The Tenderness of Wolves (27 page)

‘You know’–at last she tossed the piece of hair aside
with a decisive movement, and shook it back from her face–‘we’re going to have a picnic next Saturday, just a few of us, up by the dipping pool. You can come, if you like. It’ll just be Maria, you know, my sister, and Marion and Emma, maybe Joe …’

She was looking at him, finally, her eyes unreadable. Francis saw her as a dark shape blocking the sun, her features misty and dazzled, like a Sunday School angel.

‘Saturday? Um …’ He couldn’t quite believe what was happening. But it appeared that Susannah–the one and only Susannah Knox–was inviting him to a picnic; an exclusive picnic, to which only her nearest friends were invited (and Joe Bell, but he was well known to go around with Emma Spence). Then suddenly it crossed his mind that maybe it was all a terrible joke. What if she had come to ask him to a picnic that didn’t exist? If he turned up next Saturday, there would be no one there, or, worse, hordes of seniors watching and laughing their heads off at his presumption. She didn’t look like she was joking, though. She was still looking at him, and then she let out a short, nervous laugh.

‘Geez. Keep a girl waiting, why don’t you!’

‘Sorry. Um … it’s just that, I’ll have to speak to my dad, to see if he wants me to work … first. Thanks, though. It sounds nice.’

His heart was hammering its consternation. Did he really just say that?

‘Well, okay. Let me know, if you can, huh?’ Uncertainly, she stood up.

‘Yeah, I will. Thanks.’

She looked more beautiful than usual at that moment, her face serious and lovely, smoothing down her hair. She gave a little smile and turned away. He thought she looked sad. He lay back and tipped the hat back over his eyes, so that he could secretly watch her wander back over to
another part of the beach, where she rejoined some other seniors. Suddenly he felt a sense of wonder sweep over him. She had asked him to a picnic. She, who had never spoken more than ten words to him before, ever: she had asked him to a picnic!

Francis watched some younger boys hurtling a piece of driftwood into the shallow water, spinning it across the surface dangerously close to one another’s legs, skittering out of the way of the bright splashes. Their howls of laughter were strangely distant. He thought of the next Saturday. His father had long ago given up asking him to help out at weekends; he certainly wasn’t expecting him to. He thought of the picnic by the dipping pool on the river, where oaks and willows dappled the sun on water the colour of tea; and girls in light summer dresses would sit in pools of pale cotton.

And he knew he would not go.

Dr Watson was the go-ahead kind of asylum superintendent. He wanted to make a name for himself, to write monographs and be invited to give lectures, where he would be surrounded by admiring young women. In the meantime however, the only young women in the vicinity were to a greater or lesser degree insane, and of them he picked me to while away the time until he was famous enough to leave.

I had been in the public asylum a few months when he arrived and all that time the place buzzed with rumours of a new director. Life in an asylum is on the whole tremendously boring, and any change of circumstance is the subject of furious debate, such as a change of porridge oats at breakfast, or moving the sewing hour from three to four in the p.m. So a new superintendent was a major occurrence: fuel for weeks of gossip and speculation. And when he arrived, he wasn’t a disappointment. Young and handsome, he had a sunny, kindly face and a pleasant baritone voice. Every woman in the place fell in love overnight. I won’t say I was completely indifferent, but it was amusing to see some of the women decorate themselves with ribbons and flowers to try and snare his attention. Watson was always gallant and charming, taking their hands and paying compliments, causing them to giggle and blush. That summer, the nights in the female dormitory were full of sighs.

Since I had held back from the general idol-worship, I was surprised to get a summons to Watson’s office and
wondered what I had done wrong. I found him hovering around a vast contraption set up in the middle of the room. I immediately assumed it was a machine along the lines of the douche, designed to deliver to the insane some alarming sensation or other, but I couldn’t work out what it was, and felt rather nervous.

‘Ah, good morning Miss Hay.’ Watson looked up and smiled. He seemed very pleased with himself. I was more stunned, actually, by the change in the room, which under the previous incumbent had been dark and depressing, as well as smelling slightly off. It was a beautiful room (the whole asylum was impressive in a neo-classical way); high-ceilinged, with a wide bow window that looked out over the grounds. Watson had done away with the heavy curtains from the windows and it was full of southern light. The walls had been painted primrose, there were flowers on the table, and a picturesque arrangement of rocks and ferns stood against one wall.

‘Good morning,’ I said, unable to stop smiling.

‘You like my office?’

‘Yes, very much.’

‘Good. Your tastes are like my own. I think it is important to make one’s surroundings attractive. If one is surrounded by ugliness, how can one be happy?’

I thought he was not entirely serious, and muttered something meaningless in reply, thinking he was fortunate to have the power to change his surroundings to suit himself.

‘Of course,’ he went on, ‘the room is even more attractive with you in it.’

Despite knowing his ways, I felt a hint of a blush then, but tried to hide it by looking out of the window at some of the inmates, who were at that moment strolling or being led around the gardens.

We talked idly for some time, and I guessed he was trying to form an idea of my mental frailties and whether I was
prone to violent outbursts. What I said seemed to please him, because he then began to explain the machine. It was in essence a box for making pictures, and he wanted, he said, to make studies of the inmates. He thought this might advance the understanding of madness and the treatment of it, although I was never very clear about how this was supposed to happen. In particular, it seemed, he wanted to make pictures of me.

‘You have a very suitable face for the camera, clear and expressive, and that is exactly what is needed.’

I was flattered at the thought that he had noticed me and singled me out for attention, and it presented a welcome diversion from the daily routine. As I said, life in the asylum, apart from the odd convulsion or attempted suicide, was tedious in the extreme.

‘What I was thinking of,’ he explained, his eyes dropping to his desk, ‘is a series of studies of, well … you, say, in poses that are typical of certain mental conditions. Um, for example … there is something we call the Ophelia complex, named after an afflicted character in a famous play …’ He looked at me here to see if I showed any recognition.

‘I know it,’ I said.

‘Ah, excellent. Well … so, you see, an illustration of that would be a … a lovelorn pose, with a crown of flowers and so on. You see what I mean?’

‘I think so.’

‘It will be a great help to me with a monograph I am writing. The pictures will illustrate my thesis, particularly for people who have never been inside an asylum and find one difficult to imagine.’

I nodded politely, and when he didn’t elaborate, asked, ‘What is your thesis?’

He looked a little startled. ‘Oh. My thesis is, well … that there are certain patterns to madness; certain physical attitudes and movements that are common to different patients,
indicative of their inner states. That, although every patient has an individual history, they fall into groups which share certain traits and attitudes. And also that …’ he paused, apparently deep in thought ‘… by a repeated and concentrated study of these attitudes, we can discover more about ways to cure those poor unfortunates.’

‘Ah,’ I said, brightly, wondering what attitudes I, as one of those unfortunates, tended to strike. Several unsuitable pictures presented themselves.

‘And,’ he went on, ‘perhaps you could join me for lunch on those days when you are so kind as to give me your time?’

My mouth watered at the thought. The food in the asylum was wholesome enough but bland, stodgy and monotonous. I think there was a theory (maybe even a thesis) that certain tastes were dangerously stimulating, and too much meat, say, or anything overly rich or spicy would inflame already delicate sensibilities and cause a riot. I was already pleased at the prospect of being a model, but the promise of proper, interesting food would alone have persuaded me.

‘Well,’ he smiled, and I realised that he was actually nervous, ‘does that sound … agreeable to you?’

I was intrigued that he was nervous–of me? Of the possibility that I would say no?–and nodded. I couldn’t for the life of me see how staring at pictures of women covered in flowers would produce a cure for madness, but who was I to say so?

Besides, he was a handsome, kind, youngish man, and I was an orphan in a mental asylum with no one to sponsor me and little prospect of leaving. However unusual the events that came my way, they were unlikely to change my life for the worse.

And so it began. To start with I would go to his office perhaps once or twice a month. Watson would have gathered a number of costumes and props to create the scenario.
The first one was to be called, apparently, Melancholia, which I felt more than qualified to portray. He had arranged a chair by a window, at which I was to sit, in a sombre dress, holding a book and gazing longingly out, as though, as he put it, I was dreaming of my lost love. I could have told him that there are worse troubles in life than an errant suitor, but I held my tongue and stared out of the window, dreaming instead of braised venison with port sauce, curried chicken, and trifle with nutmeg.

The lunch, when it arrived, was every bit as good as the ones my imagination had come up with. I am afraid I ate with all the grace of a farmhand, and he watched me, smiling, as I had second and third helpings of a pear and cinnamon tart. I stuffed myself, not because I was so enormously hungry, but because I had been starved of tastes; of piquancy and subtlety. To taste spices and blue cheese and wine for the first time in four or five years (with the odd exception at Christmas) was heaven. I think I said as much, and he laughed, and seemed tremendously pleased. As he walked with me to the door of his study, he held my hand in both of his, and thanked me, looking deep into my eyes.

As I expected, I was summoned to the study with increasing frequency, and as we became more accustomed to each other, the poses became less formal. By which I mean I gradually wore less and less, ending up reclining against the fernery partially tangled in a diaphanous sheet of muslin. I think that fairly early on any pretence at contributing to the forward march of medical science was abandoned. Watson, or Paul, as I came to call him, made the studies it pleased him to make, sometimes guiltily, blinking and avoiding my gaze as though he were embarrassed at asking me to do such things.

He was kind and thoughtful, and was interested in my opinions, which many men who have known me outside the asylum have not been. I liked him, and was happy when he
put his hand on mine, trembling, one day at the end of the meal. He was sweet, desperate, terrified at doing wrong, and apologised every time we met for taking advantage of me, and giving in to his base nature. I never minded. For me it was a thrilling secret, a sweet craving, although he was always nervous and jumpy when we consummated, swiftly, after another spectacular lunch, behind the locked study door.

And he smelt of the greenhouses, of tomato leaves and damp earth, sharp and satisfying. Even now, I cannot remember that smell without also thinking of fruit pies with cream or steak in brandy. Even the other night, years later, in a frozen tent in the forest, when I smelt that scent from Parker, it brought water to my mouth, and the recollection of a bitter chocolate tart.

What happened, I don’t suppose I will ever now find out. Somehow Watson was disgraced. Not through me, as far as I know, and certainly nothing was ever said, but one morning it was announced by the head attendant that Dr Watson had to leave suddenly, and that within days another superintendent would be taking his place. One day he was there, the next not. He must have taken the apparatus, and the pictures we made together. Some of them were beautiful; dark, silvery shadings on glass that shimmered as you tilted them to the light. I wonder if they still exist. When I feel melancholy, and that is quite often nowadays, I remind myself that he trembled when he touched me; that I was once someone’s muse.

We have been walking across the plain for three days with no end or change in sight. The rain that brought the thaw persisted for two days and made progress very difficult. We waded ankle-deep in mud, and if that does not sound very much, I can only insist that it is bad enough. Each foot was weighted with a couple of pounds of clinging slime, and my
skirt dragged, heavy with water. Parker and Moody, not burdened with skirts, trudged on ahead with the sled.

Late on the second day the rain stopped, and I was just thanking whatever gods are still sparing me a thought, when a wind got up that has been blowing ever since. It has dried the ground and made walking easier, but it comes from the north-east and is so cold that I experience the phenomenon, previously only heard of, of tears freezing in the corners of my eyes. After an hour my eyes are red raw.

Now Parker and the dogs wait for us to catch up. He stands on a slight rise, and when we finally stagger up to him, I see why he has waited: a few hundred yards away is a complex of buildings–the first man-created thing we have seen since leaving Himmelvanger.

‘We are on the right road,’ says Parker, although road is hardly the word I would have chosen.

‘What is that place?’ Moody is peering through his spectacles. His eyes are bad, made worse by the dim grey light which is all that struggles through the clouds.

‘It was once a trading post.’