Bedlam Burning (34 page)

The time between the contents of the book being finalised and the finished product appearing was a difficult one for all of us. Once I'd told the patients that Bob Burns had instructed me to send no more of their work they stopped writing immediately and completely. I thought this was strange, and probably not very healthy. They'd written quite happily when there had been no suggestion of publication, so why should they stop simply because this anthology was now full; an anthology which, however you looked at it, contained only a fraction of their output? I tried to encourage them, said how much I wanted to read more of their work, but it was no good. I didn't have that kind of power over them any more.

I expressed my worries to Alicia but she didn't share them. She said it was fine for creative artists to remain fallow after they'd finished a project, to wait for the creative reservoir to fill up again, just like I was doing. I was alarmed that the patients were now being described as ‘creative artists' but I thought maybe she was right. Perhaps they'd exhausted themselves, burned themselves out. And even if she was wrong there was no way I could force them. Besides, I'd read my Sam Beckett. I knew that silence was every bit as articulate as utterance, that the act of non-writing was every bit as expressive as the act of writing, arguably more so; it just left me at a bit of a loose end, that was all, looser than ever. I was left doing a lot of thumb-twiddling, as indeed were the patients.

Released from the time-consuming burden of writing they were now free to display some of the more colourful symptoms of madness. Raymond had time to come up with a whole new look involving blue sparkling eye-shadow, ox-blood lipstick and strings of pearls, and he flapped around advising us to fasten our seat belts because it was going to be a bumpy ride. Charity's dancing was as
nude as ever but now more intense and spiritual, she claimed. She also said she saw the face of Buddha in a plate of stew that Cook had concocted. Cook meanwhile had decided that the world was like a crossword, an anagram, a code, a secret language, like a metaphor, like a simile.

Byron had started wearing a cape and had a tendency to wander around, looking tortured and poetic, while Anders could often be found punching trees or kicking the boundary wall. Sometimes I wished he'd kick Carla. She'd become completely unbearable, flopping and tumbling about the place, and shouting gibberish. Maureen tended her garden but it didn't bring her much joy. Various things were now fully grown in her flowerbeds but she didn't know which were weeds and which were flowers. She said she wished she'd just made a football pitch instead. Even Sita looked less calm than usual, though she remained as silent as ever.

I came across Byron and Max on the tennis court one day, playing tennis not only without a net, but also without racquets and balls. They were just miming a series of serves, lobs and volleys, and this seemed a pretty harmless activity to me, but Kincaid got terribly worked up about it. The way he saw it, Byron and Max were pretending to see things that weren't there, creating, as it were, invisible images, which were even worse than visible ones. You could see why he'd want to put a stop to it. And then there was the penis incident.

Even the most heterosexual of men, even the ones who've led sheltered, modest lives that don't involve many visits to gyms or nude beaches, still find they see a lot of men's penises. You don't have to go out of your way, don't have to seek them out or stand and stare at them, but you still see them. And this is to say nothing of all those penises in art and pornography which, again, even the most discreet of us can't help seeing once in a while. But however familiar you were with penises you would still surely have been taken aback by the small brown-paper package I found outside the door of my hut one morning.

There was an experiment done in the early seventies where some feminist educator went around finding groups of women and taking photographs of their pussies and then showing them the pictures. The big discovery was that most of these women couldn't identify themselves. They didn't know what their own pussies looked like,
and this said lots about repression and patriarchy, about not being in touch with their own bodies and so forth. I suppose there was a good point being made here. Certainly I think most men know what their own penis looks like. On the other hand, if some man came along offering to take photographs of your penis I don't think you'd be terribly likely to call him an educator.

So I opened the package and found it contained what looked for all the world like a severed human penis, and although I didn't in the ordinary sense of the word ‘recognise' it, I was fairly sure I knew whose it was, or had been. I felt certain this was Charles Manning's penis. I'd never given any thought to what his penis might look like and it was certainly no longer in its natural state, yet this thing in the package fitted the bill. Besides, surely Charles Manning was the only man in the clinic likely to have done such a thing.

I must have had all these thoughts in a rapid, compressed fashion since the instant I saw the severed penis, I passed out. Passing out is such a useful narrative device. It's a jump cut, a leap forward, a way of getting things done without having to live through them or go into detail. Not in this case. When I came to I was still in my hut, the severed penis was still in front of me and, not wanting to pass out again, I ran from the hut screaming for help, looking for a doctor.

I found Alicia. I was too frantic to speak coherently. I gestured towards the hut. I may possibly have shouted something about penises and severing, but it wouldn't have been very lucid. Alicia went into the hut, saw the penis still lying on the desk and she screamed horribly. She thought it was mine. I still can't really believe she thought that. True, she had never actually seen my penis in broad daylight, but surely she knew me better than that. Did I look like the sort of man who'd chop off his own penis? And if I'd actually done it, surely I'd have been covered in blood. Perhaps she wasn't thinking rationally. But at least she didn't pass out. She stayed and she looked more carefully and she employed her medical training. Not only was she able to work out that the penis wasn't mine, she was able to see that it wasn't human at all. It was only a dog's penis. She was greatly relieved, as was I when she told me.

We never discovered who'd put it outside my door, and we never found the dog, poor mutt. We didn't even try. It was just something to be shrugged off, something that could have been much worse. And
yet it seemed to me things had come to a very peculiar pass when you were relieved to find a dog's penis left outside your door.

And then there was the day that Max got drunker than I'd ever seen him, and climbed up on to the parapet that edged the clinic's roof. By the time I knew what was happening, everyone from the clinic, Alicia and Kincaid included, had gathered at ground level and were staring up at him. He was tiptoeing along the edge, knees bending, arms flailing, like a man on a tightrope.

‘I hope the silly fucker falls and breaks his neck,' Anders said, not unpredictably.

‘Perhaps that's what he's trying to do,' Maureen said, and called out to Max, ‘Don't do it. Don't jump.'

‘He's not going to jump,' Byron said. ‘It's just a cry for help.'

I had no idea whether Max really intended to throw himself off, but he looked so drunk and uncoordinated I thought he might easily do it by accident.

‘If the daft cunt wants help all he's got to do is ask for it. He's in a hospital,' said Anders.

I thought this was a genuinely perceptive remark, though it went unacknowledged, not least by Alicia and Kincaid. The nurse arrived carrying a bed sheet and tried to find takers who would each grab a corner to hold it out like a fireman's blanket. I reckoned this was pretty sensible and well-organised of her, but finding three others who shared her good sense proved impossible.

‘Maybe he's sleepwalking,' somebody said.

‘Maybe he's having a psychotic episode.'

I didn't think there was any need for these various, ingenious explanations for Max's behaviour.

‘He's just drunk,' I said, not with any great sense of urgency or triumph, but I found my analysis didn't go down too well.

‘Just because he's drunk doesn't mean he isn't sleepwalking.'

‘Just because he's drunk doesn't mean he isn't making a cry for help.'

I wasn't going to argue with anyone, but it seemed to me that walking on roofs or parapets is just one of those things people do when they're drunk, something they'd never dream of doing when sober. Nevertheless, I thought we ought to try and get him down.

‘You should go up there,' Raymond said. He meant me. ‘You're good with words. You can talk him down.'

I hoped this remark would sink into the general clutter of unhelpful suggestions and be ignored, but I found it was being taken seriously, being discussed as a damn good idea, and before long it was accepted as the obvious, not to say the only course of action, and I was being touted as the one man who could bring Max down safely. I didn't find this collective confidence remotely flattering and I didn't really think I was likely to get the job done, but when I saw that even Alicia was joining in the consensus, I went with the flow, or at least with the line of least resistance. I hoped I wouldn't actually have to go out on the roof. There was a dormer window not far from the parapet. It would be possible to go up there, stick my head out the window and talk to Max from a position of safety.

‘How are you, Max?' I asked when I got up there.

‘I'm fine,' he said. ‘I'm drunk.'

‘Why don't you come in, Max?'

‘Why don't
you
come out?'

‘Because I'm scared I might fall off. Just like I'm scared
you
might fall off.'

‘I won't fall off,' he said with blurry confidence. ‘There's a minor deity who protects the truly pissed and incapable. Come out here.'

‘But I'm sober so I won't be protected.'

‘That can be changed,' he said, and he waved a chunky half-bottle of whisky at me. ‘Come on, I hate drinking alone.'

The prospect of a good slug of whisky was actually quite attractive, though by no means attractive enough to draw me out on to the parapet.

‘I've got a rotten head for heights,' I said.

‘Oh yes, any excuse not to drink with me,' Max said. ‘It's all right, I understand. Why would anybody want to drink with me? I know I'm a bore. Nobody loves me. Nobody would care if I fell off this roof.'

‘Not true,' I said. ‘Look at all the people down there. They care.'

‘No they don't. They're hoping I'll fall off. It'd make their day.'

‘Well,
I
care, Max,' I said.

‘Then come out here and have a drink with me.'

I know that drunks are manipulative and self-serving, but knowing it doesn't really make any difference. I felt I had to go out there with him. Awkwardly, warily, I hauled myself out of the window and on to the parapet. I thought I heard a gasp from the onlookers but that
might have been my imagination. I had no intention of doing anything gasp-inducing. I didn't even stand up. I planted my bum on the parapet and sat with my legs dangling into space, my hands gripping the edge as tightly as they could.

‘You've earned a drink,' said Max and he lurched over and handed me the whisky.

It took quite an effort to prise my fingers loose from the edge of the parapet to take the whisky bottle, but I was in need of courage, of having my nerves steadied. The first mouthful didn't do much, so I took another.

‘Things look very different from up here, don't they?' Max said.

Well, yes. They looked terrifying. The ground appeared to be a million miles away. ‘Different,' I said, ‘but not necessarily better.'

‘Everything looks better after you've remodelled your consciousness a little,' Max said.

Obviously I hadn't done enough remodelling. The faces that looked up at us were hard to read but I knew Max was right; as a spectacle, as a drama, this episode was going to be far more satisfying to them if one or both of us tumbled from the roof. I was determined not to give anyone that satisfaction. I sat very still, made no sudden moves, while Max made nothing
but
sudden moves.

‘Why don't you sit down?' I said. ‘You're making me very nervous.'

‘Oh well, I can't be responsible for your nervousness, can I?'

‘Yes,' I said. ‘You're entirely responsible.'

‘Oh?' said Max, and this was an entirely new thought. He didn't like the feeling of responsibility and he looked as though he felt bad about it. I, however, was starting to feel a little better. The benefits of the whisky were kicking in: a warmth, a glow, an unjustified feeling of moderate well-being.

‘You're probably wondering why I'm out here on the roof,' Max said.

‘Because you're drunk?'

Max looked at me and seemed disappointed. ‘I sometimes wonder if you're as thick as you pretend,' he said.

‘I'm sure I am,' I said.

‘I'm here because it's as good a place as any,' Max said, as though this explained everything.

‘I can think of better places,' I said.

‘All right, yes, I suppose I can think of better too: Harry's Bar, the Deux Magots, the Moon Under Water. But within the Kincaid Clinic, at least until they open a cocktail lounge or a snug, this place is as good as any.'

‘If it's as good as any, then why not come inside?'

‘You have so much to learn, Gregory.'

‘That's what everyone tells me.'

Max offered me the bottle again. There was now only a little left in it. I drank half of what remained and passed it back for him to finish off. He drained it, then fished in his pocket and produced another bottle. ‘When I stated that one place is as good as any other,' he said, ‘what I meant is that we're all in hell, each in our own personal versions of hell that accompany us wherever we go. Alcohol doesn't get you out of hell, but it occasionally deceives you into believing that you're only in purgatory.'