Poppet

Zelda’s Locker

ONE OF BEECHWAY’S long-term residents was discharged yesterday – and ordinarily that change in dynamic would have made the remaining patients unsettled. But today, if anything, the opposite seems to happen. In fact the unit seems far calmer than it has for months. There are no alarms going off, no crises, no ambulances, no threats or tears or episodes of incontinence. The unit drifts in a dreamless state of tranquillity.

AJ’s office is so different in the daylight. He can’t understand why he hadn’t wanted to stay here the other night. What’s to be nervous of? Darkness brings fear – the most basic human instinct. Was it the same fear that conjured the track in Melanie’s garden last night? No – the track was there. They didn’t imagine it. It’s just that the atmosphere in the unit – all the crazy ideas and rumours – has made his and Mel’s imaginations work overtime.

He tries to find the maintenance records for when Moses spooned out his eye, but Melanie is right: they’ve either been destroyed or buried so deep in the great bureaucratic engine that they won’t be found again. Some of the paperwork associated with Zelda’s death is in his office – so he turns his attention to that. There are forms to be filled in, letters to be written, her belongings to be dealt with, and when her body is released by the coroner the unit is going to have to make a show of involvement with funeral arrangements. Probably Melanie will attend the service, out of respect. AJ could accompany her, but it would be hypocritical – he couldn’t stand Zelda. He can’t go to her funeral and act sad for her family.

There’s a folder on his desk containing all Zelda’s rehabilitation papers. The in-house social workers have left it here with a note: Found this in Zelda’s therapy centre locker. Does it need to go to the inquiry team? Family? If not please destroy – no further use. He leafs idly through it: endless tasks she’s been set, including theoretical CVs for theoretical jobs. Lists of things she thinks she has to offer the world (she has written: attractive, a peoples person, always ready to lissen). Recipes she’s copied from the Web, artwork, drafts of complaint letters detailing marauding patients, staff and demons raping her every night. One is to Barack Obama. AJ shakes his head. He imagines the White House having a dedicated team to deal with the crank mail – men in suits and Brooks College girls, like in The West Wing.

AJ is about to drop the lot into the bin when something about one of Zelda’s paintings makes him stop. He sits back in the chair with the folder on his lap and unfolds the huge picture on the desk. In his experience, artwork produced by the mentally ill is either highly intricate – obsessively so (people constructing the London skyline inside a perfume bottle sort of thing) – or numbingly childlike.

Zelda’s work falls into the second category. It’s the kind of thing a year-four primary-school student would be proud of. There are crudely drawn horses ridden by something that is possibly meant to be Heathcliff thundering across the moors, but could be Dracula too. What’s drawn AJ’s eye is something in the top corner. It appears to be a second figure, watching the scene from a distant mountain. It is mostly human in form, except for the face, which is eerily smooth and featureless. It is wearing a white dress. It has hair that bushes out to the sides, and the arms are striped orange and brown. In both hands it’s clutching what appear to be small puppets.

AJ drops the paper hurriedly. He stands up quickly and walks two or three paces up and down the office, wiping his hands, shooting uneasy glances at the drawing. Eventually he pulls the reading lamp across the desk and studies it more carefully. Now he sees that Heathcliff resembles Dracula because his tongue has been drawn bright red and swollen in his mouth. His arms are bleeding. AJ drags his eyes back to the gnome-like figure on the horizon. Squatting? Or simply small? Like a dwarf. Anyone who has ever described The Maude has said it has a smooth, almost featureless face.

He’s angry with it all. Just as his mood was getting good, just as he was hoping to stop thinking about The Maude, this has to come along.