Dominion

Chapter Nine

AT THE HOSPITAL ON WEDNESDAY, two days before, the rain had been succeeded by days of fog and mist. Frank sat in his usual place in the quiet room. The previous day he had told Ben, the Scottish attendant, a little about his university friend David, and Ben suggested Frank telephone him, see if he might be able to help get him transferred to a private clinic. ‘After all, if he’s a civil servant, they ken how to get things done. You can use the telephone in the nurses’ office when I’m on duty.’

But Frank wasn’t sure. The fewer people he spoke to the better, because of his secret, because of what Edgar had told him. And he was suspicious of Ben; why had the attendant singled Frank out to help, particularly when he had spoken bitterly about Dr Wilson giving Frank more attention because he was middle-class? Ben seemed direct and friendly enough but still there was something in him that did not quite ring true. He noticed that sometimes his Glasgow accent was stronger, as though for effect.

Earlier that morning Ben had come up to him and asked if he had thought any more about phoning his friend. Frank asked suddenly, ‘Why are you doing this? Why are you helping me?’

Ben raised his hands in a gesture of surrender. ‘You’re a suspicious wee fella. It’s just I don’t think you belong here, you should try’n get out. But it’s up to you, pal; if you’re happy to trust Dr Wilson, that’s fine.’ He’d walked away then, Frank staring after him anxiously. He knew it was true, he was suspicious of everybody, had been since childhood. He hadn’t heard any more from Dr Wilson about electric shock therapy, but feared he might and that it might make him blurt out what he knew. He thought again about David Fitzgerald. He had been one of the few people Frank had ever really trusted and liked. He hadn’t seen him, though, for some years. After they graduated from Oxford they had kept in touch by letter, and Frank had been invited to David’s wedding in 1943 but he had never been to a wedding and felt he would be unable to cope with all the people. After that the gaps between David’s letters had grown longer and for the last couple of years they had only exchanged Christmas cards.

Frank preferred to stay in the quiet room but the attendants often chivvied him out, saying he must come to the day room, mix with the other patients. He didn’t want to; the others reminded him of the awful position he was in. Some passed their time staring at the wall, others would suddenly erupt with fury over nothing. Some of their faces had been twisted and warped into strange expressions by years of madness. But Frank knew he had his own peculiarity, his habitual grin; and he had attacked his own brother. Was he mad too? It was all right when the drugged effect was strong in him, but as it weakened and wore off at the end of the period between his three daily doses, his heart often pounded with fear now and he wanted to scream. And though he had never dreamed about school since leaving Strangmans, he did dream about it now. This place reminded him of it in so many ways. He had even had a couple of frightening dreams about Mrs Baker.

Mrs Baker had been a spiritualist. Frank’s mother claimed she was able to contact his father, who had been killed at Passchendaele in 1917; Frank had been born, prematurely, two weeks later. His mother had never recovered from his father’s death. George Muncaster had been a doctor, he hadn’t needed to volunteer, and Frank’s mother had begged him not to go but he believed joining the Army Medical Corps was his duty. Then, as his wife had feared, he had been killed, leaving her alone in the big house with just two boys and Lizzie, the daily woman.

Frank knew his mother didn’t love him, though she did love Edgar. But Edgar, who was nearly four years older than Frank, had been born when she was young and happy, before the world went mad in 1914. She was always saying Edgar was a good boy, clever and obedient, while Frank with his childhood illnesses and, even then, oddities, was a trial.

But it was Frank who most resembled his father. The photograph of him, draped in black, on the mantelpiece had shown the same long nose, full, feminine mouth and large, puzzled dark eyes. Like Frank, he looked as though he might have been afraid of the world. Edgar, though, was big, stocky and confident. Before he went on his war orphan’s scholarship to their father’s old school in Scotland, he would often call Frank names like ‘runt’ and ‘weed’ and a word he had found in a Grimm’s fairytale: ‘You’re weazened, Frankie,’ he would say, ‘a weazened creature.’

Thousands of women turned to spiritualism in the 1920s, women who had lost sons and husbands and brothers in the trenches. Mrs Baker first came to the house in Esher late in 1926, when Frank was nine. Edgar had already gone to Scotland, and Frank was at a small local day-school, a quiet, fearful child with few friends.

It was because the house, which had also been his father’s surgery, was so large that Mrs Baker’s séances were held there. The group came on Tuesday evenings, half a dozen women, middle-aged before their time. Lizzie, the maid, who was always nice to Frank, told him she did not hold with spiritualism and he should stay away from it all.

The women would arrive just before Frank’s bedtime, greeting his mother with friendly formality. Lizzie would have prepared sandwiches and soft drinks beforehand – Mrs Baker said alcohol interfered with her channel to the spirits – and they would chat to each other about normal things, their gardens and servants or those wretched miners still on strike. When Mrs Baker arrived, though, they fell into a reverent silence. She was a very tall, stout woman of around fifty, her big, square face with its little blue eyes framed by short, bobbed curls. She wore fashionable dresses, though the straight lines of the day did not suit her large frame, and a long rope of pearls reached to her waist. She always carried a large bag, decorated in a Paisley pattern, draped over her arm.

Frank was allowed to take the sandwiches around. The women always asked politely how he was, and Mrs Baker would look down at him from her great height, saying she hoped he was being a good boy, a helper to his mother. One of the other women once commented that he was a poor fatherless lamb but Mrs Baker gave her a reproving look and said earnestly, in her rich contralto, that Frank’s father was with him in spirit. After twenty minutes’ conversation Mrs Baker would clap her hands. ‘Time to begin, ladies. I feel Meng Foo approaching.’ Meng Foo was her spirit guide, a princess of ancient China. ‘She is ready,’ Mrs Baker would say. ‘I see her walking towards me, so delicately on her little bound feet.’ The women would drop their eyes respectfully, and his mother would tell Frank to go to bed. Then, the other ladies following, she would open the double doors to the dining room with its big table.

Lizzie had said, as Frank sat in the kitchen watching her cook, that it was strange how Mrs Baker had told her ladies to avoid the new spiritualist church a mile away. ‘All very well for your mummy to say other spiritualists have driven Mrs Baker away because of jealousy over her being on a higher plane. I know she gets paid for these sessions; I don’t know how much but I bet it’s a lot.’

Frank’s mother told him Mrs Baker made a connection with his father almost every week. She had heard him speaking through her; it had been his man’s voice, his Scottish accent. When she told Frank about the séances her habitual sad expression would change to a happy, wondering smile. Frank’s father, she said, was in a place of sunlit gardens and beautiful palaces. Sometimes, in the distance, he glimpsed Jesus walking there, all haloed in white. She told Frank his father was sorry for going and leaving them; he knew now that he had done wrong. He was always watching over Frank lovingly.

The idea of his father watching over him meant little to Frank, for he had never met him. And inside him was a seed of doubt, nurtured by Lizzie, about Mrs Baker and all her works.

On Tuesday evenings Frank, driven by curiosity, began creeping out of bed after the women had gone into the dining room. He would go halfway down the stairs and peer through the banisters at the closed door, listening. There would be bangs and thuds sometimes, exclamations from the women, now and then the sound of one of them weeping. The thuds frightened Frank and the weeping made him feel like crying himself, but he always stayed where he was.

One late spring evening he was at his usual post on the staircase. From the dining room he thought he heard, briefly, a man’s voice, then one of the women sobbing: a dreadful, desperate sound. It went on a long time. Frank’s eyes watered. Then, suddenly, the dining-room door opened and Mrs Baker came out. She closed the door, leaned against the wall and shut her eyes.

Frank crouched perfectly still. The hallway was dim; if he didn’t move she might not see him. Mrs Baker was, as ever, carrying her big paisley-patterned bag. As Frank watched she laid it down and opened it. To his astonishment she pulled out a half-bottle of whisky. She glanced quickly and furtively at the closed door, then raised the bottle and took a large swig. She sighed, then took another, glancing at the door again as she wiped her mouth. The weeping was still going on. She muttered something, and Frank caught the words ‘silly bitches’. Mrs Baker’s expression had changed; it was hard and contemptuous as she replaced the bottle in her bag, took out a packet of mints and popped one in her month. Then she looked up and saw Frank staring at her.

Her eyes narrowed. She glanced quickly at the dining-room door, then lumbered to the stairs, the long rope of pearls swinging against her big body. Frank was frightened now, but he couldn’t move. Mrs Baker mounted the stairs and leaned over him. The pearls brushed his face and he flinched. She grasped his arm, thick, strong fingers digging in. ‘You’re a nasty, nosy little boy,’ she said in a vicious whisper. ‘What we do is private, not for children to see. The spirits will be angry. Don’t you say a word about what you saw just now, or I’ll send bad spirits, really wicked, cruel ones, and they’ll make you suffer.’ She shook him, hard. ‘Do you understand?’

‘Yes, Mrs Baker.’

The grip tightened further. ‘Are you sure? Don’t think I can’t summon up bad spirits, because I can.’

‘I understand.’

‘You’d better. Now get to bed. Nasty spying little boy.’

She watched him as he stumbled to his room. He lay on his bed in the dark, shaking. He was frightened, though not of bad spirits. He knew now that Lizzie was right; Mrs Baker was a heartless fraud. He knew too that what he had always feared was true, the world was a bad place, full of people who would harm him if they could.

Afterwards the séances went on. Mrs Baker was as nice as ever to Frank, although there was a new glint in her eyes when she looked at him. A few weeks later, he was summoned by his mother, who told him his father had sent a message from the Other Side that it was time he went away to school, to join his brother. She looked at him, not just with her usual anxiety but, he saw, real concern. ‘I’ve not been sure Strangmans College is right for you, you’re delicate, but your father told me through Mrs Baker that you’ll learn discipline, it’ll be the making of you. She says you must go, and the spirit world knows better than we do. Oh, Frank, don’t stand there wearing that silly grin, please.’

So a few weeks later, just after his eleventh birthday, Frank went away to school. Lizzie had tears in her eyes as she helped his mother pack his trunk. Frank thought, on the train to Edinburgh, maybe things will be better now. But he soon found out he was wrong; Mrs Baker had indeed called down on him a whole horde of terrible spirits.

The hospital was keen on exercise. The patients, if they were well enough, took an hour’s exercise every day in the airing courts. These were large courtyards in the centre of the hospital building complex, open to the air but with a covered walkway beside the walls. The patients would walk endlessly round and round for an hour, the attendants in charge calling on laggards to keep up. Some patients were allowed to walk alone in the grounds, up to the signs marked Limit of Parole, but not Frank.

He was in his usual armchair in the quiet room, facing the window. There was another patient in the room, a big, elderly man called Mr Martindale, who believed Communists and Jews were beaming messages into his head and who habitually sat with his hands over his ears, muttering to drown out the sound. He had been at the hospital for many years; he had been a foundry worker before that. Frank knew he didn’t like being disturbed, but was all right if you left him alone.

It was late morning, getting on for exercise time. Frank heard the door behind him open, a firm military tread approaching. Ben wasn’t on duty today, it was Sam, a middle-aged ex-soldier, trim in his neatly pressed uniform. He came round the chair. ‘Frank,’ he said in his Brummie accent. ‘Hiding in here again, eh? Come on, airing courts time. Look sharp.’ Frank rose reluctantly. Sam turned to Mr Martindale. ‘You too, come on.’

Mr Martindale looked piteously at Sam. ‘Please. I’m not well enough. The voices are loud. Leave me alone!’

‘We’ll give you some extra pills later,’ Sam said. ‘But you need your exercise! Chop! Chop!’

The patients began making their circuits of the courtyard. Frank had had a haircut a few days ago; it was the attendants’ jobs to do this and the one on duty hadn’t made a good job of it, cutting Frank’s untidy brown hair into a military crewcut, little more than a fuzz. He felt the cold, wet air on his scalp. Something about the mindless nature of what they were doing brought Strangmans to Frank’s mind and also reminded him once again of what he was now: a mental patient. He longed to get back to the quiet room.

He was next to Mr Martindale, who was still muttering to himself as he stumbled, hands over his ears. Sam called out impatiently, ‘Martindale! Hands down! You’ll fall if you’re not careful!’

The other attendant, a young man who was new, looked anxious but Sam, wanting to show his authority, shouted out again, ‘Martindale! Hands down!’

Frank saw something happen to Mr Martindale’s eyes; they had been cast down but now he looked up and stared at Sam and they were wild. He glanced round at Frank, a terrifying stare that made him step backwards. Then he looked back at the attendants, before plunging across the little piece of lawn in the centre of the airing court towards them with unexpected speed and force. ‘Yo’ fookin’ bugger!’ he shouted at Sam. ‘Can’t you fookin’ leave me alone!’ He threw himself, fists flying, not at Sam but at the young attendant. Frank saw blood spurt from the young man’s nose. His cap flew off and he crashed against the wall. Sam took out a whistle and sounded a long blast. Frank stood there petrified as Sam grappled with Mr Martindale, trying to pin his arms behind him. All the patients stood watching; some stared at the scene, one or two laughed, one young man started jumping up and down, weeping.

Half a dozen attendants appeared, running. Mr Martindale was pushed to the ground; Sam kicked him in the back. The other patients were shepherded quickly inside. On the ward, Frank managed to sidle off to the quiet room again. He sat in his chair. His hands were trembling and his bad hand hurt. He had seen patients cursing and shouting before, had seen people forcefully put to bed, but never open violence like that. He wasn’t safe here, anything could happen. He thought again of the shock treatment, what he might find himself saying. He whispered to himself, ‘I’ll do it. I’ll phone him. David, please help me.’