CHAPTER 10

FINAL CHAPTER?

OR LAST STRAW?

It had been the patient’s moans issuing from the padded cell next door to her own that had awoken Alice. She knew, almost without needing to think about it that it was that Welsh valley girl, Gwyneth, the girl she had been responsible for getting ‘put on tether’. She knew too, instinctively, the rationale behind the girl having been placed in the very next room - and just why someone had neglected to shut the observation flap in the door, the closure of which would have rendered the room totally soundless.

Listening to the poor thing’s mutterings and mumblings Alice found it difficult to remind herself that neither herself, nor the poor thing next door, were real mental patients, that this wasn’t a real psychiatric institution, but rather simply formed part of a small medical facility set within the walls of a priory, a church-run charity home ‘for the valuable and feckless and the morally weak’. Above all she needed to stay focused, try her best to find a way out, before her will too was broken, her mind too became eroded away and she became just another of those menial simpletons they had working their lives away in their laundry, muttering psalms, prayers and Hail Marys.

Echoing, reverberant, screams were winding along the stone-flagged hallways now, the sounds of weeping and sobbing too - every now and then an outburst of crazy kookaburra laughter. How she yearned to cover her ears, but the straightjacket they had put her in had other ideas. All she could do was lie there on the padded flooring on her side, maintaining the foetal position she had been in ever since she had last been ‘seen to’, however long ago that had been.

Just previous to that time, the last time Alice had been awake, there had been a different sound issuing from the cell next door, a sort of warm humming, thrumming sound that occasional rose or fell in pitch and that occasionally, too, had a rough buzzing edge to it. The electrical whining sound, sometimes as low-pitched as the hum from an electricity substation or transformer, had been accompanied by a soft, sensual feminine sighing, almost sobbing, sometimes rising to a wailing girlishly intimate crescendo as the thrumming too rose in pitch, became more insistent - only then to fall away to a flustered peel of “please, please, please...” as the pitch, too, dropped away. It had seemed to go on for hours, the slobbery sobbing sighing building to throaty gasps and wailing and then subsiding again - sometimes to real tears of sorrow - in time with the rising and falling of the thrumming sound. Sometimes the strange symphony of anguish would be accompanied by high-pitched pleas of what sounded like “no more... no more...”, at other times by desperate moaning throaty exaltations not to stop whatever it was that was going on; “please... please don’t stop... not again, not again... please...!”

Between these two extremes at times Alice fancied she caught the voice of the new young psychotherapist, the light tinkling girlish laugh she had, a sort of pitting awkward giggle, at other moments, she would overhear distinct snippets of speech: “...just look at the picture... that’s it... what beautiful breasts she has... what a lovely bottom”. Then the thrumming pitch would drop, accompanied by all manner of breathy entreaties. Then the sound would rise again a little: “... now tell me how lovely you think those breasts are... tell me how it would make you feel to run your hands over that bottom... come along, just whisper... and I promise I’ll not stop this time...”

That was when the gasping and wailing had started in earnest, the pitch of that thrumming buzzy hum rising up like a swarm of bees... It hadn’t been the first time of course - it seemed to be something of an ongoing programme involving the resident of the next room, poor Gwyneth - a daily procedure that seemed to have been going on for weeks. But whatever was being done to her, all that attention the girl was wallowing in made Alice feel envious; the strategy in her case now seemed to be to simply leave her alone - deadly alone.

Being in the straitjacket was like being shut in some kind of rib-crushing, breath-denying canvas, leather-strapped and steel-buckled corset - but one in addition set with padlocks. The enforced posture, knees drawn up to the chest, had almost been comforting at first but had now become a modern variation played on the theme of the mediaeval torture known as the ‘Little Ease’. Popular with the Tudors and early Stuarts, in those times the latter consisted of a tiny cell or cage-like accommodation within which the prisoner could neither stand nor sit, nor lie down but could only crouch in ever-increasing agony. The irony here was that there was plenty of room in the white box of the padded cell - from Alice’s viewpoint it seemed an uncomfortably huge and empty vacuum - just that she was prevented, forbidden, from making use of any of that potential freedom; that was the real cruelty.

The jacket’s sleeves were devoid of openings allowing for the passage of wrists and hands, the free ends being sewn closed and terminating with reinforced leather tabs or straps which dangled from the tips of her imprisoned fingers. These would be secured by a uniformed nurse who - having dragged the hotly resisting Alice’s arms across her chest in the manner of a self-hug - would then buckle the sleeves behind Alice’s back, before slipping a padlock through a ‘D’ ring on the buckle.

There had been a time Alice would have continued to struggle even at that point, often dropping to the floor and squirming around in the vain hope of making the proceedings more difficult for the nurse and the two novice nuns who usually attended her. The long hard caning that would invariably follow, with her arms anchored out of harm’s way in the jacket and her held down bodily across the hospital-style examination couch they had outside the padded room had eventually done the trick.

Nowadays once her arms were fastened she just gave up. She would now stand passively while the nurse and her two Sisters of Mercy attendants buckled her straightjacket up the back, a padlock popped into each of the ‘D’ rings locking-off the several roller buckles and clicked shut. Nowadays the nurse barely creased her starched cambric apron or her calf-length ‘hospital blue’ dress, nor was there danger of her dislodging her high-fronted cap or of perspiration dampening her uniform dress’s high ‘mandarin-style collar. The nurse’s cane was always still very much in attendance, though, swinging on its wrist strap from a silvered clip on the side of her elasticated webbing belt, a bunch of keys dangling from the other and a filigree ball-clasp buckle you could see your face in, if not for its ornate butterfly wing design, in-between.

The leather reinforced collar would be last - following the crotch strap, of which more later - simply two ‘D’ rings pulled together at the rear and wedded by yet another of those golden burnished-finish brass padlocks so beloved of the establishment. There was even a ‘D’ ring at the front of the collar from which a leash would be attached by way of one of those padlocks, this one bigger than the rest, unnecessarily bulky; she supposed it was to make it more obvious, so that she might see it each time she glanced down, be reminded of the hopeless totality of her captivity here, the unassailability of their control over her.

Her arms were pulled as tight as a tourniquet beneath her breasts. Her hands, her palms - even the individual digits all but completely immobilised - were pressed to the sides of her ribcage as if fixed in place by some kind of supernatural adhesive; such was the power of her helplessness. There were all manner of ratcheted locks and tamper-proof buckles, all contributing to her control, all relieving her of the responsibility of self-volition, the trouble of self-direction; there was a kind off peace to it, a listless, sleepy feeling of submission which somehow paralleled an intensity of powerlessness which should really have been downright terrifying. And yet having been deprived of all means of resistance, once she had calmed down, in place of panic she was left instead with a sense of relief, as if soothed by the negation of the obligation to resist. It wasn’t sane; it was a worrying thought...

The stiffly abrasive fabric scratched and itched her skin making sleeping near impossible save for fits and starts and head-nodding jolts, the only area spared being her breasts which sweated within their own prison. The latter consisted of a long-line bra possessing rigid reinforced plastic-lined cups designed to keep temptation at bay - except that it didn’t; the bra’s cups lined internally with a circular pad of fine grassy soft polythene fronds managed the exact opposite; boredom did the rest, imagination filled in the gaps making it suitably difficult to concentrate.

In a similar fashion her pudendum - that shameful thing, as the nuns called it, quoting from the Latin translation - was sheltered behind a small, rigid and roughly ovoid polythene bowl which tapered off towards the rear and was ostensibly designed to protect both from the chafing of the straightjacket’s crotch strap, and any sinful stimulation that might otherwise be derived. This shield-like covering being immovably secured within - and an integral part of - the gusset of a pair of thick skin-tight backless rubber panties was furnished with a small straw-like tube to the fore - this forming the exit point of a urethral catheter - and was lined with an entire lawn of long, soft, grass-like strands that swayed, stroked and caressed with every movement. An additional little rubbery fan of slivers, something along the lines of the body and arms of a sea anemone in form, arose and oozed upwards and inwards from within the front of the gusset cover, its latex tendrils drifting bewitchingly forwards to surround and intermittently brush against that which she’d really rather nothing touched at all than just sort of half-touch. That part of the perineum between the rear of the vagina and the anus, that sensitive area above which the plastic gusset cover tapered to a flat point, was treated to the infuriating attentions of a fine longitudinal fringe of bristly plastic hairs.

Her anus itself - ordinarily a sweet little pinkish bud - left bare and uncovered by the backless panties was distended and stretched, though not painfully so, by a hollow-centred rubber bung, this in form like a small but wide-centred black cotton reel, albeit soft yet resilient. Locked firmly in place by its shape, the rubbery inner flange being quite large in girth in comparison to the centre part of the tubular doughnut-like body, this dilator - as it was termed - was safe from expulsion during normal voiding and was essentially tamper-proof - even if the patient’s hands were free, which Alice’s most certainly were not - requiring a special tool to fit or remove; it also all but completely removed the patient’s own volition in ‘holding back’, the device rendering the sphincter muscles essentially useless.

A thick, doubled terry cloth nappy enfolding the whole ensemble, backless rubber pants, catheter outlet, pudenda shield and all, completed the picture. Over all of this paraphernalia went a voluminous pair of all-confining, ‘tamper-proof’ plastic bloomers, the garment a greyish-white semi-transparent institutional monstrosity devoid of any aesthetic or consideration of dignity. Elasticated deep-sectioned waterproofed and rubberized internally-ribbed cuffs bit deep into her lower thighs, nearly as far down as her knees. A chunky polythene covered, rubber lined, waistband, its grip augmented by an enclosed threaded-through spring steel band, squeezed just a tad too firmly where it hugged her middle beneath her lower ribs. The two halves of the flat steel hoop running within the confines of the broad waistband were kept closed by a small but robust padlock mounted at the rear, at the small of her back, which served to wed the two ‘U’ shaped metal hoops formed at the point at which the two spring steel ends surfaced from within the plastic fabric covering.

The buckled straitjacket crotch strap would be tightened over all this of course. The thick, broad, unforgiving leather tongue would be pulled taut through the locking roller buckle assembly until the crotch, diaper or nappy and that rigid gusset-shield thing were all pressed up unbearably close into her groin and intimacy, the bulk of the terry cloth forcing her thighs apart to the point at which walking would have been reduced to a painfully slow old-aged waddle in any case, even without the padded leather ankle restraints and their short tethering leash which hobbled her further. Then the crotch strap would be locked-off with a padlock.

It was true a pair of fabric bloomers would then be slipped over the top, these in a soft white satin - whether silk satin or of some man-made fibre she couldn’t be sure - and tying at the waist, over the top of the straightjacket, by way of a huge pink satin bow. But this addition had nothing to do with aesthetics or consideration of dignity, and a whole lot to do with humiliation, being festooned with babyish prints of teddy bears, dollies and other childhood friends and decorated by row upon lavish row of flounces and frills. It all went along with the ankle socks and the manner in which they now arranged what was left of her hair - after her trip to the nun who had laughingly called herself ‘the stylist’ and had doled-out her first ‘hospital cut’ - into two tightly plaited pigtails, each finished off with a massively oversized glossy pink satin ribbon.

Finally the ankle cuffs would be fastened over the top of the little frilled white turn-over-top ankle socks they made her wear; a fluffy, lacy and babyish confection decorated with pink ribbons threaded around the tops, each tied in a cutie-pie bow at the front. The restraint cuffs each fastened with a double-tongued strap and buckle arrangement, each of the four small stainless steel buckles - two on each cuff - secured by a padlock, one of which on each cuff did double duty by way of securing the ‘D’ ring on each end of the oh, so short, hobble strap.

She used to sit listlessly against the back wall of the padded cell staring at all that white glossy nothingness, content to hear nothing save the occasional creaking of the quilted plastic or polyurethane padding that covered every surface of her little cuboid inner-world as she shifted her weight. The rhythmic sighing her own resigned breathing and the tinnitus hissing of her blood circulation being recorded and registered in her ears had been her only other companions - that and the occasional word that would trickle past her own lips if and when her self-imposed discipline of silence broke down; talking to herself, she had decided, if she wanted to maintain the dignity of sanity, was a real no-no. Of course there had been her own occasional outbursts of hilarity she’d had to contend with, when some aspect of her situation, perhaps of the contrast with her beloved stepmother’s various jaunts around the globe at her - or rather her father’s estate’s - expense; an inheritance increasingly and frustratingly being squandered - would bring her own laughter ringing in her ears.

Even more worrying than talking to herself, that was - she would have to give herself a good talking to; she started to giggle at the thought of that, then broke off abruptly as she heard similar giggling emanating from the identical cell next door. Silence again fell and she found herself idly wondering whether sweet, fey Gwyneth next door might not be giving herself a good talking to, at that very moment. She would do the same, in her head of course; talking to yourself in your head was ok, the psychologist had said so; the inner voice, that’s what the doctor had said it was, ‘one’s inner dialogue’: This was something the doctor encouraged - she was to mull over her problems, all those psychological problems, the phobias, the obsessions, the addictions; but she didn’t have any of those, at least she was sure she hadn’t had, not until the doctor had got to her. And as for her greatest, hungriest addiction; that was to doctor herself, the counselling sessions she couldn’t go without, the sedatives and tranquilizers the doctor had prescribed and had left it to her darling stepmother to shoulder the responsibility, wield the power, entailed in dolling out.

It was hardly surprising her money-grabbing stepmother was going to use that dependency to gain control over her; that was how the woman had got her under her thumb, how she’d made Alice kowtow to all the stipulations, rules, regulations and limitations she had placed her under, how she’d managed to get Alice across her knee, and later to bend for her strap and cane, how she’d managed to put Alice back in school uniform, make her submit to the authority of a governess, forgo her promising and prestigious university place for the Victorian-style discipline of the home schoolroom.

Between her stepmother, the school teacher and the governess her stepmother had employed they’d had her writing lines, learning by rote and corner standing with hands on head like a naughty child. Only the doctor had been her lifeline, had been able to whisk her away from all that... But only to this place - she’d said it was a church-run charity home, but something of a sanctuary for abused or exploited young women, not a system of exploitation and abuse in its own right, a type of self-justifying sanctified detention and confinement for those the churched deemed too ‘easily led’ to be allowed to squander freedom.

Now she was becoming introspective - for some reason the thought made her smile: “I mustn’t laugh, though I mustn’t giggle, I must...” For a moment she thought she could hear the girl next door whispering, giving herself that good talking to she needed; on recognizing her own voice she broke off urgently. From outside the wailing began anew. Trying to bury her head in the padded flooring to deaden the plaintive Welsh-lilted calling out and whining Alice began now twisting herself sharply back and forth, spastically twitching and thrashing before finally, having built up sufficient momentum, she succeeded in progressing from lying on her right to her lying on her left; but still arranged in that knees-to-chest foetal position.

It was only recently this new variation to the level of her confinement, this new refinement, had been introduced. Now the foetal position was the only position she could adopt; the leather leash customarily attached to the front of the straitjacket’s throttling tight collar was now conjoined at the other end to a steel ring fitted midway along the tether hobbling her ankles, joined to it by yet another of those bloody padlocks. She could flex her knees back and forth a little, but that was about it; she couldn’t straighten out her legs. And that knees-up doubled position made it an even more onerous task to hold back once all those prunes and figs and porridge she was spoon-fed with at intervals throughout what passed as the ‘day’ here got to work...

How they loved their padlocks in this place - security was heaped on security, however superfluous. If the functionality, the strict utility, was questionable, the psychology behind it was not. There was that new young woman, for instance; the latest white-coated Snow Queen to take it on herself to gatecrash young Alice’s private Wonderland. No bespectacled college blue-stocking, this one, in fact her stockings were habitually dark tan, sometimes smoky black; yes, stockings, Alice could tell. On occasion, if this relatively new tormentress happened to squat to take her canvas shrink-wrapped patient by the chin, as was her habit (and Alice did feel ‘shrink-wrapped’, and in more ways than one), an elastic suspender - sometimes two - would show, snow white or ‘skin tone’ pink but, just occasionally, a rubbery, gummy old-gold amber, like the colour of golden syrup.

Despite the woman’s relative youth her figure was all restrained voluptuousness, girdled, boned and waspish, with a bottom that seesawed as she walked, calves stretched and moulded into a feminine ideal by the high-heel stiletto’s she was obliged to kick off out in the corridor before entering the padded cell (or ‘soft room’ as she termed it) and a bustline that was more akin to a pair of torpedoes than bullets (despite the term, ‘bullet’ bra) and that seemed to project beyond the boundary her perpetually open, flapping white doctor’s coat. There was a badge embroidered on the breast pocket of the woman’s white coat; a heraldic shield device, like a coat-of-arms, overlaid by a large glistening gold-thread Christian cross entwined by two counter-winding green and blue serpents in the style of Hippocrates (of the Hippocratic Oath fame), topped by the black-lettered title, ‘psychotherapist’ and underpinned by the words, ‘St Ursulain’s infirmary ‘.

Despite the odd parochial / clinical / medical / psychiatric context, the woman always had her powder-pale face fully and painstakingly made up as if on her way to an important dinner date or crucial business function. Wafting in on, and preceded by, a wave of scent and perfumed cosmetics, she would be all painted-talon nail varnish, iridescent green or blue like a beetle’s wing covers with eye shadow to match, full, luscious (even to Alice’s eye) tomato-red lips, and subtly (and sometimes not so subtly) rouged high cheek bones; the woman’s bone structure was striking - like a photographic model’s off the front of a glossy monthly - despite her corsetry-constrained plumpness, combining, Alice once guessed in an increasingly uncharacteristically lucid moment, the best aspects of a joint European and Asian ancestry. Invariably she would be in an above-the-knee grey hound’s-tooth, pinstripe or plain Welsh-slate-grey pencil skirt, her perky high breasts thrusting and barely constrained by a shockingly prim and proper high-necked blouse that was flounced around the throat almost as if by a miniature ruff and set off by a Whitby jet choker in the style of a cameo broach.

Alice remembered how, quite recently, having taken her by the chin and tilted back her head to force her to look deep into her deep, dark - almost black - bottomless eyes- that woman had said something about how everything that was now happening to her here was all in aid of something she had termed ‘learned helplessness’.

The woman had gone on to say how this ‘learned helplessness’ was something that occurs to animals - or people (it was a point she had been keen to emphasise) - that have become conditioned to believe that an unpleasant situation is unchangeable or inescapable, that if an animal is repeatedly subjected to what she called an ‘aversive stimulus’ which it is unable to avoid, then eventually that animal will stop trying to avoid the stimulus. The animal (or ‘subject’, as she’d kept saying) will then begin to behave as if it is utterly helpless to change its situation. It will fail to run or fight back even when if an opportunity to escape presents itself; in short, it will have become ‘manageable’, by which it seemed she meant entirely docile. Here, Alice was given to understand, it was she - Alice - who was playing the part of that animal. All those padlocks, straps, restraints, barred windows, locked doors, rooms with light switches mounted on the outside - they were all part of the process...And no, that knowledge would not stop that process progressing, she had been told.

Alice now knew this new nemesis of hers was a newly minted psychology PhD. The woman had been plucked straight from an Oxbridge university, hand-picked, appraised and vetted by doctor Ecclestone herself - and she possessed that haughty ‘chin-in-the-air, head-up-her-own-arse’ attitude and infuriatingly superior drawled-out vowels to match. But there was so much more to this overtly sensual woman than her expertise in the field of psychiatric care. Deep in her eyes there lurked the soul of an out and out dominatrix. A denial-ridden lipstick-lesbian subconsciously terrified by her own sexuality and unexplained (deliberately glossed-over?) inner feelings, in her own way she was every bit as sexually repressed and conflicted as the most hot-bloodedly disturbed of the nuns; and that conflict made her hate her own kind, especially when she found herself attracted to them. If she couldn’t physically despoil that attractive element - though her instructions to shear those under her care, to shave the eyebrows, even clip the eyelashes, were designed to do just that - she could at least disrupt that attraction psychologically, though ironically she found the level of childish dependency she then induced in her charges strangely even more seductive;. There was that sort of look of trust she could see in a girl’s eyes that came on after a prolonged period spent languishing in a straitjacket; it was something she could perceive even while tenderly stroking a girl’s cheek and telling her quite frankly what she intended to accomplish next; it made her go all ‘gooey’ inside; it also made her crueller still, drove her to become yet more vindictive, to seek nothing less than the complete ruination of her charge.

Poor young Alice’s shoulders and arms ached and throbbed like a nagging toothache and burned as if forced into unaccustomed intense exercise without letup, bringing tears to her eyes, the tendons and ligaments complaining loudly at their unnatural distension and simultaneous immobilisation; they were supposed to complain. Ordinarily some small amount of slack would be allowed, some slight few degrees of freedom left her restrained torso and upper limbs, while still leaving the jacket sufficiently confining as to make freeing herself absolutely beyond consideration; indeed, all those additional padlocks and locking clasps would have bamboozled and frustrated even the most skilled of escapologists. When the fastenings of a straitjacket were made as constraining as this though, apparently just short of actually cutting off the circulation, it was as a disciplinary measure rather than for reasons of security or of ‘patient safety and welfare’, a means of punishment.

And there was no point pleading with the staff as they came and went performing their various and often distasteful duties, spoon feeding her being one of the least. They would never help; indeed they would do their darndest to avoid even acknowledging her, even to the extent of avoiding eye contact. And if a pair of nurses was present, they would never speak to each other in front of Alice, let alone speak to her; the only person that ever spoke to her, who ever even acknowledged her, was this new psychotherapist woman. Alice didn’t even get to see Dr Ecclestone any longer; it was as if that woman had washed her hands of her, abandoned her here. If she did call out or try to speak to one of the nurses, for example while being fed, between the spoonfuls of tasteless gruel, the only response would be a sharp slap to the side of her face; and the instant withdrawal of both gruel and nurse in this instance. The hunger of a missed meal or the prolonged discomfort following the abandonment of the changing of a soiled nappy, soon brought home the intended lesson. Even saying that, though; there were times when even the slight acknowledgement embodied by a slap around the face was preferable to the frustration of silence, of being ignored; it provided an albeit short-lived release from what was a surprisingly effective, though subtle, form of mental torture; who would of thought simply being ignored could break a person down so.

The treatment with the over-tight straitjacket was not meant as a replacement for the cane, rather it was an adjunct to a caning, a lead-up to it. When the time came and the blue-uniformed nurse-orderly walked in fingering the long length of evilly pliant rattan or bamboo she was supposed to ask, quite politely if she might be ‘corrected’ by a caning; the only time she was permitted to speak. And after a day or so (there was no way of really knowing how long) undergoing such physical torment, her shoulders as agonizingly painful as if dislocated, her legs - unable to be straightened - ridden with pins and needles and sciatica-mimicking electric shooting pains, she knew she’d be ready enough to do just that, just to have her bonds slackened; the removal of the straitjacket as such was not an option, not part of the deal.

Six to eight strokes of the cane taken across her bare bottom with the crotch strap unfastened and her plastic pants and terry nappies tugged down, without crying out - that was important, she’d been told, if she didn’t want those outside the room to think her crazy - and the straps holding her arms wrapped around her body would be slackened off. If she cried out, then the tension would remain until the next time she was given the opportunity; and then the caning would have to resume from scratch, usually with the addition of a few ‘penalty strokes’. Exactly why the punishment was being applied was never told her; presumably she was supposed to just sort of associate having her restraints suddenly tightened with some form of frowned upon behaviour, or some sort of lack of compliance. Nor was it ever explicitly referred to as punishment, even by the psychotherapist; in fact it was never mentioned, not even in the ‘grilling’ sessions that interspersed her ‘close confinement’ and which took place in the psychotherapist’s consultation room.

But her confinement here in the padded cell to begin with? Well, on the surface Alice had begun to go along with the regime. But it had been all too transparent; she’d made it too obvious she was trying to lull those in charge into complacency hoping for an opening to arise to allow for her escape. Of course that was why she’d flagged up that Welsh girl - Gwyneth - when the poor thing had approached her, why she’d reported back on the girl’s suggestion they should work together to abscond; she wanted the nuns on her side, wanted to please the nuns... and doctor Ecclestone of course. Alice was conflicted; but they wanted her conflicted, that was why she was in this situation now.

Forced to listen to her would-be co-conspirator’s fractured-mind wailing coming from down the corridor Alice was simultaneously being forced to confront the consequences and truths of her actions. And one of those truths was that her pretended capitulation was in reality only a subconscious denial of what was in fact the first stages of a true capitulation; a second truth was that by tittle-tattling Alice herself had become a tool of the powers running this establishment, a blind implement of that divide-and-conquer mentality they used to make the place self governing, the mistrust bred between inmates helping break down any cohesion before allegiances even had time to form.

In short young Alice was now well on her way to that state of learned helplessness and dependency the youthful psychotherapist had taken such great pleasure in telling her about, and being made complicit in her own impending breakdown. This was something Alice at some level did grasp. Escape was her one true focus, and she had to keep that in mind, despite the sense of self-revulsion she harboured, both at her own physical condition - lying helpless, knees drawn up to her chest, obediently filling her nappy like a newborn and muttering crazily to herself - and for what she had done to the Welsh girl, Gwyneth, whose hoarse throaty whining filled her ears... And the poor thing had had such a sweetly emotionally-charged singing voice - they’d had her sing psalms in the refectory at meal times from time to time - ruined now of course, the poor girl’s vocal cords most probably festooned with nodules and irreparably torn.

They were both prisoners, and this place a prison, nothing more; and Alice - and this went for all of the others, from what she understood - didn’t even know where this place, this priory, abbey or nunnery or whatever, was sited... After a while such deliberation made even the concept of absconding seem untenable; she’d be running from where? And to where? And yet, at the same time that sense of helplessness was strangely seductive, lulling... sleep-inducing... Her eyes again sore, gritty, and the lids as heavy as lead, Alice slipped once more down into the reassuringly swaddling mother’s-embrace that was slumber.

After that, Alice seemed to slip in and out of slumber, more asleep than awake, for what seemed like a lifetime. No longer were there any trips out to the doctor’s interview room, at least not that she could remember. She had become barely aware of such regularities as feeding, toileting, changing and the rest, so much so that in hindsight she would later wonder to what extent she had been drugged during this period. But if there had been one thing she had been aware of during this indeterminate time of hangover-throbbing interspersed with sweet dreamless sleep it was that sense of constant movement, of hustle and bustle, of trundling metal wheels on flagstones, of hammering and banging and sawing and drilling and rasping scraping trowels and that building-site smell of brick dust and plaster and wet mortar and sawn stone.

But now there was a different kind of throbbing in her head, a low rhythmic throbbing that came and went at intervals, and a clattering of heels; the clarity left her feeling uncertain, disorientated, as if something were missing or had changed, some subtle attribute of her confinement. Twisting, expecting to meet with the constraint of the leash joining her straitjacket’s collar to her ankle restraints, Alice found to her surprise that not only was she now able to stretch out her legs, they did not feel numb nor overly stiff, as if she had been free of restraint for some considerable time. Gingerly testing further, she discovered that the ankle cuffs themselves had mysteriously vanished and the padlock beneath her chin which had attached the leash had also pulled of a disappearing trick.

Twisting right over on to the opposite side she was pleasantly surprised not to encounter the knobbles bumping painfully along her spine on the way, the anticipated discomfort caused by the series of chunky brass padlocks which ordinarily locked-off the roller buckles and straps like metallic vertebrae running up her back. Her arms still embraced her torso as firmly as ever, but now tensioned to a reasonable, humane, degree, and the straightjacket was just as inescapable as ever. Similarly the straightjacket’s broad crotch strap had been slackened off a little, while still leaving sufficient tension to disallow the wearer wriggling free, and the various ‘toys’ which had tortured her crotch so towards the latter phase of her fully conscious period of confinement (accessories) had been removed.

She was aware, too, that she was no longer suffering that dispiriting wet squidgy sensation, the root of so much self-disgust, but rather had been made clean, comfortable and hygienic ‘down there’, presumably well washed, powdered and creamed; there was the unmistakably comforting sensation of double-thick, warm and dry terry towelling and the odour of fresh, medicated talk filled the room. A single glance down at her crotch and thighs was enough to tell her that the ridiculously flounced and fancy romper suit-style polyester fabric bloomers she had found so unbearably humiliating had been replaced by functional, standard-issue cotton pants, as might have been handed out had she been under the jurisdiction of any psychiatric hospital anywhere in the United Kingdom. Similarly, the voluminous semi-transparent PVC bloomers she had always worn underneath the flouncy-seated romper pants had now mysteriously been transformed into psychiatric-care industry-standard rubber incontinence pants...

It was then that Alice’s astonished gaze alighted on the heavy padded door... Driven by some instinctive animal reflex, almost involuntarily, she thrust herself backwards, propelling herself urgently against the rear wall. There she wriggled herself upwards using the deeply cushioned wall for purchase, gaining her feet for the first time in... how long? Open mouthed and upright she just stared and stared, incomprehension written all over her somehow still pretty if pasty face.

The door... the thick, padded cell door that had kept her confined for so, so long... hung open, wide open. What was more; the corridor beyond was seemingly empty, deserted. Not single footstep could Alice hear (and her ears were accustomed to straining against silence); not a single click from the nurse’s high heels teetering along on the flagstones or quarry tiling, nor the pad, pad, pad of a nun’s rubber-soled lace-up shoes hurrying to investigate. Indeed, in truth she had to admit; there was not a sound to be heard, other than for those unfamiliar and obviously distant noises which had awakened her so rudely. The coast was frighteningly, unnervingly clear... What now? What was to be done?

At first Alice hesitated, fearing a trap, fearing running in to waiting staff members, and the fearful, long hard caning that would undoubtedly follow. Then some sort of instinct took over and she threw herself at the ajar door, levering herself through with her canvas and leather-bound shoulders. Stumbling from the padded cell, tripping through the heavy-set half-open door and catching a foot on its raised floor sill, she crashed against the stonework of the corridor wall outside. The serendipitous collision both served to keep her upright and orientate her in the right direction - an important factor given the fact that the convoluted, twisting and turning passageway had been deliberately designed to disorientate any would-be absconder - much of the impact ironically being absorbed by the thick leather and canvas of the straitjacket.

Instinctively perhaps, despite the unfamiliar sound being frightening, she ran towards what seemed to be the origin of the rhythmic low rumbling and thump, thump, thumping which had initially brought her around. The cacophony seemed able to propagate through the structure of the building itself nearly as easily as it funnelled along the corridor, despite the heavy stone mediaeval construction; a sort of low-pitched whhoop, whhhop, whhoop, whhooop.

Waddling along, bare-footed, bow-legged partly from the unaccustomed exercise asked of her weakened legs, partly because of the bulky double terry nappy pinned under her rubbery pants, her heart pounding, Alice rounded a shadowed corner. Her heart sunk and her chin dropped; she had traversed perhaps four, perhaps five yards and already her way was barred. To so quickly have encountered an obstacle was heartbreaking: But then the sap rose once more, her heart sped in her chest and she hurried forward, shuffling lest she slip without the use of her arms to break her fall.

The old floor to ceiling gate barring her way, its red-painted vertical railings peeling and rust-scabbed - Alice had suddenly realised - had been left ajar, just as the door to her cell had been. The gap left was narrow, obliging Alice to twist fully side-on in order to sidle through, her wrapped-around arms constrained within the straightjacket’s unrelenting grasp making her too broad to pass otherwise. Even then it proved a tight fit; she tried using the leverage of her shoulders to open up the gap further, but to no avail; in the event she had to struggle royally to squeeze past.

Try as she may, as Alice wiggled her way through, the old iron grille or gate proved just too stiff to budge on its neglected and rusting hinges. The gateway’s reluctance to move coupled with the dust-frosted cobwebbed drapery filling in the narrow gaps between the sturdy bars, making it look like a Hammer Horror film prop, together suggested that here was some sort of alternative or disused access point, a pathway ordinarily kept locked shut:

The latter was an impression not contradicted by the rusted padlock left swinging from its open clasp as if in haste. A closer inspection would have revealed that the lock itself was intact and un-tampered with, though the clasp had been sawn clean through: The broken hooked remains caught in one of the straps or bindings at the rear of Alice’s straitjacket and rattled to the floor behind her as she pulled clear. The sudden unexpected clatter made her start, causing her to stumble and to hit her head on the side wall in her effort to stay upright, grazing her forehead and cursing her useless, restrained arms.

Having negotiated the iron grille, a couple of dozen or so paces further on, and around a second blind corner, she encountered a plain white-painted wooden door, this one mercifully left wide open and hooked back. She gave out a sigh of relief; she’d had enough of cobwebs and spiders! Gingerly Alice stepped through into what she took to be some kind of storage area.

To one side there was a neat shoulder-high stack of wire-sprung iron frame bed bases, the angle-section frames painted that institutional sort of creamy-beige all things institutional seemed to be, the wire link-mesh and the coil springs supporting it glinting like factory-fresh chrome under the fluorescent strip light.

To the rear - from Alice’s viewpoint - beyond the bed frames, there was a line of folded beige metal chairs looking as if marching out from the side wall, alongside a tall, precariously teetering, tower of grey plastic stacking chairs; the latter looked like a great grey sea wave on the cusp of breaking, the stack curving outwards towards the top and stabilised only by side-on friction between it and the end wall.

To the opposite side of the area there was a stack of hospital-style navy and white striped mattresses, all apparently unused and still hermetically sealed within their manufacturer’s polythene wrapping, a medical supply company’s paper label prominent on the side of each. And straight ahead, centred between all of it lay salvation.

Straight ahead of her a single, though longish, flight of white concrete steps, flanked by a white painted iron banister rail, led straight up to a half-open door, its brass globe-like doorknob somehow lit up like gold, almost as if glowing with warmth; it took a few moments for Alice’s eyes to acclimatise and the realisation of what she was seeing to sink in. Carefully climbing the stair, awkward and unsure of her footing in the bulky immobilising straightjacket, up ahead she now saw the yellow rush of blessed, though imperfect, daylight challenging the clinical blue-white analysis of the naked fluorescent tube behind her. And that apocalyptic, dangerous, cacophony was growing ever-louder, seemingly with every step she was taking; a great tumultuous clattering, rhythmic swish-swishing and mechanised whistling and whining, now joined by distant telephone-quality staccato bursts of barked speech; masculine speech, gruff, warning, commanding.

Reaching the top of the stair Alice found herself emerging into the infirmary proper, but not through the double doors and connecting passageway through which she had originally been brought in from the main building, nor from the stairwell she had been led down when first she had been confined to the sanatorium. She found herself instead outside a small anteroom at the opposite end of the infirmary from the interior double swing doors leading through to the rest of the complex and side-on to the external entrance which she knew led straight out to the world of glorious daylight. After ever so long - so long that she couldn’t even imagine how long - being confined under the perpetual shadowless blue-white monotony of 24 hour fluorescent lighting her brain fairly begged for any kind of natural illumination; sun, moon, cloudy, clear, it wouldn’t have mattered. Even seeing the pearly-yellow light bulbs in the dark green enamel lampshades hanging over the beds seemed a kind of relief.

Alice hesitated before stepping out of the shadows, terrified that at any moment a nun or the supervising infirmary nurse would appear from somewhere, grab her by the scruff of her straitjacketed neck and sling her straight back downstairs back in to the padded room she’d come from. The nurse was a formidable figure. In reality a nun with medical training, complete with headdress but with her black habit replaced by a belted navy blue hospital matron’s dress, she would ordinarily have been sitting at her Formica-topped desk facing the short row of beds; but the desk was presently unoccupied, though the anglepoise reading lamp was still on, which was worrying. Scanning the room Alice could all too clearly recall the ‘afternoon naps’ restrained under the covers by wrist and ankle cuffs, the nightly sponge baths, the one-piece, footed, sleeper which fastened with a tamperproof zipper up the rear but which featured a buttoned flap over the backside allowing easy access for spankings, canings, hairbrush thrashings and all the rest.

The latter thought made her shudder - that ‘sleeper’ thing had been a horrible garment, horrendous, designed for just one thing... well, two things; control and humiliation, though they were most definitely linked. Fabricated of an oft far too warm polyester fleece, the region around the bottom, hips and thighs had been lined with a soft, rubbery polythene material and the arms had terminated in mittens which had seemed peculiarly, unnecessarily, stiff and which therefore largely rendered the hands useless and the patient unable to carry out even the most basic of tasks for herself. And that flap over the bottom; that feature hadn’t only been to facilitate corporal punishment (though there had been plenty of that - often under the flimsiest of pretexts); ‘all the rest’ included the administration of colonics, enemas, suppositories and an assortment of pessaries for that intimate ‘other place’.

And then, suppository in place, there would have been a trip to one of the commode chairs. There had been three of those, set up in a line facing a large mirror bolted to one of the walls. Alice recalled how each had been of a dark green-painted tubular steel skeleton construction which was furnished with a plastic toilet seat set over a transparent plastic cylindrical receptacle, the latter being embarrassingly viewable from all sides. There had been locking cuffs to take the ankles which hung like stirrups on short chains from either side of the seat at the rear, and the upper parts had been styled a little like a very upright armchair, possessing a high leatherette-covered back which sported a broad chest strap and padded arms which carried restraints for the wrists.... But, she suddenly realised, where the commodes had been there was now an extra desk, and where there had been a wall mirror there was now a bookcase furnished with what looked like chick-lit novels, albeit of the clean, innocent variety, and various classics and a pleasant pastoral gold-framed watercolour up on the wall.

Looking around, Alice now saw that much else had mysteriously changed for the better also: Pleasant light blue fabric curtained screens, printed with sunny fluffy-puffy cloud images, now hung between the beds, pulled back forming groins, rather than the near-perpetually pulled-around dull-green plastic curtains of old. And the beds themselves had transmogrified from the elderly vintage iron-framed, iron-rail-sided hospital cots there had been here before, to modern hospital beds that would not have disgraced the most up-to-date of private spa clinics. There were only six beds now - there had been a dozen - although still arranged with military precision in an obsessively-evenly-spaced and disciplined row. The covers had been folded back as if to present and display the pristine new fabric (not plastic-covered, as was) mattresses and fluffed up pillows to their best advantage; and of course there was not a sign of straps or cuffs, chain links or anything else out of the ordinary or which might of qualified as a ‘humane restraint’ system:

In short: The whole place had been sort of... cleaned up... “or should that be ‘covered up’”, Alice thought to herself, the words involuntarily worming their way out through clenched teeth and from between determinedly firm-set lips as if subconsciously she was set on sabotaging her own attempted stealth... No, she thought... sanitised... yes that was more like it, sanitised, disinfected - all the rot taken out.

Tentatively edging her way out, looking around, Alice began to realise, to accept, that the infirmary was indeed every bit as deserted as it had first appeared. But it was not only the human factor that was missing, the patients, the medical staff; the oppressive, controlled atmosphere was missing too. The place was positively cheerful now, shafts of cheering sunlight stabbing through windows no longer cowering behind padlocked hinged shutters and blinds, coloured and shaded by stained-glass bible stories and haloed saints and apostles; the scriptures writ large and brought alive through nature’s own nurturing hand. Features such as the punishment horse, the enema table and the wood rack of canes and punishment straps which had been screwed to the wall behind the nurse’s desk, were notable by their absence. In their stead there were now dark green plastic upholstered buttoned easy chairs arranged in a crescent arc in front of a sparkling new wall-mounted television. In short the priory’s infirmary was now just that; a very ordinary institutional sickbay.

The infirmary’s central, external, exit consisted of a double set of paired doors separated by a deep, high-ceilinged, stone-vaulted porch giving straight on to the cloisters - and mentally crossing her fingers, Alice now rushed across to it.

The paired inner doors gave the impression of an everyday hospital ward anywhere in Britain. Rectangular, two-way-swinging and painted that singular shade of light blue oft favoured for nurses’ dresses and termed ‘hospital blue’ they were furnished with stainless steel fingerplates and porthole wire-glass windows. The outer pair betrayed a different lineage entirely: These gave the appearance of country church doors; tall, heavy, iron-studded oaken doors, their neo-gothic-looking arched tops matching the curvature of the Norman-arch exterior doorway. Both sets of doors - inner and outer - had been left ajar, the inner set propped open by a fire extinguisher, a narrow stabbing shaft of sharp yellow sunlight streaming through the gap and along the central line of the stone-flagged porch. Diverging as it emerged on to the ward, the sunbeam seemed to sizzle and glisten its way across the glazed terracotta tiled floor; coming to rest on one of the hospital beds, lighting it up as if spotlighted.

Turning her head away from the blinding vertical cake-slice of light Alice found it easy enough to bundle her way through the inner double swing doors. Nevertheless she cursed her inability to guard her eyes with her hands. Her arms were still firmly immobilised within the sleeves of the straightjacket, the closed-ended sleeves pulled tight, crisscross fashion, over her front and around her torso before fastening behind her back. Every now and then she had paused to wriggle writhe and tug at her bindings, but despite the removal of the buckle-locking padlocks which usually went to complete the security arrangements the straightjacket was proving no less inescapable.

Blundering her way across the porch Alice then crashed against the towering outer doors, coming in aggressively now, shoulder first, letting the thick sturdy straightjacket take the force of the blow. Again and again she crashed in, until the heavy doors had parted enough for her to slide through; she was frantic, flustered; any minute she expected to be grasped by the collar and dragged back.

As Alice had expected, the doorway opened out on to the unusually expansive cloistered priory courtyard. The wide grassed central area was ringed by a rectangle of stone pavements backed by outbuildings and was pierced by raised flower beds, the shady covered walkways around the periphery lined by wide, fluted, subtly tapering stone columns. But what Alice had not been prepared for was the overwhelming vertiginous kaleidoscopic array of sights and sounds and smells that now assaulted her senses: The ordinarily meditative peace of the cloisters was in the process of being shattered, smashed by shouts, running feet and all manner of unaccustomed hectic activity, figures dashing hither and dither.

Where in the past there would have been contemplatively strolling nuns, perhaps one or two of the brown-uniformed penitent inmates weeding or tending to the rose beds, a couple more bent over birch-twig brooms sweeping or down on hands and knees scrubbing the stone steps descending to the refectory where the girls took their meals, there were now blue uniforms and sinister black-clad helmeted figures, their form-fitting suits appearing as if all of leather and lending an unnerving alien look.

Alice’s eyes squinted against the unaccustomed glare of summer sunlight, the first of the brown-roasted leaves scattering around and the spiked green balls weighting down the horse chestnut tree suggesting mid to late August, or perhaps early September and something of an ‘Indian Summer’ just beginning. Tempest winds swept swirling dust devils of leaves, sandy flower-bed mulch and miniature hailstorms of gravel and grit from around the cloisters up beneath the colonnades. The air was filled by the banshee howling of jet-turbine engines and the clattering of helicopters, the two aircraft’s whirling-dervish blades still swishing like swords of retribution where the craft now rested.

Surely judgement day had arrived; well it surely had for some, for those distant figures shuffling along with their wrists tethered by thick white nylon cable ties being led from the charterhouse across the yard. As she watched, two faceless helmeted figures, their sinister anonymous wraparound black visors making them look like giant upright beetles, scrambled from the cockpit and scurried bent at the waist beneath the scything blades of the newest arrived machine, one carrying a bullhorn.

The helicopter, Alice saw, was one of those having a cylindrical turbine apparatus in place of the traditional tail rotor. It was decorated in midnight-blue and yellow livery and was daubed along the side with the name of a neighbouring region’s constabulary surmounted by a heraldic coat of arms. Not that it was a name that meant much geographically to the fugitive straitjacketed Alice, other than it had a distinctly Celtic feel to it. Indeed there were one or two locals who would have been happy enough not to recognise it; after all, it was a mainland constabulary; and traditionally around these parts they cared little for the authority and interference of the mainland.

The whining pitch was dropping in concert with the slowing of the cane-slashing rotors, the surprisingly flexible blades with their white painted tips drooping like wilting gladioli leaves as they slowed. Uncertain of her step, lest she trip and fall, Alice stumbled out into the open, still clad in her white canvas straightjacket with its dark tan leather collar and dark straps and plethora of buckles glinting like well-polished silver in the bright mid-day sunshine. Seeing obviously male figures all around darting hither and dither, Alice was suddenly keenly aware of the ungainly ugly-duckling sight she presented with her shaved eyebrows, clown-rouged cheeks and rough boyish side-parted hair. But somehow she didn’t care.

In the distance a bare-legged but bulkily white-clad figure, apparently armless, could be seen bucking, thrashing and squirming between two taller, broader figures, bare feet kicking clear of the ground. Alice didn’t need to catch the husky broken-voiced screeching, the feline spitting through clenched teeth, to know it was the ex Welsh valley chapel choir girl, Gwyneth, her shorn head tossing like a wild stag in her feral insanity.

They’d done a good job on her - Alice thought - darkly, if a smidge uncharitably - the girl was quite, quite mad; she’d not be blowing any whistles. Even if she calmed down, regained her wits a little, no one would take any notice of anything she said, not now; an unreliable witness to put it mildly. “An Unreliable witness” she repeated to herself again, unknowingly uttering the phrase out loud, suddenly stupidly pleased with her use of the description, reassured in the knowledge that she at least - Alice - was intact, despite her captor’s best efforts!

Yes, she’d stay calm, collect her thoughts - act normal, that was the way, not rush out wailing like a wild thing. That way her testimony would be valid, she’d be believed. “Testimony” she said to no one in particular, the sound of her voice washing away under the din like dirt from a hanky trailed in a brook - a smile, then a wide mouth-stretching grin like that other Alice’s Cheshire Cat, creased her paper-white face: “Testimony” she said again, a little louder this time, then giggled. She’d wait right where she was; that would show how rational she was. Just sit and gather her wits, regroup her thoughts; she’d show them, she’d blow the whistle on them alright!

Crossing her ankles where she stood, precariously Alice lowered herself to the ground, the task complicated by her hands and arms being constrained within her straightjacket. Stiffly she dropped into a cross-legged position, settling herself on the stone-flagged path outside the infirmary door. Here she waited steadfastly, her lips set in firm determination. The old grey wooden park bench style seat set back against the building’s wall under the heavily-flowering climbing rose she had pointedly ignored. Her reasoning here was that the seat was where they sat - the nuns and the staff. Her not settling herself down on that bench seat would be a further demonstration, a sign, of how rational she was; by showing how she could obey simple rules such as girls like herself not being allowed to use any of the benches placed around the grounds.

Over on the far side of the vast lawn and flowerbed area, outside one of the stone outhouses that were used as workshops, this one a windowless construction, an iron-grille gate padlocked across its heavy mediaeval wooden door, the kafuffle involving the hysterically jabbering and floundering Gwyneth was quieting. Another black or navy-clad figure - Alice couldn’t decide - had arrived and together with the initial pair had helped get the girl down on her back. Now the new arrival was squatting lithely on his heels behind the girl’s head and acting to hold it steady, preventing Gwyneth from hammering her head against the ground; something she was patently trying to do.

Alice could see the sunlight glinting off the silvered or stainless steel roller buckles down the back of Gwyneth’s straitjacket as from time to time she twisted and wriggled like a stranded eel in her attempts to roll out from her captor’s grasp, the reddish-brown leather of its reinforced collar and fastening straps darkened against the snow-white canvas; the latter was now stained here and there by the summer dust in irregular camouflaging swaths of quarry-sand yellow and stone-slab ashen grey.

“Stupid, stupid girl” she found herself involuntarily calling out, her expression switching schizophrenically from pity to contempt and back again and her voice disappearing into the distance, blown away under angrily buzzing helicopter’s whirlwind. Didn’t she realise she was only making things worse, convincing them more than ever that she belonged in that straightjacket, that she was every bit as crazy as doubtless the Church authorities had claimed, or were going to claim. “I said, don’t you realise how crazy you’re making yourself look” she overheard herself say “...are you...mental?”. Alice heard herself laugh but wasn’t worried: It was funny after all, all that thrashing around, like a trout on a fish slab... and she - Alice - was just sitting calmly... she was calm, that was the main thing...remain calm. “Don’t react if they’re patronising, humour them if they suggest you’re mental, even let them place you in an institution for a while” she instructed herself. Just go along with it - a psychological evaluation will soon show the truth... You’ll soon be out and facing them in the courts... And they’ll believe what you have to say... Because you, Alice Lamberton, are ok... they couldn’t break your mind!

Circulating overhead and barely clearing the squat square crenulated tower of the abbey church with its central modest conical spire topped by its stone cross, the air ambulance tilted, banking steeply as the pilot looked for a place to put down. Much larger than its police counterparts the cherry red machine, the name of a well-known regional commercial sponsor sign-written along its fuselage, required much greater clearance to safely land.

If not for the presence of the already landed police helicopters it might have been possible to put it down where they had, closer to the infirmary, where it had been assumed it would be needed. As it was the regional air ambulance service helicopter would have to put down among the hardy sheep grubbing a living in one of the priory’s sparsely grassed and scrubby stone-strewn fields, still within the walled grounds of the priory but outside of the central cloistered area, doubtless scattering the flock in a manner similar to the way in which the priory’s central character’s - the ringleaders - seemed to have scattered. Like rats fleeing a sinking ship Alice thought; though from what she’d seen it had a bit less haphazard than that.

For what had seemed weeks, whenever she’d been moved around, taken to and from the psychiatrists office for another of those grilling sessions, she had become aware of hectic comings and goings, furnishings being moved around, trolleys trundling about laden with paper files and record folders. Something had been going on. Today was obviously the reason for those preparations - anything else would be too much of a coincidence. Which in turn meant those preparations, must have been triggered by something; and that something must surely have been some sort of early-warning tip-off...

“And what have we got here?” The deep brown voice was kindly, empathetic .”...What are you doing sitting down there on those cold flagstones like that for - you’ll catch your death, miss...”

“Alice... I’m Alice... And I’m being... I’m being...” (What was she being?) “...I’m being ever so, ever so calm, you know. Ever so calm!” She looked up into the policeman’s friendly trustworthy eyes, squinting against the unaccustomed glare of the sun, smiling broadly, before adding: “And I’m not mad you know... I’m just Alice, not crazy-Alice, just Alice... like the looking-glass Alice... They used to make me stare at my own reflection you know, hour after hour... But now you’re here to take me away - and I’ll stay ever so calm, that way you’ll believe my story; it’s called a testimony, you know... You see, I know that word - testimony - I’ve been practicing it... here in my head; that shows I’m not crazy.” Alice nodded her head back and forth to demonstrate. “But if I thrash around and struggle you’ll think I’m crazy - but I’m not, so I’ll just sit here, all quiet and calm...”

Having started her tongue now just wouldn’t stop wagging - all those pent-up thoughts were bursting through like water through a cracked dam wall; a single high-pressure stream of consciousness; it came as a relief to be interrupted; Bending, placing his strong hands beneath her bound elbows from behind her he began the task of manoeuvring her to her feet:

“Come on. What you say we get you seated more comfortably so you’re not in the way? How about we get you on this bench, over here amongst the roses - just until the paramedics get here; they’ve just touched down in the field beyond the priory church?” His voice had a heavy West Country burr to it, like Cornish. It was reassuring, but it also made her wonder exactly where she was; she had never known, not from day one. And what he’d just said had made her grow near-phobically cold, despite the summer sun, her flesh chilled and clammy, though she didn’t understand quite why it should - but never mind; she’d deal with it, she’d explain calmly, remain calm and collected...

“No, no I can’t... I mean I mustn’t sit there... I mean...” Realising she risked sounding irrational Alice took a deep breath; she’d explain, calmly and rationally, then he’d understand, then he’d know she wasn’t crazy: “Ahem! I mustn’t sit there officer, It’s not allowed; you see it’s against the rules... and I’m not crazy... you can tell, because I’m a good obedient girl and I always obey the rules... A - A - A crazy person wouldn’t obey the rules; now would she?”

“No... of course not my girl, you’re quite right - you’re a very good girl, I can tell!” Moving back around to the front and scratching his thickly thatched curly head the flummoxed officer smiled down at her reassuringly. “You just wait right where you are my dear, and the ambulance men will come whisk you straight off to hospital - and then I’m sure we can sort this all out, once and for all.” Surreptitiously he nodded across to someone behind Alice’s back, pulling a strained yet amused face as if to say “we’ve got a right one here” and the stretcher-bearers from the air ambulance advanced. At least this one’s calm, even if she doesn’t make sense, he thought, smiling.