by Paul Murray
Electro-convulsive therapy – ECT – was at that time considered a breakthrough in the treatment of the mentally ill. By administering an electric shock directly to the brain, it seemed that patients could be temporarily jolted out of their psychoses. The shock made them forget everything; and as Gene commented, you can hardly be depressed about what you don’t remember. She was given thirty-two of these treatments over a single year. Every time she woke up not knowing who or where or what she was. Gradually, some of her memories would come back; generally, childhood first, then adolescence, then the middle past. But the months and years preceding the treatment did not. They were simply gone – impersonally stripped away, as if they had never happened, so that years later, when she came to write her autobiography (entitled, self-deprecatingly Self-Portrait), she had to rely on newspaper scrapbooks, letters, the testimony of friends.
Her life in the institution became one long grey anonymous blur, punctuated by the electric current. And in some ways it worked: she was pacified, docile; she knitted, made tables, scrubbed floors; she was happy to be relieved of the burden of her identity. But she remained in dread of the ECT sessions. She recounts one occasion, waking up in the usual state of utter limbo, and – although, of course, she did not know why – suddenly becoming so angry that she punched the nurse standing over her right in the jaw. In revenge, the nurse brought her to the ward where the hopeless cases were kept and left her there for the day. Gene herself was so far gone, however, that she mistook them for Method actors from the Stanislavsky school. She stood there and applauded, all day long.
It struck me that it might not be such a great shift, from Hollywood actress to mental patient. The hospital, like the studio, exercised strict controls on every aspect of your image, your routine, how you thought and spoke and acted; the patients were like actors who had stumbled too far into the script and could not find their way back out. Perhaps this was why Gene was released when she was: she knew how the system worked, she knew what they wanted from you: and she had what she called her model’s trick, the ability to change her look for whatever the scene demanded. Trader, outlaw, dust-bowl Salome, frontier girl, aristocrat, Arabian, Eurasian, Polynesian, Chinese – she knew how to remake herself to order; she could make it look, given time, as if nothing was wrong. And no one could tell, or at least no one troubled to look at what was still transpiring beneath the lovely exterior.
But I could tell; and perhaps that was why, as the days tightened around us like a noose, the garishness and the threadbare plots of those late films seemed curiously to fit my wintering world of curtailed greys and blacks; her sleepwalking performances seemed, somehow, to strike a chord in me, and even to provide a sad strain of company.
The night Frank and Droyd had their set-to it started to rain and did not stop. It was as if the belly of the sky had been cut open: the water thrashed against the window with such vehemence that the outside world was obliterated. The walls of the flat shook and groaned in the wind, and at one point the entire building seemed to pitch forward, sending junk skating off the shelves to the floor.
I was sitting in my dressing gown, trying to watch the television. The reception kept going: every few seconds snow crunched up on to the screen like a nervous tic. Frank was in his bedroom with Laura, working on his bookshelves, which for all the banging they were making seemed to be progressing very slowly; although as Frank had no books anyway, I suppose there was no real hurry. There was a knock at the door, and Droyd appeared from somewhere to answer it. Three cadaverous young men were standing in the hall.
Droyd, I should point out at this juncture, was a changed man from the boorish lout who had first moved in. One hesitates, obviously, to blow one’s own trumpet, or put oneself forward as a civilizing influence, but whatever the reason, it seemed he was thoroughly reformed. He scarcely played his music at all now; he would sit by the window or in front of the television peaceful as a lamb. In fact, one could almost say he was too quiet for a lad his age. He seemed to have abandoned his musical career, and also appeared to sweat more than was customary. But this was to split hairs. All I knew was that he hadn’t called me a shirtlifter or tried to steal my wallet in weeks.
Anyway, there we all were and Droyd called to me from the doorway that he was going out to play football if that was all right, and I replied that I didn’t see why not, not listening all that intently because one really had to concentrate if one wanted to hear the TV what with the reception, and that would have been that, had Frank not at that moment happened to come out and ask what was going on.
‘Jus’ goin out for a quick game of football,’ Droyd said, as a peal of thunder broke over the roof.
At first I thought Frank hadn’t heard him; he was giving the cadaverous youngsters a long, hard look. But then he said, ‘Y’ are not.’
Droyd muttered something to his pals, who sloped off down the hall, then turned back to Frank. ‘Wha?’ he said.
‘I don’t want you hangin round with them lads,’ Frank said.
‘Wha?’ Droyd said. ‘Why not?’
‘Cos they’re scumbags,’ Frank informed him.
‘That’s bollocks,’ Droyd said. ‘They’re me mates.’
‘I don’t care,’ Frank said. ‘They’re scumbags.’
‘Ah for fuck’s sake!’ Droyd was not happy with this verdict. ‘D’you expect me to just sit around all day on me fuckin Tobler? Am I not even allowed have mates now?’
‘Oh, let him go, Frank,’ I chipped in from the armchair. ‘It’s a sin to keep a growing lad cooped up in here all the time.’
‘He doesn’t mind bein cooped up when it suits him,’ Frank jibed. ‘He doesn’t mind sittin around on his hole eatin me food when he’s supposed to be out lookin for a job.’
Droyd assumed an attitude of wounded outrage. ‘I tried lookin for a job,’ he said. ‘I told you, it’s impossible to find one now, cos of all the foreigners. There’s no room for the Irish any more. Like I got on the bus the other day, an’ I couldn’t even sit down cos of all the refugees takin up the seats. What’s that about, when the Irish can’t get a seat on their own bus? That’s what we should be worryin about, ’f you ask me. ’F you ask me, they should send the lot of them back where they came from. Like maybe not the Chinkies from the takeaway, or them lads from down the kebab shop, but the rest –’
‘You can’t blame the foreigners for you sittin round doin nothin all day,’ Frank interrupted this polemic.
‘I don’t do nothin!’ Droyd protested. ‘I go out every day for me methadone, don’t I?’
‘Goin for your methadone’s not a proper job,’ Frank said.
‘Fuck’s sake!’ Droyd exclaimed wildly. ‘He doesn’t have a job either, why don’t you fuckin nag him for a change?’
‘That’s a completely different set of circumstances,’ I said. ‘That’s a matter of principle.’
‘Do you want to end up like Charlie?’ Frank demanded, not appearing to have heard this. ‘Is that what you want?’
‘Just fuckin leave off, would you?’ Droyd clutched his head manically. ‘You sound like me oul lad, fuckin naggin me and naggin me and all he ever done himself was go down the boozer and get locked –’
‘I’m not naggin you, I just don’t want you hangin round with them gearbags –’
‘You can’t tell me what to do!’ Droyd cut him off. ‘You’re not even me mate any more. You used to be a laugh, but now you’re just tryin to be posh, bein with that bird, an’ – an’ him,’ levelling a finger at me. ‘I mean it’s not his fault he’s like that. He was born that way. But you’re fuckin tryin to be like that, and all you’re doin is makin a laugh of yourself! Well I’m fuckin sick of it! It’s fuckin depressin in this place! I had more fun in the fuckin nick! So stick it up your bollocks, Frank!’
He didn’t come home that night, or the night after.
‘He’ll be back when he’s hungry,’ I said. ‘There’s no point getting in a state.’
‘But maybe someth
ing’s happened to him,’ Frank said anxiously, pressing his nose to the streaming glass.
‘What could possibly happen to him? He can take care of himself. He’s not a child, after all, I mean he’s been in prison, hasn’t he?’
Frank was not convinced: but to be truthful, I paid little heed to Droyd’s disappearance. I was busy with worries of my own, with fretting and remembering and framing unworkable plans; and now I woke up to find only one day remaining before the dinner party and Bel’s departure.
The rain was still beating down: it looked like a perfect day for sitting around in one’s armchair feeling blue. I had an appointment at the hospital to have my dressing changed, however, so I caught a bus into the city and sat glumly on the examining table as the doctor unwrapped me and prodded me with blunt instruments and asked me if it hurt. It didn’t: I was too lost in my own thoughts – of grey Russian skies and the wild endless steppes and how they compared to my dismal little oubliette in Bonetown. So when he said the wound had healed, it took a moment to register.
‘What?’ I said, snapping awake. ‘Healed?’
‘Won’t do any more good covering it up,’ he said. ‘Time to let the air at it. Hold on, let’s give you a look at yourself.’ He went to his drawer and fetched a hand-mirror and held it up in front of me: and there looking back at me was Charles Hythloday ‘Anything wrong?’
‘No, no, I just –’ I cleared my throat. ‘I seem to have aged rather.’
The doctor laughed, and told me that that would clear up in a couple of weeks, and he wrote out a prescription for various unguents and poultices. ‘Nice weather for ducks,’ he said as I left, nodding at the window.
It should have been something special, to feel the rain on my face again after three months of clammy bandages; it should have been an occasion, to be me again after all this time as a Nobody. But all I could think of was tomorrow, and Bel. As I came back down Thomas Street I was rehearsing the impassioned speeches I might make to her at the dinner; and some of them I found so moving that I didn’t notice at first that what I vaguely remembered as a short-cut down behind Christchurch had instead led me into a maze of dilapidated flats. By the time I realized, and stopped to take my bearings, I was already hopelessly lost.
I retraced my steps, but every time ended back in the same place. Everything looked alike in this rain, and there didn’t seem to be anyone around to ask directions. Then as I took in my surroundings properly I began to hope there was no one around; and I remembered the story Pongo McGurks told about getting lost in this locale and being set upon by street Arabs, and how they’d put a penknife to his throat and told him they were going to sell his internal organs to Dubai; and only that on the spur of the moment he’d thought to tell them that he was a Christian Scientist and for religious reasons wouldn’t be allowed to have the organs replaced, and persuaded them to make do with his Cartier watch and a couple of credit cards belonging to McGurks père, heaven knows what might have happened. Getting panicky, I picked a street at random, conjecturing that I might have more success this way than by deliberately trying to find my way out. But it quickly emerged that I wouldn’t, and I had just stopped again to tell myself that the situation was more serious than I had first thought when a bony hand shot out of the shadows and tugged me down an alleyway. Before I knew where I was I had been bundled to the ground, and a skinny figure in a hood bounced down on to my chest. ‘Gis your fuckin money,’ he hissed.
‘Don’t hurt me!’ I cried. ‘I’m Amish – no, wait, I’m – blast, what was it?’
‘The money,’ he snarled.
‘Right, right,’ I gabbled, fumbling for my wallet.
‘Hurry up,’ cuffing me roughly.
‘Ow!’ I wept, finally locating the damn wallet and passing it up to him – and then at the last second pulling it back. ‘Just a minute,’ I said.
‘Don’t try anythin,’ he warned.
I squinted at him through the rain. ‘Droyd?’ I said.
This gave him pause. ‘Yes?’ the figure said warily.
‘It’s me, you idiot!’ I expostulated, pushing his knee aside. Droyd appeared totally thrown by this. He sat up and blinked heavily. I realized that he had never seen me unbandaged before.
‘It’s Charles!’ I elaborated. ‘Charles!’
He put his hand over his forehead a moment. ‘Ah fuck,’ he said. Then, without further consultation, he turned tail down the alley.
The apartment was already in a state of upheaval when I eventually got back.
‘It’s the landlord!’ Laura shouted in my ear from the safety of the bathroom. ‘He called again about the rent!’
A loud crash issued from the next room. ‘I thought we paid the rent!’ I shouted back.
‘He says he’s going to evict you!’ Laura returned over the sound of the back coming off the dysmorphic sofa and a heartfelt ‘Fuckin – culchie – pig – bastard –’
‘What’s he doing in there?’ putting my hands over my ears.
‘Breaking things, maybe you shouldn’t mention about Droyd –’ She dropped her voice as Frank abruptly hove into view and demanded to know what about Droyd.
She was right: the news did little to calm matters.
‘Ah fuck Charlie!’ he wailed. ‘This is very bad, this is very bad.’
‘Well I know, I mean I have the luxury of my own face for all of five minutes and then somebody’s punching it –’
‘Where did he go? Did he say where he was goin?’
‘He was mugging me, neither of us had time to exchange pleasantries.’
‘But, like –’ he tugged his hair desperately. ‘How did he look?’
I considered this. ‘Very focused,’ I said. ‘Obviously concentrating on the job at hand, and –’
‘No, Charlie, did he look like – did he look like he was usin?’
I didn’t know quite what he was getting at, and before I could puzzle it out he had rushed off to his room, staggering back in a moment later with a green-and-white sock in his hand, to tell us that the money was gone.
Everything was gone, as a matter of fact; the apartment had been cleaned out. All of Frank’s savings; anything of value that could be carried away from the salvage; the blighter had even made off with my penny jar. It occurred to me that the extent of the theft was such that it must have been proceeding over some time. Only then did we realize that this month’s, last month’s, maybe even before then’s rent had never made it to the landlord. ‘Ah Jaysus,’ Frank gasped as if he had been winded, dropping into the chair.
The phone began to ring.
‘And now that I think of it, that story of his about the dog waylaying him on the way to the post office, and running off with the giro for the electricity? That was pretty unlikely too…’
The phone stopped ringing momentarily, then started up again.
Frank didn’t sleep at all that night; I knew this because I didn’t sleep either. I sat at the kitchen table in the candlelight and listened to him in the next room, barging restlessly through the furniture like one of those lumbering, outmoded-looking mammals, a pangolin or a three-toed sloth. My play was laid out before me, not that I held any hopes for it now. Lopakhin had won, Frederick and I both knew it. The vineyard’s reputation was in tatters. Lopakhin had photographed Frederick in what appeared to be a deep embrace with Babs and released it to the press. It was a total fabrication, of course: what had really happened was that Babs, believing Frederick to be gone for ever, had signed her half of the estate over to Lopakhin and then in a fit of despair thrown herself down the stairs; and she would almost certainly have died, had Frederick not happened to come back early from the cork-makers’ convention and found her lying there in the hall and saved her life by performing mouth-to-mouth on her. But this innocent act, in the hands of Lopakhin and his scurrilous friends in the newspapers, looked like it was going to be enough to ruin Frederick’s name, on the very day he was about to unveil his new vintage Burgundy to the notoriously conservative
French wine industry. The fiendishness of Lopakhin’s plot seemed to have shocked him into a kind of stupor; and now all he did all day was sit in his study, sticking wine labels in his scrapbook and playing backgammon with the Bosnians, as if marking time until the inevitable end. It was depressing; I don’t know why I didn’t just leave it and go to bed. Perhaps I hoped that by simply staying awake I could somehow hold the world as it was: keep it in that dark, rain-filled moment, and stop the fateful day from coming.
Laura’s pyjamaed silhouette appeared in the doorway. ‘What are you doing up?’ she said. ‘You should go to bed, there’s no point both of you worrying.’
‘I’m not worrying about Droyd,’ I scowled.
‘You’re not?’ she said, walking past me to the refrigerator.
‘If you ask me, we should be counting our blessings.’ I spoke sotto voce so Frank wouldn’t hear. ‘It takes a particularly low sort of a blackguard to steal a man’s penny jar.’
‘Are you worried about Bel?’ She opened the refrigerator door and a neat rectangle of light unfolded over her face like a blank page. I began to reply and stopped. Somehow it had slipped my mind how simply, how matter-of-factly lovely she was; and for an instant I was seized by the old hope that I could blink my eyes and transport the two of us to another, less contrary world, a world that could fit that kind of beauty. ‘You should be glad about it,’ she said, pouring a glass of lactose-free chocolate milk. ‘It’s the opportunity of a lifetime. Like she’s so into it, all that acting stuff.’
‘I am glad,’ I said unconvincingly, then trailed off and restarted suddenly: ‘I say – do you remember a girl in your class by the name of Kiddon? Jessica Kiddon?’