The Girl Who Couldn’t Read

I did not pass a peaceful night but was troubled by a succession of dark dreams. In most of them I was wandering along dimly lit corridors, haunted by shadowy corners from which, with no warning, and screams that froze the blood solid in my veins, women would fling themselves upon me, their faces hideously deformed, eyes black with madness, lips red as arterial blood, teeth bared like wolf fangs and dripping with hunger, their fingertips ending in long talons which raked my face, tearing at my eyes. I finally awoke from one of these nightmares to the sound of birds singing and light pouring in around the edges of the blind at the window, and although I normally have no time for Him, thanked God that at last day had dawned.

My nightshirt and the sheets were soaked with sweat. I wondered that I should have been so frightened to cause this and then worried that it might not be anything to do with my dreams but rather because I had suffered some serious injury in the accident, that perhaps the blow to my head had caused a fever of the brain.

I could hear footsteps in the corridor outside, doors opening and closing, the hollow echo of distant shouts, all the noises of a large institution rousing itself for another day, dreadfully familiar to me from the past few months but somehow different too. I threw back the blankets and got out of bed. There was no heating and it was cold, though not so cold as where I had just come from. I took off the nightshirt, found a cloth and a bar of soap in the washbag, poured myself a bowl of water and, after recovering from the shock of its bracing temperature, gave myself a thorough scrubbing. I examined the bruise on my forehead in the mirror and was glad to see it appeared less livid. This minor improvement was enough to give me a little surge of optimism and kindle the belief I might survive here for a while, that everything would be OK. I dressed in clean linen, shirt and necktie and pulled on the spare pare of pants. I sniffed the armpits of the jacket I’d had on, the only one I possessed, and recoiled at the stench of stale sweat. I opened the bottle of hair oil, which proved to be scented. There was no way I was letting the stuff anywhere near my head, but I shook a little into the armpit linings of the jacket and rubbed it in. The effect might make me stink like a French pimp but on the other hand it was to be preferred to yesterday’s sweat.

I had no timepiece. The one I’d found in the jacket had been smashed in the accident and I’d thrown it away. So I had no idea of the hour, but it sounded sufficiently busy outside to think it was time I should be abroad.

I made my way downstairs and, coming across the maid who had first shown me to my room, I saw now that she was pretty and could not help noticing how long and slender was her neck, elegant as a swan’s, surprising on so coarse a person. I asked where I might find Dr Morgan and she directed me to the staff dining room.

‘Ah, Shepherd,’ he said when I walked in, and I nodded self-consciously. ‘Come and get some fuel inside you, we have another busy day.’

Breakfast proved a sumptuous meal, with devilled kidneys, grits, eggs, bacon, toast and preserves and a great pot of freshly brewed coffee, of which Morgan consumed a prodigious quantity, causing the pupils of his gimlet eyes to expand into an almost fanatical stare as he grew more and more animated.

Although I had put away a good amount of food the night before, I found I was still famished, which I blamed on my many months of deprivation, and busied myself getting as much down me as I could. The uncertainty of my lifelong career and especially my late unfortunate experiences had taught me never to presume too much where your next meal might be coming from but at every opportunity to fill your stomach against the evil day that was sure to be just around the corner. At the same time I could not help thinking of the miserable meal the poor wretches who were confined here had had last night and to feel more than a mite of sympathy for them. So preoccupied did I become by this that my attention must have wandered from what Morgan was saying, although he hadn’t noticed and, carried away on a tide of caffeine, was rabbiting on at a furious pace, until suddenly something in his gabble flicked a switch within my brain.

‘… the most tried and tested of modern treatments, the restraining chair, used so successfully on George III, only this is a much modified, up-to-date model, designed by myself. You’ll soon forget your silly notions about Moral Treatment when you see the practical application of today’s methods. It’s no use harking back to the past …’

I sat upright. ‘Sorry,’ I said, ‘I didn’t quiet catch that. What did you just say?’

‘I said it was no use harking back to the past.’

‘No, before that.’

‘I was telling you you will soon abandon those silly outmoded notions you have of Moral Treatment.’ He looked at me. ‘What is it, man?’

‘Oh, nothing,’ I said, waving a piece of toast in what I hoped was a casual manner. ‘I just misheard you the first time, that’s all.’

‘Well, come on, aren’t you going to argue with me? Put up your case, there’s a good fellow, and then I can knock it down.’

I shook my head. ‘No, no, not now, not at breakfast,’ I mumbled. ‘I can’t think clearly when I’m not properly awake.’

So I was not such a pious idiot after all! The book in my room was to do with the treatment of lunatics and not a religious tract. If only I had taken the trouble to open it last night! As it was, I would have to dodge any further discourse on the subject with Morgan until I could slip away upstairs and take a look at the book. I could not hope to keep avoiding discussion about my beliefs; it was imperative I find out as soon as possible just exactly what they were.

Breakfast was accomplished on my part at an indigestion-inducing rate because Morgan had a good start on me with it and when he was finished kept consulting his watch and tut-tutting impatiently as a not very subtle signal to me to hurry up. I did not mean to leave the room without a full stomach, however, and stuffed the rest of the food on my plate into my mouth, bolting it down as fast as I could, with hardly any recourse to the action of my teeth or troubling to taste it.

I had scarcely swallowed the last morsel of bacon before Morgan was on his feet, pocket watch out and heading for the door. I scraped back my chair, mopped my mouth with my napkin, took a last regretful swig of coffee and trotted after him. As I caught up, Morgan stopped abruptly, so I almost cannoned into his back. He lifted his head and sniffed the air like a hunting dog. ‘Can you smell anything peculiar?’ he said.

I took a sniff myself and shook my head. ‘No, sir.’

He shrugged. ‘Hmm, funny that, could have sworn I smelt flowers. Rose petals if I’m not mistaken.’ He peered at me suspiciously for a moment, which I returned with a blank face. He shrugged again, turned and walked on briskly. It seemed I had overdone the pomade in my jacket. I could not help wondering what my new boss was thinking of me now. I hurried after him once more, trying my best to hold in check what threatened to be a mighty belch.

The morning consisted of examining various ‘difficult’ patients. In one room we found O’Reilly and another attendant standing beside a thin, pale, fair-haired woman sitting on a stool. No sooner were we inside than Morgan’s nose was raised and twitching again, and, even with the protection of my perfumed armpits, I could smell something unpleasant.

Morgan took a clipboard from O’Reilly and read through the papers on it swiftly. He handed it back to her without comment or even looking at her and advanced toward the woman. ‘Now, now, Lizzie, what’s this I hear? You’ve been playing with your excrement again.’

She looked up and gave him a wan smile. ‘I have indeed, sir,’ she said, ‘and I enjoyed myself immensely.’

Morgan turned to O’Reilly. ‘Completely unrepentant!’

‘Yes, sir,’ she replied. ‘Bold as brass. It’s been the devil of a job to get her clean again. We’ve had no cooperation from her at all.’

He sighed and looked back at the woman with the assumed sadness adults use when dealing with misbehaving small children. ‘Very well, then, nothing for it but the chair. Longer this time. I did think we would not need it again with her, but I see now that last time we tried to rush things and did not give the treatment sufficient time to do its work.’

At the mention of the word ‘chair’ the patient’s face blanched, something you would not have thought possible because it had been so pale already. ‘Oh, no, sir, not the chair,’ she protested, as the attendants took hold of her arms and pulled her from her seat. The woman resisted, trying to tug her arms free, but the attendants were muscular and strong and obviously better fed than she and they wrestled her toward a side door. Morgan strode swiftly around the group and opened it. At this the patient suddenly went limp and became a dead weight, forcing the attendants to drag her along, her legs trailing behind her, and all the while she was shouting and screaming exactly like a woman who has just realised she is about to be murdered.

Morgan went after them into the adjoining room, indicating with an impatient wave of his hand that I should follow. The room was bare save for a heavy upright wooden chair, which was bolted to the floorboards. The arms and legs of the chair were fitted with leather straps, with another stretched across the front of its high back. At the sight of the chair the woman came to life again and began fighting once more. The attendants hauled her into it, manhandling her calmly in the face of fierce opposition on her part, got her hands strapped to the arms and then proceeded to strap her ankles to the legs in spite of her kicking feet. Finally, they placed the strap attached to the chair back around her throat. A strap like that could strangle a woman, I thought.

All the time the woman was screaming and resisting with what little power she had. I really don’t enjoy seeing a woman struggle. I have no liking for torture.

‘If you leave me here, I will piss myself, I swear I will,’ the woman shouted.

O’Reilly turned to Morgan, and raised an eyebrow. ‘Gag?’

He nodded and she produced a piece of rolled cloth from her pocket, evidently made for the purpose, at the sight of which the woman stopped screaming and closed her mouth firmly, turning the lips inwards so you could not see them. Her panic showed in her eyes, which swivelled this way and that, desperately searching for some means of escape, like a cornered rat. The junior attendant went behind her, seized her head in an arm hold to prevent her shaking it around and with her free hand pinched the poor woman’s nose tightly. Thus it was only a matter of time before she was forced to open her mouth to breathe, whereupon O’Reilly shoved the gag between her teeth while the other proceeded to tie it behind the woman’s head.

After this, unable to move much at all, the poor wretch in the chair gave up the fight and her body slumped. No dignity remained to her and, lacking any other means of defiance, she carried out her threat and opened her bladder and urine began to drip from the chair and pool upon the floor below.

I watched in horror, appalled at what I was seeing, but Morgan seemed completely unmoved by the woman’s plight, as did O’Reilly and the other attendant. All three were so extremely matter-of-fact about the whole affair, it was obvious it must be a daily occurrence in their lives. Morgan strolled back into the other room and retrieved the clipboard from where O’Reilly had put it down. Returning to us, he studied it, lifting the top sheet of paper, then the one underneath.

‘I see we gave her only three hours last time.’

‘That’s right, sir,’ said O’Reilly.

‘I think then that this time we’ll try six. That should do the trick.’

The eyes of the woman in the chair widened in terror at these words. It was her only method of expression. Morgan walked over to her and said, in a kindly tone, ‘Now then, Lizzie, you may as well settle down because you are going to be here for quite the long haul. During that time I want you to consider the foolish behaviour that has led you to this situation and to consider modifying it so that you never have to find yourself here again. I hope that after this there will be no more soiling of yourself.’

He stood and smiled benignly, with the air of one who is conferring the greatest of favours, and as if waiting for some kind of response, though of course there was no way the unfortunate woman could give any, except to blink. Then, in that abrupt way he had of doing things, he turned to O’Reilly, thrust the clipboard into her hands and without another word marched out of the room. I caught up with him in the corridor.

‘Six hours to be so restrained seems a terrible long time,’ I ventured.

‘You think so?’ He stopped and looked at me with surprise. ‘Why, not at all, man, not at all. Ten or twelve is sometimes necessary.’

‘It seems so – so, well, harsh. Is there truly no other way?’

He looked exasperated. ‘There we go again, with your old-style ideas. Ideas I may say that were formulated by a gaggle of well-meaning but ill-informed, completely unqualified Quakers, rather than doctors, and that have no basis in science. Come, man, let’s have it out now, why don’t we? I can’t have you working here if you mean to challenge everything we do.’

I had no notion of how I had pushed him into this. His rage seemed out of all proportion to the objection I had made. His face was red with indignation, his cheeks puffed out, like an angry bullfrog. I thought his head was going to explode. I did not know what to say. It was not like drying up on stage, for I had no script. Indeed, I was not at all sure what my role here was. I tried to improvise but all that came out was a stammer. His features relaxed and his old calm smugness seemed to flow back. ‘Well? Cat got your tongue?’

‘I will gladly fight my corner, sir, only I would like the opportunity to reflect upon what I have seen here, if I may, and to formulate my reply carefully before making it.’

‘Very well,’ he snapped. ‘Take all the time you want; it won’t make any difference. We’ll discuss it tomorrow.’

I breathed a sigh of relief. I would read Moral Treatment after dinner this evening and have whatever arguments it contained for my ammunition. As I followed him along the corridor, though, the thought came to me, why do I want to argue with him? Why should I of all people care so much about the treatment of these lunatics, I who was wholly ignorant of such things not twenty-four hours ago? Why put myself at risk by stirring the waters of this safe harbour, given what the consequences might be? But all that carried no weight. I knew I would continue on this course even though to do so lacked any sort of logic. What a piece of work is man! So full of contradictions. I thought not to find such compassion in myself. It troubled me to discover I knew so little of me.

We were now near Morgan’s office and he begged to be excused as he had a letter he must dictate to his secretary, although I had the sense that this was a pretext, that he was still so angry with me he wanted to remove himself from my presence until he could calm down and reappear as his other, more familiar, urbane character. He was a man who did not like to lose control. I told him that as I hadn’t after all visited the library last night, I would do so now.

It was strange how ordinary in broad daylight, robbed of its black corners and sinister shadows, the passage I had trod the night before was. The library, too, had lost the terror darkness had given it. There was nothing atmospheric about it now; it had only the air of a musty neglected storeroom and not even very much of the romance of books. I examined the dusty shelves and found they contained a good few novels, and several volumes of stories by one of my favourite authors, Edgar Allan Poe. For the moment, though, I restrained myself from taking one; there was enough horror about the place for me not to seek to add to it. I settled for the Shakespeare. Should a man ever find himself upon a desert island, it is the only book he would need and the only one he could not do without.