Thirty minutes later I was standing next to Sister Jenkins as she spoke to Mary’s mother on the telephone. Although I could only hear half of the conversation, it was enough. ‘Not there? And she hasn’t been in touch? Is there anywhere else she might have gone? No? Mrs Williams, what about Mary’s boyfriend? Where does
he
live?’ It was then that we learned that there was no boyfriend. He had been a piece of creative licence, a device for deflecting difficult questions.
‘She lied to us,’ said Sister Jenkins, raising her eyebrows and handing me the receiver. Reluctantly, I dialled St Thomas’s and asked to be put through to the Department of Psychological Medicine.
Maitland’s foremost concern was the welfare of the sleep-room patients. ‘They are all right, aren’t they? I take it nothing happened to them during the girl’s absence?’ He didn’t seem at all worried about Mary. When I pointed out that she had very probably left the hospital in the middle of the night and set off over the heath his only comment was, ‘Oh dear.’
At about two o’clock in the afternoon, the police arrived. Inspector Cooper was a big-boned man who wore a long black raincoat and a felt trilby hat. He was accompanied by an assistant who he introduced as Davis. Although I suggested that they would get much more information about Mary Williams from Sister Jenkins, they ignored my advice, and insisted on interviewing me. I was, as Cooper put it, ‘The man in charge.’ His questions were fairly straightforward. How long had Miss Williams been working at Wyldehope? Who saw her last? Did I have any theories that might account for her disappearance?
‘You’re a psychiatrist, Dr Richardson,’ said the inspector, ‘better qualified than most to judge a person’s state of mind.’ He invited me to speculate with a sweeping gesture.
‘She wasn’t very happy,’ I replied. ‘In fact, she only recently handed in her notice.’
‘Why wasn’t she happy? Do you have any idea?’
‘It’s a demanding job, working with the mentally ill.’
Cooper nodded sympathetically. ‘Do you think she might have been . . . perhaps . . . unwell herself?’
‘I never thought that. No.’
‘But what she did . . .’
‘It’s very irregular, certainly.’
At the end of our conversation I could tell that Cooper was unsatisfied, and possibly even a little irritated by the brevity of my answers. He had wanted more.
The next day, Cooper was back again, his black saloon leading a fleet of police vans up the drive. Constables and dogs disgorged onto the gravel, assembled into groups, and dispersed on the heath. Another party headed off towards the wetlands.
Two hours later, one of the nightingales came to inform me that Cooper had returned. He was waiting in the vestibule, standing next to the suit of armour, his hat positioned over his heart.
‘Dr Richardson.’
‘Inspector.’
‘We’ve found her.’ His expression was grave.
‘Where?’
‘In the reed beds.’
‘How dreadful.’
‘We’ll have to wait for the autopsy results, but it looks to me like she drowned.’
‘Is there any suspicion of . . .’
‘Foul play?’ He shook his head. ‘We found shreds of her uniform in the bushes. I’d say she scrambled down the bank, lost her bearings, and ran on to the marshes.’
‘Ran?’
‘She’d lost her shoes. There were footprints in the mud – widely spaced.’
‘I see.’
Cooper paused, studied the suit of armour for a few moments and then said, ‘She wasn’t well, was she, Dr Richardson?’
‘Evidently not.’
‘Just as I thought.’ He looked at me in such a way as to suggest that I might have been more forthcoming the previous day.
A journalist from a local newspaper telephoned later that week, but I refused to speak to him. When the story appeared, it was, thankfully, a sober piece. No attempt was made to sensationalize the facts. Mary’s parents had been anxious about her health for several months. They had said that she had become increasingly withdrawn and tearful. A sentence at the end of the article caught my attention and gave me pause for thought – a reference to the family being members of a Christian spiritualist congregation known as the ‘Monmouth Brotherhood’.
The funeral was a modest affair and only friends and family were invited. I composed a letter of condolence and arranged for a wreath to be sent. Maitland had expected some unpleasantness to follow: ‘They’ll say we should have noticed she was ill. They’ll say we should have prevented this from happening.’ But there were no complaints or demands for an inquiry.
For several weeks, the atmosphere in the hospital was subdued. Everyone made an effort to be more considerate, the incidence of small acts of kindness increased, and in the dining room conversations were conducted in a respectful whisper. Even Osborne refrained from his usual jokes and boasts. ‘She was a sweet person,’ he said with uncharacteristic feeling. ‘What a terrible waste, eh?’
When it was all over, and life was getting back to normal, Jane took my hand and said, ‘I’m sorry I didn’t talk to Mary. I really am. I feel so guilty now.’
‘There’s nothing you could have done,’ I replied, returning the pressure. ‘Not really.’
‘I still can’t believe it.’
Brushing her cheek with my knuckle, I said, ‘Don’t punish yourself. There’s no point.’
It was impossible for me to enter the sleep room without thinking of Mary. I would picture her, hunched close to the desk lamp, looking up to see who had arrived. Sometimes my recollection of her was so vivid that the nurse who had taken her place would be transformed by a ghostly superimposition. Memory and reality would elide and I would see Mary’s face, once again, hovering in the darkness.
She had raced up the basement stairs and exited the building without pausing to lock the door. She had scrambled down a steep bank, tearing her clothes and losing her shoes. In absolute darkness, she had attempted to cross the reed beds, running, blindly, until she had tripped and fallen into deep, freezing cold water. Every night, as I passed from wakefulness into the shallows of sleep, I asked myself the same question: what had Mary Williams been running away from?
11
Maitland handed me the referral letter as we were leaving his office. ‘I wonder if you would be so kind as to assess this gentleman for me?’ His manner was casual, almost careless, but I wasn’t fooled. He was keen to repair any damage done to our reputation by the Mary Williams affair. The provision of outpatient services at Wyldehope was long overdue, and if we offered them now this would not only improve our standing among local GPs but it would also mollify the Health Board.
Our new patient’s name was Edward Burgess. During the war he had spent four years as an army driver and had never reported sick. He then became an infantryman and was sent to the front line, where he and his comrades came under fire. Heavy shelling and mortar bombs precipitated a rapid mental collapse, and he was transported to an aid post on the Normandy beachhead. In due course he was evacuated to England and given various treatments. Although outwardly he appeared to improve, he was constantly on edge and prone to attacks of anxiety. He was allocated a desk job and after being demobbed he started a haulage business in Lowestoft that subsequently became very lucrative. Within a relatively short period of time he had become a well-respected member of a regional trade association and his contribution was recognized when he was voted its president. Yet he continued to be tormented by traumatic memories and his sleep was disturbed by vivid nightmares of the battlefield and all of its attendant horrors. He would wake up, several times a week, screaming and drenched with perspiration. Occasionally, he would be crippled by a loss of sensation in his legs. His nervous condition was placing a considerable strain on his marriage, and after years of resistance and procrastination he was finally persuaded by his wife to consult his GP.
I was waiting for Mr Burgess in one of the first-floor outpatient rooms, reading and rereading the referral letter. A nurse had been instructed to receive him in the vestibule, and I knew that he had arrived when I heard the heavy iron knocker sounding downstairs, three unhurried strikes that were amplified by the resonant space of the vestibule. Shortly after, there were footsteps in the corridor and Mr Burgess was ushered in. I recognized his face at once – the sloping brow, sunken eyes and lean features – but it took me a few moments to establish where, exactly, I had seen that grim, haunted visage before.
‘Doctor,’ he said, offering me his hand.
‘Mr Burgess.’ And then it came to me. ‘I believe we’ve already met.’
‘Briefly, yes. We shared a train compartment.’
I recalled my first, interminable journey to Wyldehope: the man sitting opposite, gripping his kneecaps.
Folk
’round here didn’t want a madhouse on their doorstep
. I had misunderstood him completely. Mr Burgess had not been expressing his own view but, rather, forewarning me of local hostility.
‘Please,’ I gestured, indicating an empty seat.
‘I’m still not sure whether I’ve done the right thing, coming here today.’
‘Why’s that?’
‘There are others who have far greater need of your help than me.’
‘Suffering is not easily quantified, Mr Burgess. I make no such distinctions.’
He considered my words, nodded, and sat down without removing his coat.
After some preliminary discussion, I encouraged him to talk about his wartime experiences, and discovered that when Burgess had joined the front line the shelling and mortar fire had lasted continuously for eight days. He was then ordered to cross a river and mount an attack on the enemy in a densely wooded forest.
‘My friends were falling all around me. I remember the noise, the cries and the explosions. I lost my voice, started to sob, and my legs stopped working. Two chaps got me back to an ambulance, but I was stunned, and just lay there, gibbering.’
‘You must have been very frightened.’
‘I’m not sure what I felt. In a way, it was like I wasn’t there.’ Later he sighed and said, ‘Doctor, I did a lot of talking when I got back to England. I was admitted to a hospital down in Surrey, where they made me go over what had happened every day. It didn’t do me any good then, and I don’t think it’ll do me any good now.’
After undertaking the assessment, I wasn’t at all sure how to proceed. Mr Burgess was not only disenchanted with talking cures, but also medication. The barbiturates his GP had prescribed were equally ineffective. I discussed our new patient with Maitland, who recommended ‘excitatory abreaction’, a treatment that he had developed during the war precisely for veterans like Mr Burgess, that is to say men suffering from nervous shock. I had, of course, read about this procedure; however, I had no direct experience of carrying it out myself. The opportunity had never arisen. Maitland detected my hesitancy, and said, ‘Perhaps I should conduct the session.’ I was grateful that he was willing to do so and eager to learn from example.
The following week, Mr Burgess returned. I introduced him to Maitland, who sat by his side and explained in layman’s terms how the treatment was going to work.
‘Your symptoms are caused by pent-up emotions, a blockage if you like, but a blockage that can be removed. To this end, we must get you into the right state of mind, and we’ll achieve this by giving you some ether to inhale. It’s quite harmless and you have no need to worry. You’ll feel light-headed and a little intoxicated, but the ether will also increase the clarity of your memories. It is essential for us to arouse strong feelings, particularly those associated with your experiences in Normandy, if the treatment is to succeed.’ Maitland asked Burgess to remove his jacket and his tie and to unfasten the top button of his shirt. He then poured some ether onto a mask and helped Burgess to put it on. ‘Breathe normally,’ said Maitland, resting a reassuring hand on the man’s shoulder. The strong, chemical smell filled the room, and I began to feel a dull ache behind my eyes. ‘Now,’ Maitland continued, ‘I want you to tell me about what transpired on the front line?’
Burgess told his story again. As he spoke, his delivery gathered momentum and he became more and more agitated. The words tumbled out of his mouth, his eyes darted around the room, and his index finger wound around a phantom trigger. At one point he began to panic and he tried to tear off his mask. Maitland took a firm hold of Burgess’s wrist, looked him in the eye, and barked, ‘No!’ Burgess seemed to come to his senses and fell back in his chair. ‘You are in the forest,’ Maitland continued, ‘there are loud detonations, screams and shouts. What do you see ahead of you, Mr Burgess? Tell me? What do you see?’
‘Jack!’ said Burgess, his eyes swelling out of their sockets in terror. He raised his hand and pointed. ‘I can see Jack. He’s standing there, right in front of me, and I can see straight through his head.’
‘How is that possible, Mr Burgess?’
‘There’s a hole, a big one, big enough to put your arm through – and a red mist in the air that tastes of iron – and his brains are on my face.’ Burgess was hyperventilating and his forehead was beaded with perspiration. ‘Harry turns round and he hasn’t got a chin any more, but he’s still making sounds, horrible sounds. He wants me to advance, but I can’t – my legs won’t move. Blood is dripping on me and when I look up I see soldiers hiding in the trees. But they aren’t hiding and they’re not really soldiers. What I’m seeing is parts of soldiers – arms, legs, torsos – and I think to myself, this isn’t happening. This can’t be happening.’
‘But it is happening,’ Maitland interjected.
‘No. It isn’t real.’
‘Oh, but it
is
real,’ Maitland insisted with stern authority. ‘And there is no escape.’
Burgess started to beat the air wildly and he pitched forward onto the floor. I immediately leapt to his assistance, but Maitland barred my way; he looked at me severely and shook his head. Burgess had curled up into a ball and tears were streaming down his cheeks. He was producing an infantile, mewling noise.
‘Bombs are exploding,’ Maitland intoned, exploiting the deeper registers of his voice with plangent theatricality, ‘and the ground beneath your feet is trembling and shaking.’ Burgess moaned and thrashed about from side to side, throwing gangly, uncoordinated punches and kicking without purpose. Maitland caught my attention and mimed a pinning down action. Our patient was enfeebled by a combination of ether and exhaustion and it was relatively easy to restrict his movements. ‘It does not end,’ Maitland continued. ‘The earth is convulsing and you are being showered with dirt and rock. You can smell burnt flesh, gunpowder. All around you, men are dead or dying.’