Bedlam (15 page)

This time Pinel put a hand on my arm and indicated for me to look.

Matthews had just noticed Mlle. Jouval. In a hushed, amazed, grateful voice he said, “You’re not a fluid-worker—”

The translator, suspecting I think an indecency, glanced at Pinel—who nodded—before he Frenched it, as
travailleur du fluide.

Mlle. Jouval could not have known what Matthews meant, but operating along her own private channel of sympathy, she immediately replied something I couldn’t catch. Her French was unlike any I ever heard. I looked to the translator, but to my amazement Matthews was already answering in his own rapid French. His too I found impenetrable. Learned in prison, I suppose. He was telling her his mother was Huguenot,
“une tisserande Huguenote
avec un fluide magnétique, mais enchainée par son métier à tisser—”
a Huguenot weaver with magnetic power, but chained to her loom, as Poynder later translated it for me. To this, Mlle. Jouval replied that for all his faults, Louis XVI had been a good friend to the Huguenots who still remained in France.

“Trop tard pour maman!”
Matthews sang out in a bright, flat voice.

“Mon papa était Huguenot, et aussi un tisserand,”
Mlle. Jouval now volunteered, dropping her eyes and colouring all the way to her magnificent cheekbones.

“Formidable! Et aussi un ami du Roi?”
Matthews asked, grinning like a cat.

“Pas du tout, monsieur,”
replied the charming creature, yet more abashed.

“Tant pis!”
Matthews trilled, adding in a sudden ferocious growl,
“Ma maman était une tisserande et une ennemie terrible de la Reine!”
Now he pretended to be cast down all pitiable.
“Mais plus terrible de mon papa! Pour ma maman, papa était le fil incorrect, et tout le tissu de sa vie était gâté.”
In Matthews’ father (as Poynder translated for me the next day) his mother had taken hold of the wrong thread and so ruined the fabric of her life.

Their French continuing opaque to me, I fell to thinking. I should have been prepared for Matthews’ ingratitude. Misbehaviour of inmates during visits is common enough and in general not a bad thing: The lunatic appreciates the opportunity to break the rules and the bigwig to witness how tolerant we are. But when Matthews betrayed me before Pinel, I caught a glimpse of his disease and knew that from him all my
kindness
and
consideration—
those precious watchwords of the Tukes and the Pinels—would only ever elicit the bitterest ingratitude. And it wasn’t only myself
I was thinking of—at least I didn’t think so. It was the bigger question of what Matthews was capable of if he was ever let out. And it seemed to me then that all my hopes of him, all my confidence in his goodness, was only ever my own pride in thinking I knew madness better than I did. How could I predict what Matthews would or would not do? Who was I to go against those in a superior position to know the facts? What but sheer arrogance would have me seeking ways to countermand so unambiguous a direction from above?

These sweaty, guilty, anxious reflections were broke off by a nightmarish-familiar voice booming from the doorway. “What ho, Mr. Haslam! Our incontinental visitors could not restrain themselves, what?”

As Pinel’s glittering eyes took in Monro’s mud-spattered boots, the improbable surtout, the broad-brimmed hat, the object of that gaze, after tossing the party a few general words of greeting, turned his full attention upon Mlle. Jouval, and in a voice loud enough for the entire gallery to hear, set about recounting the almighty importance of himself to Bethlem, nay, of three generations of himself, and still another Monro-ling poised in the wings, though that one as yet but seven years old, ha ha ha! I never saw the man work so strainedly to impress. If, like my father, he didn’t know who Pinel was when I’d told him he was coming, he’d since found out. And hearing him now, I could imagine him ha-ha-ha-ing away before the Bethlem subcommittee at his interview for the post, and how they must have said to themselves, Oh, he’s the best man for physician of Bethlem, all right. What he actually says don’t make any sense, but that will be from two generations of the family in the business. It rubs off, they say, and perhaps just as well. The patients will feel he’s practically one of them.

Monro was insisting we all inspect the new shower-baths, and this provided a nice glimpse of the steel in Pinel, who declined to go anywhere until he’d been allowed a private word with
Matthews. And so, the door closing against us, we trooped out into the gallery where there was nothing to do but stand and wait and listen to Monro. Poynder and the French looked on impassive as he babbled, but my father seemed ready to bolt. His greatness sensors having confirmed what he already knew, that Monro was littleness through and through, he was not interested to hear how our physician lives and breathes Bethlem, the blood of the patients practically coursing through his veins he’s so dedicated to their welfare, and yet another entire part of him is an artist devoted to the sublimities of nature and the beauties of the canvas, and on and on, everybody’s eyes gone glassy except, as I say, my father’s, which resembled those of a cornered dog.

But more affecting to me was the discomfort of Mlle. Jouval, whom I would say prolonged mental suffering had left more sensitive to pain, injustice, and folly than she could yet well endure. I’m sure her only protection against Monro was a perfect ignorance of what he was saying. I know I should have shielded her from his grating force, but I was too busy straining to hear through the door what tales Matthews was telling of my destruction of him. And which of us would Pinel—a man in the habit of dining with maniacs, a man ready to declare a hero of the French people every deranged anti-royalist he stumbled upon—which of us would Pinel more likely believe? In the eyes of such a fanatic, any ordinary degree of authority must count as oppression. And the more opportunity he gave Matthews to voice his insubordination, the firmer his conviction I was the oppressor if not the active destroyer around here and fell laughably short of the paragon he’d conjured from reading my book.

Through the door I could hear only enough to know they were talking French. Generally, the conversation was low, the rhythms on
one side more erratic. This was not improbably the confidential talk of two men conspiring together, one of them happening to be insane. And then, though what he said remained muffled, Matthews’ voice grew more strident, the speeches going on longer, and soon after, the door opened and Pinel was stepping out to rejoin us.

“All done your
tête-à-tête
with our favourite republican lunatic, Mr. Pinel?” Monro called to him, by this time too worked up to await a response. Instead, crying, “Very well then! It’s heigh-ho and away to the shower-baths!” he made a buffoonish show of presenting his arm to Mlle. Jouval before setting off with her down the gallery. The rest of us followed after, Pinel on my right side, his translator on my left. As I opened my mouth to ask Pinel how his exchange with Matthews had gone, my father, seizing his main chance, began chattering away in Pinel’s other ear about the history of public visiting at Bethlem, a subject of which he knew nothing beyond what his imagination had done with what he’d picked up from me. The man is a magpie. As for his speech to Pinel, he must have practised it at home.

“I hope you know, M. Pinel,” he began, “you’re lucky to be seeing the place. There hasn’t been open visiting here since you was a child. As for me, I remember those days very well. But public visiting came to be imagined cruel and inhuman, though I understand from my son John here it brought in four hundred pounds a year, which I’m sure the inmates were as pleased to see benefit from as to know they ranked as popular a sight of the town as Bartholomew Fair or the Tower lions. That’s pretty human, I’d say, and hardly cruel. I’m sure they found daily tourists among them a greater source of entertainment than standing on a chair to look out the window at people walking in Moorfields. And when the lunatics put on their antics, it was as much for their own
amusement as the gawkers’. Give ‘em half a chance, and they’ll put them on still. Unfortunately, keepers make a hard audience. To them it’s nothing to interrupt a lunatic’s tranquillity, but God help the lunatic who tries it with them. One moment they’re joking away friendly as you please, the next they’re raining down blows. You can see why my son’s all for more public access. The plain fact is, there’s far worse abuses in here since they’ve kept out the tourists than there ever—”

Here I broke in to ask Pinel how it had gone with Matthews. My father’s envy of anyone not actually in the gutter, even if it’s his own son, makes him a menace in company.

Grateful to be delivered from that familiarity, Pinel was quick to shake his head in a dumb show of disappointment. “M. Mat’hew is convince he is the victim of French intrigue.”

“Yes, he’s a lunatic.”

“Hélas!”

“And not to be credited,” I added redundantly, for something to say before my father broke in again.

At this, Pinel shot me a look of relief.
“Exactement!”

His emotion emboldened me to ask why he’d chose to speak to Matthews in private.

His chin came up, and though he spoke in French he spoke slowly. “Because I fear, M. Haslam, although M. Matthews’ express intention is peace between our nations, his words have potential to do irreparable damage.”

“Who’s listening?” I asked.

The question surprised him. “You, are you not, M. Haslam, for one? Is not listening the foundation of your treatment of the poor sufferers under your care here? Is it not what has put you at the forefront of English practitioners?”

“I suppose so,” I answered with a self-deprecating air. “Unless, I suppose, as Matthews is always assuring me, I listen but don’t hear.”

He smiled, unamused. “In his case,
hélas,
that may be for the best. Five year ago he was a good friend to the Revolution. Now his mind is in ruin. I confess to you one purpose of my visit here was to solicit his release. Now I know he is where he belong.”

As Pinel said these words, we were trudging down the central staircase, he speaking sometimes English, sometimes French, in my right ear, his translator pouring the corresponding English in my left.

“M. Pinel,” I said, startled by my own emotion, which to my surprise (because I thought I agreed with him) was outrage, “why is Matthews in here?”

“As a threat to both our nation, I should think,” he replied, seeming himself surprised I needed to ask.

“How? Why? Ain’t our nations their own greatest threats to each other? Ain’t peace between them what he’s always fought for?”

“In his mind, yes. But is he sane?”

“Perhaps not sane. But why not harmless? Why give credence to madness?”

“No, M. Haslam. I would say the question, in such time as these, must be rather, Could he be a danger?”

“Not according to my lights.”

“But do you know what he’s done?”

“No, do you?”

Like a man saddened to think what it might be, he shook his head.

“Then how do you know what he’ll do?”

“Is that for you and me to know, M. Haslam?” he asked with a smile of admonishment. “Are we legislators? Are we gods?”

These blithe assurances from one who knew nothing but what was good for the Revolution made me too flushed and furious not to assume the guise of an imbecile. We had reached the shower-bath. Like a spectator at a play, I watched Monro despatch Alavoine to select patients for a demonstration. As Pinel, seeing his chance, stepped away to rescue Mlle. Jouval from Monro, I wordlessly drew the mouth-key from my pocket and held it before him.

He stopped and looked down at it resting in the palm of my hand. He then looked very soberly at me.

I explained what it was and how I had come to create it. I mentioned an early expression of interest from Mr. Wright, the owner of a madhouse in Bethnal Green. As I enumerated several refinements that had come about in interesting ways, Pinel picked it up and turned it over in his fingers. When I was done my explanation he replaced it in my palm, saying in a gentle voice, “Still, M. Haslam. A terrible instrument, is it not?”

“Less so than knocking out teeth,” I replied equably, thinking,
Or a guillotine.

“But more so surely than attempting to find out from them why they don’t open their mout’s?”

I laughed at this, imagining a joke, for how could they speak if-

He watched me with cold eyes.

“Will finding out
open them?” I asked, recovering.

“No, but in the course of inquiry, entering wit’ dem a little into their suffering may.”

Here it crossed my mind I was being played like a British puppet as by one of those French magnet-working agents so vexing to
Matthews. Did Pinel imagine we were being great
philosophes
together, as in a
tête-à-tête
at the Académie Française, or was he only toying with me? Surely this was standard French resistance to a straightforward, practical solution? At a loss what to reply, I made a nod to mean I took his meaning perfectly, he need say no more. Yet even to myself the nod felt impatient and dismissive, and I knew he saw it all.

Now Alavoine was back, ushering before him four patients, two men and two women. Cleverly he’d chosen four who not only strip themselves at the slightest provocation to enjoy a cold air bath but are free of the usual licentious habits of such types. Yet on this occasion, as soon as they marked the strange company, the females grew uncharacteristically abashed. Alavoine having sufficient experience of visiting dignitaries not to threaten violence, those two ended up taking their shower-bath wrapped in a sheet. But sheeted or not, the four drooping radishes as they shuffled forward single-file to be hammered by the freezing spray, made so shivering and dejected a sight that our sensitive visitors averted their eyes. The exception was Mlle. Jouval, who seemed unable to tear hers away. By the time Pinel put his arms around her to walk her aside, her body was wracked with sobs.

Fifteen minutes later our visitors, Mlle. Jouval leaning hard on Pinel, were in such a hurry to climb into their carriage and be gone that they couldn’t remember what time their boat left, or indeed what day it left on, though Monro, seeking to assure them they had hours to spare and must come back tomorrow and tour our Dead House, asked two or three times.

As soon as the carriage was out of sight, I wanted nothing but to slip along to my office and mentally review the events of the morning. But Monro expected supper, which he and I took fashionably
late and cold, Sarah having retired to her bed not long past noon. This left me to listen to him babble for five hours while he drank up my red-port. He started out highly pleased, detailing his satisfaction at how everything had gone, asking me repeatedly wasn’t that something and didn’t we show the French bastards. But the more pleased he declared himself, the more he drank, and the more he drank, the more bug-eyed aware he grew that Pinel had spoke no more than a dozen words to him the entire visit. So galling was this realization that a glimpse he’d caught of Pinel turning away Mlle. Jouval from the groundbreaking spectacle of our shower-bath expanded in his mind until he was convinced Pinel had stole her from him. And so torment-ingly did this bizarre persuasion operate upon his sodden brain that by the time Alavoine and I poured him onto his horse, every forecourt window not boarded up had a lunatic face pressed against it to watch our physician gallop off cursing the French nation for the most verminous pack of scoundrels that ever tried the patience of Europe.