The Stranger Came

by Frederic Lindsay

  'It was the heat in the bar, I expect.’

  'And the noise.’

  He leaned forward again. 'Are you looking forward to the show?'

  'I'm not sure.’

  'Me neither. It's not my cup of tea, not what I'd pay to go and see, not left to myself. – Would you?' but Sophie Lindgren seemed not to hear him.

  It was nearly time, most of the audience were seated, in a moment the lights would dim.

  The patient in front of her, the man who had been led out of the greenroom, was sitting with his head bent forward. He's crying, she thought, while that wretched girl ignores him, not caring. What kind of doctor does she call herself? A wave of indignation swept over her, but when she leaned forward in protest to comfort him he was bent over an ice-cream rubbing it with his lips and sucking pieces into his mouth.

  As she sank back feeling slightly sick, the auditorium darkened and the Great Sovek was there alone on stage, appearing from nowhere it seemed in an outflowing of Indian-sounding music. He asked them to clasp their fingers, intertwine them, tighter and tighter; but when she went to do so Maitland laid his hand gently over hers. It was just as well since next they were told that it might be hard to separate their hands, and almost at once people were shuffling along the rows, crouched in embarrassment or grinning towards the stage. She felt a touch on her arm and it was Sophie Lindgren, pressing against her with hands clasped tightly together. She pulled away in disgust but the girl leaned towards her. Her lips came close almost touching Lucy's cheek. Thinking about it afterwards, she knew it must have been noisy, yet she never doubted that it was then she heard Sophie Lindgren sigh.

  The girl's head fell forward.

  But then she was on her feet and pushing past them into the passage.

  'Something's wrong,' Lucy said. 'Something's wrong with her.’

  Maitland paid no attention, smiling to himself as he watched the trickle of people mounting the steps. The Great Sovek met them there, releasing their hands with a touch and sending some back down to join the audience and others, Sophie among them, to a row of seats set out in the centre of the stage.

  Such a strange sigh the girl had given.

  It was done so quickly. No pendulums or swinging watches, 'Look into my eyes'; none of that. Lucy had never seen anyone being hypnotised except in old films, and then it was only actors pretending. The Great Sovek walked behind the line of seated people, touching each one on the neck; he hardly paused and yet each time the head fell forward as if in sleep. Perhaps if he were slower, they would realise what was about to happen and jump up. It would spoil things if too many of them did that. They were being given no time to change their minds.

  Sophie Lindgren was near the end of the row on the right, or on the left – wasn't that so? For the people up there it would be on the left; stage left. How still she sat, her hands in her lap and her head bent forward. But they were all like that, almost all of them; she was no different from the others. And there were as many men as women. She had taken it for granted that men would be better able to resist. All of them were young, of course; and she thought that might be why, and then wondered if older people had gone up and been rejected. She hadn't noticed because she had been watching Sophie Lindgren. Someone with white hair sitting up there in that row of dreamers would be not entertaining but sad.

  Strange that none of the patients had tried to go up. If one of them had tried, she hadn't noticed. Yet if weakness of will was involved – but, of course, the nurses would have stopped them. The girl doctor perhaps had stretched out to her neighbour, putting her hand over his as a warning, stopping him from whatever risk there might be in finding he couldn't unclasp his fingers. The Great Sovek might have had more than he bargained for. But then part of his skill must lie in not choosing.

  ‘I don't degrade anyone in my act’, the Great Sovek had said in the greenroom – not the young man who is proposing marriage down on one knee pleading with an empty chair? They uncover abilities they never knew they had, that's what it's about – like the girl eating the lemon now and wiping the sweet juice from her chin? People who can't sing, sing, guys with two left feet, dance the tango – and the man having a bath with all his clothes on? It was only fun, she was being ridiculous, it was part of a show, no different from the comedian, singer, juggler. Listen to them laugh.

  She hated what was happening on stage.

  The patients from the unit for the depressed, the addicted, the disoriented, seemed to be laughing in the right places. They leaned forward, cried out; in the blurred dark, they were no different from the rest of the audience. As if he had read her thoughts, the man who had been eating the ice-cream turned round and smiled at her – traces of sticky stuff dry around his mouth. She was in pain. Without warning or preparation, pain ran like acid behind her eyes.

  The hypnotist's performance was moving to its climax. For this, everyone had to be involved. The stage began to fill with figures. A boy of about twenty sat up and begged with hanging paws, fell down on all fours again, yapped and cocked up a leg – sobs of laughter. Like a circus clown spinning plates, the Great Sovek hurried back and forward. He spoke to the two men gyrating together and they were dancing the tango. He drew up his puppets slack­ jointed and gave them worlds of their own. The row of chairs was almost empty. He had touched Sophie and then moved on, come back to her quickly and then turned to someone else. Now the boy on all fours came sidling sideways like a mongrel. Boy-dog, he sniffed at Sophie Lindgren's spread legs.

  People sometimes pretended to be hypnotised. Said afterwards it was a joke. The boy moved his face up along the inside of her leg.

  It was only when Maitland caught at her that Lucy realised she had got to her feet. 'It's wrong,' she said to him. He pulled at her to make her sit down. The hypnotist was standing looking at what was happening, not stopping it. Laughter rolled forward like a wave that would knock her from her feet. In the row behind they were shouting at her to sit down. Sophie Lindgren was slipping down in her chair, the boy's head was hidden by her skirt, her legs sprawled open. The hypnotist came forward at last and bent over her. It was indecent.

  'Can't you see she's dead?' she screamed.

  It wasn't what she had intended to say; but as the Great Sovek straightened and turned with his face ugly and shapeless with fright, she knew that it was true.

  Poor Sophie Lindgren was dead.

  BOOK FIVE

  Chapter 14

  One Time in Winter

  Doctor Cadell was a very tall man. When he walked in the corridors, the evenly spaced lamps, bulbs behind curved moulds of dimpled glass, spread a uniform light; but once she had glimpsed him from a window walking on a bright cold morning, the moon like a white fingernail in the middle of an empty sky, going from this building to the administration block and his shadow which was hidden inside unrolled itself and leaping out stretched black upon the grass. The nurses used your first name; Sit up, How are we this morning? Drink it all, That's a good girl; but Dr Cadell, who would have more right than any of them, had never called her Lucy, not once. It was strange.

  'Mrs Ure?' he said again.

  'Thinking? Not about anything. I was wondering why you never call me by my first name.’

  'Does that trouble you?'

  'It doesn't matter.’ There was a silence. 'Plenty of people call me by my first name, after all.’ More silence. 'The nurses here. They use your first name. Without a by your leave.’

  She thought he might pursue that. She knew sometimes she gave the impression of being arrogant, no, that was too flattering, she flattered herself, some people thought she was a snob.

  'Do you think it special?'

  What does he mean? 'Phatic communion,' she said. There was a silence. She was accustomed to these intervals, which would stretch until she filled them. She always did at last. Today she wondered what would happen if she kept silent. Not a word till the end of the hour.

  'You would be making a mistake,' Dr Cadell said, 'assuming you e
ver want to go home.’

  That she had spoken aloud frightened her. What he had said frightened her. It was a threat they might shut her up in a place like this for the rest of her life. But at once, with the thought came its rebuttal, I don't believe that. She had been unwell, but soon she would be going home. The thought popped into her head – perhaps he's irritated because he has never heard of phatic communion; they're often surprisingly ignorant these men. Not that he was, not that he was, not that he was; how angry he might be if he could look inside her head!

  The truth was that he did frighten her.

  'The anthropologist Malinowski,' she began. Behind the desk he had his back to the window and, although the daylight was feeble, the lamp angled towards her left his expression uncertain. 'People saying, “Good morning” to one another, or asking, “How are you?” It's not that they want to know. It's just a friendly noise. Saying someone's there.’

  'Who do you think should be there?' Dr Cadell asked.

  'Anybody.’ She was puzzled, it was so obvious. 'Anybody except yourself.’

  'Your husband, for example?'

  'I wasn't talking about myself.’

  'You feel we're here for some general philosophical discussion?'

  'Anthropological,' she said, and for some reason finding that funny began to laugh and then could not stop and then was finished and listened again to the silence. 'I'm sorry,' she said.

  'Do you know how long you've been here?'

  'Just now?' She wasn't certain what he meant and, unsure, genuinely did not want to displease him. He did not answer, but made a sharp little jerk with his chin. It seemed to her a movement of irritation, even if he hadn't intended to show it. The boredom with her had just come out of him and that made it worse. 'In the hospital? You mean, in the hospital? If you mean in the hospital, I've been here for days, oh, days and days.’

  'This is the seventh week.’

  If he had thought to startle her, he had miscalculated. The days had a different texture from any before; the nights were outside time.

  'Perhaps it's time to try something different,' he said.

  They had kept her asleep at first. Later, they had given her a drug which made her hands spasm into claws. Lately, he had given her an hour of his time and at each session sat her in this low chair to look up at him against the light and talk about Maitland, her father, teachers she remembered from schooldays. She could not talk about things she did not remember. No one could expect her to do that.

  'I don't want you to put electricity into my head,' she heard herself whisper.

  'Nothing like that. We want you to remember, not forget.’

  '"We"?'

  'I want you to remember.’

  She shook her head. 'I know who I am. I tell you about my childhood. About Maitland and me, how happy we are. There isn't anything wrong with me. I want to go home.’

  'Your husband would want you to stay here until you are well.’

  Dr Cadell made the point un-emphatically, not giving it any importance, something as obvious as that. But the effect was disastrous.

  'Maybe he has his reasons, reasons, called Janet, reasons called Janet!'

  And she could have laughed and then she was appalled. It was an idea that had got into her head, a ridiculous idea; but things stayed in your head, like mice you didn't see them just a tremble of light to darkness in a corner and you knew one had found its way out of the field into the room with you; and ideas were like that, even ridiculous ones. And it should have been kept inside her head. And to make that noise, such a bitter sound. She had let herself down – and Maitland. Almost it would be better to be forgivably mad.

  'Who is Janet?'

  'Nobody, it doesn't matter.’ But his silence told her it did. 'She's a neighbour. In the village where we live.’

  'She's a young woman?'

  'Not so young. Yes, younger than me. And pretty, before you ask. More than pretty. And no, I don't really think she's having an affair with my husband!'

  'An affair. Was that what you meant when you talked about "reason"?'

  'Isn't that what you thought I meant?' But he wasn't the one who was there to answer questions. 'If you want to know I feel sorry for her. We used to see one another quite regularly. She was my friend. Is my friend. Only she hadn't been – hadn't been out at all – round the village, I mean. There had been a party – and she was dancing – and then Ewen, that's her husband, he made a scene. Afterwards he hit her- when they were home that is, but people knew. He gave her a black eye. And then I was ashamed about not going to see her and I went and she was reading – I don't know how to describe it. Some silly story about pirates or highwaymen, but all just an excuse to write about sex. Do you know the kind of thing I mean? And poor Janet was sitting there in the middle of the morning, reading rubbish like that. Of course, I felt sorry for her.’

  'She was pretty, you said.’

  '…And younger than me,' said Lucy; who wasn't stupid and had been taught by implication the rules of this peculiar game.

  'What conclusion do you draw from that?'

  'I was jealous of her? ...I never felt I was. Maybe when she talked about age, as if she was getting old. I would have swapped with her. I told her so, I'd cheerfully change ages with you. But that's not anything. I think everyone feels like that. Men just as much as women.’

  She had been staring down at her hands twisted together in her lap. Glancing up, she caught him making that same swift sideways jerk of the chin, by which perhaps he was only easing his neck, although it appeared to her still as a tic of boredom or exasperation.

  'The night at the theatre,' he said, 'I am sure we are not going to progress until you can talk about what happened.’

  'That thing about Janet,' she said, staving him off, 'I suppose it shows – it is hard to know –'

  'Miss Lindgren was sitting beside you. She was among the volunteers who went up on to the stage for the performance. Shortly afterwards she died.’

  'You told me I don't have much self-esteem. It seems it must be so. For whatever reason.’

  'The first indication that something was wrong came from you. You began to scream.’

  'I only know what you tell me.’

  'You stood up and began to scream.’

  'If I realised she was dead. There doesn't seem anything strange in that.’

  'But you didn't stop. You were ill. You came here the next morning.’

  She had learned from being with him that silence had a colour, pale and blue like ice. The silence in this room belonged to him and spread like ice, forcing you out of it.

  'I don't remember.’

  'With your consent, I should like to try another approach.’

  And like a fool her first thought when he told her was, yes, there was a couch in the room. The first time she had come here she had noticed it against the wall. Expecting to be asked to lie down on it, she had been struck by how narrow it was, an uncomfortable looking thing, lumpy in green leather.

  'I don't think so,' she said. 'I wouldn't like that.’

  'You prefer it as things are,' he said, not even making it sound like a question, and spoke of her father and of Maitland; and it was true she had too little self-esteem to stand out against what he wished.

  She did not have to stir out of the chair, only close her eyes at his suggestion. It seemed to take a long time, though, as he asked her to relax each limb in turn. ..’.You are going backward into the darkness,' he said, ..’. more and more comfortable, you are going backward and backward, backward and backward into the darkness and as you go backward you feel more and more comfortable, more relaxed, very relaxed, and hearing only my voice ...’

  She listened to him quite detachedly, not involved just listening, not with any sense of surrendering, nothing like that.

  It seemed all she had to do was wait and it would come to her. In a moment, not to make her afraid but only so that she would understand. What had made her afraid enough to hide from it in
madness.

  And then a small quiet voice inside suggested perhaps after all there wasn't any need to go on. Really, there wasn't any need to go on, except that it was too late. She had wandered too near the edge. To where it was easy and there was no way not to slide over into the dark.

  Chapter 15

  'Some people can't believe in the Resurrection. That's all right. There's no reason why you should. You're not even in the minority – not in this country now. Funny thing is, no one ever has any difficulty believing in the Crucifixion. Wouldn't it be nice if people refused to believe in the possibility of a man being crucified?'

  The tiger pushing a face of eyes and teeth out between leaves the size of manhole covers had a purple flower tucked behind its ear. Lucy had been looking at it for a long time. All the prints around the walls were the same, writhing tangles of primary colours as if drawn by a child, but without innocence. Tiger, tiger, burning bright. A flame, pure, not muddled, not human. Then imitate the action of the tiger, men in night forests, men could turn themselves into something pure like a flame. Better to be a muddling human thing. Ash was dirty.

  It was into that drift of half thoughts, sufficiently muddled, that the voice came and it surprised her that it should be speaking of resurrection in that place . The room was almost empty. It must be dry outside. People would be going back and forward on the paths. The woman who had spoken must be the one at the table by the door. She was in a dark skirt and blouse with a cardigan on top and was young. The man with her was in a dressing-gown and slippers, wrinkled pyjama legs between, one of them caught up to show a thick ankle white as suet.

  The woman looked up and then away so quickly it seemed there must be a reason. She felt the woman had recognised her, and it was that rather than any recognition on her own side which fixed her gaze upon a pale heavy – featured face, a woman in her twenties, wearing unsuitable glasses.

  While she was puzzling over it, the couple were getting up. The man's voice was soft and hasty with a tune to it that made it hard to follow. “Thank you”, he was saying, that was it, “