“Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.” - Carl Jung
Chapter 1
1953
Jane
“Do you remember your name?”
We sit across the table. My last appointment of the day. The room is bare, concrete cast. Dim light cuts through from the narrow opening near to the top of the[LJ1] ceiling, too high for anyone to reach. The smell of bleach lingers over the newly mopped lino that stretches across the surface in one homogenous sheet, blending seamlessly into the walls.
My pen hovers over a folder of notes labelled on the front with Patient A. I take my gaze away from her, careful not to come across as overwhelming but it does little to encourage her to speak. After more silence, I flit my eyes towards her again and see that she focuses on something invisible on the table. Her hair, long and greying, is braided loosely down her back. Her hands are under the table where I cannot see. I assume that she rests them on her lap. I wonder who braided her hair and study her face where her skin smooths over her delicate, pale, cheekbones.
“My name is Jane. I’m your counsellor.”
I speak in short sentences, making a point to pause in between to let the information sink in.
“I am here to help you.”
“Dr Blythe has invited me to assess you over the following months. I will be spending time alone with you each day for an hour. Since this is only an introduction, I won’t be here for that long. But I would like to ask you a few questions if I may?”
I wait to see if there is any reaction. There is none.
“You are in the Beaumont. Do you know why you’re here?”
They like to call the Beaumont a retreat and rehabilitation centre. We all know that it is a mental asylum, renamed just a year ago as a weak effort to extinguish its harrowing reputation. An attendant in a spotless white lab coat at the door tells me that the patient has been here for two months and has never spoken once. When they brought her in, she was draped in a large woollen coat belonging to one of the guards. They found her walking along the roadside by a farm near the Beaumont at dawn, wearing nothing, covered in blood. Her hands clutching a name on a piece of ripped cotton.
I open the folder and skim through the brief diagnosis from the psychiatrist, Dr Blythe.
Patient Details:
Name: Unknown
Date of Birth: Unknown. Suspected to be mid-late twenties.
Gender: Female
Address: Unknown
Date of Entry: 1st January 1953
Symptoms: Mutism. Waxy flexibility.
Diagnosis: Stuporous Schizophrenia
Treatment: 100ml Largactil every 6 hours
There is a photograph of the creased material they found her with. My eyes take it in. A name, surrounded by splatters of liquid. More blood.
Gina.
The name is inscribed, but not with pen – something rudimentary. A stick? No. Possibly with a nail or the tip of a finger. I place the photograph of the note in front of her.
“Do you recognise this note? Did you write it or was this given to you?”
Again, nothing.
“It says Gina? Is that your name?” I ask. “You were holding it in your hand when you were found. Where were you going?”
I pause and study the photos they took of her when she arrived. Distressed, shocked, lips gaping, dark hair in a tangled mess.
“Do you remember what happened to you?”
I turn around to see the guard still standing at the door, staring at the wall opposite him. “I know it’s frightening in here. You may have suffered. You are safe now. You can trust me. Can you look at me to show you understand?”
Not even a flicker in her eyelids suggests that the patient can hear me, or if she can, that she recognises Gina as her name or a name she knows. She continues to stare at the table. I watch the slow rise and fall of her chest. Her lips remain still, relaxed into a permanent thin line just above the round of her chin.
I swallow. I agreed to taking this job as a counsellor, as someone who could help a patient’s healing through conversation, a new form of treatment. I was unaware that this was what I would be faced with. I see if she can follow some basic instructions. Sliding a piece of blank paper towards her, with a pencil on top of it. I ask,
“Please could you pick up the pencil?”
Her eyes stay transfixed on the table as if there were no pencil, no paper.
A slow steady breath flows out of me. Can she not hear me or is she unable to move? I scan her notes again… Waxy flexibility, the inability to move without guidance or aided posturing. I have an urge to approach her and move her arms to see how she will respond. Could I? Would Dr Blythe truly mind if I physically examined her myself? I’m curious and don’t allow myself time to talk myself out of it.
“I’m going to move a bit closer to you now and I’m going to try and lift your right hand up. And then your left.” I walk around the cream melamine table and perch on its edge. Gently, I place my hand under her right wrist and lift it up to the height of her shoulder. She follows the movement easily. I move my hand away, so it no longer supports her wrist, and her hand stays in the air in front of me. I do the same with the other hand and once again, I let go. Now two hands hover over her thighs, as if they were suspended by thin puppet strings. Her expression remains still. I lightly guide her hands back down to her lap and return to my seat. I clear my throat.
“Thank you for letting me approach you. From now on, I will be spending time with you. Speaking to you, showing you things. Maybe we could even go out for short walks. There are beautiful gardens here that we could potter around. Or we could arrange to take a trip somewhere further afield. Otley is not far from here. We could see some of the countryside or visit some shops. Would you like that?”
The door opens, breaking the silence with the creak of its metal hinges and my heart sinks at how fast time has passed. A guard steps in.
“Time’s up, Mrs Galloway,” he says.
I nod at him in acknowledgement and look back over to her with a meek smile.
“It’s time for me to go now. But I will return tomorrow.”
I rise and make my way to where the guard waits with the door ajar.
“How do you know that she has been able to speak before this?” I ask him before I leave the room. He merely shrugs in response. Turning to glance back at her, I see that she is still in the same position she has been all along. Over the last few years since the end of the War, I have worked alongside different psychiatrists who have treated women, victims too traumatised to speak on the aftermath of their abuse or tragic accident, but it perplexes me to see one as still as this.
The guard leads me down the corridor to reception, past the cells, each one padded with rubber, stained brown at the edges. Here, it is not quiet. Here is where the women wail, scream, laugh and curse. I peer into each individual unit I pass and clock each lost soul in my mind until one stares directly at me through the small opening. She grasps at the bars with her fingers, and I look straight into her eyes, wild and dark like a starless night sky.
The clank of the door from the room where I had just walked from catches my attention. A guard leads Patient A out the door. Her arms are thread into long sleeves which wrap around the back of her waist. She shuffles across the floor in bare feet, and her gown reaches just below her knees. Her eyelids are still lowered, and I wonder if I will ever get to see her eyes properly and what colour they could be.
“This way, Mrs Galloway,” the guard says, retracting my thoughts.
“Why is she in a jacket?” I ask, watching as they lead her into her cell.
“Just for precaution,” the guard responds.
“But has she shown any violent behaviour?”
“Not yet.”
I watch her enter her cell and look back at the other woman who seems to have disappeared, but the mirror in the corner of the ceiling shows me her body curled up on her mattress. I hear her scratchy voice singing.
“Rock-a-bye baby, on the treetop. When the wind blows, the cradle will rock.”
I look above the woman’s door and take a mental note that she is in Unit 5. As we reach the final door, she appears back at the window.
“Sweet dreams!” she screams suddenly, making me jump. The words echo off the walls, setting off more cries and cackles from other cells.
I approach the reception to retrieve my belongings. As I exchange my visitor badge for my coat, woollen cloche hat, leather gloves and bag, a woman in a white dress with a wide nurse’s cap makes a beeline towards me along the length of the corridor, her heavy keys jangling against her hip as she struts.
“Did she speak?” she commands.
I blink at her, baffled by her directness. Her eyes set in her hard, bony face, flicker towards my file.
“Patient A. Did she speak?” she confirms.
“No, she didn’t,” I say.
“Do you think she ever will?”
The heat rises in my cheeks.
“It’s going to take some time. But I hope I’ll be able to help her.”
She nods. “We don’t have much time. The police ring daily to ask questions. If she doesn’t speak soon, we’ll have to resort to harder measures.”
“The police?” I ask. “We are talking about the same patient?”
“Didn’t you know? They suspect that she has something to do with a murder. A farmer discovered a woman’s body near to where they found Patient A.”
So that’s why they put her in a strait jacket.
“That’s it? They were just in a similar location. It’s not sufficient proof.”
“She was covered in blood, Mrs Galloway. That is sufficient enough. We’re in the Beaumont now. Here, it’s guilty until proven guilty. If you think this new talking therapy technique is going to get her to confess to anything, she’d have to be stupid as well as mute.” Her face is stern and I struggle to formulate a response quickly enough. I pan over to her name tag resting on her chest. Minerva Tolsy.
“Nurse Tolsy, I don’t feel comfortable speaking about my client so contentiously at reception, especially without any facts. I don’t work with the police. I am not here to interrogate her.”
She stiffens her back and a frown stretches across her face.
“Of course, Mrs Galloway.” She gathers some files and turns to the receptionist.
“I’ll be clocking off soon, Susie.”
She turns her eyes back towards me and Patient A’s documents.
“Shall I file that away for you?”
I hesitate for a moment and then hand the papers over to her. With that, she walks back into the main wards, leaving me blindsided. Why did Dr Blythe fail to mention to me the patient’s link to a death? I look back at the receptionist who gazes at me blankly.
“Is Dr Blythe in today?”
“Sorry, no. He’s in the Wakefield hospital until Thursday.”
“Who is in house today?"
“Just Nurse Tolsy.”
I want to ask more questions, but our conversation is cut short by the ring of the telephone. The hands on the clock behind the desk have just reached three o’clock and I realise that I’ll miss the next tram home if I don’t leave now.
From the tram stop, I look back at the hospital building that symmetrically spreads across the foot of the hill, like a blanket of grey, dirty grit. Standing at the centre, is the imposing clock tower, a relic from past asylums with only one onerous meaning.
The tram home to Bramley, north of Leeds, drops me off a short walk from my home, a small apartment on the first floor above a chemist. I wave a brief greeting to Mr Nichols, the pharmacist, as I pass and enter a lobby through the side door. Only now do I feel my exhaustion. My ankles feel like they’re weighed down by iron shackles as I heave each foot up every step and dig around my bag for my keys. I unlock the door and swing it open.
Kirsty, the neighbour, turns to give me a wide welcoming smile.
“Oh, you’re back!” she says and my world, in an instant, feels lighter. The way she moves makes her appear like there is a wire crinoline under her yellow, buttoned dress, her wide hips sway from side to side as she wipes down the counter one final time and brushes her hands over her the apron she borrowed from me.
“Thank you for staying. I didn’t realise I’d be so late. How is he?” I sigh, dropping my bag on the table.
“He’s fine. Fast asleep now. I gave him some toast and a glass of milk before bed. He didn’t have a temperature or anything.”
My five-year-old son, Jasper, needed to be picked up from school early today because he was feeling unwell. I hate to inconvenience anyone, but there are few in Bramley that don’t judge me for raising a child on my own, and there are even fewer that I trust. She smiles warmly at me and takes the apron off. It brushes against her bobbed hair, and she smooths it back down with her hands.
“I thought I’d do a bit of cleaning whilst I was here. I hope you don’t mind. Just wanted to help a bit.”
“Thank you, you really didn’t have to.”
The kitchen is sparkling with everything put away, adding to my guilt some more. I look through my purse which only has a ten shilling note left in it. I take it out and hand it over to her, but she waves it away.
“Goodness girl, no. Help doesn’t cost money! I’m happy to do it, any time. I don’t have anyone I need to look after.”
“Kirsty, I really don’t know what I’d do without you.”
She declines the cup of tea I offer and says she should get back to prepare her supper, so I see that she steps back into her own apartment and I gently close my front door before checking on my little boy’s room. Jasper snores softly in his bed, holding onto his soft toy rabbit with his covers tucked up to his chin. His face relaxed, mouth slightly open, long lashes resting softly below the lids of his eyes, and I watch the rhythmic rise and fall of his breath. I brush his fringe away from his forehead and plant a gentle kiss upon it, inhaling the sweet scent he still retains from infancy.
“Night Jay, I love you,” I whisper into him.
He stirs and reaches his arm out from beneath the covers, stretching it over my neck and pulling me in towards him. I take these few seconds to nuzzle my nose into the warmth of his skin and wish my whole day could be filled with this tenderness.
I have a wash in the bathroom – the water is barely warm, so I make it quick and slip into my nightgown. I scrub and hang last week’s dirty laundry up and finally sit myself at the small dressing table by my bedside. I curl my fair hair into each hair roller and gently massage cream into my tired skin, the stillness of my new nameless patient sitting firmly in my mind.
[LJ1]This was hard to visualise what you mean by ‘the top of’ the ceiling - isn’t the ceiling just the ‘top’? Might work better to say the ‘near the ceiling’?
