Unfurling The Backdrop

(In a private prison-like asylum, a girl in a humiliating green striped school uniform dress or prison uniform and latex knickers kneels hypnotised before a domineering woman in a strict nurse’s uniform - a rattan cane lies threateningly nearby)

At Mary’s Private Psychiatric Nursing Hospital hadn’t always been quite so luxuriously appointed. Indeed, even though keen to describe itself as a ‘Private Retreat and Spa’ on both its promotional literature and signage, in deference to its more publicity-sensitive residents, if stripped bare of its more recently appointed trappings something of the oppressive foreboding of the Victorian asylum still survived.

Standing nestled within an encircling network of Italianesque gardens and cosily blanketed on all sides by dense conifer forest, the great house had been erected some one and a quarter kilometres from even the most minor of public thoroughfares. As if even this level of isolation had been deemed insufficient to its builders, the privacy of its surrounds were further safeguarded behind, not one, but two high perimeter walls of stone and brick, nested one inside the other and separated by fully half a kilometre of open ground, the latter put to grass and kept neatly manicured by the grazing of sheep.

Laid out around a courtyard square, with a prison-like arched wooden gate to the fore and a clock tower guarding the rear, there was a self-enclosing quality to the structure, a hunched defensiveness to it that engendered a sense of an edifice that was in some sense ashamed of its own existence. To the Victorian mind, though, the place had been constructed just as an asylum should be - secure...very secure. It had been built from the foundations up with every stone, every brick, every heavy-iron door and every iron reinforcing rod placed with but one purpose - to securely and permanently separate the bad from the good, the insane from the ‘normal’.

To the sensibilities of the day it was that permanency of separation that had been of the greatest importance. Little serious thought had been given over to rehabilitation - for such patients as were to be held in this place, indefinite detention was the norm. It was a colony for the mentally defective, the weak of mind, the easily lost and the simply forgotten.

Architecturally, an eccentric and surreal take on the, then contemporarily prevalent, neo-Gothic style and with a seemingly random pinch of the newfangled Arts and Crafts movement thrown in for good measure; it had been saddled with more than its fair share of criticism over the ages. Indeed, the edifice had done well to have survived past the end of the 19th century, let alone the subsequent two world wars and the sociological and financial upheavals since.

Of course the external structure had been influenced to some extent by the internal layout, itself informed by the building’s function: the complex was as prison-like in form as a Victorian asylum was in function. Even in its day, barely had construction begun before it had been labelled as grotesque and condemned as architectural heresy.

Yet it had defied that criticism, stood up to the Kaiser and to Hitler, not to mention the avaricious attentions of generations of property developers. Those very features that had vouchsafed Victorian society’s ill-treatment of the mentally infirm, those very things that had drawn vociferous calls to have it pulled down - even in that age - had ensured its survival through the more enlightened times of the early 20th-century. The security grilles, barred windows and the labyrinthine passageways that had been intended to confuse the would-be escapee, gave admirable service throughout two world wars in protecting society from foreign nationals, fifth columnists and the like.

Between the wars - and with the possibility of further upheaval never far from the politician’s mind - little was deemed necessary by way of architectural adaptation. The building was pressed into use as a repository for ‘sensitive documents’ and the like, although notoriety was still never far from its door - certain rumours abounded, even then, regarding the whereabouts of certain ‘politically-active’ undesirables.

Post-1945 and the house again became a repository - now to hold the currency of the Cold War, Britain’s nuclear secrets, the insanity of mutually assured destruction - now the insane really were running the asylum.

Time passed and, irony of ironies, that architectural quirkiness itself, so derided in its time, now earned it acclaim. Amidst near universal admiration came new calls, this time for rehabilitation and restoration. Private money flowed and the public’s will was done: the hospital had turned for circle, from addressing the mental health concerns of a bygone age to those of the age of celebrity.

Reopened in the mid-1970s as a rehabilitation clinic, - a retreat for the rich, famous and infamous alike - it quickly became as well known for its jealously guarded freedom from the prying lenses and pens of the paparazzi as for any efficacy in weaning the pampered rich from their pharmacological pacifiers.

Yet as much as immediately behind its frontage, thickly clad in ivy and in Virginia creeper, the place had been rehabilitated - its gardens re-landscaped, its winding passageways re-rooted and its interior reappointed - there were areas that had been left un-retouched.

Here and there were secret places, places buried deep and thought uneconomical to restore; areas thought best left to the eternal shuffling footsteps of inmates past, the creaking of leather and canvas, the rust-iron groan of old hinges and to the night-echoes of phantom babbling. Here were catacombs of antique psychiatry, long believed to have been filled in and blocked off for all time. Here were the guts, the rotted entrails, of an establishment slated, even in the unenlightened times of its creation, for the unorthodox and often unethical treatment meted out in the name of science. Here once festered a breeding ground of ill-treatment. From here once had issued a stench of notoriety, so pungent that by rights it should have spelt out the institution’s death knell right there and then.

Yet it is that which still survives down here in subterranean solitude - that part of it which still lives on - hidden deep within these bowels, far from the smiling celebrity-greeting facade above - that is of most concern to us today.

This, then, is where much of our tale shall play out, here in these dark places, or rather supposed dark places - for it is the white plastic and electroluminescent scientific modernity of today’s research methods that have now come to dominate this secret realm.

Many original architectural features have been retained, albeit refitted as befits the modern psychiatric enlightenment - but it would seem there has been something more inherited then just those physical elements. There is an atmosphere here; one could almost describe it as a presence.

There is some sinister remnant of the impropriety of the institution’s history still haunting these convoluted passageways. It is embodied in the unearthly silence, in the identical ranks of securely-locked doors, in the stern no-nonsense aspect of the nurses - each confidently resplendent in her crisply-rustling uniform dress, starched cap and apron. Most of all, though, it is embodied in the frightened, cowed, attitude of the ‘volunteers’; those young women they consider to be their ‘patients’...and treat accordingly.

It would be easy enough to explain it away by simply stating that something of the spirit of the place has somehow infiltrated the researchers and the work they carry out down here - but the truth is in actuality simpler still. It all comes down to wealth, greed and the corruption bred by carte blanche power.

It is an unethical world that has been crafted, down here. One crafted through an equally unethical experiment in psychology, privately funded and quite deliberately allowed to run amok. Under such circumstances, would it be any wonder if money were to change hands? Would it be so surprising to find within this frontier-stretching framework of experimental psychology, certain facilities being pressed into service in furthering certain...aims, shall we say, certain aims with roots well outside the remit of science; personal aims, financial aims perhaps?

This is the world now inhabited by our two young heroines, Susan Stringer and Lavinia Vitesse, two blameless young women who have each somehow been coerced into volunteering to become research subjects here;. Albeit that quite some significant expanse of time separates their arrivals, both have come to be here through broadly similar pathways and both are effectively filling a ‘breather’ between school and university while at the same time hoping to top up their coffers in preparation. Perhaps more importantly, at least as regards their present situation, both have long been embroiled in separate power struggles with their respective guardians - tussles presently ongoing now without their participation...and proceeding somewhat more smoothly in their absence.

Yes, here are two very different young women, yet whose lives have been, for the main part, following pathways running surprisingly parallel...no, not so much parallel - the commonality is too great - perhaps converging would be closer to the truth. For the present, it is sufficient to say that these two now have more in common than they ever had before - like other ‘volunteer’ subjects that have gone before them, they now share in the knowledge that it is not going to be quite so easy to leave this little project as it had been to join!

A Woman Broods, a Woman Plots...

The woman’s face shimmers in rasterised, flickering white, grey and green, her glasses displaying the reflected image of a young woman framed within the confines of the screen before her, horizontal bars of colour sporadically drifting downwards, on occasion tearing into herringbone patterning.

The slightly smug, self-satisfied smile that had been playing around her lips is fading fast now, a tight lipped irritated aspect is developing; she has barely replaced the telephone handset before she is reaching for it again, her right hand prodding the tortoiseshell bridge of her glasses further up onto her nose as she does so, tut-tutting to herself with no little irritation at the senseless obedience to the capitalist faith that has lent so much emphasis to the pleasing of commercial aesthetics as to have almost completely failed functional design. Such dereliction could never be said of the good doctor; ever the classically self-healing physician, her obsessive tendencies have guided - other times plagued - her career path from her earliest student days. In this woman, obsessive-compulsive was no longer a disorder, rather it had been long ago harnessed and put to use.

Seconds later and she is tutting again, now in frustration; the rhythmic repeating purring coo-coo-coo of the busy tone once again has once again shielded the IT manager from her wrath. She strikes the screen with an angry side-swipe; it rocks and quivers on its stand and the image again stabilises. “Until the next time” she mutters under her breath and cranes forwards over her keyboard, her left hand flowing across the keys, her right continuing to fidget with her glasses, a long deep red manicured nail clicking every few seconds against their frames, echoed on occasion by a quietly seething exhalation, sharpened in its passage through teeth not yet clenched...not quite at any rate, not as yet.

The screen blanks out momentarily, then flickers, before settling down to display what at first sight would appear to be an alternatively angled shot of the previous scene; even to the more observant it would take a long lingering second glance to reveal the differences. This girl, a frothed and beribboned non-person in green and white stripes, the only colour to be seen bobbing in a near featureless ocean of white, differs both in position and posture from that of the previous, the detailed and carefully executed uniformity of the two girl’s appearances crafting the illusion of a disconcertingly-sudden spatial-shift.

This is an overhead view, though several alternative viewing angles are available at the depression of a single key or the click of mouse button and are presented in a series of smaller windows positioned around the edge of the main image:

This girl, though, is not alone; she is sitting on the edge of what would appear to be a typical hospital bed alongside a nurse, the latter an apparition of almost ghost-like indistinctness, her uniform dress as bleached-white as the surroundings, her hair disguised in its entirety beneath a anachronistic headdress that allows only for the exposure of her face and little else. The woman has an arm resting around the girl’s shoulders in the university recognized gesture of comfort and support that might be expected in such a context; an apparently weeping, perhaps disturbed, girl with her carer in some institution somewhere.

The room is a censorial desert. There is the hospital bed of course with its slickly burnished gloss of white rubber coverings, but then there are the cosily-closely-walled surrounds, safe from interruption by such everyday fripperies as windows, furnishings, posters or light fittings. There seems nothing to be seen beyond the pair of them and the bed; it is an aseptically-bare canvas, inhumanly clean of detail, feature and clutter.

If there is anything of remark about this scene beyond that paucity of fitments and fittings it is the spasmodic rainbow-lightning flashes of colour accompanying the nurse’s slightest move, diamond faceted glinting-flashes seem projected from the button at her collar and those at her wrists fastening her cuffs; her left hand swinging lazily back and forth, her arm draped around the girl’s shoulders, brings with it a rhythmic sequencing through the full spectrum and back again, illuminating the girl’s face in a rippling film-show flickering of God’s purist hues.

The woman’s right hand rests, palm uppermost, on the girl’s green-striped lap bracketed by two of the skirt’s glassy buttons, supporting a small round object, perhaps of three centimetres in diameter. Speckled with shiny silver glints and shifting gem-star sparks of bedazzling primary reds, blues and greens; it is of apparent irresistible fascination to the girl.

The latter’s slumped posture, with shoulders hunched, arms loosely hanging and head, adorned as always by her green and white stripped bonnet, hanging low and craning over the glittering palmed prize, is quite diagnostic. To the doctor’s expert eye it betrays a state beyond mere relaxation - rather, it is far more indicative of one whose subconscious has been laid bare, rendered defenceless to softly whispered suggestions.

A single mouse click and an angled shot zooms in with enough detail as to reveal the slowly rotating, spiral-patterned, gem-bright face of the nurse’s fob-watch nestling in the nurse’s small neat palm. Golden-yellow screen text confirms the subject’s identity by her patient number: 30C. The identifier accompanied for the doctor’s eyes only by the girls name and details, to all others the experiment is blind, the subject known only by that simple dehumanising designation - 30C.

Looking up from the screen the woman half-smiles, her mood again lightening; her proposition had been well received, as she had known it would be from the start, from the point at which she had agreed to take the girl on, in fact. She had predicted the concerns that would be raised and had carried out her research accordingly. Indeed she had taken legal council herself, albeit guarded and surreptitious in approach, all conjecture and hypothesised scenarios:

The likely-hood of any exploitation of the mental health act had to be explored; any hospital dealing with psychiatric disorders and having a secure wing could potentially be at risk of legal repercussions should some individual manipulate the system for their own purposes or gain. That such a danger was clear and present was to be found implied in the law governing the awarding of ‘enduring power of attorney’; she knew enough now to be confident of the final decision in the light of the magnitude of the potential fiscal reward and the insignificance of the risk, so long as all had been well planed from the outset. And it had been; she had anticipated the direction this was to go from day one!

A few nimble-digit pirouettes and the knitting-needle click of plastic keys and even that record is gone; in ‘cyberspace’ only the girl’s ‘patient number’ remains associated with the experimental records, results and data.

In reality too there is only that designation, the girl is forbidden to answer to anything else, indeed she wouldn’t dream of it let alone voice anything different, voice anything at all for that matter, not without permission, not without being spoken to first and even then only if spoken to by a staff member; other patients were to be ignored.

Standing, the good doctor reaches for her coat: “There, done it, she’s gone; better safe than sorry, a paper trail is never a good thing.” She is alone. Somehow, talking to her self is one habit she has never quite been able to break and it irks her immensely; she prefers to feel that she is always in control, she has to be in control it’s just the way it is, how it should be.

Doctor Ecclestone’s day is over; she is leaving, returning to the bright neon promise of the city’s lights and her exclusive, lucrative, private practice. She has other dreams to follow beyond these walls, other interests to pursue, ambitions to fulfil; she is going home, an option not shared by all residing in this building, this institution, not by a long chalk...

...While Still Others Are Awakened

For two young ladies, a certain Lavinia Vitesse and Susan Stringer, each safely ensconced in their respective areas of this place euphemistically known simply as The Unit, the ‘day’ is just beginning. What this day will bring is not a question either needs ask - it will consist of whatever was yesterday, and whatever will be tomorrow. Theirs are lives filled with constancy and certainty - even the aspect of correction, of punishment, is a given.

Just how many strokes of the cane, the tawse or the martinet each will receive across their taut plastic or latex knickers - or indeed their bared buttocks, should the need arise - is another question entirely of course. In some ways it is the only day-to-day variation in the regime that either can hope to experience. That both will earn some such institutional chastisement at some point or other through the coming day is inescapable. Those under whose control they now languish - a hand-picked group of strict, domineering psychiatric nurses and their equally stern supervising ward matron - will ensure that they will. To these women it is more than part and parcel of their job; it is veritably the spice of life, as it were.