The Man Who Turned Into Himself (5 page)

She stirred, as though responding to my thoughts.

'I have to talk to you.'

'What is it?' She pushed herself up on an elbow, anxious, suddenly alert, reaching for the light.

'Don't!' I put a hand on her arm. What I had to say to her I preferred to say in the same intimate darkness we had shared earlier. 'I know how this is going to sound, but I have to trust you, because you're the only person I can. So I have to. Try to understand.'

'Of course I do. Go on. What is it, darling? What d'you want to tell me?'

'It's, I . . . I'm not sure how . . . ' I was stumbling already.

How to begin? I took a deep breath, wound up my courage, and plunged in. 'Darling, don't be alarmed by what I'm going to say. Above all, you must believe that I'm not crazy. What I'm going to tell you is the absolute literal truth, I'm making none of it up. Now I know how it's going to sound at first, but please just bear with me. I have some ideas about what's happened and how, but we'll get to that later. The most important thing you have to believe is that it changes nothing between us. The reason I'm telling you all this is because I love you. You're the only one I can really trust, and if I can't share this with you, then my life isn't worth living.' With that, I embarked on the whole story, right up to the actual moment of its telling.

When I'd finished Anne remained motionless and totally silent. She was lying on her pillow looking up at the ceiling. I could just make out the contours of her face as the first hint of pre-dawn light began to edge around the heavy curtains. Suddenly I saw what looked like a tear running down the whole side of her face, and I was seized by momentary panic. 'You do believe me, don't you?' In the course of recounting the events of the last few days I had relived them so vividly — especially the unbearable moment of her death — that it seemed impossible to me that anyone might doubt my word.

'Oh, my darling, of course I believe you!' She sat up and reached out for me, cradling and stroking my head against the softness of her neck and shoulder. 'Of course I do. You were right to trust me. What a terrible thing to have gone through alone, with nobody to turn to. But it's all right now, 
we'll cope with this together. You'll see, everything will be all right.'

The sense of relief that flooded through me as I heard these words was indescribable. I was lost in an alien, or nearly alien, world; two persons in one, with no control over what was going to happen next, or even what was going to flash into my mind; and yet I felt relief. I had the trust of the one person who could be my anchor and support in the face of whatever storms were yet to come. Relief turned into waves of irresistible exhaustion. I fell asleep right there, being held and stroked and comforted like a baby.

When I woke I was alone in the bed. The clock showed 8:45, and a strip of light around the still-curtained window suggested that the day was bright and sunny. I got up feeling better than I had in some time and pulled back the curtains. Yes, I recognised that view. I was like a man emerging from a long dark tunnel of amnesia. Except this tunnel had two ends, two separate and quite distinct realities, connected by a mystery that I must now begin to unravel.

First, however, I was hungry. I pulled on my robe and started for the kitchen, expecting to find Anne preparing breakfast. But as I opened the bedroom door I heard her talking to someone, and hesitated.

Then I realised that hers was the only voice. She was talking on the telephone. And she was sobbing as she spoke as though her heart was breaking. Which it was.

She was saying that she'd done her best, but she couldn't handle the situation any longer. They would have to come and take me away.

By the time the doorbell rang I was dressed and had almost finished packing an overnight bag that I had found in the bottom of my wardrobe. I hadn't made any sound to let Anne know that I'd overheard her phone call. I didn't blame her for it; she had merely reacted in the way any normal, caring person would. The fault was mine for having burdened her with something that for the time being, I now realised, I should have kept to myself.

Above all I was grateful that she hadn't returned to the bedroom where, I suppose, she thought I was still sleeping. I didn't want her to have to face me in the knowledge of what she had done. I didn't want her to lie to me, or I to her.

After I'd closed the bedroom door as she hung up the phone I had rapidly reviewed my options. Flight was pointless: how far would I get and what would it achieve? The best thing, I saw at once, was to stay and accept as equably as I could what was going to happen. I must show them by my behaviour that I was sane. Even if I had to submit to further tests and examinations, I reasoned, they would conclude that I was not unbalanced in any clinical sense. I would be released and I would persuade Anne — and anyone else I had to — to take my fantastic story seriously.

I was relieved that it was Harold who came into the bedroom and not Anne. He looked surprised to see me dressed and ready. 'Are you going somewhere, old buddy?' he asked, doing his best to sound cheery and casual. I smiled, 
hoping to reassure him that I was responsible and in control, and that he could trust me.

'It's all right,' I said, 'I know what's going on. I heard Anne on the phone. Thanks for being here, Harold — I wouldn't want her to have to deal with this by herself.'

'Look, Richard,' he said, obviously feeling acutely awkward, 'it's going to be all right, I promise you.'

'I know,' I said. 'Is Anne still here?'

He shook his head. 'I made her go across the hall to Irene Granger's place.' I remembered Irene Granger: a tall redhead, in her fifties and still great-looking, an ex-model divorced from a wealthy accountant. It was funny how I only had to hear a name now or see something in this other life and the memory of it slipped instantly into place. 'That's good,' I said, 'I'm glad you did that. Tell her she did the right thing. Tell her I don't blame her.'

He nodded. 'Sure.' Another awkward pause. 'Well — '

'I'm ready,' I said, snapping shut my overnight case.

'You won't need that,' he said.

'Might as well take it now I've packed it,' I answered, shrugging a question mark at the end.

'Okay. But we can send over for anything else you need.'

'I hope it won't be that long,' I said, trying to keep an edge of anxiety out of my voice. Stay relaxed, I told myself. Just stay relaxed.

'Of course not,' he responded — too quickly, I thought.

'By the way, where are we going? Not that last place, I hope.'

'No, no. I've made arrangements. They have the very best of . . . everything.'

Two men appeared in the door behind him. They were clean cut, well built, and wore ties and sports jackets. They could have been hockey players travelling to a match somewhere. They responded politely to my greeting but didn't smile. Downstairs one of them held open the rear door of a solidly comfortable station wagon. I turned to Harold: 'Aren't you coming with us?'

'I've got my own car,' he said, 'I'll go on ahead.' He unlocked the door of a shiny BMW. I smiled faintly, reassured that Harold still drove the same kind of car, although a different model from the one I was used to. I thought about suggesting that I ride with him, but didn't want to cause problems. I glanced up at Irene Granger's windows, saw a curtain move, then I got into the station wagon. One of the hockey players went around and got in alongside me. The other slid behind the wheel. He pressed a catch and I heard the doors lock. I made no comment.

The journey passed mostly in silence, my escorts making polite but monosyllabic responses to any effort I made to open up a conversation. About forty minutes out of town we reached tall iron gates which opened automatically and a security guard waved us through. At the end of a long gravel drive sat an imposing country mansion. Harold's car was already there.

The entrance hall was imposingly vaulted and pleasantly furnished. A nurse was climbing a curved staircase. Harold was waiting to greet me with his friend the shrink from the night before. 'You already know Dr Killanin,' he said. We shook hands and went into the doctor's spacious office. At one end, in the window, was a desk. At the other was a psychoanalyst's couch. The walls, where they were not covered by floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, were panelled in dark brown polished oak, with drab framed hunting prints hung here and there alongside various diplomas. The doctor sat behind his desk motioning me to sit opposite. Harold took a chair to one side, obviously intending to stay for this preliminary interview but not planning to participate.

Something about Killanin's voice made it strangely hard to concentrate on what he was saying, which was anyway fairly anodyne; but his sonorous, droning monotone deprived the words of meaning. This, I suddenly knew, was a man of no imagination or intellectual curiosity — certainly not a man capable of seeing my condition as anything more than a routine example of something he was already familiar with. 
He was an administrator, a classifier, a man of received ideas: the very last man into whose hands I would have willingly delivered myself. I felt a momentary panic. Had I walked into a trap of my own making? Should I have run when I heard Anne on the telephone? The moment passed. I reassured myself that I had made the only possible decision.

I was suddenly aware that Harold was on his feet, preparing to leave. Killanin had risen, and so did I, feeling a twinge of alarm at the prospect of seeing my last lifeline to the outside world disappear. Harold must have seen something in my eyes because he looked puzzled briefly and anxious to get away. It was strange to feel so cut off from him. We should have been walking out of there together, cracking a joke, debating where to go for lunch; but instead he was leaving me there in that alien antiseptic atmosphere.

Without further ceremony Killanin handed me over to a senior nurse who would, he said, show me to my room. She had sharp, angular features which were emphasised by narrow, pointed glasses. She marched up the stairs with military precision, carrying my file under her arm like a rifle.

My room was large and airy with a broad bay window giving a commanding view of the grounds. It could have been a room in a country hotel except for being somewhat under-furnished. Conspicuously missing were telephone, television or radio; there was, however, a miniature television camera set into the wall above the door. The room contained no sharp edges, nor anything that could easily be broken to provide them. As in the hospital, the windows were obviously reinforced and had special catches to prevent their opening wide enough for escape. I thanked the nurse for showing me up and resisted the impulse to reach into my pocket for a tip; irony I felt would not have been appreciated.

Left alone, I wondered what was expected of me. Obviously I was under observation through the television camera. I wondered who was at the other end of it. Killanin? Somebody I hadn't yet met?

The adjoining bathroom, as in the hospital, was windowless. It was also without a trapdoor in the ceiling or any other possible means of escape. I looked around for another camera, and eventually saw it embedded in the centre of the ceiling. This was a level of intrusion I was not going to find easy to live with. However, I reminded myself of my purpose in going there willingly. It was to establish my sanity. That, and that alone, must be the focus of my attention.

***

An hour and a half later a different nurse entered and told me that Dr Killanin and a colleague were ready to see me. I had passed the time sitting by the window reading a paperback I had brought with me. Originally I had meant to bring
The Secret Agent
by Joseph Conrad. I had found it by my bed at the apartment and remembered starting it some time ago with pleasure. Also, to be quite honest, it had struck me as the sort of reading matter unlikely to make a bad impression; but then I had immediately checked the tendency towards becoming obsessed with the impression I was making as being in itself, at least to an unsympathetic observer, evidence of abnormality. So I had picked a book at random, which turned out to be somebody's account of a trip across Russia and was unutterably boring. However, I had dutifully plowed through several chapters with the intention of establishing for my televisual observers that I was perfectly capable of sustaining normal concentration.

I was taken back to Killanin's office. With him was a younger man with a fresh face, tightly curling blond hair, and a handshake that indicated such a need to be recognised as an honest 'good ol' boy' that I prayed he was someone whose opinion on my mental state would not be sought. My heart sank when Killanin introduced him as Dr Steve Sherwood.

Killanin conducted the discussion with the three of us seated in a triangle before the fireplace, in which there was an old-fashioned electric radiator of which only half 
was turned on. I was gratified at least that no mention had been made of employing the couch over by the wall.

I was by now becoming accustomed to psychiatric small-talk — those bland, introductory rondos by which they feel their way towards some tentative diagnosis. Frankly I took a certain pride in doing all I could to obstruct this process, since I felt there was no diagnosis to be made. However, I was reckoning without the fact that in the minds of my two interlocutors the diagnosis had already been made, and all they were seeking now was corroboration. Dr Sherwood was the first to challenge me directly with my 'other life' to which he understood, as he put it, I had recently referred. I smiled indulgently and told him that the things people said after getting bumped on the head should not, surely, be taken too seriously. He then asked me earnestly, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees and his fingers interlaced, why I had repeated the story to my wife during the night if I had, as I claimed, fully recovered from the mild concussion caused by my accident.

This required dealing with carefully. I knew that I was approaching a crucial border where I would either be declared sane and allowed to pass over into freedom, or labelled insane (or whatever euphemisms they chose to employ) and held, in effect, prisoner. I had to proceed with extreme caution.

'Look,' I began, 'if I tell you that I accept I was hallucinating, that what I said in the middle of the night was a result of a particularly vivid dream which revived, if only temporarily, that hallucination, then need we really go any further with this?'

They exchanged a look, reflected a moment, then Killanin took up the questioning. 'Put like that, no, I suppose not. But let's just for the sake of argument, and since we're here, let's just suppose that what you experienced was something more than hallucination. Could you offer any possible explanation for it?'

He was perhaps smarter, I decided, than I had initially 
suspected. But it was the cleverness of an advocate determined to prove his case rather than that of a genuine seeker after truth. I was determined not to be drawn into his trap. 'No,' I said, 'I don't believe I could.'

'But we have been led to understand,' Killanin went on, 'that you indicated to your wife that you might have an explanation to this phenomenon, something you told her you would get around to talking about later, once you had convinced her of the reality of what had happened.'

I cursed myself again for having subjected Anne to such a seemingly preposterous story without more careful preparation. 'I suppose,' I said, 'that if you were to go into the wilder realms of the imagination, then you could probably cook up some kind of story to make sense of it.'

'Then why don't we do that?'

'No — you mean why don't
I
do it. And the reason I won't is because you will take such speculation on my part as proof positive of mental instability. And I am not in any way mentally unstable.'

'Aren't you afraid,' Sherwood put in, 'that we might just as well take your refusal as symptomatic of a paranoia which we might equally regard as, well, unusual?'

Checkmate, or almost. I stayed cool. 'That's a risk I am prepared to take,' I told him, attempting a smile to show that I was enjoying this intellectual cut and thrust between equals.

There was a pause. Killanin leant over to Sherwood and whispered something to which Sherwood nodded his agreement. Killanin then turned back to me. 'Mr Hamilton,' he began, dropping his gaze to the carpet for a moment, 'there is absolutely no question that you are a highly intelligent man fully in control of all your faculties. However, there is clearly something here which we, and surely you too, would very much like to get to the bottom of. I am proposing, therefore, that we inject you with a very small dose of — '

'No!' They both looked at me, impressed by the force of my refusal.

'Mr Hamilton,' Killanin started up again after a moment, 'the fact of your resistance to this course indicates quite clearly your feeling that you may not be as fully recovered as you would like to believe. Surely you must see that.'

It was becoming increasingly difficult to stay calm now, because I could see exactly where this was going. However, I made an effort and managed to keep my voice steady. 'No,' I said, 'I don't see anything of the sort.'

Another look was exchanged between them. 'Surely you must be aware,' Killanin continued, 'that we are in a position to insist on such a course if we think it is necessary in your best interests.'

I knew then that I had lost. Anger rose up in me, but I stamped on it. 'I think, if you don't mind, I would like to call my lawyer,' I said coldly, glancing towards a telephone on the desk. Killanin remained intransigent. When he spoke again there was a quiet though unmistakable threat behind his words. 'Mr Hamilton, papers have been signed and you have been committed to our care for your own good, and no other reason. We would be derelict in our duty if we allowed you to refuse or in any way obstruct the treatment which, in our professional judgment, you are in need of. I beg you to reflect on that very seriously, and cooperate.'

There was a silence. Both looked at me, and I looked back at them. 'You are making a very grave mistake,' I told them, 'and I must warn you that when I get out of here you will regret it.' I stood up. They must have read something aggressive into the gesture, because I saw in both of them a slight, though marked, instinctive recoil. 'I am now leaving,' I said, 'and I don't advise you to try and stop me.' It was foolish bravado, of course, though even now I cannot blame myself for giving way to it. After all, there is for any of us a limit to the amount of pushing around we will take from people whom we don't respect, and I suddenly, perhaps rashly, knew I had reached it. I started for the door.

'Mr Hamilton, please sit down.' It was Killanin. Both he and Sherwood were on their feet now. I ignored them and wrenched open the door, half expecting it to be locked, but it wasn't. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Killanin lunge towards his desk and press something. There was no immediate response, but before I was halfway across the hall the two hockey players who had brought me there appeared out of nowhere. They had discarded their ties and sports jackets and wore the white coats of male nurses now. With the awful calmness of professional thugs they seized my arms and pinned them behind me. One of them had his forearm across my neck and began to squeeze my windpipe in a choke-hold. I fought, I suppose I must admit, like a maniac. I screamed and raged and kicked, but they lifted me off the ground and carried me away with no more trouble than if I had been an angry, helpless child. I cursed them, I cursed Killanin, who was following, issuing instructions. I cursed Harold for letting this happen to me. I cursed, God forgive me, Anne.

But above all I cursed myself for having been such a fool. For having thought I could outwit the forces I was up against. For having thought that I could pick my way through this minefield of obstacles using only reason and good sense. It hadn't worked.