‘I believe she has been asked by the Director to investigate your case. She is very highly respected.’
Cale wanted to ask more questions but as is often the case with awkward people he did not like to appear ignorant to someone who clearly disliked him – and for good reason, as this servant was the very person Cale had menaced about having the key. ‘People with charm,’ IdrisPukke had once said to him, ‘can get others to say yes without even asking the question. Having a real talent for charm is most corrupting. But don’t worry,’ he added, ‘that’s not something you’ll ever have to worry about.’
‘I’ll take you to her now,’ said the servant. ‘Then I’ll see about the hole in the door.’
‘Don’t bother. It creates a nice breeze.’
He put on his shoes and they left. The servant was surprised to see, given all the fuss he had made, that the obnoxious young man did not bother to lock the door behind him. But as long as he was not in there Cale couldn’t care less who else was.
In silence they walked through the Priory. Some of it was built recently, other parts were older, other parts older still. There were tall and grim-looking buildings with gargoyles grimacing from the walls, then a sudden change to the elegant and well-proportioned, mellow stone structures with large windows of irregular glass that in one piece reflected the sky and in another the grass, so various and changeable that the building seemed to be alive inside. Eventually, through passages in great walls, the silent pair emerged into a courtyard more pleasing in its scale and engaging simplicity than anything Cale had seen even in Memphis. The servant led him through an arch and up two flights of stairs. Each landing had a door in thick black oak to either side of the staircase. He stopped outside one on the top floor and knocked.
PART TWO
Lest we should see where we are,
Lost in a haunted wood,
Children afraid of the night
Who have never been happy or good.
W. H. Auden, ‘September 1, 1939’
7
‘Come in.’ It was a soft and attractive welcome. The servant opened the door and stood back, ushering Cale forward. ‘I’ll be back in an hour exactly,’ he said and pulled the door shut.
There were two large windows to Cale’s right, which flooded the room with light, and at the far side, sitting by the fire in a high backed chair that looked comfortable enough to live in, was a tall woman. Even sitting down Cale could see she was more than six foot tall, somewhat taller than Cale himself. Sister Wray was covered from head to foot in what looked like black cotton. Even her eyes were covered with a thin strip of material in which there were numerous small holes to allow her to see. Strange as all this was, there was something much stranger: in her right hand and resting on her lap was some sort of doll. Had one of the children in Memphis been holding it he would not have noticed – the Materazzi girls often had dolls that were spectacularly splendid to behold, with madly expensive costumes for every kind of occasion from a marriage to tea with the Duke. This doll was rather larger, with clothes of grey and white and a simply drawn face without any expression at all.
‘Come and sit down.’ Again the pleasant voice, warm and good-humoured. ‘Can I call you Thomas?’
‘No.’
There was a slight nod, but who could know of what kind? The head of the doll, however, moved slowly to look in his direction.
‘Please sit.’ But the voice was still all warmth and friendliness as it completely discounted his appalling rudeness. He sat down, the doll still watching and – though how, he thought, could it be so? – taking a pretty dim view of what she was looking at.
‘I’m Sister Wray. And this,’ she said, moving her covered head slightly to look at the puppet on her lap, ‘is Poll.’
Cale stared balefully at Poll and Poll stared balefully back. ‘What shall we call you?’
‘Everybody calls me “sir”.’
‘That seems a little formal. Can we agree on Cale?’
‘Suit yourself.’
‘What a horrible little boy.’
It was not especially difficult to surprise Cale, no more than most people, but it was no easy thing to make him show it. It was not the sentiment that widened his eyes – he had, after all, been called a lot worse – but the fact it was the puppet who said it. The mouth didn’t move because it wasn’t made to, but the voice most definitely came from the puppet and not Sister Wray.
‘Be quiet, Poll,’ she said, and turned slightly to face Cale. ‘You mustn’t pay any attention to her. I’m afraid I’ve indulged her and like many spoilt children she has rather too much to say for herself.’
‘What am I here for?’
‘You’ve been very ill. I read the report prepared by the assessor when you arrived.’
‘The moron that got me locked up with all the head-bangers?’
‘She does seem to have got the wrong end of the stick.’
‘Well, I’m sure she’s been punished. No? What a surprise.’
‘We all make mistakes.’
‘Where I come from, when you make a mistake something bad happens – usually involving a lot of screaming.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘What’s there for you to be sorry about? Were you responsible?’
‘No.’
‘So, what are you going to do to make me all right again?’
‘Talk.’
‘Is that it?’
‘No. We’ll talk and then I’ll be better able to decide what medicines to prescribe, if that seems called for.’
‘Can’t we drop the talk and just get to the medicine?’
‘I’m afraid not. Talk first, medicine after. How are you today?’
He held up his hand with the missing finger. ‘It’s acting up.’
‘Often?’
‘Once a week, perhaps.’
She looked at her notes. ‘And your head and shoulder?’
‘They do their best to fill in when my hand isn’t hurting.’
‘You should have had a surgeon look at you. There was a request but it seems to have gone missing. I’ll sort out something for the pain.’
For half an hour she asked questions about his past, from time to time interrupted by Poll. When Cale, with some relish, told her he had been bought for sixpence Poll had called out, ‘Too much.’ But mostly the questions were simple and the answers grim, though Sister Wray didn’t dwell on any of them, and soon they were discussing the events of the night Gromek was killed and Kevin Meatyard escaped. When he’d finished she wrote for some time on the several small sheets of paper resting on her left knee as Poll leant over them and tried to read, and was pushed back repeatedly out of the way like a naughty but much loved dog.
‘Why,’ asked Cale, as Sister Wray took a couple of silent minutes to finish writing and Poll took to staring at him malevolently, although he also knew this could not be so, ‘why don’t you treat the nutters in the ward? Not enough money?’
Sister Wray’s head moved upright away from her work. ‘The people in that ward are there because their madness is of a particular kind. People are sick in the head in as many ways as they’re sick in the body. You wouldn’t try to talk a broken leg into healing and some breaks in the mind are almost the same. I can’t do anything for them.’
‘But you can do something for me?’
‘I don’t know. That’s what I’m trying to find out.’
‘If you’d let her, you naughty boy.’
‘Be quiet, Poll.’
‘But it’s right.’ An unattractive little smirk from Cale. ‘I am a naughty boy.’
‘So I understand.’
‘I’ve done terrible things.’
‘Yes.’
There was a silence.
‘What happens if the people paying for me stop?’
‘Then your treatment will stop as well.’