Murphy (13 page)

This striking use of the passive voice did not spring from any fatalistic notions in the mind of Miss Carridge, but from her conviction, which as the landlady she felt it her duty to hold and utter as often as possible, that the old boy had cut his throat by accident.

‘Oh no,’ said Celia, ‘no special trouble.’

‘Ah well, we all have our troubles,’ said Miss Carridge, sighing, wishing her own were a little less penetrating.

‘Tell me about the old boy,’ said Celia.

The story that Miss Carridge had to tell was very pathetic and tedious. It brightened up a little with her reconstruction of the death scene, cupidity lending wings to her imagination.

‘He gets out his razor to shave, as he always did regular about noon.’ A lie. The old boy shaved once a week and then the last thing at night. ‘That I do know, because I found the brush on the dresser with a squeeze of paste on top.’ A lie. ‘He goes to put up the tube before he lathers, he walks across the room with the razor in his hand, screwing the cap on the tube. He drops the cap, he throws the tube on the bed and goes down on the floor. I found the tube on the bed and the cap under the bed.’ Lies. ‘He goes crawling about the floor, with the razor open in his hand, when all of a sudden he has a seizure.’ Pronounced on the analogy of manure. ‘He told me when he first came he might have a seizure any minute, he had two this year already, one on 
Shrove Tuesday, the other on Derby Day. That I do know.’ All lies. ‘He falls on his face with the razor under him, zzzeeeppp!’ she reinforced the onomatopœia with dumb-show, ‘what more do you want?’

It was not for this that Celia had put Miss Carridge on to the old boy. She looked pleasant and waited.

‘What I say is this,’ said Miss Carridge, ‘and it’s what I said to the c’roner. A man doesn’t pay a month’s advance rent one day and do away with himself the next. It isn’t natural.’ She really convinced herself with this argument. ‘Now if he was in arrears I wouldn’t be so sure.’

Celia agreed that to owe Miss Carridge rent would be a dreadful situation.

‘What did they say at the inquest?’ said Celia.

‘
Felo-de-se
,’ said Miss Carridge, with scorn and anger, ‘and got the room a bad name all over Islington. God knows now when I’ll get it off.
Felo-de-se
! Felo-de my rump.’ Just like Mr. Kelly.

Here at last was the opening that Celia had been waiting for. The fact that Miss Carridge had made it, and not she, gave an almost charitable air to what she had to propose.

She and Murphy would go upstairs and leave their room, to which no sinister associations attached, free for letting.

‘My dear child!’ ejaculated Miss Carridge, and waited for the catch.

They would be willing to pay for the room alone what the old boy had paid for the room and his keep, which worked out monthly at ten shillings less than what they paid at present, as Miss Carridge in a moment of gush had had the folly to reveal. The room was on the small side for two, but Mr. Murphy expected to be away more than formerly and they would be glad of the saving.

‘Hah!’ said Miss Carridge. ‘Saving? Then am I to take it you expect me to send the same bill to Mr. Quigley and hand you over the ten bob?’

‘Less the usual commission,’ said Celia. 

‘This is most insulting,’ said Miss Carridge, racking her brains for a means of making it less so.

‘How?’ said Celia. ‘Mr. Quigley will be no worse off. You are the victim of circumstances. You must live. We oblige you, you oblige us.’

Celia’s professional powers of persuasion had been dulled by her association with Murphy. What revived them now was not any desire to succeed with Miss Carridge where he had failed, but an immense longing to get into the old boy’s room.

‘That may be,’ said Miss Carridge, ‘but it is the principle of the thing, the principle of the thing.’ Her face took on an expression of intense concentration, almost of anguish. To accommodate the principle of such a transaction to her sense of what was honourable would take a little time, a little prayer and possibly even meditation.

‘I must go and ask for guidance,’ she said.

After a decent interval for a thorough self-scrutiny, during which Celia packed, Miss Carridge came back, her face serene. There remained just one small matter to regulate before the process of mutual assistance could begin, namely, the precise meaning of ‘usual commission’.

‘Ten per cent,’ said Celia.

‘Twelve and a half,’ said Miss Carridge.

‘Very well,’ said Celia. ‘I cannot haggle.’

‘Nor I,’ said Miss Carridge.

‘If you can manage the two bags,’ said Celia, ‘I can manage the chair.’

‘Is that all you’ve got?’ said Miss Carridge contemptuously. She was annoyed at Celia’s having taken the divine indulgence for granted.

‘All,’ said Celia.

The old boy’s room was half as big as theirs, half as high, twice as bright. The walls and linoleum were the same. The bed was tiny. Miss Carridge could not imagine how the two of them were ever going to manage. When not fired by cupidity, Miss Carridge’s imagination was of the feeblest. 

‘I know I shouldn’t like to sleep two in it,’ she said.

Celia opened the window.

‘I expect Mr. Murphy to be away a great deal,’ she said.

‘Ah well,’ said Miss Carridge, ‘we all have our troubles.’

Celia unpacked her bag, but not Murphy’s. It was late
afternoon.
She got out of her clothes and into the rocking-chair. Now the silence above was a different silence, no longer strangled. The silence not of vacuum but of plenum, not of breath taken but of quiet air. The sky. She closed her eyes and was in her mind with Murphy, Mr. Kelly, clients, her parents, others, herself a girl, a child, an infant. In the cell of her mind, teasing the oakum of her history. Then it was finished, the days and places and things and people were untwisted and scattered, she was lying down, she had no history.

It was a most pleasant sensation. Murphy did not come back to curtail it.

Penelope’s curriculum was reversed, the next day and the next it was all to do over again, the coils of her life to be hackled into tow all over again, before she could lie down in the
paradisial
innocence of days and places and things and people. Murphy did not come back to expel her.

The next day was Saturday (if our reckoning is correct) and Miss Carridge announced that the char was coming to do out the big room and might as well do out the old boy’s room as well. They both continued to think and speak of the top room as the old boy’s room. While the char was doing it out Celia could wait below in the big room. ‘Or downstairs with me if you prefer,’ said Miss Carridge, with pitiable diffidence.

‘That is very good of you,’ said Celia.

‘Most happy,’ said Miss Carridge.

‘But I think I ought to get out,’ said Celia. She had not been outside the door for more than a fortnight.

‘Please yourself,’ said Miss Carridge.

On the steps of the house Celia departing met the char arriving. Celia set off towards Pentonville, with the swagger that could not be disguised. The char stared after her at length, gave 
her nose a long wipe and through it said, though there was none to hear:

‘Lovely work, if you can get it.’

Her course was clear: the Round Pond. The temptation to revisit West Brompton was strong, to tread her old beat in the daylight, to stand again at the junction of Cremorne Road and Stadium Street, to see the barges of waste paper on the river and the funnels vailing to the bridges, but she set it aside. There would be time for that. There was a good breeze from the west, she would go and watch Mr. Kelly sailing his kite.

She took the Piccadilly tube from Caledonian Road to Hyde Park Corner and walked along the grass north of the Serpentine. Each leaf as it fell had an access of new life, a sudden frenzy of freedom at contact with the earth, before it lay down with the others. She had meant to cross the water by Rennie’s Bridge and enter Kensington Gardens by one of the wickets in the eastern boundary, but remembering the dahlias at Victoria Gate she changed her mind and bore off to the right into the north, round the accident house of the Royal Humane Society.

Cooper was standing under a tree in the Cockpit, as he had done, with spells of lying, all day and every day since his return to London with Wylie and Miss Counihan. He recognised Celia as she swaggered past. He let her get well ahead and then started after her, his gait more frustrated than ever as he forced himself to keep his distance. He could not help gaining on her, he had to stop every now and then to let her get on. She stood a long time before the dahlias, then entered the gardens by the fountains. She took the path straight across to the Round Pond, walked round it clockwise and sat down on a bench on the west side with her back to the palace and the wind, close to the flyers, but not too close. She wanted to see Mr. Kelly, but not to be seen by him. Not yet.

The flyers were some old men, most of whom she recognised from the days when she had come regularly with Mr. Kelly every Saturday afternoon, and one child. Mr. Kelly was late. 

It began to rain, she moved into the shelter. A young man followed her, pleasantly spoken, amorously disposed. She could not blame him, it was a natural mistake, she felt sorry for him, she disabused him gently.

The water splashed over the margin of the pond, the nearer kites were writhing and plunging. The nearer they were, the more contorted and wild. One came down in the pond. Another, after prolonged paroxysms, behind the cast of the Physical Energy of G. F. Watts, O.M., R.A. Only two rode steadily, a tandem, coupled abreast like the happy tug and barge, flown by the child from a double winch. She could just discern them, side by side high above the trees, specks against the east darkening already. The wrack broke behind them as she watched, for a moment they stood out motionless and black, in a glade of limpid viridescent sky.

She grew more and more impatient for Mr. Kelly to come and show his skill as the chances of his doing so diminished. She sat on till it was nearly dark and all the flyers, except the child, had gone. At last he also began to wind in and Celia watched for the kites to appear. When they did their contortions surprised her, she could hardly believe it was the same pair that had ridden so serenely on a full line. The child was expert, he played them with a finesse worthy of Mr. Kelly himself. In the end they came quietly, hung low in the murk almost directly overhead, then settled gently. The child knelt down in the rain, dismantled them, wrapped the tails and sticks in the sails and went away, singing. As he passed the shelter Celia called good night. He did not hear her, he was singing.

Soon the gates would close, all over the gardens the rangers were crying their cry:
All out
. Celia started slowly up the Broad Walk, wondering what could have happened to Mr. Kelly, impervious in the ordinary way to every form of weather except the dead calm. It was not as though he depended on her to wheel him, he always insisted on propelling the chair himself. He enjoyed the sensation of plying the levers, he said it was like working the pulls of a beer-engine. It looked as though something were amiss with Mr. Kelly. 

She took the District Railway from Notting Hill Gate to King’s Cross. So did Cooper. She toiled up Caledonian Road, feeling the worse for her outing. She was tired and wet, Mr. Kelly had failed, the child had ignored her good night. There was
nothing
to go back to, yet she was glad when she arrived. So was Cooper. She let herself in, therefore she lived there. This time he did not exceed his instructions, but hastened away as soon as he had made a mental note of the number. Cooper’s mental notes were few, but ineffaceable. Celia had begun to climb the stairs in the dark when Miss Carridge came out of her room and switched on the light. Celia stopped, her feet on different steps, her hand on the banister, her face in profile.

‘Mr. Murphy came while you were out,’ said Miss Carridge. ‘You can’t have been gone five minutes.’

For a full second Celia mistook this to mean that Murphy had come back.

‘He took his bag and the chair,’ said Miss Carridge, ‘but couldn’t wait.’

There was the usual silence, Miss Carridge missing nothing of Celia’s expression, Celia appearing to scrutinise her hand on the banister.

‘Any message,’ said Celia, at last.

‘I can’t hear you,’ said Miss Carridge.

‘Did Mr. Murphy leave any message?’ said Celia, turning away and taking another step upward.

‘Wait now till I see,’ said Miss Carridge. Celia waited.

‘Yes,’ said Miss Carridge, ‘now that you ask me, he did say to tell you he was all right and would be writing.’ A lie. Miss Carridge’s pity knew no bounds but alms.

When it was quite clear that this was the whole extent of the message Celia went on slowly up the stairs. Miss Carridge stood with a finger on the switch, watching. The turn of the stair took the body out of sight, but Miss Carridge could still see the hand on the banister, gripping, then sliding a little, gripping again, then sliding a little more. When the hand also disappeared Miss Carridge switched off the light and stood in the dark that 
was so much less extravagant, not to mention richer in acoustic properties, listening.

She heard with surprise the door of the big room opened and closed again immediately. After a pause the steps resumed their climb, no more slowly than before, but perhaps a little less surely. She waited till she heard the old boy’s door close, neither loudly nor softly, and then went back to her book:
The Candle of Vision
, by George Russell (A.E.).

T
HE
Magdalen Mental Mercyseat lay a little way out of town, ideally situated in its own grounds on the boundary of two counties. In order to die in the one sheriffalty rather than in the other some patients had merely to move up, or be moved up, a little in the bed. This sometimes proved a great convenience.

The head male nurse, Mr. Thomas (‘Bim’) Clinch, a huge red, bald, whiskered man of over-weening ability and authority in his own department, had a fancy for Ticklepenny not far short of love. It was largely thanks to this that Ticklepenny had been taken on in the first place. It was largely thanks to it now that Murphy was taken on in Ticklepenny’s stead. For Ticklepenny had vowed to Bim that if Murphy were not taken on in his stead, to release him from the torments of the wards, he would go, pay or no pay. But if Murphy were taken on he would stay, he would return to the bottles and the slops and so remain available for Bim’s fancy, which was not far short of love.

After a sharp struggle between man and head male nurse Bim neatly reconciled his pleasure and his duty. He would take Murphy on a month’s probation and release Ticklepenny from his contract. When Murphy had completed his month, and not before, Ticklepenny would be paid for the ten days he had served. Thus Ticklepenny was made security for Murphy and the fancy given a full month in which to cloy.

Ticklepenny proposed that he should be paid his ten days as soon as Murphy had completed, not his own month, but as much of Ticklepenny’s as had still to run. 

‘Darling,’ said Bim, ‘you will get your one-six-eight as soon as your Murphy has given a month’s satisfaction and no sooner.’

‘Then make it one-ten,’ said Ticklepenny. ‘Have a heart.’

‘That is entirely up to you,’ said Bim.

Thus Murphy’s appointment, as though to a position of the highest trust, was a foregone conclusion. His own merits were so recondite, in spite of the magical eye, that he obviously could not be appointed on them, but only on the demerits, or
by-merits
, of Ticklepenny. So it was that a few minutes after his arrival he found himself being signed on and admonished by Bim, who did not like the look of him in the least.

He would be expected to make beds, carry trays, clean up regular messes, clean up casual messes, read thermometers, write charts, wash the bedridden, give medicine, hound down its effects, warm bedpans, cool fevers, boil gags, sterilize when in doubt, honour and obey the male sister, wait hand, foot and mouth on the doctor when he came, look pleasant.

He would never lose sight of the fact that he was dealing with patients not responsible for what they did or said.

He would never on any account allow himself to be affected by the abuse, no matter how foul and unmerited, that would be poured out upon him. The patients seeing so much of the nurses and so little of the doctor, it was natural that they should regard the former as their persecutors and the latter as their saviour.

He would never on any account be rough with a patient. Restraint and coercion were sometimes unavoidable, but must always be exerted with the utmost tenderness. After all it was a mercyseat. If singlehanded he could not handle a patient without hurting him, let him call the other nurses to his assistance.

He would never lose sight of the fact that he was a creature without initiative. He had no competence to register facts on his own account. There were no facts in the M.M.M. except those sanctioned by the doctor. Thus, to take a simple example, when a patient died suddenly and flagrantly, as was sometimes bound to happen even in the M.M.M., let him assume nothing of the 
kind when sending for the doctor. No patient was dead till the doctor had seen him.

He would never on any account neglect to keep his mouth shut. The mercies of the Mercyseat were private and confidential.

These were the main points to be kept constantly in mind. Other routine details would be explained to him as he went along.

He was assigned to Skinner’s House, male side, first floor. His hours would be 8 to 12 and 2 to 8. He would start the following morning. He would be on day duty the first week, on night duty the second week. The peculiar features of night duty would be explained to him when the time came.

A less remarkable outfit would be issued to him.

Had he any questions before he was passed on to Ticklepenny?

There was a silence, Bim liking the look of Murphy less and less, Murphy racking his brains for a plausible curiosity.

‘In that case—’ said Bim.

‘Are they all certified?’ said Murphy.

‘That is not your business,’ said Bim. ‘You are not paid to take an interest in the patients, but to fetch for them, carry for them and clean up after them. All you know about them is the work they give you to do. Make no mistake about it.’

Murphy learned later that about 15 per cent of the patients were certified, a little band select only in name, treated with exactly the same sanguine punctilio as the 85 per cent that were not certified. For the M.M.M. was a sanatorium, not a madhouse nor a home for defectives, and as such admitted only those cases whose prognoses were not hopeless. If the effect of treatment was to render the prognosis hopeless, as was sometimes bound to happen even in the M.M.M., then out went the patient, except in very special extenuating circumstances. Thus if the chronic (the soft impairment having been admitted) was a really charming chap, quiet, clean, biddable and solvent, he might be allowed to settle down in the M.M.M. for the rest of his natural. There were a few such fortunate cases, certified and uncertified, enjoying all the amenities of a mental hospital, from peraldehyde to slosh, without any of its therapeutic vexations. 

Cringing with relief, Ticklepenny took Murphy first to his sleeping quarters, then to Skinner House.

Two large buildings, one for males, the other for females, remote from the main block and still more so from each other, housed the nursing staff and other menials. Married nurses, both male and female, lived out. No female nurse had taken a male nurse to husband within living memory, though one had once been almost obliged to.

Murphy had the choice of sharing a room with Ticklepenny or having a garret to himself. They climbed the ladder to the latter and Murphy chose it with such decision that even Ticklepenny felt a little slighted. It was not usual for Ticklepenny to feel slighted at all, it was unprecedented for him to do so without cause, as was the present case. For had he been Cleopatra
herself
, in the last years of her father’s reign, Murphy would have made the same choice.

The reason for this eccentricity does not seem a very good one. Fewer years ago than he cared to remember, while still in the first cyanosis of youth, Murphy had occupied a garret in Hanover, not for long, but for long enough to experience all its advantages. Since then he had sought high and low for another, even half as good. In vain. What passed for a garret in Great Britain and Ireland was really nothing more than an attic. An attic! How was it possible for such a confusion to arise? A basement was better than an attic. An attic!

But the garret that he now saw was not an attic, nor yet a mansarde, but a genuine garret, not half, but twice as good as the one in Hanover, because half as large. The ceiling and the outer wall were one, a superb surge of white, pitched at the perfect angle of furthest trajectory, pierced by a small frosted skylight, ideal for closing against the sun by day and opening by night to the stars. The bed, so low and gone in the springs that even unfreighted the middle grazed the ground, was wedged
lengthways
into the cleft of floor and ceiling, so that Murphy was saved the trouble of moving it into that position. The garret contained, in addition to the bed, one chair and one chest, not of drawers.
An immense candle, stuck to the floor by its own tallow, pointed its snuff to heaven at the head of the bed. This, the only means of light, was more than enough for Murphy, a strict non-reader. But he objected very strongly to there being no means of heat.

‘I must have fire,’ he said to Ticklepenny, ‘I cannot live without fire.’

Ticklepenny was sorry, he thought it most unlikely that Murphy would be granted a fire in the garret. There were no tubes or wires to that remote aery. A brazier seemed the only chance, but Bim would hardly allow a brazier. Murphy would find that a fire was really unnecessary in so confined a space. The flame within would work up a fine fug in no time.

‘I come here to oblige you,’ said Murphy, ‘and I am still prepared to do so, but not without fire.’

He went on to speak of tubes and wires. Was it not just the beauty of tubes and wires, that they could be extended? Was it not their chief characteristic, the ease with which they could be extended? What was the point of going in for tubes and wires at all, if you did not extend them without compunction whenever necessary? Did they not cry out for extension? Ticklepenny thought he would never stop, saying feverishly the same thing in slightly different ways.

‘You should see my fire,’ said Ticklepenny.

This infuriated Murphy. Was he to find a garret after all these years, just as all hope seemed dead, a garret that was actually not an attic, nor a mansarde, only to lose it again at once for want of a few yards of tube or wire? He broke into sweat, lost all his yellow, his heart pounded, the garret spun round, he could not speak. When he could he said, in a voice new to Ticklepenny:

‘Have fire in this garret before night or—’

He stopped because he could not go on. It was an aposiopesis of the purest kind. Ticklepenny supplied the missing consequences in various versions, each one more painful than any that Murphy could have specified, terrifying taken all together. Suk’s indication of silence as one of Murphy’s highest attributes could not have been more strikingly justified. 

It seems strange that neither of them thought of an oil-stove, say a small Valor Perfection. Bim could hardly have objected and all the trouble with tubes and wires would have been avoided. The fact remains that the idea of an oil-stove did not occur to either of them at the time, though it did long afterwards to Ticklepenny.

‘Now for the wards,’ said Ticklepenny.

‘Did you catch what I said,’ said Murphy, ‘by any chance?’

‘I’ll do what I can,’ said Ticklepenny.

‘It makes no difference to me,’ said Murphy, ‘whether I go or stay.’

He was mistaken.

On the way to Skinner’s House they passed a bijou edifice of mellow brick with a forecourt of lawn and flowers, its façade a profusion of traveller’s joy and self-clinging ampelopsis, set in a bay of clipped yews.

‘Is that the nursery?’ said Murphy.

‘No,’ said Ticklepenny, ‘the mortuary.’

Skinner’s was a long, grey, two-storied building, dilated at both ends like a double obelisk. The females were thrown all together to the west, the males to the east, and on the strength of this it was called a mixed house, as distinct from the two
convalescent
houses, which very properly were not mixed. Similarly, some public baths are called mixed where the bathing is not.

Skinner’s was the cockpit of the M.M.M. and here the battle raged most fiercely, whenever it could be engaged, between the psychotic and psychiatric points of view. Patients left Skinner’s better, dead or chronic, for a convalescent house, the mortuary or the exit, as the case might be.

They mounted directly to the first floor and Murphy was submitted to the male sister, Mr. Timothy (‘Bom’) Clinch, younger twin and dead spit of Bim. Bom, primed by Bim, expected nothing from Murphy, and Murphy,
ex hypothesi
,
nothing
from Bom, with the result that neither was disappointed.

Bim Clinch had no fewer than seven male relations, linear and collateral, serving under him, of whom the greatest was 
Bom and perhaps the least an aged uncle (‘Bum’) in the bandage-winding department, as well as an elder sister, two nieces and a by-blow on the female side. There was nothing
old-fashioned
or half-hearted about the nepotism of Bim Clinch, there was no more resolute and successful pope to his family in the south of England, and even in the south of Ireland there were still some who might have studied his methods with profit.

‘This way,’ said Bom.

The wards consisted of two long corridors, intersecting to form a T, or more correctly a decapitated potence, the three extremities developed into spacious crutch-heads, which were the reading-, writing- and recreation-rooms or ‘wrecks’, known to the wittier ministers of mercy as the sublimatoria. Here the patients were encouraged to play billiards, darts, ping-pong, the piano and other less strenuous games, or simply to hang about doing nothing. The great majority preferred simply to hang about doing nothing.

To adopt for a moment as a purely descriptive convenience the terms and orientation of church architecture, the layout of the wards was that of nave and transepts, with nothing east of the crossing. There were no open wards in the ordinary sense, but single rooms, or as some would say, cells, or as Boswell said, mansions, opening south off the nave and east and west off the transepts. North of the nave were the kitchens, patients’
refectory
, nurses’ refectory, drug arsenal, patients’ lavatory, nurses’ lavatory, visitors’ lavatory, etc. The bedridden and more
refractory
cases were kept together as far as possible in the south transept, off which opened the padded cells, known to the wittier as the ‘quiet rooms’, ‘rubber rooms’ or, in a notable clip, ‘pads’. The whole place was overheated and stank of peraldehyde and truant sphincters.

There were not many patients about as Murphy followed Bom through the wards. Some were at matins, some in the gardens, some could not get up, some would not, some simply had not. But those that he did see were not at all the terrifying monsters that might have been imagined from Ticklepenny’s 
account. Melancholics, motionless and brooding, holding their heads or bellies according to type. Paranoids, feverishly covering sheets of paper with complaints against their treatment or verbatim reports of their inner voices. A hebephrenic playing the piano intently. A hypomanic teaching slosh to a Korsakow’s
syndrome
. An emaciated schizoid, petrified in a toppling attitude as though condemned to an eternal
tableau vivant
, his left hand rhetorically extended holding a cigarette half smoked and out, his right, quivering and rigid, pointing upward.