Asylum by Patrick Mcgrath

Author:Patrick Mcgrath [Mcgrath, Patrick]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Psychological, Literary
ISBN: 9780307764447
Google: NyrdLgaF0gUC
Amazon: B004GTLM8U
Publisher: Vintage
Published: 2011-01-04T16:00:00+00:00

With this dramatic development Stella swings back into my field of vision, she comes into focus once more, and the account is again grounded in my own observations. She says she was grateful they weren’t rough with her. Actually they were more surprised than anything else, I think because it hadn’t occurred to any of them that she would so clumsily blunder into their clutches. They didn’t attempt to question her there and then, once they’d established that she didn’t know where Edgar was.

The events of the next hours have an unreal, nightmare quality for her now. She remembers a room in a police station and a woman in uniform giving her a cup of tea. An hour or so later Max arrived. He, like the police, had clearly decided that the best approach was the gentle one: Stella the victim, seduced and abandoned, a pitiful woman led astray by a cunning man who had manipulated and entrapped her then cast her aside. When he came into the room she tried to be calm and cool but she hadn’t the resources, and even before he could open his mouth she found herself in his arms and clutching him tightly. She had been so weak and alone and desperate these last days. He stroked her head and she didn’t care that he stroked her like a doctor, like a psychiatrist, because that was what she needed then. It wasn’t until later that the doctor receded and the husband advanced, and a new nightmare began.

She allowed herself to go limp. She became passive and pliant, like a child or a sick person. They talked to her gently, and she answered their questions. She saw them frowning, murmuring to one another in low tones, and she didn’t even try to understand what was going on, she made no attempt to take any active part in it at all. All she wanted now was to be looked after.

That night she slept in a cell in the police station. They were apologetic but she didn’t care. Sleep was sleep and they’d promised her a pill. The room was bare and the sheets were clean. She swallowed her pill and closed her eyes, her mind empty of thought, clear of all feeling, and slept a long, deep sleep and the only dream she could remember in the morning involved the conservatory in the vegetable garden, but she couldn’t remember anything more than that.

The sense of numbness gradually wore off. The next day she had to submit to a lengthy interview with a senior policeman, who was polite, she said, in a brisk sort of way. Her eyes wandered about his office. The walls were a shiny green to shoulder height, cream above. There were two large, dusty arched windows, several gray metal filing cabinets, a wall map with pins in it, and a large clock over the door. He asked her where she had lived with Edgar Stark, what they had done, the people they’d seen.

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