John McPake and the Sea Beggars Read online

  ‘You never can tell,’ said the Tempter, ‘your brother might be here, stranger things happen. Unwell like yourself and compulsorily detained. They’ll certainly put you in the same ward.’

  ‘Statistically unlikely,’ said the Academic, ‘although the instances of two siblings receiving a diagnosis of psychosis are ten times greater than the prevalence rates in the population at large.’

  ‘Rejoice, you are going to meet up with all your old pals, windae lickers, schizos, the catatonically depressed who, like you, never speak, preferring to hug their knees and rock backwards and forwards. Those enjoying florid, manic episodes, all those Sons of God, Virgin Marys, the occasional Ayatollah, and the saddos who just cry all the time. A fair bit of incontinence, don’t you think? Wards awash with the piss of the lost. Happy days, John. Remember to lock your things in the bedside cabinet. A lot of thieving bastards around here. I blame the addicts, what do you think, Academic?’

  ‘Drug-and alcohol-induced psychosis is a well-documented phenomenon; the symptoms tend to disappear when the substance leaves the system. More interesting was Nurse MacDonald’s reference to the Advanced Statement. Things are clearly changing after the belated implementation of the Mental Health (Care and Treatment) (Scotland) Act 2003. It is now incumbent on the psychiatrist to treat patients in accordance with any written and witnessed statement of preferred intervention compiled when the patient is in remission from the illness.’

  ‘Shut up, Academic, you are just boring.’

  ‘Did you hear the one about the mental patient who was congratulated for saving a pal on the ward who was trying to drown himself in the bath. Sadly he went back to the ward where he was found dead with a rope round his neck. The saviour explained, “Oh no, he didn’t kill himself, I hung him up to dry.”’

  ‘Good one, Jester! Like that, John?’

  ‘There’s better … Hello. Welcome to the Psychiatric Hotline.

  If you are obsessive-compulsive, please press 1 repeatedly.

  If you are co-dependent, please ask someone to press 2.

  If you have multiple personalities, please press 3, 4, 5, and 6.

  If you are paranoid-delusional, we know who you are and what you want. Just stay on the line so we can trace the call.

  If you are schizophrenic, listen carefully and a little voice will tell you what number to press.

  If you are manic-depressive, it doesn’t matter which number you press. No one will answer.

  If you are anxious, just start pressing numbers at random.

  If you are phobic, don’t press anything.

  If you are anal retentive, please hold.’

  ‘Brilliant, Jester. You certainly press my buttons. What about yours, John? Come now, no need to be upset.’

  John said nothing to the psychiatrist who seemed admirably tolerant of silence. When asked if he felt drowned out by the Voices, he nodded. When asked if life in the hostel was manageable he made a seesaw gesture with his hands and his interlocutor smiled. When asked about the place of alcohol in his life he looked at the ground. When asked about suicidal ideation he shrugged, confirming that he frequently thought of ending his life. When asked if he had decided on a preferred method he nodded once and looked out of the window into the hospital grounds where a middle-aged couple were arguing. The man eventually stormed off leaving his partner, transfixed, next to the roses. She put a hand to her face. When asked if he still thought obsessively about his brother he stared back intently in case the psychiatrist knew something. A single bird pecked on the windowsill.

  The Voices convened their own case conference. As principle Narrator I agreed to take meticulous notes, verbatim if I could keep up.

  ‘Lock him up, throw away the key. Let him rot beyond the pale of his own making. Give him false hope through the transitory respite of medication and then fry what little brain remains with ECT.’

  ‘I believe that laughter therapy produces results. Let me tell him jokes until he wets himself.’

  ‘We must keep his spirits up by giving him hope, I can dangle a few teasing possibilities before him, come up with the odd sign that his brother is alive and well. You know, the occasional message from the TV, the odd ambiguous headline in the Evening News.’

  ‘And then dash his hopes, trample on them, strangle them at birth. Let him howl at the moon; let him languish in the special purgatory reserved for losers. And then, after an appropriate period of time, kill him. I will be his anointed executioner, I know which lever, which finely tuned, subtle, decisive insult will open the trapdoor. What I will say is my secret and mine alone. Something more terrible than he has ever imagined. Something that will destroy what vestigial self-esteem remains.’

  John was led to Ward 5 by the charge nurse, a burly man who had a word for every patient they passed in the corridor. ‘All right, Joe?’ ‘Looking smart, Mary.’ ‘The Hearts lost again.’ ‘Watch that tray, health and safety! Remember?’

  Three of the four beds were occupied but no one was awake. The mound under the sheets of the bed nearest the window was particularly small, hardly big enough to cover a human being.

  ‘They’re admitting pets now,’ said the Jester. ‘It’s all these depressed black dogs. I blame Churchill myself. Even gerbils have mental health problems these days, gerbilmania I think they call it. Lemmings are the worst of all, desperate to kill themselves. I blame Cliff Richard.’

  The Bastard managed to smile sardonically but said nothing.

  ‘They had a cow in here the other day, hoof rot and udderly depressed. And a horse tortured by self-hatred, almost nagged itself to death.’

  ‘That could be him,’ said the Tempter, ‘in the corner fast asleep’. Tired and unable to resist, John stopped at the bed he was passing and pulled back the covers before the nurse firmly intervened. An elderly man with startled eyes and tousled gray hair stared uncomprehendingly before lapsing back onto the pillow.

  A nurse approached his bed with a syringe so large she could barely lift it. She eventually hoisted it above her head like a huntsman aiming at a single strange bird flying high. As she pushed the huge piston plunger a noxious opaque liquid leaked from its tip and splashed onto the floor. John cowered.

  There had been a delay, a backlog, a jam. Requessen’s lackey had been furious and smacked his sword round the neck of the soldier who had only been trying to explain that the carters could not cope with the numbers of the dead. As a consequence the corpses were now intruding into the execution space and making things very awkward.

  With his hands still roped together Johannes had been returned to the waiting shed. He could make out three or four other figures cowering on the far side but felt no inclination to join them. If it was his last night on earth he wanted to remain focussed; he had a lot of reflection to undertake, a lot of memories to sort.

  To an extent, Michel had been adopted by the village and Johannes had benefited from the unspoken division of labour undertaken by his neighbours. Michel would wander into their homes and was fed, allowed to play with the dogs, collect the eggs. They would take him to the harvest where he played among the ricks, always failing to catch the mice scurrying through the stubble, and was put in charge of the wine, staggering under the weight of the flagon when summoned by the men to the field.

  One late evening beneath a bright moon Maurits had carried the exhausted boy home in his arms and gently handed him over. Although fast asleep Michel was clutching a reed whistle made for him by one of the labourers.

  Not wanting to confront a related memory, Johannes looked into the gloom of the holding shed where one of his unknown companions was talking in his sleep in a high-pitched voice, spouting syllables and single words with a fluency which belied their nonsensical content. Johannes ground his fist into the palm of his other hand. ‘Come on, come on,’ he told himself and then surrendered to the long-repressed flow of recollection that tumbled like seawater over a breeched dyke.

  Only reluctantly had he let Kenaut the sorcerer wo
man over the threshold. The nearest apothecary was several days’ ride away. Less than a year later they came for her in the night and hanged her as a witch. She was essentially harmless, a simple soul who meant well and spent most waking hours gathering rue and rosemary from the riverbank. She was endlessly teased by the young men in the village. Johannes had always given her bread when she arrived at the door offering blessings and faded herbs. Antonia had always disapproved. She was beyond disapproval now. There had been no alternative but to light the room with burning faggots. The smoke clung to the ceiling in folds and to an extent hid the sweet smell of disease that had become all too familiar in the village.

  Kenaut and the pastor had made an odd couple at the bedside. Despite his tender years Michel knew full well what was happening. He spent the whole day running fast in ever-tighter circles in the yard as if by making himself dizzy and kicking up the dust he might faint and then wake to find his mother back baking bread and scolding him. He emitted a high-pitched whine as he birled mindlessly, the memory of which made Johannes flinch. His exorcism was only partially complete; there was more.

  Witnessed by a single crow, Cornelius and Balthasar dug the grave and lowered her in.

  Johannes noted with ironic satisfaction that he had, in fact, found the courage to face the second worst event of his life. The man at the end of the shed exhaled unevenly as if his chest was being pressed at regular intervals by a large force. An intimation of what lay ahead thought Johannes.

  He steadied himself to put his fingers into the deepest wound of all, the abduction of his son. He couldn’t do it. The best he could manage was to cling to the same far-fetched hopes that had sustained him on his shared journey from the village to imminent execution in a strange landscape. Perhaps his captors would treat Michel well, perhaps he would escape, perhaps he would be adopted by a kind patron, apprenticed even, and perhaps someday he might even mourn the father who had given his life to find him. All hope was suddenly extinguished as he saw Michel’s open jaws trapped in mid-scream.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  The ECT room was full: various technicians, the anaesthetist, the psychiatrist of course, the nurse who had settled John onto the ward and several medical students for whom this was a completely new experience.

  ‘What did the condemned man have for his last meal?’ asked the Bastard in a Southern drawl. ‘No word from the Governor yet? No last minute reprieve? No pleas in mitigation? No new evidence? But he’s facing reselection isn’t he? Doesn’t want to be seen as weak. Not in this state. Is Fox News ready to rock and roll? The crowd outside’s getting restless. Are the witnesses ready to be taken in, remember to give the widow the best seat? She’s looking forward to a good fry. Eyeballs popping out, that sort of thing, the smell of burning flesh. Closure really, isn’t it? Do you want the chaplain, John? It would pass the time.’

  ‘A controversial but effective treatment,’ intoned the Academic. ‘Pioneered in Switzerland in the 1930s. Arguably preferable to the Darwin chair used in the 1800s. Patients would be strapped into a chair that was then rotated at speed until blood oozed from the mouth, ears and nose. Surprisingly, many successful cures were attributed to this method.’

  ‘Fancy that, John, a dervish whirl on the carousel for the mad? You wouldn’t want to get blood and snot on all these nice people though … ’

  ‘In the 1940s, doctors Kennedy and Anchel reported in the Psychiatric Quarterly that they considered a patient sufficiently regressed when he wet and soiled or acted and talked like a child of four … ’

  ‘Happy times, get the nappies out … ’

  By 1942 85% of all psychiatric institutions in the United States used some form of shock treatment for psychosis, depression, mania and homosexuality … ’

  ‘That sounds better, Gay Boy … ’

  John sought comfort in the eyes of the ward sister who had monitored him since his arrival. He wanted her to hold his hand but the straps had already been tightened.

  Diddums … You’re regressing already and it hasn’t started yet.

  John wanted to scream, to smash his own head, pummel his skull, gouge out his eyes, anything to silence the alien Voices that had pushed him to the edges of his own consciousness, uninvited squatters, invaders, life-sucking parasites. He pushed hard against the straps restraining his wrists.

  The IV drips were attached with the minimum of fuss.

  ‘This is good, up until the 1950s before the use of muscle relaxants and anaesthesia 20% of patients suffered compression fractures of the spine … ’

  John was reluctant to open his eyes in case the sunshine went. His whole consciousness was suffused with light. He listened but heard no Voices apart from mine. He felt warm and could watch the progress of the motes on his inner eye as they floated airily in the light. He was back in bed with his wife in the early days of their marriage, lying half awake just happy to be in each other’s presence. Soon the clock radio would come on. Soon the cockerel from the Van Erst’s would throw back its head and announce the day. They lay spooned together his hand resting between her legs with no urgent sexual intent, just an intimacy full of promise.

  It was Sunday, no reason to get up, no real plans, a walk perhaps and some essay marking later. It was the Sabbath; the church bell from Crousen Village had started up its early competition with their own. Although the pastor forbade work he would nevertheless inspect the dye batch put down last night. He waited for the Observer to drop through the letterbox and the inevitable cajoling, affectionate debate about who would retrieve it and bring it back to bed. He realised his legs were trapped under the weight of the cat that slept with them despite his protests, ‘Him or me,’ he had tried once but then accepted that the decision was unlikely to go in his favour. He heard the hounds moving in the yard below. He would take them with him when he and Balthasar went to look at the far dyke. He was hungry, scrambled eggs probably. Was he hungry, oaten meal or bread? He searched his head in case there was anything he should be worrying about. The car needed its MOT, and the central heating had been making odd noises; apart from that all was well. The pivot on the far loom had become inextricably slack and he had better make a small leather harness for Michel’s sledge if he was to keep his promise of taking him to the banks of the Eisel. He remembered the previous evening’s argument about his drinking after the football. He remembered Antonia falling out with him, saying he was too hard on Michel, he was only a boy. A cloud passed in front of the sun. He was in hospital. He was in a shed waiting for his execution.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  As Cornelius and Balthasar got closer to the town their progress along the frozen river was made ever more difficult by the increasing number of barges, coracles and flat bottomed punts semi-submerged in the ice, abandoned until spring. The usual detritus of rural commerce, wooden boxes and staves had also been thrown onto the river despite the absence of flowing water to carry it downstream. Domestic waste too, vegetable peelings, bones and broken implements sat on top of the snow.

  The remains of a small fire on the deck of one of the boats was further evidence of villagers being evicted from their homes by the occupying Catholic troops. The dogs sniffed at the charred rodent heads lying on the ice where they had been tossed by the hungry squatters. In the middle of the river a crude bull’s-eye had been etched onto the ice, and the adjacent snow swept clear so that men could launch the rough-hewed curling stones to claim victory and the pooled prize money of farthings.

  ‘Did I tell you about the time when I took the stone weight from the mill, fitted a handle and beat the whole village on the ice?’ asked Balthasar.

  ‘Yes,’ said his two companions.

  ‘Did I mention the prize money?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Balthasar stumbled as he climbed onto the bank where the willow trees had been reduced to a skeletal state, all branches stripped by frozen hands for kindling and fence repairs. Cornelius hauled him up by the armpits. ‘It’s my age,’ said the older man brushing the snow
from his coat.

  The village was quiet and subdued, its life blood sucked out by fear and unwelcome proximity to the Inquisition headquarters in its midst. In the square a few peasants, long immune to harassment and abuse from bored soldiers, went through the motions of selling small items of clothing, crude mittens, heavy shawls, and simple food, mainly bread and grain, from improvised stalls. The hounds growled at each other as they tugged at a bone that had fallen from a trestle table. A hunchbacked man sat on the cold ground hammering a nail into a broken stool rescued from the river. The sound of the pounding echoed round the square. His eyes were closed; he had been hammering the same long-sunken nail since daybreak.

  A line of shackled prisoners was being herded down the side of the square by several men on horseback. Their cowled charges muttered prayers as they passed, raising their hands as if to bless themselves before being impeded by the weight of the chains.

  ‘Hieronymus!’ Cornelius recognised the cloth merchant who would visit their village in the autumn to bargain over the bales. ‘You still owe me money!’

  Recognition glimmered for a moment in the prisoner’s eyes before his chains were tugged by the more vigilant of his captors. His mouth moved as if chewing tough meat. His half tongue, a legacy from torture, fought with his palate to frame words. Cornelius watched helplessly as the despairing man lolled his head and dribbled more wetness down his

  cloak.

  ‘Leave him,’ said Balthasar. ‘We can do nothing for him. We can’t save everyone.’

  ‘Why not? Why do our people just accept this? Why do they lick the boots that kick them? We will rise again.’ Cornelius shook his fist at the soldiers whose attention he was now attracting. Balthasar made a conciliatory gesture at the soldiers and shrugged as if to say, ‘Excuse my friend, he’s mad.’

  The two soldiers guarding the courthouse moved to intercept the weavers now approaching with a confidence they did not feel. Having tied the dogs to the outer fence Balthasar pressed his chest into the crossed pikes barring his way. He moved the outer one aside and said, ‘We have business with the Commissary.’ Grudgingly, the soldiers relented and let them enter.