Barbara Vine - The Minotaur

I wondered what was in the note which must have accompanied the flowers sent to her mother. No doubt it had been coolly and subtly offensive. It was only when in the presence of Selwyn Lombard that she lost her sangfroid.

John could never be violent, I was sure of that, no matter what Dr Lombard said, no matter what absurd accusations his mother made, but I was wrong. It had never occurred to me that there would be an argument over the administering of the Largactil at breakfast time. It wouldn't be administered, that was all. John had been fine the day before, brighter if not more talkative, and I could see no reason not to forget about the drug once more. Ida thought otherwise. I suppose she was afraid of her mother. She was waiting at the table for John when I came down, and the tablet was already in a glass dish identical to the one he had upstairs, a glass of water at the ready.

He took his seat, ignoring her, and reached for his egg. Usually someone else sliced the top off for him but that morning he did it himself and very expertly too. Ida said, ‘Your pill, John. Better take it before you start to eat.’

‘No,’ he said.

‘Now come on, you always have your pill.’

Those words, for some reason, started a train of thought as I remembered reading somewhere that Largactil should not be given over a long period. One of its effects could be a tremor in the hands and difficulties of movement. What was a long period? I took my coffee, keeping my eyes on John. He seemed to be ignoring Ida but when she repeated what she had just said, he laid down his spoon and said in a much louder than usual voice, ‘I am not taking it, so you can give up.’

It was the longest sentence I had ever heard him utter.

‘Suppose Kerstin gives it to you?’

It cost Ida something to say this. Like her whole family, she wouldn't have cared for anyone to be preferred over herself. But she desperately wanted John to take that pill and if she paid the price of rejection for it, so be it.

‘I don't think so,’ I said.

Ida shrugged, looking angry, and stupidly she spooned up the pill and thrust it into his face. Quick as a flash he lashed out at her with his right arm, bending it towards his chest at the elbow, and, flinging it wide and hard, struck her across the face. She jumped up with a cry. She put both hands up to cover and hold her mouth where he had hit her.

I was frightened. John was mad, everyone else said so, and we fear the mad. I did my best not to show fear, telling Ida in a voice I tried to keep from shaking that she should leave the room, go upstairs, anywhere for the time being. She went, scurrying, carpet slippers flapping. After taking two or three deep breaths, I forced myself to go on eating. John, who had gone momentarily bright red in the face, was now continuing calmly with his breakfast.

Ida was much upset by the incident. She sat at the kitchen table for hours, her head bent and sometimes held in her hands. It made me think of one of those servants I had read of who, though they have a bedroom of their own, look on the kitchen as their natural habitat, a place in which to live and move and have their being. I wouldn't have been surprised to learn that Ida secretly undressed and got into her nightgown there, washing hands and face at the sink. I made her a cup of tea in the middle of the morning; Winifred, having changed her mind about giving up work, had gone out to cook for someone's luncheon party and Ella of course was at school.

‘Why did he do that?’ she kept saying. ‘Why did he hit me?’

He was simply exasperated, I wanted to say but did not.

‘Of course we all know really that he's quite mad. Stark, staring mad. I don't care what my father said, it's my belief he was mad from birth. Well, from being a little kid. You can get that way from a shock.’

‘How long has John been given Largactil?’ I asked, though I knew the answer.

‘Oh, years. Four years? Five? He has to have it. Well, look what happens when he doesn't. I shall never dare tell Mother. And now two of those pills have got lost. Today's one's gone missing as well. I don't know what's become of it.’

It was supposed to be my day off, a fact of which I reminded Winifred after John and I came back from our walk and she, exhausted from preparing and serving lunch to a party of bridge-playing ladies, was lying down on the sofa.

‘You aren't going out, are you?’

‘Yes, I am,’ I said firmly. ‘I'm taking the bus into Sudbury.’

There, in the public library, I looked up Largactil in a medical dictionary. This, somewhat condensed, is what it said:

A proprietary preparation of the powerful phenothiazine drug chlorpromazine hydrochloride, used as a major tranquillizer to treat patients with behavioural disturbances, such as schizophrenia. Available only on prescription, Largactil is produced in the form of tablets, syrup, and a suspension, in three strengths.

It should not be administered to patients with certain forms of glaucoma, whose blood-cell formation by the bone marrow is reduced, and only with caution to those with lung disease, cardiovascular disease, epilepsy, Parkinsonism, abnormalities of the adrenal glands, impaired liver or kidney function, hyperthyroidism, enlargement of the prostate or any form of acute infection, who are pregnant or lactating or who are elderly. Prolonged use may result in motor difficulties, a shuffling gait and tremor in the hands, all of which may become permanent.

Withdrawal of treatment should be gradual.

All this was even worse than I supposed. I sat for a long time in that Victorian library, once a corn exchange, thinking of the consequences which might result from continuous use of Largactil. Were checks ever made on John's movement disorders? I had no idea but I guessed not. It seemed to me that a drug he didn't need but which was brutally administered to him was crippling his limbs and giving him something like Parkinson's disease. Leaving the library to catch my bus, I also thought of how he was refusing to take his drug, which meant it was cut off completely instead of gradually withdrawn as the book recommended.

When I got back to Lydstep Old Hall I found John trying to read the newspaper. He had his glasses on but they were inadequate for his needs and he was using a magnifying glass procured from somewhere to help him. I guessed he hadn't had his eyes tested for years and now, at nearly forty, his sight was beginning its nearly always inevitable deterioration. As far as I could tell, the magnifying glass didn't help him much, for when he saw me he laid it down, took off his glasses and smiled. It wasn't the first time he had smiled at me but I don't think it had happened more than once or twice before. I asked him how he was feeling, using precisely the tone I would to any other man of his age.

‘I'm fine,’ he said.

The first time I saw him, back in June when he was having tea in the kitchen with his mother and Ida, I had thought him a handsome man, his looks marred by the blankness of his face. Now that this dull mask had begun to lift, I saw once more how good-looking he was, his face the legacy of two people with fine classical features, his hair dark and thick and his eyes the clear dark blue of Winifred's. Recovered from the exhaustion of her day, she was looking at him too, but with distaste.

16

Little if anything was said about osteoporosis in those days, so I don't know whether Mrs Cosway's bones were brittle. At her age, they probably were. But the fracture of her ankle was a straightforward break, no one seemed much worried about it and Eric was beginning to say that he had been premature in postponing his wedding. Why had no one thought of taking his future mother-in-law to the church in a wheelchair? But the ceremony was now fixed for mid-January.