The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August(7)

Mental health professionals of the 1960s make their 1990s counterparts look like Mozarts trampling upon Salieri’s lesser work. I suppose I should consider myself fortunate that some of the more experimental techniques of the 1960s had not yet made their way to cosmopolitan Northumbria. I was not tested on with LSD or Ecstasy nor invited to discuss my sexuality, as our one and only psychiatrist, Dr Abel, regarded Freud as unsanitary. The first to discover this was the Twitch, an unfortunate woman whose real name was Lucy, whose Tourette’s syndrome was treated by a mixture of apathy and brutality. If our warders had a notion of habit-breaking therapy, they acted upon it by hitting Lucy across the side of her head with the palms of their hands whenever she twitched or grunted, and if she became louder as a consequence–as frequently happened when provoked–two of them would sit on top of her, one on her legs, one on her chest, until she nearly passed out beneath them. The one time I attempted to intervene, I received the same treatment and lay pinned beneath Ugly Bill, the head day-shift nurse and sometime jailbird, to the vociferous approval of Clara Watkins and Newbie, who’d worked there for six months and still hadn’t said his name. Newbie stood on my wrists, mostly to show willing, while Ugly Bill explained to me that I was being very naughty and disruptive, and just because I thought I was a doctor didn’t mean I knew anything. I cried with impotence and frustration, and he slapped me, which gave me cause to rage and through which rage I tried to control my tears, converting self-pity into fury, but I could not do it.

“Penis!” the Twitch shouted at our once-weekly group session. “Penis penis penis!”

Dr Abel, his tiny moustache quivering like a frightened mouse on his top lip, clicked his pen closed. “Now, Lucy…”

“Come on, give it to me, give it to me, come on, come on, come on!” she screamed.

I watched the progress of the flush through Dr Abel’s cheeks. It was a fascinating luminescence, almost visible on a capillary-by-capillary basis, and I briefly wondered if the spread of his blush was representative of the speed of his blood flow through the shallow dermis, in which case he should seriously consider more exercise and a good massage. His moustache had ceased being fashionable the day after Hitler invaded Czechoslovakia, and the only thing I ever heard him say which made any sense was, “Dr August, there is no greater isolation a man may experience than to be lonely in a crowd. He may nod, and smile, and say the right thing, but even by this pretence his soul is pushed further away from the kinship of men.”

I asked him what fortune cookie he’d got that from, and he looked bewildered and asked me what fortune cookies were, and if you made them with ginger.

“Give it to me, give it to me!” screamed the Twitch.

“This is unproductive,” he quavered, at which point Lucy pulled up her overall to show us her oversized knickers and started to dance, causing Simon, who was at the low point of his bipolar mania, to weep, which set off Margaret rocking, which caused Ugly Bill to storm into the room, stick in hand and straitjacket already on the way, while Dr Abel, the tips of his ears burning like brake lights, scurried away.

Once a month we were permitted visitors, and no one came.

Simon said it was for the best, that he didn’t want to be seen like this, that he was ashamed.

Margaret screamed and tore at the walls until her nails were bloody, and had to be taken back to her room and sedated.

Lucy, the spittle rolling down her face, said it wasn’t us who should be ashamed but them. She didn’t say who they were, and nor did she need to, for she was simply right.

After two months I was ready to leave.

“I see now,” I explained calmly, sitting in front of Dr Abel’s desk, “that I suffered a mental breakdown. Obviously I need counselling, but I can only express my deep and personal gratitude to you for having helped me overcome this issue.”

“Dr August,” explained Dr Abel, lining up his pen with the top edge of his writing pad, “I think what you suffered was rather more than just a breakdown. You suffered a complete delusionary episode, indicative, I believe, of more complex psychological issues.”

I looked at Dr Abel as though for the first time and wondered just what his measure of success was. Not necessarily a cure, I decided, so long as the treatment was interesting. “What do you suggest?” I asked.

“I’d like to keep you here a while longer,” he replied. “There are some fascinating medications coming out which I believe would be exactly what you need…”

“Medications?”

“Some very promising developments have been made with the phenothiazines—”

“That’s an insect poison.”

“No–no, Dr August, no. I understand your concern as a physician but I assure you, when I say phenothiazines what I’m talking about are its derivatives…”

“I think I’d like a second opinion, Dr Abel.”

He hesitated, and I saw pride flare at the onset of possible conflict. “I am a fully qualified psychiatrist, Dr August.”

“Then as a fully qualified psychiatrist, you know how important it is to have a patient’s trust in any treatment process.”

“Yes,” he admitted grudgingly. “But I am the only qualified physician on this ward…”

“That’s not true. I’m qualified.”