Free The White Garden by Carmel Bird Page B

and easily into a tape-recorder. I later go through the tape with a fine-tooth comb and I note the salient points, the points of worry and conflict in the patient’s mind. I bring these matters up with the patient at later appropriate times. These tapes are of course completely confidential between myself and the patient. It is usually possible with this type of treatment to bring the patient to a point where normal desires for food and social contact and so on are restored. And at that point it can be the time for Deep Sleep. Do you have any questions you would like to ask me, Mrs Gillis?’
    ‘When is she going to be better?’
    ‘Well, a month, two months. Who can say. Took her twenty 52
    The White Garden
    years to get this far, after all. Unravelling it all can take some time. But she is young and intelligent. An attractive young woman with everything to live for. What she needs is a good rest and the right medication.’
    He brought his hands together, placed them on the desk and stood up. Dorothy got up and he put a firm hand of reassurance on her shoulder as they walked to the door. ‘Feel that you can be in touch with us here at any time, Mrs Gillis. It is important that we should all work together to get Therese back on her feet.’
    Several times Therese returned to the cubicle where she lay for hours in silence with the tape running. One day, in a kind of absence of mind, she began to speak, and what she said was recorded:
    ‘It’s really hard for someone to know how to start. You are here all alone and the tape-recorder is making a funny little noise as its wheels go slowly round and round and the ribbon runs on and on from one spool to the other and the face of the moment imprints on the ribbon as the ribbon runs like water and life the water of life and words come from my mouth and they land on the tape and the tape goes on and on, winding and winding, and I don’t know what to say. So I put my hands to my face and my face is cold and I feel my blood draining away, seeping onto the ribbon as the ribbon runs, every thought, every breath, every blink of my eye, every word of my lips, the truth and the lies, goes whirry, whirry, whirry into the little black box like a magician’s box, it’s a trick, a trick by a Turk and a turkey at a Christmas dinner with bread stuffing and cranberry sauce like blood. Blood running from my mother into me and out again and into the little black box of blood and words blah, blah, blahed. “Ch-ch” the needle goes in and “zzzzz” the wooshy juice goes singing along to the heart that beats and sends the juicy juice sailing along to the poor dead brain. Poor little match-girl brain. Redhead, deadhead. And the brain goes “Zupp!” and the curtains open and the curtains swish and the audience sits back softly in the velvet armchairs and the armchairs float along in clouds and clouds of clouds. Pink. Things happen slowly and the feeling is nice — nice and quiet and soft and safe and sound like a baby in a cradle rock-a-bye-baby on the tree top and just

    Saint Ditto of Lisieux
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    one little “ch-ch” and it’s done, opened up, up and over, when the wind blows, and split the oyster.
    ‘I used to lie in the big bed with my sisters called Frankie and Loulou and Margaret and Rosie and Bridie. Six peas in a pod my father said and I was the smallest pea. Sweet Pea. That’s me. Sweet Pea. A pink satin ribbon ran all along the edge of the blanket and I would stroke the satin and sometimes I chewed the corner and sucked the woolly taste through the satin. I am trying to tell the story of all this. Every Sunday Father May would tell my father he had six fine girls, and then he would say that I was the little one, the Little Flower of the family. I was pink and white and sugar and rose petals. That was how I looked on the surface, on the skin of things. But secretly I sucked the satin on the blanket and played a quiet juicy tune on Myself. There are dirty words for Myself but