The Girl Who Couldn’t Read. John Harding
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it, manhandling her calmly in the face of fierce opposition on her part, got her hands strapped to the arms and then proceeded to strap her ankles to the legs in spite of her kicking feet. Finally, they placed the strap attached to the chair back around her throat. A strap like that could strangle a woman, I thought.
All the time the woman was screaming and resisting with what little power she had. I really don’t enjoy seeing a woman struggle. I have no liking for torture.
‘If you leave me here, I will piss myself, I swear I will,’ the woman shouted.
O’Reilly turned to Morgan, and raised an eyebrow. ‘Gag?’
He nodded and she produced a piece of rolled cloth from her pocket, evidently made for the purpose, at the sight of which the woman stopped screaming and closed her mouth firmly, turning the lips inwards so you could not see them. Her panic showed in her eyes, which swivelled this way and that, desperately searching for some means of escape, like a cornered rat. The junior attendant went behind her, seized her head in an arm hold to prevent her shaking it around and with her free hand pinched the poor woman’s nose tightly. Thus it was only a matter of time before she was forced to open her mouth to breathe, whereupon O’Reilly shoved the gag between her teeth while the other proceeded to tie it behind the woman’s head.
After this, unable to move much at all, the poor wretch in the chair gave up the fight and her body slumped. No dignity remained to her and, lacking any other means of defiance, she carried out her threat and opened her bladder and urine began to drip from the chair and pool upon the floor below.
I watched in horror, appalled at what I was seeing, but Morgan seemed completely unmoved by the woman’s plight, as did O’Reilly and the other attendant. All three were so extremely matter-of-fact about the whole affair, it was obvious it must be a daily occurrence in their lives. Morgan strolled back into the other room and retrieved the clipboard from where O’Reilly had put it down. Returning to us, he studied it, lifting the top sheet of paper, then the one underneath.
‘I see we gave her only three hours last time.’
‘That’s right, sir,’ said O’Reilly.
‘I think then that this time we’ll try six. That should do the trick.’
The eyes of the woman in the chair widened in terror at these words. It was her only method of expression. Morgan walked over to her and said, in a kindly tone, ‘Now then, Lizzie, you may as well settle down because you are going to be here for quite the long haul. During that time I want you to consider the foolish behaviour that has led you to this situation and to consider modifying it so that you never have to find yourself here again. I hope that after this there will be no more soiling of yourself.’
He stood and smiled benignly, with the air of one who is conferring the greatest of favours, and as if waiting for some kind of response, though of course there was no way the unfortunate woman could give any, except to blink. Then, in that abrupt way he had of doing things, he turned to O’Reilly, thrust the clipboard into her hands and without another word marched out of the room. I caught up with him in the corridor.
‘Six hours to be so restrained seems a terrible long time,’ I ventured.
‘You think so?’ He stopped and looked at me with surprise. ‘Why, not at all, man, not at all. Ten or twelve is sometimes necessary.’
‘It seems so – so, well, harsh. Is there truly no other way?’
He looked exasperated. ‘There we go again, with your old-style ideas. Ideas I may say that were formulated by a gaggle of well-meaning but ill-informed, completely unqualified Quakers, rather than doctors, and that have no basis in science. Come, man, let’s have it out now, why don’t we? I can’t have you working here if you mean to challenge everything we do.’
I had no notion of how I had pushed him into this. His rage seemed out of all proportion to the objection I had made. His face was red with indignation, his cheeks puffed out, like an angry bullfrog. I thought his head was going to explode. I did not know what to say. It was not like drying up on stage, for I had no script. Indeed, I was not at all sure what my role here was. I tried to improvise but all that came out was a stammer. His features relaxed and his old calm smugness seemed to flow back. ‘Well? Cat got your tongue?’
‘I will gladly fight my corner, sir, only I would like the opportunity to reflect upon what I have seen here, if I may, and to formulate my reply carefully before making it.’
‘Very well,’ he snapped. ‘Take all the time you want; it won’t make any difference. We’ll discuss it tomorrow.’
I breathed a sigh of relief. I would read Moral Treatment after dinner this evening and have whatever arguments it contained for my ammunition. As I followed him along the corridor, though, the thought came to me, why do I want to argue with him? Why should I of all people care so much about the treatment of these lunatics, I who was wholly ignorant of such things not twenty-four hours ago? Why put myself at risk by stirring the waters of this safe harbour, given what the consequences might be? But all that carried no weight. I knew I would continue on this course even though to do so lacked any sort of logic. What a piece of work is man! So full of contradictions. I thought not to find such compassion in myself. It troubled me to discover I knew so little of me.
We were now near Morgan’s office and he begged to be excused as he had a letter he must dictate to his secretary, although I had the sense that this was a pretext, that he was still so angry with me he wanted to remove himself from my presence until he could calm down and reappear as his other, more familiar, urbane character. He was a man who did not like to lose control. I told him that as I hadn’t after all visited the library last night, I would do so now.
It was strange how ordinary in broad daylight, robbed of its black corners and sinister shadows, the passage I had trod the night before was. The library, too, had lost the terror darkness had given it. There was nothing atmospheric about it now; it had only the air of a musty neglected storeroom and not even very much of the romance of books. I examined the dusty shelves and found they contained a good few novels, and several volumes of stories by one of my favourite authors, Edgar Allan Poe. For the moment, though, I restrained myself from taking one; there was enough horror about the place for me not to seek to add to it. I settled for the Shakespeare. Should a man ever find himself upon a desert island, it is the only book he would need and the only one he could not do without.
I returned with it to Morgan’s office and hung about outside and shortly he emerged. He reached out a hand for the book and I surrendered it to him. He examined the title on the spine before flicking it open and regarding the list of contents, then he slammed it shut, releasing a little cloud of dust, and handed it back to me. ‘Shakespeare, eh? Never could understand what all the fuss was about.’
Well, I thought, that is no great surprise. It would be difficult for a lover of the bard to show so little sympathy for others. Still, I did not want to take him on over this, not after our earlier spat. Save your battles for the things worth fighting for has always been my motto, so I merely smiled, like someone appreciating the confession of a venial weakness by a superior being. This evidently put me back into Morgan’s good books and I realised he was a man who did not like to be challenged on anything. I’ve often observed this in those who are completely sure of everything they do. It’s as if the exposure of any small chink in their certainty would demolish the whole edifice.
Morgan pulled out his watch. ‘The boat will be in by now and we will have to review the new intake. They will be arriving directly at the examination room.’
We passed through the day room on our way there and, immediately Morgan opened the door, in contrast to the dead silence of the day before, were greeted by a great noise. I saw that at this early hour the inmates were not seated listlessly around the room as on the previous afternoon, but instead were on their hands and knees scrubbing the floor. I could have kicked myself for my naïveté in thinking it was thanks to the attendants that the place was spotless.
‘The patients do the housework?’ I asked, pausing to look at them.
‘Yes, they