The Possessions of Doctor Forrest

by Richard T. Kelly

  EK: You’ve got children, right? Is that joy all the time?

  SH: No. No, it can be quite ‘inane’. Marriage, too. Love is compromise, surrender. But it’s still the dearest feeling. The warmest of all, Eloise.

  […]

  SH: Are you all right?

  EK: Yes, no … Sorry … I hear you, I do … It’s just … I ask myself, could I ever come through for Leon? Screw-up that I am? In the end what would he want with me? What would I teach our children? How to mix a Cosmopolitan?

  SH: You could teach them French and Italian … Leon cares for you, Ellie. You push him away because you fear the closeness. You distrust real intimacy, the banality, the baby-making … What?

  EK: You. Your theories are amusing, Steven. Did Leon put you up to this? Did he write you a letter too? Did you get flowers?

  SH: No … But I’m not sure I should let you out of there until you promise to give him a chance. If not him, look … what I want you to just consider is that you can’t do it alone. When you’ve felt yourself in that pit … you need someone’s hand – not to drag you off but to lift you out, lift you up.

  Was she persuaded by me, or rubbing along with what I wanted to hear? I was wheedling at her, for sure, keen – maybe too keen – to encourage what I take to be her finer feelings. I don’t dismiss out of hand her insistence on Leon’s volatile machismo – I have seen too much disturbing evidence of that in others lately. And love can’t be brewed like a potion in a bottle. But love and trust, letting oneself be vulnerable in the right circumstances, with the right person – this is what she must learn for her own future wellbeing. And the idea of love, this love above all, overcoming the odds … it would be a fine thing.

  When we were done and I showed her to the door, she embraced me, to my surprise. I let it happen, knew I was in control, put an avuncular hand on the crown of her blonde head. ‘You’re one of the good guys, Steven,’ she murmured, and I shook my head, knowing better. Then she was gone, leaving me to my appointment in Bishop’s Wood. The daylight was dwindling, I had to get on my way.

  John Teacher from the next-door farm happened to be rolling by in his big Deere tractor as I waited for the electronic gates to open fully, and he pulled over for a word. Turned out the tractor ride was a treat for his little girl Emily, who sat very quietly at his side – he was running her to see mummy at the shop in the village. Apparently Emily had suffered a fright out in the fields, believed she’d seen a ‘nasty man’ – John had to assure her she’d been spooked by Mr Mandrake, the carefully tailored scarecrow he propped up just this morning to brood over his runner beans. Really I think he was made for Emily’s enjoyment, but that’s backfired – she seems quite sure that Mr Mandrake walks and talks. And, looking in her eyes, I believed I’d felt just as she had, her fear – that slow-creeping cold flush over the skin. I clambered back into my car and drove off, scarcely any more hardy in myself than little Emily, with only Schubert’s Winterreise for solace.

  Fear is a ghost, and I live with one now, he’s at my side always. I realise that I have for some years been carrying myself – even if only unconsciously – as a condemned man. But I swear, I truly swear, if there’s still some redemption to be had for me here, then I will do better, I will work harder – I will be a better man.

  September 12th

  Once more I’m confined to Blakedene overnight, but this time not the fault of my bad timekeeping, rather because of the quite cataclysmic weather that befell us late this afternoon. It has caused trouble all round the place. For one, regrettably, my night at the opera with Tessa has gone to the wall. The sudden tempest, the near-alien strangeness and fierceness of the elements, made a disturbing atmosphere for our ‘inmates’. But, nothing we could do about it. I’m concerned, nonetheless, by the highly irresponsible behaviour of Eloise and David. Whatever they thought they were doing out of house tonight it was at best heedless, and, for me, unsettling.

  Lawrence, to his credit, had the measure of the day first thing this morning. I should have heeded him. As I went in he was attending to the beds at the front, and he frowned at my casual remark about the ‘pleasant skies’, said he fancied we might have an autumn gale on the way and should batten down the hatches. Blithely I said it seemed far too soon, what with our Indian summer and these mild southwesterlies. He shook his head with the indulgence of a veteran sky-watcher. ‘New moon, see, tides run heavier. And you’ve got the mare’s tails up there too, look.’ He gestured to the long finger-like clouds streaked across the sky’s turquoise.

  ‘Fingers crossed they’ll blow over,’ I chirped – suddenly reminded that Lawrence had spent perhaps too much of his twenties and thirties imbibing noxious teas in the Peruvian Amazon, and, so I hear, has passed the odd hour with David Tregaskis in his shed at the rear of the grounds, chatting about the kalachakra. A pensive fellow, at any rate, and he wasn’t going to let me away with any glibness.

  ‘Oh no, you watch, there’ll be some black old wrath come in from the north, before the day’s end. You watch …’

  After doing the diary with Niamh I strolled over to collect David from the art pavilion. It was earnestly on my mind that we needed a more productive session than our fractious tos and fros of late. Yet I found him standing in the middle of the back lawn, eyes closed, swaying slightly, challenging me with his oddness as ever. Perhaps he was channelling Lawrence – for then I noticed a light wind shaking our blossoms, stirring the treetops, especially the tall pines at the far end of the property. Even those windows of the house that had been thrown open to the morning air now rattled a little behind me.

  Once I’d shepherded him upstairs he confounded me again. I am used to his oscillations of mood, and what I got today was a kind of serene indifference. Indeed he was glowing, freshly bathed, clad in a loose white shirt like a smock, his hair braided – resembling a supplicant monk, albeit with a dash of Rasputin. I returned his beloved silver bracelet to him, imagining he had missed it. He sat tranquil, hands on his knees, smiling affably, told me I should keep it, for he had another, indeed he showed it me – a black leather cord holding a silver figure of Asclepius, the snake round the staff.

  ‘Interesting,’ I told him. ‘The symbol of the healer.’

  ‘Is that so?’ He seemed pleased. But I assured him I couldn’t accept his old one, and he remained adamant it was of no further use to him. Thus it sat on the table between us, and the tone was set for our ‘discussion’.

  DT: Steven, I see how anxious you are. A child could see it. But I want you to understand, things have got better for me now. Radiant. Amazingly so. My sun is rising, Steven.

  SH: David, it’s hard for me to accept what you say, when your experiences and moods are so— solitary, and inward – when you remain so much apart from the rest of us.

  DT: Steven, of course I’m apart. I’m here, you’re there. We are apart. I wish that were different, I do. But I’m saying, don’t think about it. In my case it was meant to be. There is a change coming on, I feel it. Whether it’s what you want, whether that’s ‘progress’ … I can’t say, wouldn’t dare to. But now I know the master is at hand – the sense is so rich I can touch it, taste it.

  SH: David … What ‘master’? Not still Master Ravenscourt?

  DT: No, don’t be a fool, Steven, I’ve told you. I’m talking about the god of high and low, god of multitudes, king of the spiders, master of all vermin … call him what you want, he has called me. I will not say no …

  I have a serious decision to make in respect of David now: whether to keep revolving him between the houses of Depressive and Bipolar here, or whether he needs to be taking a more radical mood-stabiliser, and trying to forge a new therapeutic alliance. Because I am floundering, to be honest.

  After our session I wandered back out into the grounds, thinking only that I might smoke a cigarette, but on the lawn I saw Gillon, wearing the linen suit he likes for ‘business’, gesturing extravagantly round a standing circle of smart-suited Asian gentlemen. I didn
’t hesitate to press myself into the gathering, and it was with poorly veiled irritation that Gillon introduced me to Mr Heng and party – clearly the ‘Malaysian interest’ mentioned in Gillon’s group emails these last few months, now on site and ‘getting the tour’. No need, of course, for them to meet the director of the facility … Once I realised no meaningful conversation would be had for as long as I stood there, I decided to retreat. Whereupon all hell broke loose.

  I had been conscious, from the moment I stepped outdoors again, of the disturbing white-nacre shade of the sky, the wind in the treetops now a shuddering hiss. Autumn is here, for sure. But as I marched across the lawn away from Gillon and his Malaysians, it seemed the air was full of moaning sounds, behind these a dull but rising roar. Then the storm broke. A wind gusted over the lawn with one great sweep that had my trouser-legs flapping hard against my skin. The next moment, Lawrence’s high piles of leaves and shrubbery were being tossed up through the air. I got hit in the face by one thorny branch, and through my hands I saw the Malaysians fleeing in ungainly fashion back to the house. The air was all flying debris and jet-engine drone. Then came the rain.

  I ran to the art pavilion, told Dora to bring everyone there inside the main building too, while they still could. And yet after herding them out, watching them dart through the side fire-door – I stayed. By now the gusts were sweeping down at what had to be sixty, seventy miles an hour. I saw the lids plucked from the black bins, the bins themselves tumble and skitter away. The metal garden chairs and tables all went over and away. The clematis was wrenched off the covered walkway, its arches buckled. A roof slate plummeted and smashed on the patio, five feet from the door through which I’d sent Dora. From my safety behind glass, I admit, there was an awesomeness to these elements, akin to my own black mood. But moment by moment the damage was mounting. I heard one bone-grinding sound of shearing and torsion, later discovered to be the old apple tree, first planted for the birth of HRH Princess Elizabeth, now crashing to the earth.

  I’m not sure how long I stood there, transfixed, before making my own dash to the house. Inside was a lot of understandable fuss. My only concern was that everyone stay together, properly supervised within the common spaces. I found Lawrence in the kitchens, drenched, silently surveying the ‘black wrath’ through the window while rolling a cigarette. I was nearly minded to ask him for one. ‘You were right,’ I told him, patting his shoulder.

  But he kept his impenetrable look. ‘No, I was wrong. Wasn’t from the north that came out of. Queer.’

  The local news was reporting that drivers were warned off the roads, with fallen branches and other debris lying and the hazards for high-sided vehicles so obvious. Thus, heavy-hearted, I made the call to Tessa. No such weather havoc in Primrose Hill, and she failed to sound as if I hadn’t fixed everything to fall out like so.

  It stayed squally and blustery until past 9pm and supper was all squared away. An hour or so later I was actually dozing in the office when Goran roused me to say Eloise Keaton and David Tregaskis were both out of their rooms and nowhere to be found in the building, not as far as he could determine. Panicked, I leapt up, said we would go outside together to check the grounds.

  He and I headed out with torches, padding down the lawn beyond the pools of the floodlights. The ground was wet underfoot but there was a sense of the air cleared: also a distinctive mix of odours, flower fragrance and damp, fungal autumn. As we trod down the paved side-paths, flicking our torch-beams about, I found myself distracted by the colours of the blooms by night – somehow artificial, some quite evil-looking in their structure – cascades and curls, furls and pyramids, intense purples and fuchsias, blues seeming to feed on darkness and moonlight. At the back of the grounds we had still found nothing. But I was peering just as hard at the trunks of the tall pines, like limbs twisted and fused, straining up and clawing for the air of the upper reaches.

  I followed a half-notion, up the path under the pines parallel to our back-wall perimeter with the woods, toward the furthest corner of the grounds, shrouded somewhat by the heavy-scented lilac bushes, their sprays of clustered star-like heads. Then I heard a groan, a woman’s, throaty and uneasy. And I made out a white face, a white nightdress – a figure reclining on the black aluminium bench-seat, also some dark heap hunkered or crouched at her feet. When I turned my torch-beam that way the light picked out two eyes like sharp, shining red dots. David Tregaskis, wrapped up in his black velvet frock coat, got up off his knees onto his feet. My eyes darted past him to where Eloise sprawled on the bench.

  ‘David, what the hell are you doing? How did you get out?’

  ‘The back door combination? I have studied it, Steven … My apologies. I needed some air, some good night air, as did my friend.’

  His sanguine expression was maddening, but I simply moved round him, sat by Eloise and tried to revive her. For all that she appeared near-waxen, her throat and hands were warm to the touch, and she swayed her head languidly before turning her face to me, eyes snapping open. I really wasn’t sure whether to be angered or concerned.

  ‘Eloise, are you all right? What were you thinking of?’

  ‘Leave her alone, let her get her bearings.’ Tregaskis, over my shoulder.

  ‘Shut up, David,’ I admit I snapped. Then I saw Goran’s torch, heard his tread. I asked him to help me escort Mr Tregaskis back to the building while I assisted Ms Keaton. I took her hand, helped her to her feet, but when I put my arm round her shoulder she gently slipped free.

  ‘Thank you, but … there’s no need.’

  I couldn’t quite shake the sense that her faint smile accused me of something. But I had resolved to consider my response rather than start a row, so Goran and I only led the miscreants back indoors – Eloise, for all her professed assurance, stepping most unsteadily, Tregaskis striding forth like General Fairfax at Naseby. Back in West Wing I gave them both the same stern admonition at their doors – that on this night, more than usual, it was vital for their own good that they followed house rules. David’s triumphalism gave me no reassurance whatsoever: grinning, he advised I should change all the door codes round the building if I was so concerned. Then he wandered back into his lair, there perhaps to toy with his clay woman, who sat gazing out blankly from his desk.

  Eloise, for her part, fell down onto the edge of her bed like the soul of soft compliance. ‘I won’t be going anywhere Steven. Not now. You can be sure of it.’

  With doors shut and lights out I instructed Goran that we say nothing of this incident to anyone else, since it was clearly an aberration that reflected poorly on all parties but which was unlikely to occur again, so long as we took our lesson, made a discreet review of our freedom-of-movement policy, and kept vigilant. Those codes, too, will all be changed before sunrise.

  September 13th

  I’m making a hell for myself, yes, but I’ve no other choice under the circumstances, I’ll just have to make right whatever I’ve done wrong whenever there’s some let-up in the turbulence. Tonight I seem to have offended Tessa beyond all forgiveness by failing to be home in time for some parents’ night at the boys’ new school. I just cannot see how it was so vital, couldn’t be made up by other means. But the air is utterly frozen – ‘Why are you doing this to our family?’ she said, hardly able to look at me – and so I will take the living room couch tonight.

  Earlier I did something possibly foolish, and dangerous, but I couldn’t fight the impulse, and what I learned was bewildering. I went back to Bishop’s Wood to ascertain if my ‘dead-drop’ had been collected. I pushed my way through the gloom, found the pentangle tree, felt in the hollow and, incredibly, the bag was still there. I looked about me, then retrieved it, brushed off insects and twigs, unfastened the knot, saw the crop of innocent rubber-banded banknotes. Then I thought twice, and twice again, replaced the hoard, and hastened out of the wood.

  I don’t imagine my blackmailer has changed his mind, can’t believe he is so busy that he simply forgot. I’ve
done as was asked. Yet nothing has ensued. It maddens me to think of that pot of gold stashed away there under dry leaves – but I have to steel myself, watch and wait, keep my nerve for the moment, even if by any chance the extorter has lost his. I let myself fantasise that he has met some sort of misfortune – so much the better …

  This morning saw more torrential rain: the freakish weather had one thing more to say, it seemed. The wreckage caused by the storm was visible all round the Blakedene grounds – early in the gloomy light you could believe we’d been assailed by a hurricane. Still, the day brightened, and veritable armies set to work making repairs all round the premises.

  Eloise had been sleeping late, ‘feeling unwell’. I had a strong urge to speak to her, but I let it go. Then it transpired she had asked Nurse Gardner to ask Niamh if she could see me. I made time, she came in, didn’t sit, inspected my bookshelves for some moments, then turned and asked if I could possibly give her loan of a speculum kit? Yes, she wanted to perform an internal examination on herself.

  I was— surprised, for sure. I’m aware this is something that some women choose to do these days, and a useful skill, no doubt. I had just never thought for one moment that Eloise would be interested in or capable of such a personal care.

  ‘Are you worried about something?’ I had to ask. It was the low fear, I admit, that something might have passed between her and David last night. But the smiling shake of her head was entirely blithe.

  ‘Not specifically, no. I just … let’s say it’s something I want to do for myself. Part of being a well woman, if you like.’

  That much made sense to me – the notion of empowerment, I suppose, which I fully endorse. ‘And, you’ve done this before?’