by Richard Gwyn
We park the car and approach the site of the hospital with some trepidation, after contemplating a sign:
The main building is an imposing Edwardian structure, built at a time, following the 1890 Lunacy Act, when the mentally ill were beginning to be seen as more than merely an aberration, or embarrassment to humanity. The place contained a theatre, in an attempt to provide some creative outlet for its inmates, who were also encouraged in other pursuits, such as painting and sculpture. There was a bakery, a tailor, a printshop, and a home farm with extensive vegetable gardens: the place was designed to be self-sufficient. The location, too, was selected on therapeutic grounds, presenting a frontal view of the Black Mountains, so that those housed here might gaze gladly at the glories of nature.
The hospital has something of a reputation in these parts, having been adopted by aficionados of the paranormal as an ideal site for communing with the spirits of the dead – especially the insane dead. It had also been cited in the local press as the venue for satanic rituals, raves or – better still – a combination of these two activities. Despite its impressive location, it seems to me a gloomy, desolate place, but Alice claims to like it, without saying why. When I press her, she says it somehow feels familiar.
We walk around the hospital grounds, but do not wish to risk asbestos poisoning by exploring further, so continue up to the woods above the hospital, following a track to Pwll-y-wrach, the witches’ pool. We do not venture far, as we have left the wounded dog in the car, and Alice worries that he may get lonely. I, on the other hand, am concerned that he may chew the leather upholstery. On our return, however, we find him fast asleep on the driver’s seat.
Afterwards we drop in at a café on the site of an old mill in the village centre. The place is filled with a mix of hikers and locals. Busy for a Thursday, says the lady at the counter, smiling, as if she knows me, and assuming that I knew it was a Thursday. Perhaps she does know me. I’m terrible with faces and cannot keep track of the days of the week. We eat heartily and drink several cups of tea.
Driving back to Llys Rhosyn, I cannot decide whether the sensation of being with Alice is closer to that of new lovers, or of old friends. Since we are neither, and these are quite distinct relationships, I must be very confused. But I am, nevertheless, happy, in a vague and amorphous way, as we speed along the road, the verdant, undulating terrain a soothing backdrop in the soft light of evening.
11
Tired. So tired.
That night, after Alice has retired to bed, I spend several hours drifting through the library like a somnambulist, dipping into books, unthinkingly obeying the directive left for me by my aunt, that one book leads to another, immersing myself in the footnotes to one work, seeking out the book to which the footnote referred (which, remarkably, was almost always to be found within the library) only to be led elsewhere by a reference or a footnote in that second volume, and so on, before wandering out onto the patio and listening to the call of an especially persistent owl. I make tea and swallow a sleeping pill, the only reaction to which is an even greater detachment from any identifiable sense of self. There is a soft pattering of paws and the dog nudges the library door aside, limps in, and lays himself down on the sheepskin rug, offering a few salutary thumps of his tail on the parquet floor to acknowledge my presence. I continue working at the desk, scribbling notes and attempting to make sense of the inchoate mass of words before me.
After an hour or so the dog departs, and climbs the stairs again to be with his mistress, as though he had merely been checking up on me, on her instructions. I return to the patio and stretch out on a garden lounger. It is chilly but I am too tired to move. Then, from nearby, comes a gentle crunching sound, followed by a kind of strangled cough and a profuse expectoration. The crunching or chomping grows louder as the creature making the sound draws nearer. I cannot imagine what it is: a scrabbling, as though claws were being scraped across gravel or pebbles, then the crunching once again, and the spitting. I raise myself very slowly in the lounger and turn my head in the direction of the disturbance, to see a badger, immersed in his breakfast of snails, head down, muzzle hovering above the dirt, front paws positioning the catch before his snout, tongue darting out to snaffle up the delicacy, whereupon the crunching starts up once more.
My gaze shifts towards the swell of woods on the hillside facing me in the mist of dawn. It is here, eventually, that I drift off, my brain thick with fatigue and the merciless, circular, repetitive conjecture that sleeplessness promotes in its victims, waking an eternity later to the sound of movement, at the far end of the patio. A tartan blanket has been placed over me. Rising blearily from the lounger, I can see Alice pottering inside the greenhouse. I prepare coffee, and call to her through the back door. She arrives a few minutes later, a wicker basket in one hand. She seems flushed and excited. Her shadow follows, tail wagging.
I ask her what she has been up to.
Planting seeds, she says. She has found several unopened packets in the shed. Carrots, spinach, corn, radishes, beans, she says. All sorts. Of course, inside the greenhouse the tomato plants have all died. But outside, she adds, the weed is coming along nicely.
Weed? I ask.
Marijuana, says Alice, in a slow and exaggerated enunciation, while emptying the contents of a folded newspaper onto the kitchen table. Your aunt was quite an enthusiast. She grew loads of it. Or allowed it to grow, should I say. Oh, and if you’re thinking of going anywhere today, I’ll come with you. I want to get some courgette seeds.
Aunt Megan smoked weed? I ask, incredulous, fingering the dry, rank debris of leaves and buds and stalks she has deposited on the table. It smells of cat’s pee.
Sure, she says. A regular pixie pot-head. Didn’t you know?
I confess that I did not. I have not had cause to go into the greenhouse since moving to Llys Rhosyn. It is something – like so many other things – that I have vaguely planned on sorting out, without much enthusiasm, at some point in the future. And I’m not sure I would have identified a cannabis plant from any other kind, given my general ignorance of horticulture.
So, I say, you’re thinking of doing a bit of gardening? That would be handy. I’m more of a supermarket man myself.
Alice talks not only of populating the greenhouse, but of planting rows of runner beans, of potatoes and onions in the vegetable garden, and I do not question her motives, nor even regard it as evidence that she has decided to move in permanently. Besides, did I really mind if she did?
As for the weed, she says, you might like to try some. It could help you sleep, you know. And if you don’t like smoking I’ll make some cookies. Or tincture; you could have it in your tea. Or bedtime cocoa. She giggles.
Oh I used to smoke, I say, not wishing to appear entirely … what exactly – uncool, stuffy, antediluvian? But it’s been a while.
I do not take Alice’s suggestion seriously. While she is welcome to smoke herself silly on Aunt Megan’s pot if she so intends, I am not enthused by the prospect of moronic lethargy that I associate with cannabis smoking, on top of my chronic insomnia. However, none of this discussion has any immediate consequence, as around midday, returning from a solitary walk in the woods, Alice declares that she is feeling unwell, and indeed she does look pale and drawn, as though coming down with something. She takes to her bed and when, in the course of the afternoon, I go up to visit her with some camomile tea, she is feverish, with an almost luminous sheen to her skin and dark circles below her eyes.
Alice seems suddenly small and vulnerable, lying in the middle of the large bed. She sits up and takes a sip of water, which brings on a coughing fit. The cough sounds dry and cold, while flecks of perspiration appear on her temples and upper lip. The sight of her looking so unwell, and the sound of her cough, make me feel unaccountably emotional, and I sit down on the bed beside her and place my hand around hers. I stay for a while, holding her hand, which is warm and sticky. She clutches my own hand tightly, raises it to her lips and kisses it,
then lets it drop onto the sheet.
I offer to get her some analgesics from town, to treat the fever, as there is nothing in the house, along with some groceries and the seeds that Alice requested that morning.
Before I leave, I take her temperature. It is a hundred and two Fahrenheit.
Are you sure you don’t want me to call a doctor? Megan used to swear by one of the doctors in Crickhowell, Dr. Homfray. He’s a good sort. I’ve been to him myself. I had indeed, over the year, procured prescriptions for a range of sleeping pills, none of which worked, but which I consumed randomly in the hope of some kind of breakthrough, which, however, never occurred.
That really won’t be necessary. Sorry, I’m a lousy patient. No fun at all. I just want to sleep. And I don’t want to see any doctors.
I visit the supermarket in Abergavenny and buy a lot of fruit: apricots, strawberries and grapes, even a melon. I reckon that Alice probably likes melon. I also stop off at a nursery and buy some seeds, although I don’t know anything about seeds, and the enthusiastic and thickly side-burned proprietor contrives to sell me a number of late-flowering perennials, as he thinks they will ‘cheer me up at the end of summer’. Since I have no answer to that proposition, and since summer has barely begun – and who knows what one will be feeling a few months down the line – I let him have his way and return to the car laden down with trays of shrubs and pots with small plants in them, as well as a few packets of seeds. I imagine Alice might find a use for them when she is better. It’s a fine evening again, and I pass no cars on the way home, which is just as well, as I slip into that dangerous semi-comatose state familiar to any sleep-deprived driver, and once I even drop off, albeit momentarily, to awaken with a gasp as the car swerves towards the side of the road. The hedges have been cut back along a section of the route, and the fresh clippings add to the scent of early summer, and when I turn into the drive I am awake and almost spry, and even forgetful of the singular detail that there is now a sick young woman in one of the upstairs rooms of my house.
As I near Llys Rhosyn, with the sun in my eyes, I slow down to negotiate the uneven surface of the drive. Around half way along, the track veers to the left and the house comes into view. Standing in front of it, dressed not in her pyjamas now, but an antique knee-length white shift, is Alice. I am taken by surprise and sound the horn in greeting, but she does not raise a hand to return the salutation, nor make any sign of recognition at all. She seems rooted to the spot, and there is something odd about her posture, about the way she is standing there, slouching as though propped up by invisible hands, or else suspended by strings, with her arms slightly raised at her sides, the palms outstretched in tremulous supplication. As I draw close, in her strange pose before the house, dressed in that ghostly white nightshirt in the close warmth of afternoon, she presents an alarming and incongruous sight. I park the car hurriedly on the verge.
Alice is rigid, perspiring and trembling, apparently oblivious to where she is or what she is doing. Her breathing comes erratically in sudden sharp intakes of breath and exhalation, as though she were gasping for air. The black rings beneath her eyes seem larger and more pronounced than at midday, and the eyes themselves are open; terrified, but unseeing.
12
I carry Alice indoors, lay her down on the sofa in the living room and cover her with a blanket. She is sweating and has begun twisting her head from side to side in irregular spasms. However, once she has settled, and I have arranged cushions beneath her head, her eyes, which have been staring, wild and unfocused, close abruptly, and she remains still, her mouth clenched shut and her body tense. It occurs to me she may need water, and I return to the kitchen for a jug. I watch the contours of her face as she appears to do battle with private phantoms, remote behind her flesh. She makes small twitching movements and sighs explode softly on her lips. Several times over she performs a complex little mime in which her eyebrows rise, her forehead furrows, the corners of her mouth droop, her head again twists from side to side a few times, she bites her lip and wrinkles her nose. She lifts a hand to scratch vigorously at her temple, then lets it drop, leaving a pink welt high on the cheek. She sucks in air and noisily blows out again. Whatever is going on in the watery depths of her soul is manifesting itself as a shadow play to which I am a silent spectator.
Her face, I think, is dancing.
I pour out half a cupful of water, lift the back of Alice’s head with one hand, and hold the cup to her mouth with the other. She opens her eyes, looks momentarily confused, and then relaxes, slowly sipping the water, her gaze settling on me. When she has drunk enough, she lets out a little sigh and pushes the cup away. She smiles weakly, and says ‘tired now’. She turns onto her side and within seconds is asleep.
I stay in the living room for a while, pulling up a chair close to the sofa, but Alice is out for the count, so I go into the library to find a book, thinking I will return and read by her side. I consider calling a doctor, but then remember Alice’s aversion to the idea when I suggested it earlier. Besides, I reason, if she is now sleeping, the worst might be over. But on returning to Alice’s bedside with a slim leather-bound book – Jean de La Fontaine’s The Pleasant Founteine of Knowledge (1413) – I find (perhaps not surprisingly, given my choice of reading matter) that I cannot concentrate, and acknowledge with a yawn that although very tired, I am nonetheless too agitated to sleep. I calculate that I have slept a total of ten hours in the past four days and nights, that is, in the past ninety-six hours. Call it ten per cent. It should be between twenty-five and forty per cent, depending on one’s metabolism. Folk wisdom agrees on eight hours, around thirty-three per cent. I have been managing less than a third of that. And not just for the past four days: for the past fourteen months, from the time, at least, that I moved into Llys Rhosyn. Perhaps I really should see a sleep specialist, as Dr. Homfray suggested on my last visit to his surgery in Crickhowell.
As I sit there, making futile calculations, attempting a personal mathematics of insomnia, with the ancient book of poems neglected on my lap, the image of Alice, desolate and trembling in front of the house, her arms outstretched as if in crucifixion, keeps returning to my mind’s eye, and after a while I make my way to the kitchen, keen to occupy myself with something, anything to dispel this disturbing vision. I prepare a soup with all the vegetables I can find, thinking that when Alice wakes up she might appreciate simple and nutritious food. I put the soup on a low heat and step outside into the garden. A late afternoon breeze stirs the blossom on the cherry tree, and I wander over to the gate that leads to Morgan’s field.
The blue tent is still there, of course. It shocks me that only three days have passed since Alice’s arrival. But both she and the tent are now fixed on the landscape, external and interior. I count the days again. I feel confused. Time is not moving at the right pace. If yesterday was Thursday, as the lady in the tea shop informed me, it must have been on Tuesday evening that Alice had walked, unannounced and imperious, into my kitchen. On Wednesday we visited Henry Vaughan’s grave, and ran down the grey and white dog on our way home. That night Alice moved in and surprised me in the library in the small hours. Thursday, I paid a visit to Morgan and then we drove to Talgarth. Today, Friday, she has fallen ill. I have known her for seventy-two hours, and yet it already seems impossible that I have not known her always.
With no particular motive in mind, I move towards the tent, again drawn in by the intensity and almost hypnotic quality of its colour. I reach down for the zip and, crouching, peer inside. It is empty, as expected. I creep forward on all fours, attentive to any signs of the weirdness that had wrought such an effect on my previous visit; but rather than any sense of being at sea, I feel the onset of an immense fatigue. Recent events have excited me, breaking my routine and conjuring the remarkable presence of Alice, and I am not prepared for this sudden and complete exhaustion. The consoling azure light, fading to white, provokes a weariness that spreads through my limbs, too powerful to resist, and within secon
ds I am asleep.
13
When I wake, I have no idea where I am. I have been dreaming wild and terrifying dreams and I am sweating profusely. I think I see a figure, or figures, moving darkly outside the tent, but something, or rather some voice – who knows, perhaps the voice of the tent itself – informs me they are the last shadows of my dream escaping back into oblivion. I don’t quite believe this disembodied voice, but neither do I question it, at least not straightaway, and there is a malignancy on the air, a sense of dread that has settled in the pit of my stomach. I scramble outside, remembering with a flutter of panic that I have left Alice lying on the sofa, alone.
Indoors, the house is dark and gloomy. I rush through to the living room. Although, rationally, there is little chance of Alice having come to any harm, I do not feel at that moment as though we are lodged within an entirely rational place. I avoid switching on the lamp for fear of waking her, and then I notice, in the half-light, that her eyes are open, and she is watching me.
Hullo, I say. Have you been awake for long?
No. Just woke up. I thought I was inside the tent. I had a very confusing dream. Her voice drifts into silence.
What am I doing down here? she asks, eventually.
Do you remember nothing?
Nothing much.
I tell her that I found her standing outside the house in an old nightshirt, that I brought her in here. I do not go into details about her odd behaviour and she doesn’t ask questions. I surmise that it is not the first time she has suffered a fit of this kind. Her fever has subsided and she is no longer trembling. She reaches for the water jug.