Runaway (27 page)

Dr Robert took us up to the next floor. ‘I mostly live on this level,’ he said. And pointing down a long hallway with doors opening off on both sides, he told us, ‘My study’s down at the end there. But I spend most of my leisure time in here.’

We passed through a door into a high-ceilinged room that ran from the front of the house to the back. Perhaps two rooms at one time, but opening now one into the other through an arch. The front half was dominated by a vast, ornately carved wood and marble fireplace, around which settees and soft armchairs were gathered on a polished wooden floor as if huddled there for warmth. Bay windows gave on to a view over the park. Shelves on the wall opposite the fireplace groaned, floor to ceiling, with books. The back room was used for dining. A long, polished oval table reflected light from every window, and a gleaming silver tea service stood on an elegant, low mahogany sideboard.

In stark contrast with the old-fashioned gentility of these rooms, the walls were covered by the most extraordinary modern artwork. Large and small canvases, mostly black and white. Squares and circles, cubes and whorls, painted in such a way as to create the illusion of depth. Almost 3D. An image folding in on itself. Another buckling within its frame. Distorted geometry.
Trompe l’oeil
, an expression I had learned during my history of art classes at school. Fooling the eye. They were startling works, really, and quite out of keeping with the rest of the house.

‘Do you like them?’ Dr Robert was clearly proud of his collection.

No one knew quite what to say.

‘All works of a friend of mine. Bridget Riley. She’s exhibiting soon in New York. Going to be huge.’ He smiled his self-satisfaction. ‘And these, my friends, are going to be worth a small fortune one day.’ As an afterthought, he added, ‘Although I have no intention of selling them.’

He took us up through the rest of the house, waving expansively along corridors to his left and right, following the curve of the polished wooden bannisters from floor to floor. It seemed that most of the other rooms in the house were bedrooms, including several in the attic, which he said had once provided accommodation for the staff.

‘Of course, I have no staff,’ he said. ‘Couldn’t afford it, even if I wanted to. I was fortunate to inherit the house from my parents, but it’s as much as I can do just to pay for the upkeep of the place.’

On the top floor we went out through French windows on to a wide, square terrace with a low, white-painted stone balustrade around three sides. And from here we had a view across the rooftops of Kensington. A forest of chimneys sprouting from steeply angled slate roofs, in turn broken by countless attic dormers.

‘It’s wonderful up here of a summer’s evening,’ the doctor said. ‘With the air soft in your face, the perfume of a thousand blooms in your nostrils, and a glass of fine Scotch in your hand.’ He turned to smile at us. ‘The basement, on the other hand, smells a little damp. But I’m sure you won’t mind that.’

The basement was much darker than the rest of the house, limited light slanting in at acute angles through high windows that opened into a sub-pavement alleyway where stone steps climbed up to locked wrought-iron gates. There were three small bedrooms, a toilet and a sitting room down here, and the all-pervasive miasma of damp that seemed to have contaminated curtains, carpet and furniture in equal measure. But the doctor was right. We didn’t mind at all. It was a vast improvement on the concrete terrace of the Serpentine Restaurant, or the back of the van.

‘Make yourselves at home,’ he said. ‘There’s a girl comes in once a week to change the sheets and do the laundry.’ He pulled a face. ‘Speaking of which, can I suggest that you get yourselves a change of clothes. Or underwear at the very least. And a bath wouldn’t be out of order. There’s plenty of hot water.’

He took out his wallet and, to our amazement, counted out a sheaf of notes that he dropped on to the coffee table in the sitting room.

‘Consider this an advance on that little performance job I told you about. There are plenty of shops down the Old Brompton Road. When you’ve got yourselves freshened up, I’ll order some carry-out for this evening and tell you all about it.’

_II

We were in the hall, on the way out to do an underwear shopping, when we heard the rattle of a key in the latch, and the front door opened before we got to it. A painfully good-looking young man with a shock of Scandinavian blond hair, tumbling like straw across his forehead, looked startled to see us. He wasn’t terribly tall, but you saw at a glance how beautifully proportioned he was. He wore an open-necked shirt with sleeves carefully rolled up, revealing a tattoo of a bluebird on his left forearm. A pair of neatly pressed slacks folded themselves over spotlessly Blanco-ed tennis shoes. He looked like he might have acquired his tan at the same time and place as Dr Robert, but his pale green eyes lacked warmth and he glared at us as if we were aliens.

‘Who’s this?’ His voice cut sharply through our chatter, the question posed directly to our benefactor at the foot of the stairs. It carried more than a hint of hostility.

The doctor said, ‘They’re a young group from Glasgow, Sy. Going to help out at the Victoria Hall. They’ll be staying in the basement in the meantime.’

Sy looked far from pleased. ‘I need peace, Cliff, you know that.’ His voice was modulated by petulance. ‘I’m due on set at six tomorrow, and I’ve got five pages of dialogue to learn.’

‘No one’s going to disturb you, Sy.’ Dr Robert’s voice was calmly soothing, like a psychologist reassuring an agitated patient. ‘The boys will be out for the rest of the afternoon, won’t you, boys?’ He barely looked at us and didn’t wait for an answer. ‘You’ll have the place to yourself. And you can run your lines later with me, if you want.’

But Sy appeared less than mollified by the promise of peace and the offer of help. He flicked a dismissive hand theatrically in the air and pushed past us, fastidiously avoiding contact as if we might somehow be contaminated.

‘I just don’t need this right now, Cliff. I don’t.’ And he took the steps two at a time, disappearing round the curve of the staircase beyond the first landing.

Apparently unruffled, Dr Robert said to us, ‘I’ll see you later, then.’

And we all tumbled out into the street. The door shut behind us and Rachel turned excitedly on the pavement.

‘You know who that was?’

‘Well, it definitely wasn’t John Lennon,’ I said.

She made a face. ‘It was Simon Flet.’

When we all looked at her blankly, she raised her eyes to the heavens.

‘The actor. He was in that movie last year. You know, the one that’s been tipped for an Oscar. Shit, what’s it called?’

There wasn’t one of us could help her. Jenny and I had been to the flicks together a few times, but we hadn’t paid much attention to the films. And anyway, I was interested in music, not movies.

‘
The Killing Breath
,
’ she said suddenly. ‘It was a psychological thriller. Simon Flet got rave reviews, and every girl in the country fell in love with him. He’s totally gorgeous.’

‘Well, they’ll all be disappointed then, won’t they?’ Dave said.

Rachel gave him a quizzical look. ‘Why?’

Dave grunted. ‘Obvious, isn’t it?’ When no one responded he looked around our curious faces in surprise. ‘Well, he’s queer, isn’t he? And I’ll bet that Dr Robert is, tae.’

_III

Bridget Riley’s op art paintings took on an almost sinister air by candlelight. The flickering flames of a dozen or more candles set around the dining room danced across the geometry of black and white patterns, causing them to shift shape and distort if you let your eyes rest on them for more than a few seconds. Along with the effects of the wine, it was quite unsettling.

I don’t think any of us had ever drunk wine before. A warm, rich, heady red with which Dr Robert filled our glasses each time they were in danger of emptying. We all sat around his table, changed and washed, eating Greek food that he’d had delivered from a restaurant in the high street. Another first – at least, for me. I had never tasted anything like it before. Lamb flavoured with mint and cinnamon. Rice wrapped in vine leaves. Slow-cooked beef in a rich gravy that simply fell apart when you poked it with your fork. Tuna like steak, broken into pieces and served in a salad with little cubes of white cheese.

It was the first decent meal we’d had in three days, and we devoured it.

Dr Robert sat languidly in his chair at the head of the table. He wore jeans and an open-necked white shirt, and his tan seemed deeper by candlelight. There had been no sign of Simon Flet when we returned to the house.

We hadn’t spoken much, our focus on the food, but the wine had dissipated much of the tension that lingered among us and we began to relax.

The good doctor wiped his lips with a cloth napkin and lit a cigarette before leaning forward and resting his elbows on the table as if about to impart some solemn secret. ‘Ever heard of J. P. Walker?’ he said, only to be met by blank looks. ‘He’s from your neck of the woods.’

Then Luke said, ‘The psychiatrist?’

Dr Robert nodded. ‘Author of
The Two of Us
, international bestseller and direct challenge to all the fundamental precepts of twentieth-century psychiatry.’

None of us had any idea where this was going, and so no one said a word. The doctor smiled.

‘JP disputes the very existence of madness, at least as we have come to accept it. He argues that “normal” is just an averaging out of human behaviour, and that no such thing truly exists. And so what we define as insanity is just another form of behaviour that should, by rights, come within the very broad spectrum of normality.’

‘I’ve read something about this,’ Luke said. ‘J. P. Walker believes that the treatment of mental illness with drugs, or worse, is wrong because the “illness” as defined by psychiatrists doesn’t actually exist.’

Dr Robert nodded a smiling acknowledgement in Luke’s direction. ‘You have a bit of a savant among you, boys.’ He interlocked his fingers on the table in front of him. ‘That’s broadly correct. Dr Walker believes that what the profession defines as schizophrenia is a form of behaviour conditioned by conflict in the family and can be treated by a kind of regression during which the patient is taken back to infancy, or even earlier, and rebuilt to be what society would accept as “normal”. A sort of second chance at growing up.’

I was wondering why on earth he was telling us this, when he looked at me and smiled, almost as if he had heard the thought spoken aloud.

‘You’re probably wondering what this has to do with anything.’

I was glad of the smoke and the flickering light that hid my blushes. And I had the oddest sense of having been violated, the fingers of his mind reaching in to grasp my innermost thoughts.

‘Dr Walker is the one who will be employing you. And you should feel honoured. The man is famous on both sides of the Atlantic. He has set up a project in the East End of London to put his theories to the test. Along with colleagues, he has taken possession of a former community complex known as the Victoria Hall, in Bethnal Green. He lives there with a number of patients who would otherwise be confined in mental institutions. Under his tutelage, they are free and equal members of the hall’s twenty-five or so residents, which include psychiatrists and psychologists. And, trust me, you’d be hard pushed to tell the difference.’

I could hear music now, but had no recollection of Dr Robert putting any on, and no idea where it was coming from. The strange thing was that, although I knew it was music, I couldn’t have told you what kind of music. Classical, pop, rock ’n’ roll, jazz. It was just music, and it seemed amazing to me.

‘The Victoria Hall experiment has already gained quite a reputation. There’s a lot of media interest, and a number of what you might call celebrities drop by to consult with JP or just hang out.’ He grinned. ‘Names and faces you probably wouldn’t believe.’

He stubbed out his cigarette and lit another. It gave me the urge to have one myself, and although I managed to get a cigarette out of the packet, I somehow couldn’t seem to hold it between my fingers. It kept moving as if it were alive. I looked up and saw Rachel turning her head towards the window. It left a kind of coloured trail that traced the movement of her head, and I felt a tiny seed of anxiety start to burgeon deep inside me.

‘Anyway, our friend JP is looking for performance artists who will improvise dramas for the residents at his direction. Nothing too structured, but designed to provoke discussion.’ He blew smoke towards the ceiling and it seemed to me to take shape in the form of a dragon breathing fire. ‘There’s a local pop group in Bethnal Green who use the hall for practising. They leave their stuff set up there. I’m sure JP can persuade them to let you use their gear to practise for yourselves. And then we can get an idea of just how good you are. Or not.’