The Sleep Room (15 page)

Her response was slightly delayed. ‘Sister Jenkins has been very thoughtful.’

‘Indeed – a little severe, on occasion, but her heart is in the right place.’ I offered Mary a smile, but her features did not soften and the set of her jaw remained rigidly defiant. ‘Although, to be frank, I wasn’t really thinking about Sister Jenkins.’ I picked up a pencil, twirled it in my fingers and put it down again. ‘I was thinking more about the house.’ I looked up at the wooden beams that crossed the ceiling. They were dark and oppressive. ‘The atmosphere. It does have an atmosphere – doesn’t it?’

Mary responded with a jarring non sequitur. ‘I think they’ll take me at the Ipswich General.’

‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘I’m sure they will.’ There was an awkward break in our conversation, and I realized that I would have to be more blunt. ‘Mary, there’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you for some time. Shortly after my arrival, we were leaving the basement together, do you remember? You gasped, and when I turned round you had your hand raised, covering the back of your neck. You said that you’d twisted your ankle, but that wasn’t true, was it? You were only saying that. In actual fact, something had either struck you on the back of the head, or pulled your hair.’ She looked confused, frightened. ‘Mary. Listen,’ I continued, trying not to sound too inquisitorial. ‘I understand your reluctance to speak about it. Really I do. You think that people won’t believe you, or, even worse, they’ll assume you’re going crazy. But I’m not like that. Please. Can you tell me – honestly – what happened? I won’t say a word to anyone else.’

She looked at me with uncharacteristic intensity, as if she possessed some auxiliary sense that allowed her to gauge my intentions and judge the extent to which I could be trusted. I was willing her to speak, to confide in me, and she seemed to be on the verge of disclosing something, when the door flew open and Sister Jenkins entered. Such was my frustration that an inwardly voiced expletive almost found expression.

‘Dr Richardson? What are
you
doing here?’ Her emphasis carried a subtle demand: my presence in the sleep room at that late hour required justification.

‘I was a little concerned about Kathy Webb’s blood pressure.’

Sister Jenkins advanced, her shoes sounding a lively staccato on the tiled floor. ‘Really? I wasn’t aware that there was a problem.’

‘It’s been a little low.’

‘But nothing to worry about, surely?’

‘Indeed. I was just being . . . thorough.’

She communicated her approval with a nod.

I became aware of a thrumming sound followed by a series of jangling impacts. The pencil I had left on the table had rolled across the desk and fallen to the floor. Sister Jenkins crouched down and picked it up. As she placed the pencil back on the desk, she threw a stern look at Mary. The trainee quickly apologized: ‘I’m sorry, Sister.’ But she had not been responsible. I had placed the pencil on my side of the desk, out of her reach. When I caught Mary’s eye, she gave no indication that anything out of the ordinary had happened. Her gaze was level and the cast of her features inscrutable.

Turning around, I strolled off into the gloom. I did not look back, but I could hear Sister Jenkins talking to Mary in a low, confidential tone. Positioning myself next to Marian Powell, I studied her hollow cheeks, the sharpness of her bones, her scarecrow hair. She was dreaming. In fact, they were all dreaming: eyeballs oscillating beneath dry, papery lids; limbs occasionally twitching. Elizabeth Mason was the first among them to stop. Then, within a minute, they had all stopped.

Sister Jenkins had entered the bathroom, but she had left the door open, and a yellow trapezium of illumination had appeared on the floor outside.

I made my way back to Mary.

‘When are you leaving?’ I asked.

‘Not just yet. I’m here for another three weeks.’

‘Good. Perhaps we can have another talk?’

She bit her lower lip and after a lengthy pause, she said, ‘I don’t think there’s anything to discuss, Dr Richardson.’

I picked up the pencil and held it in front of her nose. ‘Yes, there is.’

The bathroom door closed and the trapezium of light vanished. Sister Jenkins was making her way towards us. I put the pencil in my pocket and said, ‘Goodnight, Mary.’

Chapman was seated at the table in the recreation room. He did not hear me approach and he was unaware that I was standing in the doorway. His head was tilted back and he appeared to be pinching the loose flesh of his left forearm. Each movement was accompanied by a pained vocalization.

‘Michael?’

He looked over his shoulder, and then changed his position so that he could see me more easily.

‘Ah, Dr Richardson.’

‘What are you doing?’ I asked.

‘Nothing,’ he replied. ‘Nothing in particular.’

I entered the room and sat on the empty chair beside him. ‘May I look at your arm please?’

The sleeves of his dressing gown and pyjama jacket had been rolled up and his skin was covered in small purple bruises.

‘Michael?’ I enquired, conducting a cursory examination. ‘Why are you doing this?’

He shrugged and pulled his sleeves down. I tried to get him to talk, but he was unresponsive. Self-injurious behaviour is frequently observed in patients with depression, and naturally that is what I assumed was going on; however, a few days later, I had reason to doubt whether I had understood Chapman’s motives correctly. I realized that Chapman’s ‘pinching’ might not be an instance of self-harm after all.

We were playing chess and something of a stalemate had developed. As I was contemplating yet another uninspired move, Chapman said, ‘Reality.’ He managed to invest each of the four syllables with increasing amounts of pathos.

Raising my eyes from the board, I enquired, ‘What about it?’

‘When I was at Cambridge, we used to discuss the nature of reality.’

‘And . . .’

‘There was a philosophy tutor. Halperin – G.K. Halperin. He was very keen on a Chinese conundrum. Third or second century BC, I believe.’ Chapman made a steeple with his fingers and acquired a donnish mien. ‘A man dreams that he is a butterfly, and in the dream he has no knowledge of his life as a human being. When he wakes up he asks himself two questions: am I a man, who has just dreamed that he was a butterfly? Or am I really a butterfly, now dreaming that I am a man?’

‘Is that why you’ve been pinching yourself, Michael? To see if you can wake yourself up?’

He collapsed the steeple, curling his fingers into clenched fists, and replied, ‘Lately, I’ve been dreaming a lot about Cambridge.’

‘I see. Are you a patient in a hospital, who frequently dreams that he is an undergraduate at Trinity? Or are you an undergraduate at Trinity, who is now dreaming that he is a patient in a hospital?’

He prodded the edge of the table, as if testing the stability of the material universe. ‘There’s no way of knowing. That’s what Halperin taught us.’

‘Well, pinching yourself won’t resolve the issue,’ I said.

‘No,’ Chapman sighed. ‘I suppose not.’

Over the next few days, Chapman became distant – his speech vague. It was as though he was constantly distracted by some troublesome internal process. We played another game of chess, but he wasn’t concentrating. I beat him easily and he responded with indifference. I began to worry about his mental state and made efforts to see him more frequently. He was usually sitting up in bed, staring blankly into space. Then, one afternoon, I found him positioned by the window, his fingers gripping the iron bars. It was something I hadn’t seen him do for a while. The view was dismal – low-slung hammocks of grey cloud, merciless rain. Chapman didn’t turn round but said, ‘I had stopped sleeping. No, that’s wrong. I
could
get to sleep but I found myself wide awake in the early hours of the morning. I used to feel lonely and claustrophobic in my little college room, so I went for long walks. More often than not I took the footpath to the meadows.’

Chapman let go of the bars and thrust his hands deep into the baggy pockets of his dressing gown. He continued looking out onto the heath.

‘I came across a bicycle lying on its side in the grass. There wasn’t anyone around, but I could hear someone singing, a woman’s voice, and then I noticed a swimmer in the river. I crouched behind a bush, and when this woman, this girl, this slip of a thing, climbed onto the bank I saw that she was quite naked – not a stitch of clothing. I went back again the next morning, and the morning after that, and the morning after that. I went back again and again, to the same place, and she was always there. It was obvious that she wasn’t quite right.’ He stopped and screwed a finger into his temple. ‘Mentally, I mean. She was like a child. She would pick flowers and talk to the moon. When the sun appeared she would greet it with a wave, and when she was swimming she would sing that nursery rhyme.’ Chapman began humming a simple melody. ‘Do you know it?’

‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘“Row your boat”.’

‘That’s it. “Row your boat”.’ He raised his arm and swung it from side to side, a little like a conductor beating time. ‘Row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream. Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream.’ Then, emitting a dry, humourless cackle, he repeated the final words. ‘Life is but a dream.’ Chapman turned to face me and in a voice that trembled with anguish he said, ‘Naked. Innocent. And . . . I . . .’ His face crumpled and his chest heaved. ‘Will I be punished, Dr Richardson?’

‘What happened, Michael?’

‘Will I be punished?’

‘What happened? Tell me.’

Chapman’s eyes darted shiftily from side to side. ‘Nothing happened!’ he snapped.

I tried to coax him to say more, but he turned his back on me and gripped the window bars again. When I looked in on him later he was still in the same position, softly humming the tune of ‘Row your boat’.

When I told Maitland about Chapman’s confession he was rather dismissive. ‘I don’t think we can give it much weight.’ The attitude he struck reminded me of how he had behaved after I had asked him about the histories of the sleep-room patients: surprise at my naivety was mingled with a definite undercurrent of irritation, and he insisted that I put Chapman on one of the new antidepressants from America. I felt slighted. I had worked hard to build a relationship with Chapman. Even if his confession was nothing more than a fantasy, it still felt to me like a breakthrough, an expression – albeit a cautious expression – of trust. ‘Might I suggest a little less talk,’ said Maitland, failing to sweeten the reprimand with a counterfeit smile.

I should have watched Chapman more closely, especially so after I had changed his medication. But that very same week, Wyldehope became the focus of a police investigation and I forgot all about Chapman and his confession. It was an oversight that, in months to come, I would bitterly regret.

10

I removed a circle of condensation from the kitchen window with the cuff of my shirt and peered out into a featureless void. An opaque haze obscured the view. I made myself a cup of tea, smoked a cigarette, and then descended the stairs. When I reached the first-floor landing, I saw Lillian Gray rushing from one side of the vestibule to the other. She looked harried.

‘Good morning!’ I called out.

Lillian spun round and instead of returning my greeting she asked, ‘Have you just got up?’

‘Yes. Why?’

‘Mary Williams has run off. Sister Jenkins is fuming.’

‘What do you mean, run off?’

‘Sorry, can’t talk. Ask Sister Jenkins, she’s downstairs.’ Lillian unlocked the door to the women’s ward and vanished inside.

I continued my descent, all the way down to the sleep room, where Sister Jenkins was studying papers which were spread over the entire surface of the desk.

‘What’s happened?’ I asked.

‘That stupid girl!’ Sister Jenkins hissed.

‘Mary Williams?’

‘She relieved Nurse Aldrich at one o’clock. When Nurse Page arrived at six she had gone. Can you believe it?’ Sister Jenkins snorted in disgust. ‘I’ve never known such irresponsibility. To leave the sleep-room patients unattended! And if that isn’t bad enough, she failed to lock the front door!’

I was dumbfounded: ‘How very odd.’

‘Dr Maitland will be furious.’

‘Where is she now?’

‘God knows!’

‘Have you checked her room?’

‘Yes.’

‘And she wasn’t there?’

Sister Jenkins’s tone was impatient. ‘Obviously not.’

‘Then where is she?’

‘Dr Richardson, Nurse Thomas is on leave, Nurse Perkins has gastric flu, and now, thanks to that foolish girl, I’ve got to reorganize all of these rotas again. The whereabouts of Mary Williams is the least of my concerns.’

‘But it was still dark at six o’clock.’

Sister Jenkins’s brow furrowed. She was too preoccupied with her task to recognize the significance of this fact. ‘Indeed it was,’ she replied, not bothering to look up.

‘She couldn’t have crossed the heath. It would have been pitch-black, and there’s a thick mist this morning.’

Sister Jenkins stopped writing. ‘You think she’s still here?’

‘I think that’s very likely. Perhaps we should look for her.’

‘With respect, Dr Richardson, I have to get these rotas completed as a matter of urgency. And – before you ask – I can’t spare any nurses.’

‘I’ll speak to Mr Hartley.’

The caretaker listened to the news of Mary Williams’s disappearance without showing much emotion. He nodded, collected some keys, and we commenced our search. We looked everywhere, or at least everywhere that the missing trainee might choose to hide: the first-floor outpatient suite, the rooms adjoining the kitchen, the laundry. Then we trudged through a cold mizzle to the outhouses. None of the bicycles were missing and she was not in Hartley’s car. I had hoped we would discover Mary, lying on the back seat, curled safely under a blanket, but when I looked through the rear window, I saw only stitched leather and a crumpled shopping bag.

In Mary’s room, we found a coat hanging in the wardrobe. Hartley pulled back the curtains and looked out onto a landscape of undulating fog. He didn’t say anything; he didn’t need to. It was obvious that we had both reached the same disquieting conclusion. When we had completed our tour, Hartley went back to his cottage, and I walked round the main building and down to the beach. The dull brown waves crashed on the shingle and a spiteful wind scoured my face. I made a funnel with my hands and shouted, ‘Mary? Mary?’ But her name was immediately swallowed by the noise.