1

Down a long road all sun and shadowy with trees overhead and a slow look from cows across a fence and you’re there. You see buildings with barred windows and a few people in old grey clothes. There’s the Main Kitchen. There are trucks outside being loaded with steel dixies for the wards and a reek tells you that today must be stew or cabbage. Then you see a nurse in a blue dress leading a little flock of inmates beside the road. They’re all small, like little boys or shrivelled old men, and are shambling and dribbling after her in a single file strung out for fifty yards. She turns and shouts for them to mind the car. One of them is right on the road. You see his face, all red and crumpled like a monkey’s, coming closer through the windscreen. He’s grinning. He likes the car, as though it’s a big friendly animal coming to sniff him. Your driver toots, then stops.

“Johnny Bodley! Get off the road this instant!” the nurse shouts. When he doesn’t move she walks back and takes him to one side. As you go past you can’t help your eyes flickering over her legs and the swell of her chest. After the months at the gaol the sight stabs you. And now she might be the last woman you’ll ever see.

The car gathers speed up around a winding curve past other ward buildings and you seem to be going away from the hospital again. There is dry scrub and yellow dirt with ant-mounds. Your stomach is watery with fear. Whatever you’re going to is very close now. A high brick wall is just ahead. The car stops at an iron gate and the guard next to the driver presses a bell. A man in grey uniform comes out and unlocks, then holds the gate open.

“G’day,” your driver says as we go through.

“G’day,” the grey-uniformed man answers.

The car goes along a bit then stops outside a low sprawling building with barred windows. There is a door with an iron grid on the front. Your guards start to get out and motion for you to get out too. You’d rather not. It was so nice in the car, looking out the window, listening to the guards’ small talk, knowing nothing much could happen to you until you got to where you were going. Now you’d got there.

There is a rattle of keys from inside and the door is opened by a grey-haired man in a grey uniform. Your guards exchange greetings with him while he unlocks the iron grid.

“How ya goin’?”

“Not bad. How’s yerself?”

“Hot enough for ya?”

“Too bloody hot.”

“Cool change due, they reckon.”

“Yeah, hope so.”

The talk has nothing to do with you. They seem to have forgotten you. We all step inside. The room is a pantry, with sinks and stainless steel and a big dishwashing machine and several dixies on a table. There are two more grey-uniformed men there, one of them wearing an apron, and three other men who must be inmates, also with aprons. They look at you and you don’t know whether to look back or look away or what. You try to feel as though you belong with the guards, as though you’re just one of a bunch of friends who’ve dropped by for a minute and will be going shortly.

The grey-haired man leads us down a corridor to an office. You catch a glance of a long verandah beyond a glass partition and several faces pressed against the glass, looking at you. For the first time the grey-haired man appears to notice you. He motions to a chair and you sit down. He is still talking with the guards and one of them is leaning over the desk, signing a paper. Then the grey-haired man signs a paper and the guard arranges it in a folder he carries.

“Well, we’d better get moving,” the guard says. They all shake hands with the grey-haired man and move towards the corridor. You feel panic. You feel like begging them to take you back into the car to drive some more, even just for another hour. It was so good in the car, so safe, looking out the window, hearing the small talk, knowing nothing much could happen. As the guards go out they say goodbye. One of them gives a thumbs-up sign and says: “You’ll be right, mate.”

You grin at him and nod. You want to believe him. He was a good bloke. They were all good blokes. They know about these places and you tell yourself that you can believe what they say.

The grey-haired man comes back from seeing them down the corridor and sits at the desk. He arranges some papers in front of him. It’s your file, the one the guards brought. You can see your name on the cover. The grey-haired man is looking at the file and also looking at you as though he’s weighing you up.

“What’s your name, lad?” he asks.

You are surprised. Surely he knows your name?

“Len, er, Len Tarbutt,” you answer.

“How old are you?”

“Nineteen.”

“Height?”

“Er, about five foot ten I think.”

“What colour hair would you say you’ve got?”

“Um, blond I suppose.”

“No, more brown I’d say.”

You feel a clutch of apprehension. You feel you’ve said something wrong. That you’d been caught out in a lie, somehow. Then you realise that you haven’t been calling him “Sir”. That was enough to make them hit you, back at the gaol. Not calling them “Sir” was a Breach. You recall the time at the gaol when one of the men forgot to call the warder “Sir”. The warder went up and put his arm round the man’s shoulder, as if he felt very friendly, and said: “My friend, you know you’ve committed a Breach, don’t you?” The man didn’t really know. He probably didn’t even realise about the “Sir”. But he smiled and agreed. His mouth was trembling while he was smiling. Then the warder hit him in the face and he fell down.

The grey-haired man is looking at you. You’re afraid he’s thinking about the “Sir”. or that you lied about your hair. Your throat feels so thick you can hardly speak.

“Um, my hair’s blond when the sun shines on it, Sir.” You realise how stupid that sounds and that he might think you’re being insolent. Your heart is thumping. He looks at you for a while longer. Then he closes up the file.

“I think that’ll be all for now,” he says. “You can go out with the others.”

He leads you out of the office and unlocks a door and you go through. You’re on the long verandah. It’s closed in with wire mesh on the open side and there are rows of benches set along the wall. There are a whole lot of men, some pacing up and down like at the gaol, some playing cards, some talking, some lying very still along the benches with little columns of smoke rising from their cigarettes. But the main thing you see is the view spread out in the distance. There is a big lake going right away for maybe two or three miles to a green haze of shore on the far side and green bush all around that comes right up to the high outer wall of this place. The ground slopes downwards from the verandah right down to the water so that you look clean over the top of the wall from here. It’s beautiful, especially because you didn’t expect anything like that. It’s the sort of view that rich people have from their patio, except for the wire mesh. Outside the mesh is a yard about twenty feet wide. It’s bounded at the edge by a mesh fence with barbed wire on top. Beyond that, and still sloping down, are vegetable gardens and then the main wall. To one side of the vegetable gardens is a lovely-looking tiled swimming pool, shining all white and blue and cool. The water is shimmering in the sunlight.

You stand gazing out over everything, partly because it’s so beautiful and partly because you don’t know what else to do. Some of the men are staring at you. You don’t know whether to look back at them or not. Men at the gaol had warned you about these madhouse inmates.

If you offended them, or even if you didn’t, they might suddenly attack you. Madmen have the strength of ten. That’s what you heard anyway. While you’re standing there a little dark man, one of the ones pacing up and down, bumps against you. He is staring straight ahead and muttering: “Shut-up, shut-up, shut-up, shut-up…” over and over. You edge away, pretending you haven’t noticed him.

“Hey, Len!” someone calls. It’s one of the men playing cards. You look carefully. You recognise a face. Bill Greene! You suddenly feel much better. You knew Bill Greene only slightly at the gaol, but now you feel he’s your long-lost brother.

“Hi Bill, how ya goin’?” you cry, overflowing with goodwill. Your brain’s ticking now and you make a big show of greeting Bill so the other men will see you’ve got a mate here who’ll probably back you up if anyone starts anything.

“Jeez, Bill, I didn’t know you were here.”

“Been ’ere two months.”

“Yeah? What’s it like?”

“Better than gaol, mate.”

“Listen mate, what’s the drum?”

You’re feeling so relieved now that you almost laugh to hear yourself using terms like “What’s the drum?”. It’s part of the hearty-matey pose you need to use at first, to show you’re one of the blokes and not just some innocent kid. Someone might be sizing you up. Still, it sounds so funny you almost laugh.

“Give us the oil, mate,” you say.

“Aw, there isn’t much to it,” Bill Greene says. “It’s pretty easy really.”

“What’re the screws like?”

“Most of ’em are all right. There’s a few cunts, though.”

“What about biffings?”

“Pretty rare.”

“Yeah? Dinky-di?”

“Yeah, they don’t have to biff much. They’ve got other ways. Like shock treatment.”

“Christ! What d’you have to do to get shock treatment?”

“Play up. Act mad. Anything really. It just depends on the screws and the doctor.”

“Who’s the doctor?”

“Ward doctor. He comes round every coupla days. He likes giving shock. ’Electric Ned’ they call him.”

“Real cunt, is he?”

“Aw, he’s all right in some ways. He just likes giving shock whenever he can.”

“Have you had it?”

“No, but I’ve come close a few times.”

You’re not feeling so cheerful now, with this talk of shock treatment. You start to think how it was all too good to be true. Now you’re finding out about the bad thing, the thing you knew had to be here though you didn’t know exactly what it would be. Shock treatment! It had a very bad ring to it. Especially the word “treatment”. When they biffed you it was pretty bad, but at least you knew they were doing something they shouldn’t be doing. They knew it too. There was always a chance they’d get into trouble for biffing. Not much of a chance, but a chance. Also, some screws didn’t agree with biffing and they’d try to stop other screws who did it. But “treatment” was different … they could do it with a clean conscience because they were just trying to help you.

“Who’s the grey-haired bloke in the office?” you ask Bill Greene.

“That’s Arthur, the Charge Nurse.”

“Is that what you call him? Arthur?”

“Yeah, you call the screws by their first names here.”

So you go on talking to Bill Greene while he’s playing euchre with three other inmates. And while you’re looking around the verandah you start to recognise a few other faces you remember from the gaol. There’s Nick, a little Italian. And Dave Lamming. And Barry Clarke who went to court the same day you did and got life for killing his girlfriend and shoving a broom-handle up her. Barry was famous at the gaol. His jury stayed out only nine minutes. That was supposed to be a record, at least for a murder. You think about saying hello to him, but he looks peculiar, shuffling along like a drunk man and his face all loose and his mouth dribbling.

“What’s the matter with Barry Clarke?” you ask Bill.

“He’s on medication. That’s another thing here. They whack medication into you and some of it’s pretty bad.”

“What does it do to you?”

“Have a look at Barry.”

“He’s like a zombie.”

“That’s what it does. Shock does the same thing.” You decide you’d like to change the subject.

“What do you actually do here?”

“Most of the blokes work in the vegetable garden. A few have jobs inside the ward. Pantry work. Stuff like that.”

“Do you have a choice in what you do?”

“Sometimes you do. Just depends.”

“What’s the best job?”

“The gardening’s all right. Gets you out in the open a bit. Inside jobs have more lurks—like pantry workers get extra food. Stuff like that.”

Then you ask the question you’ve been waiting to ask.

“Does anyone ever, sort of, go berserk? Is there anyone you have to watch out for?”

“Aw, not really.”

Bill’s casual tone is very reassuring.

“You hear talk at the gaol about this place. They reckon blokes go berserk all the time, and how you have to be careful or you get your throat ripped out or something.”

“That’s mostly shit, mate. Someone might go off now and again, but nothing much.”

So you let Bill Greene go on with his euchre while you sit and think about what he’s told you. On the whole it doesn’t sound too bad. Except for the shock treatment. Except for the medication. Those two things.

A screw calls out that lunch’s ready and the inmates all get up and move toward the door of the dining room. You follow them into the room and see eight tables. The others sit down at their places and you stand waiting for someone to tell you where to sit. A screw waves you to a chair. There is a glass of orange juice and a spoon at each place. The dining room is connected to the pantry by a servery cut in the wall and you see somebody’s hands pushing plates of food through. Three screws in aprons are taking the plates and bringing them to the tables like waiters. You feel uneasy about this, as though it’s wrong for screws to be waiting on you. The food makes you uneasy too. It’s so good, better than any gaol food, even the gaol food on Christmas Day when they give you a piece of plum duff with custard. You eat carefully, with your eyes down, as if you want to show that you understand the food is too good for the likes of you and that you don’t deserve to be waited on and that you aren’t gloating about it or anything.

There’s a lot of noise coming from the pantry, laughing and yelling and banging of plates and dixies. The dining room is quieter with just the clink of spoons and eating noises. You’re at a corner table with five other men who are all very messy with their food. They all look drugged. One of them is Barry Clarke and he can hardly eat. His mouth is slobbering and his tongue’s poking out and getting in the way of the spoon and he is making a gurgling sound in his throat and spilling the food down his jacket. A screw keeps coming over to him.

“For Christ’s sake Barry, don’t be such a bloody pig.”

He takes the spoon and tries to show Barry how to put it in his mouth, but as soon as he takes his hand away the spoon goes crooked against Barry’s tongue and the food spills.

“Bloody sure you won’t be invited to Government House!” the screw says.

Barry is mumbling something with his thick tongue. The screw takes a while to understand what he’s saying. Barry wants to go for a piss.

“No, be buggered!” says the screw. “You can wait.”

A minute later there is a trickling sound under the table and you feel your foot getting wet. Barry is pissing. You try to pull your foot back out of the way. The screw notices the piss and throws up his hands in disgust.

“Jeeeesus!” he says. He goes for a mop.

The rest of the afternoon you stand looking out through the verandah wire at the lake. Now that you’re here, actually here, and you’ve seen and heard enough to make you think that maybe you’ll survive all right, you start to remember the other thing, the Life sentence, and the hollowness comes back into your stomach. You’re doing Life. That means seventeen or even twenty years in this State. Fifteen if you’re very lucky. But that’s when you’re doing the time in gaol. Doing it here, well, who knows? Being here means you’re Criminally Insane, a psychopath, and they don’t let psychopaths out if they can help it. You look along the verandah and think that this is for fifteen or twenty years, or maybe until you’re an old man. Just this verandah and the outside yard and the dining room and the vegetable garden stretching on for probably twenty years at least. You feel the way you did when you were a little kid lost in Woolworths big store and you just stood there crying until some kind lady bent down and asked you what the matter was and then took you by the hand and found your mummy for you. Then your mummy gave you a big hug and you cried some more, but differently, because the fright was over. But now there weren’t any kind ladies and no mummy, and crying wouldn’t help.

There are some men down in the vegetable gardens working with spades and mattocks. Some of them are bare to the waist and brown from the sun. They’re working slowly, and you can hear the soft sound of the mattocks hitting the earth and a faint sound of the talking and sometimes a shout or a joke. Screws are standing around on the high ground watching the men, or strolling among them. One screw’s listening to the mid-week races on a transistor radio. Across the wall, the lake is a different colour from before lunch, darker blue and all ruffled by a lovely breeze that you can feel on your face.

At three o’clock two pantry workers carry a big tea-urn and a tin of biscuits down to the garden workers, then come back and bring another urn and more biscuits out to the verandah. You line up with some other men for a cup of the tea and a biscuit. The tea has milk and sugar in it. You begin to feel cheerful again, thinking that, anyhow, this is better than gaol.

At six o’clock the men start gathering near two heavy doors at each end of the verandah where the cells are. All the screws are there with their bunches of keys. The men go through the doors and start undressing and putting on pyjamas. Each man has a little plastic cup of water and some of them have a book or magazine too. Then a screw leads each man to his cell and locks him in. Your cell is halfway down the row. It has pale yellow tiles on the walls and the floor is some kind of rubber. It has a bed and an open rubber tub like the gaol tubs for pissing in. You can shit in them too, but they’re so small it’s hard to squat over them properly, and the shit smell fills up the cell all night.

When everybody’s locked up, the screws go away. You sit on your bed and look around the cell. It has a window with a sort of steel lattice over it. You can see the main wall a few yards away, and along to the left you can see part of the main gate. There’s a rose bush growing under the window, but you can only see the top of it because of the angle of the sill. It’s very quiet, with only a cough or squeak of bedsprings from the other cells. You can faintly hear a television set from another part of the ward where five men are sitting up till nine-thirty. You’ve been told about the roster for sitting up, and that you’ve been put on the roster for another night. All the cell lights are left on till the rostered men are locked in their cells. The light in your cell seems awfully bright, with the bare bulb over your head and the reflection from the yellow tiles. A low rhythmic sound of moving bedsprings comes from one of the cells.

“Hey Don!” a voice calls.

“What?” another answers.

“Stop fucking yer fist!”

“Get stuffed!”

After a while the night screws come down the row of cells, trying all the locks and looking through the narrow peephole in each door. You see an eye looking at you.

“G’day,” the screw says.

“Hullo,” you reply.

The eye disappears. From the window you can see the day screws going out with their kitbags and then hear the noise of cars driving away. It’s very quiet again.

You stay at the window, watching the sky getting dark above the wall and the leaves of the rose bush jerking in the breeze. Then you think you’ll try to sleep. You get into bed and pull the blanket up over your head to block out the light. You find it hard to breathe like that, so you try screwing your eyes shut tight instead, but the light is still bright through your eyelids. You try facing the wall, but the tiles are reflecting the bulb straight into your face. You lie there, trying to think of something. You think of the roll of toilet paper beside your tub. You could lay a few thicknesses of toilet paper across your eyes and maybe tie them behind your head so they’ll stay in place. You congratulate yourself on your brilliance, but then realise that the screws might think you are mad if they peep in and see you with toilet paper tied around your head. Shock treatment. Medication. No, you don’t dare risk it. You toss and turn for what seems like hours, then you drift into sleep.

A loud banging wakes you up and daylight is in the cell. Your door is thrown open. Men are carrying their tubs outside to empty them at the lavatory on the verandah. You take yours out too, come back and make your bed, then get your clothes from the piles at the end of the corridor, and dress. You wash and shave with a locked razor at a row of basins on the verandah.

The morning is beautiful. The sky is hazy blue and the sun coming up from the other side of the lake makes the water like a sheet of blazing steel, so blinding you can only look at it for a moment. Birds are singing. The men are cheerful. Two of them are playing ping-pong and the sound of the ball going back and forth seems a bit like birdsong, only faster. There are several card games going and the players are slapping the cards down with great energy and talking and arguing loudly. Not all the men are active though. Some have gone back to lie on the benches they’d been stirred from the night before. The same little blue columns of cigarette smoke are rising from them again. There’s a whirring sound coming from the television room where somebody’s buffing the floor with an electric polisher. You have ten minutes walk up and down the verandah to stretch your muscles, falling into step with Bill Greene and Dave Lamming who’re doing the same thing. Dave’s a thin little timid man. He’s worried. Yesterday he told the Charge he had a headache and asked for an Aspro. The Charge said he’d speak to the doctor about it. Bill Greene is disgusted.

“You’ll never learn, Dave!” he says.

“It was a bad headache,” Dave replies.

“Electric Ned’ll give ya more than a bloody headache when Arthur tells him about it.”

“I get my headaches a lot.”

“Well, Electric Ned will say your headaches are really just a sign of mental distress and he’ll whack some shock into you.”

“I’ll tell him I’m all right.”

“He can’t believe anything you say. You’re mentally distressed.”

“I’ll ask Arthur if I can clean some windows,” Dave says.

Cleaning windows is Dave’s own therapy for when he’s upset. Whenever you see Dave with a bucket and rag you know he’s trying to soothe himself. Dave is very upset now. His voice is trembling.

“You don’t really think they’ll give me shock do you?” he asks Bill.

“Aw, probably not,” Bill replies in a softened tone.

“D’you reckon they will, Len?” Dave asks you.

“Aw, probably not,” you say. You’ve no idea really, but you hope they won’t. You’re telling yourself never to complain of a headache or ask for an Aspro. Be careful about windows too.

Breakfast is delicious. Orange juice, scrambled eggs, two slices of buttered bread. You’re very hungry after the long night in the cell.

After breakfast the garden workers start putting on work-boots and wide hats. You’re called to the Charge.

“How d’you fancy a bit of gardening?” he asks.

“I’d like it,” you reply, having to check yourself from adding “Sir”. You don’t dare call him “Arthur” yet.

“Well, Grumps will give you some work gear.”

Grumps is an old inmate who looks after the clothing store and does errands for the screws. He wears old tatty slippers and shuffles along swearing and moaning under his breath. You go with Grumps and he gets you a pair of boots and a straw hat. He takes a long time because he keeps stopping to swear and groan.

When you’ve put on the boots and the hat you go to join about twenty other men waiting at the verandah gate. Five or six screws are there and the senior screw unlocks the gate and you all go through into the outer yard. The screw unlocks another gate and you file through into the vegetable garden. The men amble over to a tin shed and another screw hands out spades, mattocks and hoes. Then they wander to various parts of the vegetable garden and start digging or hoeing or turning soil over.

You ask a screw where you’re supposed to work. He points to a plot where another man is digging.

“You can help Zurka,” he says.

Zurka is a Pole. You remember the name vaguely from the news a long time ago. He ran amok in a train with a butcher’s chopper. Killed a couple of people. You don’t remember much about it, just the name. You start digging beside him. It feels good, the strain on your muscles, the earth under your feet, the warm sun on you. After a while you’re sweating and the drops are trickling down under your shirt. The soil is already warm and dry on top from the sun and it throws up little bursts of dust when you turn each spadeful over, but an inch or two down it’s still damp. You work very hard for a while, to show the screws how willing you are, until you start to get very sore in your back and shoulders, and also in your hands from gripping the smooth spade handle.

“The new bloke’s a goer,” you hear a screw say. Then he calls out to you: “Don’t bust yourself, mate!”

You grin back at him, wondering if he’s being sarcastic. You have a breather and look around at the other men. None of them are working hard. They seem to be taking a minute’s breather for every minute’s work. You do the same, but cautiously, in case you overdo it and get into trouble for bludging. The breathers give you plenty of time to look around and listen to the birds. There are small brown darting birds like sparrows—finches, you think—that fly so close over your head you hear their wings, and magpies walking about on the turned soil as though they’re inspecting the work, and other birds sitting in rows on the top of the wall, and lots of seagulls wheeling in bunches and crying out.

There’s some talking among the men and among the screws who sit or stand around on high points keeping watch. Whenever there’s a question about planting or watering or anything important about the work, the screws will call out to ask Mario what he thinks. Mario is a very dark Sicilian who used to be a market-gardener, and he’s the unofficial foreman here. His English is very poor. He only has two phrases: “Issa good” and “Issa no good”, so you have to ask him very simple questions.

“We water carrots? Yes?”

“Issa good!”

If Mario doesn’t agree he shakes his head sadly as though he’s in despair at such foolishness.

“We dig this bed, Mario?”

“Issa no good. Issa no good.”

“We dig that one then?”

“Issa no good.” More despair. More head shaking.

“What about this other one?”

“Ah, issa good!” Mario brightens up.

“Mario a cunt? Yes?”

Mario makes a rude Sicilian sign with his fingers.

At ten-thirty the morning tea and biscuits are brought down and we all lie on the grass around the urn for fifteen or twenty minutes. Sometimes, if there’s an interesting conversation going on, we stay drinking tea and lying on the grass for half an hour. It’s lovely lying there with a pleasant tiredness in your muscles and the sun on your face, listening to the talk. Then a screw will sigh wearily and say: “Ah well, boys, we’d better strike another blow or Arthur’ll be after our balls,” and the men get up slowly and go back to work. We stop work at eleven-thirty and hand our tools in at the tin shed. Anyone who wants a swim can go to the pool. Almost everyone does. There are piles of swimming trunks and towels and a big red ball to play with. For thirty minutes you float in the cool blue chlorinated water or join in a rough game of water-polo, or sunbake, hardly able to believe you’re really in the madhouse you’ve heard such awful tales about.

Electric Ned comes round after a couple of days. He wants to see the new man.

“He’s a bit absent-minded,” Bill Greene tells you. “Once he asked old Tom Hawksworth how he was settling in. Tom had been here for twenty-two years.”

This incident is famous here. If anyone asks you how you’re settling in, you know they’re having a joke.

Electric Ned wears thick glasses and a white coat. He comes up to you on the verandah and shakes your hand very politely.

“You’re Mr Tarbutt then,” he says.

“Yes, doctor.”

“How are you settling in?”

“Very well, thanks.” You get ready to grin, but he’s quite serious.

“No problems?”

“No, doctor.”

“Feeling all right?”

“Yes, doctor.”

“Doing a bit of work around the place?”

“Yes, gardening, doctor.”

“Fine.”

He gives you a long look through the thick lenses and goes away into the office.

“He seems all right,” you remark to Bill Greene. Your heart is still thumping. You wonder what he’s doing in the office. Maybe ordering immediate treatment for you.

“Yeah, as long as you stay on the right side of him,” Bill replies.

You’re going to try. Christ, you’re going to try!

It’s almost nine o’clock and you’ve got your work gear on and you’re waiting near the verandah gate with the other men. A screw comes down the verandah carrying a tray with a cloth over it. You can see things sticking out. A silver kidney tray and cotton wool and some short lengths of rubber hose about four inches long. There’s an antiseptic smell. The screw goes into a small room at the end of the verandah. Then Dave Lamming comes down the verandah looking deathly afraid. A screw is walking beside him, holding him by the elbow, and the doctor and Arthur are coming behind. As Dave goes past you turn your eyes away, as though there’s something terribly interesting on the far side of the lake. Dave and the doctor and Arthur go into the small room after the screw. There is silence for a couple of minutes and then you hear Dave yelling: “I don’t want it! Please! I’m all right! Oh please don’t! Oh please! Oh please!” There is a sound of struggling. You hear screws’ voices: “Don’t be such a bloody kid, Dave!” and “The doctor knows what’s best!” and “Hold his arms!” and other things. Then there’s a sudden buzzing sound and a choking and gargling, then silence. Your stomach is watery and you’re shaking.

“Poor little bastard,” says one of the men.

“He’ll need Aspros now,” says Bill Greene.

A screw comes to unlock the gate.

“Come on,” he says, “it’s not a friggin’ side-show!”

You go down into the garden with the others and start digging. You work steadily, not daring to take a breather much. You want to show what a good inmate, a model inmate, you are. Dedicated. Eager to please. Then you get afraid you might be giving a wrong impression. You might be overdoing it. Showing “Obsessional Tendencies”. Digging too much might be like cleaning windows too much. Two screws are sitting on a knoll a little way behind you. You imagine what they might be saying:

“Tarbutt’s going pretty hard.”

“Yeah, I noticed.”

“Seems agitated.”

“Better mention it to the doctor.”

So you slow down and take a lot of breathers. Then you get afraid again. You wonder what the screws are saying. Maybe:

“Tarbutt seems a bit lethargic.”

“He was going like steam a minute ago.”

“Yeah, he’s very erratic, isn’t he.”

“We’d better mention it.”

So you work a bit faster, but not too fast, or too slow. You’re concentrating so hard on timing every move to what you think is a proper balance between fast and slow that you feel giddy. You imagine what the screws might think if you fell over:

“Tarbutt fell over.”

“Yeah, for no apparent reason.”

“Peculiar.”

“We’ll have to report it.”

You try to steady yourself. You take deep breaths. You’re sure the screws are watching you and talking about you and you feel a wild urge to go up to them and assure them that you’re not mentally disturbed or anything like that. You imagine how it would go:

“Er, I was wondering if you’ve noticed anything odd about my behaviour?” you might say. “How d’you mean, Len?”

“I mean … well … whether you think I’m mentally disturbed.”

“Why should we think that?”

“Because of the way I was working.”

“What about the way you were working?”

“Well, fast and then slow.”

“Why were you working like that?”

“I was a bit, sort of worried about how it might look. I mean, I wasn’t worried, I was just thinking how it might look to anyone who was watching me.”

“Do you think someone’s watching you?”

“Well, no, I mean, not really. I mean, I’m not worried about it.”

“You seem worried.”

“No.”

By now you know that you’ve made things much worse. You’ve delivered yourself to that small room at the end of the verandah.

“Tell us about this person you think is watching you.”

“I don’t think anyone is watching me.”

“You said someone or something is watching you.”

“No.”

“Do you hear this person’s voice when he’s watching you?” “No.”

“He just watches you.” “Nobody watches me.”

“That’s not what you said a minute ago. Is it?” “No.”

“This creature or whatever it is, can you see him?”

“There isn’t any creature.”

“So he’s a person then? A human?”

“No.”

“A sort of spirit?”

“Look, he’s nothing!”

“A sort of nothingness that watches you?” “There’s nothing there at all!”

“Does this nothingness ever try to harm you? Does he tell you to do things?”

“Do what things?” “You tell us, we want to help you.” “Christ! You’re twisting everything around!” “Don’t get upset, Len.”

“I can’t help getting upset when you twist things.” “Is that what the nothingness tells you? That we’re twisting things? That we’re trying to harm you?”

“I don’t think you’re trying to harm me at all.” “You said we’re twisting things.” “I just mean that you’ve got it wrong.” “We’re trying to understand, Len. We really are. If you tell us about this nothingness, this spirit or whatever it is, we’ll be able to understand better.”

“Can’t we just forget the whole thing?”

“No, Len, we can’t. This belief of yours about the Nothingness Spirit is obviously making you very distressed and unhappy.”

“There isn’t any Nothingness Spirit! Please believe me!”

“But you just told us about it.”

“I didn’t!”

“Well, how would we know about it if you didn’t tell us.” “You just invented it.”

“No, it’s something in your own mind, Len.”

“My mind’s all right. Honestly.”

“Do you know what this place is, Len?”

“Of course I do.”

“What is it?”

“A psychiatric hospital.”

“That’s right. And why do people come to psychiatric hospitals?”

“Because of mental problems.”

“Right. And you’re here, aren’t you?”

“Yes, but my mind’s all right.”

“Are you saying you’re being held unjustly?”

“No, I wouldn’t say that.”

“So, you admit that you need treatment?”

“I suppose so.”

“That’s fine. It shows you have what’s called ’insight’. You’ve done the right thing by telling us about the Nothingness Spirit. We’ll tell the doctor all about it and he’ll be able to help you. Any time the Nothingness Spirit starts to bother you, you let us know. Will you do that?”

“Yes,” you say, defeated, knowing you’ve destroyed yourself. Knowing that within an hour the Nothingness Spirit will become a reality in your file. A true presence in cold print on the page. A living force that will be summoned by other minds to explain every sleepless night, every change of mood, every odd remark, every laugh, every tear, and every facial expression you will wear for the rest of your life.

You have created your own demon.

You know it would go something like that. Even if the details are wrong, it would go something like that. So you can’t say anything to the two screws who are probably watching you. You struggle to calm yourself. You take deep breaths. You have a breather and stare away to the blue haze of the sky with your eyes half shut against the sun and try to think the sky down into yourself. The sky is so very calm and old and has seen more troubles than your own. You suddenly remember some words: “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for Thou art with me.”

Lovely words. They give you a feeling you can face whatever might happen. You’re not religious. You’ve never been to church. You suppose the words are something about God, but it’s the words themselves, and the strong, gentle sound of them, and the picture they give you that suddenly makes you feel all right, or nearly all right. They must have been written thousands of years ago, yet it’s as though they’re meant for you, yourself, right now. You let out a deep breath and there’s a sort of good tightness in your chest and you don’t feel very afraid of the two screws talking, or about digging fast and slow, or even about the room at the end of the verandah.

It’s Thursday, the night you’re rostered to sit up watching television. At six o’clock, when the other men are going into their cells, you go into the television room with the four who are rostered with you and the screws lock the door behind you. There’s a billiard table in the middle of the room and the television set is up on a high stand near the window. The five of you move your chairs into position near the billiard table so you can rest your feet on the side of it if you want to. Or you can pull two chairs together to make a couch and lie full length. There’s Bill Greene and Ray Hoad and Zurka and another man named Williamson, whom they call The Wild Man as a joke because he’s so timid. The Wild Man has got a brass whistle and a cigarette lighter the screws gave him. It’s forbidden to take your own matches or lighter into the television room at night, so they let The Wild Man have an official lighter for the five men. Nobody uses it. They all bring their own lights anyway. The whistle is to call the screws from the office if anyone goes berserk or anything. The Wild Man is very embarrassed about having the whistle.

“Blow yer whistle, mate,” Bill Greene says to him.

The Wild Man grins, very sheepishly.

“Give it a blast. Go on,” says Ray Hoad.

“No, it’s all right,” says The Wild Man.

“You’d better test it,” says Ray Hoad. “The pea might’ve fell out.”

“I heard something drop,” says Bill Greene.

“Jesus, The Wild Man’s lost his pea!” cries Ray Hoad.

“He’ll be buggered without it,” says Bill Greene.

“Sure it’s not in yer pocket?” says Ray Hoad.

“Turn ’em out,” says Bill Greene. He starts helping to turn out The Wild Man’s pockets.

“That pea’s government property!” says Ray Hoad.

“The whistle won’t work without it,” says Bill Greene.

“What if somebody goes berserk?” says Ray Hoad.

“There’ll be murder done!” says Bill Greene. “Blood all over the room!” says Ray Hoad. “They’ll probably tear The Wild Man to bits!” “It’s his own fault. Won’t keep his bloody whistle in workin’ order.”

They both look solemnly at The Wild Man. “Yer in a tight corner, mate.” “Up shit creek!” “Without a paddle.”

Bill and Ray make a show of conferring together.

“D’you reckon we can do anything?”

“We’ll do what we can.”

“But we can’t promise anything.”

“No.”

“We might be able to save him from gettin’ killed.” “Just depends.”

“He might get hurt pretty bad.”

“Luck of the game.”

“He’s not a bad sort of a bloke.”

“Good fella.”

“Except for his temper.”

“I forgot about that.”

“Ya can’t hold him when he gets goin’.”

“He goes berserk.”

“He might go off any minute.”

“Look at his face.”

“It’s turnin’ savage.”

“Blow the whistle, mate.”

“Can’t. The fuckin’ pea’s lost!”

The Wild Man is still grinning. Sheepish. He’s used to this. There’s a musical show on, and a beautiful girl is singing “Help Me Make it Through the Night”. The camera is right up on her face and lips and you can see the little throbbing pulse in her throat when she sings the long notes, and when the camera draws back, you see the swell of breasts out of her dress and then her leg through a slit at the side. The men are all quiet, watching, not wanting the song to stop.

You’re not thinking about sex, exactly, but about something more, something harder to put into words, as though the girl isn’t just one girl, but all the girls and women in the world wrapped into herself. You keep your eyes on her until the song’s finished and then you realise you’re feeling miserable all of a sudden. A drama show comes on, with police cars and sirens and a lot of punching and chasing up fire escapes. It seems stupid. You stand looking out of the window at the dark night. There are some trees being blown by the wind. If you listen carefully when the television goes quiet for a moment you can hear the chain of the main gate clanking whenever a big gust comes.

At eight o’clock the two night screws come in with the tea-urn. One of them is called Eddie. He’s got a sharp face and a way of sneering when he speaks. His favourite word is “fuck”. but he pronounces it “faaark”. like the cry of a crow.

“Faaark, you blokes have it easy,” Eddie says to us. “Nobody brings me a cuppa, not even me faaarkin missus.”

“Well, you wouldn’t be bringin’ us one either if it wasn’t in the regulations,” says Ray Hoad. Ray isn’t afraid of screws.

“Faaarkin oath I wouldn’t!” says Eddie. “If I was in control I’d have all you faaarkin blokes put down.”

“Thousands ’ud agree with ya,” says Ray Hoad.

“That’s faaarkin right. Why should the taxpayers be keepin’ you cunts in food and clothes?”

“If it wasn’t for us, you’d be out of a job.”

“Don’t faaarkin kid yerself!”

Everyone is pretending that this is just a bit of friendly banter.

“Hitler had the right faaarkin idea. Crims, pervs, poofters, all into the faaarkin oven.”

“What about morons?” says Bill Greene, looking directly at Eddie.

“Faaarkin morons too!”

Eddie and the other screw go out and lock the door behind them.

“Faaark. Faaark. Faaark,” croaks Bill Greene, flapping his elbows like a giant crow. Then he farts loudly.

At nine-thirty we’re put to bed. After the screws have gone and everything is quiet, you lie listening to the wind. The moon is near the top of your window and throws a silver sheen against the foot of the bed. You sleep for a while. Then you are awake and someone is shouting from one of the cells. George Pratt is yelling that the “Sallies” are after him. He’s got an obsession about the Salvation Army, and often shouts in the night like this. Voices from other cells are telling him to shut up. Then you hear the screws in the corridor, and Eddie’s voice.

“Shut yer faaarkin noise or I’ll give yer a faaarkin needle in yer faaarkin bum!”

George Pratt’s yells fade to low sobbing and you go back to sleep.