Bedlam Read online

  But of course this too I had known all along, or could believe I had, once the retching stopped. And now purged of my error, I

  could move on to the next order of business: accompany my madman—as I had promised him I’d do on the day after he told me why he was in—on a tour of the world paragon of asylums he was on the list to enter. So it was, next day, just after two o’clock, he and I left Old Bethlem for New, in a hackney coach, me regretting I’d gave my word, for I was either still a-tremble from the previous day’s bomb-shell or had a touch of the grippe. I couldn’t keep breakfast down.

  As Matthews preceded me climbing up into the carriage, it struck me that in his jacket, waistcoat, and boots, he could have passed for someone from the street.

  “Were your room ready,” I told him as we settled into our seats, “this could be your ultimate departure from the old place.”

  “I can wait.”

  It wasn’t his first trip out since the time he escaped. Only a few years before, an honour guard of six governors had escorted him to the new site, so he could advise on construction. Now he was watching out his window, eager to know what the world had been up to since then. Gazing past his shoulder, I reflected that London ain’t the town it was twenty years ago, when you could believe you lived in a city built for people, not commerce, and the streets weren’t overrun with rabble from every corner of Britain and the world, all starving for a piece of the pie. What Matthews was thinking I don’t know. Peering at the side of his face as he watched, I saw the absorpt look of a gawker at a raree-show.

  Once we put Blackfriars Bridge behind us, the streets were quieter because of fewer shops. The Southwark poor are more hid away, in buildings more ramshackle and crowded than in town. One area of open ground is St. George’s Fields, like Moorfields but swampier, and faster being swallowed up by houses. New Bethlem has been erected at that southwest juncture of roads through the fields where the old Dog and Duck tavern, more recently a breadmill, once stood. The new building is a conflation of Old Bethlem and St. Luke’s, though behind its intimidating walls, grander and severer than either.

  After the fellow on the gate (not yet our new porter Mr. Hunni-cut, who was still at the old place) had satisfied himself it was really me, he opened the gates, and we rolled up to the entrance. “Do you see how handsome, James,” I said as we climbed down. “And how quiet—” Indeed, as we mounted the steps to the great doors, an unholy hush seemed to emanate from the building.

  “Jack, let’s not play games. We both know how much you hate this place.”

  “I only hate what its proponents would pretend it stands for. Otherwise I’m grateful to have an opportunity to show you the real effects of your architectural work. They listened to you, James. It’s more than they did for me.”

  After a wondering welcome from an underling to Mr. Wallet, the man sidled away to leave us standing in the vast, cold foyer. For something to interest Matthews before we went up, I drew aside velvet curtains to reveal Cibber’s statues of Melancholy and Raving Madness. Seeing that Melancholy in the furbishment had been given a loincloth, I pointed it out to Matthews, who only shook his head, saying, “The new propriety, Jack. But no more absurd than old Cibber last century doing no monument to Nuisance, as the principal qualifier for residence in here.”

  Next we ascended marble stairs to the first floor, where I noticed with bitter satisfaction how truly chill the air was, even up there. Bitter because, though I’d spared no pains gathering information on modern heating systems to inform the governors’ decision, they held their meeting without telling me. Satisfaction because the steam method they chose—the cheapest tendered—confined its benefits to the basement, where the boilers were.

  “What time is it, Jack?”

  “Nearly four.”

  “And mealtime four-thirty here too?”

  “Yes, same here—”

  “What say we break bread with Peg Nicholson?”

  “James,” I teased him, “you know as well as I do bread’s precisely what Peg won’t eat, on principle, until the King hands over his crown.”

  “Cake does she eat?”

  “When she can get it—”

  “Oh, she can get it—” And he held up a small, greasy, newspaper-wrapped oblong, tied with a string.

  After I located a female keeper to inform her we’d need an extra meal tray to Peg’s room, we toured the women’s wing, the only one as yet fully occupied. While we walked through the upper gallery inhaling fresh plaster, I provided a positive commentary. “Notice, James, as you made it clear to the committee were needed, not only many more windows for admitting much glorious light but several that reach low enough to the floor so inmates can enjoy the view without climbing up on these chairs, which instead can be used for the purpose they were designed for: sitting in and looking out.” Here I indicated three female lunatics slumped on wood chairs before the windows, one dozing, one sunk in a fixed stare, the third eyeing us with alarm while nasally mutilating a Bach air.

  “And glazed windows throughout—” I heard myself say as I pushed open a cell door to reveal Alice James crouched shivering naked on the floor by her bed beneath an unglazed window—”by springtime, at the latest—See, James? Iron bedsteads—”

  He was helping Alice onto her bed. When he next drew a small blanket from a high shelf near where we stood and draped it over her scabby shoulders, she whispered, “Thank’ee, Jimmy—You’re here now—?”

  “Not yet, Alice—”

  After goodbyes to Alice, we proceeded on our way, I assuring Matthews of warm rooms (once all the glazing was in), warm baths (once the steam-heating system was working, or replaced), communal dining (once the dining room was completed), “…with a keeper, James, at your elbow to cut your meat—”

  At meat we reached the open doorway of Peg Nicholson, whom, from the look on her face when she lifted it from her needlework to see who said it, the word revolted. Though I’d heard she was as much a favourite here as at the old place (except now the general belief was it was the Prince Regent she once attacked, and most wished she’d succeeded), from the shocking appearance of her that day, she was wasting away. Gaunt and pale, except, her face being turned away, visible at the back of her jaw was a great yellow-black contusion, like a spider bite that had nipped a blood vessel.

  “Peg,” I said, fearing the drastic loss of weight meant a cancer. “Are you ailing?”

  “Not a bit of it,” she tartly responded, turning back round as if to face me, but it was Matthews her eyes went to. “I am only pining. Royalty does pine, you know. I understand that now.”

  “Like anybody else, I should think—?” I murmured, reaching for her pulse.

  Her eyes remaining on Matthews, she did not resist. As I counted the beats, I glanced over my shoulder in time to see him pull the string and unfold the greasy newspaper to reveal two crumbled pieces of short-cake, crying, “Happy Birthday, Peg!”

  “Why, Jim!” she said, going all shy. “You remembered the Queen’s birthday!”

  “Peg’s eighty-two today, Jack,” he muttered, swooping the short-cake in under her nose.

  “Happy Birthday, Peg,” I said.

  She was shaking her head smilingly at the gift.

  “Are you refusing shortbread now too, Peg,” I asked, “in your pining?”

  Already rewrapping it, Matthews said at my ear, “Tell us the time, Jack.”

  “Twenty-five to five—Why?”

  My answer was the peremptory entrance of a female keeper I never saw before, a beetle-browed young woman with a pimply complexion, carrying in each hand a tray containing meat and bread and a bowl of carrot broth. Greeting Peg with brusque endearments, she deposited one of the trays on the bed next to her. Holding the second, she hesitated between me and Matthews as the lunatic to receive it. To spare her embarrassment, I pointed at him. She duly set it down near the foot of Peg’s bed, where he sat. A curtsy and she was gone, but in the gallery as she left she said something to a male,
who responded obscenely, and when I looked round, the keeper Davies was filling the doorway in his usual insolent manner.

  I glanced at Matthews, who looked at me soberly before he looked to Peg. Following his eyes, I saw that hers were fixed in fright on Davies. “You’re not needed yet, Mr. Davies,” I let him know. “We’re old friends here. I’ll inform you when we’re ready to leave.”

  “She must eat,” Davies replied with a sullen look.

  “That’s correct. Now leave us till she’s finished her meal.”

  “By your pardon, sir, I’ll only need to come back. Because she won’t eat.”

  Now the ugliness of the situation was revealed. “Let me help you, Peg,” I murmured and hardly knowing what I did, spooned up a little broth with a trembling hand and raised it to her mouth, which she pressed firmly shut, her head slowly shaking No, her eyes once again on Matthews.

  I set the spoon in the bowl a moment and flexed my fingers, as if they were stiff. “Why not?” I said.

  “His Majesty’s cooks are preparing a state feast at the Palace for the day of my investiture,” she explained, seeming to address Matthews. “I’m loath to spoil my appetite.”

  “But stopping eating,” I said, “will cause it to fade away altogether—And so will you.”

  “Because I can’t trust his Majesty’s cooks I must only pretend to eat. What good are tasters if the effects of the poison are slow?”

  “Better eat, in that case, before he arrives, to stay robust and alert and that way foil his schemes.”

  Once more I lifted the spoon to her mouth. Once more it clamped shut. Really, what was the use? Why was I yet again in the position of trying to reason with a lunatic? I looked at Matthews, and he was watching me. I lowered the spoon. Sighing, I said, “Peg, you must eat. If you don’t eat, you’ll die.”

  “This nation will die,” she replied, with a meaning look at me, “if I don’t soon get my crown.”

  Davies was still in the doorway. The menace of his energy seemed to flood the room. “By your leave, sir—” Again I looked round at him, at his beefy, brutal face. “Your key does work, sir,” he cajoled me. “She’d be dead two weeks ago without it, or long since have all her teeth smashed out. She’ll take the broth no trouble if we use the key. Before it’s cold—”

  I looked at Peg and seemed to see a beseeching expression in her eyes. She must, I reflected, be used to it by now.

  “If you would, sir—” Davies said.

  When I nodded, he was immediately in the room, followed hard by the keeper Hester, who must have been out there waiting too, and slipped the spoon from my unresisting hand. Being for my eyes, their performance was a professional display. Already Davies was nestled next to Peg, on the side opposite her tray. As she sat paralysed by terror, her needlework fallen to the floor, he, like some dreadful nephew, put his arm around her neck and pulled her to him with his left arm while with the sausage fingers of his meaty right he reached up before her to squeeze her jaws at their hinges, a pressure you’d think would cause them to yield immediately, for by her expression those bruises—no spider’s doing—were extremely tender to the touch. But she wouldn’t open her teeth, or wouldn’t open them far enough, though from her whimpering and writhing you could hear and see too clearly the pain she was in. That’s when the mouth-key materialized in Hester’s free hand, and Davies giving the anguished Peg’s jaw a harder squeeze still, one so painful she cried out, the key was slipped between her teeth and turned, the steel disk neatly opening her mouth—neatly, that is, except for the obvious excruciating agony of it. Now Hester stood over her, tipping in spoonfuls of broth, and each time Peg refused to swallow, Davies pressed her nose shut with the hand no longer required to squeeze open her jaw, affording her no choice. Choke, gag, splutter, but often enough gulp the liquid down.

  In five minutes, though it seemed as many hours, the bowl was empty and Davies and Hester were gone from the room. The whole time they’d been upon her, whenever her eyes weren’t pressed shut in anguish she held mine, as if to say, How can you let them do this to me? But as soon as they were gone, she refused, or was unable, to look at me, as if I had betrayed her beyond the limits of her comprehension. Her distress was obvious and extreme, her hands fluttering helplessly in her lap, trembling and turning as she mumbled a mad litany of royal deliverance.

  “Jack—” It was Matthews. I would say I had forgot he was there had I not just watched Peg’s ordeal in large part through his eyes.

  “What, James?”

  “You don’t make people talismans.”

  “Lunatics need to eat,” I said quietly. I couldn’t look at him.

  “You’ve fed her force.”

  My gaze was lowered to my lap, where my hands were trembling as wildly almost as Peg’s. Sometimes I have thought I’d go mad with not knowing what to do for these people.

  “Jack?”

  “What?”

  “We’re men and women in a condition of mental torment. You must treat us humanely or not at all.”

  When I made no answer to this, he kept on. “Jack, what was it Sir Archy used to say to The Middleman after they would do their worst with me?”

  I looked at him.

  “Jack, you do know, because it’s in the book you wrote about me.”

  “‘He is the talisman,’“ I dully answered.

  “Yes, that’s it. And he knew what he spoke of. I am your talisman, just as Peg is. By your use of us you defend your power. That’s the other reason I’m in that you and I have come here to learn. In your own scrabble after immortality, you have done to us exactly as Liverpool and Co. have done to you, no matter what the sugar-candied medical terms you might put it in for your own consumption.”

  “James,” I said, needing to take a deep breath to continue, “I’ve only ever tried to do my professional best—”

  “Your professional best,” he jeeringly retorted. “And to be seen by the world to be doing it. But do you know what my life has taught me, Jack? A man’s best is not always the right thing, or enough, if it ever was. And sooner or later there comes a time he must walk away.”

  To have, I suppose, something to occupy my hands, I had picked up Peg’s needlework from the floor. It was a likeness of a coat of arms, a canary yellow crown against a white shield, with round about the crown a charge of dolphins leaping out of green waves, two of the dolphins as yet stitched in outline only. What right did Matthews have to tell me my best was not enough and I should walk away, when he believed his own best had saved two nations and he could never forgive his friend Williams for doing just that: walking away? I was thinking this as, my God, he went on talking. I was being hectored by a lunatic I had done everything for I could do, short of ruin myself.

  “Your best, Jack, has too long done us all an injustice. As soon as it sinks in how great, that’s when the genuine suffering will start for you—”

  What happened next I don’t know. I guess I threw myself at him. I can still hear Peg’s cries, which passed into my skull like knives into cheese. I remember the curious mixture of satisfaction, shock, and terror on Matthews’ face as my hands closed upon his throat. I remember I had every intention to kill him if I could. But Davies must have been loitering nearby if not directly outside the door, for he it was who quickly dragged me off. I suppose I fought him too, because next thing I remember I was in a strait-waistcoat, alone in a brand-new cell, rocking and weeping.

  CORNWALL

  WESTMORELAND, JAMAICA

  MARCH 5TH, 1816

  Dearest Jamie,

  Mr. Lewis has lost no time making changes and doesn’t care a jot they’re spectacularly failing to recommend him to the white planters. Mr. Scrubbs the book-keeper is already gone, dismissed for his mistreatment of our slaves. This is a consequence of the fact Mr. Lewis, as examining magistrate, has accepted the word of five Negroes against that of one white man (namely the agent, Mr. Wilson, who’s still grumbling about the affront to his honour). It’s a decision unheard
of on this island, where the word of one white man is normally good against that of a dozen blacks.

  Among other reforms initiated at Cornwall by Mr. Lewis: The use of the cart-whip is absolutely forbidden. No Negro is otherwise to be struck or punished except by express order of the new overseer Mr. Sorley and then only after a cooling-down period of twenty-four hours. Records are to be kept of all punishments. A white man who has sexual relations with the wife of a slave faces instant dismissal. In addition, though Jamaica law provides the Negroes every second Saturday off work and here at Cornwall they already have every Saturday off Mr. Lewis has doubled their holidays by adding to the legislated three days at Christmas, three more days: Good Friday and the second Fridays in July and October. July 9th is his own birthday. October is the month of the Duchess of York’s (a particular favourite with him). In honour of her, each Cornwall pickaninny-mother will receive a scarlet girdle with a silver medal for every child born, which she must wear on feast days.

  In light of the fact our Negroes are still slaves, these may seem paltry measures, but in this place at this time to blacks and whites they are, respectively, joy- and dread-inducing initiatives. When you add to them Mr. Lewis’s orders for the building of a new Negro lying-in hospital, the sum is a uniquely enlightened regime. No wonder the other planters say he’s as bad as the Methodists: a radical menace to the peace of the island. Jim, though Mr. Lewis’s over-affectionate attentions make him nervous (I can see why), is greatly impressed by our employer’s manifest concern for the well-being of the Negroes and now says he wants to be—in that regard—exactly like him.