18

‘What an exquisite day!’ Sister Cynthia announced, pulling back the curtains and opening the french doors of my room. ‘Just right for a stroll in the garden. I daresay I’ll take one myself when my chores are done.’ She laughed. ‘When! If there’s no rest for the wicked…’ She leered at me ‘… I must have been a very naughty girl once upon a time.’

She said nothing more but, swinging the doors wide as if to entice me out, collected up my clothing to be laundered and left. I listened as her footsteps retreated down the corridor.

I determined to go to the oak tree, but, as happens sometimes, I was swamped by a terrible, unassailable apprehension. Usually, when sitting under the tree, I make every effort to empty my mind, to concentrate only upon that which presents itself before me: a groundsman mowing the grass, an inmate chasing one of the squirrels that occasionally appear or, as I observed the other day, eating the blooms of a rose bush. I consider the tree not so much a sentinel over my being as a guide into my future, before which there was no past. Yet there are times when I believe the tree neither protects nor guides me but taunts me with its age and knowledge, tests me, attempts to break my resolve and, by doing so, possesses my spirit.

With tentative steps, holding onto the door frame as I moved across the lintel, I edged outside. The flagstones of the narrow terrace were warm, even though the sun had yet to touch them. Around the pots of geraniums were damp patches. One of the gardeners, I surmised, must have already done his rounds. With studied care, as if stepping to avoid treading on something fragile, I made my way to the steps at the end of the terrace.

On the path below, a man in a grey woollen dressing gown, his head encased in overlapping bandages, was being led by an orderly. I paused to let them pass before heading off in the direction of the oak. I did not walk straight to the tree but took a circuitous route, occasionally sidestepping a tussock of grass or a stone embedded in the ground. Anything out of the ordinary worried me. I cannot say why. It was an illogical reaction, yet there are times when I behave in this way, almost instinctively, as if programmed. Something deep within me, beyond my consciousness, drives me. How this condition came to be I do not know. It was born in the past I no longer possess.

On reaching the tree, I checked around the base of the trunk for anything that might arouse my suspicion, although what I could not say. Satisfied, I then sat down between the roots, my back to the rough bark and my hands loose in my lap. I was tempted to doze but dared not. Yet I felt relaxed. Birdsong in the branches above me reassured me that all was well.

I had sat under the tree for about an hour when a dove flew onto a bough directly above my head. I looked up at it. Its feathers were a soft grey, like the sky just after dawn on a misty autumnal morning. Around its neck was a thin black ring, its eyes sharp and black. They reminded me of a necklace of jet, perhaps one my mother had worn, the beads contrasting in my imagination with her white skin. When the sunlight caught the bird’s head, the feathers took on a faint purple opalescence. Once it had come to terms with my presence, it began to coo softly, almost inaudibly. It was a fluid sound, warm and viscous like tepid oil or new, thin honey. The calls soon attracted another dove. Side by side, they perched on the branch, bobbing at each other in avian friendship.

Some yards away, the gardeners had recently reset a patch of the lawn which had been invaded by moss and raked out. Rain had thinned out the topsoil, exposing the seed over the possession of which half a dozen sparrows and a gaudy goldfinch were contesting. I ignored their clamour, but it did not escape the attention of the doves.

When, suddenly, they took flight with a clatter of wings, I was startled, yet a quick survey around the sides of the oak, and the fact that the doves headed straight for the seed patch, put me at ease once more.

Landing on the grass, the doves began to peck at the soil, hardly bothering to look up. The smaller birds pranced about them, chirping indignantly. In a matter of minutes, the doves had devoured most of the visible seed and were down to competing for the remnants. I watched as one of them set about the other, pecking at its neck to drive it off. With every jab of its beak, tiny wisps of downy under-feathers drifted away on the breeze. The victim retreated, only to return again from another direction, only to be repulsed once more. After four or five of these ambitious forays, the dominant bird launched a determined attack. It ran at the other with its wings half-opened. The sparrows, gleaning what they could on the periphery of this contest, took to the air in fright. With one vicious stab, the offensive dove gouged out its opponent’s eye. The injured bird shook its head. Tiny specks of blood spattered the grass. The victor, ignoring what was left of the grass seed, flew over the wall and out of sight. The sparrows returned to squabbling over what remained.

The wounded bird did not move, made no attempt to fly or disguise itself. Its head was slick with blood. The sparse grass and soil beneath it was smudged. The bird had, I knew, surrendered to the inevitable. Its life was over. There was no point in making any effort. Fate had clapped its hands and the bird’s number was up.

I felt nothing. Not anger, not compassion, not sorrow. All I could think of was the irony of the little drama I had just witnessed, staged as if for my benefit: the traditional bird of peace savagely pecked to death by one of its own kind.

‘Good morning, Alec.’

I jumped. This was not good. I should have seen someone approaching. My defences had been down. Standing to one side of the oak, in partial shade, was a man dressed in a tweed jacket and slacks. Around his neck, suspended by a red rubber tube, hung a black-and-chrome stethoscope, At first, I took the figure to be that of the doctor who had rescued me from the fantasy rioters in the Strand. Only when he stepped into the sunlight did I see it was the young doctor.

‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you.’

He glanced in the direction of the dove that was now hunkered down on its breast, its blood congealing.

‘Nature in the raw, driven by urges.’

The young doctor moved nearer and sat on the ground beside me.

‘They are ruled by instinct, their actions governed by ingrained behavioural patterns, whereas we possess the ability to reason.’

He snapped his fingers. The sparrows were immediately alert. Several took to the wing.

‘Those sparrows,’ he continued, ‘have no free will. Have you ever read T. H. Huxley? He would have called them conscious automatons. They lack any means to break the physiological conditions of their bodies.’ He readjusted the stethoscope, which was slipping from around his neck. ‘Huxley conducted an experiment. He decerebrated frogs, yet their bodies continued to swim. They were automatons. Extrapolating from this, he wondered if men with damaged minds were similarly automatons, their thoughts governed no longer by reason but merely by an automatic response to a given action. I wonder if that is true.’

He let his words hang in the air.

‘Would you agree, Alec? I, myself, would not. I believe that so long as one has free will, one is not an automaton.’

Casually, the young doctor glanced sideways at me, looking for a sign that his words were getting through. I just stared at the dove, which was now breathing in shallow gasps, as if hungry for air.

‘I wonder, are you an automaton, Alec?’

The dove’s head very slowly sank down to the earth. The sparrows returned to feed, oblivious, close by.

I did not move, yet tears started to run down my cheeks, to slip from my chin to strike my hand as plainly as raindrops might have done. I looked down, puzzled by them, for I could not justify why I was crying. I have seen far worse than a mere bird die.

The young doctor produced a handkerchief from his top pocket, wiped my tears away as if I were a child and, taking my arm, raised me up.

‘Come inside now, Alec,’ he said as he gently eased me into a first step. ‘You may be locked in a prison within yourself, yet you are still free.’