Asylum

Read Asylum for Free Online

Book: Read Asylum for Free Online
Authors: Patrick McGrath
Tags: Fiction, Literary, Psychological
allowing her to bury her guilty secret. And so the first sharp shock of horror at the appalling transgression she’d committed—having sex with a patient , not fiftyyards from the house—began to subside, and she told herself it had been a moment of madness, no more than that; never, of course, to be repeated. Though it worried her that Edgar would return to the garden, and that when he did, she would be able to find him, if she wanted to.
    Now, predictably, as they moved toward assignation and structure, Stella began to create a sort of arabesque in her mind, a pattern of thought and feeling whose function it was to lead her back to him. She told me how one hot July morning she put on her wide-brimmed straw hat and took her tea out onto the terrace on the north side of the house and watched the patients feeding a bonfire with barrowloads of the dead wood and other debris strewn about this neglected part of the garden. It had been overgrown for years, a long, shallow, wooded slope that gradually flattened out and then beyond the back fence climbed into a stand of deciduous trees that crowned the far ridge and formed the outskirts of the forest.
    Max’s plan was to clear this slope and plant it with new turf. He envisioned a rolling pasture here, an idea that disturbed Stella, for it suggested that their tenure of the house would be longer than she’d been led to believe. It had occurred to her that his ambition was to tame and cultivate both the hospital and the estate, make them over as his twin gardens.
    The patients worked on steadily. The wood was dry and caught quickly, sending up showers of sparks as it burned white and gold in the sunshine. Onto the blaze they forked heaps of dried grass, the mowings of the back lawn, and the grass damped the blaze and produced clouds of black smoke. She saw them step back from the smoke and lean on their forks. One man turned and, shielding his eyes from the sun, gazed up the slope to where she stood in her straw hat, holding her cup of tea. She held his gaze.
    Her own behavior puzzled her. She asked me what it meant. She made no gesture of any kind, merely stood there staring at the man. He took the handles of his wheelbarrow and started to push it up the slope, coming not straight in her direction but bythe path that led to the gate in the back fence. He was wearing the baggy yellow corduroys of the outside work parties, and the blue institution shirt with no collar. The cuffs were unbuttoned and they flapped at his wrists. He paused and pushed a strand of hair off his forehead and wiped the sweat away with a red-and-white-spotted bandanna that was certainly familiar to her, for Edgar had one. Her eyes were still on him and he knew it. She began to fan herself gently with her hat. Then, annoyed, she turned and went in.
    I did not tell her that as a function of her relationship with Edgar not only had she begun to identify with the patients, she had eroticized them. She had eroticized the patient body.
    Edgar spent all that week working in the chaplain’s garden. Then on the Monday he was back on the conservatory. Stella knew he was out there, she could hear him working. She waited until Max had left for the hospital and Charlie had gone off on his bike. She had decided that when she met him she would be cool. They would behave toward each other in a manner appropriate to their respective situations. She was sure he would see that this was the proper course. She crossed the yard and went into the vegetable garden. He was there, and her heart sang at the sight of him.
    With Stella it was always the heart, the language of the heart.
    He was standing at his workbench, an old potting table where he did his carpentry, and he had his back to her; and though he must have heard her on the path he didn’t turn until she had almost reached him. Then he swung around. They stood face to face. She was trembling. He touched her cheek, smiling slightly at her agitation.
    “Thank God.”
    She

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