Maitland was even the subject of a programme on the wireless, broadcast very late, in which a panel of distinguished guests discussed his life and work. All of the speakers were very positive, except a philosopher, who was critical of Maitland’s ‘crude’ reductionism. ‘There is more to a human being,’ said the philosopher in a querulous voice which suggested considerable age, ‘than chemicals.’ Nothing was said about Wyldehope, although Maitland’s advocacy of deep-sleep therapy was periodically mentioned and applauded.
My association with Maitland was extremely advantageous. I enjoyed a kind of vicarious celebrity. The obituaries were still fresh in people’s minds and when I went for job interviews I was treated with an inordinate amount of respect. Within days I was offered a locum position back at the Royal Free Hospital, which I accepted. I then found a room to rent in Dartmouth Park. Fortunately, my new landlady was very different from my old one in Kentish Town. She mixed with local artists and wandered around the house in a silk kimono smoking black cheroots. Her greatest virtue was complete indifference to my comings and goings.
Just after Easter, I received a letter from Jane. She had made some enquiries and had discovered my whereabouts. It was a relatively brief communication. She had been thinking of me and wanted to talk. ‘Could we go for a drink, I wonder? I’m working at UCH now. Perhaps we could meet in town?’ I didn’t reply. In fact, I crushed the letter into a tight ball and threw it into the bin.
I had persuaded myself that our relationship was well and truly over and that I no longer cared. Yet on Sunday afternoons, as I walked around Hampstead, I would often look up at the high mansion-block windows and remember the fantasy I had had of our future life together. I would reflect on what might have been.
Clearly, I had a lot of thinking to do – and not just about Jane.
On that terrible Christmas night, when Chapman and I had been standing together on the second-floor landing at Wyldehope, he had stiffened, stared into the darkness at the far end of the hallway and said, ‘It’s coming.’
I can remember how I experienced his use of the word ‘it’ as particularly chilling, because the word suggested the approach of something impersonal and unknown.
In psychoanalysis, the term ‘id’ is used to describe the deep unconscious. A classicist would also be familiar with the term as the Latin word for ‘it’. Freud described the id as an inaccessible chaos, a cauldron full of seething excitations; a primitive part of the mind, constantly seeking to bring about the satisfaction of its instinctual needs. Thus, when Chapman had said ‘It’s coming’ the language he employed had had a double meaning and at some level I must have registered this.
I had read through the referral letters of the sleep-room patients only once; however, I could remember, quite clearly, every detail of each case, and one didn’t need to be so very insightful to identify certain correspondences between the histories of these women and the activities of the poltergeist. For example, the theft of the wedding rings and the fire-setting. Moreover, the women in the sleep room had in common the frustration of that most fundamental of female instinctual needs: the need to have and care for a child. Most of them had lost a baby, one way or another, through removal, termination or miscarriage, and those that hadn’t lost a baby demonstrated strong maternal feelings. Marian Powell had cherished her rag doll, ‘Little Marian’, and for Elizabeth Mason, the prospect of marriage and raising a family was, evidently, everything.
Their minds had come together, in their long, communal sleep, and the ‘whole’ that resulted from this merging had become something much greater than the sum of its parts. The poltergeist was a vehicle for the fulfilment of wishes, a dream that had escaped from the confines of their collective unconscious.
Had they meant to die with Maitland? Probably not. Nothing that they did was intentional, as such. The unconscious is entirely irrational. It does not plan ahead or consider consequences.
And what of Marian Powell’s psychic powers? As a child, she had been investigated by representatives from the Society for Psychical Research. Had her abilities been reawakened and amplified by membership of this unique community of souls? Did she generate energies that could be used to levitate books, slam doors, release the fastenings of a straitjacket, and, in the final instance, prevent my entry into the sleep room? These were fanciful speculations, but I could think of no better way to account for the facts.
I asked myself many questions, but one in particular came back to me, again and again, to disturb my quiet moments. What was Maitland
really
doing at Wyldehope? I had long since abandoned the naive notion that he was simply trying to develop new treatments. Naturally, I had ideas, notions, but nothing that could be substantiated, nothing that I could actually prove. This unsatisfactory state of affairs might have lasted indefinitely had I not, quite literally, bumped into my old girlfriend, Sheila, in a smoky pub in Soho.
‘James?’ she said, wiping a damp hand on her skirt. We had both spilled our drinks as we collided.
‘Sheila?’
‘Good God, it is you.’ She raised herself up on her toes and kissed me on the lips. A boisterous group of people in the corner cheered. ‘Take no notice,’ she added, and then asked me what I was doing in London. I gave her a much-abbreviated account of my experiences at Wyldehope (omitting any mention of the poltergeist) and explained how the fire had necessitated my return.
Sheila’s face showed signs of recognition. ‘I think I read about it in the newspapers. You were
there
. Heavens. Some people died, didn’t they?’
‘Six patients and the medical director.’
‘What caused the fire?’
‘An electrical fault.’ I did not want to dwell on Wyldehope and was anxious to change the subject. ‘How about you? What have you been up to?’
She extended her fingers and showed me a diamond ring that flashed when she tilted it beneath the light. ‘I’m engaged.’
‘That was quick. Who’s the lucky man?’
‘His name is Nigel. Nigel Reeves. He produces comedy programmes on the wireless. He did a few episodes of
The Goons
last year.’ She seemed bashfully reticent for a moment, before adding: ‘He took me to a party on Tuesday and Peter Sellers was there.’
‘Was it fun?’
‘Fantastic fun.’
‘Did you meet Nigel at the BBC?’
‘No. In a jazz club, which is mad, considering that our offices are on the same floor. He’s always looking for new talent.’
Our lives couldn’t have been more different since we had chosen to go our separate ways. I remembered Sheila jumping on a bus and waving through the window. My recollections of saying ‘goodbye’ to her on the Charing Cross Road seemed as distant as childhood.
‘You must be very happy,’ I remarked.
‘I am.’ She smiled and looked at me askance. ‘Anybody special in your life?’
‘No. Not really. I became very fond of a nurse at Wyldehope but it didn’t work out. You know how it is.’
This admission aroused in Sheila a disproportionate volume of pity. She was insistent that I ‘absolutely must’ meet a friend of hers who was also single and who Sheila was certain I would like. I found myself being cajoled into accepting a dinner invitation. We were to be a foursome: Sheila and Nigel, the friend and myself.
‘Are you sure this is wise?’ I asked Sheila. ‘I mean, do you really want your fiancé and me sitting on opposite sides of the same table?’
Sheila laughed. ‘Oh, that won’t be a problem. I’ll tell him who you are and he won’t mind a bit. He isn’t the jealous type.’ Clearly, they were a good match.
A week later I went to dinner at Nigel’s town house in Kensington. He was a good ten years older than Sheila and clearly in receipt of some form of private income. He wore loose, casual clothes, had the yellow fingers of a chain-smoker, and drank large quantities of wine without showing the least sign of inebriation. The slim, red-haired girl who stood to greet me as I entered the sitting room was Sheila’s friend, Tosca Summerfield. Her exotic name provided the first topic of conversation. Apparently she had been conceived in Milan after her newly married mother and father had visited the opera house.
It turned out to be a very pleasant evening. Nigel Reeves was a splendid host and Tosca and I got along famously. She was a friendly if somewhat excitable young woman who worked in a publishing house and harboured aspirations to be a writer. We swapped telephone numbers and started seeing each other soon after. Subsequently, I saw quite a lot of Sheila and Nigel, and for a brief period of time I found myself escorting Tosca to parties where most of the people present seemed to either make programmes for the BBC or write for a newspaper.
It was at one of these gatherings that I met a journalist called Leonard Grimwood. He was a Marxist and writing a highly critical book on modern America. When he discovered that I was a psychiatrist, he started talking about the CIA. ‘It looks like they’re trying to develop a procedure that will enable them to erase human memories and I have good reason to believe that some very senior members of the medical establishment have been helping them. All
hush-hush
, of course, but you’d be surprised at how bad they are at keeping secrets.’ He noticed that his pipe had gone out and paused to relight it. ‘Have you been to the United States?’
‘No,’ I replied.
‘The whole of American culture is obsessed with mind control and brainwashing. I blame the ad men. They’ve made everyone paranoid.’
Maitland had believed that narcosis and ECT might work by destroying unpleasant memories. I remembered turning the pages of Marian Powell’s file: the CIA memorandum, covered in rubber stamp marks and scrawled annotations.
‘Have you ever come across the name of Dr Walter Rosenberg?’ I asked.
Grimwood looked startled. ‘Yes, I have. He’s based in New York. Do you know him?’
‘I met him once.’
‘A slippery customer if ever there was one. He’s been sending patients home with their memories wiped clean for years. And he’s a lot wealthier than he should be. I know some lawyers in Queens: young Turks, eager to stir things up a little. They specialize in civil rights and have become increasingly interested in mental health lately. They’ve been trying to put together a case against Rosenberg for some time – some kind of negligence claim – but they haven’t got very far, as yet.’ Grimwood narrowed his eyes in such a way as to suggest that this lack of progress might be attributable to some kind of sinister interference. He produced a vast amount of smoke from his pipe and continued to stare at me from within a thick, brownish cloud.
‘What about Maitland?’ I asked, ‘Dr Hugh Maitland?’
‘Well, of course I’ve heard of him. He died quite recently, didn’t he?’
‘Yes. I worked with him.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘We weren’t close. Maitland knew Rosenberg very well. In fact, I met Rosenberg when he was visiting Maitland.’
‘Maitland was British.’
‘Does that matter?’
‘It does to me. My book is about America.’
22
In the autumn, Tosca was offered a job in Paris which she accepted. I had never really expected our affair to last for very long. Even so, I was saddened by her departure. She had been good for me, a welcome distraction. Of course, the fact that I judged the success of our relationship in those terms shows that we had never really progressed beyond a superficial acquaintance. Our love-making had been efficient rather than passionate. There had never been any rapt embraces or trembling exhalations that might, at any moment, have carried an admission of love.
When my contract expired at the Royal Free I applied for a position as senior registrar to Professor Aubrey Lewis at the Institute of Psychiatry. He was the inaugural chair and a man of considerable importance. Unlike Maitland, who was leonine and seductively charming, Lewis was bald and pedantic. An unflattering moustache gave him the appearance of a retired sergeant major. The interview was arduous but I managed to impress Lewis and drub some stiff competition. Once again, my prior association with Maitland proved useful.
On the face of it, one day was much like the next. I saw patients, undertook research and did a little lecturing; however, the Institute was an interesting place to be. One felt at the centre of things.
My relationship with Lewis was good, but lacking in warmth, because he was not given to showing his emotions. Indeed, he was probably the least demonstrative person I have ever met. Some of my colleagues found this trait discomfiting, but as far as I was concerned Lewis’s reserve was a refreshing and welcome contrast to Maitland’s intensity. Travelling from Dartmouth Park to South London every day soon became tiresome, so I gave my bohemian landlady notice of my imminent departure, packed my bags, and moved to Herne Hill.
One Saturday, I was walking past the forecourt of a car showroom in Camberwell when I noticed a rather eye-catching, second-hand Wolseley. It had lustrous black bodywork and silver appurtenances that reflected radiant spears of morning sunlight. I opened one of the offside doors and inspected the leather upholstery, pile carpet, and walnut trim.
Why not?
I thought.
I can afford it.
When the spring came, I got into the habit of going for long drives every weekend. I would usually head for the coast, stopping for a few hours in Brighton, Margate, or Southend, but occasionally I would travel north, into Hertfordshire and beyond. On one of these jaunts I went as far as Cambridge. I arrived much earlier than I had expected and, while strolling along Silver Street, it occurred to me that I could probably get to Wyldehope by way of Ipswich in just over two hours. The idea took hold and began to acquire a compulsive quality. I experienced what I can only describe as a ‘strong urge’ to see Dunwich Heath again, to hear the sound of waves breaking on shingle, to stand in front of the ruined hospital and to remember. Perhaps at the root of this impulse was the untrustworthy supposition that returning to Wyldehope would be therapeutic. For over a year, my actual life had felt vaguely unreal and lacking in substance, whereas my memories of the sleep room, Maitland, Sister Jenkins, Chapman and Jane were extremely vivid. A symbolic and final encounter with the past seemed to offer the prospect of release. I would satisfy some obscure and wholly imagined propitiatory requirement and be able to move forward. The flat monochrome of the world would swell into three dimensions and colour would gradually bleed back into its surfaces.