The White Garden (4 page)

And children in suburban houses, children with soup bowls on their heads and rivulets of broth running down their foreheads, turned to their fathers who bore the marks of breadknives in their hearts — and the children said where is mum. The fathers said she packed her bags and went for a holiday and a rest and to get better; she went to Mandalay or Mississippi or Woop Woop or Wagga Wagga or the moon, went off with the man in the moon. Went into a world of her own, woosh, she went in a taxi through the gates of Mandalay or Mandala or Manderley.

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The White Garden

Mum on the road to Manderlay where the flying fishes play.

Mum as mysteriously dead and gone as Rebecca from
Rebecca
.

Ma-ma in La-La-Land.

Ma-ma-ma-ma.

Mothers who gave up, who let themselves go, who thought all the time of suicide or murder or both, were sent to Mandala for their own good and for the good of their families. When they got round to talking to the woman in the next bed they would say: ‘My aunt was staying with us and she went down the street to post a letter. It was five minutes, or ten at the most.

And when she came back I was gone. By that I mean I had my breakdown. They all knew I was on the verge, could crack at any time. All alone in the house with the children at school and my husband at work all day and me alone in the house with the washing machine and the vacuum cleaner and too much to do and Auntie posting a letter down the street. I cried and cried — slow and quiet — and I stared at my hands that were red and cracked and sore. There were cracks at the corners of my mouth, the corners of my eyes, the corners of the room, the corners of the butter dish. Blood began to trickle from the butter.

And then I had my breakdown. Auntie came back and she could see it had happened. She got my husband to come home and I couldn’t stop crying, thought I would never ever stop. Cry me a river, cry me an ocean, cry myself to sleep. It was like the crying was outside me, some crying force that was out of my control. I remember some of it but the rest is a blank. My auntie asked me where my sponge bag was and I went crazy looking for it. I said it had been stolen and I could hear dogs barking in the distance.

“They’re out there,” I said, “out there on the marshes looking for the thieves, hunting them down.” She said yes, but not to worry.

“You worry too much,” she said. I know I do. I worry about everything. The house and the children and the ironing and the front gate — it won’t close properly and things get in and out

— dogs and cats and men in raincoats and people with guns and knives and great big bags of sugar — there’s no control. She found my sponge bag in the bathroom, underneath the towels.

‘ “What’s this then, girlie,” she said, and I couldn’t even recognise it. She put in new soap and toothpaste and a brand

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new toothbrush, and a washer and some powder, baby powder.

I remember all that about the sponge bag so vividly, and yet I never saw the thing again. I sometimes wonder if I imagined everything. But I know people pinch things in the hospital

— and the toothbrush was brand new.

‘Long red fingernails on long red fingers on long red hands go creep, creep, creep and then suddenly they go snatch! and your sponge bag’s gone forever. Gone. I never had a
sponge
in my sponge bag. Sponges are animals you know. Once I looked into the water by the harbour — it was on my honeymoon, long, long ages before my breakdown — and I looked down into the water and saw that it was bobbing with every kind of dark and slimy floating thing. There was no room for boats or fish.

And just below the surface of the water I saw the red hand. I remember saying to my husband — he was new then, and very shiny — “There’s a dead body under the water. Look at the hand all red and bloated and reaching up, waving and calling for us to help.” And he just laughed and said what an imagination. He said it was only an old rubber glove. “Calling out for someone to help with the dishes, I suppose,” was what he said. We laughed. But for some reason I never forgot the sight of the red hand floating and disappearing and appearing and bobbing and feeling with its long fingers under the scummy water. Other things I forgot — other things about my honeymoon. I can’t remember the hotel or anything like that. I remember some pine trees. And a cake we had in a funny old cake shop. Sex I can’t remember. Funny, isn’t it? Not remembering sex on your honeymoon. That’s what honeymoons are supposed to be all about. Sex.’

Marjorie Bartlett entered the Mandala Clinic in a state of depression and confusion. Doctor Goddard spoke at length to her husband. He explained that Marjorie was depressed, obsessive and confused.

‘Her thoughts run round and round, Mr — um — Bartlett. It’s rather like a needle stuck in a groove on a record, if you follow me. She plays the same idea, word, phrase over and over in her brain and it gets so she can think of nothing else. She has a fixed notion that someone has removed her toilet articles, for
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The White Garden

instance, and nothing will alter this opinion. I predict that even if she were to “find” the powder and soap and such like, she would not be shaken in her belief that someone took them from her out of malice.

‘It’s a mild form of paranoia. She has an obsessive fear that started out who knows where, and that has by now spilled over into most areas of life for her. Frightened of her own shadow, basically. The big one’s sex. I’m speaking man to man here, Mr Umbartlett. What I know for a fact, and I feel sure you will readily understand, is that these women need a good fuck. Of course the sad thing is they have built up so much fear about every damned thing in the world, they can’t do it. They break out in rashes at the very thought. You no doubt realise that Mrs Umbartlett has a terrible rash on her pussy. Enough to put any man off, if I may say so. This form of libido depression is frequently associated with violence of the type that you and your family have suffered. Think about the knife, for instance.

Pardon me, but of course you think about it. The knife with which your wife attacked you.

‘There is the clear sexual association of the weapon, the knife. They are always knifing people in the back, these women.

Knifing one way or another. We had a woman in here at one time, for instance — her mother-in-law turned up at the house with a basket of hothouse tomatoes. Well the woman apparently grabbed the basket, upended the tomatoes all over the doormat, threw the basket in the air, and then grabbed a gardening fork and attacked the mother-in-law. You see what I mean. I tell you these things not to alarm you, but in an attempt to demonstrate the fact that these episodes are normal parts of abnormal behaviour, and to reassure you that the condition is curable. In the drawer of this desk I keep my pistol, which I assure you is ready at all times to menace one of these women when they get out of hand. See? Mind you I seldom have occasion. But you will understand it is a comfort, I may say a necessary comfort to me, that this little fellow lies in the drawer in wait and comes out Zupp! when I need him. Mr Browning .22 here gives them quite a scare.

‘The woman I have just described now leads a perfectly

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peaceful life with her family in rural France. I omitted to say that she was French — but that in no way accounts for the violence.
All
women, in my experience, of any racial or cultural type, are capable of these outbreaks. Something in the nature of the beast, if you follow.

‘So Mrs Umbartlett — I will call her — er — Marjorie from now on — is depressed. I have prescribed a sedative for her and treatment will begin in the morning. Rest is of vital importance, rest and a sense of purpose. We have, as you have no doubt heard and read in the press, an unusually active program of occupational therapy. We are pioneers in the field, and your wife will have the opportunity to study china painting, pottery, water-colour, gardening — is she interested in beekeeping at all?

I must give you a pot of honey before you leave. All patients, when they are well enough, are expected to help in the daily running of the clinic — cleaning and fetching and carrying and so on. A very high standard of personal hygiene is encouraged, although not at all times expected. We have a perfectly realistic understanding of these matters.

‘The range of treatment at Mandala is very broad. Did I mention the foreign language program? I can honestly say that this is the only clinic in the world where the intellect is stimulated by the surroundings. I am working on an idea of introducing daily lessons in foreign languages — perhaps Latin, French and German — only in those patients who are in any way capable, of course. Swedish perhaps. Depression and hysteria are multifaceted, and must be approached from as many angles as possible. Mandarin Chinese. Japanese, naturally. Language laboratory. Heard of that, have you? A bit of a revolution really.

Miracle in a way. Then at the other end of the scale there’s recreation. It will possibly sound old-fashioned to a man like you, Mr Umbartlett, but here we follow a program of outdoor gymnastics, physical jerks to music. Line ’em up, turn on the record — “Sentimental Journey” is a favourite — and da-da-da a da-da-da-da-
dada
— there they go. This place used to be a school you know, in the bad old days. And we have retained the outdoor play equipment, walled up and locked of course.

Can’t have the girls getting too carried away on the swing. Well,
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The White Garden

they’re supervised. Always supervised. Everything here is under the strictest supervision. It’s a pity in a way, but that’s how it is with nervous disorders. Can’t trust ’em for a minute.

‘We have the anti-depressant drugs as well as the psychotrop-ics. Some cases respond to amphetamines. We try a mixture.

The human mind is a mystery that we are at last beginning to solve. Electro-Convulsive Therapy has been found to be effective in ninety-five per cent of cases — and your wife will have access here to the latest equipment from abroad. When I was in Sweden recently I ordered the newest machines. We are also having a remarkable success with Deep Sleep Therapy. Here again we are pioneers. It seems only fitting that a great young country such as ours should lead the field in this work. You may be familiar with the names Charcot and Mitchell — Silas Weir Mitchell — nineteenth-century fellows who early in the piece had some tinkling inkling of the notion that the big S — I refer of course to Sleep — was the key to the mind’s recovery from troubles. The mind is a restless animal, and sometimes what a woman needs more than anything else in the world is the chance to sleep off whatever it is that is worrying her.

The Rest Cure, the immobile good old Rest Cure, was as far as Mitchell got. Not bad, not bad. And Charcot, more French in his approach to these things, got the hang of hypnosis. Look-into-my-eyes and so forth sort of thing. I think he actually used the
term
“Deep Sleep” on some occasions. Had no idea what he was talking about, of course. Now I come to think of it, it could have been Bernheim that stumbled on Deep Sleep. I’m inclined to lump those chaps together sometimes — named the dogs after them, you know. I see you’re smiling. Yes, we have Hippolyte Bernheim, Silas Weir Mitchell and Sigmund Freud, the Irish wolf-hounds. All good fellows.

‘But, as I was saying,
somebody
had the inkling, the drift, when they talked about rest and sleep and general nodding off.

Well of course it’s a Biblical thing, isn’t it? God gave Adam a dose of Deep Sleep and whipped out his rib while he was under.

And here at Mandala we send the brain on a little holiday. The Deep Sleep ward is in fact named “Hawaii”. Just the spot for a vacation from life’s cares. Pack up your troubles, I say to them,

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and wave them goodbye. And after all, Mr Umbartlett, what
is
sleep. Who knows? Shut-eye. You put out the light, put your head on the pillow, close your peepers, and dmmmmmh — off you go to dreamland. Zzzzzz. Shakespeare had the right idea

— knits up the ravelled sleeve of care he said, didn’t he? But that’s your field, the old Will. Macbeth went round murdering sleep. What a villain. Sleep, Mother Nature’s own elegant beauty treatment for the mind. Imagine a sleeping woman.

What could be more inviting? When their eyes close and their muscles relax, and the sandman comes and they go off into the Land of Nod, they are putty, just simple putty in the hand. And it does them the
world
of good. I’ll stake my reputation on that any day. Zzzzz.

‘Then of course we have an advanced program of meditation, yoga and mild exercise. And for special cases we have the psychedelics — LSD, psilocybin. It’s just a little
ch!
into the arm and the patient begins to lose contact with the reality around her, begins to make contact with the terrors within that torment the mind. She begins to make contact with a whole new world of possibility that opens up in extraordinary colour and light.

These are the mind-expanding drugs which, when used under clinical conditions, can give patients a whole new way of seeing things, and can make all the difference in the world. I have undergone the experience myself in order to understand what the patients go through. And at Mandala we offer the psychedelic treatment to the relatives of our patients. Keep it in mind. You may wish to take advantage of it.’

The doctor gave Michael the impression that this long speech had been invented there and then for Michael’s very own comfort and information. A light shone in Ambrose’s eyes, and it was beamed at Michael — it was personal, intimate, kind, wise. It was the light of deep thought inspired by truth. It was a light you could trust. It seemed to Michael that a diffused glow circled the whole person of Ambrose. He was still a doctor in a tweed jacket in a book-lined office, but he was lightly bathed in an elusive radiance. Michael asked the doctor about surgery