The Sleep Room (28 page)

I went over to the window. Maitland’s Bentley was parked outside and, due to an unfortunate chain of associations, I found myself thinking of the Chesterfield once again: the rhythmic creak of leather accompanied by moans of satisfaction in the dark. Maitland, panting over Jane’s back, searching out the full, ripe weight of her breasts with his big hands. My head began to ache.

‘What’s the point?’ I said, exhausted and bitter.

‘We were happy together.’

‘Yes, we were.’

‘Well, then.’

‘I’m afraid I don’t see what you’re getting at.’

I heard her stand up and watched her image in the window, expanding as she came closer, until she halted behind me. Through her ghostly reflection I could see the heath, distant woodland and the sky. I felt rigid with expectation. She wanted to reach out, I could feel it – her desire to touch building steadily.

‘People make mistakes,’ she said. ‘I made a mistake – and I’m sorry. Really I am.’

I felt her hand on my shoulder and observed its appearance in the glass. My attention was immediately drawn to a glint of gold. She was wearing a wedding ring. Or at least I thought she was. Because, when I looked more carefully, it seemed to fade away. Was my willingness to give this particular interpretation to a glimmer of reflected light significant? Did it reveal the survival of my fantasy of an idyllic life with Jane, now relegated to the murky underworld of forbidden wishes, something only expressible through the Freudian trickery of faulty perception and slips of the tongue? I felt her grip on my shoulder tighten and she took a step forward. Her breath warmed the back of my neck.

‘No,’ I said. ‘It’s over. We can’t pick up the pieces. It’s too late.’

She did not have time to respond. Because it was at that point that the screaming started.

20

The door at the end of the ward opened and Nurse Page rushed down the corridor. ‘Jane?’ she hollered. ‘Where are you?’ Then, seeing us standing at the entrance to the recreation room, she shouted, ‘Fire! Fire! Get the patients out!’ I looked beyond the nurses’ station into the distant extremity of the vestibule and noticed signs of activity. Sister Jenkins was directing a procession of women in hospital gowns, making frantic gesticulations to encourage speed. The scene was bathed in a sinister lambency and I could hear a continuous wailing. Nurse Page turned on her heels and ran back out again.

Jane and I were so stunned for a few long seconds we remained in fixed attitudes of horror and surprise. ‘Come on,’ I said. ‘We’d better hurry.’

Some of the patients were already coming out of their rooms, bleary-eyed and blinking. ‘Nurse?’ said Mr Murray. ‘What’s all that shouting?’

‘There’s a fire,’ Jane replied. ‘We’re evacuating the building. Move along now. This way.’

I grabbed Jane’s arm and indicated the doors which faced each other across the corridor. ‘You do this side, I’ll do the other.’

We worked systematically, getting patients out of bed and corralling them towards the vestibule. Although heavily sedated, many became distressed.

‘Are we going to die?’ asked Alan Foster.

‘Not if you’re quick,’ I replied, pressing my palm against his lower back and encouraging him to move faster.

Smoke had begun to billow onto the ward and several of the patients had started to cough and splutter. When we entered the vestibule, I felt a blast of heat on my face. The entire wooden staircase was ablaze and the loud crackling it produced sounded like an enormous bonfire. Individual reports, sharp and clear, could be discerned against a swelling, background roar. Sister Jenkins was, necessarily, holding the front door open, but this was fuelling the conflagration with a fresh supply of air and causing the flames to burn more fiercely. The smoke was stinging her eyes and her cheeks were damp with tears.

I positioned myself at her side. ‘Sister Jenkins, where is Dr Maitland?’

She coughed into her hand and croaked a reply: ‘In the sleep room.’

‘Why in God’s name isn’t he coming out?’

‘Nurse Page said something about the door being stuck. Perhaps you could . . .’ The remaining syllables of her sentence were rendered incomprehensible by more coughing. She waved me away and followed the last of the fleeing patients onto the drive.

Shielding my face with my forearm, I peered through the thickening smoke. Breathing was painful: it scorched my lips and left a foul taste at the back of my throat. ‘Hugh?’ I called down to the basement. ‘Hugh? Get out of there!’ Before going to his aid, I hesitated, because at any moment I guessed the staircase might collapse. The entrance to the sleep room was situated directly beneath it. Maitland did not respond, so I made a swift, stumbling descent, and when I reached the bottom I grabbed the door handle. It turned easily but when I pushed nothing happened. I banged my clenched fist against the door and shouted, ‘Hugh? Hugh? Are you all right?’

There was an explosion followed by the sound of shattering glass. One of the windows had blown out. Something large fell onto the stairs behind me and I was showered with sparks and cinders. When I turned round, I saw a hefty piece of charred timber angled between the walls. Undeterred, I threw my weight against the door, but still it did not yield.

‘Dr Richardson?’

Hartley was standing at the top of the stairs. He glanced upwards, at something only he could see from his position, and his expression became anxious. Even so, he began to make his way down, only stopping when he came to the fallen timber.

‘The door’s locked,’ I said. ‘Do you have the key?’

‘There is no key. I was never given one.’

That made perfect sense. The customary security measures did not apply to the sleep room. ‘Then the door’s stuck. Dr Maitland and the patients are still inside. I’m going to need your help.’ I slapped my hand against a sunken panel. ‘The two of us might be able to break it down.’

Hartley looked up once again, but whatever hazard he was monitoring did not prevent him from jumping over the timber and joining me. ‘After three,’ I said, and counted. We slammed our shoulders against the door, but to no effect. ‘And again,’ I said. ‘One, two, three.’ The force of our impact caused us to rebound and Hartley fell over. ‘It’s no good,’ he said, shaking his head.

‘What are we going to do?’ I asked. ‘We can’t just leave them there.’

Pieces of burning wood rained down on us and I had to pull my jacket over my head for protection. At my feet I saw part of a blackened banister. A delicately carved owl was still visible, its claws wrapped around a branch.

‘Let’s go,’ said Hartley, straightening his glasses. ‘The whole damn staircase is going to come down.’

‘But we can’t leave them. The patients. Maitland.’

‘Don’t be a fool. If you stay any longer, you’ll get yourself killed.’ He clutched my sleeve and gave it a firm tug.

‘No,’ I protested, twisting myself free.

Hartley gave me a searching look. I could see his eyes through the reflected flames that danced on his lenses. Suddenly he swore, turned his back on me and scrambled up the stairs.

I tried to force the door open again, but its stubborn intransigence made me feel that I was engaged in a hopeless endeavour. There were no promising indications of future success: no splitting or splintering to encourage further violence. The door felt as if it was bolstered with iron, unnaturally solid and secure.

‘Hugh,’ I called out in desperation, pounding the door with both my fists at once. ‘Can you hear me?’

Retreating a step, I noticed the keyhole, and I crouched down so that my eye was level with it. The lights were on in the sleep room, and what I saw was so strange that I thought that I must have breathed in too much smoke and be suffering from some form of hallucinatory intoxication. The six patients were sitting up in their beds. Their backs were very straight. I couldn’t see if their eyes were open or closed, but their heads were turned at different angles, as if they were all studying the same thing. The object of their common interest was Maitland, who occupied a central position, and appeared to be deep in thought. He looked much the same as he did when I last saw him. With his hand poised in readiness to stroke his chin, there was something about his appearance that suggested that the action had been arrested in mid-movement. I pummelled the door again, but Maitland did not react. He stood, perfectly still, like a wax model.

There was a sense of opening up and expansion, as my mind became elastic and stretched to accommodate the significance of what I was seeing. The human animal thinks along pathways prescribed by habit, and I had exhibited predictable conformity in this respect, by attributing all of the supernatural phenomena I had experienced to a spirit agency. But, at that moment, it was quite clear to me that I had encountered something more subtle, and more frightening, and that it – the poltergeist – had arisen from the deepest regions of the minds of the slumbering women.

Maitland had violated their brains, with drugs and electric shocks, and now they were violating his.

‘Dear God,’ I groaned.

What must it feel like, I wondered, to have the very fabric of one’s being, one’s identity, one’s very soul, torn asunder? And in what place, what impossible landscape of the imagination, was this appalling horror being enacted? I remembered something Maitland had said shortly after my arrival at Wyldehope. He had observed that physical pain, no matter how bad, was never the equal of mental pain. And then I remembered standing in front of
The Wenhaston Doom
, and marvelling at humanity’s genius for imagining worlds of suffering, grotesque forms of torment. Where was Maitland now? And what were they doing to him? His body was in the sleep room, but I had no doubt that his consciousness had been removed to another reality.

A massive beam dropped like a guillotine from the ceiling and crushed the nurses’ desk. I saw masonry skittering across the floor, the lights went out, and there was only darkness.

The heat was now intolerable and I felt like I was suffocating.

I could not delay my escape any longer. I leapt up the stairs, dodging burning debris. The atmosphere was so opaque I could hardly see. I tripped over the suit of armour, which had toppled over and broken into separate pieces. High above me, another window shattered, and the delicate tinkling that followed was soon followed by a punishing shower of broken glass. I got to my feet and launched myself at the front door, which was still open and admitting a dim luminescence into the benighted vestibule.

Quite suddenly, I was brought to a jarring halt. The sensation of restraint was not unfamiliar, and one that I associated with two very particular situations, both remote in memory: the school playground and the rugby field. It was the feeling of someone holding on to one’s clothing to prevent progress. I did not turn. But instead narrowed my shoulders and lowered my arms. My jacket slipped off and I managed to get to the entrance in two energetic bounds.

From beneath the porch, I glanced back and saw the entire wooden staircase collapse: a concertina effect that produced a searing gust of hot air. My hair and eyebrows sizzled unpleasantly and a new, acrid odour infiltrated the existing, incendiary reek. I staggered out, onto the drive, and let my lungs expand: the pure pleasure of the experience made me feel vaguely delirious. Bending over, with my hands clasping my thighs, I coughed so much that I thought I was going to be sick. My knuckles were covered in blood and my trousers were smouldering.

Sister Jenkins, assisted by a small number of nightingales, was leading the male and female patients to safety along the drive. Another, much larger group of nurses, who had obviously just left the accommodation block, were trudging across the heath and following a diagonal that would eventually intercept their colleagues. Mr and Mrs Hartley and the kitchen girl had positioned themselves outside the Hartleys’ cottage, where they could view the destruction of Wyldehope at a respectable distance, while – it appeared – enjoying the panacea of Mrs Hartley’s tea.

I limped past Maitland’s Bentley, registering the image of a haunted-looking man in the semi-transparent depths of the windscreen. His face was filthy and his hair was standing on end. Clouds with fleecy edges raced over the tower, and another window exploded.

21

The following day I received a telephone call from a journalist who had thought that he might build a story around my failed attempt to rescue Maitland.

‘I’ve spoken to Sister Jenkins.’

‘Yes.’

‘She speaks very highly of you, Dr Richardson. Indeed, she says you’re something of a hero.’

‘I wouldn’t say that.’

‘Weren’t you the last one to leave the building? Didn’t you try to save Dr Maitland and his patients?’

‘The door to the sleep room was stuck. Perhaps the wood had been warped by the heat. I tried to force it open a few times, but without success, so I ran for my life. No, I wouldn’t say that I was a hero.’

When the journalist realized I wasn’t going to cooperate he brought our conversation to an abrupt end.

The investigation into the causes of the fire proved inconclusive; however, the general opinion of all those involved was that an electrical fault was to blame – a plausible hypothesis and reassuringly predictable. Mr Hartley had been in the habit of treating the staircase with an improvised wood preserver, and this dubious concoction most probably contained flammable ingredients.

I didn’t stay in East Anglia. There was no reason to. When the police had finished questioning me, I travelled down to Bournemouth to stay with my parents, and from there I began making arrangements for my return to London.

The tragedy was widely reported and Maitland’s obituary appeared in several newspapers. Opinion was unanimous. He was ‘a gifted communicator’, ‘a modern visionary’, and ‘the most significant British psychiatrist since Henry Maudsley’. Sir Paul Mallinson, who I had worked with at St George’s, wrote that Maitland was ‘a personable colleague’ and ‘a man of singular purpose’. He was ‘the enemy of unreason, a formidable critic of psychoanalysis, and a shining example for generations to come’.