Colleen McCullough - Sins of the Flesh

Todo pounced. “Scary work,” he said. “How do you manage to keep your cool sitting in a session with a homicidal maniac?”

“Oh, really!” Melos exclaimed. “There speaks the ignorant layman. Sometimes I think the general public still believes that the warders wear suits of armor and keep the inmates at bay with high-pressure water hoses. Inmates are properly prepared for their sessions. If they need to be sedated, they are. It’s not dangerous work, Todo—in fact, it’s more likely to be boring.”

Dr. Fred took over. “HI has state and federal funds, and has one aim: to remove violent, sociopathic crime from humanity’s list of unacceptable behavior. One day we’ll be able to cure the physiologically violent criminal.”

“Oh, sure!” Todo sneered, looking militant. “It happens now, guys—some axe murderer is released as cured, and what’s the first thing he does outside the prison walls? Kills more people with his trusty axe. Psychiatrists play God, and that’s a very dangerous role.”

But Melos and Dr. Fred merely laughed.

“Blame the press, Todo, not psychiatrists,” Melos said. “No journalist ever wastes space on the thousands of successful cases. The one-in-a-million failure gets the publicity.”

Dr. Moira chimed in. “Setting an inmate at liberty isn’t under psychiatric control,” she said. “The steps taken to release a patient considered a danger to the community are multiple as well as agonizing for all concerned. Boards, committees, panels, reviews, outside consultations, exhaustive enquiries, investigations and tests—it’s a near-endless list.” She looked complacent. “Besides, Asylum inmates aren’t ever considered for release. HI is like Caesar’s wife, above reproach.”

Animation had crept in; the shrinks had undergone a sea-change now the subject was their work. If only, thought Delia, they could abandon their air of superiority, they might win a few fans, but they couldn’t. Her eyes encountered Jess, also listening, and saw an echo of her own sentiments; Jess too deplored their snobbery.

“I’ve never cottoned on to the idea of using tax dollars to create a place like HI,” said Todo, enjoying himself. “I mean, isn’t it bad enough that public funds have to keep the criminally insane fed and housed, without also providing health services ordinary citizens can’t afford? I hear that HI has a modern hospital capable of treating anything from a heart attack to cirrhosis of the liver.”

Rose piped up. “But how can it be helped?” she asked, sure of her ground. “This is a civilized country, people have to be treated for their illnesses. But what hospital can cope with violent patients who can’t be reasoned with? The Institute is a prison, and the general hospital side of it was installed to protect the community. Our psychiatric research unit is quite separate again, so is its funding.” Her rather plain and ordinary face had become flushed.

The mother defending her young, thought Delia; she’s new to this, and resents the criticism.

“There’s no altruism involved, Todo,” said Dr. Moira crisply. “Ours is a job that has to be done. The cost of long-term—no, life-long!—incarceration is so astronomical that we have to find some answers, or at least make the tax dollars go farther.”

“Our work is immensely valuable to society,” said Ari Melos. “In the long run, it’s units like HI that will make the whole problem of the criminally insane a cheaper exercise.”

I think, said Delia to herself, that I have just heard the same old arguments that come up every time these two disparate groups of people get together. Rha and Rufus invite them to please Ivy, who wants to please Jess, who wants to please her staff. And it’s all to do with music.

Around six, while the sun was still lighting the sky brilliantly, blinds and curtains were unobtrusively drawn, plunging the big room into semi-darkness. A most alluring after-shave essence stole into her nostrils, the mark of Nicolas Greco, whom she’d met only in passing. The Rha Tanais Inc. accountant of the Savile Row suits, easily the best-dressed man Delia had ever seen, and, she suspected, as close to indispensable as people got.

“Rufus has issued stern instructions,” said he, piloting her with a hand under her left elbow. “I am to put you in Fenella’s chair—it has the best outlook.”

People were taking seats all over the place, no system or method to it except for this one smallish armchair, which had a footstool and, across its padded back, a sign that said RESERVED. Placed in it, she had an uninterrupted view of one large, octagonal niche wherein a grand piano, a harp, drums, and music stands were located. Even Betty Kornblum of the Siamese cat wore an excited expression, and the shrinks, clustered together, were positively animated.

What had been an ordinary, if magnificent, party turned into what in Delia’s days at Oxford had been called a “salon.”

Rufus began it by playing Chopin on the piano well enough to entrance a Paderewski audience—glorious! Was this what he did for a living? One of the willowy waiters picked up a violin and Rufus passed to Beethoven’s fifth sonata for violin and piano; you could have heard a pin drop, so rapt and quiet was the audience. Roger Dartmont sang, Dolores Kenny sang, and they finished with a duet. Todo danced with a group of the waiters, males for one dazzling athletic number, females for a voluptuous dance, then males and females together for something balletic and graceful.

With pauses and intermissions it went on for five hours, and by the end of it Delia fully understood why all the badgering to obtain invitations for the shrinks went on. To be privileged to witness such first-class performances in the cozy intimacy of a salon was memorable enough to, pardon the hyperbole, kill for. The evening would, Delia knew, live in her memory forever. If anything puzzled her, it was the arrogance of the psychiatrists, who didn’t seem to grasp that they were being honored; rather, they seemed to think they were entitled. And that, she decided, had nothing to do with psychiatry. It was all to do with the mind-set of people who would, could they, ban all exclusivity from the face of the globe. A Rha and Rufus salon was exclusive, and they had managed to invade it. What did that make Jess?

“That was utter magic,” she said to her hosts as she was leaving, “and I want you to know that I deeply appreciate your asking me to come. Truly, I don’t take the privilege for granted.”

Rha’s eyes twinkled. “Rufus and I are greedy, darling,” he said. “Concerts are such a bore! Parking—crowds—coughs—strangers a-go-go—and never exactly the program you feel like. Salons are a total self-indulgence. No grubby money changes hands, performers who love to perform get to do their thing—terrific!”

“Even the loonies wallowed,” she said demurely.

“Poor babies! So ghastly earnest!”

“Were you a concert pianist, Rufus?” she asked.

“Never, Delicious Delia! Too much like hard work. No, I love to play and I keep my hands supple, but life’s too full of variety to lay one’s entire stock of sacrificial goats on just one single altar. I play to please me, not others.”

“If you eat British stodge, I’d very much like to ask the pair of you to dinner at my place,” she said, a little shyly.

“We’d love to come,” said Rha, and looked wary. “Uh—what is British stodge?”

“Bangers and mash for the main course—I drive to a butcher outside Buffalo for the bangers—absolutely authentic! And for dessert, spotted dick and custard.”

“How,” asked Rha seriously, “could we possibly turn down a spotted dick? Especially with custard.”

Delia handed Rufus her card. “Decide on a night, and call me,” she said, beaming.