Bedlam Burning (10 page)

LSD seemed to fit in here somewhere. It too was touted as some kind of psychic joy ride, a chance to take a day trip to the more garish zones of inner space. Someone I knew at college had dropped a tab half an hour before going in to take his finals and had done
surprisingly well. I'd once taken one small dose and while, as advertised, colours and music and lofty thoughts had indeed become a lot more interesting, before very long I was anxious, paranoid, and convinced there was something just horrible lurking inside my wardrobe. It hadn't been dramatic enough to qualify as a bad trip, but it had taught me that my mind was too rickety a thing to start trifling with. That way, I was fairly sure, madness lay.

I had no real experience with the mentally ill, but almost inevitably I'd come across one or two of them at university, people who'd freaked out as exams approached or when their girlfriends dumped them and, frankly, they hadn't seemed to be in touch with any higher truth or reality. They appeared to have exactly the same problems as the rest of us; they just dealt with them in more showy or desperate or self-destructive ways.

And, equally, I knew bugger all about the treatment of madness. I'd heard some horror stories and accepted some received opinions about lobotomies and leucotomies, about shock treatment and dousing people in cold water, about beating them into submission with drugs or inducing insulin comas. You didn't have to be some bleeding-heart liberal to be appalled by that stuff.

Since we were still in the long rain shadow of the sixties I knew there were some flashy and risky therapies being employed out there in the name of revolution and mental health: everything from primal screams to rebirthing to orgone boxes to flotation tanks to group sex. It was no surprise to hear that the Kincaid Clinic employed ‘experimental' techniques, but I wondered just how wild these experiments were. I told myself, on no very good basis, that Alicia surely wouldn't be involved in anything dangerous or disreputable. And the mere fact that they were employing a writer-in-residence suggested to me they surely couldn't be doing anything too totally off the wall. If they'd been employing a performance-artist-in-residence I'd have been far more worried.

I'd taken Alicia at her word and not done any specific research about madness and its treatment, but I hadn't felt able to arrive without having read a book or two about creative writing. I'd trawled some bookshops and discovered quite a cache of books that claimed to teach you how to write, and in a few cases to teach you how to teach other people how to write. Some were quite practical and down
to earth, some were just pretentious. Some contained simple suggestions and exercises, others took a more spiritual approach, angled towards personal growth. None of them was specifically designed for use in a mental institution, and I suppose I knew even then that I wouldn't ultimately be able to rely on how-to-do-it manuals, but I'd bought a couple of them and they were in my holdall and I considered them a very worthwhile prop.

However, as I stood in the pouring rain outside the Kincaid Clinic, all this stuff about madness and methodology seemed rather academic. The problem of how to get in was far more pressing. I didn't doubt that sooner or later someone would come in or go out through the gates, at which point I'd surely be able to gain access, and if it hadn't been raining I might have been prepared to wait patiently. As it was, the rain was getting heavier and there was absolutely nowhere to shelter, so I looked closely at the gates and, although they were formidably high, they didn't look utterly impregnable. There were a number of inviting iron curlicues that could be used as hand or foot holds if you were of a mind to make an ascent. I reckoned that if I did that and got to the other side I'd be able to go to the clinic's main entrance, and find someone to open up the gates so I could bring in my belongings. It was a bit of a pain, and it obviously shouldn't have been necessary, but in the circumstances it didn't seem like such a bad or crazy scheme.

I began my climb, actually a lot trickier than it had looked, since the rain was making the iron framework slick and I kept losing my grip. Nevertheless, I managed to get to the top in reasonable order, but when I swung my leg over to begin the descent of the other side, I lost my footing, slipped, flailed, and found myself splayed on top of the gates, one leg and one arm on either side, half of me in the clinic, half in the outer world, trying desperately to keep my balance. I held on as best I could, and I may even have called out for help since help, of a sort, came running.

Two men I'd seen before trotted out of the clinic. They were the porters who'd taken away the naked Charity after our wrestling match. They looked businesslike yet sporty, like athletes going out for a pre-match warm up; but although I recognised them, they apparently didn't recognise me.

When I saw them clambering up the gates towards me I was at first rather pleased. Help, I thought, was at hand. But their demeanour,
their body language, and the way one of them shouted, ‘Come down from there, you mad bastard!' made me realise they weren't primarily motivated by kindness. They appeared to think I was an inmate trying to escape. They were trying to drag me down as roughly as they knew how. One of them grabbed my ankle and pulled on it heavily. I was flipped over the top of the gate and fell head-first towards the ground, my ankle acting as a sort of pivot, and only by instinctively huddling my arms around my head did I stop my skull making contact with the wet black asphalt of the drive. Instead I landed on my elbows and I lay there winded, unwilling to move, fearing I must have broken any number of bones. A second later the porters were hauling me to my feet, and dragging me inside the clinic. This, I suppose, was what I'd wanted, but again it was not precisely the way I'd have liked to make my entrance.

My belongings, of course, remained outside in the rain. As the porters dragged me through the doors, through the empty waiting area, where my flailing presence caused not the slightest interest to the nurse on duty, one of the porters said to the other, ‘They're going to have to electrify that gate before long. Only way to keep the buggers in.' I tried to speak up, tried to say I was attempting to get in, not out, but being shocked, wet and winded I dare say I wasn't sounding very articulate. Certainly the porters treated me as though I was raving incoherently, and I found myself being pulled along the clinic's central corridor, past the line of identical grey doors behind which the patients lived, until we came to a door the porters liked the look of. One of them held it open and the other pitched me inside, into warm, musty, absolute darkness. I heard the door slam and lock behind me.

I was in a padded cell, a new experience, and if I'd ever considered it before I would probably have thought padded cells belonged in the realm of movies and comic books rather than of contemporary psychiatric practice. I tried to stand up, and fell against a thickly quilted wall. In the darkness I could see nothing at all, but I suppose there wasn't much to see. For a very short while I was almost glad to be in the room. At least it was dry. At least I was inside the clinic. At least I wasn't being manhandled by two porters. But this feeling of comparative well-being didn't last long, and I soon started to feel a more natural anger and indignation. At this point there wasn't a great deal of fear, since surely it couldn't be too long before the porters, or
someone, would work out that the clinic had one inmate too many. And then I imagined everyone would be full of regret, the porters would get a bollocking from Dr Kincaid, and from Alicia too, possibly. And then I'd be released, apologised to, treated like a lord, in an attempt to make it up to me, and I'd be graciously accepting and forgiving, trying to see the funny side of it. But this expectation soon passed as well.

I stood, then sat, then slouched, then prostrated myself in that padded room for a great many hours. I had lost all track of time before I finally heard a noise outside and the harsh overhead lights were switched on. The room took shape around me: smaller, uglier, more commonplace than I had imagined. There was the scraping of a key in the lock, then the door opened and Dr Kincaid strode into the room.

‘Mr Collins,' he said gravely, ‘welcome to the Kincaid Clinic.'

No apologies, no offers to make it up to me. I was furious.

‘How are you?' Kincaid asked.

Words very nearly failed me but I came up with, ‘How the fuck do you think I am?'

‘I expect you're feeling a tad anxious, a mite distressed.'

‘Very good, doctor,' I said. ‘Let me out of here, will you?'

‘Soon,' he said, ‘but first let's analyse these feelings.'

‘Oh, come off it.'

‘Bear with me, Mr Collins,' he said, and I couldn't stop him. ‘When you first entered this room I'm sure you were angry because you weren't being treated with the respect you thought was your due. But anger is the most volatile of emotions, hard to sustain for any length of time. After that you were fearful of the darkness, the isolation, the unfamiliarity. Some typical fears of the dark may have atavistically gushed forth. But as time passed, these imagined horrors failed to materialise. You were reassured. You became calm. The darkness enveloped you like a friendly cloak, supporting and protecting you. The darkness became a source of strength. You accepted its power. You started to feel tranquil. You felt liberated by the absence of light, of visual clutter. Soon you felt wonderfully at home.'

‘Oh did I? Did I really?' I snarled.

‘Yes. If you look into yourself I think you'll find that you did, and then you'll understand the wisdom that's at the heart of the therapy we deliver at the Kincaid Clinic.'

‘Are you saying this was deliberate? This was a bit of therapy you laid on for me?'

He didn't quite have the gall to pretend this was the case.

‘No, not exactly,' he admitted. ‘The porters did indeed commit an error, an understandable error in my opinion, but, be that as it may, I want you to see how errors can be turned to psychological advantage.'

‘Yours or mine, doctor?' I said.

I thought of launching myself at him and landing a punch on his big, self-satisfied face. It would have felt good. But I didn't. However bad your first day in the new job is you don't stick one on the boss unless you're really looking for trouble. Instead I said, ‘Let me out. Now.'

He sighed deeply, as if his bold experiment had collapsed, its failure due to my lack of insight and sensitivity, as though I had failed him. And yet he knew there was nothing more to be done. He accepted that I'd had enough of the padded cell. He opened the door. ‘You may go to your hut now,' he said. I was dismissed. My audience with the great man was over.

I decided I'd better go and see what had happened to my luggage. I went through the clinic, through the waiting area, past the front desk where the nurse ignored me again. I walked out of the main entrance, along the driveway to the gates, locked as before, and I looked into the road where I'd left my bags before climbing the fence. Nothing was there. Hardly surprising. Maybe the lads in the car had come by again and nicked them. Something told me I might never see my stuff again. That was a depressing prospect in one way since, apart from a few things I still kept in my old bedroom at my parents' house, it was pretty much all I had in the world. On the other hand, it wasn't as though I'd actually lost very much. All my worldly goods amounted to precious little.

This was an era when many people professed to being unmaterialistic, if not downright anti-materialistic, but I think my profession was more sincere than most. I was prepared to be philosophical about the loss. There were my clothes, for instance. Now, nobody would willingly lose all their clothes but mine were the sort that anybody could lose without too many regrets. People are inclined to think that in the seventies everyone went around in silver jumpsuits, platform boots and glitter jackets, looking as though they were auditioning for
Roxy Music, but I can't say I ever met anyone who dressed like that. Yes, I did own a few of what now seem like archetypal seventies duds: purple loon pants and skinny rib sweaters, and I had a Che Guevara T-shirt, but that was sort of a joke anyway; and, in any case, I didn't wear these things because they were super-fashionable or because I was trying to look ‘seventies', I wore them because they were normal and ordinary. I wore them because they were what everybody else wore. And if they were gone they were easily replaceable.

I would have said the same for most of the other things in the bags. There were some books, a few Penguin classics, and the books on how to teach creative writing. I'd be sorry to see them go, but they too were replaceable.

I was sorrier to lose a bottle of White Horse whisky given to me by my father as a sort of ‘good luck in your new job' present; and there was a little plastic bag containing enough grass to make three or four joints. These might have been welcome in the long evenings ahead, but what the hell, it was only whisky, it was only dope. These weren't things to get upset about.

My camera had gone too. I wasn't absolutely sure why I'd brought it. I did believe in documenting my life, taking pictures of friends and family, and yet I didn't think I was really going to go round the clinic taking pictures of the inmates. But that made me think of the only truly irreplaceable things I'd brought with me: my collection of photographs, a box full of snapshots showing parties and holidays, weddings, birthdays, me on my first bike, that sort of stuff. It was from this collection that Gregory had extracted the photograph of me for use on his book jacket. There were also half a dozen nude pictures of Nicola, which it had taken me a very long time indeed to get her to agree to pose for. If all these were gone I'd be really sorry; but again, what good would being sorry do?

I went back inside the clinic and at last the nurse looked up at me.