The Girl Who Couldn't Read

by John Harding

  ‘Bravo,’ he said, pouring us another glass of wine and then lifting his in a toast that I copied. ‘Your unfortunate past has been the making of you. It has provided you with grit and determination to work hard. It will serve you far better than being born with a silver spoon in your mouth and treading the primrose path.’

  I beamed with pride, feeling very satisfied with my new self.

  Back in my room I spent a long evening absorbed by more of Moral Treatment. It was not the sort of book I had been used to. Drama, novels and poetry had been my literary meat and drink, and I had some difficulty following all the arguments put forward in it, although my interest always picked up when I came across any case history the author included by way of example. It was always people that fascinated me. Facts are too malleable to make me have much respect for them.

  I heard the clock strike midnight as I struggled through the second half of the book, yawning all the while. It was no wonder I was tired. There was the business of the wreck and the injuries I had suffered. Besides the blow to the head, I had sore ribs and an ache in my back that made it hard for me to sit comfortably, no matter how I tried to arrange myself. Then there had been all the stress to my nerves of arriving here, the pressure of being a new, untried employee, the battle within myself to keep in line, to overcome my obstreperous nature and not speak against the hard treatment of the poor wretches who were my fellow inhabitants of this place, separated from me by that most fragile of borders, chance. The wine at dinner had not helped either, so that at some point, notwithstanding my determination to plough through to the end of the book and prepare my arguments for the morrow, I must have fallen asleep.

  I had the dream again, the one that always seems to return in times of trouble. I was back on my uncle’s chicken farm, where I’d arrived the day before following the death of my mother. I’d never had a father; he’d run off before I was even born. I was eleven years old and my uncle had just strapped me because he’d told me I had to earn my keep and I’d refused to kill a chicken.

  I stood before him, my pants around my ankles, my bare backside sore from the blows. I put a tentative hand behind me and felt something wet. When I inspected it, I saw it was stained with blood. My uncle watched me, breathing heavily, his belt swinging from his right hand. ‘Well, boy, what’s it to be,’ he said, ‘you or the chicken?’

  ‘Does it have to be one or the other, sir?’ I said. ‘Is there not something else I may do to earn my keep?’

  ‘There are plenty of other things you will be doing. None of them can be instead of this. You have to learn the business. You know Martha can’t bear children. You can be like a son to us and then one day this farm will be yours. You have to be able to run it.’

  I tried to look grateful. It was the first time I ever put on an act. I pretended to be a boy who wanted to spend his whole life on a chicken farm, with the scent of chicken shit clogging up his nostrils.

  ‘Come on now, let’s give it another try.’ He began threading the belt through the loops on his pants.

  I pulled up my pants, which hurt as they slid over the wounds on my backside. I tried not to cry. I could tell my uncle was not someone who would approve of a boy crying.

  He went inside the big barn where the chickens were and came out holding a bird in each hand. He held them by their feet and they dangled helplessly, flapping their wings and clucking their heads off. I wanted to put my hands over my ears to shut out the noise but I knew it would be a mistake.

  ‘Here, take this one.’ He held out one of the birds. Gingerly I put both my hands around its legs. This made the bird even more agitated and the movement of its wings more frenzied and instantly I let go, but my uncle still had it so it couldn’t get away. ‘Get hold of it!’ He was mad again now.

  I bit my lip and took the bird, my head recoiling from it, but this time I had it firmly by the legs. I held it at arm’s length. I didn’t want it flapping against me.

  ‘Now pay attention. It don’t take but a second, so you need to watch nice and close, OK?’

  I nodded. What I really wanted to do was close my eyes. This was the second demonstration. I had no wish to see another bird slaughtered.

  He put his free hand around the hen’s neck and released the other from its feet. Then he put that around the neck too. The bird’s body was swinging, a crazy pendulum. ‘Now all you have to do is twist, like so.’ There was a soft crack and after a few seconds the bird stopped moving and hung lifeless from his hand. ‘See, ain’t nothing to it, son.’

  I stared back at him. My chicken was going berserk, squawking its head off, and I felt sure it had seen the other’s fate and knew what was coming. I wondered idly whether a chicken was really smart enough to figure all that out.

  ‘Now you.’

  I gritted my teeth. Bile rose up in my throat and I thought for a moment I was going to vomit over my feet but I managed to hold it down. I put one hand around the chicken’s neck, got a good hold of it and let the feet drop.

  ‘That’s it, perfect,’ said my uncle.

  I put my other hand around the hen’s neck. The feathers felt soft and warm, so warm. I could feel the bird’s blood beating fast through my fingertips. I swear its eyes widened in terror, although I later discovered that a chicken’s eyes couldn’t do that. I shut my own eyes and twisted exactly as my uncle had shown me. The bird’s wings were banging against me. I imagined my hands were huge and they were around my uncle’s neck and that I was about to snap the life out of him so I wouldn’t ever have to do this again. There was a click and after a last frantic flurry the bird stopped moving. Slowly I opened my eyes and saw its head was flopped over my wrist.

  ‘That’s my boy!’ cried my uncle. I looked up at him and smiled.

  ‘Come on, son,’ he said, turning back toward the barn. ‘We have another fifty to do today.’

  As it always did, the dream jerked me awake. My fists were clenched around something soft and I opened my eyes and in the guttering light of my near burnt-out candle discovered my hands were squeezed around the pillow on which I’d fallen asleep. I was in a dreadful sweat. And then I heard the slightest sound and looked up from my fingers and saw a figure in the room, a woman in a white nightshift standing at the desk, her back to me.

  I shot bolt upright. ‘What in God’s name –’ I began and at that very moment the candle went out and the room turned black. I leapt from the bed and lunged for the figure but she was too fast for me and I grabbed only air. I heard the slam of the door and the patter of feet fading away along the corridor outside.

  I stumbled to the door and out into the corridor. Everything was dark. I looked this way and that, up and down the passage, but couldn’t see a thing, no glimpse of a person, no flicker of a light. I had no idea which direction the woman had taken. I stood still and held my breath and by some primitive animal instinct knew the intruder was there too and also holding her breath and immobile. And then, I guess when she knew she would have to breathe out and so give herself away, she was off, and the scamper of bare feet told me the way. I tried to follow but, unable to see even an inch in front of me, I was overwhelmed by the sensation that I was about to collide with something, even though as far as I could remember the corridor was clear of any furniture or other obstruction. My heart was beating fast and I had the constant fear of some harpy about to leap out at me and put her claws into my throat. I shuffled along, hands stretched in front of me to prevent collision with any unseen objects. I could hear nothing because of my own noise, so I paused, and there were a couple of footfalls ahead of me and then silence again. It was a cat-and-mouse game, with my prey waiting until I should move and the sound I made conceal her own movement. I felt my way along the corridor wall and eventually my hands met thin air as I came to a side passage.

  I did not know which way to go and stood there shivering in the dark for what seemed like an age. If I chose wrong, she would escape me easily. I had the sense again that she was nearby, although she could sur
ely have gotten far away by now while I had been fumbling around. I suddenly felt a fool because I realised she was playing with me, finding a macabre humour in the chase, letting me think I could catch her when she knew I could not. I strained my ears but everything was silent and then, just as I was about to decide at random and hope to pick the right direction, I heard the merest hint of another’s breath, not far away. Instantly I took off, shuffling along to avoid tripping on anything, because I’d never explored this side passage. I heard the soft touch of feet gliding over bare floorboards only a few yards ahead of me and tried to speed up, but somehow my body would not let me, its fear of a collision with my prey too great. The hair on my neck bristled against my collar. My forehead was clammy from the terror of it all. Then, of a sudden, how or why I could not explain, I sensed she was just in front of me, a stretch of the hand – hers or mine – away. I steeled myself, took another step and made a grab, expecting to grasp warm flesh, and met instead something solid and cold that I realised was a wall.

  I explored it with the palms of my hands, up and down and from side to side, but found nothing. The corridor ended in a solid wall. I was baffled. I turned and began to creep back toward the main passage. I held my hands out and felt the walls either side of me. The corridor was too narrow for the woman to have slipped past me without our touching. Her disappearance defied all logic. Then, I guess about halfway along this tributary of the main corridor, my left hand felt something different. Further investigation revealed there was a door let into the wall. I fumbled around and eventually met the cold metal of a handle. I turned it and pushed the door, which did not yield. It was evidently locked.

  Still, at least the puzzle was explained. The woman must have flattened herself into this doorway and stood there while I crept past. That would have been the moment when I paused, sensing her presence close to me. And then, once I had gone by, she had returned silently to the main corridor.

  I made my way slowly back to it and had just reached the junction when I heard a sound that made my blood freeze. A terrible distant laugh, my opponent braying her triumph. I knew it was useless to pursue her now, even had I had the nerve and inclination; she was too far off. I experienced a moment of frustration at her having toyed with me so and gotten the better of me, but it was subsumed by relief from the responsibility of pursuing her further. I returned to my room, where I found and lit another candle. I was so jumpy that the hiss of the match and the shadows dancing on the walls startled me. I almost expected the light to reveal the woman standing right in front of me. I had no key with which to lock my door, so took the chair from my desk and set its back beneath the handle. I knew I would do this every night from now on, to prevent another intrusion.

  In my nervous state, sleep was out of the question. I picked up Moral Treatment and, without getting undressed, which I knew would make me feel more vulnerable, lay down on my bed and began to read. By the time the first light was stealing around the edges of the window blind, I had finished the book.

  6

  Next day, fired up with enthusiasm, I went to breakfast to do battle with Morgan, so convinced by the good reverend’s arguments that I felt sure my employer could not fail to be impressed by them too. While he sat eating his breakfast in a leisurely manner, I used all my experience in making my case, presenting it as if it were the closing defence speech in some courtroom melodrama. From time to time I glanced at him and found him listening attentively, nodding his head now and then, which made me hope I was winning him over to my way of thinking. At last I had presented all my – that is to say Abrahams’s – case and, falling silent, looked at him expectantly.

  He sat smiling, and I thought I had carried the day, until I recognised it as the kind of smile one puts on to indulge a small child. At last he spoke. ‘I have to admit I admire your enthusiasm,’ he began, and I felt a glow of pride, but then he added, ‘but I’m afraid it’s misplaced. The ideas you espouse are woefully out of date. These things were tried years ago and proved to be a dismal failure.’ I opened my mouth to protest but he held up a hand to silence me. ‘Oh, I dare say you’ve read some of the claims these people make and no doubt they had a good outcome once in a while, but generally these theories have long been discredited. You see, these people were priests and unqualified do-gooders; they were not medical men. It’s only comparatively recently that we doctors have become involved in the mental health problem. It’s now generally recognised that insanity is not to do with social pressures and personal misfortune, but is a pathological problem. It’s a physical disorder of the brain and, as such, must be managed. It cannot be cured so easily as you and the people who’ve influenced you think. Believe me, I’ve had years of experience and I assure you – who’ve had none – that I know what I’m talking about.’

  I protested that surely he must agree that the way the staff at the hospital treated disturbed people could not be helping their condition. Did he not think, I asked, of trying a gentler method?

  At that he began to grow angry and his face became red and choleric. ‘How many attendants would we have to have for there to be sufficient of them to spend time chattering with the patients? Who will be playing music for them? Who will be supervising their games? Where is the money to come from to pay for the sumptuous feasts you wish to provide them with?’

  We batted the thing back and forth until finally I could see that I was getting nowhere. All I achieved was to increase his ire. Finally, at the end of one of his tirades I decided enough was enough. I hung my head and said nothing. There was an awkward silence. It was Morgan who broke it. He cleared his throat and said, ‘Look, I’m not an unreasonable man and I don’t want to discourage someone who’s just starting out in the profession. Here’s what I’ll do. I’ll give you a chance to prove your ideas can work.’

  I looked up. ‘How will you do that?’

  ‘I’ll indulge you this far: you may take one patient, any patient you like, so long as it’s not one of the violent ones. And you can treat her according to your notions. Separate her from the rest, give her different clothes, she can eat what the staff eat. She can have her own interests, although she’ll only have you to play cards with or else she’ll have to make do with solitaire.’

  I was almost too stunned to speak. ‘Y-you’re serious?’ I said at last.

  ‘Completely.’

  ‘Then thank you, sir.’ I was grinning like a fool. ‘That’s incredibly generous of you. I truly appreciate the opportunity.’

  ‘I should think so,’ he said, picking up his coffee cup and taking a sip. He set it down and beamed at me. ‘It’s the chance to find out for yourself how wrong you are.’ He began to rise from the table, even though I’d been so busy talking I’d had no time to eat anything. ‘This afternoon you can select your guinea pig.’

  Morgan strode along the day room, gesturing expansively with his arms at the wretches ringed around it. ‘There you are, take your pick. Select one on whom to practise your experiment. Anyone you like, it’s up to you.’ He stood still, fingers in his vest pockets, smiling broadly, rocking back and forth on his heels, a poker player smug with a winning hand and enjoying himself immensely.

  I looked at the sea of faces; many were muttering to themselves, others gazed into space, or dozed with their eyes closed, or fiddled with their fingers, or picked invisible bugs from their clothes, regarding their actions with intense fascination. Here and there I would find a woman staring at me, sometimes eagerly, as if she required only the merest nod from me to engage me in conversation, or, more often, fearfully, as though she thought I was about to whisk her off for a long cold bath or an afternoon tied to a chair.

  I was at a loss. It was impossible to decide on one poor imbecile over another. The important thing was to select someone who would give me the greatest chance of success. Why, exactly, I could not have told you. For what reason was I allowing myself to become involved in this? What good could it possibly do me? It would not help my situation to antagonise Mo
rgan, and yet I knew this was part of my motive. I could not endorse the man’s bullish certainty that what he was doing was right. But another cause for acting as I did was that I was a professional and that this was what my part demanded of me. A man who has a book on Moral Treatment in his baggage and who puts its theories into a letter of application for employment, boldly it has to be said, given it obviously went against the current prevailing wind in the treatment of mental illness, would be bound to take Morgan on.

  This was all true and very noble indeed – if it had been everything, but the bottom line, I knew, lay in myself, in my own make-up. I had always wanted to challenge authority, ever since that day with my first tender chicken neck, to wrest back the power from those who told me what to do, even though doing so inevitably drew attention to me. It is not what a man with my little foibles should seek to do.

  ‘Well, come on, man! If you can’t make your mind up then perhaps I should decide for you? I will pick one at random, yes?’

  ‘No, give me another minute, sir, please.’

  I paced slowly along the room looking at all the women along one wall and made the turn around the potbelly stove at the end and started back along the women on the opposite side. The more I strained to find one face that stood out from all the rest, the more one face seemed to merge into another. At one and the same time I felt sorry for them all, as a forlorn mass of humanity and yet also strangely detached because I could not find a single one I could imagine having any normal intercourse with. I decided I might as well give up and let Morgan choose, feeling suddenly hopeless about the whole thing. When regarded practically, in the flotsam and jetsam of society washed up before me, the very concept of Moral Treatment began to seem more and more fanciful. My eyes flicked from one woman to another and my confidence shrivelled and then, just as I was thinking this, I was stopped dead in my tracks.