Bliss (21 page)

Without him knowing it, Honey Barbara had taught him to smell, and when he thought of her now it would not be in terms of how she looked but rather in relationship to the whole wonderful array of smells he associated with her: strong and salty as goats' cheese, rich and flowery as leatherwood honey.

He fought against the Pentothal but could not better it. For perhaps an hour he lay on his back, during which time, in giddy reconnaissances, he managed to gather that the room contained four beds, one of which was much larger than the others, that the walls were a yellow perhaps intended to be 'sunny,' that the fly-wire screens over the two small windows were torn, that the vinyl-tiled floor had a long black rubber skid-mark which ran from beneath the windows to the door on the opposite wall, and also: that he was wearing pyjamas which were not his.

He was not so much frightened as impatient to know what would happen next, and it was irritation with his drug-induced weakness which finally drove him, wobbly-legged, across the room to the window.

He had expected walls.

What he saw reminded him of a number of country railway stations all moored in a park of dwarf trees, covered walk-ways leading from one to the other. The red-brick buildings were long and thin and seemed to be only one room wide, with fading green doors opening out on to verandahs. Sometimes, he saw, the doors had signs such as 'Social Workers' instead of 'Station Master' or 'Waiting Room' but there was, amongst the people he saw, the same melancholy one finds amongst passengers who have just missed the train to the city and know they will he marooned here for the next four hours. They paced up and down, sat still on benches, talked to each other, or more commonly established a hostile isolation amongst the dwarf trees. The sun sank below the roof of the Ginger Factory (although Harry took this ugly rusting corrugated-iron building to be part of the hospital) and the very green, perfectly mown grass assumed a darker, blacker coloration.

It was then that he heard the Sea Scouts screaming. Abso-lute bowel-loosening terror cut through the air and hung there, vibrating. The patients, like grazing animals, suddenly froze. Harry crossed the room in two strides and opened his door. There was no grass here, only bitumen, across which black expanse two large men hurried, carrying the struggling bodies of two small male children. A notebook was dropped. A pen-cil, somehow pitiful, fell and rolled across the bitumen. A woman descended the steps of a box-like aluminium building and, with a slight hop, like a magpie scavenging beside a busy road, picked up the pencil. As she rose she caught sight of Harry Joy, who, instinctively, shut the door.

The screams now came through the open window as Jim and Jimmy carried the kicking Sea Scouts across the grass towards the Ginger Factory. Harry saw the patients move out of the way and then close behind in curiosity. The Sea Scouts screamed as if they knew the secrets of those smoking chimneys.

Honey Barbara had rules for survival in this particular quarter of Hell. They were as follows: Do not aggravate them, be quiet, smile nicely, don't let them know how smart you are. Eat all your food and don't steal jam. Fuck whoever wants to be fucked and then forget about it. Never tell a doctor the truth but make everything you tell them interesting. Never say you're not sick. Keep your nose clean and do not write complaining letters.

Harry was determined to follow the rules exactly and it was his desire, made more intense by the frightful screaming, that led him, so early, to his first mistake. His heart was racing. He was panicked and still dizzy from Pentothal. Yet he saw it clearly, there plain as day, on the end of the big bed. It was not the bed he had been sleeping in, but there it was: his name: Mr HARRY JOY, in metallic tape.

Already he was courting disaster. He was in the wrong bed. ('Never tell them,' Honey Barbara said, 'that a thing is their fault, even if it is.') A mistake had been made, or a trick. Perhaps he had been delivered to the wrong bed or a prankster had shifted him while he slept.

Quickly, dizzily, he made the bed he had been asleep in and shifted himself into the correct bed.

And there he was: keeping his nose clean, obeying the rules, not complaining either verbally or in writing. He was in the right bed, only worried now that he might have been given the wrong pyjamas and, in fact, he was sitting up in bed, peering over his shoulder and trying to read the label on his pyjama coat when Alice Dalton entered the room, already a little on edge.

She had a pencil in her hand. It was the Sea Scouts' pencil. She held it without feeling and he watched her narrowly as she approached the bed, thus ignoring one of Honey Barbara's many rules: 'Always give out a good vibe, never let them think you hate them.'

She stood at the foot of his bed for some seconds, her head bowed, her temples held delicately between thumb and middle finger. When she looked up at last, her mouth was drawn very tight.

'Mr Joy, I am Mrs Dalton. This is my hospital and you are here because you are sick.'

Harry waited. He had remembered Honey Barbara's rule about vibes but all he could think was that he didn't like this pencil woman. He disliked her self-importance, her mottled red face, her pink glasses, her tightly permed indifferent-coloured hair, her sparrow legs, her fussy voice, her black shoes, and he would have gone on, finding more things to dislike, except that she started to talk and he had to concentrate on her ridiculous words.

'Unpleasant fact number two,' said Mrs Dalton, 'is you are in the wrong bed. Please don't interrupt. Now when we assign you a bed we do it for a good reason, probably a whole number of reasons. We know things, Mr Joy, that you could never possibly know so if you start changing your bed... well, it's impossible.'

'It has my name on it,' Harry said. He wasn't meaning to argue. He was simply trying to clarify. He did not wish to argue.

Mrs Dalton sighed. She held her temples again, in the same delicate way, between thumb and middle finger. Harry kept a respectful silence.

'I will not argue, Mr Joy,' she said at last. 'You see, this is a perfect example. How could you possibly know that there are two Mr Joys in this room? You see how silly that makes you look? You thought you knew it all, and now you find you don't. You find there are
other factors
. Even,' she said, 'if you were healthy you could not know. So,' she said with some attempt at friendliness, 'be a love and get back into your own bed.'

He did not want to argue. He knew it was not politic, but the fact remained:

'But I
am
Harry Joy.'

'No, you're Mr Joy.'

'Mr
Harry
Joy.'

'You are not Mr Harry Joy. Kindly do not tell me my own business.'

'I should know my own name.'

She smiled and allowed herself two good seconds before she answered.

'If you knew your own name, Mr Joy, you probably would not be here. I am here because I
do
know my own name. Not only my own name, but also the names of all my patients. You see, Mr Joy, this is my
speciality
. It is my business.'

'I am not Harry Joy?'

'No. You are
Mr
Joy. Now why don't you get out of Mr Harry Joy's bed before he comes back You don't want to start off in his bad books too:

Harry climbed out of the bed which was bigger and more comfortable than the one the horrible Mrs Dalton wished him to sleep in. When he had done that she tucked in the other bed and smoothed it obsessively. Then she came and sat on his bed.

'I'm sorry to growl,' she smiled.

For one horrifying moment he thought she was going to take his hand.

'That's O.K.'

'It's confusing, I know: two Mr Joys in the one room.'

'My name is Harry too.'

'Well you'll have to give it up for a little while,' she said. 'Let him have it for a while. Do you have a second name?'

'Stanthorpe.'

'Alright, Stanthorpe. It's a very aristocratic name.'

Stanthorpe!

'You can be Stanthorpe.'

'I don't want to be Stanthorpe.'

'Then you'll damn well have to be plain Mr Joy,' she said, standing up irritably. 'I can't spend all day arguing. Good afternoon, Mr Joy.'

He wished to be polite but he had forgotten her name already.

'Goodnight,' he said vaguely. The only name that came to mind was Pencil.

When he woke up he was hungry, and later, looking back on all the indignities and irritations in this part of Hell, he was to remember the hunger as the predominant thing, the mel-ancholy gurglings of his empty stomach.

It was night and there was someone else in the room. He heard the sound of a page turning and a loud hearty chuckle.

'Oh dear,' said a familiar voice, 'oh dearie dearie-me.'

He propped himself up on his elbow and saw the person who had been designated as Mr Harry Joy.

'Jesus. Alex.'

Alex was lying on his bed and reading. He did not stop reading just because he had been spoken to. In fact he con-tinued to read for a good thirty seconds before he dropped his book down on to his lap, and then his face showed none of the pleasure his jovial 'dearie me's' might have suggested. His high white forehead was creased up like a piece of rejected writing paper and the beginnings of a moustache accentuated the down-turned line of his mouth.

'Christ, Alex. What a fuck-up. I'm sorry.'

'I thought they told you.'

'No, no. I just found out. I mean, I just found out you were here. Alex, I'm sorry.'

'I thought they told you,' Alex said slowly, 'that my name is Harry Joy.'

There was a long silence and Harry Joy stopped smiling.

'Oh come on, Alex, don't be silly.'

'I am not being
silly
. If you think I'm being
silly
, talk to Mrs Dalton.'

'I don't blame you for being mad, Alex. I shouldn't have left you in the Hilton. You're quite right for being angry with me.'

Alex shut his eyes and rubbed his big hand across them. Harry was reminded of Mrs Dalton.

'This is a wonderful place if you are reasonable about it. So don't go around the place saying you're Harry Joy because you'll only get yourself into trouble.'

Harry's stomach gurgled. 'I'm Harry Joy,' he said. His name was his name. His name was more than his name. In short, it was him. It could not be stolen from him.

'You're new here. You don't understand yet.'

'Understand what?'

'You have a primitive attitude towards your name.'

'I don't know what you're talking about. Talk in plain English.'

Alex hesitated, hearing the voice of Alex's employer talking to him, a voice that could no longer be used against him.

'It's a therapy,' he said at last, 'to find the right name. But first you have to give up your old name. You see, when I came here I was really stuck on being Alex. I didn't want to give it up. No damn way was I going to give it up,' he smiled, remembering. 'I didn't want to be Harry Joy. No way was I going to be Harry Joy but, finally, I just stopped fighting. And it worked, you see, the damn thing worked. I'd always hated being Alex.'

'That's not therapy. That's a fuck-up. They called you Harry Joy because they got you by mistake. You're not meant to be here. They meant to get me. They thought you were me.'

Alex smiled and shook his big head. 'Sorry,' he said, 'save your imagination for someone else.'

'It's true.'

'You can’t be destructive with me any more. I'm free of you.'

'You're insane.'

'You can't run my life and pull the strings any more. They've put you in here as a final test, that's obvious. It doesn't fool me. Well, I'm ready for you. You see: you can't affect me.'

'Did they actually
tell
you it was the final test?'

'Well there'd be no point in
telling
me would there. No, of course they wouldn't tell me. I don't have to be
told
.'

'Alex... '

'Please call me Harry.'

'Alright then, Harry. Harry you don't have to be in this hospital. It's not you they wanted. Go home.'

'You want me to go, don't you,' Alex smiled cunningly. 'You don't like having to share a room with Harry Joy,' he laughed. 'Oh, what irony, what irony.'

'Everyone knows you're not Harry Joy,' said Harry, who, in spite of his growing conviction that Alex had been put there to torture him, was rattled.

'Who?'

'Everyone at the office. Your wife. My wife. My children. Aldo... '

'Don't see any of them here.'

'Of course not.'

'All the people
here
know I'm Harry Joy.' He picked up his book to signal the end of the conversation but after a moment or two he put it down again. 'You know,' he said, gazing at the ceiling, 'I'm not at all surprised to see you end up here. I knew you were crazy. All that bullshit about firing clients and Captives and Actors. You've been crazy for years. You've made everybody else crazy.'

'I've been trying to be Good.'

'How naive,' Alex said. 'The most dangerous thing in the world: an untrained mind deciding to seek salvation. The most astonishing thing about you is that you kept your ignorance as long as you did. It's probably a record.'

'All that business about Hell... '

'We're all in Hell, you silly ding-bat,' said Alex, playing his idea of Harry Joy. 'It's a question of making yourself com-fortable. I mean, if you want to be tortured, you've come to the right place. But look... it's
nice
here. We can stay here for
ever
if we want to. They need the money they get in subsidies from the government. They need us, Harry.' He stopped petulantly. 'Fuck it.'

'What?'

'I called you Harry.'

'I didn't hear you.'

'I don't care what you heard. I heard. I called you Harry.'

'Don't worry about it.'

'Of course I worry about it. You don't want me to worry about it. But I've got to worry about it, because I'm happy now. I feel really happy with being Harry Joy. I'm a successful advertising man without the smallest scruple. I've made money, made a name and don't worry about a damn thing. I'm crazy and happy.' He had started to cheer up as he listed the advantages of being Harry Joy. 'I can relax,' he beamed. 'We could get up a darts team and beat the old men.'