and tomato roll and a can of Diet Coke out of the machine. I unwrapped the roll and took a bite. Not bad. My companion watched with satisfaction. He bounced up and down on his toes a couple of times. His boots creaked. ‘Would you care to take a stroll in the grounds?’ he said. ‘I’ll gladly show you around.’
He watched me expectantly as I chewed another large mouthful. I swallowed it with a big, painful gulp. ‘No, thanks,’ I said.
He looked crestfallen. After glancing around quickly, he lowered his voice. ‘As a matter of fact I believe a confidential discussion between us would be of mutual benefit. We can talk as I show you around; that will also serve to allay suspicion.’
I took a swig of Coke. He frowned at me, and I was suddenly aware I was being rude, even if he was a lunatic. The little man’s formal courtesy, assumed or not, made me feel like a lout. I inclined my head briefly and placed my hand on his arm. ‘That’s very kind of you,’ I said, ‘but I’m rather tired now and I’d prefer to go back to my room. But I’ll take you up on the offer another time. Thank you.’
‘Very well. Can you find your own way back?’
I nodded, with my mouth full again.
So they’ve put me in the loony bin. I knew it wasn’t a normal rehab. Some of these joints have pretty strange ideas, but the whole point is to get some kind of grasp on reality. A man who’s firmly convinced he’s a dead Victorian writer, and has got the whiskers to prove it, is delusional and belongs in a mental institution. Which is obviously what this place is. Which means I must have done something that made whoever put me here believe I was insane. Which is very worrying because I still can’t remember a fucking thing.
It’s interesting, though, that Wilkie Collins was a notorious opiate hound. Addicted to laudanum in a big way, like a lot of the Victorians, including Victoria herself, according to some people. It’s certainly true that for most of the nineteenth century half the House of Commons and most of the Lords, including a lot of the bishops, were laudanum addicts, along with thousands of doctors, lawyers, teachers, governesses, and a vast, twittering army of spinsters who’d faint at the merest hint of depravity but found great relief from all manner of maidenly ailments in the little brown bottle of comforting medicine. To say nothing of the poor, if they could get it. So, if there had been such a thing as rehab in Wilkie’s day he would have been a good candidate for it. I wonder if the nutter who’s impersonating him here has gone to the extent of developing a real-life opiate habit. Not that I plan to ask him. What I plan to do is to get out of this place.
But what if I can’t? What if whatever I did was serious enough for me to be sectioned, and detained under the Mental Health Act?
Unless it’s more sinister than that. What if someone wants to get me out of the way, or punish me? An old enemy taking revenge. Christ, there are enough candidates. It could be a conspiracy, and they might have paid this place to certify me and when I try to leave I’ll find I’m a prisoner. Fuck, what am I saying? That’s basically the plot of a Wilkie Collins book. Get a grip. As soon as I feel a bit better I’m going to walk out of here.
Patient DP
Recovery Diary 15
Dear Diary, I feel so awfully jolly and bucked up that I may get through the whole day without bashing my head against the wall.
Will that do, kids? No, I know it won’t. But a blank page is worse than an empty glass. At least you can gaze at an empty glass and imagine what might fill it. Maybe that’s the idea: they set a task that gives you such a dandy headache you forget about any other pain that’s making you feel sorry for yourself. It’s just the kind of scurvy trick that doctors will play in their determination to help you, despite your unwavering ingratitude.
It is certainly horrible here, but I would be a fine louse to complain too much, for I am ever the optimist and I’m sure it’s doing me some good. Anyway, I had better quit crabbing about these present straits as I haven’t a damn thing to say that will make them any better. Instead, as instructed, I shall try to describe my feelings. (I may have to excuse myself to go be a little sick on account of it, because you never know what you will find when you get to lifting up rocks in this way.)
Well, let’s see. I’m sleeping more and crying less, and it’s been several days since I’ve woken up screaming with hysterical laughter because I can’t get a drink. Yesterday I thought about what it would be like never to have a drink again, and today I thought about the same thing without breaking into a cold sweat. I am even able to pen these few poor scraps after only a few hours’ hesitation, and not have the yips come stealing over me. Progress, of a kind. I’m beginning to notice the sunshine, and the birds outside, even though they’re too small to eat. That’s another thing: I have an appetite. I ate a traditional breakfast today, but without the martini.
And now there is a new man. Not bad looking; maybe a little old and overweight but he has a certain something, and I know where he keeps it. I’ll admit he may not be the perfect answer to the lisping prayers of an innocent maiden, but that description ceased to fit me many moons ago, and if the inevitable should by any chance happen there may be trouble and I will be in it. I know myself only too well. It’s a fascinating subject but it gets a little predictable after a while.
Patient WC
Recovery Diary 16
I feel a renewed energy and confidence today, perhaps invigorated by an encounter that took place earlier, and of which I will relate more in due course.
As to my progress, I believe I am finally beginning to understand the precepts upon which this institution, and my treatment within it, are based. As I have previously recorded in this journal, I had always believed my occasional use of laudanum to be simply the most effective remedy for the gout from which I suffered. When it was first suggested to me that I was in some way dependent upon what I considered to be a purely medicinal recourse, and unable to abstain from it if I chose, I rejected the suggestion out of hand with some asperity, and, indeed, asserted that those who made it were more in need of medical attention than myself. However, that belief has been slowly changing, in the manner, and with the result, that I have described in these pages.
This report, I trust, fulfils my obligation to make a daily record of my progress, and the emotional responses which I experience in relation to it. This, at least, is still my understanding of Dr Hatchjaw’s demand (reiterated by Dr Bassett, on the few occasions we have met, in the gentler, less imperative terms to be expected of her sex) to ‘describe my feelings’.
And now to other matters. My encounter with a mysterious newcomer today has given impetus to my efforts to penetrate a riddle that has confounded me since my arrival in this strange place. The riddle of the place itself, and my presence in it, is of a different order, and I am convinced that the key to that mystery lies in my own hands, as I have been encouraged to believe by the medical practitioners here.
However, it is of those practitioners that I now wish to speak. Hatchjaw is clearly subordinate to Dr Bassett in professional terms, and this in itself is surprising. Hatchjaw is a learned and accomplished physician. His methods differ somewhat from those of his colleague (or superior, as I must learn to think of her) in that he tends towards a more analytic approach that presupposes a mechanical basis of psychology, while Dr Bassett seems to favour a broader, more metaphysical view. However, these differences are no greater than those that you might find between any two persons of science. Many is the time that I have observed a pair of eminent London medical men, at my very bedside, at complete
