The Sleep Room (22 page)

Beyond the gates was a very typical example of an English country church, the most prominent feature of which was a high, square tower. The rain began to fall more heavily and I felt cold droplets landing on my skin. I quickened my pace and, after passing through a whitewashed porch, entered the nave. To my left was a velvet curtain that partially obscured a circle of hanging bell-ropes, and to my right an aisle leading to a raised altar. An excessive amount of devotional clutter made the interior look disordered.

I found myself facing what I at first thought to be a mural of some considerable age, but as I drew closer I realized that the images had not been painted on a wall, but an arch-shaped screen made of horizontal planks. The artist seemed to have chosen a hierarchical arrangement of figures, the King of Heaven hovering near the apex and the denizens of Hell gathered lower down. Attached to the bottom of the screen was a board covered in Gothic script. A typed information sheet mounted in a frame informed me that I was standing in front of
The Wenhaston Doom
, a fifteenth-century depiction of the Last Judgement.

My eye was drawn to a horde of demons, corralling naked sinners into the mouth of a giant fish with teeth the size of elephant tusks. A red devil, with an elongated nose and chin, had a naked woman slung over his back. He gripped her ankles, a foot held either side of his head, with sharp claws. The woman was hanging upside down, flailing helplessly, the seam of her hairless sex exposed between parted thighs.

Adjacent to this hideous spectacle was an Archangel armed with a mighty broadsword. He was being challenged by the largest of the demons, so large he might have been Satan himself – a black giant with piercing eyes and scalloped wings. His most grotesque feature was a malevolent second face extruding from his abdomen.

My gaze dropped to the Gothic script. I could decipher some words – ‘God’, ‘Rulers’, ‘Evyll’ – but it was mostly illegible.

As I looked at this curious world of pain and suffering, I marvelled at the extraordinary capacity of the human mind to summon up scenes of horror. I had no belief in psychoanalysis, but in one respect I was prepared to concede that Freud might be right: there are horrible things lurking in the unconscious, things released in dreams, or given illusory substance by the imbalanced chemistry of a sick brain. I shivered and left the church.

The remainder of the morning was spent cycling from village to village. Around midday, I stopped next to a reed bed where I ate a cheese and tomato sandwich and drank tea from a Thermos flask. It was there that I did my most profitable thinking. The flat expanse was peaceful and the prospect therapeutic. Afterwards, I followed signposts that directed me back towards the coast. The low cloud had settled into charcoal-grey layers, and when the hospital finally came into view it was already getting dark. I rolled the bicycle into Hartley’s shed and went straight to my rooms.

I had more or less resolved to leave Wyldehope; however, my day out (the fresh air, the landscape, and the wholesome pleasure of doing something physical for a change) had altered my perspective. I was still angry at Jane, but I wasn’t about to let her sordid behaviour ruin my career. The textbook was too important. It had to be finished before I could consider moving on. Then that mansion flat in Hampstead could still be mine. As before, the interior was easily envisaged: tall windows, the city in the distance, chintz settee. A woman, standing by the fire – not Jane, of course, but someone else – attractive, sophisticated, uninterested in mundane chatter; the daughter of a professor, perhaps, well-read and witty, able to appreciate my accomplishments; her copies of Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir would pave the floor. It was just a question of biding my time. In the interim, work would keep me occupied and I might even play some golf. According to Osborne, female companionship was always to be had in the clubhouse bar.

Dr Ian Todd

Highgate Hospital

Southwood Lane

London N6

1st July 1955

Dr Hugh Maitland

Department of Psychological Medicine

St Thomas’s Hospital

London SE1

Dear Dr Maitland,

Re: Miss Sarah Blake (d.o.b. 3. 1. 1933)

      No present address.

Thank you for your letter. I believe we have three patients currently in our care who meet your referral criteria; however, I would like to begin with Sarah Blake, who is perhaps the most problematic. She suffers from hebephrenia and her condition has been worsening steadily for eight months (logorrhoea with marked clang associations, inappropriate affect, impaired self-care, loss of appetite).

Her history is rather curious: Sarah’s mother, Dolores Blake, suffered from post-natal depression and her father, Mr Graham Blake, abandoned his wife and child when Sarah was only eighteen months old. Subsequently, Sarah and her mother received considerable financial help from Mrs Blake’s sister, Mrs Louise Clarke (the wife of a successful vintage car dealer).

Mrs Blake and Sarah moved from their tenement in Holloway to a comfortable mansion block on the Highgate–Dartmouth Park border, where Sarah attended a private school and was judged to be very able. During the war, Sarah and her mother moved to Hertfordshire for two years. At eleven, she developed a fascination with fire and got into trouble with the local police. She would empty out bins in public parks, douse the rubbish with paraffin, and set it alight with matches; however, the simple deterrent of the removal of all her privileges was enough to eradicate the problem.

When Sarah was fifteen, Mrs Blake became romantically involved with a younger man to whom she loaned a significant sum of money. The relationship ended and the ungrateful absconder made no attempt to repay his debt. A year or so later, Mrs Blake became attached to another ne’er do well, causing her sister to voice objections in no uncertain terms. An ensuing family row resulted in Mrs Clarke deciding to withdraw her financial support, and Sarah and her mother were forced to move back to Holloway. Sarah attended a new school which was very inferior and she was deeply unhappy. Once residual funds had been exhausted, Mrs Blake’s relationship was predictably short-lived and a second episode of depression followed.

Sarah left school and found employment in a shoe shop in the Nag’s Head area, and shortly after moved into a bedsit on the top floor. She became obsessed with occult subjects (astrology, Tarot cards, etc., etc) and sought the company of others who shared this interest. Apparently, there is a bookshop situated near the British Museum where enthusiasts congregate, and as soon as Sarah learned of this meeting place, she began to attend talks there.

At twenty, Sarah started to hear voices, which she attributed to discarnate entities, a view endorsed by those with whom she was associating. Her behaviour and choice of clothes became eccentric (her mother described it as ‘fancy dress’) and she lost her job; however, she continued to pay her rent. She was helped, so she says, by a wealthy gentleman with whom she had become acquainted at the occult bookshop. I have been unable to establish the precise nature of their relationship, but I am inclined to believe that his generosity was not unconditional. Sarah mentioned having acute ‘stomach pains’ and heavy menses, which I suspect were miscarriages. She did not consult a doctor.

Sarah continued to live in this fashion until last year, when, on the 15th of September, she almost succeeded in burning down the building in which she lived. She was seen sprinkling paraffin on the stairs by another tenant, who immediately ran to get help. The fire station is very close and the blaze was quickly brought under control. Nobody was injured. When asked why she did this, she replied, ‘I like to watch fires. The flames are exciting.’

When I first saw Sarah, she was very ill, but still able to give an account of herself. Mrs Blake (now severely depressed and an in-patient at the Royal Northern) gave a corroborative interview shortly after Sarah came to Highgate. Sarah’s mental state deteriorated rapidly soon after her admission. She is now rarely lucid, speaks gibberish and spends much of her time drawing concentric circles which she calls ‘horoscopes’. Last month she cut her wrist and daubed arcane symbols on a wall with her own blood. It was most distressing for the nurses.

I feel that we have now done all that we can for Sarah and she needs to be transferred to a facility offering a more radical approach. If you would like to arrange an assessment, then please contact me through my secretary, Mrs Hampden (telephone: HIG 3562).

It is regrettable that a child who showed much early promise has been brought so low by her condition. If you were to achieve only modest treatment gains, I would consider that an impressive accomplishment.

Yours sincerely,

Ian Todd

Dr Ian Todd

MB BS, DPM

15

Michael Chapman and I had not discussed the extraordinary occurrences of Christmas night. From the moment Osborne had divulged their secret, I had become entirely preoccupied with Jane and Maitland’s affair and had thought of little else; however, after confronting Jane and making my decision to stay at Wyldehope, I found myself thinking more and more about those strange events: the power cut, the slamming doors and the half-seen face behind the advancing flame. I wanted to sit down with Chapman and compare my own recollections with his, but he was becoming increasingly paranoid, and I did not want to aggravate his condition by interrogating him. When he was at his worst, I would find him hiding behind an armchair in the recreation room or trying to decipher scratch marks on the table. If his mood improved, he could still manage a game of chess, although he was listless and frequently complained of headaches. A problem not helped, I am sure, by the development of a curious obsession.

I discovered Chapman sitting on his bed, writing furiously in a notebook and surrounded by discarded pages. He was so absorbed he failed to notice my arrival. I looked over his shoulder and saw what appeared to be a complex algebraic problem, but when I looked closer I realized that he was, in fact, repeating a single proposition:

‘What’s that?’ I asked.

Chapman covered the page with his hand. ‘Nothing,’ he replied. I saw no profit in pursuing the matter and left him alone.

A few hours later he was more amenable. He didn’t appear tense and he was writing at a more leisurely rate. I sat beside him, ran my finger beneath a single instance of several iterations, and said, in a tone suggesting casual interest, ‘Some kind of logical problem, is it?’

Chapman did not look up. ‘Russell’s paradox,’ he replied.

‘Would that be Bertrand Russell?’

He nodded.

Like Maitland, the famous philosopher was always on the wireless. They had both featured on the same programme only a few months earlier.

‘Did you ever run into him when you were at Trinity?’ I asked.

‘His voice annoyed me,’ said Chapman.

I pointed at the symbols again. ‘Russell’s paradox. Would you care to explain?’

‘It demonstrates that Cantor’s naive set theory leads to a contradiction.’

‘I’m sorry, Michael. That doesn’t mean very much to me.’

‘You must have heard of the barber paradox, surely?’

‘No. I can’t say I have.’

Chapman chewed the end of his pencil and said, ‘A barber’s job is to shave all the men in a village who do not shave themselves. But this means that he can’t shave himself, because he can only shave people who don’t shave themselves. Do you see?’ I thought about it for a moment and shook my head. ‘All right,’ Chapman continued, ‘it’s a little like saying, “This sentence is false.” If the sentence is true, then the sentence is false – which means that what it states is true. A sentence can’t be true and false at the same time. But in this case . . .’ His expression suddenly changed and he looked worried.

‘Why are you troubling yourself with all this, Michael? It doesn’t seem to be doing you any good.’

‘It’s important to know what is true. What one can trust.’

‘The evidence of your senses might be a reasonable place to start?’

‘But a straight stick looks crooked in water.’ He employed his tongue to make a knocking noise on the roof of his mouth. ‘
Cogito Ergo Sum
.’

‘I think, therefore I am?’

‘The only certainty. As for the rest . . .’ He struck the page with his pencil. ‘Full of contradictions. Paradoxes are like fault-lines: they show where the weaknesses are, the shoddy workmanship, the dodgy joins that can so easily fall apart.’

I did not know how to respond.

This conversation turned out to be one of the last I would ever have with Chapman. Soon after, he became agitated and impossible to talk to. ‘What have I done?’ and ‘Will I be punished?’ These were the only things he said, and he would stand for hours by the window, gripping the bars and whimpering.

Chapman’s deteriorating health might have been due, at least in part, to his new medication. I raised the subject with Maitland, but he was insistent that Chapman should stay on the same drug and even suggested that the dosage should be increased. ‘With these compounds,’ said Maitland, ‘a period of apparent decline often precedes full recovery. The Boston trials show this. Mr Chapman must stick to his treatment plan. It is in his best interests to do so.’