Free The White Garden by Carmel Bird Page A

White Garden
    you can come home.’ She hesitated and then she said, ‘Bridie wanted me to tell you she’s going to enter in six weeks.’
    Therese heard these words about her sister Bridie who was going into the convent. She went white and rigid and moved away so that she was no longer touching her mother. Her mother had said the words in an attempt to get Therese to show some emotion, some interest. Now she thought that perhaps she had gone too far, misjudged, that she should not have told Therese at that moment. Bridget specially wanted Therese to know. But perhaps she should have asked the doctor if it was a wise thing to say. Therese was the youngest in the family, and so sensitive and strange. When Rosie got engaged to Vincent, Therese went hysterical and locked herself in the playhouse and wouldn’t come out. They went into the playhouse afterwards and discovered that Therese had pulled all the dolls to pieces, scattering their heads and legs and arms around the floor. Now Therese stared coldly at the woman who sat anxiously at the bedside and said: ‘Tell her I hate her.’ Then she turned away, and her mother knew that she could say and do no more. She patted the bedclothes, lightly kissed the back of Therese’s head, and left. At the front desk she spoke to a nurse: ‘She isn’t eating, Sister. We are very worried.’ And the nurse, smiling up at her in reassurance said, ‘Doctor would like you to make a time to see him.’
    During Mrs Gillis’s appointment Ambrose kept his feet on the floor beneath the desk. At one point it amused him to slide his hand into the desk drawer and run his fingers over the pistol he kept there. His little Browning .22 automatic. He smiled as he thought of shooting Mrs Gillis. (Dangerous lunatic Mrs Gillis who had threatened him with a sawn-off shotgun. No, mad Mrs Gillis who ran in brandishing a scimitar.) He looked at the scrawny woman in a linen overcoat, a woman with haunted and bewildered eyes. Her brow was furrowed with anxiety, her shoes were Italian, her huge tapestry handbag bulged with motherly love. Ambrose could hear her heart crying out for help. It could be, he thought, that she is more depressed than the daughter.
    But she has plenty to keep her busy, and doesn’t give in so easily. The daughter is the youngest of a heap of Catholic girls.

    Saint Ditto of Lisieux
    51
    Sexual repression. What they all need is a good fuck, a bloody good fuck. Father’s an architect. Rich and busy building. Girls need a screw. Make a note: ‘Could be the father screws the girls.’
    Any of the girls married? One. Any in convents? One going soon. So the one we’ve got here in the Sunroom is the baby, the pet. They have all spoilt her. Spoilt. Sounds like a crop of wheat. Spoilt by the floods. Therese, flooded by affection and love and too many toys, got too big for her boots and then she was crippled and depressed and wound up in the Sunroom.
    Makes bad sense. Very bad sense. Won’t eat, won’t talk, won’t anything. Fading away. Needs to be taken in hand. Needs thrashing. Needs ECT, DST. Needs fuck.
    ‘Theresa is in very good hands here, Mrs Gillis.’ Ambrose rested his chin on his hand and smiled across the desk at Dorothy Gillis. She tried to smile. She was holding on tightly to the wooden handles of her bag which was placed on her knees.
    Her feet were neatly together on the carpet.
    ‘She needs, she needs a period of rest and medication. She may well be a candidate for our new program of Deep Sleep Therapy which sends the brain on a little holiday.’ Dorothy’s eyes registered a flicker of desire for such a little holiday. ‘But first we need to approach her problems through a program of what is called “truth drug”. Therese has already undergone some sessions of this form of therapy, and she is, I can assure you, responding well. The truth drug isn’t nearly as dramatic as it sounds. The patient is given a dose of Sodium Amytal and Ritalin and then speaks freely