A Cupcake Diversion

How long it had been she had no inkling but she had just this minute been let out of her little prison room, the doctor smiling in greeting as if having a teenage girl locked in a little annex room leading just off her office was the most normal thing in the world. Now Lavinia Vitesse stared, open-mouthed and drooling.

The baby-pink and cornflower-blue fondant icing cupcakes, delicate little contrasting green and red moulded icing leaves and flours decorating their tops, looked scrumptious, if twee. There was a smell of fruit-laden jam and of vanilla and a sort of sugary-sweetness that hung heavily and seductively in the air with such intensity that Lavinia could virtually taste it. Haphazardly scattered on the same plastic tray, centred on the front of the doctor’s desk, there were perhaps ten, or even twenty, rich dark Belgian chocolate truffles, all sweating slightly under the warmth of the swan-necked desk lamp and adding their own characteristic aroma of cocoa and brandy to the heady, confectionery-shop mix pervading the room. Truffles were her favourite - how could they know, what new torment was this?

Standing in front of the psychiatrist’s desk in her baggy, ill-fitting institutional pyjamas, the broad green white stripes of the flannelette contrasting vividly against her pale complexion, Lavinia Vitesse was swaying gently, like a palm tree in the breeze, despite repeatedly being told to stand up straight. Obliged to clutch at the waistband of her pyjama bottoms in order to prevent their slipping down using both hands, her wrists being in soft padded-leather cuffs linked together by a short strap, she felt demoralised and near to tears. With her ankles hobbled in similar padded leather restraints to her wrists and wearing pyjamas whose trousers were at least a couple of sizes too large around the waist, totally devoid of waist elastic or a waist cord and which would fall straight down around her ankles should she release her grip on the fabric, she was reduced now to shuffling about like an invalid.

Kept permanently barefooted, those shapeless stripy pyjamas were all she had to wear now, albeit with the addition of a voluminous pair of transparent plastic pants or knickers and a thick terry nappy beneath during the daytime. It was striking just how handicapping those pyjamas could be in their own right; even with her wrist restraints removed it was difficult to do much with one hand permanently employed to hitch up the bottoms. For some reason it was that part of the doctor’s regime that was becoming the most demoralising of all, the constant humiliating irritation of shuffling around with one or both hands tugging at her pyjamas.

That and being kept in pyjamas twenty-four hours a day, day after day after day, never going any further than to stand or sit in front of the doctors desk or sit or lie in the teeny little anteroom off of the doctor’s office with only a hospital bed and a desk and chair for company, never seeing or hearing anyone’s voice other than the doctor herself or the nurse she employed. But somehow, even with all that, for whatever reason it was the pyjamas themselves that seemed to be having the greatest effect on her. Whenever she caught sight of herself in the full length dressing mirror on its adjustable, slightly angled wooden framed stand in the corner of the doctor’s office she found herself thinking that what she looked most like now was a patient. And that was what, more often than not, she felt like, nowadays, permanently dressed as she was in those drab institutional pyjamas.

The doctor took great care to ensure that the mirror was angled and her patient positioned in such a way when seated before her desk the patient could not look up at her without catching sight of her own reflection staring back. And she was forbidden to look away - Lavinia was obliged to keep her gaze fixed on the doctor at all times when in ‘one-to-one’ therapy. It was one of the doctor’s strictest rules and the doctor was a stickler for rules and regulations - it was the reason she always left that crook-handled cane of hers hanging over the mirror, dangling from its frame; it was a constant reminder that she wouldn’t hesitate to employ corporal punishment to underline her authority. The dull-eyed hunched grey-skinned thing gazing back in that uncompromising critical reflection was a patient, a psychiatric patient, moreover a psychiatric patient who was by the day becoming ever more dependent on her psychiatrist. Heart pounding and now salivating at the sight of the delicious spread laid out before her Lavinia did her best to force that last thought from her mind.

From across the desk her nemesis, the sharp-witted and aristocratically-featured section psychiatrist, beamed up at her pleasantly, like a mother greeting an errant daughter on her birthday - all forgiveness and promise and... yes, love... even love was there somewhere in her eyes. Leaning forward, her tight black leather skirt creaking, the woman plucked one of the pink-iced treats from the tray, daintily encircling its fluted paper case with her thumb and index finger, as if afraid of its fragility, as if, subconsciously guilt-laden, she viewed this delicately-crafted confection as a metaphor for her patient’s increasingly fragile sanity. Still smiling she offered it to the, now drooling, Lavinia:

“I drove past a patisserie and confectionery shop on my way in today. Such a lovely little place, I don’t know why I haven’t pulled up there before. Its got low oak beams that one has to be careful of bumping one’s head on, a glass bakery counter at the front and its own teensy-weensy little tea room at the rear with white paper doilies on the tables and finger sandwiches, pastries, cakes and chocolates served on tiered silver stands by a couple of waitresses in traditional black and white uniforms, complete with little frilled aprons and matching caps on their heads. Quite pretty girls actually, and around your age I’d say. Though I imagine one of them will be gone soon - I noticed an engagement ring on her finger: it looked quite expensive too. I don’t imagine she’ll be waiting tables much longer.

I imagine she’s caught herself some successful young beau who will whisk her away briskly enough, probably one of those ‘young professionals’ or even one of those city types who have been buying up all the cottages and farmhouse fringing the moors of late as ‘second homes’...” She sighed, wistfully then smiled at her patient, her observant gaze taking in the girl’s nervous twiddling with her ring finger. “... well time passes and lives change...” She noticed the girl’s eyes drop to where her fingers were fidgeting and her shoulders droop as if suddenly under some heavy burden and hardened her tone accordingly - she’d hit the spot but she wasn’t going to suffer the girl’s attention wandering: “Stand up straight... and for heaven’s sake stop fiddling with your fingers. That’s it! Now, let’s have that chin up and have you looking at me when I’m talking to you - unless you want me to stop talking, that is. If I’m boring you, you know you can always have plenty of quiet back in your room if you feel you need a rest from hearing my voice droning on for a while - you only have to ask.”

Feeling her cheeks burning red, Lavinia snapped back her shoulders, pressing hard together her shoulder blades, and somehow forced herself to look towards the seated woman, the psychiatrist now gently swinging from side to side in her swivel-base chair, her long legs outstretched and her hands behind her head. No, she didn’t want to listen to the doctor - she knew what the woman was trying to do with all that talk of ‘life going on’ and engagement rings and lush descriptions of village tea rooms and the rest.

There was never anything in these diatribes of the doctor’s that might help pin down the time of day or the weather or even the season - in that way everything she said was always calculatedly, frustratingly neutral. But then she had no option but to hang on the woman’s every word - she certainly couldn’t bear the thought of the woman not speaking to her. She tried to listen to her voice but not hear her words, tried to focus on the one distraction she had back in her room, the sparrows that would come to dance in that window high-up on the end wall, flittering in and out between the iron bars that stood guard outside the thick double-paned glass. All else through that portal was featureless; and if it was the sky she could just make out through the blurring distortions caused by the old dirty glass, then it seemed to be perpetually grey, neither relieved by the sun, moon nor stars or as much as sullied by scudding clouds.

Meeting for a moment the doctor’s dispassionate gaze she had to fight the urge to avert her eyes - the rule thoroughly drummed in elsewhere when under the scrutiny of those in authority - finding her self suddenly overcome with a clammy irrational dread. She forced the image of those little round brown and grey balls of feathers from her mind as if fearing giving too much away, as if somehow the woman might otherwise read her mind - what if the doctor found out, would she take them away? What if she took them away? Would she die, could she die? Or would her mind just shatter - driven to a complete and utter nervous breakdown? Tears suddenly streaming down her face, she decided it would be the latter - they went to great lengths to eliminate any possibility of ‘self harming’ here.

That her sanity should be hanging by such a frayed thin thread filled her with cold dread and clawing panic. She could feel herself shaking; her vision now reduced to a tunnel centred on the doctor’s condescendingly smiling face. She was so desperate to disregard what the doctor had been saying that the image evoked of that engagement ring - as much as she tried to push it too from her mind - now filled every nook and cranny of her reason with its huge blinding diamond cluster and glinting platinum band.

Yet the doctor’s voice was softening now - it seemed to soothe her if she paid attention, but only if she paid attention. It gave her something to focus on. If she focussed on the doctor’s words, she wouldn’t have to think about the sparrows, the doctor wouldn’t find out and she could concentrate on their antics and block out the doctor and all that she was trying to do to her - but now the sweet little things were dancing around in her head again... and they mustn’t, they just mustn’t... they had to go away, the doctor would find out. She had to chase them away, shoo them off, block them out, focus on what the doctor had to say, think about whatever the doctor wanted her to think about... But then...

Her fingers were still twiddling together, fidgeting and rubbing and worrying at her ring finger as if something were absent - again the behaviour had not gone unnoticed, but now the doctor kept her voice calm, an empathic, understanding tone giving to what was in reality a humiliating order an almost conciliatory aspect, as if issuing a boon relieving her patient of some burdensome action.

“If it is bothering you so much keeping your fingers still, rather than letting it build still more tension I’d much rather you just interlock them - that’s it, don’t worry about your pyjama bottoms; there’s only we two here and you’ve got your incontinence bloomers on. Now just place your hands on your head and we can continue, you’ll find you feel much calmer like that.” The doctor watched, a friendly warm smile now playing around her lips, as the thick voluminous green-stripped flannelette slithered over the girl’s hips and down her thighs forming a circular pile around her ankles and leaving her haunches sheaved in loose rippling folds of thick greyish polythene from her navel where the ‘tamperproof’ steel-cored waistband cinched tightly, a small brass padlock hanging from a clasp at the rear, to mid thigh where deep rubber-lined banded leg cuffs bit deep into reddened flesh, dimpling the skin. She nodded approvingly at the thick terry nappy fastened with four large locking-cap safety pins underneath and the embossed lettering across the front of the girl’s semitransparent, but never-the-less leak proof undergarment - the name of the hospital, the words, ‘secure psychiatric wing’ and the rather militaristic designation; pants, incontinence, female, adult, anti-tamper.

“Right, now just stand properly, feet together, elbows back, hands pressed on the top of your head, and we’ll get on” The alluring woman psychiatrist swept an arm over the top of the selection of patisserie-bought confections arranged across the desktop in front of her in a gesture of presentation. “Now, I digressed a little, but what I wanted to say was that I spotted these sitting in the shop window just as soon as I pulled up. I think it was the bright colours that caught my eye in the first place as I was driving by - I don’t know; I just had the sudden notion to stop for some reason. But I’m so glad I did - don’t you think they look just divine - hmmm? Totally irresistible, I thought.

Anyway; for some reason or other they made me think of you and... Well, I just popped in and, having had tea and cake myself, I bought them on the way out; especially for you! Wasn’t that nice of me?” The question was rhetorical; the doctor barely drew breath before continuing:

“The thing is; I have become a little concerned recently that you appear willing to try just about anything possible in order to avoid finishing up your meals. It turns out that this is not something that has simply materialised since you have been under my direct supervision here. In fact it looks like there are certain long-term issues at work that we are going to have to get to grips with - I have been reading the staff reports on your behaviour during your time in the ‘schoolroom’ and they too seem to indicate similar issues regarding mealtimes.

As I understand it, you made such a fuss that they had no option in the end other than to resort to corporal punishment in order to get you to eat properly. A staff member had to literally stand over you, flexing her cane, at every mealtime. Now, I well understand that the meals that are served up here are not always exactly what one might call ‘gourmet cuisine’ but the behaviour you have been exhibiting may be indicative of an early-stage eating disorder.”

Taking care not to drag the sleeve of her white coat through the others the doctor leaned forward plucking a cupcake at random from her desk - a strawberry pink one with a syrup-coated real strawberry perched on top. Smiling reassuringly she offered it to the stiff-backed standing girl, holding it out to her: “Come on, honey; just a bite, just a nibble, one tiny nibble, one little taste - what can it matter?”

The girl shook her head violently, almost as if in terror, her voice pleading: “Pl.pl,please, n,n,no... I m,m,mean, n,no th,th,thanks... do,do,d,doctor.

The doctor tutted in mock irritation, the smile never leaving her full red lips: “And just what was the point of all that, you silly goose? They’re scrumptious little things - it’s so silly to be like that about it.

Lavinia could feel her cheeks colouring; partly through embarrassment over being yet again castigated like a naughty child and partly due to her bristling with frustrated, restrained anger. Not exactly ‘gourmet cuisine’? Wasn’t that what the doctor had said about the diet they served here? ‘Unappetizingly bland’ would have been rated a superlative. The soy-protein-based, beige, textureless and tepid sludge they served up filled the stomach, was vitamin and mineral rich and nourished the body, but that’s all it did - it left the senses famished. But even that only scratched the surface of the problem; the real issue she had - and that had led to her developing what was in effect a restrained eating pattern - was a personal thing.

She was indeed desperate to taste one of those gorgeous things. But this was one of the last vestiges of independence she felt she had left - this ability to deny herself...torture herself, she wondered? One bite and she just knew that resolve would be broken - and with it, yet another shard of personality, spirit and self-respect, will have been chipped off her. One tiny mouthful was all it would take for her to be stuffing herself with both hands. She was indeed terrified, even more so than of the cane, if that had been threatened. But it was not something she would wish to discuss with any psychiatrist, let alone this woman whom she felt sure was devoted to her downfall and would merely view it as yet more ammunition to be thrown back at her patient when the time was right.

She need not have worried; she was not going to be required to contribute a viewpoint. The doctor could read her as easily as the press cuttings glued in the cardboard covered album she now slid out from a shallow drawer beneath her desktop over her lap. Slim, A3 sized and slightly dog-eared the navy-blue cover was liberally sprinkled with large silver stars and the single word - or rather, name - Margot. Flicking through it she glanced up at her suddenly blanching patient:

“It’s that dance thing again, isn’t it?” It was a rhetorical question, a cursory glance at the girl’s features was enough to tell her that she had again scored gold - and shooting from both hips. “If it’s not about conspiracies and having been tricked into volunteering for that behavioural research project you got yourself embroiled in, it’s about this misguided notion of yours that you are one day going to become a dancer, or model or actress. So even though you’re locked up in here with little scope to keep fit, no facilities for practice, while your peers get ever further and further ahead - still you find it necessary to starve yourself, to make yourself suffer. All it achieves, hanging on to these unrealistic ambitions, is to breed frustration and anxiety.

Those two girls I told you about, all coy and compliant in their trim little waitress uniforms, seemed cheerful enough. Why? Because they accept the deck life has dealt them, their limitations. In days gone by the two of them would have gone into ‘service’ in some large country house somewhere, spent their days scrubbing on their hands and knees or dusting and been grateful for it. Yes one of them may have ‘cracked it’ - or so she may well think, marrying above her natural position in the order of things. But ‘natural order’ has a way of reasserting itself, rebalancing itself and one must learn to tailor one’s expectations in life to match both one’s ability and circumstance.

Whatever ability you may or may not have once possessed - and I am not going to argue about it - will have deteriorated to quite some significant degree by now; that is just a fact of life I am afraid. You have to appreciate that your circumstances have changed out of all recognition - your aspirations need to be tempered to suit. In short: we need to lower our sights a little, and that is where I can help.

Part of my remit is to help you rebalance those ambitions of yours with the scope left open to you. I can promise you that by the time you leave my hands you will have become be a nice, compliant, shy girl - meek, modest of ambition, quiet and exceptionally passive by nature. To be honest, the fire I can detect still present in those eyes of yours will have been long quenched and the fight will have well and truly gone out of you. I can’t imagine much will be left open for you, if you spend too long in this place, other than being placed ‘in service’ somewhere.

How long you remain here, under my care, is of course purely up to you and how amenable and malleable you show yourself to be to the sort of re-education programme I am going to be putting you through. And remember there is a nice comfy bed waiting for you on the secure psychiatric ward at the end of all this. How long you’ll be kept there - who knows? It all depends on the opinion of the case review committee - and that opinion largely depends on... Yes you got it; how I write up my report in your patient notes. And that, in turn, depends on little old you, or rather on your behaviour.”

Suddenly dropping to her heels with a groan of despair Lavinia grabbed at the waistband of the pyjama trousers tangled around her ankles. Rising and pulling up the bottoms in one pre-planed choreographed movement she spun on her heels, lurching towards the office door. Four or five restraint-hobbled paces saw her stumbling and falling the rest of the way as - relinquishing her grip on the waistband in her haste to reach for the door handle, her other arm occupied in supporting her wildly swinging breasts beneath the ill-fitting pyjama jacket - the trousers fell around her ankles, tripping her. Nevertheless, on her knees, having crashed heavily side-on in to the sturdy iron-riveted door she grasped at the handle with both hands, her tethered wrists allowing little other option. Twisting the white metal knob with all her might she heaved and tugged frantically, but all to no avail. Again and again screaming at the top of her lungs she hauled on the handle, jerking twisting, wrenching, thumping with clenched fists until fingers and knuckles bled and nails were torn, despite being kept trimmed short.

Finally she collapsed in a weeping foetal-curled heap of sweat-stained flannelette, cloudy grey incontinent pants and now quite noticeably yellow-stained nappies, her head pressed against the rough hard metal of the door, straining in the hope of hearing some sign of life from outside the doctor’s office while all the time knowing in her heart of hearts that there was nothing out there, that the doctor’s office was a little world unto itself branching off a section of disused corridor separated from the rest by a sturdy locked security grille positioned at each end. She’d recognised that album or scrapbook as it truly was - it had been her mother’s as a little girl. How had they got hold of that? It was full of cuttings and postcards, ballet and theatre handbills - many autographed. There were even no less then three signed photo cards of Margot Fonteyn herself, all dedicated to her mother in the famous prima ballerina’s own hand. Seeing that had been the last straw - she was consumed with fear now - pushed beyond all reason. Behind her there came a rustle of paper and the sound of a drawer opening and closing. Then the doctor’s voice wafted across, dreamlike, soft and gentle, the woman not even deigning to rise and apparently talking to her self in that thoughtful manner that one sometimes adopts when writing up a report or scribbling into a journal:

“Subject... had become agitated, displaying unpredictable, possibly psychotic, behaviour and ... then became... frantic, leading up to...an attempt... no... strenuous attempt... no, violent, yes violent attempt to... abscond....Hmmm... And a possible attempt at self harming - some evidence of blood on hands and torn nails.” The doctor brushed her hands together noisily, as if both symbolically washing her hands of the situation and attracting her would-be absconder’s attention at the same time. “Well, that’s that then. A strenuous and prolonged attempt to abscond - and not your first - that should just about put the kibosh on a favourable case-review. If I send that in I doubt if the panel will even bother to convene, not on the strength of having to deal with your case, not unless there are other cases to be considered at the same. No, I imagine your detention will be extended for further reports and pretty much rubberstamped - another twelve months I’d imagine. Why, by that time you’ll have been here in total...” The doctor made a dramatic pretence of totting up. “... four... or is it five...years. Oh my god! What a long time out of such a young life. Tell me, I’m a little ignorant of such things: what age do most dance conservatoires accept their students up to? I mean: it’s not a long career I imagine - not in the highest league - beyond a certain age they probably see all the time it takes as not being worth their while; not while there are so many talented young things waiting in the wings.”

“No please, not another year - then there’ll be another and another wont there?” The pleading stammered and staggered out through Lavinia’s cracked lips frustratingly slowly - the thought that that debilitation placed the stage out of reach bringing fresh tears to her pretty violet eyes. “Please, please... cane me... take the strap to my bottom...”

“Begging for corporal punishment - that’s hardly the act of a rational young woman. I’m wondering whether you would be ready to sign a document I have here that would place you under my care and control indefinitely. It’s ironic: you’d have to be ‘of sound mind’ to do that - but then you’re not are you?” No such document existed of course but it was the verbal admission she was after, the one thing she wanted to hear the girl admit to herself; nice and loud and clear for the tape she had running. She didn’t have long to wait - the girl was almost gleeful in her confession.

“No. No I’m not, doctor”

“You’re not what, dear?

“I’m not of... of...”

“Sound mind, dear? Not of sound mind?”

“Sound mind... I’m not of sound mind.”

“If you’re not of sound mind, you must be... ill? Mentally ill?”

“Yes, yes, yes... I... I...I am mentally ill...doctor...Oh please don’t make me say it any more...please...I’ll be good...I’ll be a good girl...please cane me...punish me, I’ll be good, I’ll do as I’m told...”

“Hush, hush, sweet heart.” The doctor had now risen and traversed the room, placing her hand comfortingly on the half-reclining girl’s shoulder. I might be willing to fudge over this issue but I don’t think the cane is quite the way forward for you on this occasion...”

“The cakes... please no... I’ll get so fat, I’ll...”

“No, no; not the cakes - I don’t expect you to eat the cakes. I’ll pop them in the fridge. When the time comes I would prefer you to want to eat them, to eat them of your own volition - and the chocolates. The choice has to be yours, of your own free will, not through fear of punishment. No, it will have to be something that will be of a help to you, something with a genuine therapeutic aspect while still having something of the nature of a punishment in order to correct you behaviour.

The reason I produced your mother’s scrapbook today was to introduce you to an approach I have in mind to help you deal and eventually vanquish these delusional ballet ambitions of yours.” Standing over the still pathetically weeping girl she again flicked through the scrapbook, having carried it across tucked under one arm. “It’s all collector’s items of course, much of it valuable and much of it irreplaceable - but that’s a good thing. I see you have added to it yourself, but I can rely on that very uniqueness of the collection to dissuade you from ever starting again to rebuild it off your own back and thereby rekindling your obsession. Why there are even cuttings in there relating to your mother in her dancing days. Well, what we are going to do together is that each day, out here in my office - or at each of our sessions anyway - you are going to choose a picture, handbill or cutting... and tear it into tiny, weenie little pieces. Then you are going to return to your room, sit at your desk and write me an essay in your finest handwriting detailing the subject matter, its history, what its existence meant to you personally and how it felt to destroy it - the thoughts running through your mind as you did so and the way in which its destruction is helping you let go of that dream that this album represents. We are going to go through this procedure over and over until it is all gone - all of it; and with it this deluded ambition of yours. Only then will I amend the entry I made today in your notes. Do you understand?”

From the floor came a muffled grunt of agreement and a loud shuddering defeated sob, the girl’s head nodding sullenly. It amused the doctor that even this impending destruction of something the girl held so dear was somehow preferable to the girl to being forced to eat that confectionery - she hadn’t begged to do that, just to be caned. So much the better - when the day came that she did finally give in to temptation it would have all the greater and more permanent effect.

“Now I was intending to let you make all the decisions as to where to make a start - and of course I would expect you to choose the less valuable and important, the less rare and possibly the less personal first. But as I said; there has to be an element of punishment in all this. So for today’s abysmal and downright disrespectful behaviour I shall make the first selection. And I think we’ll start with one of the Fonteyns - the one with your mother in the background. You are going to take this into your room with you, study it for the rest of the day and commit it to memory.

Then I am going to bring you back out here and you are going to describe from memory every tiny little detail in that photograph while I hold it. I’ll be questioning you and it’ll be six strokes of the cane across your bare behind if I see anything in that shot you fail to mention; and I’m very observant.

Then you are going to rip it into tiny, tiny pieces, not quickly but as I tell you. As you do so I am going to be to trying to guide you to think of yourself as letting go of the ambition the picture embodies, just as you rid yourself of the memento - guided imagery I call it. Then there’ll be the essay writing, as I have just outlined, which I think you’ll find will help fix these new ideas I am introducing you to in your mind. Right, off you go... let’s have you back in your room please - and quickly, unless you’d like me to send that report off right this minute.”

Back in her little cell-room Lavinia sat at the cramped school-style desk staring at the photograph propped up against the featureless white of the end wall the desk abutted. As the white noise came on she burst in to tears... And her mind wandered, the unwelcome familiarity of the school desk helping set the scene... Free of this time and free of this place - but she was not free of the rules and restrictions that had been imposed on her by her aunt even now, or of that woman’s control.