Free The Sleep Room by F. R. Tallis Page A

of my trousers, and it must have fallen out while I was getting dressed that morning. The fact that I had not detected its presence earlier was perhaps a measure of how distracted I had become.
    I was about to call Sister Jenkins on the telephone, in order to inform her that I had recovered her ring, when it occurred to me that telling her the truth might not be such a good idea. She would think me unobservant or, even worse, absent-minded, and very likely share her views with Maitland. After giving the matter some thought, I decided that I would invent a harmless lie, something that would clear me of any fault or blame. I placed the ring on my bedside cabinet and pulled back the cover and blanket.
    As I was falling asleep, listening to the sound of the sea, the memory of Jane’s kiss returned. Great black waves rolled through the room and I was carried out across a vast ocean of forgetfulness.

Dr Joseph Grayson
    Department of Psychological Medicine
    London Hospital
    Whitechapel
    London E1
    23rd June 1955
    Dr Hugh Maitland
    Department of Psychological Medicine
    St Thomas’s Hospital
    London SE1
    Dear Dr Maitland,
    Re: Miss Isobelle Joyce Stevens (d.o.b. 12.10.1929)
          The Old Alms House, 28 Rope Street E2
    Thank you for agreeing to see the above patient, who we discussed today on the telephone. She has been in my care now for fifteen months and I would value your opinion with respect to her future treatment. She is twenty-six years of age and in her relatively short life she has managed to collect several diagnoses, some of which are rather exotic. These include folie circulaire , melancholy and catoptrophobia. My own view is that she suffers from a severe manic depressive illness with pronounced psychotic features.
    Her background is as follows: her father cannot work on account of a major injury he sustained during the war, and her mother is a seamstress who is employed by a clothes’ manufacturer in Bethnal Green. She has one sibling, Maude, who is her junior by three years. Miss Stevens was a premature baby and slow to develop. She did not talk or crawl until quite late and she missed much of her early schooling because of a recurrent chest complaint. Be that as it may, she eventually caught up with her peers and on leaving school she was able to get a job as a waitress in a cafe.
    Soon after her nineteenth birthday she is said to have gone through a change of character, becoming, in turns, increasingly indolent and impulsive. She also became fearful of mirrors and insisted that her parents cover all reflective surfaces in the house. When asked what she was afraid of, her responses were nonsensical. She was attended by her family doctor, Dr Fletcher, a man sympathetic to Freud and psychoanalysis, who attempted a talking cure which was, as one would expect, wholly ineffective. Miss Stevens’s behaviour became increasingly erratic and she lost her job as a consequence.
    After a period of several months, during which she hardly stirred from her bed, Miss Stevens’s mood improved and her fear of mirrors remitted; however, one set of symptoms was immediately replaced by another. Miss Stevens could not sleep, she became garrulous, and she began to express grandiose ideas: for example, that she had been in conversation with a representative from a New York casting agency and that she was going to be a successful actress in Hollywood. She took to wearing flamboyant clothes and frequented local public houses, where she received a great deal of attention from men. Needless to say, she became the subject of much gossip and when her parents learned of her behaviour there were heated arguments at home. Some of these altercations must have been quite ugly, because Dr Fletcher noted the appearance of bruises on her face and a swollen, twisted ankle. At last, recognizing the limitations of his chosen method, Dr Fletcher referred Miss Stevens to my predecessor, Dr Meadows, who admitted her to the Royal London for a period