The institutionalised tr.., p.128
The Institutionalised Trilogy, page 128
But it was that vinyl beachball analogy that returned again and again to haunt him, in his dreams and moments of weakness. Was that why for lessons the school knickers worn beneath the gymslip he had specified had to be lined with the finest, most satiny latex rubber imaginable, even though hidden from view, even though the exterior had been specified to approximate as closely as possible the chaste, passion-killing bloomer design popularised in the strict, discipline-driven private boarding schools of the 1930s - 1950s? Was that rationale behind his selection of high-waisted glossy acetate pants - more likely typifying many a girl’s grandmother, though here fitted as close as a second skin and of a delicacy to rival the silkiest of girl-flesh - for wear beneath the uniform defined for their workroom toil? He didn’t know, he couldn’t know - how could he? These decisions hadn’t been his - not entirely - he took his instruction from God. If that unspeakable region between a girl’s legs, while correctly covered, was nevertheless delineated by puckered fabric apparently painted-on and further pulled taut by a girl’s foundation-wear, then the obscenity of that disclosure was surely God’s will. His own arousal - being merely a man and notwithstanding his position - was clearly then intended by God in order both to heighten the young trollop’s mortification and shame and ensure he dealt with her with no undue leniency. Thus ever had it been ordained!
Smiling again at the quietly sitting nun he turned to leave. He had an appointment in the chapel next, a confession to take. For an instant the irony troubled him, of taking a confession rather than perhaps being on the other side of the confessional - especially given the hypocrisy of his own actions; and especially given the nature of the interest that this Ms Bartlett had expressed in the girl he would be hearing. And this particular girl, his own favourite little confection, might well prove dangerous; somewhat awkward enquiries were being made as to her whereabouts, enquiries that had already resulted in the good name of the charity he partly headed being thrown up. Young Meredith Hewson; he would be loathe to release her, and she knew too much. But Julia Soames’ scheme, though at first far-fetched, was, he had now been convinced, quite plausible. The girl would still remain effectively under his and the charity’s control, still be under lock and key - but legitimately - and by the time the redoubtable Ms Soames and her tame psychiatrist got through with her, even if she did get the chance to testify in some manner her testimony would hold no weight. Not with the full weight of the mental health act thrown at her. Then after a little convalescence in a suitably secure hospital she could be spirited back here.
The Confessional
It was gone lunchtime by the time he had everything set up in the chapel. It was a somewhat extravagant building for its purpose, appointed almost like a full-scale church albeit minus the steeple - though there was a low square bell tower adjoining - and was complete with small side-chapels.
“Here, let me straighten your tie.” Smiling through time-parched lips and yellowed graveyard-subsided teeth, the elderly church official reached out to straighten the striped school-tie ringing the slender neck of the young tawny-haired confection standing coquettishly simpering before him. Desperately struggling not to suck her thumb in consternation and despite knowing her institution-specified neckwear to have already been obsessively arranged with almost inhuman attention to detail by her own hand, the nervous teenager nevertheless dropped her hands to her sides without argument - as she knew was the least required of a girl in her position. As was implicitly demanded by word of the regulations guiding this church-run institution she did her utmost to disguise her uncharitable revulsion as hands, cruelly knurled with arthritic nodules, glided under her gymslip’s bib-like bodice and over the crisp white blouse beneath, cupping young dumpling breasts and fumbling unreassuringly about her person. Smiling with satisfaction that his afternoon charge’s countenance now more closely approximated his ideal of a penitent - at least in so much as the chastened girl’s apple-dimpled cheeks had now taken on a suitably autumnal russet hue - the reverent father now withdrew a few paces. As if in silent-witnessed accusation, the slanting multi-hued India-summer sunlight filtering down through the stained-glass Norman-arched windows rebounded cleanly off the centuries-worn Cotswold flagstones to separate the two protagonists, spotlighting his dog collar death’s-head grin and glancing obliquely off her mortified hood-lidded downcast eyes.
For a single breathless moment nothing moved, save for the tears of an uncommonly modest and shy teenager, the silvery droplets drifting downward, deforming and quivering as if in slow motion through gravity-defying clouds of mid-air-suspended floating motes of ancient cathedral dust. Then his arm moved, sweeping through the air in a broad arch, his priest’s cassock riding up to reveal corpse-like bony, skeletal wrists and forearms, the two bones making up the latter clearly defined beneath their dire covering of age-eroded yellowing paper flesh. She deliberately muted her cry through clenched teeth, the good Reverend Father’s cane, having cut deep into her flesh in the tender region that lay between the abbreviated hem of her gymslip’s razor-sharp pleated skirt at mid-thigh and the backs of her well-fleshed dimpled knees, produced an agony of ironically demonic proportions. With his other arm, his more wizened, the priest simultaneously indicated the vacant confession booth with a counterbalancing swoop of invitation.
“This way” he beamed. His ecumenical zeal was written all over his time-corrupted face, his ugly age-wrinkled brow streaked now by snail-trails of perspiration and bejewelled with pearlescent beads of overheated sweat that overhung precariously his ruddy fattened jowls. “And you’d best not be found demurring in your confession, if I am to hear it.” An excitedly-quivering twig-like digit, nicotine-discoloured in a manner most un-priestly, indicated the so-called ‘Penitent’s Kneeling Block’.
The latter, a low stone-surrounded figure-contoured hump of padded leather - festooned with stirrups, straps and other restraints - resided deep within the dark shadows of the nearby side-chapel, the furnishing resting well back from the carved-oak, silk-curtained privacy of the confession booth itself - one of four in actuality, set at forty-five degrees to the nave so as to form the arms of the cross of Saint Andrew. Each such ‘Penitent Block’ was silhouetted against a wall-mounted timbre-framed rack bolted to the stone wall and hung to brimming with the sort of implement historically shown sufficient to persuade even the most uncertain to relinquish and relent on their doubt. The latter resource, perhaps more infernal than cleansing, could more often than not be relied upon to provide absolution... even if the courtesy of the confessional had failed.
Absolution in this case of course, would hinge on the girl’s own grasp of quite why her nipples should now be out on stalks, squeezed tightly like brass thimbles through the apertures allowed for in the design of her otherwise restrictive underwear and forcing outward through the stiffened polyester-cotton of her striped school blouse - to the point at which the nylon-lined frontage of her gymslip was now notably elevated above her bustline.
Yes, there was much here for the girl to explain. But then again: there was also much time to fill - certainly sufficient time for the confessional - for the girl to give her explanation... Just as there was more than sufficient time for God Himself to intervene, to reach out to the girl through his word - even if His Word was by way of the rod and the cane and the strap; with himself, the father, as proxy, of course. At that latter thought - and at the sight of the departing young lass’s swaying skirt-fringed hips and buttocks - a new spring came into his, usually jaded, shuffling sloth-like step. This old man, for one, could once again feel God’s spirit, God’s intention, pumping through his flaccid blood vessels, making turgid his veins, his arteries and... yes... his manhood! He was alive! Alive!!!
Whatever she said he’d have her over that penitent block, her knees spread obscenely apart. He’d cane her until she barely knew where she was; he had to if he was to excise those mischievous, tempting spirits residing in her. Then he’d fill her with God’s own given spirit by way of that other rod that through His grace he had been gifted with this day. He’d release her, make her tug up those knickers of hers good and snug right away so that the seed might trickle and pool and not be wasted, that it might settle there as she sat at her lessons as a constant reminder for the rest of the day of the mortification of both her flesh and spirit. The rest he’d wipe off on her lips and chin or in her hair, perhaps let a little dribble down the front of her gymslip for others to see.
Sparrows In The Window - Or Bats In The Belfry?
The young girl’s heart missed a beat; above her head the sparrow in the window cavorted as it always did, fluttering to and fro, its beak opening and closing in silent chirruping. Its antics were fascinating, the one thing that broke the monotonous predictability of the institutional routine. Over the weeks since the immature bird’s first miraculous arrival, the girl had learnt to anticipate her little companion’s appearance, silhouetted against the bright square backdrop of greyish daylight, flittering in and out of the framework of prison-window bars just two or three sheets of toughened glass away but conceptually a thousand miles removed from her own situation. Set deliberately too high in the wall to be seen out of in the usual way, the window did at least intermittently present this view.
This day - like so many that had passed before - she had been sitting forlornly on the edge of the hospital bed, staring up at the tiny cell-like window, when her miniscule friend had appeared. Given the choice she preferred the spongy rubber of the mattress to the plastic seat of the school-pattern desk that constituted the cramped room’s only other furnishing; its resilience eased the bottom-numbing discomfort caused by the thick towelling bunching beneath the elastic grip of the plastic pants they made her wear. As always, her misery and despondency quickly turned to grinning glee with the first flickering, feather-trailing shadow. It was fair to say that this moment she waited for with progressively greater urgency day on day; it had gradually taken on a greater and greater importance over the weeks, it pulled her through, it was something she could focus on when the doctor’s comments and insights began to burrow too deeply beneath her skin. Not that she was always alone here; there were days when the doctor preferred to sit with her, keeping her company here in this claustrophobically isolated cocoon of a room. There were other times when she would be ushered out into the doctor’s consultation room for her therapy sessions, there to spend who knows how long seated on the hard wooden chair facing the doctor’s desk, obliged to sit bolt upright throughout with her hands on her head like a naughty child. But still in her pyjamas - those hated, baggy and now quite malodorous green-stripped monstrosities never came off. This particular day was to be one of those once rare but increasingly more frequent occasions when the doctor would keep her company in her little room.
Lavinia understood this would be more likely to be the case from now on; she had overheard the doctor practically telling someone as much on the phone.
The sound-proofing outer door to her cell had been left ajar at the time and she clearly heard the doctor say how she “intended to provide the patient with in situ psychoanalytical sessions more often in future” as she now considered the consultation room environment to be “likely to overexcite the patient” and to be “too distracting” and to provide “far too much by way of mental stimulation”. Somehow she had known immediately that the ‘patient’ being discussed was herself and she had cried long and hard as a result. Of course Lavinia could only assume it was a telephone call; the doctor had a particularly strident conversational voice and it was perfectly feasible that another party had been present and was just particularly softly spoken.
It often suited the doctor’s purpose to leave open the outer door to the ‘seclusion room’ if present at her desk for any length of time - the woman enjoyed the feeling of being able to directly observe her pretty teenaged patient where she was securely confined behind steel bars. After all; she knew the time, her patient didn’t. Poor Lavinia didn’t even know the season, let alone what day of the week it was - not any more. There was something the woman found thrilling about that, about glancing down at her watch and then up at her captive through the narrow wall of bars, watching the girl at her cramped school desk - staring dumbly at the blank white wall ahead or with head down and working busily at some stupefyingly tedious imposition she had set. The thought might strike her how at that selfsame moment other young women of Lavinia’s age would be setting out for the Saturday night crush of the pubs and clubs or settling down in the arms of a boyfriend for a cosy night-in - the latest romcom slapped in the DVD player and the wine waiting in the glass - or indeed giggling away with friends at lunch in the office canteen or University refectory. Then there was the knowledge of how the simple act of leaving that outer door ajar increased the patient’s sense of being under constant supervision and deprived of privacy - she thought it good that her patient should sometimes be aware of others coming and going in freedom while she was effectively caged and closely confined. Along with the constant stream of written impositions she set the girl she knew the latter enhanced that feeling of being under control that she wished the girl to develop.
But whereas she might at such times wish her patient to be aware of being under scrutiny or of others arriving and departing her office she would not allow her patient to as much as glance over her shoulder - at such times invariably the doctor would either set some long-winded written task, instruct the girl to sit at her desk facing the wall or, failing that, would ensure Lavinia was confined to bed in her usual wrist, ankle and waist restraints. Of these three precautions Lavinia knew to her cost the doctor preferred the former two - lacking recourse to restraint, other than the fairly slack stainless-steel chains that restrained her wrists and hands to the region immediately encompassing the desktop, compliance was left to the responsibility of the patient herself and so was considered far superior in instilling discipline.
It was difficult not to glance back over a shoulder or twist around - indeed it went against human nature itself. But Lavinia’s sense of curiosity had been well and truly quelled by this time. Somehow the doctor never seemed to miss a thing - a cursory glance back over a shoulder, perhaps startled by the scrape of a chair or the clearing of a throat, would be all it would take. Lavinia knew there would come a rattling of the key in the lock and the iron-squeak of the hinged bars opening inward. Her heart would solidify in stone and her hands would shake like branches in a sudden forest squall at the first creak of bamboo being bent and flexed in preparation behind her or the threatening slap of a well-oiled strap against leather-skirted thigh. It was all too easy to earn a dozen or more across her bare bottom - that is why when told to face the wall, Lavinia faced the wall.
Not that there was much to be seen out in the doctor’s office in any case - the room was generally kept locked other than for patient consultation interviews and psychological assessment and was sparsely functional in the extreme. There was, she thought, a window, behind the doctor’s desk, but she couldn’t be certain - thick drapes hung from ceiling to floor and were always drawn across whenever she was allowed out there. In fact, out there in the office her isolation was only a little less complete than when locked away in this little whitewashed nightmare of loneliness, yet it offered some respite at least from the silent monotony of her world. Those excursions past the cell-room bars and out into the interview room, though measured in feet and inches, were something she had grown to savour, to hang on to, however nefarious the doctor’s intent really was - now they would be fewer and farther between, perhaps cease altogether.
At any rate, at least for the moment she was not alone - a nurse might call by or Matron herself might visit, but neither would speak, and she was forbidden to speak to them. But only the doctor constituted true company; only the doctor would listen to her, only the doctor would as much as acknowledge her as a sentient being, as something more than a child’s doll to be dressed and undressed, fed and toileted without comment. And right now the doctor sat alongside her, perched on the edge of the bed, the woman’s arm draped comfortingly around her shoulders.
The procedure would still be the same as out in the office though; that was the one thing that never varied, other than in the detail. She would be questioned, interrogated some would say - and with good reason - in the name of psychoanalytical psychotherapy. Some questions would sound unfamiliar or - if an otherwise familiar query - would be phrased in a convoluted, difficult to understanding and confusing manner - but the ground dug over would be the same. Other queries would be so over-familiar as to be repeated several times in any one session, until she felt the need to scream simply from the sound of the doctor’s softly-feminine condescending tone. Throughout the doctor would maintain the same measured cadence and same lulling sing-song tone, sounding out the syllables - syll-ab-les - of each word slowly and deliberately. She would do so with her individual words spaced out in synchronism with a musician’s metronome which she would bring with her into Lavinia’s little prison, setting it up on the floor of the cell where she knew it could catch Lavinia’s eye. If the interview took place in her office, then she would position the device on the front of her desk between herself and her patient, who of course was forbidden to look away. Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock. “Have ‘tick’ you ‘tock’ ev-er ‘tick ’ con-sid-er-ed ‘tock’ your ‘tick’ self ‘tock’ men-tal-ly ‘tick’ ill ‘tock’ or ‘tick’ psy-cho-log-i-ca-lly ‘tock’ dis-turbed?” It could be quite hypnotic
