Looking around, Alice now saw that much else had mysteriously changed for the better also: Pleasant light blue fabric curtained screens, printed with sunny fluffy-puffy cloud images, now hung between the beds, pulled back forming groins, rather than the near-perpetually pulled-around dull-green plastic curtains of old. And the beds themselves had transmogrified from the elderly vintage iron-framed, iron-rail-sided hospital cots there had been here before, to modern hospital beds that would not have disgraced the most up-to-date of private spa clinics. There were only six beds now - there had been a dozen - although still arranged with military precision in an obsessively-evenly-spaced and disciplined row. The covers had been folded back as if to present and display the pristine new fabric (not plastic-covered, as was) mattresses and fluffed up pillows to their best advantage; and of course there was not a sign of straps or cuffs, chain links or anything else out of the ordinary or which might of qualified as a ‘humane restraint’ system:
In short: The whole place had been sort of... cleaned up... “or should that be ‘covered up’”, Alice thought to herself, the words involuntarily worming their way out through clenched teeth and from between determinedly firm-set lips as if subconsciously she was set on sabotaging her own attempted stealth... No, she thought... sanitised... yes that was more like it, sanitised, disinfected - all the rot taken out.
Tentatively edging her way out, looking around, Alice began to realise, to accept, that the infirmary was indeed every bit as deserted as it had first appeared. But it was not only the human factor that was missing, the patients, the medical staff; the oppressive, controlled atmosphere was missing too. The place was positively cheerful now, shafts of cheering sunlight stabbing through windows no longer cowering behind padlocked hinged shutters and blinds, coloured and shaded by stained-glass bible stories and haloed saints and apostles; the scriptures writ large and brought alive through nature’s own nurturing hand. Features such as the punishment horse, the enema table and the wood rack of canes and punishment straps which had been screwed to the wall behind the nurse’s desk, were notable by their absence. In their stead there were now dark green plastic upholstered buttoned easy chairs arranged in a crescent arc in front of a sparkling new wall-mounted television. In short the priory’s infirmary was now just that; a very ordinary institutional sickbay.
The infirmary’s central, external, exit consisted of a double set of paired doors separated by a deep, high-ceilinged, stone-vaulted porch giving straight on to the cloisters - and mentally crossing her fingers, Alice now rushed across to it.
The paired inner doors gave the impression of an everyday hospital ward anywhere in Britain. Rectangular, two-way-swinging and painted that singular shade of light blue oft favoured for nurses’ dresses and termed ‘hospital blue’ they were furnished with stainless steel fingerplates and porthole wire-glass windows. The outer pair betrayed a different lineage entirely: These gave the appearance of country church doors; tall, heavy, iron-studded oaken doors, their neo-gothic-looking arched tops matching the curvature of the Norman-arch exterior doorway. Both sets of doors - inner and outer - had been left ajar, the inner set propped open by a fire extinguisher, a narrow stabbing shaft of sharp yellow sunlight streaming through the gap and along the central line of the stone-flagged porch. Diverging as it emerged on to the ward, the sunbeam seemed to sizzle and glisten its way across the glazed terracotta tiled floor; coming to rest on one of the hospital beds, lighting it up as if spotlighted.
Turning her head away from the blinding vertical cake-slice of light Alice found it easy enough to bundle her way through the inner double swing doors. Nevertheless she cursed her inability to guard her eyes with her hands. Her arms were still firmly immobilised within the sleeves of the straightjacket, the closed-ended sleeves pulled tight, crisscross fashion, over her front and around her torso before fastening behind her back. Every now and then she had paused to wriggle writhe and tug at her bindings, but despite the removal of the buckle-locking padlocks which usually went to complete the security arrangements the straightjacket was proving no less inescapable.
Blundering her way across the porch Alice then crashed against the towering outer doors, coming in aggressively now, shoulder first, letting the thick sturdy straightjacket take the force of the blow. Again and again she crashed in, until the heavy doors had parted enough for her to slide through; she was frantic, flustered; any minute she expected to be grasped by the collar and dragged back.
As Alice had expected, the doorway opened out on to the unusually expansive cloistered priory courtyard. The wide grassed central area was ringed by a rectangle of stone pavements backed by outbuildings and was pierced by raised flower beds, the shady covered walkways around the periphery lined by wide, fluted, subtly tapering stone columns. But what Alice had not been prepared for was the overwhelming vertiginous kaleidoscopic array of sights and sounds and smells that now assaulted her senses: The ordinarily meditative peace of the cloisters was in the process of being shattered, smashed by shouts, running feet and all manner of unaccustomed hectic activity, figures dashing hither and dither.
Where in the past there would have been contemplatively strolling nuns, perhaps one or two of the brown-uniformed penitent inmates weeding or tending to the rose beds, a couple more bent over birch-twig brooms sweeping or down on hands and knees scrubbing the stone steps descending to the refectory where the girls took their meals, there were now blue uniforms and sinister black-clad helmeted figures, their form-fitting suits appearing as if all of leather and lending an unnerving alien look.
Alice’s eyes squinted against the unaccustomed glare of summer sunlight, the first of the brown-roasted leaves scattering around and the spiked green balls weighting down the horse chestnut tree suggesting mid to late August, or perhaps early September and something of an ‘Indian Summer’ just beginning. Tempest winds swept swirling dust devils of leaves, sandy flower-bed mulch and miniature hailstorms of gravel and grit from around the cloisters up beneath the colonnades. The air was filled by the banshee howling of jet-turbine engines and the clattering of helicopters, the two aircraft’s whirling-dervish blades still swishing like swords of retribution where the craft now rested.
Surely judgement day had arrived; well it surely had for some, for those distant figures shuffling along with their wrists tethered by thick white nylon cable ties being led from the charterhouse across the yard. As she watched, two faceless helmeted figures, their sinister anonymous wraparound black visors making them look like giant upright beetles, scrambled from the cockpit and scurried bent at the waist beneath the scything blades of the newest arrived machine, one carrying a bullhorn.
The helicopter, Alice saw, was one of those having a cylindrical turbine apparatus in place of the traditional tail rotor. It was decorated in midnight-blue and yellow livery and was daubed along the side with the name of a neighbouring region’s constabulary surmounted by a heraldic coat of arms. Not that it was a name that meant much geographically to the fugitive straitjacketed Alice, other than it had a distinctly Celtic feel to it. Indeed there were one or two locals who would have been happy enough not to recognise it; after all, it was a mainland constabulary; and traditionally around these parts they cared little for the authority and interference of the mainland.
The whining pitch was dropping in concert with the slowing of the cane-slashing rotors, the surprisingly flexible blades with their white painted tips drooping like wilting gladioli leaves as they slowed. Uncertain of her step, lest she trip and fall, Alice stumbled out into the open, still clad in her white canvas straightjacket with its dark tan leather collar and dark straps and plethora of buckles glinting like well-polished silver in the bright mid-day sunshine. Seeing obviously male figures all around darting hither and dither, Alice was suddenly keenly aware of the ungainly ugly-duckling sight she presented with her shaved eyebrows, clown-rouged cheeks and rough boyish side-parted hair. But somehow she didn’t care.
In the distance a bare-legged but bulkily white-clad figure, apparently armless, could be seen bucking, thrashing and squirming between two taller, broader figures, bare feet kicking clear of the ground. Alice didn’t need to catch the husky broken-voiced screeching, the feline spitting through clenched teeth, to know it was the ex Welsh valley chapel choir girl, Gwyneth, her shorn head tossing like a wild stag in her feral insanity.
They’d done a good job on her - Alice thought - darkly, if a smidge uncharitably - the girl was quite, quite mad; she’d not be blowing any whistles. Even if she calmed down, regained her wits a little, no one would take any notice of anything she said, not now; an unreliable witness to put it mildly. “An Unreliable witness” she repeated to herself again, unknowingly uttering the phrase out loud, suddenly stupidly pleased with her use of the description, reassured in the knowledge that she at least - Alice - was intact, despite her captor’s best efforts!
Yes, she’d stay calm, collect her thoughts - act normal, that was the way, not rush out wailing like a wild thing. That way her testimony would be valid, she’d be believed. “Testimony” she said to no one in particular, the sound of her voice washing away under the din like dirt from a hanky trailed in a brook - a smile, then a wide mouth-stretching grin like that other Alice’s Cheshire Cat, creased her paper-white face: “Testimony” she said again, a little louder this time, then giggled. She’d wait right where she was; that would show how rational she was. Just sit and gather her wits, regroup her thoughts; she’d show them, she’d blow the whistle on them alright!
Crossing her ankles where she stood, precariously Alice lowered herself to the ground, the task complicated by her hands and arms being constrained within her straightjacket. Stiffly she dropped into a cross-legged position, settling herself on the stone-flagged path outside the infirmary door. Here she waited steadfastly, her lips set in firm determination. The old grey wooden park bench style seat set back against the building’s wall under the heavily-flowering climbing rose she had pointedly ignored. Her reasoning here was that the seat was where they sat - the nuns and the staff. Her not settling herself down on that bench seat would be a further demonstration, a sign, of how rational she was; by showing how she could obey simple rules such as girls like herself not being allowed to use any of the benches placed around the grounds.
Over on the far side of the vast lawn and flowerbed area, outside one of the stone outhouses that were used as workshops, this one a windowless construction, an iron-grille gate padlocked across its heavy mediaeval wooden door, the kafuffle involving the hysterically jabbering and floundering Gwyneth was quieting. Another black or navy-clad figure - Alice couldn’t decide - had arrived and together with the initial pair had helped get the girl down on her back. Now the new arrival was squatting lithely on his heels behind the girl’s head and acting to hold it steady, preventing Gwyneth from hammering her head against the ground; something she was patently trying to do.
Alice could see the sunlight glinting off the silvered or stainless steel roller buckles down the back of Gwyneth’s straitjacket as from time to time she twisted and wriggled like a stranded eel in her attempts to roll out from her captor’s grasp, the reddish-brown leather of its reinforced collar and fastening straps darkened against the snow-white canvas; the latter was now stained here and there by the summer dust in irregular camouflaging swaths of quarry-sand yellow and stone-slab ashen grey.
“Stupid, stupid girl” she found herself involuntarily calling out, her expression switching schizophrenically from pity to contempt and back again and her voice disappearing into the distance, blown away under angrily buzzing helicopter’s whirlwind. Didn’t she realise she was only making things worse, convincing them more than ever that she belonged in that straightjacket, that she was every bit as crazy as doubtless the Church authorities had claimed, or were going to claim. “I said, don’t you realise how crazy you’re making yourself look” she overheard herself say “...are you...mental?”. Alice heard herself laugh but wasn’t worried: It was funny after all, all that thrashing around, like a trout on a fish slab... and she - Alice - was just sitting calmly... she was calm, that was the main thing...remain calm. “Don’t react if they’re patronising, humour them if they suggest you’re mental, even let them place you in an institution for a while” she instructed herself. Just go along with it - a psychological evaluation will soon show the truth... You’ll soon be out and facing them in the courts... And they’ll believe what you have to say... Because you, Alice Lamberton, are ok... they couldn’t break your mind!
Circulating overhead and barely clearing the squat square crenulated tower of the abbey church with its central modest conical spire topped by its stone cross, the air ambulance tilted, banking steeply as the pilot looked for a place to put down. Much larger than its police counterparts the cherry red machine, the name of a well-known regional commercial sponsor sign-written along its fuselage, required much greater clearance to safely land.
If not for the presence of the already landed police helicopters it might have been possible to put it down where they had, closer to the infirmary, where it had been assumed it would be needed. As it was the regional air ambulance service helicopter would have to put down among the hardy sheep grubbing a living in one of the priory’s sparsely grassed and scrubby stone-strewn fields, still within the walled grounds of the priory but outside of the central cloistered area, doubtless scattering the flock in a manner similar to the way in which the priory’s central character’s - the ringleaders - seemed to have scattered. Like rats fleeing a sinking ship Alice thought; though from what she’d seen it had a bit less haphazard than that.
For what had seemed weeks, whenever she’d been moved around, taken to and from the psychiatrists office for another of those grilling sessions, she had become aware of hectic comings and goings, furnishings being moved around, trolleys trundling about laden with paper files and record folders. Something had been going on. Today was obviously the reason for those preparations - anything else would be too much of a coincidence. Which in turn meant those preparations, must have been triggered by something; and that something must surely have been some sort of early-warning tip-off...
“And what have we got here?” The deep brown voice was kindly, empathetic .”...What are you doing sitting down there on those cold flagstones like that for - you’ll catch your death, miss...”
“Alice... I’m Alice... And I’m being... I’m being...” (What was she being?) “...I’m being ever so, ever so calm, you know. Ever so calm!” She looked up into the policeman’s friendly trustworthy eyes, squinting against the unaccustomed glare of the sun, smiling broadly, before adding: “And I’m not mad you know... I’m just Alice, not crazy-Alice, just Alice... like the looking-glass Alice... They used to make me stare at my own reflection you know, hour after hour... But now you’re here to take me away - and I’ll stay ever so calm, that way you’ll believe my story; it’s called a testimony, you know... You see, I know that word - testimony - I’ve been practicing it... here in my head; that shows I’m not crazy.” Alice nodded her head back and forth to demonstrate. “But if I thrash around and struggle you’ll think I’m crazy - but I’m not, so I’ll just sit here, all quiet and calm...”
Having started her tongue now just wouldn’t stop wagging - all those pent-up thoughts were bursting through like water through a cracked dam wall; a single high-pressure stream of consciousness; it came as a relief to be interrupted; Bending, placing his strong hands beneath her bound elbows from behind her he began the task of manoeuvring her to her feet:
“Come on. What you say we get you seated more comfortably so you’re not in the way? How about we get you on this bench, over here amongst the roses - just until the paramedics get here; they’ve just touched down in the field beyond the priory church?” His voice had a heavy West Country burr to it, like Cornish. It was reassuring, but it also made her wonder exactly where sh
e was; she had never known, not from day one. And what he’d just said had made her grow near-phobically cold, despite the summer sun, her flesh chilled and clammy, though she didn’t understand quite why it should - but never mind; she’d deal with it, she’d explain calmly, remain calm and collected...
“No, no I can’t... I mean I mustn’t sit there... I mean...” Realising she risked sounding irrational Alice took a deep breath; she’d explain, calmly and rationally, then he’d understand, then he’d know she wasn’t crazy: “Ahem! I mustn’t sit there officer, It’s not allowed; you see it’s against the rules... and I’m not crazy... you can tell, because I’m a good obedient girl and I always obey the rules... A - A - A crazy person wouldn’t obey the rules; now would she?”
“No... of course not my girl, you’re quite right - you’re a very good girl, I can tell!” Moving back around to the front and scratching his thickly thatched curly head the flummoxed officer smiled down at her reassuringly. “You just wait right where you are my dear, and the ambulance men will come whisk you straight off to hospital - and then I’m sure we can sort this all out, once and for all.” Surreptitiously he nodded across to someone behind Alice’s back, pulling a strained yet amused face as if to say “we’ve got a right one here” and the stretcher-bearers from the air ambulance advanced. At least this one’s calm, even if she doesn’t make sense, he thought, smiling.
Alice Under Discipline, Part 2 Page 17
