Walls of Silence: a stunning historical thriller you won't be able to put down

by Ruth Wade

  Edith blinked once or twice rapidly but said nothing.

  Stephen forced himself to breathe slowly and wait. He had to learn patience; he’d tried the chocolate and the jokes, and that was the only thing left according to what had been the late Dr Maudsley’s favourite proverb: the best physicians are Dr Diet, Dr Quiet, and Dr Merryman. He would hold his tongue for the entire session if he had to.

  The answer, when it came, was not the one he wanted to hear.

  ‘Swap places.’

  He wanted to roll on the floor and scream. She was exhibiting another of the most common symptoms of catatonia: echolalia. Such parrot-like repetition was not a good sign; it showed she was still not responding to him on a fully conscious level, and clinically speaking, it was often indicative of profound resistance. Whatever the conscious – or subconscious – message Edith wanted to give in adopting this approach, he would be unable to break it down. The irony of her causing him frustration because of her frustration wasn’t lost on him but he was hardly able to continue, let alone smile. But continue he must because having made a promise to be open with her, it would be unethical – and potentially destructive to their tenuous relationship – not to keep it.

  ‘To start with the basics first: a neurosis is a product of a failure to adapt. The adaptation may be to people or the environment or any given situation but the effects are always the same: a lack of inner harmony. It’s as though the framework we use to organise our perceptions has broken down and we no longer know who we are. Am I making myself clear, Edith? I want you to follow this because it’ll become very important when I move on to what I think may be happening with you.’

  ‘Swap places.’

  There was nothing behind the words. They were empty of thought and feeling.

  ‘One of the reasons such disturbances cause us so much distress is that they tend to bypass our reason and intellect and affect our instinct, our emotions. And that’s especially difficult for someone like you who’s used to being able to think their way out of a problem because, with only a portion of your faculties available, it can only ever be guesswork. There are so few clues for your rational mind to work on. Without outside intervention, that is.’

  He stood up and walked over to the window. The lawn outside was fresh and green, and cobwebs still danced with last night’s dew. He wished he had some way of gauging how she was responding to all this. Was her rational side compelling her into the role of an interested observer, or was her emotional side getting angry at the picture of disintegration he was painting? It would make a difference.

  ‘Everybody, every single one of us, has a secret. Some of us have more than one.’

  His breath frosted the cold glass until he could no longer see out but he didn’t want to turn around. He wasn’t ready yet.

  ‘And all our secrets have their roots in the past; it may be the recent past or, as Freud would have us believe, from our childhood.’

  ‘Swap places.’

  Her voice had an edge to it, a harshness that hadn’t been there before. He had to return to his seat and observe or he might miss one of the crucial stages of her decline or release. He felt a shiver of distaste at his clinical thoroughness; at this pivotal juncture, he was aware that Edith wasn’t the only one accessing and acknowledging habitually repressed feelings. In him, the man and the doctor were waging their own war, too.

  ‘When something happens to us it marks its passage through our experience. It may be only fleeting or it may be of such significance that it blows our whole world apart, but it changes us irrevocably; it helps make who we are about to become. And this next point is important, Edith. There are no value judgements on whether the changes are good or bad: they are just as they are. They are valid because they exist and we have to accept them as such. The reason this is so crucial is because the mind can’t allow an experience to remain unassimilated for any length of time. If – for whatever reason – a part of ourselves refuses to accept or take responsibility for what has happened then it will lock the experience away where it can no longer be reached. That can lead to conflict and repression and ultimately dissociation – the splitting off of parts of ourselves. And that’s where I think you are, Edith.’

  Just for a second, her gaze slipped over his face but it was so vapid he was unable to pick up anything of her state of mind. He thought she was co-operating the best she could but it wouldn’t be enough to enter into hypnosis this time. Her resistance was too great. The childlike, frightened part of her seemed to be growing stronger each time they met. A knot of compassion lodged in his throat. He coughed. He had been worried for the last few days about whether to pursue this line and now the moment had come, he really didn’t know if he could go ahead. The responsibility of distressing her further was almost too much. He felt a flush rush up from under his collar, took a deep breath and gabbled it out before he could change his mind:

  ‘Recently published research by Sir Frederick Mott and his pupils shows that in many cases of dementia praecox there is evidence of maldevelopment of the sex glands. You’ll understand why I can’t ignore this as a possibility when we take your physical damage from the fire into account. There are forms of catatonia with hormonal connections and that ...’

  He was perspiring now and his jacket was uncomfortably heavy.

  ‘You’ve never been married have you, Edith? Not that there’s anything intrinsically unhealthy in that but any failure in the sex instinct may be linked to biochemical changes in the brain and that would give me an entirely different avenue of exploration.’

  When the silence finally became too oppressive, Stephen left.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  ‘I want to take you further back now, Edith. I want you to imagine that I have a long, long piece of string in my hands and on it is a series of knots. You tied them for me. I am going to give the string to you and I want you to run it through your fingers. Feel the weight of it. Feel the thickness of it.’

  Edith Potter’s fingers trembled. Stephen leaned forward on the chair until he was just inches from her face and could taste the mustiness of her exhaled air. It had taken him a long time to get her into the hypnotic trance but now she was there he wanted to take her as deep as she would allow him to go. It was even more imperative than ever that he broke through her reserve as quickly as possible. Last Thursday an announcement had appeared on the clinic notice board detailing the British Psychological Society’s next meeting. As usual they were calling for papers and he’d put his name forward only to spend a sleepless night pacing around his room, pulling his research to pieces and regretting his temerity. The hypothesis still stood up – he was pretty sure about that – but without any evidence of practical application it remained interesting, but not startling. He needed proof.

  A blackbird outside the window was calling out its song and Stephen thanked providence for giving Edith such a gentle reminder that the world was still out there softly waiting: she might very soon need that reassurance. He found some comfort in it himself.

  ‘Pull the string through your hands and feel where the knots are.’

  Her thin hand clasped and unclasped rhythmically.

  ‘Now I want you to see if you can sense when one is coming up before your fingers get there. When you can intuit every single knot and its order on the string, I want you to pick one for me.’

  He paused for a moment or two.

  ‘Pick one for me and hold it between your thumb and finger.’

  Edith performed the pincer-like movement. Her face was relaxed and her breathing steady.

  ‘Tell me what it represents. Can you do that for me, Edith? I will be patient until you are ready. Could you start to do that for me?’

  The notes of the blackbird’s song and the soft hush of some slippered footfalls in the corridor outside were the only sounds.

  ‘I am in a room ...’

  ‘Where is the room, Edith?’ He was almost whispering.

  ‘I don’t know because it i
s dark ...’

  ‘How old are you?’

  ‘I don’t know because it is dark ...’

  As he’d had to in their last session together, Stephen worked hard to crush his disappointment. This could be a sign of verbigeration: seemingly meaningless responses for her to hide behind. If her mind’s need for catatonic symptoms was so great that it was inducing them even in her trance-like state, then he had misjudged badly. He ran his hand over his forehead and felt his hot skin rasp. He had to stay focused.

  ‘I keep calling and calling but no one comes, and I don’t know where anyone is ...’

  This was better.

  ‘What do you feel, Edith? Tell me what you can feel.’

  ‘Something is pressing and pressing on me and making my skin scream.’

  Her voice was shaking and growing higher with every word. He reached forward and touched her wrist.

  ‘Keep hold of the string, Edith. Remember that it is your contact with me and I am not about to let you go. While you have one end and I have the other, you’re perfectly safe. Tell me what else you can about what is happening around you now.’

  ‘There is a burning right in the centre of me and I can’t seem to make it go away and I can’t remember it not ever being there. There is not an inch of me that doesn’t hurt inside and out, and my eyes are sore from crying.’

  Her whole body emanated an aura of pain; Stephen’s chest tightened in sympathy.

  ‘Find one word, Edith. Find one word for how you feel.’

  ‘Alone.’

  ‘Get right in the knot and tell me what it is like on the inside ...

  ‘... take yourself in as far as you can go. I have the rest of the string here, tight in my hand; you can pull yourself back. If it is too much, you can come right back. I want you to know that there is nothing holding you there; it is only a knot and you can unravel it and find your way out any time you want.’

  Would this be the push too far?

  ‘Cold ... Sterile ... Confusing ...’

  He’d helped her access the rational side of her mind again. However, she was still talking about feelings. Logic and emotion were becoming reunited: it could be the beginning of the crucial stage.

  ‘... I can’t stop the swirling inside my head ... it’s like patterns in a kaleidoscope ... I don’t want to be here, I want to be ... somewhere else ... someone else. I look on the inside and there is nothing ... I am like an empty shell ...’

  ‘Now try very hard to stop thinking. Switch the adult off, and show me the child. Find the child you still are deep within that knot you tied so tightly around yourself, and tell me what is happening to you.’

  A long expanse of nothingness. Then a shudder like the slamming of a door. A second later, all muscle tension vanished. Her chest was barely rising and falling, her breath little more than a flutter from her lungs. Edith’s mind had willed her into unconsciousness.

  Stephen leapt from the chair to prise her mouth open and stop her swallowing her tongue. He knew – and was aware that a desperate part of her did too – that they were getting uncomfortably near the truth.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Stephen had stayed with Edith until her pulse had become strong and steady, and then had sought out Dr Johns to ask him to arrange for her to be checked up on at regular intervals. He’d been pleasantly surprised at how readily the asylum director had agreed; obviously he wasn’t the only one who thought Edith Potter worth saving.

  *

  Another interminable week in the clinic, and he was back. He let himself quietly into the room. One of the kittens had followed him and he pushed its furry body gently outside again with his foot.

  ‘How are you feeling today, Edith? Any better?’

  The face turned to the wall was hostile and fringed with fury. He could only say that in her position, he’d be exactly the same.

  ‘I can understand your blaming me for what you’re going through, for the turmoil you must be experiencing, but we’re so very nearly there.’

  Maybe he should have let the cat stay. It would undoubtedly be more welcome than he was. He picked up the chair and moved it to the side of the bed where he would be within range of those hooded eyes should they wish to show him any forgiveness.

  ‘You have trusted me this far, Edith, stay with me a little longer. Please. I promise you that at the end of this, you’ll feel freer than you’ve ever done in your life before. You will be back in touch with your true self.’

  Her fingers busied themselves obsessively gathering and pleating the strip of sheet under her hand. Stephen saw that it was grey and greasy. It was another catatonic symptom: stereotypy. He thought that probably the next stage would be for her to go back around the loop into stupor and withdrawal again. Beyond the reach of hypnosis – possibly beyond the reach of them all. The thought that he might very well be about to hasten her descent down that path made him feel queasy. He looked up as a light spattering of rain started to flick onto the window.

  ‘Can we do the same as we did before, Edith? Will you allow me to take you back to your childhood again so you can show me what went on then? I’m convinced the answer to your psychosis lies in something in your past. I can’t promise that it won’t cause you any pain, but I can say that it can do no more damage than you are doing to yourself; your mind is refusing to accept what it knows and it’s destroying you. I need you to exercise your will and help me to reach the truth before your mind causes more disintegration than I can ever hope to repair. It’s the truth that will save you, Edith; as it’s only ever the truth that will save us all.’

  He couldn’t bring himself to tell her his truth: that he was now deep into unknown territory and he had no idea which way it would go. He watched as the pleating of the sheet continued; the muscles over Edith’s jaw began to tense and ripple as her fingers started to pluck more and more fervently. The counterpoint of the ping of the rain on the glass. Then the compulsive movements gradually became smoother until they faded into the background. Finally they stopped altogether. Something inside Edith had resolved itself.

  The moment he had been almost dreading had come. He stood up and arranged the pillows under her neck and arms, drew the curtains, and then shifted his chair to its usual place just behind the bed head.

  Now she had decided to co-operate, Stephen was able to get her into a trance with such ease that he felt like a fraud; it was as if she was doing it to herself. When he was convinced she was receptive, he started the process of taking her deeper than he had ever attempted with any patient before.

  ‘This time what I want you to do for me is to think of yourself as a field mouse as small as small can be. You are curled up warm and cosy in your little burrow, free from harm in your nest of dry grass. You start to run your little paw over your ears to clean yourself. Your fur is soft ...’

  He watched for the telltale signs of compliance in the softening of the muscles in her face.

  ‘Now you grow a little – just a little – and you are a kitten sleeping with its mother in a basket in front of the fire.’

  Her neck lifted off the pillow for a second, then she relaxed and a soft smile crept around her mouth.

  ‘You can taste her milk on the inside of your lips and smell her very special scent of love, and you know that she smells that way only for you. Smell it, Edith. Wrap yourself up in it because it makes you feel safe and secure and lazy as you stretch out to sleep some more.’

  He waited while the room filled with the energy of Edith’s happiness. She was feeling the emotions with everything at her disposal.

  ‘While you have been asleep you have grown again. This time into a baby. You are still feeling safe and warm and lazy but now you can feel a little more around you. The sheet resting over you is cool and smooth. The pillow under your head is soft as it squashes up around your ears. The mattress cradles you and lets you kick out in your sleep when you want to. Kick out now for me, Edith.’

  The bedclothes rippled under the assaul
t of a flurry of weak jabs.

  ‘Very good. It’s time for you to wake up now, Edith. You have slept as much as you want, and you are refreshed and happy and excited about seeing your mother again. You know she will come in to you as soon as she realises you are awake so you grab hold of one of the bars of your cot and shake it just as hard as you can.’

  Edith’s hands on the pillows transformed into two fists that lifted slightly into the air and trembled in weak imitation of violent movement.

  ‘Your mother comes in and she picks you up and holds you close, and you feel safe and special and as though nothing bad can ever happen to you. She starts to dress you. What do you wear, Edith? What is she putting on you?’

  ‘A vest.’ Her voice was high and thin. ‘It itches. It’s not soft like it used to be. It smells of soap. And my blue jacket. My favourite. It has ribbons around the neck that Mummy ties for me and if I pull my hands up I can make them disappear inside my sleeves. And now she’s pushing my feet into my shoes.’

  ‘Are you sure you are still a baby, Edith? You sound a little older to me. You sound very grown up indeed ... How old are you, Edith?’

  A pinprick of laughter bubbled out from between her smiling lips. She suddenly flung her arms across the bed and hugged herself.

  ‘We are going for a walk. I love walking out with Mummy, she is so pretty and everyone looks at her, and I know that they all love me too because I am a part of her. We’re off to the park where I can play on the swings but she won’t let me go very high. She says that although I’m strong and brave, I’ll have to wait until I’m older.’

  Two tears slid out from under Edith’s closed eyelids.

  ‘I never did go any higher.’

  He waited until her breathing sounded calm and measured once more. A part of her was observing the process, not yet fully immersed. He had to help her get beyond this. He leaned forward and began to whisper in her ear in a voice that was softly pitched and smoother than his own: ‘Can you be brave for me once more and tell me what happened the last time I tried to keep you safe?’