Briefing for a Descent Into Hell (32 page)

  
She’s twenty-one.

  Legally.

  So that’s that.

  If you and Violet left tomorrow and set up a ménage together you wouldn’t be stopped physically. But I guarantee she’d come running back to us inside a week.

  To be protected from me?

  From her feelings about you, first of all. And mostly because of her family.

  But why should they know?

  It’s extremely easy to find out where people are these days. There is an industry to do just that.

  All right Doctor. Then I have one choice the less. And the one that I’ll end up with is my wife and family.

  In the end, yes. Because that’s where you belong.

  Tell me, was there a point in your life that was a real turning point? You could have chosen to do something else?

  No, I think my life has been pretty mapped out for me by circumstances.

  But when you think of yourself, you don’t think of yourself as your circumstances, surely.

  I could have done other things, of course. But I’ve been the same person.

  
Then why do I
have
to be Professor Thingabob? And I’m not Felicity’s husband and the father of James and Philip. Suppose I had gone back to Yugoslavia after the war and married Vera? She was Konstantina’s close friend.

  Look Professor, whether I understand you or not doesn’t make any difference, you know. There are certain roads open to you. I want to list them again—right?

  Why don’t you
see?

  You can go home. Your wife says she’ll be happy, any time you decide to go home. We think this would be a mistake as you are now. We don’t know but we think it is possible that your home or your wife or your children set you off in the first place.

  It was nothing to do with Felicity. It was to do with …

  Go on, catch it—to do with what?

  It went. How can I not remember? How? It’s just there, always. I feel I could catch it by suddenly turning my head, it’s so close. Like a shadow out of the corner of my eye.

  And it is not your wife or your home?

  No. I know the nature of it very well. I keep telling you that. The kind of thing it is—I know that. But not exactly what. There’s something else I ought to be doing. Something different. I know that, and I have to…

  I’m going on with the alternatives. The second one is that you could stay with a friend, either Miles Bovey or Rosemary Baines, since they have both offered …

  
But you say I don’t know Rosemary Baines, I met her once at a public meeting, and she wrote me that letter you showed me. Sometimes I do think that there is something there for me. Last time I read her letter yes, I did think—but how can I be sure? It is so easy to be trapped. I’m trapped here. I might find that another trap and …

  I’m going on. But that is my advice—try a friend for a short time. They are less exacting than families and …

  Friends. Friends, yes. Real friends. Friends are not for comforting and licking each other’s muzzles and saying how nice you are, how kind. Friends are for fighting, they are for …

  I am going on. If you decide not to go home, and decide not to stay with a friend, there’s the North Catchment Hospital in two weeks from now. And there you would find the same conditions as here …

  Everyone says much worse.

  The same, I mean, for your choices. Because if you wanted to leave there, you’d be in the same position exactly as you are now. The same alternatives.

  It’s not a question of alternatives. It’s a question of remembering.

  I’m going on. Or you can agree to have shock therapy. I’ve already gone into the pros and cons pretty thoroughly. It has to be shock, because you haven’t responded to the alternative drugs.

  
Tell me.

  The essence of it in my opinion is that I don’t think it would do you any harm, and it may have the effect of making you remember.

  Remember what, that’s the point!

  Or it may leave you exactly as you are now.

  When you give people electric shock treatment you don’t know, not really, what it does.

  No. But we do know there are thousands, probably millions by now, of people who would be too depressed to go on living without it.

  I’m not depressed, Doctor. I am not.

  Well, well.

  And if you were in my place, you’d have the electric shock treatment?

  Yes I would. You’ll probably come to that in the end. That’s my view. It is also the view of Doctor X. You have had the drugs we use instead of shock. None has worked with you. Nothing has worked. You had lost your memory when you came in, and you still have no memory. So what shall we do?

  But I have two weeks more here?

  Yes.

  Of course I might remember in that time.

  
Yes, you might. Would you like to try writing things down again? A tape-recorder?

My room in college looks out into a small court. The court is square and has white walls. There are various plants in tubs and pots. The wall opposite my door is the retaining wall of the garden above it. Honeysuckle dangles down over this wall from that garden. Last summer the honeysuckle let down two long tendrils side by side, but separated from each other by about a yard. The two green dangling sprays look attractive on the white wall. It is the nature of honeysuckle to look for a support, a wall or a trellis or another plant. There is nothing on that wall for it to fasten itself to. But there is a camellia in a pot in the corner. I noticed that the strand of honeysuckle nearer the camellia was swaying back and forth in wider sweeps than the strand further away. At first I thought that for some reason the wind or a breeze was reaching this strand to make it move more than the other—though this seemed unlikely because it was the strand on the outer side of the wall nearer the entrance which was more vulnerable to wind or air passing. Or at least it would be reasonable to think so. But there was no doubt that it was the inner strand which moved faster and in wider sweeps, in its efforts to reach and fasten itself on to the camellia. I sat there last summer a good deal, watching. It was really a remarkable sight. After watching for a few minutes, the faster moving strand began to seem like an arm or a part of some sea animal, as it swayed back and forth, trying to reach the camellia. Day after day passed, but no
matter how hard the honeysuckle tendril tried, it could not reach the camellia. Then I moved the pot with the camellia in it inwards a few inches, and sat to watch how the honeysuckle finally managed to latch itself on, helped by a small breeze.

Then I moved the camellia back again, into its corner, though by now I was so involved with the efforts of the honeysuckle to find a support it was like taking away food from a creature. I marked the length of the honeysuckle on the wall with chalk. But it had become autumn, and the plant had stopped lengthening itself for that year.

One afternoon I looked up from my desk and saw that the honeysuckle had swung itself far enough to lay a tight tendril around a branch of the camellia. It had been a stormy night. And the tendril or arm of the honeysuckle that was farther away had been swung up by the wind past the camellia-loving tendril to lay hold of a trellis high on the wall. So now both tendrils were fastened and made pretty loops of green on the wall. But then in a few days there was another strong wind, and the outer tendril lost its hold on the trellis and fell down. Now, hanging down by itself, it began a slow determined swinging to reach its sister tendril that was hanging down on the wall, but curving away, since this inner one was fastened to the camellia. As I watched one afternoon, I saw how a small breeze took this outer strand to hook on to the inner one, but the combined weight of the two was too much for the still tentative clasp of the tendril on the camellia, and now both sprays fell back and dangled down the wall.

We were all back where we started.

Both again started their slow aspiring swinging back and forth, back and forth, more or less, according to whether there was a wind. But they were never entirely still. Even on a windless day, the sprays would be in perpetual light movement, the one closer to the camellia moving more than the other.

I used to sit and watch and I asked myself if the honeysuckle sprays “remembered” how one of them had been able to reach the high trellis on the night of the strong wind, and the other how it had found a host in the camellia. After all, the genus honeysuckle “remembers” that it must hold fast on to something or other, and it knows how it must swing back and forth inside the attraction of another plant which becomes its host. And what of the camellia? Does it lean over as far as it can to help the honeysuckle to reach it? Surely the camellia cannot be indifferent to the efforts of the honeysuckle?

By the time the autumn ended, the honeysuckle spray had several times reached the camellia, with the aid of light breezes, and had several times been pulled away again, either by too strong a breeze, or because of its sister strand adding its weight to it.

And all the times between, when the inner strand was not attached to the camellia, it hung there, lightly quivering, always in subtle movement, waiting as it swung for the wind, as a surfer adjusts the balance of his body for an expected wave.

Sometimes, watching, I could feel the process on that wall as a unity: the movement of the honeysuckle spray, the waiting camellia, and the breeze which was not visible at all,
except as it lifted the honeysuckle spray up and close to the camellia.

It was not: The honeysuckle spray swings and reaches the camellia.

It was not: The wind blows the spray on to its host.

The two things are the same.

Not until the spring came, when the honeysuckle spray lengthened its growth, and achieved a wider swing, was it certain of a really solid grasp of the camellia.

Now I see a third part of the process.

Not only: The movement of the spray made it reach the camellia,

Or: The wind blew it so it could reach the camellia,

But: The further growth of the honeysuckle made it possible to reach the camellia.

But the element in which this process exists is—Time.

Time is the whole point
. Timing.

The surfer on the wave. The plant swinging in the wind. And it’s just the same with—well, everything, and that’s what I have to say, Doctor. Why can’t you see that?

It was ten at night in a ward or room shared by the Professor and three other men. The ward was cosy, with its pink curtains drawn. The Professor was reading that day’s
Times
. Outside was a wild night, noisy with wind.

Of the other three patients, two were already asleep, their bedside lights off, and one was listening to the radio through headphones.

A girl came into the ward. She wore flowered little-girl
pyjamas, and a white fluffy dressing gown. Her señorita’s hair was now loosed from the formal bun, but she had pulled it back and tied it at the nape of her neck, making it a brown bush caught neatly by a pink ribbon bow. She was everything that was proper and right, but poor girl, she could not help herself and now the shock inherent in Miss Violet Stoke’s presence was because the little girl had a sad, knowledgeable woman’s face. She sat on the Professor’s bed and lowered her voice to say furiously: “Is it true?”

“Yes, I suppose so.”

“But
why?
Don’t. Please don’t. Oh please please don’t.”

That day the whisper had gone around that Professor Charles Watkins had voluntarily agreed to have electric shock treatment. Some of the patients were indifferent, but not many. Most were agitated by the news. He had become a bit of a symbol. For the Professor, unlike most of them, had had a choice. He had not been given shock treatment when many would have had it, because Doctor Y opposed it, in his case. But now, when he was himself again (except for the fact that he still could not agree that his past was what they said it was) he had said to Doctor Y, and to Doctor X, that he would try it.

He was going to have his first shock the following morning.

Some of the patients reacted as if they were in a prison and one of their number had offered to be electrocuted.