The Queen of England — II
True Love Began with Three Rusty Nails
I have read of many people claiming they were some famous person. Grandiose delusions are certainly not an uncommon occurence amongst the psychologically ill. You can find at least one Jesus at any psychiatric hopsital, all to varying degrees of commitment. A Napoleon here and there. Your choice of Cleopatras. A plethora of Joan of Arcs. Some Julius Caesars and George Washingtons. But this was the first Queen Elizabeth I had ever heard about. And it was quite surreal to think that she was just eight inches away on the other side of a cinder block wall.
It hadn't been long since the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. Four years ago, precisely, in 1952, the same year Judge Marple died of a coronary while mowing the lawn, according to his widow. I wondered what this Elizabeth thought of Queen Elizabeth II, her namesake. If she even knew about her at all. If perhaps she had read of it in the newspapers or magazines. I had no compass to her age. Only that she had arrived in February, naked, amidst a cold rain.
As I readied the room next to hers, I wondered about the man she had killed, whose name I learned was Burt Gardner. I wondered if she had any sort of remorse, despite the monster that he was. Much can be learned from how one reacts to a traumatizing stimuli. I wondered if she had ever killed before. Ever hunted to eat or ravaged small animals. All these were poignant questions I'd keep in my pocket for the appropriate time. I had become an investigator. Her unofficial inquiry. I wondered if she could be prosecuted if sanity was established. I wondered of so much.
The hospital, I learned, kept the ordeal quiet. Deemed it a grave mishap and called Mr. Gardner a misfortunate soul, which was far too generous and genial. They claimed, for public relation's sake, that he was killed by someone on the criminally insane men's ward. Overpowered and bludgeoned to death. They didn't divulge that he was a rapist, and his family was quite brutal in their response, threatening to sue the hospital and the state for the murder of this "good man." Dr. Cooperrider, swift as a sparrow, then sent a personal note to Burt's wife that he had it on good authority that Mr. Gardner was a rapist and fathered numerous bastard children with inmates of every race, age and distinction. They never heard another peep from the family, and no lawsuit was ever filed.
1952, the year Queen Elizabeth II was coronated and Judge Marple died, was a terrible year at the hospital I found in my study. Dr. Cooperrider's predecessor invited Dr. Walter Freeman to lobotomize hundreds of patients in what was referred to as "Operation Icepick." It was a sort of gruesome revival. A mass lobotomization craze swept across the country post WWII through present day, and Dr. Freeman, who lobotomized more patients than anyone, described it as little more dangerous than a tooth extraction.
As of 1956, he is still lobotomizing patients, but no longer at this hopsital. I have no stomach for such barbarism and the fact that the procedure began on chimps with violent tendencies at such a prestigious university as Yale, made me loose faith in academia. It shook my confidence in medical science as much as radiation therapy and leaching. As much as the Tuskegee Syphlis Study. They were all grave horrors committed in the name of science.
However, Dr. Cooperrider's ardent assurances that the practice is no longer performed at TALA, helped to assuage my concern that I might have choosen the wrong field of study and that I should have become a lawyer. I had initially wanted to be a lawyer before a sudden and quite inexplicable change of heart led me to the study of psychology.
As for my room, which had the cold damp feel of a cell, I didn't ask for too many comforts. Just a bed, pillow, blanket, a writing desk and an assortment of pencils and pens. I wondered if I might catch a glimpse of her through the hole. If so, I intended to sketch a picture of her. I sketched pictures of what I thought she looked like. I wondered if she was a grotesque sort of figure. A behemoth. If she was missing teeth and disfigured. I was excited as much as I was nervous. I was a boy at a carnival peeking into the fat lady's tent.
However, Dr. Cooperrider's ardent assurances that the practice is no longer performed at TALA, helped to assuage my concern that I might have choosen the wrong field of study and that I should have become a lawyer. I had initially wanted to be a lawyer before a sudden and quite inexplicable change of heart led me to the study of psychology.
As for my room, which had the cold damp feel of a cell, I didn't ask for too many comforts. Just a bed, pillow, blanket, a writing desk and an assortment of pencils and pens. I wondered if I might catch a glimpse of her through the hole. If so, I intended to sketch a picture of her. I sketched pictures of what I thought she looked like. I wondered if she was a grotesque sort of figure. A behemoth. If she was missing teeth and disfigured. I was excited as much as I was nervous. I was a boy at a carnival peeking into the fat lady's tent.
Yet, essentially becoming a patient at the hospital, despite my liberties being intact, was unnerving. Being behind a door that could lock. But the possibility of solving this enigma that she had become, being the one to finally break the code and gain her trust, was equally quite enthralling.
The hole was covered by a sheet of metal no bigger than a legal envelope which slid to the side on a rudimentary track. I wondered if someone had used it for nefarious purposes, and as to how it was created and by whom. It was only about three feet or so off the ground and I had to sit at it to be eye-level. I sat at it for several hours, staring, thinking of what I would say. What was there to say? As much thought as I had given to her, I had not given any at all to what I would say. But then I slid it open and it was as though a microphone was on and a red light flashed that I was on air. I felt the emormity of a man tasked to address the whole world in all of one person. My captive audience.
The hole was covered by a sheet of metal no bigger than a legal envelope which slid to the side on a rudimentary track. I wondered if someone had used it for nefarious purposes, and as to how it was created and by whom. It was only about three feet or so off the ground and I had to sit at it to be eye-level. I sat at it for several hours, staring, thinking of what I would say. What was there to say? As much thought as I had given to her, I had not given any at all to what I would say. But then I slid it open and it was as though a microphone was on and a red light flashed that I was on air. I felt the emormity of a man tasked to address the whole world in all of one person. My captive audience.
"True love started with three rusty nails," I said plainly and clearly. I hoped she was religious and what I said might resonate. The hole was so sad and despairing. I couldn't help but to think of it as some barren woman's vagina. Or the vagina of a woman who had given birth to stillborn children and died as a result of grief. A crumbling gray and cold vulva. I don't know why I thought of it that way. Freud would have some thoughts, surely. But it looked sad and desolate. A passage to someplace no one wanted to be. Like the grayfish anatomy drawings I recall from medical school and my mate questioning how could they make something so beautiful as a woman's vagina look so dreadful. I had no answer but to concur. He laughed at me once more and that memory vanished.
I had seen that saying on a letterboard sign on the lawn of a Methodist church across from the widow Marples — True love started with three rusty nails. I concur. But Elizabeth didn't say anything in response, so I wondered if she was sleeping. I couldn't hear her stirring. I couldn't hear anything from that dark cold hole but the swoosh of a draft that came out of it. There was no light, just a blood-red glow, and it felt as though there was no hope at all. Still, I persisted. And perhaps because of her silence, the lack of an obvious critic, I was emboldened.
I sat there by the hole in the wall and recited the Gettysburg Address which I had memorized in the third grade to the astonishment of my teacher. I said it slow and deliberate and then I said it fast over and over. But no matter how I said it, there was nothing but the flow of cold pleasant air from the open door that returned to me, indifferent of my words.
For a week I continued. I read text books. Comics. The newspaper. It served briefly as a confessional. The air was my mute priest. Still nothing. Staff assured me that Elizabeth was eating her food and showering as normal. She was in bed by 8pm and up by 5am like clockwork. She spent much of her time writing and exercising, I learned, though I never heard her at all. Not so much as a cough or a sneeze.
For a week I continued. I read text books. Comics. The newspaper. It served briefly as a confessional. The air was my mute priest. Still nothing. Staff assured me that Elizabeth was eating her food and showering as normal. She was in bed by 8pm and up by 5am like clockwork. She spent much of her time writing and exercising, I learned, though I never heard her at all. Not so much as a cough or a sneeze.
It was three weeks later that I sat at the door and thought to myself I had nothing to lose. Then I recalled what Abel had said of Sir Walter Raleigh. That she had an unusual fascination with him. I wished I had thought to find a book to read on the subject, but I lacked the apparent foresight, so I would have to wing it. Though I recognized the danger in feeding a patient's delusion, I was getting nowhere otherwise.
"Elizabeth," I whispered. "Elizabeth! It is me. Walter."
How ridiculous I felt uttering those words. But the sound of her feet shuffling across the floor was immediate and killed my sense of hopelesssness. She knocked something over on her way to the hole. And I heard her. At the hole. The usual red tint of what lay at the end of that short tunnel was disturbed and blackened by her face. Her mouth. And then I could see her eye. Faintly. Looking at me. No air flowed through and the sound was interrupted by her presence. So I pressed my eye to the block and looked back upon her. It was peculiar, to say the least. How our eyes met. Eight inches apart from each other.
I thought for a moment that I should pay heed to caution. I should be careful. There was always the chance that she might poke me with something and I would become a cyclops, forever doomed to wear a patch like a pirate or the villian from a sci-fi movie. But as I stared into the deep green of her iris, I have never felt a more sense of calm. It was a state that I didn't know to exist. The only thing I could compare it to was looking at the ocean for the first time. I could have contentedly remained there for hours. I felt in her eye a deep sense of familiarity and tranquility which I couldn't explain. How unusual it is to stare at someone like that, I realized. To stare without saying a word at all. Humans all too often look away.
"Walter. Have you come for me?" she whispered. Her mouth in the hole, displacing her eye. I caught a glimpse of her lips. They were the color of an apple skin I remember. The perfect shaving of which lying in my memory on my grandmother's butcher block, which was the color of her chin.
"I have," I replied hesitantly. "I have come for you."
The thought of how ridiculous I might sound was drowned by my desire to hear her speak more. To learn more of her. Not for Dr. Cooperrider, but for myself. Greedily, for myself. To gain her trust. To weasel my way into her psyche and to extract reality from her fragile and broken mind and hopefully, curry favor. Gain a new audience the likes of which I have never known. Her voice was pleasant. Sweet in tone. The way birds are pleasant chattering in a tree. I was suddenly an old man in his rocking chair, listening to her sing to me. Songs I've never heard before.
What were my next words. I feared she might ask me something so to verify who I was. Some absurd fact of Sir Walter Raleigh that I couldn't possibly know. I knew that he was likely wrongly convicted of a plot against James I, Elizabeth's effeminate successor in 1603 and condemned to death. The execution was stayed by James I and Raleigh lived in the Tower of London as a political prisoner until 1616 when he was pardoned to pursue El Dorado, the legendary city of gold fabeled to exist in South America. But on that expedition, one of his compatriots ransacked a Spanish outpost resulting in some deaths and hostility with the Spanish, with whom the British had a peace treaty at the time.
One of those deaths was that of Walter's own son. The Spanish consulate demanded that King James I reinstate Sir Walter Raleigh's death sentence for the previous plot against James I, who had little choice in the matter wishing to avoid further hostilities with the Spanish. It was after all, a violation of the terms of Raleigh's pardon, to engage in conflict with the Spanish. And though it was not his doing, Sir Walter Raleigh was executed in 1618. Beheaded. His wife, Elizabeth Thockmorton, kept his head in a velvet bag for 29 years until her own death.
I don't know how I knew any of this. Dare I say I extracted it from the green of Elizabeth's eye? I hadn't studied British history in college and only touched on it in high school. I've never read any books on the matter. Nor had I seen any movies. But there I was, with a headful of the life of someone I was pretending to be as though I had been them. Inexplicably, I craved a pipe that I'd never smoked. "Comes meus fuit in illo miserrimo tempore," I muttered to myself. Latin for, "It was my companion at that most miserable time."
"The justice of England has never been so degraded and injured as by the condemnation of the honourable Sir Walter Raleigh," she whispered through the hole. "The judge said that about you."
"Yet, here we are. In another life. In another world. We must move on."
"Must we?" she countered.
"We must."
"A matter of fact. But we can go back."
"How so, madame?"
"Oh, pease dispense of all formality and call me Elizabeth. I long to hear you call me by my name, dear."
"Elizabeth," I said. It did, in fact, roll sweetly off the tongue.
"Give me your hand," she begged.
I didn't know that my arm would fit through the hole, but it passed through as though it were meant to pass. As though that hole was cast from a molding of my arm. And as my hand emerged into her room, a new world, she took it in hers and then she wept. I could hear her weeping before I felt her tears.
It is an uneasy feeling pushing your hand through a hole uncertain of the person on the other side of the wall. Trusting them with it. Someone that is insane, no less. Who has killed a man with her teeth. I realized in that moment that I had never been truly vulnerable with anyone. I realized that I had never been in love. I realized so much. My hand had never been my ambassador, but that it was now.
Her hand was soft and delicate like a warm satin glove. She placed her face in my palm and sighed. I left it there for hours and that is what we did. Nothing more. There were various states of emotions coursing through her heart I could feel, and I was the conductor. My hand was the conductor. She cried upon it as though it were a grave of a loved one or a baby she bore. She kissed it as though to greet or bid it farewell. And she softly ran her fingers upon my palm as though to solocit a fortune more conducive to her happiness than what fate had rendered us. I believe this woman, this stranger, genuinely loved me. And though it was likely madness, I wondered what love worth having is not madness.
I couldn't see her, but I could tell she was very undeserving of the monstrous sketches I had done of her and the guilt for composing them burdened me. Those I kept in my spiral pad for I was ashamed of what I thought of her, rather, what I assumed of her. That she was some ogrish beast. Not some delicate being who was simply lost in a mad world. I hadn't seen anything but her eye and her lips, but my opinion changed of her. From one of eggshells, thorns, toadstools, sharp jagged glass, warts, frogs, broken sticks, flies, abcesses, and mud to beautiful things. Flowers, doily tablecloths, dandelions, butterflies, bell jars, water, clouds, lace and rabbit ears. The soft purr of a distant airplane engine or a kitten on a pillow by one's ear. The cool ripple of gentle water. My mind shifted and when she relinquished my hand with apologies for holding it so long, I wasn't the same person I was before. My life was irrevocably altered by so little. And yet, I hadn't truly seen her. Only a piece of her.
"Elizabeth," I whispered. "Elizabeth! It is me. Walter."
How ridiculous I felt uttering those words. But the sound of her feet shuffling across the floor was immediate and killed my sense of hopelesssness. She knocked something over on her way to the hole. And I heard her. At the hole. The usual red tint of what lay at the end of that short tunnel was disturbed and blackened by her face. Her mouth. And then I could see her eye. Faintly. Looking at me. No air flowed through and the sound was interrupted by her presence. So I pressed my eye to the block and looked back upon her. It was peculiar, to say the least. How our eyes met. Eight inches apart from each other.
I thought for a moment that I should pay heed to caution. I should be careful. There was always the chance that she might poke me with something and I would become a cyclops, forever doomed to wear a patch like a pirate or the villian from a sci-fi movie. But as I stared into the deep green of her iris, I have never felt a more sense of calm. It was a state that I didn't know to exist. The only thing I could compare it to was looking at the ocean for the first time. I could have contentedly remained there for hours. I felt in her eye a deep sense of familiarity and tranquility which I couldn't explain. How unusual it is to stare at someone like that, I realized. To stare without saying a word at all. Humans all too often look away.
"Walter. Have you come for me?" she whispered. Her mouth in the hole, displacing her eye. I caught a glimpse of her lips. They were the color of an apple skin I remember. The perfect shaving of which lying in my memory on my grandmother's butcher block, which was the color of her chin.
"I have," I replied hesitantly. "I have come for you."
The thought of how ridiculous I might sound was drowned by my desire to hear her speak more. To learn more of her. Not for Dr. Cooperrider, but for myself. Greedily, for myself. To gain her trust. To weasel my way into her psyche and to extract reality from her fragile and broken mind and hopefully, curry favor. Gain a new audience the likes of which I have never known. Her voice was pleasant. Sweet in tone. The way birds are pleasant chattering in a tree. I was suddenly an old man in his rocking chair, listening to her sing to me. Songs I've never heard before.
What were my next words. I feared she might ask me something so to verify who I was. Some absurd fact of Sir Walter Raleigh that I couldn't possibly know. I knew that he was likely wrongly convicted of a plot against James I, Elizabeth's effeminate successor in 1603 and condemned to death. The execution was stayed by James I and Raleigh lived in the Tower of London as a political prisoner until 1616 when he was pardoned to pursue El Dorado, the legendary city of gold fabeled to exist in South America. But on that expedition, one of his compatriots ransacked a Spanish outpost resulting in some deaths and hostility with the Spanish, with whom the British had a peace treaty at the time.
One of those deaths was that of Walter's own son. The Spanish consulate demanded that King James I reinstate Sir Walter Raleigh's death sentence for the previous plot against James I, who had little choice in the matter wishing to avoid further hostilities with the Spanish. It was after all, a violation of the terms of Raleigh's pardon, to engage in conflict with the Spanish. And though it was not his doing, Sir Walter Raleigh was executed in 1618. Beheaded. His wife, Elizabeth Thockmorton, kept his head in a velvet bag for 29 years until her own death.
I don't know how I knew any of this. Dare I say I extracted it from the green of Elizabeth's eye? I hadn't studied British history in college and only touched on it in high school. I've never read any books on the matter. Nor had I seen any movies. But there I was, with a headful of the life of someone I was pretending to be as though I had been them. Inexplicably, I craved a pipe that I'd never smoked. "Comes meus fuit in illo miserrimo tempore," I muttered to myself. Latin for, "It was my companion at that most miserable time."
"The justice of England has never been so degraded and injured as by the condemnation of the honourable Sir Walter Raleigh," she whispered through the hole. "The judge said that about you."
"Yet, here we are. In another life. In another world. We must move on."
"Must we?" she countered.
"We must."
"A matter of fact. But we can go back."
"How so, madame?"
"Oh, pease dispense of all formality and call me Elizabeth. I long to hear you call me by my name, dear."
"Elizabeth," I said. It did, in fact, roll sweetly off the tongue.
"Give me your hand," she begged.
I didn't know that my arm would fit through the hole, but it passed through as though it were meant to pass. As though that hole was cast from a molding of my arm. And as my hand emerged into her room, a new world, she took it in hers and then she wept. I could hear her weeping before I felt her tears.
It is an uneasy feeling pushing your hand through a hole uncertain of the person on the other side of the wall. Trusting them with it. Someone that is insane, no less. Who has killed a man with her teeth. I realized in that moment that I had never been truly vulnerable with anyone. I realized that I had never been in love. I realized so much. My hand had never been my ambassador, but that it was now.
Her hand was soft and delicate like a warm satin glove. She placed her face in my palm and sighed. I left it there for hours and that is what we did. Nothing more. There were various states of emotions coursing through her heart I could feel, and I was the conductor. My hand was the conductor. She cried upon it as though it were a grave of a loved one or a baby she bore. She kissed it as though to greet or bid it farewell. And she softly ran her fingers upon my palm as though to solocit a fortune more conducive to her happiness than what fate had rendered us. I believe this woman, this stranger, genuinely loved me. And though it was likely madness, I wondered what love worth having is not madness.
I couldn't see her, but I could tell she was very undeserving of the monstrous sketches I had done of her and the guilt for composing them burdened me. Those I kept in my spiral pad for I was ashamed of what I thought of her, rather, what I assumed of her. That she was some ogrish beast. Not some delicate being who was simply lost in a mad world. I hadn't seen anything but her eye and her lips, but my opinion changed of her. From one of eggshells, thorns, toadstools, sharp jagged glass, warts, frogs, broken sticks, flies, abcesses, and mud to beautiful things. Flowers, doily tablecloths, dandelions, butterflies, bell jars, water, clouds, lace and rabbit ears. The soft purr of a distant airplane engine or a kitten on a pillow by one's ear. The cool ripple of gentle water. My mind shifted and when she relinquished my hand with apologies for holding it so long, I wasn't the same person I was before. My life was irrevocably altered by so little. And yet, I hadn't truly seen her. Only a piece of her.
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