Sparrows In The Window - Or Bats In The Belfry?

The young girl’s heart missed a beat; above her head the sparrow in the window cavorted as it always did, fluttering to and fro, its beak opening and closing in silent chirruping. Its antics were fascinating, the one thing that broke the monotonous predictability of the institutional routine. Over the weeks since the immature bird’s first miraculous arrival, the girl had learnt to anticipate her little companion’s appearance, silhouetted against the bright square backdrop of greyish daylight, flittering in and out of the framework of prison-window bars just two or three sheets of toughened glass away but conceptually a thousand miles removed from her own situation. Set deliberately too high in the wall to be seen out of in the usual way, the window did at least intermittently present this view.

This day - like so many that had passed before - she had been sitting forlornly on the edge of the hospital bed, staring up at the tiny cell-like window, when her miniscule friend had appeared. Given the choice she preferred the spongy rubber of the mattress to the plastic seat of the school-pattern desk that constituted the cramped room’s only other furnishing; its resilience eased the bottom-numbing discomfort caused by the thick towelling bunching beneath the elastic grip of the plastic pants they made her wear. As always, her misery and despondency quickly turned to grinning glee with the first flickering, feather-trailing shadow. It was fair to say that this moment she waited for with progressively greater urgency day on day; it had gradually taken on a greater and greater importance over the weeks, it pulled her through, it was something she could focus on when the doctor’s comments and insights began to burrow too deeply beneath her skin. Not that she was always alone here; there were days when the doctor preferred to sit with her, keeping her company here in this claustrophobically isolated cocoon of a room. There were other times when she would be ushered out into the doctor’s consultation room for her therapy sessions, there to spend who knows how long seated on the hard wooden chair facing the doctor’s desk, obliged to sit bolt upright throughout with her hands on her head like a naughty child. But still in her pyjamas - those hated, baggy and now quite malodorous green-stripped monstrosities never came off. This particular day was to be one of those once rare but increasingly more frequent occasions when the doctor would keep her company in her little room.

Lavinia understood this would be more likely to be the case from now on; she had overheard the doctor practically telling someone as much on the phone.

The sound-proofing outer door to her cell had been left ajar at the time and she clearly heard the doctor say how she “intended to provide the patient with in situ psychoanalytical sessions more often in future” as she now considered the consultation room environment to be “likely to overexcite the patient” and to be “too distracting” and to provide “far too much by way of mental stimulation”. Somehow she had known immediately that the ‘patient’ being discussed was herself and she had cried long and hard as a result. Of course Lavinia could only assume it was a telephone call; the doctor had a particularly strident conversational voice and it was perfectly feasible that another party had been present and was just particularly softly spoken.

It often suited the doctor’s purpose to leave open the outer door to the ‘seclusion room’ if present at her desk for any length of time - the woman enjoyed the feeling of being able to directly observe her pretty teenaged patient where she was securely confined behind steel bars. After all; she knew the time, her patient didn’t. Poor Lavinia didn’t even know the season, let alone what day of the week it was - not any more. There was something the woman found thrilling about that, about glancing down at her watch and then up at her captive through the narrow wall of bars, watching the girl at her cramped school desk - staring dumbly at the blank white wall ahead or with head down and working busily at some stupefyingly tedious imposition she had set. The thought might strike her how at that selfsame moment other young women of Lavinia’s age would be setting out for the Saturday night crush of the pubs and clubs or settling down in the arms of a boyfriend for a cosy night-in - the latest romcom slapped in the DVD player and the wine waiting in the glass - or indeed giggling away with friends at lunch in the office canteen or University refectory. Then there was the knowledge of how the simple act of leaving that outer door ajar increased the patient’s sense of being under constant supervision and deprived of privacy - she thought it good that her patient should sometimes be aware of others coming and going in freedom while she was effectively caged and closely confined. Along with the constant stream of written impositions she set the girl she knew the latter enhanced that feeling of being under control that she wished the girl to develop.

But whereas she might at such times wish her patient to be aware of being under scrutiny or of others arriving and departing her office she would not allow her patient to as much as glance over her shoulder - at such times invariably the doctor would either set some long-winded written task, instruct the girl to sit at her desk facing the wall or, failing that, would ensure Lavinia was confined to bed in her usual wrist, ankle and waist restraints. Of these three precautions Lavinia knew to her cost the doctor preferred the former two - lacking recourse to restraint, other than the fairly slack stainless-steel chains that restrained her wrists and hands to the region immediately encompassing the desktop, compliance was left to the responsibility of the patient herself and so was considered far superior in instilling discipline.

It was difficult not to glance back over a shoulder or twist around - indeed it went against human nature itself. But Lavinia’s sense of curiosity had been well and truly quelled by this time. Somehow the doctor never seemed to miss a thing - a cursory glance back over a shoulder, perhaps startled by the scrape of a chair or the clearing of a throat, would be all it would take. Lavinia knew there would come a rattling of the key in the lock and the iron-squeak of the hinged bars opening inward. Her heart would solidify in stone and her hands would shake like branches in a sudden forest squall at the first creak of bamboo being bent and flexed in preparation behind her or the threatening slap of a well-oiled strap against leather-skirted thigh. It was all too easy to earn a dozen or more across her bare bottom - that is why when told to face the wall, Lavinia faced the wall.

Not that there was much to be seen out in the doctor’s office in any case - the room was generally kept locked other than for patient consultation interviews and psychological assessment and was sparsely functional in the extreme. There was, she thought, a window, behind the doctor’s desk, but she couldn’t be certain - thick drapes hung from ceiling to floor and were always drawn across whenever she was allowed out there. In fact, out there in the office her isolation was only a little less complete than when locked away in this little whitewashed nightmare of loneliness, yet it offered some respite at least from the silent monotony of her world. Those excursions past the cell-room bars and out into the interview room, though measured in feet and inches, were something she had grown to savour, to hang on to, however nefarious the doctor’s intent really was - now they would be fewer and farther between, perhaps cease altogether.

At any rate, at least for the moment she was not alone - a nurse might call by or Matron herself might visit, but neither would speak, and she was forbidden to speak to them. But only the doctor constituted true company; only the doctor would listen to her, only the doctor would as much as acknowledge her as a sentient being, as something more than a child’s doll to be dressed and undressed, fed and toileted without comment. And right now the doctor sat alongside her, perched on the edge of the bed, the woman’s arm draped comfortingly around her shoulders.

The procedure would still be the same as out in the office though; that was the one thing that never varied, other than in the detail. She would be questioned, interrogated some would say - and with good reason - in the name of psychoanalytical psychotherapy. Some questions would sound unfamiliar or - if an otherwise familiar query - would be phrased in a convoluted, difficult to understanding and confusing manner - but the ground dug over would be the same. Other queries would be so over-familiar as to be repeated several times in any one session, until she felt the need to scream simply from the sound of the doctor’s softly-feminine condescending tone. Throughout the doctor would maintain the same measured cadence and same lulling sing-song tone, sounding out the syllables - syll-ab-les - of each word slowly and deliberately. She would do so with her individual words spaced out in synchronism with a musician’s metronome which she would bring with her into Lavinia’s little prison, setting it up on the floor of the cell where she knew it could catch Lavinia’s eye. If the interview took place in her office, then she would position the device on the front of her desk between herself and her patient, who of course was forbidden to look away. Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock. “Have ‘tick’ you ‘tock’ ev-er ‘tick ’ con-sid-er-ed ‘tock’ your ‘tick’ self ‘tock’ men-tal-ly ‘tick’ ill ‘tock’ or ‘tick’ psy-cho-log-i-ca-lly ‘tock’ dis-turbed?” It could be quite hypnotic

“What is it honey? I sometimes wonder if you ever hear a word I say to you. How am I supposed to help you if you won’t listen to me?”

With the fingers of the hand she had draped over her patient’s shoulder the doctor rhythmically stroked the girl’s cheek in a motherly fashion. As she spoke she gradually applied an increasingly insistent pressure, her intention being that the girl should turn her undeniably pretty features towards her. Her other hand rested on the thick white square plastic panel that she had entered with tucked under her arm and that now rested on the floor, propped up against the side of the girl’s bed.

“Come on honey; look at me when I talking to you...I said...LOOK AT ME!!”

“Oww!” The girl’s startled yelp was quite understandable given the sudden unexpected harshness of the woman’s tone, coupled with the stinging slap that the latter had simultaneously landed on her left cheek with the very same fingers that had been caressing her so lovingly mere moments before.

The girl’s neck twisted instantly towards her tormentor, her face flushed with shock, her violet eyes wide like a terrified doe caught in a car’s headlights, bleary, distant and as uncomprehending as the doctor could wish for - the perfect counterpoint to the asylum-patient pyjamas she kept the girl dressed in.

“Sorry...s,sorry, doctor”

“I said I want you to look at me when I am talking to you...what is wrong with you, honey?”

“Nothing, doctor...really...noting at all...sorry, doctor.... I, I... I’m not m,m,m mad you know.” The girl giggled inanely, a silly stupefied giggling. Then, with notable effort seemed to pull herself together again. “You see... they keep me sane...they won’t let you win...”

“Who are ‘they’? Who is trying to ‘win’? You seem... distracted - is something distracting you? Hmmm? Do you think, perhaps, it is because you are unwell, do you think you might be... hallucinating? It’s ok to say, I am your doctor you know.”

“Please...no...doctor, please...it’s nothing...my mind wanders...I,I... I don’t always know what I’m saying... I feel so... confused.” Tears were forming now, the voice taking on a pleading tone and the girl beginning to gently rock back and forth.

The girl’s voice was music to the woman doctor’s attuned ears: The timid, faltering, fawning tones told a tale of one consumed with worry and desperate to cover some misdeed or guard some secret. Similarly, the girl’s eyes - continuously flickering to and from the shaft of flickering daylight reflected off the bars covering the cell door - were those of one who, in seeking to misdirect, succeeded only in attracting further unwarranted attention to her most valued possession.

The thought was rushing headlong through Lavinia’s mind like a wild boar pursued by baying hounds, crashing through the elements of reasoning, shattering logic, inevitably plummeting towards the precipice that marked out the transition to the state most would recognize as ‘madness’. “What if she should see it - what if she should take it away?”. One eye had already fallen on the plastic panel the woman had brought in with her; the forty-five degree orientated reinforced slots set, one at each corner; the four, sturdy, white-painted padlocks the woman had disgorged from the nondescript packet she had also walked in with, clutched in her other hand. The opposite eye had automatically been drawn up to the iron ‘U’-bolt hoops, similarly orientated, that protruded out rudely from the wall at the corners of the inset cavity housing the room’s sole window.

The relationship had been arrived at unconsciously, the connection made quite instantaneously. The resulting concern, though instinctively born, soon took on a life of its own: “Please, please don’t look...please God, don’t let her look up! Please, please, please, Lord...please, Lord God, make her look away...please don’t let her take my friend from me...not now...not today”. It was a prayer; she was praying, near-silently, under her breath.

Lavinia Vitesse was not overly religious; despite her English Home-Counties upbringing. Lavinia Vitesse was not one to seek aid from the divine; to her, religious entreaties muttered under the breath were the province of the psychologically disadvantaged, the ‘intellectually challenged’ - to be blunt: the down-right mentally ill!

A quizzical frown creased the woman doctor’s refined brow: “Well, something is distracting you”.

“No, no,...honestly, doctor...no, it’s nothing...really. I, I...I was day dreaming, that’s all... honestly.” The stress was clearly evident now in her stammering disjointed babbling speech pattern.

“Now you know I disapprove of your constant daydreaming - I like you to keep your mind focused on your surroundings, on the real world. No, I don’t think it is that - you wouldn’t have admitted to it so readily if it had merely been daydreaming....No, something is definitely distracting you...You’re doing it now, glancing around, trying not to focus on something...something you want to keep hidden from me. You know you can’t keep secrets from me - I’m your psychiatrist and you are my patient: I know everything about you there is to know. Now what could it be? Hmmm?” It was a game she was playing - of course it was - a subtle game that was, of itself, a distraction. Yet this was a gambit that, if it paid off - and she had no reason to believe that it wouldn’t - would be crucial to her achieving the outcome she was looking for.

Smiling innocently the curvaceous young psychiatrist rose to her feet, smoothing down her customary knee-length black-leather skirt as she twisted away. It was rare that she left off her white coat, but she had made plans for today - and it was to be a rare day indeed. Following the line of the girl’s gaze she stepped languidly across to the barrage of steel bars; purposely swaying her hips as she moved, fancying that she could feel her timid young patient’s eyes running up and down the seams of her dark-tan stockings, from the hem of her close-fitting skirt to her kitten-heeled patent court shoes, perhaps taking in the swell of her bosom beneath her blouse. True the latter was cut conservatively enough, but there was something fascinating about satin - a gloriously feminine fabric, it both flattered and drew the eye. Starved of any significant sensory input, companionship and conversation - not to mention sexual relief - and with the doctor herself as her sole tenuous link to the real world, it would have been surprising if the girl had not developed a certain attraction to her captor. This was something she could work on; she could take this early beginnings of a girlish ‘crush’, encourage it, develop the relationship until attraction became adoration became obsession and pathological fixation. Given time she could, and would, undermine the entire basis of the girl’s sexuality and belief system - and if all went well she would have all the time in the world.

She would have the girl quite literally eating out of her hand, ready to believe any thing and everything she was told and tamed to a degree those who had consigned her to this place could never have imagined possible.

“What is it that you find so fascinating over here? Just what is it you are looking at?” The look of puzzlement on the doctor’s beautician-perfected features was a triumph of deceit, a dramatic tour de force. As she spoke the doctor bent as if to examine the white-painted security bars, tentatively scratching at an imaginary blemish here, a shadowy outline there, her manicured nails clinking lightly against the metalwork, their subtle shrimp-pink varnish appearing iridescent under the unrelenting fluorescent criticism of the lighting system.

Internally her tormented young patient was now one boiling tumultuous cauldron of conflict, her thoughts, useless, crippled; a tangle of irrational fear and carefully orchestrated neurosis. She rocked on the edge of the bed, feeling the soft latex mattress-cover alternately stretching and contracting through the dank flannelette of her pyjama bottoms beneath the backs of her thighs and barely conscious of her bladder emptying into the double-layered bulk of terry-towelling encasing her bottom beneath the polyurethane waterproof protection of her knickers. At some level she became aware that her lips were moving. What she speaking? Was she voicing her thoughts? She did sometimes, she knew. She had even caught herself doing it with a nurse present, with the woman seated beside her bed and supposedly there to supervise her. It was allowed, apparently. So long as she made no attempt to communicate in any kind of sensible way, so long as she was merely inanely muttering her own thoughts to herself, it was allowed. It was a most terrible thing; to become aware of hearing a young woman’s voice - perhaps reciting over and over some half forgotten piece of learning gained through a previous lifetime - only to gradually become aware that it was one’s own.

Watching the doctor moving across to the front of the cell her heart was pounding, now driven by hope rather than fear. “That’s it, that’s it! Look over there... over there! Yes, yes, there, look there”. She brought her fingers up to her mouth, obliged to lift both arms together by the restraints linking her wrists and sensing both the slack waistband of her pyjama bottoms, and that of the plastic knickers she had on beneath, slip below her navel as she relinquished her grip. A sour, ammonia-laden odour wafted up from the now exposed absorbent towelling pants and her fingertips were similarly faintly tainted. A mixture of mortifying shame and revulsion filled her as the latter made contact with her lips, but was tempered by the need to stifle her own words, lest she give the game away herself.

The trouble was; the greater her conscious endeavour to manoeuvre and misdirected her nemesis by directing her gaze, the more her subconscious seemed to conspire against her, signposting the way by causing her eyes to forever nervously flicker back in the direction of the prize. She had to take care not to stare at the object of her desire and yet, conversely, she knew that she had somehow also to avoid focusing her gaze in the diametrically opposite direction as this could be, to the trained eye, just as telling. This in a nutshell was now the dilemma - that and the definite possibility that she might actually tell the doctor what she needed to know by vocalising these very thoughts.

The answer seemed in adopting some sort of neutral gaze, but then again that would likely settle perpendicularly to the sight line and so, by inference and interpolation, give the game away - and besides, she wasn’t allowed to look away from the doctor while she was talking; that would be rude and disrespectful and a sign in itself of mental illness. If she could just focus her thoughts elsewhere then at least she wouldn’t have to worry about talking to herself - and she was becoming only too aware now that she was definitely muttering to herself! But what was there to focus on, other than the birds, the window or the doctor herself? That was the point - there was nothing to see, nothing to hear, nothing to do, nothing to think about; not ever... not ever!

She was beginning to cry, a soft, sniffling, keening weeping, yet one producing copious heavy salty floods that trickled down her cheeks, ran down her chin, down the grubby stained top of her pyjama jacket - she seemed to cry all the time now, over anything, everything and often nothing at all. She glanced down, catching sight of the tough steel-wire reinforced plastic I.D. bracelet that was permanently strapped around her right ankle, its rectangular tag jutting out awkwardly from beneath the padded leather cuff of the ankle restraints are looking for the world like an old-fashioned tie-on suitcase label. For a moment she tried to focus her thoughts on that - she could just make out the thick black characters spelling out “secure psychiatric unit”. A voice somewhere had just said exactly those words. She listened and it said it again. But this time she knew - it was her own voice; she could feel her lips moving. She suddenly realised that her nose was running, dribbling and dripping into her lap and instinctively went to wipe it on her sleeve, only to stop herself - the pyjamas weren’t hers, they belonged to the hospital; they constituted a uniform in much the same way as the gymslip she had once worn had. Worse: she also realised she was now staring directly at the very thing it was essential she avoid acknowledging.

“Secure psychiatric unit?” Was that her voice? No; it sounded like...

“What was that you said - secure psychiatric unit? Well yes, dear it is - but perhaps not secure enough. We’ll have to see what we can do about that. If a patient doesn’t feel secure, how can we expect her to improve?” The doctor was smiling at her, twisting and glancing back over her shoulder and clearly pleased to see her young charge flummoxed, unsettled and shuffling around uncomfortably in her notably-stained hospital-issue pyjamas.

Under the probing scrutiny of the doctor’s eyes, Lavinia’s hands dropped back to her lap, her cuffed wrists crossed in front of her, one hand gathering up and then clutching at a handful of excess fabric at the waistband, the other hanging uselessly limp with thumb and middle finger endlessly circling pad to pad as if the girl were seeking to erase her own fingerprints.

If the doctor was pleased to see the girl still obediently perched on the side of the plastic mattress she was even more pleased to catch her patient in the act, nervously casting furtive downward glances at the square panel she had pointedly left resting against the bed frame then transiently glancing skyward out of the corner of her eye, toward the softly grey-lit aperture set ceiling high; stage to her very own fluttering, dancing gymnastic entertainment. Holding on to the bars with her left hand she traced the girl’s imaginary eye-line through the air with a theatrical wave of her right.

Waggling her index finger dramatically to and fro, as if feeling her way along an invisible taut thread, the woman slowly sidled across the narrow confines of her patient’s cell-like accommodation before - momentarily halting accusingly before the shivering young girl - gesturing toward the energetically dancing shadow she suddenly laughed out loud in faux surprised delight:

“Why!... Well, well! Now, how ever did that get in there? We can’t have that, now, can we - far too distracting. I’m just going to pop out to my office for a moment; I want you to stay exactly where you are. Don’t you dare shift that chubby bottom of yours one inch; you’re in enough trouble already. I’ve a good mind to put you across my lap for a few strokes of my belt. It’s no good you whimpering; I’ve told you enough times. You’re supposed to tell me straight away if something is bothering you; what we don’t have here are secrets. A patient doesn’t keep secrets from her doctor - does she?”

From the side of the bed behind the implacable woman’s back, came a muttered chattering, the chanted rhythmic pattern suggesting something akin to the ‘’Lord’s Prayer, yet somehow more personal, more specific......”I said; does she?”

“No...no...doctor”.

“Don’t you think you deserve a few strokes from my belt across your fat behind?”

“No...I mean...I’m not sure... I,I mean... No, please. No!” The doctor’s phrasing seemed confusing; what with her sleep-deprived state and the desperation born of the prospect of loosing what she had now come to see as her one anchor to reality, even the simplest query now took on the aspect of an intellect-challenging quandary.

“Well, dear; I wouldn’t expect to have to up-end a patient across my knees like a small child and take my belt to her bare bottom - not if she were a good patient. You do want to be a good patient, don’t you, dear?”

Lavinia bristled: The dilemma was set; she could either verbally confirm her status as a mental patient - something she was most loath to do, as in a sense it implied admitting it to herself - or she could set herself up for a good, long, humiliating, not to mention painful, spanking over the psychiatrist’s knee. Neither prospect was exactly welcoming.

“I...I...I’m not...Yes, doctor”. There was more at stake here than a little dignity - she risked losing her little friend; for all she knew, the only friend she had left in the world, if she discounted the doctor.... The doctor? Why ever should she consider the doctor as a friend? How could that be right - what sort of thinking was that? Surely she should not be thinking that way...she would have to be careful; this was the way the woman wanted her to think. She was not a real mental patient, not a real one; she was just playing the game they wanted her to, just going along with it for her own ends, just until she could get away... But how could she get away, how long could she expect to stand it, how long could they keep her here? Come to think about it... how long had she been here... why wouldn’t they tell her... what was happening outside... what was going on?

She began to weep, at first gently - the tears trickling silently down from the corners of her pretty violet eyes - then more profusely, her restraint-bound wrists frustrating her attempts of stifling her increasingly vocal expression of her grief.

“Take your hands away from your face, dear. Remember; we never hide our emotions from our doctor. It’s good to cry sometimes; just let it all out. You know you want to be a good patient, deep down inside, you know you want to please me...don’t you?”

“Yes...sob...doctor”

“Then why not just say it? You’ll feel so much better when you do. You do trust me, don’t you?”

“Yes...doctor”

“Then why not just tell me how much you want to be a good, little, patient for your doctor. What is holding you back? It’s only making you ill, you know. Is that what you want to be, mentally ill? Well?”

“No...do, do...doctor”. The girl’s stuttering response was punctuated by deep, ribcage-shuddering sobs.

“Then say it; say ‘I want to learn to be a good, docile psychiatric patient, doctor’.”

“No...I mean...please...please no.”

So; am I to take it that you don’t want me to help you - do you want me to leave you alone in here again? Think about it.”

“No...no.. .please... please”. Lavinia took a deep breath, a deep shuddering, grief-filled inhalation: Please, doctor, please. I, I, I...want...to learn...to be a...good...”

“Docile”, the doctor prompted, smiling.

“A, a, a...good...docile...psy,psychi...”

“Just say mental..come on, there’s a sweetie.”

“A, a, a, g,good, d,d,d...”

“Docile.”

“A...g,g,good, d,d,docile...m,m,men...men...”

“Mental...say ‘mental’, deary.”

“A,a ,a g,g,good, docile, m,m,mental...patient...”

“Doctor”

“A,a,a...m,mental patient, doctor.”

“That is a good girl - what a good little girl you are becoming. You’re making me very happy, you’re well on your way to becoming the perfect little mental patient. Why, before too long - if we work together, you and I - I would be surprised if you weren’t ready to be transferred on to a proper psychiatric ward... Wouldn’t that be nice?”

“Yes, doctor.”

“Yes! And then you’ll be able to have visitors.”

“Visitors...d,d,doctor?”

“Oh, yes! You’ve not been totally forgotten here you know: I’m sure your guardian, Ms Bartlett, will want to see you... and as I have said before: I understand her solicitor may well accompany her; there are a couple of documents outstanding that will require your signature at some point.

And, of course, once you are past the age of twenty-one, there will be quite a deluge of paper-work to be dealt with - transferring control of your late father’s estate to Ms Bartlett... that sort of thing... I’m sure you understand, darling.”

Turning on her heel the triumphantly-smiling woman strode from the room, pointedly leaving both the outer-door and steel security gate ajar in her wake. Seconds later and she was back, low foot-stool in her hand. Having positioned the leather-topped footstool against the end wall, directly below the window, she turned, snatching the plastic panel with one hand while gathering up the padlocks from the mattress surface with the other. Two paces further on and the implacable female psychiatrist was offering up the white plastic square - now held at arm’s length overhead - to the inset opening that housed the cell window, manoeuvring the first of the corner slots over its corresponding wall-mounted iron ring.

A padlock snapped shut...then another and another and another. Clicking the last padlock shut, the willowy psychiatrist twisted around, smiling back over her shoulder at the still seated pyjama-clad girl: “There now; we can’t have all that distraction, can we?” The psychiatrist’s cheery tone was met first with a less than enthusiastic grunt from her patient - perhaps the calm before the storm - then a near-hysterical outburst of screaming. Where before there had been sweet encouraging daylight - albeit greyish, featureless and nondescript - there was now a homogeneous whiteness, the blessed window now barely discernable from any other part of the end wall. The resident’s little feathered saviour was lost - the broken-hearted sobbing that now rent the air suggested that the resident herself had been, likewise, cast adrift - or perhaps some part of her sanity had been.

Tears filled young Lavinia Vitesse’s eyes as if a pair of flooded and overflowing violet pools deluged in a summer’s evening downpour. Her voice rose in wailing agony as if in mourning for her broken mind - it was end game, and in more ways than one. Screaming she threw herself headlong at the softly chortling psychiatrist, knocking her to one side and leaping up on the stool in the startled-woman’s stead. Completely forgetting her on her pyjama bottoms, the perspiration-infused flannelette trousers instantly falling in a green and white striped pool around her ankles, she scrabbled madly at the window cover, clawing with nails deliberately kept trimmed less they lead to self-harming and so too short to be of use and handicapped by her tightly restrained wrists.

Behind the girl’s back - out of sight and nothing like as shaken as she made out - a smile creased the domineering doctor’s dramatically beautiful features. Her right hand calmly reached across to her left, feeling for the broad, white plastic, bracelet encircling her slender wrist - more specifically, feeling for the discreetly-mounted inset button gracing the latter’s underside - her thumb pressing upward upon reaching its target, the electronic summons, silently-sent but received with all urgency.

The response was near instantaneous: Outside the close confines of the girl’s accommodation - out in the consultation room that lay beyond those sound-proofed walls - the heavily-secured door burst open. A scant few strides was all it took for the two nurses the doctor customarily employed as orderlies - both being highly trained in restraint and control techniques - to arrive at her side. In moments an arm was hastily thrown around the protesting girl’s waist and she found herself manoeuvred expertly to the floor.

Pinned down on her back Lavinia now found herself confronted by the doctor’s apparently concerned face, the woman bending over her, tut-tutting loudly in faux consternation. Seconds later and a bolt of pain shot through her being, as every bit as shocking as if she had touched a live wire: The psychiatrist’s palm had slapped across her face - hard, very hard!... Then the woman struck her again...and yet again, first across one soft plump cheek then the other, over and over, harder and harder, the effort causing the woman’s own face to redden, her breathing to become laboured - and her hysterical patient’s head to ring as if filled to bursting by the incessant pealing of church bells. Satisfied, the doctor twisted to face the nurse closest to the austere room’s steel bar-guarded door:

“You, nurse; fetch my leather belt from the top drawer of my desk.”

“Yes doctor”. The blue-uniformed nurse released her painfully bruising vice-like grip on the girl’s ankles. She paused for a moment, still squatting, her broad haunches straining the seams of her uniform skirt, the polyester fabric notably pulling at the sides. Then, tugging urgently at the leather tongue of the strap linking the girl’s ankle restraint-cuffs through its bright stainless steel buckle, shortening the patient’s hobble-strap until the girl’s ankles touched and her legs were rendered safely useless, the robust nurse rose quickly to her feet. Bobbing respectfully to the woman psychiatrist, as might a servant girl to her employer in days gone by, the nurse scuttled from the room without further comment.

Turning back to the other nurse, presently engaged in securing the girl’s wrists above her head, the doctor indicated with a nod of her head the infantile-looking desk occupying the end wall. “And you, nurse; please be so good as to help me get this stupid little child secured across her desk - I fear she has another lesson to learn.” The doctor sighed resignedly. “Sometimes, sadly, there is only one way to help these poor deranged wretches, and that is with a firm hand!”

So saying the imperious psychiatrist turned her attention back to the sobbing girl, still lying prostrate on the padded linoleum flooring. “Up you get, child.” For a few precious, reluctant, moments young Lavinia Vitesse could do little more than twist on to her front, burying her face in her securely cuffed hands, desperate to staunch the stinging in her cheeks. “I said: Get up...NOW, you imbecile!”

“I, I, I am...NOT AN IMBECILE!. You, you...YOU COW!” Somewhere, deep in her soul, the girl clearly still harboured some small reserve of defiance - but was this the time to unleash it? Had she still the capacity to think clearly, conventional wisdom would suggest not. But then again she had been carefully relieved of the capacity for rational thought - at least in all but for these last few residual dregs.

To the trained eye of the psychiatrist, the outburst merely indicated that she was on the right track - she had her patient at breaking point, her sanity hanging by a thread and well on the way to a complete mental breakdown. The woman’s reply to that outrage was as chilling as it was condescending, her calculating words softly spoken, her voice taking on a strangely ambiguous amalgam of aspects; part parental disapproval, part empathic sorrow, part sympathy. “No you’re not... Not as yet, at any rate - but you’re well on your way.” The doctor smiled sweetly, her professionally applied cosmetics, whitened perfect teeth and cupid-bow lips giving her for a fleeting moment all the appearance of some television variety show hostess - she continued:

“Just how far down that route you go is up to you. I can help you, but you must be prepared to place yourself in my hands - the decision must be yours, you must take responsibility.”

Lavinia’s mind was in turmoil now, complete disarray: What was this - it was all her own fault? Was that what the doctor was saying, that she was responsible, that she was driving herself towards a nervous breakdown? But it was the doctor that kept her locked away alone in this room, kept her dressed in dirty, stinking baggy pyjamas like a, a, a... mental patient. Surely it was the doctor that had the nurses constantly awaken her from her sleep over and over again, the doctor who would take her to her office to sit and be questioned for hours on end, forever tripping her up, trapping her into answers that seemed to prove her diagnosis. And now... and now... That window... it was all she’d had, the sparrows were her only friends. And now it was all gone. The doctor had taken them away from her - but why? Why had her doctor taken her only hope of... of... sanity. But... but...what if she was right? She was her doctor, after all, a psychiatrist - she must know what she is talking about. But... she, she... she is trying to drive me out of my mind, she’s said as much! No!, No! No! Why would she? She’s a doctor, a doctor - and doctors are here to help. “No! No! You, you, wouldn’t. You, your, a,a,a... doctor! You w,w, wouldn’t!” Sobbing now, she heard her own voice ringing in her ears - strange and distant, involuntarily voicing her thoughts in sudden tumbling nonsensical outburst. It was a terrible thing.

“Wouldn’t what, dear? Yes, I am a doctor, your doctor - but what wouldn’t I do? I’m not trying to make you sick, if that’s what you mean. I’m not an ogre. Is that what you think, that I must be an ogre to have locked you away like this; that my purpose was to make you sick? Nothing could be further from the truth, my dear. I’m your friend, not your enemy. I’m trying to help you. All I have done in keeping you here is to give you a little peace, quiet and isolation away from all those little distractions outside - your own mind has done the rest. I have simply provided you with the space you needed to discover for yourself the fragility of your mind and to come to grips with the utter reality of your illness.”

It was as if the doctor were reading her mind - the doctor continued, still smiling her friendly smile, her words just as confusing, just as contradictory. “Do you know what I think?” It was a rhetorical question. “I think you are finally coming to realise how little point there is in trying to keep yourself together in the situation you are now in. One: all you are doing by denying your condition is to exasperate it, driving yourself closer and closer to a nervous breakdown in the process. Two: you have already been committed under the mental health act whatever happens - and potentially for an indefinite period, save for the recommendations of your case review board. And three: You are presently incarcerated in a secure isolation cell, itself housed within the most secure privately-run mental hospital in the country, bar-none.”

At each point made the doctor had raised another finger, counting off and emphasising that particular aspect of hopelessness. Now she wagged a single finger threateningly as she went on: “As for that case-review hearing: To reiterate what I have told you so many times before - it’s a long way off and only I hold the key to any hope you might or might not have there for your release.

They will be relying to a great extent on my reports ... and only my reports - no one else’s. And they will put great store in my reputation as a clinical psychologist and psychiatrist.

Already the reports and case notes I have written up will be counting heavily against you and every instance of the sort of defiant behaviour, such as we have seen today, make it more likely that you won’t even get as far as attending a hearing. Indeed, I have said before that I doubt it would take much more by way of evidence of your ‘intractable behaviour’ to ensure a new review date be set - perhaps another year or two on from your presently scheduled one. But I have also explained to you before how if you were to strike out, spit, or even as much as try to push past me or one of my nurses, then it would be taken as an instance of violence against a member of staff. If I send up one more report of assault on a member of staff - yes, I said assault, pushing me over was assault - well... As a violent patient you are going to have to be very, very careful now not to end up categorised as dangerous - because if I decide you are, an indefinite period of stay will likely simply be rubber-stamped on my say-so alone.”

That last part, the part about such a decision being rubber-stamped wasn’t true, of course but the doctor knew her patient wouldn’t know that - besides, given a little more time and she could arrange indefinite incarceration by other means: and all entirely legal. For now what was needed was to press home the lesson:

“Such a silly little girl. Do you really think you can hide anything from your doctor? I know your mind, inside and out - I understand your thought processes better than you do yourself. Your little feathered friend, for instance - you hung on to his appearance day after day, didn’t you? You pinned everything, your every hope, on his continued presence in your life. But you must have realised that I knew - I knew everything about him from the start. Didn’t you realise that I could take him away from you at any point? Ultimately, I had to take him away - for your own good.

Ask yourself: What did watching your little sparrow flittering around out there do for you? Isn’t the truth that his perceived freedom served only to make your own incarceration here seem all the worse? Isn’t the truth that you tortured yourself, day after day, with thoughts of where he might go, of what he might see out there? Isn’t it the truth that whenever he flew away, the only thoughts left rushing through your mind were ones of what might have been - if you had still been free; thoughts of where your friends are right now; thoughts of where had they might have been, what they might have seen; thoughts of who had married, who had not, who had gone to university, who had gone back-packing? That’s the truth, isn’t it? In the form of your, so-called, ‘feather friend’ your mind had fashioned the perfect torturer - one without the slightest conscience, one without the slightest pity, furthermore, one entirely blameless, one even ignorant of his task. And all this conjured by your own subconscious.

So you see, the pain you feel is only there because your mind allows you to suffer it: You worry about the boyfriend that you lost contact with, for example, but I can tell you that not so long ago he married - you see; the world out there has moved on quite happily without you, it will continue to do so in your continued absence.

If I am to help you adjust, then first I must encourage you to disconnect from that world - you are no longer part of that existence physically, you must strive to detach yourself from it psychologically.

This is the limit of your world now, this institution, this psychiatric institution, this mental hospital, if you will. This is the reality of your situation - and the only way you are going to know anything even approaching peace is to restrict your mind to this reality, to constrict your imagination to occupying the same confines as your physical self.

So as I say; you’re not yet an imbecile. But with my help you will eventually become one - and you will be so much happier for it... Ah, nurse, thank you.”

The first nurse had returned, the broad, supple, yet thick leather belt swinging from her hand by her side, the heavy bronze buckle tucked away in her hand. It was very much a man’s belt - more at home on a building site or down a coal mine than cradled in the pink-skinned hands of a twenty-something nurse in a psychiatric institution; let alone about to be laid across the tender naked plump backside of a pretty teenage girl as an instrument of correction. But what correction this was to be - to the doctor’s mind this was to be nothing short of a life-altering correction. This experience was to be something the doctor intended the young woman would never forget - whatever else she might forget. And there would be many things she would teach the girl to forget before she was finished with her, very many things.

Lavinia had of course noted the eye-bolts before - one set in the wall directly at the back of the desk - the iron painted white so as to merge in near-seamlessly with the background, - one set into the floor to either side of the rear supports of the attached seat and one set into either side of the desk top itself. They had always oozed sinister intent; they had always exercised her imagination - now she at last grasped their function in the real world. Half-struggling - her ankles now uselessly constrained practically side-by-side and inhibiting her co-operation, even had her spirit been willing - and half dragged to her feet by the surprisingly robust nurse, the teenage girl found herself flung bodily across the school desk. Her torso landed heavily across its top - the girl ending up facing the rear wall - her feet remained behind the attached chair, the girl’s centre of gravity now acting to counter any possibility of her righting herself of her own accord. Seconds later and a padlock had snapped shut around the centre of the restraint strap running between her wrists and tying the same to the shackle emanating from the back rear wall at the rear of the desk.

A broad leather band - approximating in form to a barber’s razor-strop and possessing a metal catch mounted at each end - was pulled tight across the small of her back and the catches promptly snapped into place around the ‘U’ shackles mounted to either side of the desktop. At that point - a buckled adjustment having been brought into play to drag tighter still the unrelentingly secure broad restraint running across her back - the leather strap connecting her ankle restraints was relaxed. That sense of freedom, however limited, was short lived - moments later her ankles were roughly yanked apart and just as quickly secured as each ankle cuff, in turn, was fastened to its corresponding ring-bolt set into the floor.

The final insult came when a sharp slap, landed across the sensitive flesh of the rear of her thighs - causing her knees to buckle and her weight to be taken in near totality on her abdomen - was promptly followed by the binding of some sort of restraint (she could tell little about it from sensation alone) across the backs of her thighs and fitted just above her knees, such that she could no longer straighten her legs and so could no longer take her weight on her feet. She could now only hang ungainly, with her buttocks sweetly upturned and presented for punishment.

To her rear - and blessedly out of her sight - such punishment that she could only have envisaged in her most disturbing nightmares was being presently prepared: The good doctor was folding the heavy-leather belt double in her hands, running her fingertips appreciatively over the inset conical metal studs.

Eighteen measured swipes of the belt the implacable section psychiatrist laid across Lavinia’s bare bottom - eighteen full-blooded, swooping, body-jerking swipes with a belt that had once been Lavinia’s father’s own.

Lavinia had been left alone to cry. It was several hours later before the heavy sound-proof door to her world again swung back. The plastic-covered hospital bed mattress creaked as the institution’s section psychiatrist came to rest alongside her, the intimate warmth of the woman’s thigh apparent through both the leather of the latter’s close-fitting skirt and the stripy, dank, ill-fitting ‘mental patient’ pyjamas of her patient. A motherly arm insinuated its way around Lavinia’s shoulders and hot breath, dancing disconcertedly over her ear, enticed a shiver to propagate up her spine.

“I’m ever so, so sorry, honey. You know; I had no idea how much the window meant to you. But the problem I am facing now is that access to a window is considered a privilege here - and in terms of punishment I have little choice but to deprive you of a privilege. It’s not me - you must try to understand - it’s the rules of the institution. What was so fascinating and important about it anyway - why did you feel it necessary to strive to keep it from me when you must have known that eventually I would discover it?

“It was the sparrow, doctor - my little friend.”

“Not sparrow - we don’t say ‘sparrow’; we say birdie...don’t we?”

“Yes, doctor...I’m not sure...”

“Birdie...we say birdie’... What do we say?”

“...Uh...b,b,birdie”

“Good, girl! It’s just a birdie - a silly little tweet-tweet - nothing to get so worked up about. Let’s hear you say it....just a silly little...

“Birdie...doctor”

“Oh! What a good little girl you really are becoming; your well on the way to becoming the perfect little mental patient, aren’t you, sweetheart?”

“Yes, doctor.”

“ ‘Yes, doctor, indeed!... And don’t you forget it! Now, you get it out of your system - you just cry it all out. Just lie there sobbing in my arms...that’s it.” Even as she spoke she was simultaneously rocking the sobbing girl in her arms as if she were a life-sized vinyl doll. “There’s really no need to cry, honey. I’m your friend. I can always get you another little birdie if you want. Would you like that? Yes? I’m sure you would... Hmmm?”

The girl was settling in her arms, she could feel the surrender, she could sense the girl’s young muscles relaxing as her mind gave way and her resolve caved in. She had no doubt the girl would bounce back to some degree - she was young, still quite strong-minded and resilient - but she would never again be quite the same head-strong truculent adolescent she had once been.

“Yes, doctor.”

“Then why not ask nicely; and I’ll see what I can do.”

“Please give me back my little friend”, doctor.” The girl’s heart-broken sobbing was now all but rendering her diction incomprehensible.

“Oh, oh darling...as much as I want to, I can’t. But what I can do is to offer an alternative: The rules say that one privilege can be swapped for another; if you were to give up on some other privilege - such as your ability to use the commode in my office, perhaps learning instead to use your nappy - then I might, just might, be freed to return your access to your room’s window. Alternatively - and I really shouldn’t be doing this - I have this...From behind her back, creasing the ivory-white satin-silk of her shirt-blouse as it passed, the woman produced a soft-stuffed pink-furred teddy bear. The smile spreading across her patient’s face spoke volumes to the highly-astute psychiatrist - she knew what to say next, yet barely dared annunciate the syllables. Be a good little girl; let your thumb slip between your lips... Yes, that’s the way. Why not hug your little teddy and have a little doze...that’s it...deep asleep now...deep asleep.”

She watched, with no little pleasure, as the girl’s, heavy-hooded’ eyes drifted shut. There would be time enough to put the girl over her lap when she awoke - but make no mistake; she intended that the girl would be begging on her knees by the time the day was through. She looked down on the foetal-curled child-woman, childishly sucking on her thumb as if it were a rubber-teat pacifier: a day’s work well done.

Absentmindedly she began to stroke the succulent young woman’s brow, brushing the silky skin with her nails. Her right hand, having now wandered beneath the girl’s pyjama-trouser waistband, began to explore the broad ribbon of barred belly-flesh above taut polythene of the girl’s incontinence knickers. The doctor’s gracefully dextrous fingers insinuated themselves one by one, wriggling under the flesh-biting elasticated waist, only to be ultimately frustrated by the tough close-fitting fabric. Her sensitive fingertips tracing a trickling path down the soft plastic side seam, the latter stretched and puckering over the broad swell of the young girl’s hips, straining to accommodate the additional bulk of the terry-towelling beneath, she began to explore beneath the rubber-lined elastic leg cuff, probing higher and higher up the girl’s satin-fleshed thigh, sensing first the humid moisture of imprisoned perspiration and then, her heart pounding with anticipation, the less viscous wetness infusing the towelling nappy.

Her heart missed a beat and she felt the colour rising in her cheeks, this first flush of arousal guiltily brushed aside, intellectualized as a simple biological reaction to her patient’s undoubted attractiveness rather than anything to do with the observation that the girl had wet herself, that indeed the young woman’s nappy was soaked through.

She wouldn’t rush - that much she had long ago decided upon - then again, she could already feel the girl’s core-warmth - it was likely to prove difficult not to give in to temptation and thrust her fingers deep into the girl’s crotch. That passionate part of her, that Sapphic part of her, that dripping lustful part of her, ached, nay, positively throbbed, in broiled, tongue-drooling anticipation.

Straightjacketed Binging

The canvas straitjacket had seemed a superfluous encumbrance considering the totality of the girl’s seclusion. But it was a necessary refinement also - it served to set up the scene, so to speak. This was a scene that had been long in the writing - a patience-stretching set-piece, planned from the start and allowed to mature like an old wine. The window had caught the girl’s attention from the start, from the very first day she had been introduced to her new home all those weeks - or was it months - earlier. It was small, it was set high - well above head-height - it was uninspiring, it gave view to very little... But it was all important. And the woman knew that. That was why she’d taken it away. But now she would offer a substitute distraction, one that she had tried - and failed - to provide the girl with before. The girl had been so deeply asleep in her arms that she’d barely been aware of having her arms guided in to the sleeves, their ends closed off to prevent tampering. She’d awoken then, her eyes springing wide with concern. The doctor had only to quietly press a finger to her lips and murmur a few gentle words of reassurance to quell her. “It’s nothing to worry about. It will be quite comfortable; I won’t do it up too tight and it’s only for a short while but if you want me to let you keep your new teddy to replace your friends then you mustn’t struggle. If we can get you in this, then we can let you out of the seclusion room for a while and you can spend a little time in my office. But you have to wear it for now - it is hospital regulations where a patient has had a violent outburst. Do this for me and perhaps I can tone down a little the report that I’ll have to provide the case review committee.” There would be no room in any such report for any mention of the use of corporal punishment, of course, nor of any other of the good doctor’s more unorthodox coercive techniques; but such was the privilege of her position here.

Lavinia had nodded contritely. And with a gesture from the doctor one of the nurses that had helped quell the girl’s earlier rebellion had entered from out in the doctor’s office. Lavinia had been bidden to stand up and - her arms having already been threaded in the long canvas sleeves at that point - the rear was closed up, the leather straps drawn one after another through jangling metal roller buckles and pulled breathtakingly tight. The waist in particular was tightly constricted, gripping her like a corset, the nurse not being satisfied with the fastenings until Lavinia could hardly breathe. Then the arms had been drawn across her chest so that she was tightly hugging herself, crossing just beneath her breasts and fastened behind her, leaving her with her arms entirely immobilised. Finally the broad crotch strap had been drawn back tightly between her legs and firmly buckled at the rear.

The nurse having been discharged, it was in that manner, with the doctor’s supporting arm wrapped around her shoulders, that she led toddling out into the relative normality of the doctor’s office or interview room.

The nurse’s finishing touch in departing had been to shorten the tether running between the cuffs of Lavinia’s ankle restraints and the girl’s mobility had now been reduced to a painfully slow short-gaited shuffle. From the point of view of the inmate herself, this overly-constrained young girl, the straitjacket had at least one advantage: the crotch strap did at least serve to keep hoisted her pyjama bottoms. But along with that latter boon came the only connotation one might make with such a garment, the only label likely attached to one restrained within - disturbed! This was truly the uniform of the disturbed, the insane. And at that moment, to the teenage girl, escape from that nomenclature seemed as likely as wriggling free from the canvas-weave grip of the thing.

But not all was to be defeated misery - though she faced now defeat of another kind. Rather than being placed down on the hard, high-backed chair that stood to the front of the doctor’s desk, she was led, shuffling unsteadily, around to the rear of the office and positioned standing behind the desk alongside the doctor’s plush leather chair. Seating herself comfortably the doctor reached down to the deepest of the desk’s pullout draws, sliding it open and carefully lifting out a glass-topped oak tray temptingly piled with the now familiar pastries, cakes and assorted confectionary - all those tantalising little morsels Lavinia had thus far resisted on so many occasions. There were fondant-toped fairy cakes in every shade imaginable, sticky Turkish delicacies in glistening honey-gold hues with layer upon layer of phyllo pastry, honey, and nuts, and doughnuts filled with clotted cream and jam. Here and there betwixt and between these delights were liberally sprinkled innumerable chocolate-coated candies, some foil wrapped, many obviously hand-finished. In all, it was a confection-lovers heaven - and a dieter’s nightmare. And she had always been one for the diets, always with one eye on the bathroom scales and another on the mirror - it was important for a dancer to keep trim; especially for one of the calibre that Lavinia had been told so often she had the potential of becoming.

“Come, sweetheart, kneel here, beside my chair and rest your chin on my lap. There now, that’s not so bad, is it?” The doctor’s right hand wandered around the back of the girl’s head as she spoke, her fingertips trickling down and stroking the slender nape of the girl’s neck, guiding her pretty head gently down to rest in her lap. Her left hand, already grasping a soft, sticky temptation of fondant sweetness between index finger and thumb, now slowly guided its succulence towards the girl’s plump lips, brushing them delicately to and fro across the girl’s generous mouth whilst gently teasing the girl’s lower lip with her little finger:

“Come on, honey; just a bite, just a nibble, one tiny nibble, one little taste - what can it matter?” She eased the little cake between the girl’s glistening lips, smiling encouragingly as the teeth parted and the girl’s drool dribbled onto the tightly stretched frontage of her leather skirt: “That’s it - what a nice big bite! Isn’t that nice? Now then, come on swallow it all down... good, good... what a good little girl - my good little girl! Now let’s see you have another bite - come on, just one more bite....oh, doesn’t that taste nice, so nice, so sweet? Now one more, that’s it, nearly all gone now... Good! Good girl! I’m so happy for you! I have another here, if you’d like... of course you would... that’s it... you’ve had one already anyway... think about it - what does one more matter? Oh, oh! Very good, lovely, lovely, excellent! That’s it - wolf it all down... delicious!”

The doctor gazed down proprietarily at her patient, watching the eyes smiling stupidly up at her, the cupid-bow mouth surrounded by a smothering of moist golden crumbs munching greedily. Reaching again across her desktop she opened her palm, wafting the gooey chocolate beneath the girl’s nostrils.

“Mmmmm! Truffles, chocolate truffles, Belgian Truffles...and laced with rum...your favourite. What a lucky little girl you are!”

For a moment young Lavinia glanced up, nonplussed, her lips now caked with melted chocolate and syrupy crumbs and her tongue lapping around her mouth picking off morsels as if starving. Then, giggling idiotically, she dropped her pretty head down for more.

“Just nuzzle your pretty snout in my hand, dear....that’s it. What a dear little piggy - eat it all up.” And what a fat little piggy you are going to become - though that latter thought the doctor kept to herself.

The CCTV plasma flat-screen stretched across the wall, incongruous against the framing backdrop of antique dark-stained panelling. Tall, louvered wooden shutters held back the high-summer sunlight, the few rays leaking through and slicing diagonally down across the display proving insufficient to detract much from the bright imagery. Other dusty shafts, propagated obliquely off the deep mirror-polished top of the dining table, a baroque hardwood creation with richly carved legs, projected spreading yellow fingers across its surface and painting greenish-yellow fans and ovoids on the antique green Damask wall covering. Surrounded by large high-backed chairs and as old as the house itself, the table dominated the room.

Only one place had been set, at the head, the end furthest from the screen. Crockery and silverware lay discarded and used alongside scattered reports and papers, some topped by an impressive looking crest - a gold crown surmounting a standing swan with a collar and tether of argent around its neck and set against an azure background. An ornately-chased solid-silver salt cellar squatted low on a padded-leather bound folder, holding it open at a particular page where a long slender finger traced a painted nail down a long list, set out in the manner of exam results - names correlated against two-digit serial numbers and scores laid out in several columns as percentages and quotients.

A pair of lively, sparkling eyes, yet filled with the wisdom of maturity, glanced up over half-moon pince nez with thin gold wire frames. The leather-skirted woman reflected in those lenses, with her belted cinched waist, long legs, high heels and dark tan stockings had an almost burlesque appearance - one quite at odds with her companion, the latter attired in an ultra-conservative take on the traditional British nursing uniform. A voice soft, slightly husky and as rich as walnut laughed gently, the accompanying words meant for none to hear, merely echoing, interpreting, those now flowing from a fountain pen’s gold nib - a fleeting thought made concrete for all time, an observation sampled and frozen in time; though not in so many words.

“The study progresses well: One is a pawn - one is a catspaw of a pawn... And one is merely a deserving victim, indeed a most deserving victim. The questions remain though: To what extent can a subject be said to be truly blind to manipulation and left to its own devices, how far can such a webbed hierarchy of authority and of obedience to authority develop? Indeed, how far should it be allowed to develop - or should one not intervene at all?”

Elsewhere, her charge now safely locked away, a video disc was being dropped into a player. Up on the screen the label can be read over the woman’s shoulder dating it to a time getting on for some two years or so previously. The scene that opens up is unrelentingly clinical; a dental studio, though more spartan, more purely functional than most. Pen poised, a pair of attractively made up eyes scan the scene - the woman’s learned mind undoubtedly churning with practiced, contrived empathy as she strives to place herself in the psyche of the subject in search of that holy grail of psychological science - novel and illuminating insight...