Bedlam Burning (28 page)

I was walking in the grounds when I heard a voice, unmistakably Anders', though he sounded softer, more constrained, more intimate than usual and he was involved in describing something or other.

‘Yes,' I heard him say, ‘there's a Spanish galleon, and a double-decker bus, and a rhinoceros, and a map of Italy, or maybe just a boot, and there's a rolled leg of pork, and waves on a beach, and a dressing table, and oh fuck, that does feel good.'

You might have guessed it was someone casting their eyes over more Rorschach blots, but that seemed an unlikely activity to be taking place out of doors. It also sounded like Anders was enjoying it far too much. I was curious to see what he was up to, and although he wasn't someone you wanted to disturb or intrude on, after listening to more of his monologue, ‘An armchair, a dolphin, a lightbulb, a pygmy, a lung, a trumpet, and oh Jesus …' I decided to take a look. Fortunately I could hide behind another rhododendron bush and peer through its foliage.

At first I could see only a part of Anders, the lower half, but that was in some ways enough. He was lying on his back and his trousers and underpants were down, leaving him naked from waist to ankle. I could see chunky, hirsute legs, scarred knees and also his penis, chunky certainly, though not hirsute or scarred, and it was being nonchalantly fondled by a fully clothed Sita.

I experienced a number of contradictory, ambiguous emotions. The first one was surprise. I had never watched people having any sort of sex before, and it felt horribly intrusive. But at the same time I felt almost pleased, as though I'd discovered or proved something. It wasn't by any stretch of the imagination an orgy, but it was definitely something.

Anders continued to talk, slowly, in this meandering yet precise, free-associative way, and Sita stroked his penis in a complementary though not identical rhythm. ‘A pheasant, a meringue, a sledgehammer, an ear, a Christmas tree,' he said, and then in quite a different tone added, ‘Christ, Sita, you're doing a bloody good job down there.'

I moved as surreptitiously as I could, to a position where I could see Anders' face. I wanted to see what he was looking at. The back of his head was resting on the grass and his eyes were staring straight ahead of him, up into the sky, into space, at nothing. But then I saw the sky was full of clouds that a lively breeze was ruffling and remoulding. Anders was describing what he saw in them. ‘A castle, a pillow, a loaf of bread, an isthmus …' I studied the clouds and I could see what he meant, sort of. Yes, there was definitely one formation in the sky that looked quite like a castle, a loaf of bread and so on. I probably wouldn't have ‘seen' these things if I hadn't heard Anders naming them, but they were definitely, in some sense of the word, visible; in some sense of the phrase, there to be seen. What, if anything, they had to do with sex I had no idea.

Anders continued to speak, though he now was talking more quickly and with less precision, ‘A helicopter, a petrol pump, and a, you know, a fish, an octopus, one of those … oh Christ, I'm coming …' which he duly did, after which he slid into a deep silence. Sita let go of his penis and wiped her hand on the grass; not very flattering to a man, I'd have thought.

I retreated. My tread was tentative, since I assumed the postorgasmic Anders would be rather more alert than the pre-orgasmic one, and I imagined he might have specially violent impulses towards peeping Toms. I was so busy trying to creep away that I didn't see Charles Manning until I'd nearly walked into him. I was startled. He was not.

‘Sometimes it's good to watch, isn't it?' he said.

‘What?'

‘The human imagination is a deep, fecund source of erotic images, but sometimes it isn't enough.'

‘What? I said again.

‘Personally,' he continued, ‘I'd say I've lived a fairly full sensual life. It's certainly provided the fodder for a goodly amount of self-abuse. And yet there's nothing like a bit of fresh, real-life stimulus for recharging the erotic batteries. One's own fantasies are necessarily limited. To catch a glimpse of someone else's reality is jolly arousing, even if Anders isn't precisely the man I would most like to have striding through my erotic reveries.'

I stopped myself saying ‘what' again. Instead I said, ‘Well, Charles, if there are all these orgies of yours going on there must be no end of visual stimulation for you.'

He looked at me rather less pleasantly than usual. ‘Oh you're smart, aren't you? I know what you're trying to do. You're trying to make me believe I'm seeing things. You think I'm making it up. You think I didn't see Sita giving Anders a hand job, is that it?'

Maybe he didn't say ‘hand job'. I think it wasn't a term we used much in those days.

‘No, Charles,' I said. ‘I'm not saying you're hallucinating. I saw the same thing you did – Sita and Anders, doing God knows what exactly. But I've never seen any of these orgies you talk about.'

‘And only seeing is believing?'

‘Well in a way, yes.'

‘Although sometimes you can't believe your eyes. And sometimes your eyes deceive you.'

‘Well yes,' I agreed.

‘Tell me, Gregory, what do you do when you masturbate?' he enquired.

‘What?' I knew exactly what he'd said but it seemed best to pretend I hadn't understood.

‘I'm not enquiring about physical technique,' he said. ‘I'm interested in whether you run, as it were, dirty films in the cinema of your imagination. And are you the star of these films? A supporting actor? A spear-carrier? And are these mental films reruns or remakes or sequels of events you've actually participated in, or are they scenarios you'd
like
to participate in, or scenarios you couldn't
possibly
participate in, but enjoy thinking about, nevertheless? And who's in the cast? Is it Marilyn Monroe and Sophia Loren and Julie
Ege, or is it the girl from the corner shop or your old gym mistress or the Queen?'

‘I don't really want to share my masturbatory fantasies with you, Charles,' I said. ‘It's nothing personal.'

Charles Manning looked understanding but troubled.

‘You see, I'm wondering whether it's bad to have these fantasies,' he said, ‘to run these pictures through my mind. I'm frightened they might be ruining all the good work Kincaidian Therapy is doing for me.'

I couldn't tell whether he was really concerned about this or not, but I thought it was best to say, ‘I don't know. You should ask Dr Kincaid.'

‘Or Dr Crowe,' he said slyly.

That offended me. I didn't want him discussing his masturbatory fantasies with Alicia, and he obviously knew that; yet at the same time I realised I was being absurd. Alicia was a grown woman, a doctor, a professional; she was hardly going to be harmed by answering a few questions about sex from one of her patients.

‘Yes, why don't you,' I said.

‘And what if I find I'm having masturbatory fantasies concerning Dr Crowe herself, or about Dr Crowe and you, or Dr Crowe and you and Dr Kincaid and Sita and Anders all together in a kind of sexual snarl-up?'

‘Then I think you should go and have a cold shower,' I said primly.

‘And tell me,' he said, ‘what role do you think visualisation plays in coitus?'

‘Oh please, Charles,' I said, but that didn't stop him either.

‘I've never been sure of the morality of picturing one person while you're having sex with another. It seems at best distasteful, at worst an act of betrayal. But supposing your current partner doesn't arouse you sufficiently? What if you have trouble sustaining an erection? You need to stay hard in order to please the one you're with, and so you begin to think of someone else or perhaps of many others. Your arousal is renewed. The erection remains, the act of coition is satisfactory, you've pleased your partner. Who's to say it's such a bad thing?'

‘Not me,' I said dismissively. I was too young to consider this an issue worth thinking about.

‘Then there's the other side,' Charles Manning said, ‘when you
need to slow yourself down, when you're in danger of coming too soon. No point trying to visualise in those circumstances. I did briefly try fantasising about women I didn't find attractive, but it never worked. Once the blood is up, all women are attractive, all women are arousing. Some people suggest doing mathematical problems or thinking about sports results, but again those methods never worked for me either. You want to know what works for me?'

‘Not really,' I said, though I knew it would do no good.

‘Reciting poetry,' Charles Manning said. ‘To myself. In my own head, not aloud obviously, that would undoubtedly spoil the moment. But if I turn my mind to Kipling or Vachel Lindsay or T. S. Eliot, they slow me down very effectively indeed.'

I. A. Richards, or at least Byron, might have wanted to ask Charles Manning if he ever visualised poetic images as he recited, whether he saw boots or the Congo or ash on an old man's sleeve; and whether it was the images or the words themselves that delayed him. But I didn't ask that question. I simply said, ‘Surely there aren't many occasions when you need to sustain yourself or slow yourself down, are there, Charles? You told me you weren't here for the sex.'

‘There are all too many,' he said sadly. ‘All too many.'

‘Maybe you should write about it,' I suggested.

‘Oh no, Gregory. Some things are far too precious to write about. Now, if you'll forgive me, I'll retire to my room so I can pollute myself before the memory of Anders and Sita loses some of its sharpness.'

I had no desire to detain him. Returning to my hut I found the memory of seeing Anders and Sita anything but erotic. I wasn't disgusted or offended, but I had the feeling that I'd seen something I shouldn't have seen, that I didn't want to see. I liked to think I'd watched them not out of any voyeuristic impulse, but out of simple curiosity. I'd heard Anders' voice and I'd wanted to see what he was up to. I wanted to know what was going on in the clinic. Was that so odd or so terrible?

One thing apparently going on was a general, steady undermining of the principles of Kincaidian Therapy. Kincaid was trying to keep out the images but they kept creeping right back in, via sawdust or flames, drugs or clouds or masturbatory fantasies. The subversive in me was quite content with this. You wouldn't want the head of the clinic to be able to wield absolute power, would you? At the same
time, if Kincaidian Therapy was to be given a chance, the patients should surely be trying to stick to its tenets. Sometimes it was almost as if they wanted to stay sick. I wondered why they could possibly want that.

All too often as I tell the story of my time at the Kincaid Clinic I'm struck by how slow and stupid I seem to have been. I don't think I should necessarily have known from the beginning exactly what was going on around me, since parts of it remain fairly inscrutable to me even now, but sometimes it does seem reprehensible that I didn't worry more about how little I knew. Such discoveries as I made were forced on me rather than sought out. For instance …

Alicia and I were with Kincaid in his office where he was about to conduct a session with Carla. She came into the office, sort of skipped, sort of stumbled, tripped over the edge of a non-existent carpet, then made an attempt to sit down on a chair, but she missed the seat by a foot or two and performed a pratfall, like a physical comedian of the old, unfunny school. Kincaid and Alicia took no notice of the pantomime. Having picked herself up, Carla managed to take up a position on the edge of the chair, but her knees flapped back and forth as she opened and closed her legs, her fists clenched and unclenched, and her features now adopted a series of extreme, rapidly changing expressions, as if she were engaged in exercises designed to limber up the facial muscles.

‘Hello, Carla,' Kincaid said to her.

Carla abruptly straightened in her seat as though invisible strings had yanked her upright. ‘Och, hello, doctor,' she said in a thick, foolish, unconvincing Scottish accent. I was already finding this spectacle both profoundly irritating and profoundly embarrassing. I'd seen enough of Carla around the place to know she was an habitually silly girl, but in the close confines of Kincaid's office the effect was much more concentrated and much less tolerable.

‘Do you know what day it is today, Carla?' Kincaid asked her.

‘Christmas?' Carla asked all dewy-eyed.

‘No, Carla, I think you know it's not Christmas.'

‘Then is it Mother's Day? Or St Swithin's? Or Fat Tuesday? Or Maundy Thursday? Or the seventh Sunday in Michaelmas? Don't tell me, doctor, I really want to guess this one.'

‘It's Monday,' Kincaid said.

‘No,' Carla said sweetly and sadly, ‘I'd never have got that.'

‘Do you know who this is, Carla?' and he nodded towards me.

Carla tossed back her head, and her face was gripped by an agony of concentration. ‘Is it George Harrison, the quiet one?'

That was near enough for me, and considering that when Kincaid then asked her who the prime minister of England was and she said Zsa Zsa Gabor, it was perhaps surprisingly close. Kincaid pointed at the clock on the wall, a plain, robust circular face with big, clear numbers that showed eleven thirty.

‘Now, Carla,' said Kincaid, ‘if I asked you what the time was, I think you'd tell me it was midnight or seven o'clock, or a quarter to two, wouldn't you?'

Carla stared at him in amazement, an expression that was replaced a moment later by a sneer.

‘And if I raised three fingers,' Kincaid continued, ‘and asked you how many I was holding up, you'd tell me it was one or two or four fingers or perhaps even seventeen, wouldn't you? And if I asked you to give me the name of a country, any country, you'd say umbrella or apple or fuselage or any word in the dictionary except one that was the name of a country. I'm right, aren't I? I'm not misrepresenting you here, am I, Carla?'