ALL WAS SILENT for a minute or two — then I heard the echo of brisk footsteps and a young woman came round the corner. She too wore an official uniform, but it was of a greenish colour with the word Director on her badge. She came right to me.
“Mr. Steen?” she said in a pleasant, friendly voice. “I’m Sarah Mackay … Miriam’s daughter.” She shook my hand.
I could hardly speak. Close up, she was so like Miriam in the photograph I’d removed yesterday from the house in Duncairn, I felt transported back in time. The blue eyes had the same honest quality as her mother’s when they’d first scrutinized me over the edge of that rock on the moorlands all those years ago.
“I was delighted to hear you were coming,” said Sarah Mackay. “I almost feel I know you, my mother spoke your name so often. She always wondered how life had worked out for you. I know she’d have loved to see you again.”
To hear that I hadn’t been forgotten by Miriam touched me deeply. I couldn’t think of anything to say.
“Let’s go to my office,” said Sarah Mackay, glancing round the waiting area with its grim furnishings. “At least it’s a little more comfortable than this.”
2
I followed Sarah Mackay along a maze of corridors, deep into Eildon House.
As we walked, she explained that the place had originally been the residence of Andrew Eildon, one of those nineteenth-century industrial barons. He’d spent much of his fortune on this house, acting as his own architect. Newspapers in his day had called it “Eildon’s Folly.” By the early years of the twentieth century, none of his descendants could afford the upkeep.
“Ultimately, the government took it over and converted it to its present use,” she said.
I guessed its “present use” must be as a place of confinement of some sort. The intersections of many of the corridors had checkpoints manned by uniformed guards with pistols in their belts. They nodded respectfully to Sarah Mackay as we passed.
I was curious about the letters E.R.C. I’d seen on the Eildon House highway sign.
“It means ‘Enforced Residential Community,’” she said. “For most people in this country, that’s a polite designation for ‘prison.’ Though only about half of our inmates have actually done anything criminal. Anyway, we think of them all as patients, not prisoners.”
By now we’d turned so many corners and walked along so many lookalike corridors that I was rather lost. I remarked that the place was like a rabbit warren.
“Quite so,” she said. “This labyrinthine design seems to put the inmates more at ease. They don’t feel regimented or spied on. That’s quite different from the more orthodox prisons. If you’ve ever seen any photographs of them, you’ll have noticed they look like a big wheel, with its spokes containing rows of cells and its central hub for observing the inmates at all times.”
I thought back, too, to Dupont’s reconstituted military camp, with its razor-wire-topped fence making it look like a prison camp. I told Sarah Mackay about my visit there. I wondered whether, no matter what the design of these places of confinement, the workers in them came to feel as though they were prisoners, too.
“There’s a good deal of truth to that,” she said. “Here in Eildon House, in the case of guards and other service workers, their salaries have to be high enough to keep them from looking for work elsewhere.” She frowned. “But as for those of us who’re professionals, we don’t mind spending the better part of our lives in places like these. It’s our calling — our vocation, you might say — and we’d do it for no money at all. Indeed, we’re sometimes accused of being attracted to those with afflictions of the mind by a kind of sympathetic hypochondria. Some of our critics even say that our sensitivity to the sufferings of others is a mental illness in itself.”
She must have seen that I was genuinely interested, so she talked more as we walked.
“I should have mentioned that Eildon House specializes in artists and academics who’ve somehow gone wrong,” she said. “By that I mean many of them have undergone the kinds of psychological traumas associated with people in their professions.
“Of all the artistic types referred to us, writers are in the majority by far. It’s no exaggeration to say we’d need ten Eildon Houses to accommodate all the writers with severe problems.
“Our academic inmates are often quite brilliant, as you’d expect. Yet they have a tendency to commit the most disproportionately awful criminal acts — for example, they might stab a department head to death over their teaching assignments, or shoot a dean who’s denied them even a tiny research grant. One of them is particularly infamous in this country for other reasons. His name’s Professor Artimore — you’ve probably heard of him?”
Naturally, I hadn’t.
“Well, he’s a very interesting case” was all she said.
3
By now, Sarah Mackay and I were walking along a corridor lined with century-old black-and-white photographs. The subjects wore the uniforms of Eildon House employees and were assembled in groups, like football teams. Their faces were unsmiling and wary, as is often the case with people who’ve never seen a camera before.
We arrived at a door with the sign Director on it and she led me inside.
The office was spacious, with a number of filing cabinets and a wide desk in front of a big window. Thick iron bars on the outside marred an otherwise beautiful view of the hills. The office walls were a plain, greyish colour with no ornamentation aside from several more of those old black-and-white group photographs I’d seen in the corridor.
Facing the desk were a shiny black leather couch and armchair. Beside them was a kneeling stool, the kind of thing you’d find in a church. She noticed me looking at it.
“Eildon House used to have its own chapel,” she said. “After the government took the place over, they put many things in storage, including the chapel furniture. That prie-dieu had actually been used by Andrew Eildon exclusively. When I saw it, I thought it might be useful in my office and had it brought up. Sure enough, some of the inmates now prefer to kneel when they come to see me.” She smiled. “You’re welcome to use it, if you wish.”
I assumed she was joking and smiled back. She seated herself in the armchair and I sat on the couch. Despite its expensive appearance, it was unyielding.
WE’D BARELY SETTLED when a young, pretty woman wearing a white housekeeping uniform came in. She was carrying a tray with a pot of coffee and two cups on it.
“Thank you, Georgina,” said Sarah Mackay.
The woman laid the tray on the desk and left.
“Georgina’s one of our inmates,” said Sarah in a matter-of-fact way. She saw my surprise. “Yes, half of our inmates are female. Madness is one of those areas where women have always had equal rights.”
I wondered why this Georgina wasn’t under lock and key. “It’s a long story,” said Sarah.
“She likes to help out and her medication makes her quite sociable, so most of the time there’s no need for her to be locked up. She’s here because she wanted to be a writer. Would you like to hear about her?”
GEORGINA, after graduating from university at the age of twenty-two, had decided to write a novel and bought a typewriter for the purpose. For a year following that, she stayed home every day, and for almost every hour of the day did virtually nothing but write—tap, tapping out her first novel, hour after hour, seldom leaving her room. She was so dedicated she rarely took time to eat, so that after a few months her body began to wither away and the tips of her fingers blistered, eventually bleeding onto the typewriter keys as well as down over her clothing.