Mindgame (2 page)

STYLER: You don't?

FARQUHAR: None at all.

STYLER: Well, please, consider yourself forgiven.

FARQUHAR: Thank you.

STYLER: I'm Mark Styler.

FARQUHAR: That's your name?

STYLER: Yes.

FARQUHAR: And what is this in connection with?

STYLER: I wrote a letter…almost a month ago. Your secretary didn't mention it to you before she left?

FARQUHAR: I'm afraid not. But then she's been gone a long time. To be frank, I'm often tempted to get rid of her. To
let her go. The way she just ups and disappears like this. But she has excellent short-hand and filing skills and as I'm sure you'll understand, good secretarial help is extremely hard to come by, particularly in this neck of the woods…

STYLER: You mean an insane asylum.

FARQUHAR: I was referring to Suffolk generally. You say you wrote to her.

STYLER: I wrote to you. And you replied. At least I assumed it was you. The letter was signed in your name.

FARQUHAR: It certainly wasn't me. I'm very sorry but I have absolutely no recollection of it. Mark Styler, you say? The name does seem familiar to me. Are you a doctor?

STYLER: No. I'm a writer. You don't know my work…?

FARQUHAR: I'm sure I should. I do apologise, Mr Styler…

STYLER: Mark.

FARQUHAR: It's unlike me to be so…disorganised. Perhaps we should start from the beginning. I feel I should almost walk out of the room and come in again.

STYLER: Not with another two-hour wait.

FARQUHAR: You were kept waiting that long?

STYLER: Well…

FARQUHAR: You must be angry.

STYLER: I'm just glad you agreed to see me.

FARQUHAR: Any minute now we're going to establish what it is I agreed to see you about. (
He rummages on the desk
.) If I could just find this letter of yours…

STYLER: Perhaps this will help.

STYLER reaches into his briefcase and takes out a sheet of paper.

FARQUHAR: And what is this?

STYLER: It's a copy of my letter.

FARQUHAR: A copy of the letter you sent me almost a month ago?

STYLER: Yes.

FARQUHAR: Excellent. That really is first-rate.

FARQUHAR takes the letter and tries to focus on it.

Ah yes. Yes. (
He puts the letter down
.) Actually, I seem to have mislaid my reading-glasses so why don't you just take me through the gist of what it says.

STYLER: You can't read it?

FARQUHAR: Not without my glasses.

STYLER: (
Surprised but continuing anyway
.) Well, it's quite simple really.

FARQUHAR: You're a writer.

STYLER: Yes. You know, Dr Farquhar, I'm quite surprised you haven't read any of my books.

FARQUHAR: Should I have?

STYLER: I wrote a book about Chikatilo…

FARQUHAR: Andrei Chikatilo?

STYLER: Yes. It was called
Serial Chiller: The True Story of a Monster in the Ukraine
. It was something of a best-seller.

FARQUHAR: And don't tell me. You've come here because you want to write a book about one of the residents here.

STYLER: Yes.

FARQUHAR: Did you mention that in your letter?

STYLER: Well, obviously. It's right here.

FARQUHAR: And I invited you here to see me? I'm afraid there must have been some sort of misunderstanding. I couldn't possibly allow you access.

STYLER: Isn't that a little bit…autocratic?

FARQUHAR: No. It's entirely autocratic. But you see, I am the master of Fairfields. And what I say goes.

STYLER: So you keep your patients locked up, isolated. What's the point in that?

FARQUHAR: There would be no point if that were the case. But I can assure you we do much, much more than that.

STYLER: Tell me.

FARQUHAR: Why?

STYLER: Because I'm interested.

FARQUHAR: No. I think you should leave.

STYLER: I've driven three and a half hours to get here, Dr Farquhar…

FARQUHAR: From where?

STYLER: From London.

FARQUHAR: Three and a half hours? (
Pause
.) From London?

STYLER: Yes.

FARQUHAR: That seems an inordinate amount of time. You came by car?

STYLER: Yes. (
Pointing at the window
.) Mine is the red BMW near the main door. I got lost outside Framlingham.

FARQUHAR: We're nowhere near Framlingham.

STYLER: That's how I knew I was lost. Would it be possible at least to have a cup of tea before I go?

FARQUHAR: (
Impatient
.) Mr Styler…

STYLER: I drove three and a half hours without passing a single café. There was nothing. And I've been sitting here in your office…

FARQUHAR: There's a Happy Eater on the A12.

STYLER: I didn't see it.

FARQUHAR: Just outside Colchester.

STYLER: Maybe it was closed.

FARQUHAR: I was there yesterday.

STYLER: It wasn't open today.

FARQUHAR: A cup of tea.

STYLER: If it's not too much trouble.

FARQUHAR hesitates. But he can see that STYLER is determined. He reaches out and presses a button on the intercom.

FARQUHAR: (
Into the intercom
.) Nurse Plimpton. Could you come up, please? (
Pause
.) There…

STYLER: Plimpton?

FARQUHAR: Yes.

STYLER: Is that her name?

FARQUHAR: Yes. Why do you ask?

STYLER: Well, I knew a Plimpton once. That's all. I suppose it's just a coincidence.

FARQUHAR: She can take you through to the kitchen and get you a cup of tea.

STYLER: Thank you.

FARQUHAR: On your way out.

STYLER: Right. (
Pause
.) You were about to tell me about Fairfields.

FARQUHAR: Was I?

STYLER: You were going to tell me what you do here. I was wondering about the name.

FARQUHAR: Well of course we changed the name when I first came here. It used to be called the East Suffolk Maximum Security Hospital for the Criminally Insane.

STYLER: That can't have done much for the local house prices.

FARQUHAR: There are no local houses but anyway that's not the point.

STYLER: How many inmates do you have here?

FARQUHAR seems tetchy. He glances at his watch.

Forgive me, Dr Farquhar. But can't we at least use the time until your nurse arrives?

FARQUHAR agrees.

FARQUHAR: Actually, I'm not very partial to the word ‘inmate'. It smacks too much of the judiciary. True, the patients here have been sentenced by the courts and are here for life. They have no hope of release or remission. But what drives Fairfields — our philosophy if you like — is that the very worst examples of humanity, what the tabloids and writers like yourself call monsters still have some hope of redemption and reparation. That a lifetime incarcerated need not be a lifetime entirely wasted. I'm a great believer in the work of Ronny Laing…R D Laing. And as he put it: ‘Madness need not be all breakdown. It can also be breakthrough.'

STYLER: So how many patients do you have?

FARQUHAR: At the last count there were fifteen.

STYLER: Are they all dangerous?

FARQUHAR: Not all of them. No. Two of them are well into their eighties although even with them I wouldn't go too close to their dentures. As for the rest…I'm sure you know perfectly well. Fairfields houses the serial killers. Society's bogey men. The monsters who've murdered their wives and their children. Who have tortured and raped and killed. Who have eaten their victims and kept parts of them as souvenirs. Who have committed atrocities so appalling that even the tabloids have had to show some deference, tiptoeing round the truth. We are what most people would call a Chamber of Horrors.

STYLER: I have to say, I didn't see a lot of security coming in here.

FARQUHAR: Did that make you nervous?

STYLER: No. There was one thing though.

FARQUHAR: Go on.

STYLER: The man at the gate. The guard.

FARQUHAR: Yes?

STYLER: Well, I don't want to be cruel, but there did seem to be something wrong with him. I mean, he was disfigured.

FARQUHAR: Ah — that must have been Borson.

STYLER: He was quite badly disfigured — his face. He must have had some sort of accident.

FARQUHAR: Yes. It happened when he was a child. He never talks about it but I'd hate to think that you believe it disqualifies him for the job.

STYLER: No. Not at all. It's just that he didn't ask me for ID or anything. I could have been anyone. And if as you say this institution is meant to be maximum security…

FARQUHAR: It is.

STYLER: …well, to be honest with you, once I'd got through the gate, I felt more as if I was coming into a country hotel than a…

FARQUHAR: …lunatic asylum.

STYLER: Yes.

A speaker clicks into life and suddenly the room is filled with soft, syrupy music. This music will click on and off at random throughout the play.

FARQUHAR: It wasn't what you're expecting.

STYLER: That's right. (
Pause
.) What horrible music, if you don't mind my saying so.

FARQUHAR: I don't. I agree with you. But the patients like it…although I will admit that we've been having a few problems with the speaker system.

STYLER: (
Joking
.) Don't tell me you can't turn it off!

FARQUHAR: (
Serious
.) We can't.

STYLER: Oh.

FARQUHAR: It turns itself off. And on, unfortunately. It was damaged a couple of weeks ago…quite a nuisance really. We'd get someone in but it's a Swedish system… Anyway, you were saying. More like a country hotel than a lunatic asylum.

STYLER: Yes.

FARQUHAR: It's a common preconception. The very word ‘asylum' has come to mean something that's grim and
foreboding. Gothic towers and huge creaking doors. People have forgotten that prisons and asylums are two quite different things. The former are to lock people in. The latter are to protect people by keeping the world out.

STYLER: You don't want this to feel like an institution?

FARQUHAR: Exactly.

STYLER: So why the terminology? You were talking about B-wing.

FARQUHAR: There are three wings. Their names are Bee, Honey and Flower. (
He gestures at the portrait
.) This is Karel Ennis who founded Fairfields and who personally raised the money to landscape the grounds.

STYLER: It doesn't disguise the fact that the patients here are still prisoners.

FARQUHAR: It's not intended to. But I'm not here to keep prisoners. My job is to set them free.

STYLER: Not literally, I hope.

FARQUHAR: From themselves. ‘To enlighten the endless night of insanity with the torch of responsibility.' That's Michel Foucault.

STYLER: And you do that by giving them a nice garden?

FARQUHAR: (
Annoyed
.) I can't explain it to you. Nurse Plimpton will be here any minute…in fact I'm surprised she's not here already. (
Speaking into the intercom
.) Nurse Plimpton. Can you please come to the office?

STYLER: I'm sorry. How do you set them free from themselves?

FARQUHAR can't decide if it's worth continuing. But he gives STYLER another chance.

FARQUHAR: Well, in broad strokes, we start by putting back the lines, the human connections that were absent for far too long in mental hospitals such as this. I want my patients to feel at ease so that in their sessions with me at least part of that psychiatrist-patient relationship will be broken down. I want to meet them as equals.

STYLER takes this as his cue to sit in FARQUHAR's chair — on his side of the desk — for the first time.

STYLER: And what then?

FARQUHAR: That very much depends on the patient. Dr Ennis was a great believer in psychodrama.

STYLER: I'm sorry?

FARQUHAR: He studied under J L Moreno in Vienna.

STYLER: Moreno?

FARQUHAR: Yes. He was the director of the Theatre of Spontaneity.

STYLER: You make me feel I should know about him.

FARQUHAR: You should. Moreno was inspired by watching children at play in his garden in Vienna. This was in about 1920. He began to see that play, and play-acting, could be used as a therapeutic process and that's what Ennis brought here.

STYLER: He wrote plays.

FARQUHAR: No, no. He was interested in spontaneity-creativity. Role-playing. He encouraged his patients to take the parts of their parents, their children, their wives or whatever and by playing out these often disturbed relationships to arrive at the cause of their emotional distress. Of course, I'm simplifying what was actually a very precise and highly structured process. Anyway, Ennis took the mechanics of psychodrama one step further
by applying them to psychotics – alas with only limited success.

STYLER: Why only limited?

FARQUHAR: Because in the end one of them turned round and killed him. That was when I took over.

STYLER: Do you still use psychodrama?

FARQUHAR: I'm more selective about the patients I apply it to and I have to say that one of the first things I did when I inherited this office was to have a decent alarm installed. (
He points to the button on his desk
.) But yes, I'm trying to continue the work that Ennis began.

There is a sudden, terrible scream from outside; the demented, blood-chilling howl of a wild man. STYLER springs up. FARQUHAR appears not to have noticed it.

STYLER: What the hell was that?

FARQUHAR: What?

STYLER: Didn't you hear it?

FARQUHAR: I'm sorry?

STYLER: It came from outside.

STYLER goes over to the window and looks out.

FARQUHAR: There's no one outside.

STYLER: But I heard them.

FARQUHAR: It came from B-wing. This is Wednesday night. They have scream therapy.

STYLER: It's not Wednesday. It's Thursday.

FARQUHAR: No. It's the twenty-first. Wednesday.