I read about LeShan, who experimented with sleep learning in relation to nail biting. Hundreds of times a night, for weeks, he played to a number of sleeping boys the phrase, “My fingernails are terribly bitter.” He claimed some success (although his phonograph eventually broke, requiring him personally to stand in the room at night repeating the phrase while the boys slept). And I read about Cameron, who was similarly interested in mind control techniques and who tried to reprogramme his bedbound subjects’ brains, playing taped messages to them through headphones for hours each day, day after day, for months. He is reported to have had some success with the message, “When you see a piece of paper, you want to pick it up.” I also read up on Skinner, who believed that human free will is an illusion. Around 30 years ago psychologist Benjamin Libet discovered that if you ask people to make voluntary movements, their brains initiate the movement before they become consciously aware of any intention to move. Other experiments have since been performed along similar lines, leading many neuroscientists to conclude that free will is an illusion.
Fascinated by the potential of sleep learning and mind control, I also developed a curiosity about hypnosis, and specifically posthypnotic suggestion in which a suggestion made to a hypnotised subject is “activated” in the posthypnotic “waking” state, perhaps when a cue is given. I attempted to hypnotise my brother. However, he was uncooperative, despite me trying a very wide range of both traditional and innovative methods. I saw hypnosis done on stage, subjects convinced that they were Madonna, or that they were playing a trumpet when no trumpet was there, or that their chair was burning hot. I was most intrigued by the idea of negative hallucination, where the subject will fail to see what is right there in front of them. In the subject’s imagination, the hypnotist’s clothes disappear, or their own clothes disappear. The trick gets a big laugh and everyone claps and the subjects go back to their seats.
My other interest was drama. Our school had a good drama department and I got involved in set design. I was fascinated by the ability of a neutral performance space to become a desert or a hotel room via the dressing of the space with papier mâché cacti or a bed and maybe a picture on the wall. It was not really the set design that was important: it was that we — the performers and the audience — all agreed to believe that the performance space was, at this moment, a desert or a hotel room.
I attached myself to the drama department at university as well, taking classes in video production, which introduced me to the editing suite. Meanwhile, I was majoring in psychology, and saw a recording of the 1962 film of Stanley Milgram’s Obedience experiment, in which everyone was playing a role, was part of the act, except for the naive subject. I discovered the work of James Vicary, and began to take an interest in the possibility of subliminal messaging.
It was around that time that I had my first run-in with the university, receiving my first warning. In my defence, I cited Milgram, and Watson, and others who had not been hampered by impossible-to-know long-term effects on their subjects. All sorts of things which used to be allowed in experimental psychology are unfortunately no longer permitted, formally.
12
‘I thought we were going to stay in an Ibis,’ said Bonnie, switching on the kettle. ‘Or a Comfort Inn if there is one.’
‘No,’ said Sylvia. ‘This is better. We’re going to Seaton, because that’s where your story is set.’
‘It’s set in Seatown,’ said Bonnie, ‘a fictional Seatown.’
‘It’s obviously Seaton,’ said Sylvia. ‘I can see that, even if you can’t.’
‘And either way,’ said Bonnie, ‘why are we going there?’
‘If you go there, you might find out how your story ends,’ said Sylvia.
‘Fiona thinks it’s strange that I’m going on holiday with you,’ said Bonnie.
‘Does she?’ said Sylvia. ‘Why’s that?’
‘You’re my landlady,’ said Bonnie.
‘I don’t see what’s so strange about it,’ said Sylvia. ‘We’ll be one another’s travelling companions, like in Rebecca: I’ll be Mrs Van Hopper and you’ll be my young lady companion on the Côte d’Azur.’
‘I don’t think I have a name, do I?’ said Bonnie.
‘Oh, you have one,’ said Sylvia. ‘We just don’t know what it is. We know it’s something unusual and hard to spell.’
‘And I remember that she doesn’t much like Monte Carlo,’ said Bonnie. ‘She finds it artificial.’
‘Well,’ said Sylvia. ‘It is what it is.’
‘And it doesn’t end well, does it?’ said Bonnie. ‘It ends with everything ablaze.’ It ended with the smell of ash mixed with the salt wind from the sea.
‘Well, that’s not Mrs Van Hopper’s fault,’ said Sylvia.
‘My character seems to think it might be. If it wasn’t for Mrs Van Hopper, I’d never have become Mrs de Winter,’ said Bonnie. ‘You know,’ she added, ‘I know very little about you. You know a lot more about me.’
‘I’ll see if I can get us rooms above the Hook and Parrot,’ said Sylvia.
‘I don’t think they do rooms,’ said Bonnie.
‘But it’s in your story,’ said Sylvia. ‘That’s where Susan stays.’
‘I think there are rooms upstairs,’ said Bonnie, ‘but not for people to stay in. I think it’s just a pub.’
‘So that’s not where you stayed when you went there as a child?’
‘No,’ said Bonnie. ‘We stayed in a caravan park.’
‘Well,’ said Sylvia. ‘Maybe they do rooms now.’
‘I need to be on the ground floor,’ said Bonnie.
‘Don’t worry about that,’ said Sylvia. ‘Leave it to me. Are you waiting for this cup of tea to make itself?’
While Bonnie made the teas, Sylvia went ahead to the lounge. When Bonnie came through, Sylvia was standing near the desk, browsing through a small pile of new library books.
‘Is this your holiday reading?’ she asked. ‘Heart of Darkness. The Sheltering Sky. I can imagine you reading these in your room at the Ibis, journeying up the Congo and trekking into the North African desert while you’re lying on your bed.’
‘I thought we weren’t staying in an Ibis?’ said Bonnie.
‘No,’ said Sylvia. ‘No, we’re not.’ She took her cup of tea and drank it while she browsed through a Rough Guide volume that Bonnie had read, in which women braved Taliban-occupied Afghanistan; and Antarctica, where blinking for too long caused your eyes to freeze shut; and countries where leeches found their way onto your body, onto any and every part of you, even your privates, tiny ones worming unseen through your clothes; and where earthquakes parted the ground beneath you, the road you’d been travelling on, leaving you stranded.