‘Then he is like us, isn’t he?’
I did not reply.
‘I mean, we are on an island and neither of us can leave.’
I nodded at the parallel. ‘Well, I guess that’s true for you, but I’m at liberty to go any time I want, if I chuck in my post.’
She made no reply, but looked up at me. Her eyes were troubled.
‘What is it, Jane?’
‘I would do anything to escape from here. I dream about it every day. To be out of this wretched place, to no longer be considered mad. And one day, I shall.’
‘I’m sure that day will come, Jane. It’s what we’re working for, your release.’
She returned to inspecting the picture and sighed. ‘Sir, we both know that will never happen. No one ever gets out of this place, except to be sent somewhere even worse. Dr Morgan will never let me go. I must find some other way.’
I wondered what she was thinking. I thought how I had made a difficulty for myself over this stupid experiment. If Jane Dove should ever make an attempt to escape, I would be in real trouble with Morgan. There would be repercussions that could endanger my life. I cursed myself for letting my boredom and the strange pull I felt for this girl tempt me into putting myself at risk. Her potential for recklessness was something I hadn’t considered. Gradually, though, I calmed myself as I thought how impossible it was for her to get off the island. The river had strong currents and could not be swum, even supposing she knew how, and the only means to shore was the daily boat that brought new supplies and new patients, and the one on Sundays that brought the visitors. No one ever travelled on the former, except when patients were taken by O’Reilly to the city asylum. All required passes signed by Morgan. And Sunday visitors bought a return ticket for the boat and were not permitted to go back on it without one to prevent any patient using it as a means of escape. In my heart of hearts, I knew the poor girl was probably right, that she was buried here for life. But I had to pretend otherwise to her, so I replied, ‘That may be true in the normal course of things, but then you are not in a normal situation. If we can make our trial a success and convince Dr Morgan you’re cured, I’ve every reason to believe he will let you go.’
She turned to another picture in her book. I saw it was Crusoe discovering the footprints in the sand and said nothing. I did not for a single moment think I had fooled her.
One morning I went upstairs to fetch a notebook I had left in my room that contained some observations I’d made about a patient I was seeing that day. I had just turned into the corridor when I saw Jane Dove come out of my room. She looked furtive and startled as she closed the door and looked up and saw me watching her. She put her hand to her mouth and said, ‘Oh!’
I strode along the corridor and said, quite harshly, ‘What were you doing in my room, Jane? You know you’re not supposed to go there. If you break your agreement, Morgan will shut you up again.’
‘But, sir, I wasn’t in your room,’ she said. ‘I was looking for you. I knocked and when there was no reply I opened the door to see if you were there.’ She stood biting her lip and moving nervously from foot to foot.
‘Very well,’ I said, after letting her stew for half a minute, for I knew it to be a lie; she had definitely been coming out of the room, not merely looking in. ‘But see that it doesn’t happen again.’
‘Oh, I will, sir, I will.’ And she went off quickly along the corridor toward the stairs.
‘Oh, Jane!’ I called after her.
She stopped and turned. ‘Yes, sir?’
‘What was it you wanted?’
‘Wanted?’
‘Yes, what did you want to see me about?’
‘Oh!’ She was evidently taken aback by this. She shook her head and said, ‘Oh, it doesn’t matter, sir. It unimportants. It can wait till later.’ And before I could question her further, she skipped off down the stairs.
I went into my room and looked around. There was no obvious sign of disturbance. I examined my chest of drawers, opening them one by one. Nothing seemed to have been touched. I shrugged. After all, what was there for her to pry into here anyway? As I picked up the notebook I’d come to fetch from the table beside my bed, my eye caught Moral Treatment, which sat next to it. Was it my imagination or had it been moved? I have a habit of always placing a book precisely upon a table, adjusting it carefully so that its edges are parallel to the edges of the surface it is on. It’s just a little foible, something I have always done. Moral Treatment was ever so slightly out of true, or so I thought. If it had been shifted, it was by the merest fraction, but it wasn’t quite right. I could not be absolutely certain, though, that I hadn’t been careless in arranging it and that Jane Dove wasn’t entirely innocent. Had she even been in my room? Maybe I’d been mistaken in my impression that she had. It was completely possible she’d been telling the truth. She had an openness of expression, a naïveté about her, that made it hard to imagine her lying. I felt reassured. Then I remembered how she had fooled Morgan over the reading, improvising Hamlet and taking him in completely.
I picked up the book. If she had been in here, then likely as not she would have examined it, looking for pictures. I flicked through the pages as though that would offer a clue and a piece of paper dropped out and fluttered to the floor. I picked it up. The newspaper clipping. I saw now how risky it was to keep it there or anywhere else. It wouldn’t matter if Jane Dove had seen it, because even though she’d probably have recognised the photograph of me, she would not have been able to read the accompanying report and would have had not the faintest idea what it was about. But suppose someone else, O’Reilly perhaps, came in and poked around? I’d been arrogant in thinking them all too ignorant to look at a book. If anyone who could read – and O’Reilly could – had done what I suspected of Jane Dove, I would be caught bang to rights. I put the clipping in my pocket, and later, as I walked through the day room while the patients were at their exercise and I was quite alone, put it into one of the stoves there and watched it burn until I was satisfied it had been reduced to ash. There was no evidence against me now. I smiled at the irony that if Jane Dove had indeed found the clipping, she had done me a favour by alerting me to the foolhardy risk I had run; inadvertently she had helped me keep myself safe.
As was to be expected, O’Reilly was not best pleased with the new arrangement concerning Jane Dove. She even went so far as to complain to Morgan, as I found out when I went to his office a couple of days later and was just about to knock when I heard her angry voice from inside. ‘I cannot guess what you were thinking of,’ she said. ‘Did you think it sensible to give her the run of the place? Did you not think of the risk that she might go where she’s not supposed to and give everything away?’ It was obvious what she was talking about, the madwoman in the attic.
I heard a murmur from the doctor, but I couldn’t make out what he said.
‘“Exaggerate”! I “exaggerate”!’ exploded O’Reilly’s voice. ‘On your own head be it. Don’t blame me if the whole thing blows up in your face.’
At that, her footsteps came toward the door and I backed off hurriedly so that when it was flung open I was able to give the impression I was just approaching and had heard nothing. She scowled at me and pushed insolently past. I knocked on the open door and put my head round the edge.
‘Is something the matter, sir?’ I asked, when Morgan acknowledged me. He looked old and tired, I thought, not his usual self.
‘Oh, just Mrs O’Reilly,’ he muttered. ‘She is not enthusiastic about your Moral Treatment. If she had her way, she would have Jane Dove locked up with the other patients.’
‘I trust you won’t give in to her on that,’ I ventured.
‘Give in? Give in, sir? Of course not. It’s I who run this hospital, not Mrs O’Reilly. She sometimes tends to forget that, I’m afraid.’
Nevertheless I was uneasy about O’Reilly’s fury over Jane Dove. It would be a mistake to antagonise her too much when she had it in her power to expos
e me. If I was right and she had found the discarded draft letter I had written to Caroline Adams, how would I explain it? How would I justify to Morgan that I had pretended to have a broken hand? Perhaps I could claim I had told a white lie to avoid having to write endearments to her when I was no longer sure of my feelings? Well, it was stretching things to the breaking point of credulity, and although in a confrontation it was possible Morgan might swallow this, even if he did it would show me in a poor light, as both ungentlemanly and devious. It might start the cogs of suspicion whirring in his brain.
I considered my other choices. I could confront O’Reilly with what I knew about the mysterious hidden patient, but would that get me anywhere? Morgan was involved in the concealment of the woman too and, considering the way O’Reilly had just spoken to him about the situation, somewhat in her power over it, so an appeal to him seemed useless.
When I thought of O’Reilly’s insolent expression, the way she looked at me and spoke to me, I considered simply eliminating her, stamping upon her the way you would a poisonous spider. My fingers were itching to get around her throat and dispatch her the way of Caroline Adams – but I knew anything in that line was out of the question. It would bring the police down on the place like a hawk upon a rabbit and I would be done for. The only other solution was to try to get my hands on that draft letter.
The very thought of this was too much a reminder of the night I had risked everything in the attempt to find Shepherd’s letter of application in Morgan’s office. I had no appetite to go sneaking around in O’Reilly’s room and running the chance of her pouncing on me there. I cursed myself for not thinking of it while she was away on the mainland, but then it was plausible that she would have taken the letter with her. No, there was no prospect of anything in that direction at all.
And anyway, I could not be sure O’Reilly had the letter. I had only a loaded remark to suggest that she did. I might be reading too much into it; perhaps it was just paranoia on my part. The best thing to do for now was to try not to antagonise the woman further, since if she had the letter, she was content not to act on it for the moment. I was not yet willing to sacrifice Jane Dove to appease her, but I resigned myself to the idea that if push came to shove and there was no other way to protect myself, I might have to do so.
25
By now I had firmed up my plan of escape. In December I would receive my first quarter’s salary, which, with the money bequeathed me by Caroline Adams, would be more than enough to carry me to the far west. In January, when I was ready, I would tell Morgan that I wanted to quit. In my mind I often rehearsed this conversation, in which I told him in no uncertain terms what I thought of the harshness and ineffectiveness of his regime and how I could stand to be part of it no longer. I would tell him I was leaving immediately. As this would be without the notice period of a month my employment agreement demanded, I didn’t expect him to pay me any more salary anyway, so I had nothing to lose by my frankness. I would do this on a Sunday and take the visitors’ boat to shore that afternoon and then head for the nearest railroad depot and a train to freedom.
As far as this plan went, the one fly in the ointment was O’Reilly, if she had the draft letter. After I was gone and the thaw came and the body of Caroline Adams was discovered, O’Reilly would produce the letter and it would soon be obvious to the police that ‘Dr Shepherd’ had been a fake. I didn’t imagine it would take them long to find out that Shepherd had been in the train crash with Jack Wells. Given the manner of Miss Adams’s death, it was a small step to figuring out the identity swap and then the hunt would be on for me, with my old police picture on every front page.
Once again, I cursed my carelessness in not destroying that draft note; it was the only mistake I had made, yet that one little error could cost me all. Without it there would be a single murder possibly – but not definitely – committed by a doctor of previous good character, a crime of passion. Even that was a worse case. There was a possibility that when they found Miss Adams no one would connect the corpse with the woman who had called upon me and who, so far as anyone knew, had returned on the boat that had brought her. And if Shepherd were hunted, any photographs of him the police traced and published would be of the wrong man.
As part of my preparations for my flight, I began to grow a beard, which I figured would make me even harder to recognise as Jack Wells. It afforded Morgan no little amusement. ‘Ah, you think you will look older and wiser if you hide half your face behind hair,’ he said.
‘You have divined my motive,’ I confessed with a smile.
‘Well, perhaps it will add some gravitas. Although, speaking personally, I never saw any need for a beard. In my opinion a perfectly good and manageable moustache is as far in that direction as anyone should go.’ He stroked his own, that hacked-off caterpillar on his upper lip, as he said this.
‘You may well be right, sir. I’m not set on it. I shall wear it a month and then if I decide it doesn’t suit, off it will come.’
Jane Dove was also intrigued by my burgeoning whiskers. ‘Why, sir,’ she mocked one day, for she was growing ever bolder in the familiarity with which she spoke to me, and was almost flirtatious it seemed to me, ‘I swear I did not recognise you. If that forest upon your face grows much thicker, even your friends will not know you.’
‘Do you think not?’ I asked. ‘Am I to gather from the amusement it affords you that you do not approve of beards, even though so many men choose to wear them?’
She was thoughtful a moment, then said, ‘I seem to recall someone I knew once – do not ask me who or when or where, for I do not know – but someone said to me that a man who covers his face with hair is trying to hide.’ She said this with a smile, meaning it as a throwaway remark, but I found I could not reply in kind; what she had said was a little too near the mark for that.
I picked up the book I’d brought with me from the library to read to her. It had no illustrations but I thought she might like it.
‘What is it called, sir?’ she asked as I opened it.
‘Jane Eyre.’
‘Jane, sir, just like me.’
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘just like you.’
26
Although Jane Dove spent the vast majority of her liberty in one place, the library, when the day was bright and sunny she loved to get outside for a while as well, and one morning, about a week later, I caught sight of her through the window of the restraining room, where I was supervising the torture of another poor lunatic. She was building a snowman. So intent was she upon what she was doing, she seemed completely lost to the world. She was picking up great handfuls of snow and thrusting them onto the base she’d constructed, laughing and chatting away as if to another person. At that moment she seemed like a child playing a child’s game, girlish and carefree. I felt a pang in my chest as I watched, a stab in the heart as it came back to me, a scene from long ago, myself as a small child, making a snowman, together with a woman whose face I could not picture but who I knew must have been my mother, and I realised this was a buried memory of a happy time before she died and I was condemned to the horrors of the chicken farm. Tears sprang into my eyes as I watched, at the thought of all that my life might have been. ‘Some good I mean to do, despite of mine own nature.’ The words leapt into my brain as lines I’ve learned often will. Edmund in King Lear: my defining role, in many ways. The words could not have been more apt for all I felt now and I resolved that if I could manage it without hazard to myself, I would somehow get this lost child out of here and give her the chance of a life that I had never had.
Next day, I paused in my reading of Jane Eyre and said to her, ‘I have been thinking how we might obtain your release.’
She sighed. ‘It impossibles, sir. I am as much a prisoner as Jane and Helen Burns at Lowood. There is no way out.’
‘But there could be. If we can convince Morgan you are cured, I may be able to persuade him to let you go.’
‘I wish you luck with that, sir.’
>
‘No, listen. I’ve been thinking. What are your symptoms of madness? Do you attack people? Do you rant and rave? Do you mutter to yourself? Or foul yourself? Or take off your clothes in public?’
She blushed.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I didn’t mean to embarrass you. My point is that you exhibit none of the typical signs of insanity. The thing that brought you here – the main thing, that is – is your amnesia. You cannot remember anything about yourself. That is the principal reason. Losing your memory is not the same as being mad, even though in your case the two have been conflated. So what we must do is get your memory back.’
She recoiled, an animal at bay. ‘I have told you, sir, I unremember anything at all.’
‘All right, all right, calm yourself. I know that. You cannot recall your past life, so we will have to provide you with one.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘We make one up! If we can persuade Morgan that your memory has returned as a result of your treatment here, then he will have no justification for keeping you any longer. In fact, I’d go so far as to say he might well want to get rid of you, because your obvious sanity would represent a challenge to his methods. I think under those circumstances he would have to let you go.’
Her eyes lit up. ‘You really think it would take no more than that?’
‘Well, I can’t guarantee anything but it’s certainly well worth a try. It’s better than doing nothing, surely you can see that?’
‘And what if I unconvince him? What then? Will he not say your treatment of me, your “Moral Treatment”, has failed and send me back to dwell among the living dead?’
‘Don’t you see, sooner or later that will happen anyway? He will not permit this trial to go on for ever. Once he feels he can reasonably say it has failed, you will be back in the day room for good.’