Vacant Possession

‘I make no showing,’ Crisp said, petulant. ‘I’d better get a delusion. I hope to become a public man,’ he told Dr Battachariya. ‘I hope to be appointed Ambassador to St Petersburg. Or Governor of the Bank of England.’

Dr Battachariya sucked his pen. He questioned him closely. ‘What is the difference between a ladder and a staircase?’ he asked him.

Crisp smiled. ‘A ladder is a series of portable gradations,’ he suggested, ‘of either metal or wood; sometimes rope. It consists of two uprights, with steps, called rungs, between them. It serves as a means of ascent, as does a staircase; but a staircase, designed on the same principle, is a fixed internal structure. Suppose for the sake of argument that you were a window cleaner – and some honester men than you or I, Battachariya, do in fact earn their living in that fashion – then taking stout cords, you could bind the ladder to your vehicle’s roof, and thus transport it; which you could by no means do with a staircase.’

Dr Battachariya toyed with his ballpoint. He was determined to fault it. ‘Don’t you think your explanation is rather over-elaborate?’ he asked. Crisp smiled again; his dry, remote, ecclesiastical smile.

Muriel sought him out. ‘Crisp, give me a book,’ she said. ‘A book of sermons. Anything.’

‘What do you want a book for?’

‘I want words. I’ve got to have more words. I was kept stupid on purpose. I want some like yours.’

‘Listen,’ Effie said sharply, ‘this is the bloody Savoy. Do you know what we had where I was last? No doors on the lavatories, pardon me. One toothmug per seventeen imbeciles. Crisp, you don’t know you’re born.’ Recovering herself, she added, ‘Balmoral is no better.’

But next day Effie went on the rampage. She had a filthy tongue in her head when she wasn’t giving regal addresses. She ran screaming and cursing down Greyshott Ward and out into the corridor.

‘I don’t need hospital,’ she shouted. ‘I don’t need nurses. I’m not sick. I may be daft but I’m not sick. I don’t need getting up at six thirty every day, Christmas Day, birthday, Queen’s official birthday and every bleeding Sunday. I need to get up when I want and make myself a little cup of tea.’

Two stout male orderlies got Effie by the arms and brought her back to Greyshott. They argued with her as they dragged her along. ‘And how would we get your breakfast, if you got up any old time you felt like it?’

‘I’m not here to have breakfasts. I could get my own.’

‘Go without is what you’d do. And if we didn’t get you up, what’s to say you’d ever get up at all? What’s to stop you lying in bed all day?’

Sholto stood by, scratching his head and looking on.

‘The patients for the shifts,’ he remarked, ‘or the shifts for the patients?’

Dumping Effie on her bed, reaching for the screens to pull around her, the orderly stared at Sholto; his face crimson, his breathing heavy. ‘Get your frigging ugly face out of here, Sholto Marks,’ he bellowed.

Effie subsided. She began to cry, her chest heaving with the shock and horror of her outburst.

I’ve killed a psychiatrist … I pulled all the stuffing out of the doll … they put gunpowder through my letter box … they sang in the streets outside my house … a strange letter came, postmarked Scarborough.

Philip had the secret of perpetual motion. Chug, chug, chug. I am a tractor. I am a Centurion tank. I am a shiny red new Flymo. Otherwise sensible, Philip oils his moving parts each morning.

Crisp attributes it to the decline of faith. You may hear it, he says, as Philip garages himself for the night: the melancholy long withdrawing roar. In days gone by, Philip might have believed he was possessed by a devil, but the trend this century is to penetration by rays, bombs in the skull, and possession of men by machines.

I am the internal combustion engine, says Philip.

After a year or two Muriel became angry. She went to the end of the ward where the charge nurse sat in his little plastic cubicle. He was a fair-haired belligerent man, with a habit of sucking on his underlip. His biceps bulged pink and scrubbed beneath the short sleeves of his tunic. He was reading his racing paper.

When he saw Muriel he folded up his paper and put it down.

‘Eh up, it’s Jane Fonda,’ he said. Muriel did not know why he used this name, which he always did. He was looking amiable, but amiable was not his bent.

‘I have a question,’ she said.

The charge nurse lit a cigarette. ‘Fire away.’

‘Can’t I be treated like a normal person?’

I’m worried about everything. What things? The bomb. What do you think will happen to you? Stay in hospital; then I’ll die. You got very drunk, didn’t you? Why did you go to the pub, do you think? My sinful nature. When did you last eat, do you think? 1952.

I’m dead of misery. Dead inside. There are murderers in this place, murderers in the night. They used to wear uniforms so you knew them but now you don’t know them any more. There are murderers in the night. Lizzie Borden. Ruth Ellis. Constance Kent.

Lizzie, thought Muriel. Later she couldn’t recall the surname. Lizzie Blank.

How would you like a new life? they asked Muriel one day. How would you like a new life, with your needs met by the community instead of the institution?

When Muriel looked at herself in the mirror, she knew that she was changing. She was a woman of forty, a woman of almost forty-three. In repose, her face was empty and expressionless, but at a word of inner command she could set it to work, assuming expressions acceptable to the people around her. The grimaces, she called them. The nods and smiles, the frown of concentration, the puzzled stare; all these were within her scope nowadays.

If you knew the language and the logic, you could get into people’s workings. You could press the right keys, get out the response you wanted. You have to appreciate their prejudices: good defeats evil and love conquers all. That two plus two equals four, that cause precedes effect. Remembering, all the time, that this is not really how the world works. Not at all.

The hospital was changing too. There were new nurses, milder in their ways; at least for the first month or so. The patients were left to their own devices, allowed to stroll about the grounds together while Crisp lectured them on eschatology. He looked forward to the day of a more immediate and worldly release. There was so much to be done; the Church was in a parlous state, and the General Synod – than where you would not find a bigger collection of atheists – had quite lost its grip. There were dwindling congregations, rectories turned into guest houses and deans living in maisonettes; and a demand for women in the ministry. Can you imagine, he asked, can you imagine Effie, in a sacramental character?

Crisp’s preoccupations were his own; but more and more, their thoughts were turning to the outside world. ‘I’m learning to make meals,’ Muriel said to Effie.

Effie laughed. ‘Get away. Meals come out of those big trays in the canteen.’

‘Oh, do they?’ Muriel said passionately. ‘That shows your ignorance. When I was at home I used to get meals from my mother, eggs, vegetables, that sort of rubbish, peas out of a tin. Where do you think the nurses get meals when they go home?’

‘They live here,’ Effie said. ‘Don’t they? This is where we all live.’ She relapsed into silence, and took up the occupation of looking at the wall.

Emmanuel was the first to go. ‘Social Services will be responsive,’ the doctors said. Emmanuel made a little speech, thanking them for their support as a congregation over the years. They sang a few of his favourite hymns, and he shook hands all round. He would be returning, he said, by the road to town which had brought him here some ten years ago; as if Calvary had an exit route. He turned up his face. A stray shaft of autumn sunlight gilded the waxen tip of his nose.

‘The heart’s gone out of things,’ Sholto said. He kicked at a stone and dug his hands further into his pockets. ‘It will dull our wits, trying to pass for normal.’

They were walking in the grounds, their numbers diminished. ‘Do you think you can pass?’ Sholto asked her. He looked at her keenly. ‘You might, Muriel. I might pass, if I don’t fall down and foam. Crisp will pass. But Effie – never.’

‘After all, Muriel,’ they said. ‘Look at all the stuff we’ve taught you. You know how to do your shopping. You can count your change. You can use the telephone.’ Muriel nodded. ‘We’ll find you a place,’ they said. ‘A nice little flat with a warden. You’ll be a free agent, you can come and go as you please.’ They patted her hand. ‘You’ll have lots of support. The social worker will call and see you. And you know how to make your meals.’

Muriel thought: When I get out I shall get out, just let those wardens try; Four and twenty social workers baked in a pie.

Sholto said: ‘When you get out of here your aim should be to get as far away as possible from all those people who are going to treat you as an abnormal person. You have to get away to where nobody knows your face. You don’t want a pack of people around you who are going to say, oh, you know, you mustn’t expect too much, she comes from there. You don’t want people making loopy signs at every trifling embarrassment. You want to get right away. Get a fresh start. Get treated on your own merits.

‘If you let the Welfare house you they’ll tell all the neighbours that they’re to keep an eye out. Is that any way to start life? Everybody makes mistakes, but as long as they’re watching you all your mistakes will be put on file. You want equal treatment, don’t you? You want to merge into the crowd. Not to be pointed out in the public library as that cove who has fits. Not people coming up helping you all the time. Stuff them, I say. If I want to lie in the gutter and foam at the mouth it should be my entitlement. What are gutters for?’

The odd letter came, here and there. Tales drifted back from the outside. ‘Crisp is walking the streets now,’ Sholto said bitterly.

‘I thought you didn’t want nothing from nobody, Sholto.’

‘No, he doesn’t,’ Effie said timidly. ‘But he’d like a little residence.’

‘Philip got a council flat,’ someone said.

‘How did he like it?’