The smile resurfaced, mellow and sweetly warm as Sunday sun. Eloise herself had vanished from the veranda, thus making it simpler for me to give Leon the bad news. He absorbed it philosophically, likewise my assurance that Eloise was in safe hands but needed her privacy at this time. He nodded, told me – as if I were a pal – that what he would do was write her a letter. His hand was on my arm again, his physicality limber and laconic, muscular yet at ease – for a moment I thought he might lift me onto his lap. Instead he confided in me. ‘I understand, she’s a funny girl, doc. She’s got her sadness. But what’s wrong with her, it’s just not her fault, yeah …?’

  I didn’t question his judgement. Truthfully, in short order I’d got the sense he has genuine feelings for her. Then he was clambering back into his semi, waving amiably, driving off. Goran, still primed, jogged over to the golf cart and made to tail him down to the gate. I went back inside and up to her room in West Wing, where I found her sitting on her bed. Seeing me in the doorway she rolled her eyes.

  ‘What a madhouse, right …?

  I led her at last to my office, let her spark up her black tobacco, and shortly she confessed that Leon is someone with whom she’s had a ‘difficult’ on– off relationship over the last six months. Old news to my ears: I’ve gathered it’s her habit to reject sexual partners as soon as they breach her defences, her force field. A fear of the particular terrors of true intimacy, I’m sure – though I believe she longs for that closeness.

  She characterises Leon as ‘troubled’, ‘volatile’ – not the chap I met, for sure, indeed some evil twin. But he has a son by a woman from whom he’s separated, of Trinidadian extraction like himself. His brother Lynval deals marijuana, to Leon’s despair, though Lynval has, to date, evaded the courts. (And it was through Lynval’s good offices that they met.) Among Leon’s cousins is a professional footballer, quite successful, though Leon ‘doesn’t rate him’ – not as a man nor as a left-sided winger. Eloise attributes this to envy, though Leon has had his business for five years and is constantly in work. Indeed she sees in him immense psychological problems, starting with the chip he sports on his shoulder concerning their relationship. It wasn’t long in our discussion before she confirmed Sir James’s vehement disapproval of him.

  ‘Is that any part of his appeal for you, Eloise?’

  She threw me a look of asperity, began to fish about for another cigarette, as if despairing of me, or else buying time to come up with a fit response, which she had to hand once she was lit up again.

  ‘His appeal to me is the man he is. He just won’t see that. There’s no … socio-cultural barrier between us, I’ll tell you that. Not from my side. Just his – him and his male pride. He says I don’t really respect him, don’t really want him for himself, I just want – oh, I don’t know – some typical white-girl fantasy. Some big dark island man …’

  ‘What do you say back to him?’

  ‘I’ve given up replying to that one, actually. Because I can’t see any answer that will satisfy. Other than my agreeing to go to Trini with him and have his babies. Or one more of them.’

  ‘He’s put that proposal to you?’

  ‘Not in so many words. But he does seem to think our relationship needs to accelerate to the, uh, patter of little feet.’

  ‘And how do you feel about that?’

  She exhaled, with a curl of her lip. ‘I wouldn’t be a good mummy.’

  It was at this juncture, timely or not, that Niamh knocked to tell me the Metropolitan Police were on the phone, an urgent matter – Robert, of course. I ought to have asked Eloise to step outside. For some reason I let her sit, staring wanly through the leaded panes of the long window, while I spoke to the northern-accented Detective Hagen. Oddly he was fishing for more about Robert’s abortive work in facial transplant. I could only tell
him that the cases I evaluated at Robert’s request, all deeply distressing in their own right, obviously came to nothing once Robert abandoned the work, something he and I both regretted. But Hagen clearly wanted to be certain how far that work had gone. Of course, I only know so much.

  ‘I know he did … a certain amount of practice, under highly regulated conditions, with cadaveric material.’

  ‘Did he really, doctor?’

  ‘Yes, so, he transplanted the faces of corpses. All donated to medical science, of course …’

  ‘Fascinating,’ said the detective. And maybe so, to the layman. After I hung up Eloise’s eyes were fixed most searchingly on me.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I shrugged. ‘There’s no escaping this business at the moment.’

  She nodded. ‘The police spoke to me last week. Rather impertinently, I felt. But you and Dr Forrest are good friends?’

  Didn’t he say so?, I thought. ‘Yes, we were friends at school. And ever since. So you’re acquainted with Robert?’

  ‘I had a little procedure, in his clinic.’ Her eyes darted aside. ‘What do you suppose has happened to him? Something bad?’

  ‘I don’t know, Eloise.’ I toyed with my fountain pen, conscious of my own conflictedness. ‘He’s a complicated man, Robert, it’s never been easy to account for him. But I do believe he’s out there somewhere. I’m sure he’ll resurface.’ She nodded, pensive. I felt a slight catch in my throat. ‘Are the police interviewing all of his patients, do you know? Or had you been friendly with Robert outside of the clinic?’

  Evidently she felt the insinuating edge in my ‘casual’ enquiry. ‘Not quite “friendly”, that wouldn’t be the word. We … had a thing. Slept together, once or twice, after my procedure. Not made to last. Though he was charming, to start with. But actually I’m not sure I met his high standards. And I don’t think he was very happy. Not since he’d left his wife.’

  ‘They weren’t married,’ I heard myself saying. ‘And she left him.’

  ‘No kids, though? Figures. He certainly didn’t want me to have his babies. To the point of wanting to put it just about anywhere other than mia fica …’

  I am inured to her odd, sorry attempts at scandalising me, even in vulgar Italian, and I let her see my disappointment.

  ‘Sorry. It’s a dirty world out there, Steven.’ She tapped her forehead with one scarlet fingernail. ‘And also in here.’

  I was not to be distracted, since the subject was on the table, however unwelcome. ‘It was Robert who ended your affair? Were you upset?’

  She made condescending eyes. ‘No, I think it was quite clear what we both wanted. After he dumped me I did drunk-dial him a few times, but he was – aloof. The last time, it was a woman answered. Spanish, I guess, she actually said, “No, mi hermana, he is mine now …”’ She laughed, unconvincingly. ‘I told him in the end, I’d started feeling not-well again, and he said to me, “Why don’t you just check back into Blakedene Hall, let Steven Hartford look you over?” He didn’t mean it nicely. But I decided I would, and fuck him.’

  Her tone couldn’t mask the wound in her, as she sat rubbing her arms through the gauzy sleeves of a cardigan, knees together, toes turned in, a picture of dejection. Behind the mask she is languishing; no proper help is possible with this false self of hers between us. I weighed the moment, thought it ripe, told her I wished us to try a new therapeutic technique. My explanation of the relationship between eye movements and the cognitive pathways didn’t quite persuade her, but then I didn’t tell her that my most encouraging uses of this treatment so far have been with women who were abused. She chewed a nail warily, finally nodded assent. I rummaged my desk drawer, found a new red-and-black workbook, asked that she begin to write daily on whatever matters occurred to her, past and present – this to be a basis for our sessions.

  She sat back, tapping another cigarette on her pack. ‘Can I write down my dreams?’

  ‘By all means,’ I gestured open-handedly, thinking Oh Lord, spare me the X-certificate … I’m sure we will take a wider frame of reference once the sessions proper commence. I have to consider, though, that she may wish to say more about Robert. And I must make my own peace on that score.

  * * *

  I suppose, were he testifying in court, Grey would say of me – without judgement – that I was always somewhat jealous of Robert’s way with women, and accordingly a little bitter about my own mixed fortunes in that field.

  True, for the one college term that Robert and I were flatmates I had cause to rue the thin wall between our bedrooms, such were the ardent, quickening moans that travelled whenever Robert was ‘entertaining’. In that same time-passage I got myself in a foolhardy state of unrequited love for Cleo Glendenning, in the way one only can at that age – and, like in a story, I had to watch while fate turned, against me, and Cleo became Robert’s. Fair play, I paid for my passivity – Cleo too, for Robert got her pregnant, then arranged the termination. I don’t doubt the experience pained him, if not so much as it did Cleo. The wound I sustained was probably negligible. It hurt, nonetheless.

  It did perplex me, though, how a male peer of mine could get away with such conduct toward the most spirited young women – and yet these girls seemed to put up with bloody well everything. Dalliance with Robert, in the end, rarely made a girl feel better about herself – not on what I have observed. But who am I to judge? Robert had something, for sure, his very own burning brand of charm. And perhaps in burning holes through so many girls he acquired an understanding that’s been denied me. He must have acquired it somehow, or he couldn’t have done what he did in life and with such success.

  It was a familiar med-school dilemma – albeit with a shade of taboo, spoken of in winces – but a key consideration for any male student, and unavoidable for those minded toward Ob-Gyn. How can a man truly empathise with a woman – however many lectures and labs he attends, examinations he sits, female patients he palpates – without having felt in his own person the aches of menstruation, the contractions of labour, et cetera? In the brief time Robert teased Grey and me with the notion he would pursue gynaecology, he was wont (smiling slightly) to speak of ‘the part of me that is female’. I’m not sure, though, if he could ever have tucked the rest of himself away to the degree the discipline required. (‘Before inserting a speculum into any vagina,’ I once heard him regale our beer-soaked table, ‘always ask the patient to take a deep breath. I recommend the same procedure for anything else one might care to insert up there …’ This the wit of the man who, as I heard it, never failed to ask his surgical assistants, ants, male or female, to set their clamps ‘soixante-neuf style’.)

  A good thing, I suppose, that Robert never had to call on me to be his best man. That would have been Grey’s job by right, and he would have made sure the assembled saw all sides of Robert. We were younger then, anyway. I concede that the mature Robert, in company – inspired by fine burgundy rather than fizzy beer – could expound most tenderly about the female form, in a manner befitting his claim to be an artist of skin and tissue. Without wishing to act the sort of bore who buttonholes surgeons at parties, still, I couldn’t stop myself asking Robert how he girded himself for bout after bout of labiaplasty, ‘the designer vagina’, given that the procedure had become a Forrest Clinic signature. ‘Has it never made you feel – I don’t know – desensitised to women?’

  He looked at me keenly as if this were the most profoundly serious matter I’d ever raised with him. ‘Not the bodies. No, never. Nothing could change how you touch flesh that attracts you. The female mind, though – that is, of course, a truly appalling vista …’

  Poor Eloise – one more notch on Robert’s scalpel. But in truth she’s had a lucky escape.

  7

  Eloise’s Workbook

  The knife and the wound

  August 30th

  Steven, I can’t sleep, and I’m glad of that, since the dreams are worse than wakefulness. Shall I tell you what I dreamt last night?


  I was in a cottage, a gingerbread stone cottage, marooned in the clearing of a forest – the clearing perfect as a crop circle, hemmed on all sides by tall trees, lilac and purple foxglove. In the sky above was a huge black cloud like a canopy – un nuage funèbre et gros d’une tempête! – so even by daylight the cottage was steeped in darkness. And inside I was trapped, stuck in the fireplace – a huge hearth, no fire burning, still I was caged behind the guard, wedged right into the grate among the cinders and ashes, and my parents (they had the faces of my real parents, at least for a time) wouldn’t let me out. They jabbed at me with sharp black pokers. I snapped back at them with blackened teeth.

  Then came a hammering at the door. My dungeon shook … And a man forced his way in somehow, nobody admitted him. I couldn’t quite place his face, my rescuer – I’m not certain he had a face. But he swept me up in his arms, bore me on his shoulder as he scaled the inside of the chimney stack, lizard-like, then hefted me up and out and over the roof. When he told me to jump I jumped and, still, he caught me. Then he led me into the forest, and we sat at the foot of a tree until it got darker and darker, and all he did was stare at me.

  Then I woke myself up, because it was too ghastly.

  * * *

  I have to tell you, you will understand – I always thought I’d never be able to bear it here at Blakedene – didn’t believe it could be the ‘therapeutic landscape’ your glossy brochure promises – no ‘good, safe place’ of friends and protectors, not if hemmed on all sides by dark and silent woods: le bois sombre et les nuits solitaires … However, I now accept: these woods of yours are most pleasant. I think we should be allowed to walk in them more often, all of us sufferers. The darkness and the silence encourage contemplation. They also test the nerve.