by Mervyn Peake
‘Well, hello then,’ it said again.
Titus remembered the events of the previous evening. He found himself on a hard mattress. He saw a barred door and uninviting walls of dun-coloured brick. He put his arm up and it met some iron slats, and as he raised his head, he saw a head leaning down towards him. It had a smile. It had a gingery-white beard. He could take in no more detail but that there was no animosity towards him.
‘Well, well. We’re in the same boat, then. What are you on, then? Drunk and disorderly, that’s me. Funny that. I’m an orderly you know. That’s why I’m drunk. Couldn’t take it. Had to get away for a bit. They’ll let me out now. They know me. Doesn’t happen often. I want to get back, but sometimes I go round the bend, like the lot of them. Anyway, sorry to talk so much. Can I help you? Anyway, what’s your name? What do you do?’
‘Titus.’
‘Titus?’
‘Yes. Titus Groan.’
‘Oh, well – I’m Peregrine Smith. Why are you here?’
‘No reason, really. I just ran into a basement, and I was prodded out of it.’
‘Oh, I know, Mick and his friends. I’ll help you. Do you want a job? That’ll do the job. We want a ward orderly. We want more, as many as we can get. Are you afraid? Had any experience?’
‘I’m not afraid, but it’s difficult to be afraid before I know what to be afraid of.’
‘A man after my own heart. I’ll tell them you’re with me and were merely trying to help the old friends. They’ll just want to make sure someone will speak for you. I’m going back this afternoon. You can come too. They’ll be only too glad to have you. I’ll vouch for you. Breakfast’ll be here soon. You hungry?’
‘I’m hungry – I’m dirty – I’m thirsty.’
‘Well, we’ll have a clean-up and then we’ll get going. There’s the wherewithal here,’ said Peregrine as he let himself down from the bunk above Titus’s head and pointed to the elementary articles of hygiene.
Ablutions and formalities completed, Titus and his newfound protector took their leave of their night’s jailers, and went out into the wide empty streets, where the rough wind was not blowing poetically through a field of corn, but was playfully toying with the sordid litter of an unlovely urban purgatory.
‘First, I suggest a breakfast fit for us, if not the gods. What do you say to that, Titus? Then we can get the coach. It takes us to outside the gates.’
The coach took them through the outskirts of the town, until it came to rather barren heathland.
‘It won’t be long now. If you look over there you’ll see the towers; we get off at the end of the drive. If we’re lucky there may be a staff car we can get a lift in. Otherwise it’s a good old walk.’
Titus looked across the heath and in the distance, partly hidden by trees, he saw gaunt and rather forbidding black towers, which gave him no sense of eagerness to know the place better.
Several people got off the coach at the same time as Titus and Peregrine, who acknowledged them by name. Walking forward a few yards they came to heavy iron gates, which were closed, but at their side was a gate through which they went. A porter’s lodge was on the inside, and a rather surly little wizened man asked for their papers.
Peregrine showed his papers, then motioned to Titus saying that he was coming to help in the wards.
‘Can’t take any responsibility for who you bring here, Smith.’
‘That’s all right, Tom. I’ll answer for him.’
‘If you say so – get on in.’
It was dusk by now, and the huge building in front of them was gradually being lit, which seemed to accentuate rather than diminish its formidable aspect; it was massive, aloof and rich in turrets.
Peregrine and Titus made their way through a large box hedge until they came to a side door, through which Peregrine ushered his companion. A gloomy yellow globe of light overhead did not conceal the archaic and ugly flaking walls of ochre, painted many years earlier.
‘We’ll go to the common room, then I’ll have a word with the super and I’ll fix you up with a room. Do you feel like starting work tomorrow, Titus?’
‘Yes, but I’d like to know a bit about what I’m to do.’
‘Oh, yes, I’ll initiate you – I’m the ward nurse on Ward 12 and I’ll keep an eye on you. Mind you, I can’t say you may not be a bit upset by it all, but I’ve got quite fond of some of them, though there are others – oh, lord, yes. It can be difficult, and they can be . . . you need your patience, and your humour, and your compassion, and your strength, and above all leave your mind alone, or you might find yourself an inmate too.’
Titus found himself in unfamiliar surroundings yet again. He let himself be led into them with his eyes open.
28
Among the Dead Men
Titus awoke early in a rather drab little room and for a moment had no idea where he was. Slowly he remembered the various events of the last few days, and he wondered what now lay in store for him. There was a tap on the door.
Peregrine entered the room. He was dressed in a white overall, and over his arm there was a second one. In his other hand he held a mug of steaming liquid.
‘Here you are, Titus. When you’re dressed, put this overall on, and we’ll go and have breakfast; then I’ll take you to the super and show you the ward. I’ll be back in ten minutes.’
Titus dressed. It did not take him long, as his clothes were scanty. He drank the hot tea and put on his white robe of office, and as he finished it another tap came on the door and Peregrine entered once again.
They went down several flights of stone stairs, their shoes signalling their descent with an echoing clatter, until they came to a vast hallway, with a skylight illuminating it, to its great disadvantage.
On both sides of the hall were double glass doors and Peregrine turned right when they reached the bottom of the stairs. Titus followed him as he pushed open the glass door, and was amazed to see a corridor that stretched endlessly from where they stood to the horizon. As they began to walk down it, their footsteps once again striking the stone floor like knells of doom, desultory figures appeared, seemingly going nowhere. Some turned into doorways on the left of the corridor; they knocked, and after some seconds and a sound of keys jangling, the disconsolate figures would disappear behind the door, and the grating of keys in locks could be heard again.
There was a common denominator in the people who passed Titus and Peregrine. Of all shapes and sizes, of both sexes and all ages, yet their gazes were turned inward. They did not see where they were, or who was there. Some sloped, some dragged their feet, some shuffled, some almost ran, some would take a few paces, then stand still, looking but not seeing. Some were holding irate conversations with themselves; others shouted obscenities. There was an anarchic lack of order, but Titus reflected that in the world outside these thick walls he had seen people behaving in the selfsame way. That he was in a hospital for people who were mentally disturbed he knew, but of the scores of people whom he had met in his wanderings there were few whose strange quirks would not have qualified them for a place in this institution. He pondered, what is sanity, what is normal? He was unable to reach any conclusion: the immediate present called for something other than intellectual activity. In fact, as he was to learn, it was better to suspend that side of himself in favour of preserving unlimited physical strength and as much imaginative insight as possible. These thoughts were passing through Titus’s mind as he walked the endless corridor.
At the end of the corridor Peregrine said, ‘Well, here we are, Ward 12’ and as he spoke he took out a large bunch of keys and, fitting one into the lock, pushed open the door. The first thing Titus noticed was the smell. It reminded him a little of the stench that had permeated the cellar where he had met Mick and his fellow vagrants. It was sickly and heavy and, although he had a strong constitution, his stomach turned.
‘I’ll take you to meet the super first. A few formalities, you know. We don’t want any trouble from th
e others. Just casual work, yours. They’re a bit touchy.’
Behind the locked door were screens that hid most of the interior of the large room, so that Titus could not see, only smell, where he was to work. Peregrine ushered him into a small office, cluttered with papers, timetables on the walls, a desk at which a rather anonymous white-coated man sat. He acknowledged the two men with an unsmiling nod and made no effort to put them at their ease.
‘This is Titus Groan. He is a traveller. He’s willing to help out at the moment for a few weeks. There’ll be no trouble from him, I’ll vouch for that. What d’you say?’
‘Any experience?’
‘A great deal,’ answered Titus, with a truth that was not quite to the point.
‘We could do with another pair of hands, there are three off now. We’ll take you on for a stated time, with conditions. If you break them, out you go.’
Titus was given conditions that restrained him from any kind of interference and he would answer to Peregrine for his work, and a certain small sum of money by way of remuneration.
He had during his wanderings met many such nameless people who rejoiced in their own sense of power, in however small a sphere: narrow, set and unyielding to any human frailty of feeling.
‘Well, let’s get on now.’
They left the office and turned into the main room behind the screens. It was a large room. Down the centre were ranged, practically touching each other, white iron beds, with only a small enough space between each to house a little table, and room for the occupant to remove himself.
Titus could see that some of the beds were occupied, while others had been made and were empty. At the end of the room, in a large alcove, were chairs of every description, some with restraining bars, which formed a circle at the wall’s edge. Most of the chairs were occupied by dormant human beings. The lack of animation was the most noticeable aspect. Not even the eyes showed any sign of life. Each man was an island. Each island was too remote to link with any other. Mist, fog, a moonless night separated island from island, and the vegetation, which at one time might have been receptive to cultivation, was barren; no future could be seen, even if it had been possible to coax the tiniest particle of life into being.
But among these sad remnants, who were still, there were some who could not stop moving. One stood in a corner of the room, jumping up and down with the tirelessness of a child and with as little purpose. Another, obsessed by perpetual motion, walked at great speed round and round the ward and, if the french windows on to the garden were open, made his lolloping way anticlockwise, passing little groups moving with the help of male nurses at the pace of a tortoise.
Titus noticed one man, who shiftily walked up the ward and drank from the bottles beside any occupied bed.
Peregrine showed him what his tasks would be. Titus had never had very much to do with children, and his own childhood, which had been unlike any other, gave him very little clue as to how a child’s mind worked. He imagined that these men he now saw had entered the second stage of juvenilia, but the resemblance ended there, as he was to learn later.
The duties Titus was to undertake were menial. The washing and shaving of those whose limbs or faculties were beyond such a daily exercise. Dressing and undressing those who could not or would not help themselves. Feeding others who had no fancy to eat, or if they had, were not capable of doing so, so that their clothes gave off a sickly odour from the food that had been dropped. In two or three of the beds, Titus was told, were men, old soldiers who had been in them for nearly fifty years, their young manhood smothered for ever by a gas that had taken the whole sweetness of life from them, in a war forgotten by nearly everyone. Another man, upright like a soldier, stood all day issuing commands to a ghost platoon. Unlike the others, he was clean and almost as young looking as on the day that whatever had happened to stultify his hopes and expectations had happened. Only he, among these lonely men, seemed happy and carefree in his own isolated world.
The days went by with a lack of hope and very little laughter, but Titus found friendship with the other men who worked with him. There seemed to be no world outside, and he confined himself to what he had to do. To think of what he was doing was at this time mentally beyond him, for strong as he was, by the end of each day he was physically exhausted. But later in his life he was to ask himself the reasons, to try to discover if there was anyone to blame for such meaningless destruction of so many human beings. He was nauseated by a great deal of what he had to do; to see the loss of dignity in men who at one time had been both loved and desired.
One day a man was brought to the ward on a stretcher and put to bed. He had been drugged to quieten him. His wife had come with him, and Titus watched as she brought out from a suitcase some books and pencils, some food and a few clothes, which she put in the small cupboard by the side of the bed.
There was something in the man that drew Titus to him, although he was in a deep, drugged sleep, and as she left to go the wife turned to him and said, ‘Look after him, please. I will be down in two days’ time.’
29
Intimations of Other Days
The daily duties could never cease. If some catastrophe had razed this building to the ground, with all its inmates in it, would it have mattered? But was it any more pointless than most of man’s pursuits? The line between sanity and the loss of sentience became daily too perplexing for Titus to reach any conclusion, yet each day he helped to keep alive beings who hardly knew they were alive; and others who, knowing, did not wish it. Nevertheless, apart from one or two of the really unlovable among them, he was drawn to them by an indefinable feeling. A feeling that he had thought had died in him many years ago: compassion and protectiveness towards people from whom he neither wished nor expected to receive gratitude, and he knew that if there were ever any situation where there was a choice of leaving them to their fate, or saving their living bodies, he would save them, but no rational thought could explain this reasoning.
He had been told that the man who had been brought in some days before was an artist, and no one knew what was the matter with him. Titus remembered the pleading way in which the man’s wife had asked him to look after her husband. When the effect of the drugs had worn off and with difficulty he sat up in his bed, one of the most pitiful sounds that Titus had ever heard almost rent the ward in two. A cry of despair. It belonged to neither man nor beast. It had in it all the pain that man has suffered since time began. It was so basic that it affected everyone, both staff and inmates, with an unnamed fear – such as the animal world feels before a natural disaster. The cries could not be alleviated by soothing words, or gentle persuasion. It was the soul and the heart of all humanity, pleading to whatever God there was for release.
The only release that was possible was an injection to quieten and deaden his consciousness and, being too frail to ward off the needle, he crumpled back on to the bed and slept, a heavy disturbed sleep.
The whole ward was in a turmoil, and it took Peregrine and Titus and two or three other men to calm it as best they could.
After the lunches were over, what few visitors ever came were allowed in.
At two o’clock the bell rang in the locked ward and the door was opened. The artist’s wife walked towards her husband’s bed. He was still in his uneasy sleep. There was so little room that there was nowhere to sit except perched at the end of the bed. She put some things she had brought on the table and sat, looking at her husband with a look of longing, a palpable aching.
‘How is he?’ she asked, knowing that no one could say anything that could assuage so deep an affliction. Why or how should they, when surrounded by such an abundance of human disarray?
There was nothing for her to do but await his uneasy reawakening. The bell rang again, and an elderly woman walked the length of the bed-scape to the bed next to her husband, where an old man, sunken in cheek and jaw, lay dying. Another wife, another life. Each person, alienated in his own prison. This elderly visitor ha
d taken on the unseeing eyes of those around her. She had no hope for the future, only a past that no one could share with her, her own husband included. She was not new to this world, as she sat upon a small stool by the bed. From time to time an emaciated hand struggled from the bedclothes and reached for an answering hand, and the smallest whisper emerged, and as the old woman touched his fingers, the artist’s wife could just hear an echo from a world of years and years ago. ‘Hold my hand, mother . . . mother . . . hold my hand,’ then a rattle so faint as almost not to be heard, as the life in the bed floated away unobserved.
The only difference it made in the huge room was the arrival of a screen that now separated the quick (if that were not an exaggeration) from the dead.
The sleeping man in the next bed did not awake. The trumpets were too faint, and the two hours that had passed were over, and his wife had to leave.
Titus watched her as her steps took her back to the locked door and into the world outside. He did not take part in the formalities that followed the ending of a life, but once more, with his work companions, had to soothe the agitation of the living.
And so the days wore on, the nights wore out, the lives wore down. Titus was drawn daily to a feeling towards the artist that he could not explain to himself. As though there was an indefinable link between his life and that haunted man for whom he had to perform duties that in his younger days would have affronted his dignity. Despite the haggard eyes, the remnants of teeth discoloured and decaying from too many drugs, there was an intelligence so forceful that it probed the inner life of everyone in the ward. His words would not make the sentences that he searched for, and in his frustration he would hit out at those around him, but with so little force there was no danger for anyone. Titus watched sometimes as his wife handed him paper and pencil with which to draw, and as the hand faltered over a few marks, he would brush them away with a sigh so piteous and profound it almost rent his being.
