Briefing for a Descent Into Hell (31 page)

The eyes of Violet Stoke had the same effect, that of negating the rest of her appearance—and perhaps of saying the same thing.

As if it were all not enough of a challenge, the shocking contrast between formal black dress and the lower nakedness, the smooth dancer’s hair and the sad moist patch below, the social position of “the cardplayer” and the isolation spread around her by her fear and hatred, as if these were not enough (to which must be added the social and possibly less important comment made by the expensiveness of her dress, shoes, handbag, any of which was a week’s salary for the poor nurses) there was this other contrast. The girl’s black eyes looked directly out of the picture, and if you followed
that gaze, let yourself slide inwards, so that you slid into her head, what you became part of was not the violence of hatred, but a puddle of tears, and a little girl’s tears at that: Oh love me, hold me, forgive me, and never let me go, don’t make me grow up. What she was feeling inside that façade of upsetting contrasts, was what a very small girl feels when she has been beaten or ill-treated by a powerful parent, and she knows quite well it will happen again next time the parent is angry or drunk or frightened himself—or herself. She was all victim, betrayed, tormented, vulnerable, and a sponge for love.

She had been sitting there, playing patience in a way which was the cry:
Why do you all make me stay alone like this?
when into the public room came a tall good-looking man of about fifty. He had wavy dark grey hair that had been black, he had blue eyes, he had a good smile.

Unlike others who had come in while she sat there, saying silently:
I dare you to come and sit with me
, and had gone to sit elsewhere, he went straight towards her, sat down, and immediately pulled a pipe out of his pocket and started on the business of filling and lighting it. He wore a casual jacket, and a dark blue sweater under it. He looked like a man who had been an amateur athlete.

He was Professor Charles Watkins and he and Violet were friends.

Now, without asking him, she swept her cards together and began dealing for a poker game which was a favourite of theirs, which meant that each played three hands, seven cards a hand, with four cards wild, and high-low into the
bargain. She nearly always won these games, not because she was brighter than the Professor, but because she cared more.

“Threes, fives, sevens, Jacks wild,” she announced, in a companionable girl’s voice.

They played. She won.

She shuffled and said: “Did you see him today?”

“Yes, Doctor X is away.”

“What did he say?”

“He says I’ve got to be moved somewhere. I can’t go on here the way I am.”

“Why, why can’t you? Oh, it is too much!”

“He just keeps saying that this is a reception hospital and he can’t bend the rules any more.”

“Don’t you let them send you to the North Catchment then, whatever else.”

“Don’t worry, I won’t.”

She dealt.

“Twos and sixes and Queens wild,” she said.

They played in silence. She won.

“Haven’t you got any money at all?” she cried, a petulant and wilful child, as it were demanding a new doll, or dress.

“The Professor is quite loaded, so they tell me,” he said. “But that doesn’t help me much, does it?”

“I could get a job and earn, I have had jobs. Never for long though.”

“I’m sure I could too. I’m very handy around the wards, after all. I could wash up in a restaurant or work in a bar?”

“Would we earn enough to live on?”

“We could try.”

“Oh do let’s. Oh please.”

“Yes … we wouldn’t—force each other. We wouldn’t—impose.”

“No. We’d help each other, I’m sure of that.”

She dealt. It was for five cards.

“We’ll play it straight, cool and classical,” she said.

They played. She won.

“Aren’t you cheating at all?” he enquired.

This meant, was she identifying more than was inevitable with one or other of the hands she was playing, for in this personal version of poker they had evolved, the different hands stood for aspects of themselves. They might or might not know what each other’s different hands stood for. But he knew now that when she dealt for the classic game, this meant she was feeling calmer and more in control of her different selves than when she dealt three hands each and with so many cards wild. And so on.

Yesterday morning, she had let him win the first game, making it clear that it was because she knew he had had a bad night.

“Was I cheating? Did it look as if I was? I was trying not to.”

“Well perhaps I was too, a little.”

“But I
won,”
she claimed fiercely. “I won, didn’t I?”

“Yes, you did, Violet. You always do.”

“Yes, I do, don’t I?”

She dealt again, three hands each, five cards.

They played, she won.

“Are your sons coming to see you?”

“No. She won’t bring them.”

“Don’t mind. Oh please don’t. I’ll go and make you some tea. Would you like some?”

“I’d like some tea, yes, but I don’t mind that they aren’t coming. What I mind is, that I don’t mind, when
they
are so sure that I ought to. Who are
they
, though? I know you. I suppose you are my daughter. They say I haven’t had a daughter?”

“Oh I wish I was your daughter. Oh I do so wish I were. But you’d be like the rest, I suppose.”

“Perhaps I would. How do I know I am a good father to my sons? But that is
then
. You are now. I am good for you, Vi? Am I?”

“Yes. But you like me, you see. My families don’t.”

“Yes, I do like you Violet. Very much.”

She went off to the little kitchen used by patients to make themselves tea, cocoa, toast, sandwiches. When she returned with two cups of tea, a woman patient had sat herself near the handsome and distinguished Professor, but at Violet’s killing black glances, she hastily withdrew.

“I heard Doctor X say that Doctor Y favoured you unfairly.”

“Yes, Doctor Y told me that too.”

“And Doctor X said to Nurse Black that he thought it was possible you are shamming.”

“That I do remember?”

“That you remember more than you let on.”

“What I remember they won’t have at any price, that’s my trouble.”

“Doctor X said there was a case last year when a man
went on pretending he couldn’t remember his wife, but then Doctor X caught him out and he had to go home.”

“I don’t remember my wife or my mistress. I am very attractive to women, that’s clear enough. They both hate my guts.”

“I don’t think that is very funny, if you do.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I don’t hate you.”

“No, but you aren’t a woman.”

“No. Oh no, I’m not. Oh no, no.”

“You look very like my girl, the one that was killed in Yugoslavia.”

“You never were in Yugoslavia.”

“But I—oh very well. I don’t see why you should mind that.”

“But I
do
mind. They
know
you weren’t in Yugoslavia.”

“All the same, you do look like her.”

“Perhaps I am the first person that belongs to your new memory. I mean, the people in the ward and me and Doctor Y and Doctor X, we are what you’ve made your new memory out of?”

“Not Doctor X!”

“Oh, I don’t know, I suppose he’s not as bad as that. I mean, why do we all hate Doctor X? They aren’t all that different, are they?”

“Yes. Oh yes, they
are.”

“Well all right, I’m sorry, oh, please don’t get upset.”

“All right.”

“But when you do start remembering all the people in your life, what will happen to me? I mean, I was thinking
last night, now I’m an important person in your mind …”

“You are, you are, I promise you, Violet.”

“But when it all comes back, I’ll be one of—hundreds?”

“Perhaps it won’t come back.”

“When it does, will you want to be my friend?”

“I am sure I will.”

“But
she
won’t.”

“Are you sure of that?”

“Yes. I saw her both of the times she came to see you. I was the one who took her in to you, and showed her the way and everything. That was when I was being co-operative and amenable.”

“She is very attractive. He has good taste, the Professor has.”

“Is she what you would choose now, do you think?”

“I wouldn’t mind. I wouldn’t mind at all if I could just go off with her as if I had just met her.”

“But you have only just met her.”

“I know when I’m with her that she is telling me the truth. She hates me, you see.”

“Yes, she does. But it’s not you she hates so much. She hates her life.”

“Are you sure of that?”

“Yes. I saw her face. I took a good close look, both times. I knew what she was feeling.”

“Tell me then.”

“She’s like my mother.”

“But perhaps everyone is?”

“No. Because if that is true it means you are like my father, and you aren’t, you aren’t, you aren’t.”

“Don’t cry then.”

“I don’t cry.
Never
. Or if I do, it isn’t me that’s crying. I can watch myself cry—it’s not worth anything, not like real sorrow … 
she
was crying like anything last time.”

“They say I lost my memory because I feel guilty.”

“Do you?”

“I think I feel guilty because I lost my memory. I do feel very deeply indeed that it is irresponsible to lose one’s memory.”

“If you feel that, you haven’t lost your memory, but you have only lost some facts, some events.”

“Oh yes, I do tell myself that. But there’s something else. Yes. There’s something I
have
to remember. I
have
to.”

“But don’t get excited, it makes it worse.”

“I’ve been here over two months, Violet.”

“Don’t let them send you to that place. Don’t.”

“But if I refuse to go, they say I’ll have to have shock.”

Both of them, the middle-aged man and the pretty girl, turned to look at a person, a woman, who sat in a chair a few feet away, watching the television. The programme had at last started. Then they looked at another person, a middle-aged man, and then at another, and so on, around the room. The people their glances were isolating in this way had had shock treatments, or were in the course of having them.

There was no method of treatment that caused more emotion in the wards, more fear. Yet of the people in that room, more than half had had the electric current switched through their brains. Although some of the new drugs that were being used were as powerful as electric shocks, and although as little was known about their effects as was known
about shock treatment, these new drugs did not provoke nearly as much fearful comment and speculation.

“Brian Smith says he knows to a week when he is going to have to come in and have another set of shocks,” she said.

“Mrs. Jones told me she couldn’t bear the thought of living without them,” he agreed.

There was a considerable silence.

“Roger is going out next week,” she said at last. “He says he will be looking for a flat to share. He says we can go and live with him if we like, until we find a place of our own.”

“Oh good. That’s very kind. Yes, I’m sure that would be the best thing for both of us.”

  Well now Professor.

  Well now Doctor Y?

  I’ve got you another two weeks. But it wasn’t easy and I am afraid it’s the last extension possible. It would be so much easier if you didn’t show your dislike of Doctor X so strongly. It is quite irrational you know. I understand that among the patients I’m a goody and he is a baddy. It’s like schoolchildren.

  I don’t dislike him.

  But you never say a word to him.

  There is nothing I can say. He’s not there.

  Well, well.

  
Doctor Y, have you thought at all of what I suggested?

  Oh, come now, Professor!

  I’d look after her. You don’t imagine … I understand her. All she needs is to be allowed to behave like a little girl.

  You fancy yourself as a nursery maid?

  Or as her father.

  It doesn’t matter what I think, anyway. It wouldn’t be possible. She has two fathers, two mothers, three sisters and a brother. As I know to my sorrow.

  But it’s not illegal?

  No. But you’d find the whole lot buzzing around you day and night. No, it’s better she stays here where she is allowed to be a little girl without the benefit of her relations.

  It is very strange to me, Doctor Y. You say you’d be delighted if I went to stay with Miles Bovey. Or with Rosemary Baines.

  Both have said they’d be happy to have you stay with them as long as it would help. Mr. Bovey has a cottage in Wales, he says. It would be quiet for you. And Miss Baines sounds a reasonable type of woman.

  And yet I don’t know either of them.

  You said you did remember wandering around by yourself that night when you got to Miss Baines?

  A little. Not much. It isn’t the wandering around that is the point. No. The point is—there was something I had
to remember. Have to remember. I know that. I was looking for something. Somebody.

  Yourself?

  Words. That’s a word. To you that means one thing, but it’s different to me.

  You think you’ll remember if you share a flat with Violet?

  I don’t know. But you see, she’s
now
—do you understand? She’s not like a person in a dream. She can’t suddenly turn into something else—
and make up a past for me
.

  I don’t think either Miles Bovey or Miss Baines would make up a past for you. And above all, it wouldn’t be an emotional pressure, as it might be if you went home too soon.

  I don’t know why I can never make you understand. I can get Violet to understand everything I say.

  Are you sure she’s not behaving as a small girl would—playing at grownups?

  I am sure sometimes, yes. But she is not just a small girl, Doctor Y. Emotionally yes, of course. But in other ways she understands things you don’t.

  Well, I’m sorry. What do you want me to do? I can say to you that I agree it might help both you and Violet to spend a period of convalescence together. I could say that. But I am sure there would be other opinions. Not least from her parents. All four of them.