Asylum (8 page)

“You don’t know them.”

“Oh yes I do.”

“Then you know they can do anything they want and nobody can tell them otherwise. You can’t. I can’t. That would just be it.”

“Will you come to the pavilion today?”

“I don’t know.”

She walked back and forth on the path. Edgar set his elbows on his knees, leaned forward, and gazed at the ground. I believe I know what he was thinking. He was coming to a decision. Stella stood with her back to him, again staring up through the apple tree to the Wall beyond. She heard him abruptly get to his feet and murmur, “Charlie.” She picked up her basket and set off down the path toward the house.

She left the basket on the kitchen table and went upstairs. The house was empty. Brenda had taken the car to do some shopping. She threw herself onto the bed and lay there staring at the ceiling.

Ten minutes later she sat up. She was feeling under the bed for her shoes when she heard footsteps coming rapidly up the stairs.

“Charlie, is that you?”

It wasn’t Charlie. To her utter astonishment Edgar was standing in the doorway.

“What are you doing!” she whispered. “My mother-in-law is staying with us!”

She began to laugh. She imagined Brenda confronting Edgar in the middle of the morning on the upstairs landing as he emerged from the master bedroom, buttoning his trousers. Still laughing, she crossed the bedroom and closed the door.

She was
amused
that he came to her bedroom?

She was amused, horrified, excited. Risk excited her, I realized, situations of risk. He wasted no time, stripping his clothes off, the blue shirt and yellow corduroys, the patient’s uniform. She quickly slipped out of her own clothes. Just the thought of it: here he was in her home, in her bedroom, she was defiling the bed with him, though I don’t believe she was aware of the spike of aggression that drove the sex: she was dealing with Max that morning, as well as Edgar.

She lay there in his arms, their clothes in a heap on the floor at the end of the bed. By the clock on her bedside table it was ten to eleven. How desperately I must want to be caught, she thought, to do this, but the thought was not accompanied by any feeling of alarm, it was the calm and tranquil voice of truth. She said she realized that regardless of the cost there is an impulse in us that cries out to declare our truth. Or destroy ourselves. She certainly felt it then; what pleasure it would give her to announce to Max, to me, to all of us that she loved Edgar Stark and found it intolerable to have to conceal it! Though she was not so abandoned as to allow this feeling to surface for more than a few seconds; pragmatic concerns are never far from the thoughts of the secret lover. Then she heard a car in the drive and all her vague ideas of exposure vanished: It must be Brenda returning from her shopping expedition, hours before she was expected. Edgar sat up and she told him they had to get dressed,
she’d heard the car. They stared at each other for a second then scrambled out of bed, laughing like a pair of wicked schoolchildren.

Brenda was coming in through the front door as Stella came downstairs.

“Too hot, my dear,” she called, “I simply cannot function in this heat. Oh, and there was nowhere to park, and some dreadful little man kept honking his horn at me, so I thought I’d just forget the whole thing, come home and get cool and relax.”

“What a good idea. Shall I put the kettle on?”

“A cup of tea would be heaven.”

She went upstairs. Stella paused at the kitchen door. She heard the bedroom door close. Then Edgar was coming down with his boots in his hand like a character in a farce, and she ran ahead of him across the kitchen and opened the back door to make sure no one was in the yard.

She turned to him and saw that under his arm he had a bundle of Max’s clothes.

“What are you taking those for?” she whispered.

He put a finger to her lips, then walked boldly across the yard. She went back upstairs. The cupboard door was open, and clothes were missing from several hangers on Max’s side. She heard Brenda coming out of her room. She was making the bed for the second time that morning, this time with clean sheets, when Brenda spoke from the doorway.

“Would you mind if I ran a bath? One gets so sticky.”

“Of course not,” she said, not turning.

She went downstairs and sat at the kitchen table. Why had he taken Max’s clothes? What could he possibly want with Max’s clothes? What on earth was he up to?

Max came home from the hospital just after one, so there were four for lunch. Stella became more animated when she felt under pressure, and she most certainly felt under pressure that day. Even a couple of large gins could not reduce the magnitude in her mind of the risk they’d run. She couldn’t begin to imagine
the consequences if they’d been caught. So she gaily served cold meat and new potatoes with butter and chives, and a tomato salad with a garlic dressing, and energetically pursued a semblance of normality. Max was quiet and preoccupied throughout, and when it was over he asked her to bring his coffee to the study.

He was at his desk. He turned toward her as she came in, and his expression provoked a fresh flare of anxiety in her. She was very much on the defensive, and her response was to assume a blithe unconcern; but she was afraid they’d been seen and reported, and this seemed confirmed when he said: “What dealings do you have with Edgar Stark?”

“I see him in the vegetable garden most days,” she said, frowning slightly as though attempting to fathom the source of this unusual inquiry. “Why?”

“Has he ever come into the house?”

Has he ever come into the house! The bed was still warm with the impress of his body, the sheets in the laundry basket stained and damp!

“Only the time he brought Charlie in.”

Max sighed. He took off his spectacles and rubbed his eyes.

“There’s no doubt now that alcohol’s being smuggled into the hospital. The nuisance of it is, the attendants get so badly rattled. We have to be seen to be taking it very seriously indeed.”

“Is it out of the question that an attendant brought it in?”

She was unsure of the wisdom of putting this to him. If she was under any suspicion it would look like a diversionary tactic. If on the other hand she was not suspected it would be a perfectly logical question. She watched him closely. He did not lift his head. She knew she was safe. For now.

“It’s not out of the question but it’s not an idea Jack’s eager to pursue just at the moment. It’s all so bloody political.”

“Are you looking for a scapegoat?” She was deliberately pressing her advantage. “That’s not very fair.”

“Of course we don’t want a scapegoat. Nor do we want to accuse anyone until we’re certain.”

“It hasn’t come from this house.”

“It might have come from the cricket pavilion, I suppose.”

“It might,” said Stella. There was a pause.

“Walk over there with me,” he said. “I’ll get my keys.”

His keys. Upstairs, on his dressing table. Or perhaps in the pocket of his linen jacket. In the cupboard. She sat there in the study and waited for him to come down. His desk was neat, only the morning’s mail and a couple of files on top, all his pens and pencils and papers sorted and consigned to their various drawers. The study window looked out onto a patch of lawn bordered by flower beds, and beyond it the pine trees that hid the house from the road. On the bookshelves, stacks of psychiatric journals and textbooks.

“Stella.”

She came out into the hall. He was on the upstairs landing, leaning over the top banister.

“Did it go to the cleaners?”

“What?”

“My linen jacket.”

Think fast, Stella. Get it right. Save the situation. “No. Can’t you find it?”

He went back into the bedroom. She climbed the stairs. He had his back to her as she came in. He was going through his suits and jackets on their hangers. He didn’t turn around.

“This is very odd. I’m missing a shirt and a pair of trousers too.”

“Nothing’s gone to the cleaners this week.”

“I had my estate keys in the pocket. Where’s Charlie?”

“I don’t think he would take your clothes.”

“Nor do I.”

He sat on the side of the bed frowning at his fingernails. Stella leaned against the door frame. The sunlight streamed in across her dressing table. She knew she was about to lose everything, and in a way she didn’t care. She was curious to see how it worked itself out. His accusation was imminent and she had no idea what she was going to say.

“He must have got in here.”

“Who?”

“Edgar Stark.”

“That’s impossible. How could he, with me and Brenda here? Let me see if Charlie’s in the garden.”

He was sitting with his hands in his lap, frowning. A man as organized as he was, a man so much in control of his world: such a man did not lose a shirt and a pair of trousers and a linen jacket with the estate keys in the pocket.

Stella darted downstairs and out through the front door. They weren’t back from lunch yet. She ran through the vegetable garden and into the conservatory, where Edgar’s white jacket hung from a nail by the door. She tore open an empty seed packet and with a stub of pencil scrawled him a note. She stuffed the note into the pocket of the jacket and left it sticking out so he wouldn’t miss it.

As she crossed back to the house she saw the working party appear at the end of the drive. There was no more she could do except pray that Edgar would see her note and find an opportunity to get rid of the clothes. She met Max in the hall. She told him that Charlie wasn’t in the garden and probably wouldn’t be back for hours now.

“I don’t think Charlie would touch my clothes,” he said again, and went back into the study.

She stood there in the doorway. “What are you going to do?”

He was beside his desk, the phone in his hand, facing her. “Put me through to Block Three.” This he said into the receiver as they stood there gazing at each other.

The news came that evening. Brenda came down at five and Stella told her about the missing keys and clothes, and they went into the living room and each had a large gin. Stella couldn’t keep still. Her anxiety was of course explicable in terms of sympathetic concern for her husband.

“Max will cope, my dear,” said Brenda.

“Of course he will. But one does worry.”

They’d both had another large drink by the time Max came home from the hospital. Brenda was still in the living room and
Stella was in the kitchen making dinner. She heard the front door open and came out into the hall. His face was closed and angry. She went down the hall to him.

“What is it?”

He didn’t look at her properly his eyes merely flickered to hers, then slid away. In the living room he stood in front of the empty fireplace and delivered his news.

“Edgar Stark has absconded.”

And at that moment the siren began its awful singsong wail.

This is what we think must have happened: Edgar told John Archer after lunch that they wanted him in the chaplain’s garden, and went off by himself. He retrieved Max’s clothes from where he’d hidden them in the woods at the end of the Raphaels’ garden. Wearing Max’s clothes he had then made his escape, keeping well away from the road until he was clear of the estate, and then, by thumb or bus or train, he found his way to London. I was not at all happy to hear how lax security was on the outside work parties, but the question that most disturbed me—and Jack too—was what Max had been doing in the hours between the discovery of the missing clothes and the discovery of Edgar’s absence, close to five?

This was an interval of
almost three hours
. The search of Edgar’s room and a subsequent search of the entire ward had yielded nothing, but Max hadn’t told Jack what was going on. If he had looked for Edgar in the chaplain’s garden immediately,
and discovered his absence, the alarm would have been raised very much sooner and we’d have quickly picked him up.

But Max was apparently so determined to get to the bottom of it all before he saw Jack that he made mistakes, and the most significant was this failure to establish Edgar’s whereabouts during the afternoon. After returning to the hospital and checking with the staff in Block 3 that nothing had turned up in his absence, he went to his office. He then, apparently for no good reason, waited
another half hour
before calling Jack. By that time the working parties were due back in, and John Archer had already discovered that his patient was missing. I was told at once, and without delay I went to Jack’s office. When Max telephoned, I was with Jack, and he already knew that Edgar had gone. What Jack did not know, and what it must have galled and humiliated Max to have to tell him—and this of course accounts for much of Max’s behavior that afternoon—was that the escaped patient was wearing his, Max’s, clothes. I certainly had no sympathy for him; he had allowed my patient to escape. And Edgar, for all his sexual bravado, still needed me. He was a sick man.

Jack and I decided not to use the siren immediately, reluctant to arouse the countryside to the escape of a patient until we had to. Better to organize a search party and mount a quick sweep of the estate, try and pick him up, before he got too far. We were both aware there were two things a patient needed to abscond successfully, clothing and money, and one of those at least he had secured. For two hours attendants fanned out across the estate. They searched the farm and the marsh, and they penetrated some way into the forest. Dusk was coming on. They didn’t know how much of a lead Edgar had. No more than three hours, they believed, but three hours was enough for a resourceful man with clothes and money. Nobody knew whether he had money; nobody but Stella, of course, who had more than once given him cash, enough certainly to get him to London. In the meantime we could only hope that he was still out there somewhere, stumbling blindly cross-country, and as such an easy
quarry for the local police, who were informed of the escape when after two hours he had not been found.