In the Middle of the Wood

by Iain Crichton Smith

  “I think I will be in a long time if I stay. People are trying to make me eat and I don’t like eating.”

  “Who were the spies you were talking about?” the handicapped girl stuttered.

  “Everybody. My baby is illegitimate. People were talking about me at the bus stops, in the shops, everywhere. Old bags. They wouldn’t stop talking about me. Even the traffic wardens. They were waving their arms and pointing to me.”

  “Come off it,” said Hugh. “They would have been doing traffic duty. Traffic wardens are always waving their arms. That’s what they’re for.” He turned round to the company. “I was on holiday one time among the teuchters and I was driving through this town and this traffic warden waved me on. But at the same time he was nodding his head from side to side. I didn’t know what to do so I stayed where I was. He came up to me and he said, ‘Why aren’t you driving on?’ ‘Well,’ I said, ‘I didn’t know what to do. You’re waving me on with your hands and yet you’re nodding your head from side to side.’ ‘Ach,’ he said, ‘don’t you know your Highland Code. It should be the hands you should be watching and not the head.’ “

  Some of the group laughed but the girl remained stony faced as if she didn’t see the point of the joke. Then after a while she said, “Are you trying to say something about my head?”

  “Of course he’s not,” said the scientist placatingly. “He was just telling a joke.”

  “Well, he should keep his jokes to himself. And you too what are you laughing at,” she said, turning to another girl whom Ralph had only seen once before. “What are you f … … laughing at?”

  “Stop f … … shouting at me,” said the girl angrily.

  “Now, now, calm down both of you,” said the psychologist who had been sitting quietly listening. “The point is, Diana, what are we going to do about you? For your own sake and the sake of your baby you should really accept treatment. It isn’t reasonable to think that people are spying on you.”

  “They are f … … spying on me. Do you think I’m a headcase? They talk about me all the time. I can’t go out of the house. I can’t even take my baby out in the pram. These f … … old bags are always coming to have a look at him.”

  For the first time the man with the trembling head spoke. “Women always do that,” he said, in his civilized scholarly voice. “They always bend down and look at babies.”

  “What do you know about it, you old fart,” said the girl angrily.

  “Now please, Diana, that’s no way to talk,” said the psychologist. “We’re only trying to help you.”

  “You’re trying to get me to eat and I don’t want to. I’ve changed my mind. I shouldn’t have come in here in the first place.”

  All the time Ralph was listening. He wanted to give some advice but he didn’t know what to say. The girl, he could see, was miserable and unhappy and unwell. On the other hand her statements were making him uneasy. Why did she think that traffic wardens were laughing at her? They were only directing the traffic, surely.

  Was this then a part of the conspiracy against himself? Had the girl been put up to this, to repeat his own story in a different way, with different characters? Still, if she was an actress she was very good, very authentic. And her bad language was the first he had heard used in the hospital. He passed his hand across his forehead, thinking hard. The girl certainly was very thin and it seemed to him that she hadn’t been eating. For a moment there he felt as if these were real people and not a theatrical group: it was the bad language that had done it, for everybody seemed to be as shocked as he himself was, and the scholarly trembling man was staring down at the floor as if he had been mortally hurt. Unless of course the girl belonged to a more real, harsher school of acting than the others and they were now intent on forcing the issue with himself, considering that he was taking so long to break down.

  “Don’t you love your baby?” he heard himself ask.

  “Of course I f … … love my baby. What sort of question is that? But they won’t let me have him. My mother takes him away from me. I’m not going to harm him. I’m not going to poison him.”

  “Well, then, why don’t you take treatment. Do as you’re told. Take your pills.”

  “I told you. I’m not taking the pills. I don’t want pills. I want to go home. What is happening to my baby while I’m in here. That’s what I want to know. Maybe my mother has run away with him and I won’t be able to trace her.”

  And she began to scream and wail, rocking from side to side and clutching at her thin body.

  Stop, stop, stop, Ralph almost shouted aloud. Stop this at once, you’re hurting my head.

  And without thinking he rushed out of the lounge and ran along to his room clutching his head. He lay down on the bed. The room was spinning around him and his mouth was forming soundless screams. His head was bursting, he was sweating profusely. As he lay on the bed he heard someone coming after him. He had a glimpse of a pale face, a uniform, and then he was being given a pill, and put below the blankets. In a short while he fell asleep.

  He woke up in the morning at the usual time. Hugh was already out of his bed and padding about the room in his dressing-gown. The yellow light of the electric bulb was cast over the ward. Ralph put on his dressing-gown and made his bed.

  “Brilliant,” he said glancing down at it. “Isn’t it brilliant. Can’t I make a brilliant bed?”

  “You’re learning,” said Hugh, considering the bed like a scholar considering a manuscript. “Another six months and you should be all right.”

  Ralph laughed. He knew that Hugh was joking. Wasn’t it a tremendous thing that he should know that? Tom was sitting on his bed in the corner smiling, now and again blinking his eyes as he habitually did.

  “About your book,” said Ralph. “I can give you a Writers’ and Artists’ Yearbook.”

  “What’s that?”

  “It tells you the addresses of publishers. I’ll get my wife to bring it in to you.”

  “Thanks,” said Hugh.

  “And today I’ll have a bath,” said Ralph. “Isn’t that great? Little adventures all the time.”

  The last time he had had a bath he had panicked because he couldn’t get the door open. And when he went to the toilet the never closed the door: it was as if he was afraid of being locked in a box.

  What was the source of this joy that he felt? It was pouring all round him like the yellow light. He felt lightheaded as if he could fly. Today too he was seeing the psychologist again. So that was two things, the bath and the psychologist. They would make his day, he smiled ironically. He padded along the corridor to retrieve his razor from the office. The charge nurse handed it over saying, “Feeling okay today?”

  “I’m feeling great,” he answered.

  When he looked into the mirror in the bathroom he saw that the apelike expression had disappeared from his face. To the right of him Heydrich was gazing contentedly into his own area of glass. Ralph was no longer frightened of him, no longer frightened to be in the bathroom with any of the others. Before, he had thought they might attack him. This grave joy, where had it come from? He wanted to talk to somebody, to anybody, to share his joy. It was as if he had risen from the tomb and his shroud had fallen away like expended wings.

  “And how is Heydrich this morning?” he asked gaily.

  “Fine,” said the tall fair haired ‘Nazi’ drawing the razor down his throat and sweeping the foam away in billowing waves.

  “And what are you going to do today?”

  “I have orders to write. That’ll keep me going for a while. I must get rid of more of these bloody Jews.”

  “What are you going to do with them?”

  “I’m going to machine-gun the bastards.”

  “I see,” said Ralph, feeling the room spin around him, and the joy leaving him. But when he had got back to the ward the joy had returned again. His mind was moving in free leaps; Linda hadn’t touched the telephone book after all. It was he himself who had torn it up, tho
ugh he couldn’t remember having done so. And these obscene messages which he had found in his books and his diary, he must have written them himself. He, also, it must have been who had disarranged the pages of his novel. The Irish psychologist was what he had always been, an Irish psychologist. Why shouldn’t psychologists be Irish: they had as much right to be Irish as any other nationality.

  When he arrived back in his room Hugh said, “I forgot to tell you. I’m getting out Thursday.”

  “You must be pleased,” said Ralph.

  “Yes, my wife’s coming to collect me. I have a lot to do when I get home. All my notes to arrange. And then I’ll have to see my sons to find out how the business is going. I’ve got a share in it. I visit them every second Sunday, usually, and have my dinner with them.”

  “How’s your concentration?”

  “Not so good. I’m working on a chapter on the Trade Unions at the moment. It takes a lot of reading.” He looks so old-fashioned, thought Ralph, like a superannuated officer from the First World War with his ghostly moustache. And he’s so meticulous with everything, his leather shaving case, his bed: all must be neat and tidy. When the soul dies we become machines. We move like machines, jerky, remorseless. Our eyes lose their human shine and our faces become like those of chimpanzees.

  The soul, what was it? It had shone like a halo above the animal nibbling at his cloud of fruit. On the other hand, was it the soul? Was it not simply consciousness? But what was the source of this joy, this coming back to himself as a stranger to his own house at last, a tide returning to a shore that had been long unfamiliar? Was this consciousness that pervaded his whole body as sap does a tree or was it more than that, did it have the unique signature of holiness? He wanted to extend himself everywhere, to shout, to tell an immense and priceless secret. He studied his bed again. No, it wasn’t quite right. The final flick of the blanket like a tail had been omitted. He imitated Hugh and corrected it.

  “I’m becoming a real artist at this,” he said.

  Through the parted curtains he could see the dawn reddening the sky, and he could hear the twitter of birds. The sun was beginning to force its way through the clouds with steady remorselessness. The stars like pills were being overwhelmed by that rawer stronger light. He could just make out a cat padding across the wet grass. He felt the material of his silk dressing-gown—the one Linda had bought for him — with wonderment. It passed like water through his hands.

  After lunch he and Tom helped the woman who was washing the dishes. The dishes were put in a machine and then dried. He and Tom spent half an hour on them before they went to the lounge for their pills. It was a simple machine but he was delighted that he could operate it.

  “Look at the food that’s left,” said the small woman in the blue uniform. “Some of them hardly eat a thing. Hardly a thing.” And she nodded her head as she walked to and fro in the kitchen.

  “The waste,” she said. “Did you see that fellow? He put his head in at the door and ran away again. Anorexia nervosa,” she said wisely. “That’s what the doctors call it. Nothing but skin and bone on them.”

  “Why do they do it?” asked Ralph as he dried a plate.

  “You tell me. It’s mostly girls. They want to keep their figures, that’s what I think. I’m slimming myself, but I know when to stop. I watch my tatties and my bread and my sugar. I just have a coffee when I come out in the morning. And no cakes. I have a big meal at night though. It’s not natural to slim as much as they do, and that boy is as bad as the girls. It isn’t often you see it in boys, mind you. My own boys were the opposite, couldn’t get enough food. And they would say to visitors, We’re starving. I felt so mortified.” Her voice became more confidential. “Listen, you wouldn’t believe this. I had a visitor the other week, my sister it was, Jane, that’s my sons’ aunt. Very pernickety she is, toffee-nosed, very madamy, and Sam, that’s one of my sons, doesn’t like her. I offered her a sherry. ‘And what do you drink, Sam?’ she said. ‘Coke,’ he said. But I could see he was mad at her. ‘Coke,’ she says. ‘And do you really like coke?’ She talks to him as if he was a wee boy and he hates it. I tried to get him out of the room to wash the dishes but he never washes dishes. ‘No,’ he said. ‘And why don’t you like it then?’ ‘ ‘Cos it makes me fart.’ “

  And she went into fits of laughter, joined by Ralph and Tom. In between bouts of laughter she muttered wiping her eyes, “You should have seen her face. She’s so proud, you see. The sherry nearly fell out of her hand. But these boys, you’ll never know what they’re going to say next. They make me so ashamed. Sam used to sit in the garden like a Hindu when he was in university. He wore dirty sandals all the time. Mind you, he’s smart, I’ll say that for him. But this won’t pay the rent. Many thanks.” Tom and Ralph folded up the towels, put them in the drawer, and went for their pills.

  In the lounge, while he was waiting for his pills, he sat beside the girl who had checked in as a voluntary patient.

  “Can I talk to you?” he said quietly.

  “If you want,” said the girl in a hostile manner.

  “It’s just that I wanted to tell you what had happened to me. I thought everyone was spying on me. I thought my wife had written obscene messages all over my books. And that she had torn the telephone book in two. I had the idea that she had plotted to send me to the hospital.”

  “How do you know she didn’t?”

  “I just know.”

  “How do you know?” For a moment the nightmare returned, hovering with its black wings on the edge of his mind but he pushed it away with all his might.

  “I just know,” he repeated. “It wouldn’t be reasonable that the hospital nurses, doctors, taxi drivers, psychologists, would all be involved in a plot. It’s not reasonable that traffic wardens should be talking about you.”

  “But they are talking about me. They think I’m a criminal.”

  “Why?”

  “Why what?”

  “Why do they think you’re a criminal?”

  “Because I’m not married, that’s why.”

  “But that doesn’t make you a criminal.”

  “It does to them.”

  “Listen,” said Ralph urgently. “You’re wrong, you know. You’re making a mistake. They cured me in here. I took my pills and they cured me. One day you wake up and you know that it’s all been a bad dream.”

  “What was a dream?”

  “The idea that people were spying on me.”

  Suddenly the girl spoke in a hard voice. “Who sent you to talk to me? Is this part of the plot as well?”

  “No one sent me.”

  “I know somebody sent you. They’re all against me because I don’t eat my food. Well, I’m not staying here. And one of the girls stole some of my clothes. I’ll get the f… … bitch. She took a scarf of mine. But she’s not getting away with it. And there’s another thing, when they weighed me they told me the wrong weight. I’m getting out of here.”

  “I’m not spying on you,” said Ralph desperately. “I’m trying to help you. I want you to get well. I got well.”

  “How do you know?”

  “How do I know what?”

  “Like how do you know that you weren’t well before and you’re ill now. How do you know?”

  Her sharp belligerent intelligence pierced him but he knew that he must hang on: he must cling to his joy. His joy told him that all was well, his misery had vanished like a cloud. The people in the lounge had all swum back into focus again. The room was real, its occupants were not actors, there was no longer a threat.

  “I know,” he said, “because I feel happy.”

  “Happy.”

  Her eyes on his were hard and hostile, and bitter as if he were her enemy.

  “Why should I listen to you? Jim told me that he’d marry me but he didn’t. He changed his mind. Over and over he said that he would marry me. Give me it, he’d say, give me it, I’ll marry you, I swear I will. And he pawed me all over and he breathed like a pig.
But he never married me. He never came to see me.”

  “I see,” said Ralph. Her pallor was poignant and childlike. Tears were brimming from her eyes. How many of these girls he had seen, on streets late at night, with their cracked handbags in the yellow fallen light, walking in pairs, giggling their high virginal giggles.

  “Listen,” he said, from the very centre of his care, of his joy.

  “Get away from me, old man,” said the girl. “Or I’ll tell Snooty face. Get the f… … hell away from me.” And her voice rose hysterically. Ralph got to his feet quickly and moved over to where Tom was sitting cradling his coffee cup in his hands as if he was warming them. The following day he was going to Glasgow to have the operation to his head.

  “Come on out for a walk,” he said. They made their way along a road beside which were fields and houses: a house that had once been a nunnery and was now a Nurses’ Home. Tom knew the area well as he had been brought up close to it, after being born in Aberdeenshire. They opened and shut gates and strolled between tall red foxgloves like burning spires in the cold raw wind. It was strange to smell the scent of flowers again, to have the freedom of the air: it was as if already in reality he were leaving the hospital behind him.

  There was an immense silence and purity everywhere, like Easter, like the resurrection. Cows gazed at them with absent eyes, chewing green blades of grass.

  “I think you’ll be oot quicker than me,” said Tom.

  “What makes you think that?”

  “They told me I might be fower or five weeks after my electric treatment. They say it’ll mak me dizzy for a few days.”

  Now that he could see properly the delineaments of the world he could understand that after all Tom was not a psychologist but a rural man, and an authentic non-chess player. His accent was explained by the fact that he had not been born in the area.

  For the first time Ralph felt that he might be allowed home. The mountains, flowers, animals, fields, were not alien to him but natural. They were not inconceivable gifts but ordinary and fixed in their places, to be accepted. They did not represent an infinite yearning of the spirit towards the unattainable.