Marcel Theroux - Strange Bodies

I decline the offer of more tea: my bladder’s bursting but I don’t want to break the atmosphere. He pours himself another cup. ‘We had this kind of problem when post-structuralism came in,’ he says. ‘I had students telling me that Timon of Athens was a play about the inherent contradictions of late capitalism. Self-evidently false, but rather a nuisance to refute. I would say that “I am the reincarnation of an obscure dead academic” is a statement of that sort.’

I try to ask him how Q knows so much, but what comes out is a stumbling, rather confessional sort of question in which I wonder how Q’s got me so confused.

‘You’re confused, young lady, because you’re good at your job. You’re sensitive and compassionate and he’s taking advantage. Not knowing is a gift. Keats knew it. He called it negative capability. You know the expression? “When man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason”.

‘As to the less interesting question of how he knows — I would say like any illusionist, this man achieves his effect by the most laborious and dull solution on offer. Hard work, cheating and misdirection. In this case, the answer is he probably didn’t write it himself. My gut feeling is that he’s plagiarised this from Nicky’s papers.’

In the end, I’m reassured and surprised by his generosity of spirit. He sees me to the door and presses Swann’s book into my hand as a parting gift. It’s pristine and unread, but the cheap paper is yellowing with age. I guess that he has boxes of them somewhere.

‘Her poems are very underrated. But I’m not expecting to be vindicated in this lifetime.’

*

Mingled sadness and relief. Sorry for Harbottle somehow. But it doesn’t last long. Tonight, back at the hotel, I can’t think how Q is doing it. I’ve watched the document grow in the weeks he’s been using the computer. Is he cutting and pasting it from somewhere on the internet? Frantic Googling turns up nothing. It crosses my mind to go back into the Maudsley. Check what he’s added since I left? Might be something I can use.

*

Back into work for an ad hoc supervision with PW. I explain everything. He’s absolutely silent throughout the session. I give him Q’s file. Tell him I’m thoroughly puzzled. I don’t know what the truth is, but I believe Q is telling more of it than I think we gave him credit for.

‘You’ve read Rank on doubles?’ he asks.

‘No, but I’ve read Freud. He says the fantasy is rooted in narcissism.’

‘Initially. But then he goes on to say that having been an assurance of immortality, it becomes the uncanny harbinger of death.’

For an instant, it seems like he’s threatening me, but then I realise he’s talking metaphorically. I say that I’ve already thought of the chilling effect on my career of all this, but that I promised myself a long time ago that any time I had a conflict between my work and my conscience, I’d follow my conscience.

PW says nothing. I suddenly feel crazed and hollow.

He says he’ll need time to figure out how to proceed, but he’s glad I’ve been honest with him. He suggests I take a further week of leave. As I stand up to go, I feel certain he’s sad. Walking through the DHU, I see Q stretched out on his bed, reading The Economist. He doesn’t notice me.

*

Today a letter from PW. It’s typewritten. PW writes that he’s regretfully decided to accept my offer of resignation. WTF? I call Rog in panic and email PW. I say it wasn’t my intention to resign! At most, I thought this would be handed over to an external agency who could evaluate our work with Q and make a decision about the best way to continue with him. I say that I’m gutted; this is the last thing I wanted to happen. PW replies with a one-line email to say everything being handled now through Human Resources.

The DHU was in uproar tonight. It’s a full moon and there are two new patients on the ward. Some shenanigans between them at supper time resulted in one being taken to a seclusion cell. As a result, I was here early, waiting in the corridor for Dr Webster’s room to be unlocked.

The calm up here is like paradise after the man-smells and chaos of the DHU. While I was waiting, I heard the opening bars of the first aria of the Goldberg Variations drifting up from somewhere on the lower storeys. A patient? It seems unlikely, but perhaps someone’s co-operation in the safe space has earned them music privileges.

Dr White unlocked the office for me with obvious reluctance. ‘Is there a music room in the building?’ I asked.

He pointedly ignored the question. ‘We’re reviewing your access to the computer,’ he said.

‘I believe you mentioned that during our work together,’ I said. But my attempt at ingratiation came out as sarcasm.

‘In the meantime, I’m going to have to ask you to use it strictly within office hours as it’s too disruptive to have you up here at other times.’

‘Won’t Dr Webster be needing the computer in office hours?’ I asked.

‘I’ll be back at eight fifteen,’ he said as he locked me in and left. I listened out for the diminuendo of his heavy tread and the fading jingle of the loose change in his pocket.

Once he was gone, I checked to make sure Webster’s spare keys were still in the tin where she keeps her Hobnobs. As it turns out, she’s unlikely to be needing either. I’ve eaten the biscuits, and the keys … Well, perhaps better not to say.

I logged on as her tonight and found the extract appended above.

It’s going to sound like wisdom after the event, but I rather had the sense that someone was reading my testimony.

She’s too smart to say it anywhere in the text, but it’s clear that Webster meant for me to read it.

The sense of exoneration makes me almost tearful.

My elation is succeeded by a chastening sense of regret that I was so dilatory in giving my testimony. I can think of half a dozen better witnesses than the ones she was armed with. She jumped the gun, really. If only she’d had my information on the accident.

But imagine: Ron still alive and compos mentis!

Through the window, London is the orange blur in the sky behind the outpatients’ unit.

These fragments I have shored against my ruins.

What to do in the time left to me?

Rereading: I give him Q’s file.

I give him Q’s file?

Surely, Webster meant to write I show him Q’s file?

Could she be so soft, so credulous, so daddy-fixated as to give those papers to White, a man who is at best an aggrieved quack, at worst …? Well, no worst, there is none.

Not a hint of softening in White’s attitude to me. Just the threat to revoke my use of the computer. He doesn’t believe her. Or he can’t believe her?

I’m beyond worrying about myself, but Webster has no idea what she’s tangling with.

It’s the Glenn Gould version. I can hear it clearly now. Someone’s opened the window and the music is

So much has changed since I last looked at these pages that it’s hard to know where to begin.

Pages. How tenacious the old metaphors are.

I find myself once more in a library, surrounded by the spines of old books. I recall Pascal Sheldon’s cadaverous and self-satisfied face: the printed book is dead. Dust rises when I ease one off the shelves. So these are an obsolete technology, like Victrola needles and buggy whips.

It is a volume of Mayakovsky and its unstamped bookplate suggests the students of Knowle Court found nothing of interest here. The cover is of a pretty constructivist design. The poetry has the gritty scent of revolutionary Moscow. I hear the steely timbre of his voice, insisting — what I’ve grasped myself too late — that words possess the kabbalistic potency of the tetragrammaton: