Bedlam Burning (11 page)

‘Problem?' she said.

‘My bags were left outside the gate. Now they're gone.'

‘Why on earth did you leave your bags outside the gate?' she said. ‘Obviously they were going to get stolen, weren't they?'

This was undoubtedly true, yet I couldn't tell whether I was being taunted or humoured, whether the nurse thought I was some pretentious big shot from the big smoke who deserved to be rooked by the humble locals, or whether she thought I myself was some sort
of sad bumpkin whose naivety was more to be pitied than blamed. I didn't feel inclined to justify myself by describing my misadventures with the porters and the padded cell, which presumably she already knew about.

Calmly I said, ‘If by any chance my stuff turns up, you'll let me know, won't you?'

‘Obviously,' she said.

I could tell she wasn't going to be a very warm or forthcoming source of information but she was all I had, so I asked her a couple of things that were on my mind.

‘Is Dr Crowe on duty tonight?'

The nurse looked at me as though I was a moron.

‘If I had that sort of information, and it's a very big if, then obviously I couldn't give it out to just anyone. Could I?'

‘Couldn't you?'

She shook her head regally.

I said, ‘And how can I get something to eat around here?'

I thought it was a question that left no room for mockery or condescension, but she looked at me again with the kind of sympathy usually reserved for the offensively feeble-minded, and replied, ‘This isn't a hotel, you know.'

‘I know,' I replied. Then as sarcastically as I could, I added, ‘It's a clinic for the insane. I can see that's a reason for there to be no room service, but I don't see that it's a reason for there to be no food.'

‘There's no need to raise your voice.'

I hadn't raised my voice at all. I'd been sarcastic in an intense, quiet sort of way, but I wasn't going to start arguing about the volume of my voice.

‘Obviously the kitchens are closed at this time of night,' the nurse said. ‘And the food store is well and truly locked. I'd like to help you, but obviously I can't.'

‘OK then, how do I get to the nearest pub or burger bar?'

She sneered at me. ‘To do that,' she said, ‘you'd have to go outside the clinic. And to do that you'd have to climb over the fence. And I don't think you want to do that, do you?'

‘Obviously not,' I said.

I set off for the writer's hut, for what was going to be my home for the foreseeable future. For a second I had a vague, unrealistic fantasy that my luggage might, by some act of magic, if not porterage, have
found its way there, but you know how it is with fantasies. However, there had been one or two additions to the place since I'd last been there. There was a basket of fruit, a vase of red carnations, and a bottle of champagne. They were arranged, perhaps like a still life, on a little kidney-shaped coffee table in front of the sofabed, and there was an envelope with my name on it. I opened it up to find a postcard from Alicia – a Jackson Pollock painting, black knotted strands against a beigy-grey background. The title was
Number 32
, and on the back were the words, ‘Welcome, Alicia'. I found this somewhat cheering, perhaps more cheering than it merited, but I was clutching at every cheerful straw I could find.

I did what I'm sure any real writer would have done in the circumstances: I opened up the bottle of champagne and drank it all. On an empty stomach, I was drunk by the second glass. I ate a couple of pieces of fruit so as not to feel like a complete degenerate, but they didn't do much to absorb the alcohol. By the time, not very much later, I'd finished the bottle, I was ready to fall into a heavy stupor. Which I did.

I spent the night asleep on the sofabed, fully dressed. I woke up feeling happier than I had any right to. The sleep had done me some good and I resolved that today would be better than yesterday; after all, how could it be worse? I would start again. I'd challenge Kincaid if I had to. I would take no crap from nurses or porters. I would get what I wanted. I would make sure I was given food and respect and perhaps my own key to the front gate and, most important of all, I would make contact with Alicia.

There was a knock on the door of the hut and it was gently opened by a slight, smiling young man who came in pushing a trolley. He was wearing a peculiar sort of uniform, a high-necked, short-sleeved tunic and loud patterned trousers. In other contexts he might have resembled a chef or a dentist, but in the circumstances, given his scrubbed, hygienic appearance, I assumed he was a male nurse.

‘Hello,' he said. ‘I'm Raymond. How are you this morning?'

‘Not so bad,' I said.

‘Sorry about the turbulence. I'm afraid the Kincaid Clinic hasn't been treating you very well, has it?'

At last. This was all I'd been looking for; a bit of sympathy, a hint of apology.

‘You can say that again,' I said.

‘Can I offer you tea, coffee, a boiled sweet?'

‘Coffee, thanks.'

He messed around with a pot and a milk jug and handed me a tiny plastic cup of dense, tepid coffee.

‘Care for a bag of salted peanuts with that?'

‘Why not?' I said.

He handed them over, and then he presented me with one of those little airline bags containing the odds and sods you might need during
a long flight: a comb, toothpaste, a towelette. It also contained a sleep mask and a pair of earphones, which seemed superfluous to requirements, but it was reassuring to be given anything at all.

‘It's not much,' he said, ‘but it's the least we can do. On behalf of all of us I'd like to welcome you on board and if there's anything I can do to make your flight more enjoyable, don't hesitate to ask.'

I thought he was overdoing the in-flight metaphor a bit, but when I put the coffee to my lips it certainly tasted as bad as anything served by an airline.

Then I heard a woman's voice say, ‘I wouldn't drink too much of that coffee if I were you,' and I turned to see Alicia, dressed in her doctorly whites, hornrims in place, clipboard tucked under her arm. She was standing behind Raymond and had placed a firm, restraining hand on his shoulder. He drooped and looked suitably cowed.

‘It probably isn't poisoned,' Alicia said, ‘but you can't be too careful. Raymond's improving all the time, but he does have relapses.'

The thick, bitter taste lingered in my mouth as I handed the cup of coffee back to Raymond. ‘Sorry, Dr Crowe,' he said, and a great weight of subjugation fell on him, and he looked as though he might throw himself at Alicia's feet.

‘Take your trolley with you on the way out, Raymond,' she said.

He went without another word, and I was left alone with Alicia.

‘God, I'm glad to see you,' I said.

‘Are you?'

‘Yes,' I said, disappointed. She might have said she was glad to see me too. The last time we'd been in this place there'd been kissing and massage, a great feeling of intimacy and possibility, but Alicia's manner told me there'd be none of that today. She was in professional mode, and although she said she was pleased I'd arrived safely, it didn't seem she was pleased in quite the way I wanted her to be. I also had a sense that she was looking me over and finding my crumpled, rain and mud-splattered appearance a bit of a let down. I tried telling her about my arrival, the gate, the porters, the padded cell, the loss of my luggage, but she wasn't at all concerned.

‘Teething problems,' she said dismissively.

‘I also lost the books I was planning to use as part of my teaching.'

She was even less interested. ‘You'll be fine,' she said. ‘Actually, you'll be addressing the patients in about five minutes' time in the
lecture theatre, telling them who you are, why you're here, what you're going to be doing with them and so on.'

‘I don't know if I'm quite ready for that.'

‘Don't worry. They're not monsters. And to make things easier, Dr Kincaid has written an opening address for you. All you have to do is read it out.'

She gave me a dozen densely typed sheets of paper.

‘Wouldn't it be better if I told them in my own words?'

‘No,' she said.

She probably had a point, since I had no idea what I was going to be doing with them.

‘You might decide to take a couple of minutes to familiarise yourself with the lecture before you read it out,' she said. ‘Or you might decide otherwise.'

I must have looked discouraged, and Alicia responded by rubbing her hand against my unshaven left cheek. It was a welcome gesture, although I suspected my stubble might only confirm the impression that I wasn't quite spruce enough for the forthcoming event. Then she saw the empty champagne bottle lying on the floor and said, perhaps disapprovingly, although I liked to think a little wistfully too, ‘I'd rather hoped we might share that.'

I'd hoped that too, but if she'd really wanted to share it with me then she should have said so on her card, and she might also have been there to welcome me. I tried not to show my irritation. After all, I wanted her to like me.

‘There'll be time for other bottles of champagne,' I said.

Her frown suggested she wasn't so sure about that.

‘Any chance of a coffee that Raymond hasn't adulterated?'

‘You want too much,' she said.

I didn't think that was true, but Alicia wasn't prepared to give me anything else.

‘Come on, you can cast your eye over Dr Kincaid's introduction as we walk to the lecture theatre.'

I wondered if I should protest that I needed a wash and a shave, but that all sounded too fussy. Grubby and sleep-creased as I was, I followed Alicia.

Walking and reading simultaneously is never easy, and I couldn't make much sense of the words on the pages. But I wasn't too worried since I suspected this first appearance of mine wouldn't be so much
about what I said as about the way I said it, and about the way I presented myself. I would need to appear confident, competent, writerly, like someone who knew what he was doing. This would undoubtedly have been easier to pull off in clothes that weren't streaked with rain and mud, and that I hadn't slept in, but I told myself these things might be used to my advantage, part of an image as an unworldly, rumpled artist. I was making the best of a bad job.

Minutes later I was in a room with the inmates of the Kincaid Clinic. The term ‘lecture theatre' seemed a little grandiose given the smallness and meanness of the room. It was no more than thirty feet square. One wall had windows that looked out on sturdy, ragged bushes, the three other walls were bare and had been emulsioned white, though not recently. I was standing behind an unsteady lectern, facing what I couldn't stop myself thinking of as an audience.

There were ten of them, ten patients; I had expected a greater number than that. There were six men and four women, a cross-section, though not a strictly representative one, in a variety of sizes, shapes and ages. They were all white-skinned except for two: a very young, agitated black woman, not much more than a girl really, who was bouncing up and down in her seat; and an older Indian woman sitting placidly beside her, a model of quiet and calm by comparison. These, I would later find out, were Carla and Sita.

I looked the group over, trying to make unthreatening eye contact, trying to make some sort of connection, although I didn't want to stare, didn't want to appear to be too curious about them. They, however, had no such inhibitions. They gawped at me with great interest and some anticipation, as though I was a cabaret act, there to entertain them, although nobody had told them quite what my act was. So they watched me expectantly, as if they thought I might be about to begin juggling or tap-dancing or singing unaccompanied blues ballads. I suspected I was going to disappoint them.

Alicia made introductions. ‘This is Gregory Collins, a much-praised author, who'll be working with us from now on. Gregory, I'd like you to meet Anders, Byron, Charles Manning, Raymond, Carla, Cook, Maureen, Sita, Charity and Max. Wake up, Max.'

Max was a plump, sagging, baggy-faced man who had nodded off in the back row. He seemed to be not so much asleep as in a drunken stupor, though naturally I assumed the patients didn't have access to drink. He woke up at the mention of his name and turned unfocused
eyes in my direction. He acknowledged me blearily, then looked away, and I was sure it would be no time at all before he was unconscious again.

There's nothing like someone reeling off a list of names to make my mind go completely blank, but I did my best to remember them all. I could attach names to two faces. Raymond, the deliverer of the suspect coffee, was sitting in the front row, just a few feet away from me, gazing up in needlessly respectful awe, and next to him, somewhat less awed, was Charity, the woman I'd briefly wrestled with on my first visit. She was clothed this time, in a hippie peasant smock, although given that her head, and now that I looked more closely, even her eyebrows, were shaved, there was still something very bare and exposed about her.

There were a couple of other shaved heads among the patients. Whether it was a style thing or some sort of medical precaution I didn't know, but even the sanest person can look pretty strange when their scalp and the contours of the skull are revealed. One such scalp belonged to the man introduced as Anders. He was perhaps a little old to be the classic skinhead but even without the exposed skull he would still have been terrifying. He looked menacing, like very bad news. He was vast and pink and his face was puckered up like a fleshy gargoyle. His demeanour seemed to say he'd kill me soon as look at me, and I did my very best not to stare at him, but I must have looked at him just a moment too long, since he curled his bottom lip outwards and downwards at me, and I could see that tattooed on the soft inner flesh were the words, ‘F*ck you'. The asterisk was strangely touching.