by Will Self
– No, I didn’t mean thoshe wordsh either, Audrey . . . For a man who supposes himself in thrall to the progress of the labouring classes, Gilbert has a most extreme aversion to work itself, in all its forms, except for the production of his own words . . . I meant the wordsh you have sent forth in that frail barque, the Ardent, on to the world’sh watersh. In the shadows of his shirt his penis hunches ringed by rolled skin-folds bamboo stuck in you. At the Ince workshop, in back of Old Commercial Street, the piece workers, Jews and Jewesses mostly, cut the silk and gingham, oil it, stretch it, sew the finicky loops and sleeves, then feed in the ribs and attach the handle – Vwar-la! another Peerless or Paragon or elegant ladies’ walking umbrella. Over and over they do it, their strange and sallow faces also oiled and stretching – hands chapped and chafed, covered with bunions in winter – summer brings the stench from the fish stalls in Black Lion Yard, but always there is the high reek of poultry.
It is a paltry thing, Gilbert, she says, rising to pull up her petticoats and roll up her stockings. Snap! goes one garter. A paltry thing, and taken only by those that assent to its contents already, read, I believe, not even by them. Snap! There is a silver tray with cut-glass decanter and soda siphon. Audrey lightly touches the fluted neck, the cool grooves – she picks up a pin and begins to fold strand upon strand of her red raffia-work. The window is masked by a heavy drape, but beyond it she knows stand the high-gabled houses with their triplets of artistic windows, while beyond them lie the embankment and the river sweating its noxious vapours – she pictures the lurid swirl of tannery waste caught in its sluggish flow. – I shall have to go. – Musht you? – Yes, yes – back to Missus Phelps in De Beauvoir Town, back to tinned Gong soup heated up on the oil stove, back to the airy sensation of falling to sleep without the deadweight of Father, Mary Jane, and the rest . . . She steps into the respectable embrace of her shirtwaist, buttons it, moves to the drapes, parts them. Down below a motor-taxi rattles by the kerb, Venetia Stanley – it can be no other – stands withdrawing coins from the beady security of her purse. She has come from tea at the Dorchester, Audrey imagines, or a piano recital at the Bechstein Hall – and she has no cares beyond the troublesome proliferation of her purple plumes upon the hats of her inferiors . . . Turning, Audrey says decisively, I should like to hurl a brickbat through her dear friend’s window – through all his bloody windows! Gilbert has taken upon himself flannel underwear none too clean. She will not venture, he says, to dishturb us, but jusht in case . . . He uncrooks the arm of the Victrola with one hand, while expertly winding it with the other. His face swells monstrous in the beaten tin horn as the melody sings though the hiss. Thought is a melody, Audrey thinks, while the body is an inert mechanism of cogs, springs, chains and ratchets . . . His hands are on her neck, her fingers are hooked in her bootlaces . . . – No, really, Gilbert, I must go. He claps his hands to his thighs. Ha! Well! Sho may it be, he says, and looks about for the exasperation of his trousers. Shall I shee you on Thurshday at the meeting? I believe Shtanley will alsho be attending . . . He knows of their disagreement – a word too flimsy to contain the violence of their falling-out. Didddle-di-diddle-di-diddle-di-di-di! The pretty trills from the phonograph scatter before her rage, resurrected: Stanley, who, despite his waywardness, will, she knows, be martyred. Stanley, his lissom arms outstretched, his palms pierced by the tips of the steel ribs, his ankles bound to the umbrella post by an India-rubber ring. So to Cook, Audrey is emphatic: Stanley comes not for George Lansbury, or the car-men, or any principle ’soever. He is in thrall to that fine lady and her pimp – my brother has no position, he’s all but disowned by our father –. She stops, hearing the shh-ching of the drapes being drawn in the drawing room below – the Victrola, which went off half cocked, has diddled to a halt. Her lover views Audrey appraisingly throughout the awkward business of buttoning himself up. He completes his costume with a cigarette – he smokes a brand called Logic, one shilling for a box of twenty-five! You love him, Cook says amazed. You love him more than any other – more than your shuffaragette friensh, more than our schocialisht comradesh, more than –. He is a shapeless tweed bag with a smoky drawstring . . . Suddenly, she grabs him and pushes him backwards, thrusting her hot face against his bare neck. She feels the cold trickle of her love between her clenched thighs. I love you, Gilbert, she pants, I love you. Audrey knows this is no romantic felicity, or brazen fortitude, but revolutionary: And all around the slaves do dwell, Who are called to labour by a bell . . . – And you love me, Gilbert, don’t you – she shakes him – you love me too! His shoulder has snagged the copper teat of the light switch and they look up at the electrolier curling over their heads, look up and are smitten by the incandescing clapper in its frosted bell. Beyond this lamp there is another, and beyond that one a third – and so on, a great profligacy of illumination that draws Audrey’s eye along the curved roof. Sam Death explains how the electricity is jenny-rated way over west in Wood Lane, and how there are substayshuns all along the route of the railway, where this strange fluid is subjected to still more mysterious refinement before being piped down into the tunnels to feed the lamps and the middle rail at their feet, which, unlike the evilly gleaming sisters that flank it, is dull and neglected. Audrey cannot stay wivvim – she knows this doesn’t matter. — Her father speaks of the Greathead shield not on her behalf but on behalf of an absent other . . . Am I right, sir? The air crackles ozone a celluloid dickey rubbed on velveteen . . . at her feet are others’ feet: spattered spats and high-heeled boots dainty as cake decorations. Audrey tries hard not to stare at the lady and gentleman: she with her hands lost in her muff and a fever spot on each painted cheek, he, lifting his watch by its chain, tapping the platform with his cane, pushing up the brim of his topper. Then the same again: mechanical, unthinking. Stan only ’ad the one lead soldier, a pith-helmeted bugler in scarlet tunic and tartan trews, he lifted up his battered bugle to his chipped lips, tootled, lifted ’is battered bugle to ’is chipped lips an’ tootled. There was a big bolt through each of his shoulders and there was Stan’s little big finger makin’ ’im do it. The train is coming, straining up the incline shaped by the underside of the Fleet’s irrelevant banks. Rothschild Death raises his voice to shout about planned extensions and a turning circuit buried beneath the Uxbridge Road. He sounds proprietary enough to be an investor in – A southern extension, ’owsabout that, Or-dree, then we’d be tunnelin’ our ’ole way ’ome, snug as –. The engine explodes from its ’ole, a shell fired by a dreadnought that cruises far below in the brown earthsea. Its lamps send deffrays lancing along the tiles, while Audrey hears the paddin’ between her own ears as she listens to the roar of its trajectory. Although she knows it cannot hit them, she grabs the arm from which the parcel destined for Arnold Collins hangs by its loop of twine. – Fine companion you are! Her father exults in her fear, draws her near – from under his furry arm Audrey watches, appalled, as the platform with its cargo of buckram and boaters and nodding plumes slides away behind the row of yellow-lit windows. Seated beside her father, she sees not the advertisement card REDFERN’S RUBBER MATS FOR THE OFFICE, above the rushing darkness into which the carriage sinks, then rises to another crest at British Museum Station, then sinks once more. Her hands are back in her lap and they tap-tap-tap with the clack of wheel on steel – but Audrey remains detached, bobbing in her seat as the train surfaces at Tottenham Court Road, at Bond Street, at Marble Arch, where, her head clamped in the eyepiece of the window, she is compelled to see through her own diaphanous self to the electrified fssschk-chk-fssschk-chk as the platform pulls away again, this time its display more various: tailors’ dummies hung about with Ulsters and macintoshes shared by two, the full skirts hiding Little Titch on a pantomime horse . . . in between are arranged in no particular order an oil stove, a steamer trunk, pearl-handled Colt revolvers in an open display case, a selection of travelling rugs, a hat stand hung about with moabs, a writing desk with a stuffed raven set upon it, a toy train set that is this
very underground railway made awfully small, a hassock embroidered with the Prince of Wales’s crest, a pianola, an indicator board ringing for service in every room, a probang, an electroplated punch bowl, Malacca canes fanned out on a Mackinaw, a regimental table piece in the shape of a sepoy shooting a tiger, a toaster, an electric lamp, a fondue set, a patented ‘Galvanic’ weight-reduction belt, an electric blanket, a stereo cassette deck – whatever that may be. Audrey can hear the disembodied voice – sweetly covetous – naming these things as they are shuffled before her, but the kinetoscope is difficult to focus on when she is so constrained . . . a barbecue! His and hers dressing gowns and a cuddly toy! The voice finishes on a triumphant note, synthetic sounds swell to make the shape of music, and an invisible audience shapes its hands to make applause . . . this fiendishness will be Albert’s doing: a brace adjusted so as to force her to stare up at the ceiling, its screws threaded in the bone to either side of her eyes. This . . . kinema film his doing as well: a means of torture. The brace presses Audrey’s face into a muzzle that smells of old sweat – her legs are bound in a single leg of some tartan trews, her hands must loosen the chuck, switch the bit and turn the wheel by touch alone – she feels the fuse cap drop into my lap . . . the lines in between the ceiling tiles converge sickeningly but it’s not so bad . . . she isn’t like Gracie, who’s been in the Danger Buildings too long – poor Gracie, who shared a cubicle with her in the Plumstead hostel and who also received Cristobel’s message to join in the war effort and once the workers were with them to rise in the reddy dawn. Poor Gracie, who doesn’t know me, who’s demented, whose skin is still canary-yellow – are they putting Trotyl in her food? In the early years Audrey had been happy to assist – to coo, bill and generally calm them before their psychoetheric reordering, before they were made to desire the images, if not the Ding an sich: atoasterafonduesetanelectricblanket – the words chew together now in avaricious haste, astereocassettedeckabarbecue!’isnerrsdressin’ gownsannacuddlytoy –! Off. Clicked off. The aerial sits alien antennae on the old set, which is warm and smells of singed dust. Busner straightens up, turns – the silence in the day-room of Ward 14 is slowly infiltrated by moans, mutterings, then: Wotcher do that for? Mister Garvey – mid-sixties, hypomanic, recent transfer – protests: That’s my favourite bloody programme, that is. Busner lifts an emollient hand and strokes the air. Please, he says, please . . . it’ll only be for a few minutes, I just want to ask Miss Dearth a couple of things . . . He waves the clipboard he holds in his other hand, and the papers stir up powdered milk, dried urine. The high-backed and upright armchairs face him in two shallow crescents, and are far more accusatory than the bundles dumped in them. Awkwardly, Busner manoeuvres between the rows, jostling past knees covered up with rugs and others frighteningly exposed: Oof, look at that contusion . . . a Waterloo sunset. The day-room’s ill-fitting sash windows are buffeted by the wind, strafed by raindrops, and so he is reminded It’s April, as he drops himself into the seat beside her. Her poor old face is crammed into the angle of the headrest, her scrawny legs are rigid and the torsion of her upper body is painful to behold – yet, despite this, her hands move methodically, deftly, pulling upon an invisible lever, twirling an immaterial flywheel with such assurance that the psychiatrist does see steel basted with oil, the fireside glow of bronze. Miss Dearth, he begins, I have your original admission form from . . . together with the notes made by medical officers during your first few years here. — It has taken him over a month to beg, cajole and wheedle these from Records, they see no point to it any more than Whitcomb does. – There’re plenty of fancies floating around this place, Busner, that’s why you’re better off confining yourself to facts, to routines . . . It is pointless to observe to his nominal superior, or to Missus Jarvis, the hideous old dragon who crouches on the nest of paper and card breathing bureaucratic fire at him, that these records are precisely that: facts, and facts about routines. De’Ath, Audrey, Admitted 26th September 1922, Born Fulham, 1890 (age 32), Spinst. 5'2'', 7st. 8lbs., Address Flat G, 309 Clapham Road, Stockwell, London SW, had been subjected to a medical examination, so it was noted that: she showed no signs of tuberculosis, rheumatic fever, smallpox, being postpartum or having had any confinements. De’Ath, Audrey, had been admitted – it was cramped into the preprinted boxes of the form – as a rate-aided person, exhibiting symptoms of catatonia that led Doctor M. H. Hood, Medical Superintendent, unhesitatingly to diagnose Primary Dementia whatever that was. A year later Doctor Ventor concurred in respect of one Death, Audrey, but a note written by a Doctor Hayman, dated a scant three years later, just as definitively – the Latin tag underlined thrice in purple ink – characterised one Deeth, Audrey, same other details, as suffering from Dementia Praecox. As he had laid out the ancient sheets and file cards on a sticky-ringed coffee table in the staff room, Busner found himself moved to consider the evolution in symbiosis of these names. For, as the Mental Health Act of 1930 modified Colney Hatch Asylum to Colney Hatch Mental Hospital, so Deeth, Audrey, mutated into Deerth, Audrey, who was given – courtesy, he imagined, of the slow absorption of Bleuler’s terminology into the fabric of English psychiatry – an equally authoritative diagnosis of schizophrenia. It would have been next to impossible to have tracked this pseudonymous patient down through the decades within an institution that remained in a continuing identity crisis, were it not that Miss De’Ath, AKA Miss Death, AKA Miss Deeth, AKA Miss Deerth, remained in exactly the same place, a moth – not dead but hibernating and growing more and more desiccated with the years – despite the subsidence of entire spurs, the constant renovations called for by the shoddy workmanship of its original contractors, the fires and the wartime bomb damage, the admission and departure, by death or discharge, of thousands of the mentally distressed. In the late 1930s, when the hospital saw fit to reinvent itself as Friern Mental Hospital, relegating – or so they hoped – the echo of the booby-hatch to the chants of children, Miss Deerth, Busner assumed through yet another error of transcription, became Miss Dearth. And so she stopped on Ward 14, an incurable schizophrenic whose profound catatonia was her most enduringly remarked upon characteristic, now that the decades had worn away all contingencies of sex, age, class and name. Her catatonia . . . and her dyskinesias and dystonias of all kinds, her muscles crimped, then cramped, her hands vamping and vibrating in the vice of her malady – so that, come the 1960s, when the hospital adopted the modishly informal nickname Friern, and the surf of chlorpromazine was up, old Miss Dearth’s symptomatic consistency was noticed by a not-yet-jaded junior neurologist temporarily attached to the staff — a certain Doctor Mohan Ramachandra, who must, like Busner after him, have bothered to read at least some of her notes and seen that, while she had been subjected to one round of insulin coma therapy in the late thirties and a single experimental jolt of ECT a decade later, she had mostly stepped over the high-tension cabling that snaked through brains for the next twenty years. He so concluded that, far from her twisting, ticcing and transfixed gazing being the consequence of too liberal dosage with major tranquillisers – since as yet she had been prescribed none – there might – just might – be a physiological explanation for her forty-odd years of torpor, a hypothesis that led to his jotting down very tentatively, in pencil, a single word, Parkinsonian, on the final page of those notes, followed by a ? that absolutely guaranteed there would be no follow-up
