Bedlam Burning (38 page)

In the way that you never quite know how you're going to react to stress I found myself at the buffet table, stuffing myself with anonymous, flavourless sandwiches. The condemned man was eating a hearty plateful of finger food, white bread spread with who knew
what. I became aware of Charity and Anders standing next to me, watching me intently. ‘Case of the munchies?' Charity asked.

I knew I sounded most unlike myself as I said, ‘Charity, whatever happens, how ever all this turns out, believe me, I did my best.'

Anders snorted at this piece of cheap sentiment and Charity's look was as blank as I might have expected. Neither of them knew what I was talking about, but Charity's big wide eyes showed soft, slow-moving concern.

‘Are you in trouble, Greg?' she asked. ‘Want us to pray for you?'

I couldn't reply because I felt someone's fingers gripping my forearm, and I turned to see that Dr Bentley had laid hands on me and was steering me from the canteen, through the open back door, to the world outside. I didn't resist. What would have been the point? We walked in silence until we came to the dried-up fountain. I sat down on the cold, rough lip and Bentley positioned himself at an appropriately detached distance. We made an odd couple sitting there in the shadow of the cement mermaid.

‘Well, Michael,' he said.

‘Well, indeed,' I replied.

Bentley laughed. The bastard was finding this funny. ‘You present me with something of a problem,' he said.

‘Do I?' I couldn't see what his problem was at all. I just wanted him to do his worst and get it over with.

‘Do you have anything to say in mitigation?' he asked.

I shook my head.

‘No extenuating circumstances you'd like me to know about? No claims of diminished responsibility?'

I shook again.

‘I find your reticence disarming,' he said. ‘I had thought you might argue that even though you're not the “real” Gregory Collins, you do appear to have done a fair job of harnessing the creative abilities of these … lunatics.'

He was right. I might once have argued something like that, but it sounded very flimsy now that he said it. And the word lunatic seemed needlessly cruel.

‘I suppose,' he said, ‘a corollary of that argument might be that since the patients obviously admire you so much, and since you've clearly done them, in some sense of the word, “good”, then
discovering that you were a fraud might be detrimental to their continuing mental health.'

‘That's an argument,' I said.

‘And yet,' said Bentley, ‘I think we owe it to the patients not to treat them as children or simpletons. If they've been victims of a deception they surely have a right to know.'

‘Yes,' I said. ‘I'm sure they do.'

‘What then of Dr Kincaid, Dr Crowe and the Kincaid Clinic? Their reputations might be severely damaged if you were exposed.'

‘Yes,' I said.

‘It might seem vindictive of me to enhance my own reputation at the expense of theirs.'

It had never occurred to me that Bentley's reputation was at stake here, yet now that he mentioned it I could see it might be some tiny feather in his cap to be the man who'd exposed a literary and psychiatric hoax, even if he'd only done it by the purest fluke.

He continued, ‘You might also argue that there would be those who'd accuse me of acting out of even worse self-interest, who'd say I was revenging myself for the occasion when you burned my book. For that matter I suppose you might also argue that I wouldn't particularly want my book-burning parties to become common knowledge.'

‘I suppose I might,' I said, though I wouldn't have.

‘Equally,' he said, ‘I suppose one might argue that since you're a member of college, one of my former students, the scandal your exposure would create might be a worse evil than the one you've perpetrated, and might reflect exceedingly badly on the college and on me. You might think I had a duty not to destroy a college man.'

‘That never occurred to me,' I said. I knew Cambridge colleges looked after their own, but I'd never felt I was one of their own.

‘However, if at some later date the truth came out and I appeared to have been complicit in the deception, then the scandal and the ignominy would be far worse.'

‘I understand,' I said, but somehow I didn't think all these filigrees of logic and consequence were very necessary or relevant. I didn't think Bentley was really trying to decide on a course of action. I thought he was just showing off his brain power, torturing me slowly and exquisitely before doing what he surely had to do. And so he went on.

‘Now some would certainly say that the exposure of a fraud, be it literary or otherwise, is a universal good, and the very least that scholarship might aspire to. We scholars are supposed to love truth. And yet for those of us who are scholars of
literature
, truth is rarely quite so cut and dried. Art may aspire to tell the truth, may indeed do so, but it tells it via a series of illusions, deceptions, confidence tricks. Perhaps all artists are charlatans. Not that I think you're claiming to be an artist, are you, Michael?'

‘No,' I said.

‘So what, ultimately, am I saying?'

I wished I knew and I certainly wished he'd stop prolonging the agony. He did that thing where you make a little church out of your fingers then press them against your lips. Very prudent and professorial. Very corny.

‘What I seem to be saying is that while there are indeed some persuasive arguments for exposing your little fraud, and even though I find the arguments
against
exposing you somehow specious, I nevertheless find myself having a great deal of sympathy for you. And I can't help wondering why that is.'

Neither could I.

‘Why?' he asked himself. ‘Why do I feel inclined to help you? Could it really be simply because I like your face?'

I can think of worse reasons, I thought, but I didn't say that aloud.

‘Another reason,' Bentley said, ‘might be that I like jokes. And I have to admit this is rather a good joke.'

Well yes, there was his taste for Warhol's
Empire State
but that seemed to be something altogether different.

‘I suppose what I'm really saying,' Bentley said, ‘is that at this moment I'm confused. I don't know what I'm going to do at all.'

‘No?' I said.

‘No. But once I've decided,' he said, ‘I'm sure you'll be one of the first to know. Until then, what can I say? Keep up the good work.'

He stood up, bristled slightly, turned his back and started walking towards the clinic. I remained immobile. It seemed to be over, at least for the moment, although the threat would continue to hang over me, and that would certainly be a punishment, though not necessarily punishment enough.

I know what I should have done. The moment the evening was over, once Bentley and the others were back on the bus, I should have gone along to Kincaid and confessed everything. The game was surely up. I'd had a good innings. I could have retired, not undefeated exactly, but at least on my own terms. I could even have just disappeared.

So why didn't I? Oh, all the usual reasons: pride, inertia, cowardice, sex. It was all too difficult. I was scared. I didn't want everyone to know what a fraud I was. I didn't want people to hate me. I didn't want Alicia to stop liking me and having sex with me.

And I admit there were moments when I hoped I was wrong, that the game wasn't up, that something would happen to change everything and make it all right. Perhaps Bentley would decide not to do anything after all. Or perhaps he'd be run over by a bus. Perhaps some crazed undergraduate would slaughter him. Stranger things had happened in Cambridge. Or maybe Anders knew a good hit man I could employ. Or perhaps I should do it myself, set up some elaborate alibi at the clinic and then sneak off to Cambridge and kill Bentley in his rooms.

But no, in general I didn't really think any of these would happen. I was sure Bentley would tell all. Maybe not immediately but very soon, and no doubt in some clever, clever way. And that only made these last moments, these last days, all the more precious. I didn't want to leave. What would I gain by confessing? I would hold on as long as I possibly could. I hoped for another night or two with Alicia.

Kincaid's literary evening was heralded as a great success, not least by Kincaid. He was even more full of himself than usual. Oh well, that would change soon enough. The patients were pleased with themselves too. They'd been so good, so in control on the night of the reading, it was hard to know what to do with them next; not that
I was exactly in a position to start any new projects. I felt a great fondness for all of them. I'd be sorry to lose them and I hoped they'd be sorry to lose me.

The waiting was tough, and now more than ever I found myself becalmed and powerless. I kept thinking about Nicola and Gregory. I wondered how the wedding had gone, whether she'd looked beautiful in white, whether she'd even
worn
white, whether it had been a grand affair, where they'd gone on honeymoon. I certainly wondered how long it would last.

While I was sitting in the hut the next night, thinking of these things, waiting for fate to do its worst, I heard a kerfuffle outside. I peered out and saw the porters struggling with someone who was trying to climb in over the front gate. It was reminiscent of my own ignominious arrival, though I couldn't immediately think who, apart from me, would be crazy enough to want to get into the Kincaid Clinic. Perhaps it was some restless native up to no good.

The porters dragged this new arrival down to earth and started to give him a good kicking. Booted feet were making repeated solid contact with the victim's torso. He was trying to curl up in a ball to protect himself, but the porters weren't allowing that. They opened him up, rolled him on to his back for ease of access, and then I was able to see his face. It was Gregory Collins.

I ran from my hut and shouted at the porters to stop kicking him, which perhaps a little surprisingly they did, but by then Gregory had also stopped moving. He was flat on his back, legs together, arms spread. It was probably a good thing that Charity couldn't see this.

‘What the fuck is the matter with you two?' I shouted at the porters. ‘You could have killed him.'

‘We wouldn't have killed him,' one of them replied, as though defending himself against charges of professional incompetence. ‘We know what we're about.'

Apparently they did. Gregory started to move. He writhed and moaned and looked distressed, but he was still undoubtedly in the land of the living, and then I noticed he was wearing a morning coat and a grey silk waistcoat – wedding tackle.

‘Oh God, Bob, what happened?' I said, rather pleased that in the circumstances I'd remembered to use his false name.

He sat up a little but gave no sign that he was capable of standing. He said, ‘She left me in the lurch. At the church.'

He laughed at the way his tragedy had been reduced to this familiar, predictable doggerel. I couldn't help feeling sorry for him, yet it seemed, on second thoughts, not so much tragic as simply inevitable, although I suppose all tragedies have an inevitability about them. Nicola had finally seen the error of her ways; better late (very, very late) than never.

‘They were all there,' Gregory groaned. ‘All Nicola's friends and family. Some of the teachers from my school. My family. They'd come a long way, all done up like shilling dinners. And I'm standing there like a lummox and the organist's playing bloody
Jerusalem
, and her father comes in on his own and says he thinks he'd better have a word with me in private, old chap. He called me old chap. I knew what he was going to say. She'd changed her mind. Who could blame her?'

‘I'm really sorry, Bob,' I said.

‘That's very good of you, Greg,' he said carefully.

Now he did stand up and that made him look markedly less tragic. The hired wedding suit didn't fit him. It was too narrow in the shoulders, too long in the sleeves. The waistband of the trousers formed a tight equator under his plump gut, and yet the trouser legs were vast and wide and billowed in ruffs around his ankles. He would have looked silly enough in any circumstances, but the beating from the porters had pulled him even more laughably out of shape. His hair stood on end, his tie was hoist somewhere under his ear, and his attempts to look dignified and brave only completed the comic effect.

I told the porters I'd take care of him from here and I helped him to my hut. I was touched, though nevertheless flabbergasted, that Gregory had come to me in his hour of need. If I was the one who'd just been stood up at the altar I certainly wouldn't have turned to Gregory. Who
would
I have turned to? I had no idea.

He sat on my sofabed, patting his body to make sure he was all there. I felt truly sorry for him. I knew I was going to have to tell him all about Bentley, the literary evening and the impending doom, but the moment would have to wait. Seeing him like this, knowing that Nicola had dumped him in the most humiliating way possible, knowing that Bentley was lurking in the outside world ready to do his worst to me, I also felt we had a surprising amount in common.

‘I don't blame Nicola,' Gregory said glumly. ‘I blame myself.'

When one person turns up at the church and the other doesn't, it
seems to me that blame can only be directed one way. It was uncharacteristically generous of Gregory to admit any fault.

‘After all,' he said, ‘she did catch me in bed with one of the bridesmaids.'

‘What?'

‘Well, actually, two of the bridesmaids.'

‘What? What, Gregory?'

‘It didn't mean anything. I was just living out my dirty little fantasies. I thought it was better to do it than to write about it. Get it all out of my system the night before the wedding. But Nicola caught me at it. So I don't blame her.'