Rebecca asked one of the nurses if she could talk to him.
‘I wish you luck,’ he laughed. ‘But you’ll be doing most of the talking.’
She was taken to his room.
‘Visitor for you, Jamie boy,’ the nurse shouted at the door, and Rebecca entered and shut the door behind her. She saw only the back of him. James was sitting in a chair facing the window. He made no response to the nurse’s call. For one who rarely had a visitor he was strangely incurious. He neither turned his head nor made the slightest movement in his chair. Rebecca walked over to his side, introducing herself and declaring her purpose. She was careful to avoid the social worker’s jargon. She knew how off-putting it could sound.
‘I thought we could have a little talk,’ she said.
‘Go ahead,’ he muttered without moving.
She looked at his profile which was all that he granted. Its contours were chiselled out of melancholy, and she felt sorry for him. Very gently, she started on her questions. He was distinctly incommunicative. He volunteered his name and his age, and considered those offerings more than generous. Then he turned his chair so that his back was towards her. It was his sign for her dismissal. She asked if she could come again, but he made no answer.
But Rebecca persevered. She took a fortnight’s leave from her law practice and drove down to Devon, booking a room in a hotel hard by the hospital so that she was able to visit James every day. She had become a familiar face to the hospital staff, and she was given free passage. For form’s sake, she visited other patients, but most of her time was spent with James. She asked him no more questions. She simply talked to him, telling him stories of her own work and the more interesting cases that she’d worked on. Occasionally she invited him to offer an opinion, or even advice, and very slowly, James thawed. By the second week of her stay, the monologue had dissolved into a dialogue of sorts and it seemed that James even took pleasure in their conversations.
It was the last day of her leave. They were sitting in the window-bay in the common lounge, and in the course of one of her courtroom stories, Rebecca dared to drop the name of Dreyfus.
It was a quiet afternoon. An old lady was knitting an endless scarf that draped about her feet and only the unrhythmic click of her needles, as she dropped a stitch and bred some more, could be heard in that unhinged silence. A few roses rested quietly in a vase on the table. For the still time being. Until the vase struck Rebecca, hurled at her shoulder, the rose-thorns caught in her cheek, and the green water and broken glass at her feet. James stood by the window, rigid on his feet, his hand in the air still poised for the throw. And he was screaming. The haggard sound that came from deep in his throat was not sustained. It cut out to give respite and then tuned in once more. Its siren was a morse code SOS. Rebecca stared at him and noted the bulging muscle on his raised arm. She wanted to approach him, but his rage was bursting with strength and she feared that he might well kill her for the terror raked by that name in his mind. She stared as two nurses crossed her vision and gently held him and led him from the room. She watched as they trailed him away and listened to his despairing semaphore as it faded into a stuttering silence.
Rebecca shivered with a burdensome sense of responsibility. She knew that she had broken him, and with one single word had possibly achieved the breakthrough sought by months of therapy. She sat down and nursed her bruised cheek. The room was still silent. James’s outburst seemed to have made no impression. Apart from the clicking needles, the entire space was blind, deaf and mute. She closed her eyes and once again she heard his screams, though she knew that by now James had been sedated, but his screams still fidgeted in her ear. She wondered whether their hypodermic had erased the Dreyfus name or whether James would wake with the dead weight of it on the tip of his parched tongue. She felt a none too gentle tap on her shoulder. She looked up and saw a nurse, one whose face was not familiar.
‘You are wanted in the office,’ she said. Her tone was abrupt and Rebecca expected a severe reprimand. Matron was waiting for her and she came straight to the point.
‘We do not think it a good idea for you to visit Mr Turncastle again. You clearly disturb him. Heaven knows what harm you have done.’
Rebecca was enraged. The woman showed absolutely no interest in the matter that had ignited James’s screaming. She simply wanted to be rid of the one who had caused it. But Rebecca sat down indicating that she had no intention of leaving.
‘Don’t you want to know what started it all?’ she asked.
‘I know that your visit distressed him,’ Matron said, ‘and that’s all I need to know. Now I must ask you to leave.’
‘You are right,’ Rebecca said. ‘I know I have disturbed James. But I think that disturbance marks a significant breakthrough. I want to see his therapist.’
Matron gave her a look of mild contempt. ‘I’m afraid that’s impossible,’ she said. ‘You’re not even a relative. You have been free to come and go these last few weeks. We have given you ample licence. Now it is over. You will not be admitted again.’
‘I’m not leaving until I see his therapist,’ Rebecca said. She crossed her legs and assumed a comfortable position.
A while passed with silence between them. Rebecca took a notebook and pen out of her briefcase and started to write. She wrote nothing of importance but it was a signal to Matron that she had no intention of going away. The silence continued and when Rebecca turned over a page Matron knew that something had to be done. She picked up her phone and said that Dr Field was wanted in her office. As she replaced the receiver she said, ‘I have to tell you that this is most irregular.’
Rebecca didn’t respond. There was no point in salting wounds.
Matron went to the door of her office. She clearly wanted a word with Dr Field before the meeting. She approached him as he walked down the corridor.
‘It’s that Miss Morris,’ she said, ‘the one who disturbed James Turncastle. She insists on seeing you. And she refuses to go away until she does.’
‘I’ll sort her out,’ Dr Field said roughly. He was in no mood to discuss his patient with that interfering woman who had caused such havoc. He would give her a piece of his mind. He strode into the office while Matron withdrew with some relief to the staff kitchen to swallow her defeat in a cup of tea.
‘What is it you want?’ Dr Field asked as he entered the room.
‘How is James?’ Rebecca asked. First things first, she thought.
‘None the better for your interference,’ he said.
‘I’m astonished,’ Rebecca said. ‘You’re his doctor. Are you not in the least bit interested in the reason why he lost his cool? Do you not think it might be valuable information regarding James’s treatment?’
‘Madam,’ Dr Field said on his guard, ‘James’s treatment depends solely on what I learn from James himself. What outsiders tell me is irrelevant.’
Rebecca stood up. ‘Irrelevant or not, Dr Field,’ she said, ‘I intend to let you know. I disturbed him today because I let fall a name which is possibly the very core of his depression. I just thought you ought to know.’ Rebecca had occasionally been obliged to consult with therapists while involved in a law suit. She found them often unreliable. They tended to know everything and they were never wrong. When in doubt, they sought refuge in psychobabble, as she expected any moment from Dr Field.
‘Do you know what transference means?’ he asked with a sneer.
Rebecca ignored the question and gave another in return.
‘D’you know what the name Dreyfus means?’ she asked.
He was flummoxed. He knew the name of course but clearly he’d never connected it with his patient, and Rebecca wondered what in God’s name the man had been doing for the last twelve months of James’s hospitalisation. She gathered her papers together. ‘Remember the name, Dr Field,’ she said with some scorn. ‘It was that name that tipped James over the edge. Remember it. It might well come in handy.’ She left the room before he could begin t
o vent his spleen. For he was indeed furious. The woman had had the crass impertinence to tell him how to do his job. But he was also angry with himself and his niggling nudge of incompetence.
Rebecca returned to London only partially satisfied. She sincerely felt she’d made some headway in James’s treatment but was sad that she was now declared out of bounds. She had expected much from his story and had pinned her faith on getting to its truth. Now that truth might or might not be revealed to Dr Field and there was certainly no way that Dr Field would divulge it. And certainly not to the person who set him on the right track in the first place. She hoped that her private eye would have made some fruitful discoveries.
And he most certainly had. He had brought back stories from Austria which spelt out the first clues to a conspiracy, and what he’d discovered in Marseilles had confirmed those clues.
‘We’re on our way,’ he told Rebecca. ‘And how was James?’
She had to tell him that the trail had gone cold. And she told him why. But the private eye was elated. ‘You’ve established the link,’ he said. ‘That’s what’s important. Something will come of it. It’s bound to. We must just be patient.’
‘Tell that to poor Dreyfus,’ Rebecca said.
Chapter 29
When I returned to my cell after that first family visit, I fell into a deep depression. I wanted to cut myself off from my family. Or rather I wished that they would abandon me. I wanted them all to go away, to leave the country for a faraway place, to change their names and begin a new non-Dreyfus life. Their absence would, in some measure, relieve me of the catastrophe I had wrought in their lives. I would urge them to leave, I decided. I would insist on it. And, if they refused, I would refuse their visits. I had worked myself up into such a state of determination that I began to shout aloud. ‘Go away. All of you. Just leave me alone.’ The grill clicked on my door and a pair of eyes checked that nothing was amiss. I was not attempting suicide; I was not frothing at the mouth. And above all I was not dead. Therefore nothing was amiss. The grill closed with scorn on my frenzy.
I don’t know how I weathered the next few days. My depression did not lift. Occasionally I was thrust into company. Meal-times in the dining-hall, I noticed that I was ignored. No one approached me with offers of friendship or communication of any kind. On the contrary, I detected a distinct hostility, which upset me greatly. If I was bent on ridding myself of family, then I certainly would need friends of a sort. Even amongst the men of this wretched company with whom on the outside I could never have associated. But I would have to lower my sights. I would have to consider a radical change in my values. Innocent as I was, I would have to behave like a criminal. Moreover I would have to think like a criminal. But as yet I had no guidelines. I must prepare myself for education. I would mix. Yes, mix. And hopefully merge.
To this end I decided to avail myself to the exercise period which hitherto I had forfeited. With some trepidation I allowed myself to be led to the exercise yard. It was already full. A ball game was in progress, a game which seemed to have no rules but rather depended on the one player outdoing the other with swearing and curses. The actual ball seemed an irrelevancy. Some men were jogging, and even this exercise involved swearing soliloquies. The playground was abuzz with blasphemy.
I hung around the wall for a while. Perhaps I was waiting for a passing word, or a simple nod of acknowledgement. I noticed that several of the men nudged each other and pointed me out. At least I had been noticed. I decided to circle the yard at a trot. It was, after all, an exercise yard and there was little point in leaning against the wall. So I set off, and as I circled I felt their eyes on me. They were not kindly eyes and I felt threatened. So I decided to sing to myself to allay my fears. And out of my mouth, as from nowhere, except from out of two thousand years of memory, came a tune that my mother had sung to me when I was a baby. Her own mother had sung it to her. That Yiddish song was the sole Jewish legacy my mother could not deny. My grandmother’s song, that not even the ovens could stifle. I imagined her face as I sang it to myself, and with her I mouthed the odd Yiddish word that I could remember and for some reason that recollection gave me so much joy that for a moment I forgot where I was and why. And even who, that prime source of my pain. And as I sang, recalling more and more words, I was shipped back into that Paris apartment, long before the time when she went to buy milk and when my grandfather went to look for her. I kept running and singing the while. Then I heard a shrill whistle and I stopped in my tracks. A Gestapo’s whistle, which sound punctuated their fears in their last Parisian days. Then I looked around me and saw where I was, and knew why I was there and my name no longer escaped me. The words were gone from the song and so was its melody, as I was hustled back into line on the way to my cell. And once there I could not recall the tune, much less those occasional words and even my grandmother’s face had become a blur. But I did not lose heart. I assured myself that visits to the exercise yard would rekindle that memory. But never again was it so strong. The tune returned, but fewer and fewer words and I could never forget who and why I was, as I had so blissfully on that magic morning of my first exercise sortie.
The hostility of the other men was constant. It occurred to me that I might make the first approach with some innocuous question referring to the weather or the food, uninflammable topics. It would be a start. At the next meal-time I made my way to my usual table. It was where I had been deposited on my first visit to the mess-hall. It was a small table, smaller than the others, seating about ten of us, and it was placed near the door and the guards who stood there. Its size and placing had not seemed of any special importance to me, but one dinnertime I was to understand its difference from the others. I sat with the other men, and after a while I broke the silence with a fatuous comment on the weather. To my surprise my remark elicited a response. Not from one, but all of them. It seemed they were as eager for exchange as I. But the theme of weather can be quickly exhausted and after a short while silence was bound to take over. I noticed one of the men open his mouth to speak, but he thought better of it. Then the man next to him nudged him.
‘Go on,’ he said. ‘Ask him.’
‘Ask me what?’ I asked, happy that a possible conversation was in the air.
‘You’re one of us, aren’t you?’ the nudged man whispered.
I was puzzled. I was certainly one of them in that I was a prisoner. But the man couldn’t have meant that. His ‘one of us’ pointed elsewhere. For a moment I thought that all my table companions were Jewish and they were cementing me into their tribe. But none of them looked Jewish. Indeed a couple of them sported crosses about their necks. I decided to play safe. ‘Of course I am,’ I said. ‘I’m a prisoner, like all of you.’
The men grinned. I’d clearly not understood. ‘Isn’t that what you meant?’ I said feebly.
Then one of them leant across the table. He was sitting opposite me and as he leant forward, his silver cross dangled over his plate.
‘We’re all child-killers,’ he whispered.
I thought I was going to cry. I am not a man much given to tears. Indeed I could count on less than one hand of fingers how many times I have wept. With tears I mean. I don’t count the lumps in my throat. There were tears when my father died and I think that was the last time. But now I felt the heat behind my eyes and I knew that the tears would fall and I didn’t care. I would be crying for young George Tilbury whom I did not kill. I would be crying for the company I was forced to keep, for the small shameful table that accommodated us like lepers, and the guards on hand to shield us from violence. I let the tears flow. I wanted to tell them that I was innocent but I feared they would laugh in my face. I felt dirty in their company and I shuddered at the thought that I would have to break bread with them for the rest of my life.
I left the table and asked to be taken back to my cell, pleading a raging headache and the need to be alone. The guard told me to wait, and I had to sit there while the tears streamed down my face.<
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‘It’s all right,’ the man with the cross said. ‘We all feel sorry sometimes. Then we forget about it. Good days. Bad days.’ He turned to the table. ‘Isn’t that right, men?’
They nodded their agreement and tucked into their pudding. They had enrolled me into their club. Whether I liked it or not, I was one of them. A barely paid-up member but with all the privileges of a pariah.
Once back in my cell, I dared to wonder what had become of me. And my grandmother came once more to my mind together with her melody and the smattering of words. And that memory brought me a strange peace and I wondered how I had ever contemplated sending my family away.
Despite the hostility that surrounded me, I steeled myself to my meal-time company and to my lonely trotting around the exercise yard. One morning, during the exercise period, I thought I might indulge in something more strenuous than my gentle running. I would stretch myself, touch my toes perhaps, or at least try. I am not by nature a physical man. I play no sports. I take walks occasionally, and sometimes I swim, or I used to in my days of freedom. But I have never seriously tested my body. I thought this might be a good time to remedy many years of neglect and I rather looked forward to it.
I found myself a place at the end of the yard. I was sure that it would not be crowded. My mere appearance in the yard sent the other men scattering. I faced the wall. I did not wish to face the men. I was a little nervous of my gymnastic abilities and I did not want to view their scorn. For a while I jogged on the spot, flexing my muscles and holding my grandmother’s song in my ear. Then I tried my first bend. Keeping my knees straight, I was not able to reach my toes. My fingertips achieved a mere mid-calf. But I was not discouraged. I would practise. I would give myself a target. By the end of the week I would caress my toes with ease. I took a deep breath and tried again. I fared no better on the second turn but the strain was less and I was encouraged. I tried a few more times and I heard a rustling behind me.
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