by James Wilson
‘Difficult to say, when I don’t know what sort of footing you have in mind.’
‘Well, I mean …’ She caught my eye, and gave me a quick appeasing smile. ‘You can’t go on living here, can you?’
‘It’s not ideal.’
‘Not ideal! You can’t work – at least, not properly. You can’t use the telephone. You can’t entertain –’
‘You’re suggesting I should come back into the house?’
‘Well, that would be one possibility, wouldn’t it?’ she said. ‘But I’m not sure it would be a good idea. After all, we did live in the same house for ten years, didn’t we? And I don’t think anyone’ – attempting a smile – ‘would probably count it as having been a howling success.’
‘No,’ I said, still wary of giving anything away, until I knew for certain where this was leading. ‘I don’t suppose they would. But then that’s nothing particularly unusual, is it? I mean, an awful lot of couples are in pretty much the same boat, and most of them seem to get by well enough.’
She raised her eyebrows, and the ends of her mouth puckered like the corners of a purse. It was a look I had often seen before, expressing – at the same time – surprise that I should be prepared to settle for something less than perfect, and an absolute refusal to accept it herself.
‘And the other possibility?’ I said.
‘Well …Well, it’s rather obvious, isn’t it? That we should each of us have our own establishment.’
She was right: it was obvious. But it was still a shock to hear her saying it so matter-of-factly. The coldness of it took my breath away, like the first slap of the sea when you’re tiptoeing in for a swim. I could not keep myself from shivering.
‘You’re probably thinking about the expense,’ she said. ‘But provided we’re careful, we really ought to be able to afford it, oughtn’t we, thanks to Alcuin Hare and Mr. Largo Frog?’
‘Where would you …What would you …?’
‘I would stay here,’ she said softly. And then, seeing my face: ‘Oh, no, darling, don’t!’ She leaned forward and began gently stroking my temple with her forefinger. ‘Honestly, just think about it. It’d be a clean slate. You could go anywhere you chose. The downs – you always said you wished we’d settled there. Or the seaside –’
‘I –’
‘Or what about Dorset? Then you’d have the Jessops for neighbours. That’d be nice, wouldn’t it?’
‘But this is where … this is where …’ I was fighting to keep my voice under control, and was surprised how quiet it sounded. ‘Where … You know …Where Elspeth –’
She coloured abruptly, then started frantically fluttering her hand, like a woman whose bag has just been snatched by a thief.
‘I know you have suffered, too –’ I began.
She shook her head. ‘You should not have made me say this,’ she murmured, so softly I could barely hear her. ‘But there’s no avoiding it now. What I have gone through and what you have are different things altogether. You are sad, of course you are: any man would be. But I … If I had to leave here, it would kill me.’
This, I knew from experience, was a contest I could not win: unhappiness was her province, and she would always manage to trump my anguish with her own, leaving me feeling an insensible clod. My only hope was to shift my ground.
‘Well,’ I said, ‘I will think about it. But I’m afraid I can’t give you a firm decision at the moment.’
She sniffed. ‘Why ever not? I mean, surely –’
‘There’d be no point to it. I still haven’t seen the specialist.’
‘Ah. I hadn’t realized it was that …’ She left the word serious hanging unspoken between us, in hope I would pluck it from the air myself and tell her what was wrong with me.
‘I’d rather not discuss it,’ I said.
Her eyes narrowed, then widened again as she wrestled with herself, wondering whether she could still assert a wife’s privilege to know, or whether, in suggesting a separation, she had forfeited her last claim to it. After a few seconds she nodded, admitting defeat.
‘All right,’ she said. ‘And when are you going?’
‘I don’t know yet.’
She retrieved the bear and got up.
‘Well, be sure to tell me when you do.’ She moved to the door, then stopped and looked back with her hand on the handle. ‘It is a good idea, Corley. Honestly. I know when you’ve thought it over you’ll agree it really would be the best thing for us all.’
‘For us all? What, for Mr. Dolgelly as well, you mean?’
‘No, no, I’m just talking about the family.’
‘But you and I are the family now, aren’t we? And you said for us all, which suggests more than two.’
She flushed. ‘I’m sorry. A slip of the tongue. I’m an old silly, aren’t I, Bear?’
*
I was numb after she had gone – not just mentally, but physically, as well: my feet felt like blocks of ice, and my hands seemed to have turned into lumps of rubber, too clammy and ungainly even to lever myself out of my chair. So I was still slumped there when, an hour or so later, Chieveley appeared with an envelope.
‘This came for you from the doctor, sir,’ he said.
I waited until he had left, then fumbled it open and drew out a note smelling faintly of chloroform.
Dear Roper (it read),
This morning, as promised, I spoke to Dr. Enticknap on the telephone. I told him something of your case, and – in view of the extremity of the symptoms – he has agreed to see you tomorrow at 3.00 pm at 12, Fairfield Gardens, St. John’s Wood. I trust this will suit.
Yours very sincerely,
Arthur Lewis
VIII
At five to three the following afternoon a cab delivered me to Fairfield Gardens. Two passing women looked curiously at me as I paid the driver, and – fearful that they would guess my business – I hovered on the pavement until they had gone. Then I climbed the steps to number 12, and rang the bell.
It was only then that a disturbing thought struck me: what if Dr. Enticknap decided that I was insane? Or – even worse – if Lewis had already come to that conclusion himself, and referred me, not to a conventional doctor, but to the director of an asylum, who after the most cursory examination would order me to be put away? Perhaps, even now, a couple of burly fellows were lurking in the shadows of the hall with a straitjacket, waiting to pounce …
I had turned, and was already hurrying back down into the street, when I heard the door opening behind me, and a woman’s voice saying curiously:
‘Mr. Roper?’
I tensed myself, preparing to break into a run. But then I reflected that the two burly fellows, if they existed, would have no difficulty in overtaking me. And if I was trying to prove my mental stability, it would not help my cause to be caught ringing the door-bell and scampering off like a naughty child. So, bending down, I quietly dropped one of my gloves at my feet, and then made a great show of retrieving it.
‘Ah, here you are, you wicked chap,’ I said. ‘No more larks for you.’ I shook a reproachful finger at it, before ostentatiously stuffing it into my pocket.
The woman giggled. I turned back towards her, and immediately felt better. Instead of the brawny-armed nurse I had expected, I saw a slender, pink-faced girl in a parlour-maid’s uniform. Her eyes were bright, and she was nibbling on a thumb-knuckle to keep herself from laughing. It was hard to imagine her being an accomplice to kidnapping.
‘Would you please come this way, sir?’ she said – and then immediately began to giggle again, and had to ram the thumb back into her mouth as she turned to lead me inside.
The last remnants of my fear of violence evaporated the instant I stepped through the door. This plainly was not a house adapted to desperate struggles with lunatics: the brightly lit hall was furnished with spindly legged Regency chairs and a huge old looking-glass that looked as if it would crack if you breathed on it; and the waiting-room the girl showed me into was noth
ing more than the doctor’s dining-room, still smelling of lunch, and fitted for its temporary purpose simply by the addition of a few magazines on the table. I had time enough only to open a copy of Punch, and puzzle over what made a cartoon of a washerwoman and a fish-knife funny, before the girl reappeared and said:
‘Dr. Enticknap will see you now, sir.’
The first thing that struck me, as she opened the consulting-room door, was how dark it was. Thin winter-afternoon daylight seeped through the blinds at the window, but it was too feeble to penetrate more than a few feet, so all you could see at the extremities of the room was a dim fog where the heavy brown carpet met the dingy walls. The only other illumination came from a small electric table-lamp, which inscribed a sharp circle of light on the blue leather surface of the desk, leaving everything beyond it vague and indistinct.
‘Mr. Roper, sir,’ said the girl.
‘Thank you, Esther.’ A grey-suited figure erupted in the gloom, stretching a hand towards me. ‘How do you do, Mr. Roper?’
He was younger and less imposing than I had imagined: a slight, wiry man with steel-rimmed pince-nez and a neatly trimmed black beard flecked with iron filings of grey.
‘Won’t you please sit down?’ he said. As soon as I had done so, he stepped nimbly round the desk, placed his hands under my chin, and began to examine me as a vet might a horse, moving my head this way and that so as to be able to see into my ears, eyes and nose. The sensation was surprisingly pleasant: his fingers were soft and warm, and smelt of Pears soap, and worked with a kind of calm authority that was oddly reassuring.
‘Would you be so good as to do this?’ he said, when he had finished – pulling back his lips so I could see his teeth. I imitated him as best I could, and he peered into my mouth for a few seconds. Then he nodded, went back to his place opposite me, and leafed through a small pile of papers.
‘So,’ he said finally, looking up. ‘Mary Wilson. And her still-born son.’
‘Yes.’ I don’t know what I’d expected – a few bland introductory civilities, probably – but indubitably not this. I swallowed painfully, uncertain how to respond. I was still far from sure how he regarded me, and had counted on having at least a minute or two to size him up.
‘Well,’ I began, nodding towards his notes, ‘I don’t know how much you already know –’
‘Assume I know nothing.’ The arrangement of the lamp allowed him to see me more clearly than I could see him, but I could feel the uncomfortable force of his eyes looking into mine.
I hesitated a moment. And then, reflecting that there was really no point my being here at all, if I did not intend to be honest, I took my courage in both hands, and told him more or less what I had told Lewis two days before – only faltering, as I had then, when I reached the disturbing episode in the hotel room in Langley Mill. For a second, my tongue seemed to knot in my mouth, and I found myself mutely searching Enticknap’s shadowed face for some sign of unease or incredulity. But he immediately reassured me with an encouraging nod, as if he heard stories of spirit possession every day, and regarded them as entirely normal. And when I had finished, to my great surprise, he did not even mention my hallucinations, but instead – after jotting a quick note – settled back in his chair and said:
‘And can you offer any explanation for the intensity of your feelings towards this woman?’
‘No, not really,’ I mumbled. ‘Unless …’
He raised his eyebrows, inviting me to say unless what. But my courage deserted me, and I shook my head instead.
He nodded. ‘Well, let’s begin by trying to identify exactly what those feelings are, shall we? What does the name Mary Wilson mean to you?’
‘It …Well …’
He snapped his fingers. ‘Quick! Quick! Don’t think about it! First thing that comes to mind!’
‘Real. Solid. Strong. True.’
He waited for me to continue. When he saw I had nothing more to add, he said:
‘True. That’s interesting. Can you elaborate?’
‘It’s as if … as if when I’m with her, I have found my true vocation.’
I paused, trying to grasp hold of the fugitive images darting through my mind.
‘When I met her,’ I went on finally, ‘it suddenly seemed that every other relationship I had known had been limited to only two dimensions. Even with intimates, I mean to say, I had always found I had had to censor myself, to a greater or lesser degree, in order to prevent them from seeing some … some part of me I thought they would not … understand. And they, doubtless, were doing the same thing with me. But Mary Wilson and I appeared to experience each other in three dimensions. That, at any rate, is what it felt like.’
‘Even during your second encounter with her?’
I pondered a moment, then nodded and said:
‘Well, needless to say, the circumstances were rather different. But yes, I think so. It wasn’t an easy conversation, of course. But there was none of the usual pretence. We were both quite … naked, I suppose you could say.’
‘Hm.’ He picked up his pen and flourished it back and forth, as if he were conducting a miniature orchestra. ‘Tell me, Mr. Roper, how would you describe the state’ – clearing his throat – ‘of your marital relations?’
‘I should say they are almost non-existent.’
‘And for how long has this been the case?’
‘My wife has never been ardent. We have always had separate rooms. But she would generally tolerate my going to her once or twice a month – except after our daughter was born, of course – until about a year ago. It’s only since then that her bed has been entirely barred to me.’
Enticknap did not reply, but leaned closer, still holding my gaze – and giving me, all of a sudden, the unnerving sense that a stranger had scaled the walls of my house, and was shining an electric torch through the bedroom window. I started to blush, and looked away. Immediately he said:
‘Onanism?’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Have you ever resorted to onanism?’
I heard myself gulp. Staring at the desk, I said: ‘If I have … it was only very occasionally. Never a matter of habit.’
‘And when you were younger?’
‘I … Look, do you really think it is pertinent to my case?’
‘It’s hard to say what’s pertinent at this juncture. But, as I’m sure you’re aware, there is a view – maintained by no less an authority than Professor Maudsley, among others – that repeated self-abuse can lead to mental degeneration, and even, ultimately, lunacy.’
‘If that were the case, it seems to me a great many of my school-fellows would be mad.’
He had the grace to smile.
‘Was either of your parents susceptible to mental infirmity?’
‘No. Not unless you count drunkenness.’
‘They were inebriates?’
‘Only my father. And even he, not all the time. But brandy did inflame his imagination. When he’d been drinking he would hit my poor mother and me, if we said we couldn’t see the big black dog on the stairs, or the kaffirs surrounding the house.’
Enticknap nodded, and scribbled something.
‘And what of your imagination, Mr. Roper?’ he asked, looking up. ‘I understand from Dr. Lewis that you are an author of children’s stories. About talking frogs, and dress-making rabbits, and so on?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, it strikes me that if you spent enough time in the company of talking frogs, and then, while in a state of nervous excitement, encountered a real frog, you might well start to suppose that he could talk, too. Was it not, indeed, something of exactly that kind that took place when you thought you heard the spaniel speaking to you in the woods?’
I didn’t like the drift of his argument, but I couldn’t deny its logic.
‘Yes,’ I said reluctantly. ‘Perhaps.’
‘Well, and might not the same mechanism have been at work when you met Mary Wilson?’
&nb
sp; ‘What, you think I imagined her talking?’
‘No, no, I don’t say that. My point is that it’s quite natural for a woman to talk. And, from what you’ve told me, I don’t think a dispassionate observer would feel there was anything very remarkable in what she said – on either occasion. So your imagination was obliged to endow her with another miraculous attribute. An extra dimension.’
‘I confess I hadn’t thought of it in that light,’ I said – feeling like the apostle Peter denying Jesus.
He smiled. ‘Neither should I have done, five years ago. The only choices before me then would have been to prescribe you a strict regime of liver pills and cold baths and vigorous exercise – or else, if I thought the case warranted it, to have you admitted to an asylum. But the world of psychology is changing. Giving us new ways of understanding what is really happening in the patient’s mind.’
‘But surely, I am either mad or not mad?’
He nodded. ‘That would certainly have been the prevailing view when I first began to practise. A madman was not like the rest of us: you could identify him immediately, by the asymmetry of his features, or the malformation of his ears, or a spasmodic movement of the eyes or mouth. But now the distinction does not seem quite so clear. We’re being forced, in fact, to reconsider some of our most fundamental assumptions about it. You might perhaps liken our situation to that of astronomers at the time of Copernicus.’
He stood up, and drew aside a blue velvet curtain hanging behind the desk. I expected it to reveal another window, but to begin with all I could make out was a shadowy, rectangular recess like the mouth of a cave. Then he switched on an electric light, and I saw a shallow alcove, with an examination table in the middle of the floor, and shelves and pictures lining the walls. In pride of place in the centre was a life-size, coloured anatomical drawing, showing the complex tracery of the human nervous system. Nodding towards it, he said:
‘That is a map, as it were, of our Ptolemaic universe. It sees mental phenomena as no more, really, than the expression of our various organs working on our nerves. When those organs are grossly diseased or degenerated, usually as a consequence of some inherited weakness, the result is madness. So – since you exhibit none of the associated physical symptoms – I would conclude that you are not mad, but merely suffering from some temporary neurasthenic disorder that can be corrected by enforced rest, and a change of diet. It is all very simple. The only difficulty is that it does not seem to have been very effective – or not, at any rate, in more than a small number of cases. So our new Copernicans are abandoning that model’ – pointing to the drawing, and then switching off the light again, so that it was lost in darkness – ‘and replacing it with another.’ He closed the curtain, then sat down facing me again. ‘Our organs have been deposed from the centre of the solar system. And what has taken their place is individual experience. In particular, childhood experience. And that, of course, does not require any inherited propensity. It is common to all of us. What happens in a disturbed mind is no more than an exaggerated form of what happens in every mind.’