Bedlam Burning Read online

  ‘I can’t lie to you, Gregory,’ he said portentously, ‘the truth is I do have certain literary ambitions. I’m working on a little something at the moment; that’s what I do in my office in the evenings. Perhaps you’ve seen me pacing back and forth in the throes of composition.’

  I admitted that I had.

  ‘I envisage a trans-genre, not to say transgressive work that’s part autobiography, part scientific treatise, part prose poem. I see it as a synthesis of art and science, east and west, the conscious and the subconscious—’

  ‘Right,’ I said, and I was aware of my head nodding tensely, a tight-lipped smile on my immobile face, pretending to be intrigued by this literary prospect.

  ‘Don’t look so worried,’ Kincaid said, ‘I shan’t ask you to read it and give me your opinion.’

  He laughed modestly, and once again I was pleased by his grasp of psychology. The idea of having to read and comment on something Kincaid had written was daunting. At the same time I felt vaguely insulted. Would my opinion have been so worthless in his eyes? Did he regard himself as so possessed by genius that my comments would have been irrelevant to him? Well yes, I suspect he did. And for a moment I thought I ought to offer, perhaps demand, to be given a chance to read his great work in progress; but then I thought no, wait a minute, maybe he’s using even cleverer psychology than I thought, manipulating me to read it when I really didn’t want to. Life with Kincaid was never simple, although sometimes I suspected I was making my own complications.

  Life with Alicia continued to have its complications too. By day she was the cool, not to say frosty, not to say hostile, medical practitioner. I was still not clear what she did to, or for, or with, the patients. They went into her office just as often as they went into Kincaid’s, but I had little idea what they got up to in there since Kincaidian Therapy, as I currently understood it, seemed largely to involve doing very little. But I was prepared to accept that my knowledge was patchy, my understanding imperfect and certainly Alicia always seemed to be in the middle of doing something vitally important.

  I would still occasionally make businesslike enquiries about the workings of the clinic. I wondered, for example, why the patients never received any visitors, why none of them ever received any mail; and in a tone that suggested I was a cretin Alicia told me there had once been a time when the clinic encouraged visitors, but they’d always arrived wearing floral dresses or ties with gun dog motifs or Mickey Mouse watches, and this visual chaos would set the patients back weeks or months. The same applied to letters; they’d arrive full of doodles and drawings, containing family snapshots, with stamps on the outside that depicted the Queen and who knew what else. All this was a horror and an intolerable risk, and apparently totally obvious to anyone with half a brain.

  I didn’t much like the way Alicia treated me at these times, but later she would make up for it. She would come to my room and be warm and sexy and extremely dirty-mouthed, and she expected the same from me. At times this coprophemia, as I only much later came to know it, seemed a shade rigid and formulaic, a bit too much like hard work, but I didn’t complain. The glass was definitely half full rather than half empty. On the other hand, I did sometimes feel confused about what was actually going on between us, and then I’d ask some different stupid questions such as, ‘Are we having a relationship, Alicia?’

  We were in my bed, with the lights inevitably turned off, and I heard Alicia’s laughter in the dark and then she said, ‘What do you mean by relationship?’

  ‘I mean the same as everybody else does,’ I replied, thinking this wasn’t a bad answer.

  Alicia can’t have thought it was too bad either, since she said, ‘Yes, we’re having a relationship. We all have relationships with everyone we meet. How could it be otherwise?’

  ‘But what kind?’ I insisted. ‘We’re not “going out” together, are we, because we only ever see each other here in the clinic, and we’re keeping it a secret. So obviously we’re not “dating” or “courting” or anything like that.’

  ‘Courting. That’s a quaint word, the kind of word your mother might use.’

  ‘All right,’ I admitted, ‘I don’t suppose I want us to be courting.’

  ‘Then what do you want us to be doing? And why is it important to you that we put a name to it?’

  ‘It’s important to know where we stand. At least it’s important to me to know where I stand.’

  ‘You want to know whether we’re boyfriend and girlfriend, whether we’re lovers, or slaves of passion, or just people who have the occasional friendly fuck, is that it? You want to know whether we’re serious, whether we’re an item, whether we’re committed, whether you’re spoken for.’

  ‘Is that so unreasonable?’ I asked.

  ‘And once you’ve put your label on it, everything will be all right?’

  Her condescension annoyed me and I thought it was my turn to be angry. ‘Look,’ I said, ‘I’m getting really pissed off with this talk of “just words” or “just labels”. I don’t think words are so terrible, and it seems to me a label’s a pretty useful thing. It means you can tell the difference between a bottle of beer and a bottle of arsenic, for instance.’

  ‘That’s always assuming someone’s put the correct label on the bottle,’ she said, apparently thinking she’d made some infinitely subtle point.

  ‘Well obviously,’ I replied, may even have shouted. ‘Obviously I don’t want you to tell me I’m your “soul mate” if all you think I am is some quick shag. I don’t want you to lie to me.’

  ‘You’re not a quick shag,’ she said. ‘You’re a long, slow, delicious, lingering shag.’

  ‘That’s very flattering, Alicia, but you’re evading the issue.’

  ‘Yes, I am. And don’t think I’m unsympathetic, Gregory. You want me to say a few simple words that will tell you where you stand – one word if possible.’

  ‘You make it sound as though I’m asking for the world.’

  ‘Asking for the world, asking for the word. A Freudian would make plenty out of that.’

  ‘Thank God you’re not a Freudian,’ I said.

  ‘You know, Gregory, sometimes you talk too much.’

  I thought this was a bit rich coming from Alicia, but she then very effectively stopped me speaking. She wrestled herself into a position above me and firmly lowered her genitals into my face. I couldn’t talk, but she could. And while I lapped and licked and probed and tongued, she delivered an incredibly filthy, dirty monologue about what a filthy, dirty man I was. I was in no position to argue.

  19

  I know it’ll sound strange and suspect if I say I began to feel at home in the Kincaid Clinic. The implication would seem to be that anyone who feels at home in a lunatic asylum must be a lunatic, but I’d challenge that. Most doctors and nurses presumably feel at home in hospitals but that doesn’t mean they’re sick. Zoo keepers must feel quite at home in their zoos but that doesn’t mean they’re wild animals, does it?

  Not only did I feel at home, I wanted to stay at home. My need to have my own key to the front gate, my desire to be able to come and go as I pleased, didn’t so much disappear as become irrelevant. I got to the stage where I didn’t know what I’d have done out there. Would I have gone shopping? Gone to a pub? To the movies? To a bookshop? All these things started to seem rather pointless to me.

  I realised that in an important way I too was on the receiving end of Kincaidian Therapy; at least its broader tenets. Just like the patients, I was cut off and protected from the world of created images. And although that could feel odd at times, I got used to it surprisingly quickly. I found it strangely soothing, and I had to consider the notion that there might be more to Kincaidian Therapy than I’d first thought. I was also cut off from much else besides: from news, from politics, from world affairs, from pop music and television and sport, but that felt like no loss at all. What was I missing? What was going on in the world at that? Well, there were problems with unions and ter
rorists, the American bicentennial, Labour prime ministers coming and going, songs like ‘Fernando’ and ‘Save Your Kisses For Me’, television programmes like Love Thy Neighbour, movies like All the President’s Men. Even at the time these things seemed a bit passé, a bit seventies.

  I wasn’t a complete hermit. It wasn’t as if I had absolutely no dealings with the outside world. For one thing, I did phone my parents from time to time, but you know how it is with parents, you keep having the same conversation year after year, decade after decade. They asked me how things were going with the job and I said, ‘Fine’ and that was as much as they wanted to hear. I did ask my mother what heart’s-ease looked like and she did her best to describe it, but I didn’t learn anything I could pass on to Maureen. My mother would ask me if I’d found a ‘nice girl’ yet and I said I was still looking.

  Very occasionally the dealings went the other way and the world came to me. For instance, I was enormously surprised one day to get another phone call from Gregory Collins. Given my situation you might think he’d have been on my mind all the time, but actually I felt as though his was a voice from an entirely different time and place.

  ‘I’ve been reading about Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath,’ he said without preamble. ‘Apparently, back in 1962, she decided to cast a spell on him. Literally. So she went to his desk, got some of his manuscripts, and bits of dandruff and fingernail clippings and stuff, and she made a bonfire out of them and danced around it, chuntering devilish curses.

  ‘Now I reckon this begs a few questions, the main one being why Ted Hughes let his desk get in such a disgusting state. Anyway, whether the spell worked or not is debatable, but Hughes had the last laugh, not that he’s much of a laughing boy from what I hear. After Plath committed suicide, he made a bonfire of his own and burned the final volume of her journals. He said he did it to protect their children, but most people reckon the journals had Plath’s version of what a bastard he’d been to her. And you know, if that was the case, I don’t think you can blame him. Which of us wouldn’t have done the same? Posterity be buggered.’

  ‘Hello,’ I said. ‘What can I do for you?’

  ‘I just wondered how you were getting on,’ he said, and I knew something was wrong. Gregory would not have been calling out of such straightforward motives.

  ‘I’m fine,’ I said, playing along. ‘I took your advice. Sort of.’

  ‘I’m glad,’ he said, though he didn’t sound glad. ‘One thing I’m calling for is to tell you I’ve decided against making a complaint about Bentley.’

  ‘Good,’ I said.

  ‘Yes.’ Gregory added hesitantly, ‘I had a word with Nicola and she told me it was a daft idea.’

  How very like Nicola, I thought. I’d never heard her use the word ‘daft’ but she certainly knew daftness when she saw it, and was always quick to denounce it.

  ‘Good,’ I said.

  ‘She’s really got it in for you though, I’m afraid.’

  That didn’t surprise me much, but I didn’t want to be told it by Gregory, and I certainly didn’t like the implication that the two of them had been discussing me.

  ‘I tried to put in a good word for you,’ Gregory said, ‘and I hope it helped a bit, but basically she wasn’t having any of it.’

  The idea that Gregory wanted to be my champion was deeply unattractive, and the idea that he thought he might be able to change Nicola’s opinion of me was just laughable, not that I found myself laughing. And I felt even less amused when he said, ‘Tell me about Nicola.’

  ‘Tell you what?’ I asked, although I knew I didn’t want to tell him anything at all. He’d slept with her more recently than I had, and he had the great advantage of being on speaking terms with her, which I certainly wasn’t; that should have told him something.

  ‘Let me put my cards on the table,’ he said. ‘Fact is, I know I’m an ugly git and I don’t get many chances. But I think I might be in with a shout when it comes to Nicola. What do you reckon?’

  ‘A shout?’

  ‘Do you think she’d go out with me?’

  ‘If you don’t know, I can’t tell you,’ I said haughtily.

  ‘Oh, but you can. You know women. And you know Nicola. Am I the sort of bloke she’d go for?’

  ‘She went for you all right that night in Brighton.’

  ‘But that was just sex. I’m after more than that.’

  ‘Aren’t we all?’ I said.

  ‘And I don’t want to make a chuff of myself.’

  A few months ago I would never have dreamed that Gregory was ‘in with a shout’ with Nicola, but then I’d never have thought he was likely to have a one-night stand. So it appeared I knew nothing about either of them. If he wanted to pursue her I wasn’t going to try and stop him, and if he fell on his face and made a ‘chuff’ of himself, well, that wouldn’t surprise me and it wouldn’t exactly break my heart either.

  ‘Go for it,’ I said. ‘Follow your heart.’

  ‘Really?’ he said, and he sounded happy in a boyish, uncontrived way that made me feel rather small. ‘That’s bloody great. You’ve bucked me up no end. And this means I have your blessing, right? You won’t hold a grudge if me and Nicola start courting. All’s fair in love and war, may the best man win and all that gubbins, right?’

  ‘Yes, all that gubbins,’ I said.

  ‘You’re a mate, you really are. I appreciate this. If there’s anything I can ever do for you in the future …’

  I found his gratitude embarrassing. I felt I had done nothing for him. I certainly wanted to do nothing, and at that time I couldn’t imagine I’d ever want or need him to do anything for me. I wished he hadn’t called. It felt like an intrusion.

  The world could intrude in other ways too. I had a sense that the locals were getting louder, rowdier, more out of control. They’d congregate invisibly but very audibly, outside the boundary wall. I’d sit in my hut and hear laughter, shouting, girls squealing in delight or feigned terror, and then cans, bottles, a few stones would be lobbed over the wall into the grounds. It wasn’t every night by any means, and it still didn’t feel especially threatening but I had a sense that it was happening increasingly often, becoming more and more of a pain in the neck.

  Then one night some of the perpetrators became visible. Half a dozen young men came and stood at the front gate of the clinic, peering into the grounds as though into a monkey house. They looked younger and much more harmless than I’d pictured. They might even have been sixth-formers on a dare, but their callowness didn’t make them any more welcome. I wondered why the porters didn’t appear and clear them off.

  Most of the time there would have been nothing for them to see, but their very presence made all the difference. I understand it was always like this. In the days when asylums were open to the public, those inmates who gave the most convincing displays of madness were the ones who received the biggest rewards from visitors. And so, in a way, it was at the Kincaid Clinic. Carla decided to put on a show for the watchers at the gate. She went and talked to them and did a fairly good impression of a gibbering, drooling mad girl, and the boys were duly provoked and entertained. They gave her a can of lager. And when Charity arrived and started dancing naked they got rather more than they’d bargained for.

  There was nothing truly indecent about Charity’s nudity, and her dancing was that of free-form expression rather than of a strip show, not least because of her shaved head, but the boys found it much more confusing and far harder to deal with than Carla’s more obvious lunacy. They gawped in silence, and when she danced right up to the gate and started interacting with them they were extremely cowed. Nevertheless, I felt I had to do something to try to protect Charity, not least from herself.

  I went to the gate, told the boys to clear off before I called the police, and I draped an old shirt of mine around Charity’s shoulders. I don’t know that the lads were especially fearful of my anger, but at least they knew that the show was over, and I led Charity back to her room.<
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  ‘I suppose you want to come in,’ she said.

  In a way I did. Having seen Max’s room I was keen to see others. They surely couldn’t all be quite as fancy as Max’s, and Charity’s room proved to look pretty much like your typical hippie girl’s pad. It was packed with stuff: clothes, scarves, sandals, scented candles, a hookah, peacock feathers, bunches of dried flowers and pine cones. The air was clotted with the smell of old joss sticks and musk oil. It was an extreme version of a lot of girls’ rooms I’d seen at college.

  There was a portable mono record player on the floor, a Dansette (pitifully uncool in those days, though soon to be beguilingly retro), and there was a stack of records beside it, but the records were without their covers, just slices of black vinyl in plain inner sleeves. They looked paltry and denuded, denatured by being separated from their cover art: none of Hendrix’s electric ladies, no zipper on Sticky Fingers, no plastic window on L. A. Woman. I suppose Charity would have been all right with the Beatles’ White Album although there might have been problems with the record label and its image of an apple.

  I’m never sure I believe people when they say that nudity has nothing to do with sex. I suspect it always has something to do with sex. Certainly I felt uncomfortable to find myself behind closed doors with a female patient who was naked but for a shirt, especially given Alicia’s accusation that I wanted to have sex with Charity. I stood awkwardly at the centre of the room. There were no chairs and it didn’t seem right just to plonk myself down on the bed. Charity had no intention of making me feel comfortable.