'We are optimistic,' Braithwaite replied, guardedly.
She gave him a doubting look, which he studiously ignored. 'He has recovered well from the lobotomy and is responding to treatment with cocaine. He is much calmer now. I'm thinking of moving him on to a new drug, a substance called lithium carbonate. Some patients have shown great improvement with this. Ah, here we are.'
They stopped outside a metal door. Braithwaite produced a key and turned it in the lock. 'If you'll excuse me, Mrs Thomson, I would like to go first.' He opened the door slowly and peered in. Then he took two steps into the room and beckoned Sonia to follow him.
The room was small but looked surprisingly comfortable, with its barred window overlooking the manicured gardens to the front of the building. It was furnished with a bed, a side table and a couple of chairs. Archibald was sitting at the end of the bed, stiff-backed and staring straight ahead, his face utterly expressionless. He was wearing a dark brown dressing-gown over a crisp white nightshirt. His hair had been neatly combed. Sonia walked up to him and took his hand. It was icy cold, and he did not look up. She caught a whiff of carbolic.
When he had first been admitted to the London Hospital on Mile End Road, Archibald had been barely conscious. Over the period of a week, he had begun to mend. In some ways he had been remarkably lucky. He had suffered rat bites to his legs, but had thankfully not contracted any deadly disease from them. He was malnourished and dehydrated, but the physical ills had been relatively easy to treat. The problems had started just as he was growing physically stronger and begining to remember what had happened to him. Seemingly overnight, he appeared to lose his senses. He began to rant and rave, to shout incoherently. It had been possible to grasp a few words here and there, but nothing comprehensible. He had become violent, uncontrollably so, and as his mental state deteriorated, it became impossible to treat him in the hospital. That was when the decision had been made to move him to Bedlam. For his own good.
The doctors at the asylum had tried to calm Archibald. They had thrown him into a freezing cold bath, tied him to a bed and left him for twenty-four hours, and then tried spinning him at high speed in a chair for ten minutes. He had simply grown worse, ranting incoherently. Finally, with Sonia Thomson's permission, they had conducted a lobotomy. That had shut him up. Indeed, Archibald had now been silent for five weeks. He had not moved a limb by his own volition. Everything had to be done for him.
At the insistence of Dr Braithwaite, Sonia had stayed away until now. She received formal letters each week, detailing her husband's progress, or lack thereof, and she had done as the doctor advised. Then, upon the prompting of an Oxford Professor of Medicine who had been a close friend of her father's, she had written to Braithwaite telling him that she would be visiting Archibald in two days' time. The doctor could do little other than comply with her wishes.
'I'll leave you alone together, Mrs Thomson,' he said, and turned towards the door. 'A nurse will be outside should you require anything. Please come and talk to me before you leave.'
Sonia heard the door close behind him. She glanced at her husband. He stared back at her, unseeing. She gathered her thoughts. The friend of the family who had advised her to visit her husband had said she should simply talk to him as though nothing had changed. But at that moment, staring at Archibald's marble-still face, she realised that it was no easy thing to do.
'I thought you would like to know that everyone at the paper is thinking of you, my darling,' she began, swallowing back tears. 'They have been very kind. And…' She could no longer stem the tears and started to weep into her hands. Archibald did not react. After a moment, Sonia was able to pull herself together. She cleared her throat and dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief. Then she removed a bundle of letters from her bag.
'I received some letters today, darling. The strangest letters from a man called William Sandler.' She looked into her husband's eyes to see if the name produced a reaction in him. 'I think you knew him as Harry… Harry Tumbril. Does that mean anything to you?'
Archibald stared at her. Silent.
Sonia felt a stab of fury. 'Archibald? Husband? Does this letter mean nothing at all to you?' She waved it in front of his face. He did not react.
She stood up and leaned over her husband. Grabbing him by the shoulders, she shook him hard. 'Archibald!' she shouted, and threw the letters on to the bed beside him. 'Archie… Archie.' She fell to her knees in front of him and started to sob again. Looking up, tears running down her cheeks, she grasped his chin in one hand and started to shake his head. 'ARCHIE!'
She heard a sound behind her. The door to the corridor had opened. A nurse was standing there.
'Is everything…?'
Sonia ignored him and slapped her husband's face hard. His head rocked from the blow, but he simply stared straight ahead.
'Mrs Thomson!'
The nurse ran over and grabbed Sonia's arm just as she was about to hit Archibald again. 'Please, Mrs Thomson!'
Another male nurse appeared in the doorway, then strode in. Between them they turned Sonia away from her husband's blank stare, helping her to leave the room. They had almost reached the door when they heard a sound from behind.
'Tumbril.'
Sonia froze and the men tightened their grip.
'No. Please!' she cried. 'Please stop! My husband spoke to me.'
The nurses looked at each other.
'Please? He said something.' Sonia pulled away, turning back towards Archibald.
'Tumbril,' he said quietly. His lips moved, but his face remained frozen, staring straight ahead. The nurses took Sonia's arms again, lightly now. They too seemed to be transfixed by the sight of the patient speaking.
'Tumbril,' Archibald repeated, his face a blank mask. 'TUMBRIL!' The sound reverberated about the walls of the room, a deafening roar now. The three onlookers stared, petrified and powerless, as Archibald fell forward on to the tiled floor, his forehead hitting the hard surface with a dull thud.
Dr Braithwaite was yelling something incoherent as he ran into the room, a warder a step behind him. 'Out of the way!' he shouted, pushing them aside. He crouched down beside Archibald and, with the help of the warder, slowly turned him over on to his back. Sonia made a strange sound in her throat as though she were choking. The two nurses had let her go and taken a step back.
Dr Braithwaite checked Archibald's pulse and pulled up one eyelid. He let out a heavy sigh and his body seemed to sag. Standing, he walked over to Sonia. 'I'm afraid your husband is dead.'
'NO!' she cried. 'No!
That's not… NO!' She threw herself to the floor huddled next to her husband's body. Then she leaned back, pulling his bloodied head towards her breast and cradling it, sobbing and rocking. The others stood by in silence until Braithwaite crouched down, helped the widow gently to her feet and guided her from the room.
Chapter 52
Brick Lane, Stepney, Thursday 29 January, 2.05 p.m. Pendragon sat in the swivel chair at the back of the darkened Media Room, the monitor casting a pallid blue haze all around. Apart from a scattering of red power lights, this was the only illumination. He sat back, resting his head against the back of the leather chair, and for a few moments ran through in his mind the first section of The Inner Mounting Flame, one of his favourite pieces of music.
An incongruous thought came to him. He was transported back twenty-six years into his rented flat in Oxford. He had graduated that summer. Now it was late autumn and he still had not decided what he was going to do with his life, but he had just suffered the greatest trauma he had yet known. He had discovered that Cheryl, his girlfriend of two years, had been sleeping with his best friend at college, Gareth.
It was 7 a.m. when Cheryl turned up at the flat they had shared. He had been up half the night waiting for her. He had opened the front door, saying nothing. When she tried to speak, he put a finger to his lips and pointed to a chair in the living-room. Then, with his mind in a numb, nowhere land, he had paced over to the record player, put on The Inner Mounting Flame, sat in another chair directly facing Cheryl, and insisted they both stay and sit and listen to the whole side of the LP. The moment the last notes died away, he had stood up, put the record in its sleeve and ignored Cheryl when she called his name. Still silent, he had walked into the bedroom, placed the record in his case of albums and picked up his two bags. Reappearing in the lounge with the sum of his possessions, he walked past her, through the door and out on to the pavement.