The hospital now was transformed from its everyday drab and dreary appearance. The attendants had been busy putting up paper chains and tinsel, which produced a sad kind of cheerfulness; it was so strange, so at odds with the place the rest of the year round. In the day room, one of the patients who could play the piano had begun practising carols ready for an entertainment that was granted the inmates every year on Christmas Day, and when she struck up a tune many of them would accompany her by singing the words – or in some cases alternative words of their own – with varying musical success. Mostly they mumbled or croaked and were dreadfully out of tune, but some could sing beautifully and on one occasion as I walked through the room I was stopped dead in my tracks when a lone voice rang out the words of ‘Hark! The Herald Angels Sing’, clear as a bell on a bright, frosty morning. It caught you like a fist plunged into your chest and throttling your heart. It choked off your breath and made tears spring to your eyes. I was helpless while it continued. It seemed to sum up every hope in the world, and in that lay the pity of it, that someone could give pour forth such optimism while imprisoned there.
Christmas Day dawned bright and clear, which further lifted the mood in the hospital. There was an undercurrent of expectation, as though some atavistic memory had been stirred in the inmates of Christmases past, an excitement at what the festive season would bring, although in truth there was precious little for them to look forward to. Lunch was a stingy treat. There was lentil and bacon soup, followed by roast chicken in parsimonious portions, enough to tease the appetite but not to satisfy it. There were extra potatoes and even boiled vegetables, things never normally seen here, and jugs of gravy, the latter regarded as such a delicacy that the attendants had their work cut out preventing some of the diners from picking up the jugs and quaffing them as if they were beer.
When lunch was over, the inmates repaired to the day room, where the pianist began to work her way through her repertoire of carols, which were sung by a small choir made up of a selection of patients who could sing well and some of the attendants, although the performance was naturally accompanied by some of the audience who joined in, often with cacophonous results. Still, the atmosphere was jolly and, after contributing to the singing ourselves a little, Morgan and I retired to the staff dining room for a late lunch.
It was a sumptuous affair of roast goose, the first such meal I’d had in a year or more, and I tucked into it with relish. We drank a fine red wine and Morgan grew so relaxed that he called for a second bottle, which we began to work our way through steadily. Under the influence of the alcohol, all my anxieties, all the nervous tension of my scheming, melted away and I felt myself caught up in the warm feeling of the season as I looked at Morgan, who sat rosy-cheeked opposite me, regaling me with anecdotes from his distant college days, and beyond him at the greetings-card scene outside and Jane Dove’s snowman standing sentry in the radiant sunlight in the place he’d occupied for weeks now.
As I stared at him, I had the sense of something being different, something about him that was not right. He did not seem to be the same person he had been before. At first I could not put my finger upon it. Then I saw there was something odd about his nose – that is, the stick Jane had put there to represent it. It was no longer pert as it had been but was drooping onto the line of stones that were his mouth. His eyes were strange, too. The two pieces of coal that formed them had slid down, giving him the look of a mournful clown. My chest was tight and I could not breathe. My stomach was an empty pit in spite of all the food I’d just eaten. I felt a terror I did not understand. And then, all at once, I did.
I realised Morgan had stopped talking. I tried to gather my wits together. He was staring at me. ‘Good God, man, what is it? You look as if you’ve seen a ghost.’
I almost laughed when he said that, except I seemed to have lost the power of uttering a sound. I pushed my chair back from the table and scrambled to my feet, only to find my legs would not support me and I had to hang on to the edge of the table.
‘What is it?’ Morgan said again. ‘Are you feeling ill? Have you had too much wine?’
I ignored him and stumbled toward the door and somehow staggered through it. I hurried along the corridor and out the main door and nearly fell over. The surface of the snow was slick and slippery now. It had not been before. I slid and tottered along the front of the building and reached the snowman. Behind me I could hear Morgan calling me to stop. I looked the snowman in the face and he seemed to be mocking me. I put the palm of my hand on his cheek and let out a sob. I watched as a teardrop of water ran down the length of his nose and dripped to the floor. It was true. He was melting.
Morgan was beside me now. ‘What’s the matter with you, Shepherd? You’re behaving most strangely.’
‘It can’t be! It can’t! It’s not meant to be happening for weeks yet. It simply can’t be true.’
But it was. The thaw had come.
Morgan put his arm around my shoulders, in a surprisingly tender way, and turned me about face so I was no longer looking at the snowman, then steered me back toward the building. It was growing dark. In the dead silence I could hear the drip drip of water from the branches of the pine trees we passed. As we reached the open front door I turned to Morgan and said, ‘The freeze is supposed to last until February, isn’t it? You told me so; you said it always lasted.’
He gave me a bland smile, appeasing me in my sudden madness. ‘Well, I was going on past experience. I’m not an expert on weather. The freeze usually does last until then, but it’s not unknown for the temperature to rise before. It’s very rare, I grant you. The weather is unseasonably warm today, but whether this thaw will continue or not is anybody’s guess. Let’s hope it does, eh?’
I stared at him as though he was mad.
Inside, I gradually came to my senses, enough to worry about what I might have said. I went over everything carefully in my mind. I could not be entirely sure but I was fairly certain I’d not given anything away. Back in the staff dining room, Morgan sat me down and poured a glass of brandy, which he offered to me. I was about to take it, as I was shaking and in dire need of something to quiet my nerves and restore my spirits, but had the sudden good sense to wave it away. ‘Thank you, sir, but no. I think I may have taken too much in that way already. I’m not used to it, you know. My family were hot on temperance.’
I don’t know what made that jump into my mind but it was fortuitous; it gained Morgan’s sympathy. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t know. And here I was, plying you with drink all through lunch. Should have known better with your Quaker leanings.’
‘It’s not your fault, sir. I should have known better myself and gone more easy. I cannot apologise enough for my behaviour. I don’t know what came over me.’
He waved this away. ‘No need for sackcloth and ashes, old man. We’ve all taken a bit too much at one time or another. No harm done.’ He studied me for a moment and then glanced out the window. ‘Something about that snowman, was it? Something that upset you?’
‘I – I think it reminded me of a clown,’ I said. ‘I could never abide them as a child. They terrified me. Even today you couldn’t get me to a circus to save my life.’
‘Really?’ He raised an eyebrow. ‘Most strange. Wonder what could have caused that.’ He peered at me with a forensic interest.
I was in a state of terror. I managed to put on some appearance of normality for Morgan but it wasn’t easy. All the while the steady dripping of water from the eaves was a torture that made it difficult to concentrate on anything else. Every so often there would be the soft sound of a heap of snow sliding from the roof and hitting the ground.
Eventually I pleaded a headache on account of the wine and slipped away from him. I needed to be alone to try to think of a way out of the fix I was in, to devise some means of escape before the snow all turned to water and revealed the late Caroline Adams to the world.
After dark, I went outside and surveyed the grounds as far as I could see by starlight. Now that the sun had gone down, it had turned colder. Was it wishful thinking or could I detect an easing-off in the frequency of the dripping? I walked around the building and stared in the direction in which Miss Adams lay awaiting her resurrection. The light was too feeble to see that far, but I was relieved that the deeper drifts of snow seemed hardly to have diminished at all. I reckoned Miss Adams had a good three feet on top of her and I figured it would take quite some time to melt. I guessed I had a day or two at least, even if the temperature remained this high.
As I went back inside, it occurred to me that in my distress I had neglected to look in on Jane Dove, who had had a lonely day of it. I had suggested she might put on her old patient’s uniform and join the rest of the inmates in their celebrations of the day, but she had been horrified at the idea. ‘I never want to return to that, sir,’ she said fiercely, ‘not even for a day. Not for an hour, or a minute or a single second. I am not one of them.’ And so she had spent Christmas Day on her own, the only seasonal note for her being Dickens’s Christmas Books, which I had found in the library and left with her, that she might look through the illustrations. It was what I found her doing now, sitting by her window.
‘My snowman is melting.’ It was the first thing she said to me and it made me wince.
‘Well, he was never going to last for ever,’ I said, putting a brave face on it. ‘Though I confess I had hoped to have him with us a bit longer than this.’ I stood beside her and we both gazed out the window at the diminished figure outside. It was a grim sight.
She lifted up her book. ‘Have you time to read me some of this? I cannot make out the story, try as I might, although I can see it ends with a Christmas meal.’ I saw it was A Christmas Carol.
‘Not now, Jane. Something more important has come up. We need to lay plans.’
‘Is it a bad thing? Your face seems to tell me so.’
‘Yes, I’m afraid so. I had a discussion with Dr Morgan about the recovery of your memory and I’m afraid he did not react in the way we had hoped.’
The book slipped from her grasp and fell to the floor. Neither of us attempted to pick it up. ‘But surely he must agree that my loss of memory is the chief reason I have been put here?’
I took a turn around the room, in part to help my thinking but also to hide my face from her. ‘You would think so, but that is not the way he sees it. He insists it was merely one factor amongst many that made him judge you insane. He says it would not have been sufficient on its own to make you a patient here.’
‘B-but how can that be?’
As I made the turn in my walk and looked up at her, I found her eyes boring straight into me. It was like being cross-examined in court. I could only look down again. I continued pacing.
‘But, sir, it’s not just my memory that has improved. I can read now. Has he forgot that?’
I stopped and faced her. ‘I put that to him, but he refused to be moved. He said most people can read, including most madmen. It is not an indication of mental health.’
She took a moment to absorb this and then said, ‘But doesn’t it show I could take my place again in the world? That I can manage myself and be managed well enough to learn to do it? That I have made such great progress shows I am cured.’
I stepped to her side, went down on one knee and grabbed her hand. ‘That’s just it, Jane, that’s just what I hadn’t reckoned with when we pulled the trick of pretending you could read and spent so many weeks inventing your past. Morgan doesn’t ever allow anybody to be cured. It’s against his creed. Managed sometimes, yes, but cured, no. No one ever gets out of this place. It is a life sentence without parole.’
She flushed with anger now and pulled herself forward on the arms of her chair. ‘What has all this been for, then, this experiment with your Moral Treatment? Why did he let us waste so much time and … and … hope on that, when he never meant me to be cured?’
‘It was partly an indulgence toward me but mainly so he could prove me wrong and bring me to his views in order to make me more enthusiastic for his barbarous methods.’
She sank back and tears rolled down her cheeks. She buried her face in her hands and let out a great sob.
I watched with satisfaction. It was exactly what I had hoped for. Eventually she dropped her hands, and looked at me. ‘So the experiment is over? I am to go back amongst the others?’
I nodded slowly. She bit her lip, fighting to hold back another fit of crying, unable to speak for what seemed an age, until at last she whispered hoarsely, ‘When?’
‘As soon as the holiday season is over and all the staff are back from leave. A few days.’
She broke down again. ‘Oh, sir, I cannot stand it! I cannot bear a single day of it, I know.’
‘You won’t have to.’ I released her hand and stood up. ‘I am going to get you out.’
Her head jerked up. ‘Get me out? But how?’
‘Escape. I will help you escape. We will leave together.’
She stared at me. ‘But what about you? Won’t you get into trouble with Morgan? Might it not cost you your post?’
‘I will explain everything to you and you must do exactly as I say and play your part well to the very last detail. As for me losing my post, I intend to escape with you. I am never coming back.’
‘You would do that for me? But why? I do not understand why you would give up everything to help me.’
I laughed. ‘I came here to help people because that’s what I thought the job of a doctor was, but now I find I am useless. No, worse than that, I’m only here to assist in the oppression of the poor unfortunates incarcerated here. I have no interest in remaining if I’m not doing any good. I’d be bound to quit sooner or later, and this news about you makes it, well, just a little sooner than I intended. At least this way I will save one patient; that will be something to be proud of in my whole shameful sojourn here.’
She looked at me with something like adoration. It was the equivalent of a standing ovation. ‘Oh sir,’ she said, tears again streaming down her cheeks, ‘I thank you from the bottom of my heart.’
I grabbed a chair, pulled it up close to her and said in a whisper, ‘Now, here’s what you must do …’