Over the Darkened Landscape

The Cats of Bethlem



England, 1925



Wells stood just outside the entrance to the hospital. He was feeling nervous, and perhaps the most obvious sign of that anxiety was his constant reaching up to adjust his tie. With him were two burly interns, men who looked to be very close descendants of their Darwinian forebears. They had met him as he approached and one of the interns had indicated they would wait there until the rest of his party arrived.

Soon, two cars pulled up alongside the curb below. Out of the first stepped two more fierce-looking men, these in the employ of His Majesty’s government. The driver of the second car stepped out—also a large man, Wells noted—and then opened the rear door of the same car.

The former Prime Minister, J. Ramsey MacDonald, climbed out, looking very grim and serious. Both men from the first car approached him, taking up station on either side of the man who until last November had been leader of the country.

If the ex-Prime Minister looked grim, these men looked positively morbid. Perhaps it was the thought of what could go wrong on this visit, mused Wells, the thought of this great man even daring to consider entering such a facility.

MacDonald mounted the stairs, and a smile briefly crossed his countenance as he reached out a hand to Wells, before his face disappeared into the pits of a glower again.

“H.G. Good to see you again.”

Wells nodded his head and allowed himself a small smile as well. “And you, James. I trust everything is going well?”

“Ha!” exploded the great man. “Allow me to remind you of the basics of the parliamentary system some time, my friend, even if you don’t choose to take another run at a seat. I no longer run things, but we’re working on that. And in the meantime, nothing but trouble with that infernal Baldwin and his cohorts!”

Wells laughed politely, and then the two men turned to enter the hospital. The two beefy interns led the way, there to clear any unwanted madmen out of their path. The two security men walked slightly behind, on the watch for any danger, hopefully more imagined than real.

The doctor Wells had met once before was at the door. He couldn’t remember the man’s name, but supposed it didn’t matter since they were not here for pleasantries.

“Mr. MacDonald. Mr. Wells. Welcome to Bethlem. How do you gentlemen do today?” he asked.

The doctor was middle-aged, developing a fair paunch around the torso, and losing hair on top, which he tried to cover by combing hair from one side over to the other. Large white flakes hung from various places on his scalp. His nose was red, with a street map of many telltale broken capillaries.

Both men responded with how-do-you-do’s of their own, and then the doctor turned to lead them beyond the lobby and to the ward where their destination lay. As he walked he pulled a large key ring from his belt and fumbled about until he found what was obviously the right key. A few steps later they were at the first locked doors.

“How is Wain today, Doctor?” asked MacDonald.

The doctor cast a glance back before attempting to insert the key in the lock. Over the doctor’s shoulder Wells could see almost a dozen patients had gathered at the sound of the keys and were standing in a semi-circle around the doors, silently watching the latch.

“The same as usual, sir,” replied the doctor. He twisted the key that he had finally managed to get into the lock, and then pushed the doors open. Both interns rushed ahead to herd the patients back and away, barking “Get back!” in sharp tones that echoed up and down the halls, but none seemed to be interested in escaping; they all moved back silently, shuffling feet and hanging heads as they went.

The doctor closed the doors behind them and inserted the key once more, locking them in. Then he stepped around the patients and led the way again.

As they walked, Wells let his eyes rove about, keenly taking in details. There were several closed sets of doors to the left, and what appeared to be a common area not too far ahead. To their right as they walked was another set of double doors, from behind which came moans, screams and other wretched noises often popularly associated with the mad. He briefly paused to look in through the wire and glass, only to jump back startled as a patient flung himself against the door, causing it to shake. A trail of spittle was left on the glass as the madman slowly sank to the floor, dazed from the impact or perhaps drugged with something that was only now taking effect.

Behind him one of the two guards MacDonald had brought along chuckled, and the former Prime Minister said, “Good job, Wells. Nothing like giving them a reason to get all worked up.” Face flushed, Wells turned and rejoined the entourage, trying his best to ignore the sounds still emanating from behind those doors.

The doctor still walked in front, consulting with one of the large interns and waving off requests from other staff members that tried to approach the party. The quietly insane that inhabited this ward lined the walls, watching their unlikely, well-dressed visitors with a sort of unattached, vacant curiosity, as if they were of interest only because they were there, and that would all change as soon as they were out of sight. Movement and colour in an otherwise dormant, static world.

“Doesn’t say much for your hopes for a utopian society, now, does it, Wells?” commented MacDonald.

Wells looked at him with a sidelong glance, trying to judge if he was being put-upon or if the man was serious. Wells himself had run twice for the Labour Party; the second time MacDonald had formed a minority government, although Wells himself had been unsuccessful both times. As well, they had both been members of the Fabian Society, and yet he still had trouble figuring the man out. But for now he decided now that this was no joke, that MacDonald was indeed feeling very grim about their surroundings.

“I still think it is possible,” replied Wells. “We should start with sterilizing all these poor creatures and those who have a history of creating them. Stop the bloodlines before they take over the world.” He swept his arm about, taking in all of so-called modern psychiatry in one gesture. “And then, I think that sooner than you might think we will be seeing some wondrous scientific and humanitarian achievements that should make this a thing of the dark ages.” At this the doctor grunted, but made no further comment. Wells chose not to pursue it.

MacDonald snorted. “Sooner than I might think could still be a thousand years away, Wells. Too many stains, too many stains.” He picked up his pace, obviously through with the conversation for now. The rest of the party sped up in kind.

They stopped outside a room with a lock on the door. An intern moved to unlock it but the doctor held up his hand. “This is where Wain spends his days and nights, gentlemen. The lock is by his request, not ours. He wanted one that he could lock himself, but that is of course against hospital policy.

“So he has settled for this, although not happily, I can assure you. He will request that the door be locked again when you go in to visit, and I highly doubt that he will allow any more than the two of you in.” Both guards started forward at this, but MacDonald stopped them with a wave of the hand.

“How fast can your men unlock the door and get into the room?” he asked.

“Scant seconds, sir. But don’t worry. Wain is anything but dangerous.”

“Very well.” He turned to his two guards. “You can make do with standing out here and watching through the peephole.” Then he turned to the doctor. “We’re ready to go in.”

The intern opened the door and Wells stepped into the room, then MacDonald. It was small and functional. Perhaps ten feet by twelve, a cot with one lumpy pillow and a threadbare blanket along one wall and a toilet and sink in the opposite corner. A small table with a lamp sat at the head of the cot, a copy of the Times with a headline from one day last week taking up the rest of the table space.

In the middle of the small room there stood an easel with a canvas on it, a painting in progress. So far it had taken no form that Wells could discern; merely splotches of colour in a few seemingly random locations, as if the artist was still searching for the best way to attack his subject.

The artist himself stood beside the easel, eyes wide and darting to and fro. He clutched furiously at the brush in his right hand, his knuckles turning white.

“Louis,” Wells said softly.

Wain fixed him with a stare for a brief second, long enough for Wells to tell that he was with them in the here and now, but that it likely wouldn’t last long. “H.G.,” he gasped. “Mr. Prime Minister. So . . . very good to see you . . . again.”

Both men smiled, trying to be disarming and peaceful in their looks and their actions. MacDonald took two slow steps forward, towards the painting.

“What are you working on, Wain?” His tone was cautious, his stance relaxed. Wells knew that he didn’t feel that way, but his years in politics had trained him to project what his audience needed.

Wain glanced at the painting, eyes wide, as if he feared it would tell something about him, perhaps even betray him. Which, mused Wells, it was entirely possible that he did. “Just, just, just a piece, sir, a piece about, about . . .” He bit his lower lip, unable to carry on.

“Cats?” prodded Wells, softly.

The artist moaned loudly, and under the wretched sound Wells heard a scratching at the door. He turned his head halfway and out of the corner of his eye thought he saw something small at the foot of the door, but when he turned his head all the way it wasn’t there. The sound must have come from one of the nervous guards on the other side.

MacDonald cleared his throat. “You had wanted to talk to us, Wain?”

Wain paced around behind the canvas, appearing for one moment to be stalking something, the next to be hiding. “I . . . I wanted to thank you for, for getting me out. Out of the, the, the poor ward.” Wells wryly observed that MacDonald was standing even straighter.

“It’s nice,” continued Wain, gesturing around the room. “I mean, I mean, I know I’m still . . . crackers, still, still not well, but here I can paint, can, can . . . I like it better here.” He smiled at the relief of having made it this far.

“We were glad to be of service,” said Wells. The year before, in 1924, Wells and MacDonald, then in the middle of his short eleven-month stint as Prime Minister, had discovered that Wain was shut away in the pauper ward of a mental institution. They had started a fund to save him from this terrible fate, and a short while ago had managed to have him transferred to the Bethlem Royal Hospital.

In the 1890s and the early part of this century, Louis Wain had been one of the most successful artists in all of England. His humourous paintings of cats in human situations had become hugely popular, and Wain could turn out literally hundreds of drawings and paintings every year.

But he was not a very good businessman; when he sold his paintings he relinquished the rights as well, and when his work began to fall out of favour, due to many imitators and to changing public tastes, he sank into poverty. After the Great War he had begun his long descent into madness and extreme paranoia, finally being institutionalized in 1923.

Wain dabbed a small amount of paint on his brush and stabbed at the canvas with it, then continued. “I also wanted to tell, tell you that I’m going to be . . . to be having my own, own, show.”

“By God!” announced MacDonald. “That’s fabulous, Wain. Where shall it be?”

Wain cringed a bit at this booming outburst, but continued. “At, at the Twenty-One Gallery. This, this, this October, I think. Or so they tell me . . .” This sentence didn’t so much end as it trailed off.

Wells smiled. “That’s excellent news, Louis. You must be very proud.”

The artist smiled back, very briefly, and then dropped his gaze down to the floor. “Thank you for, for coming.”

Both men responded with farewells and then turned to leave, but Wells, behind MacDonald, felt Wain’s hand fall briefly and lightly on his arm.

“Please stay for one more moment?” Wain asked in a small, scared voice.

Wells nodded, then stuck his head out the door. “I’ll be out in a moment. He seems to want to speak to me privately.” Ignoring the irritated look that crossed MacDonald’s face, he ducked back in and slowly walked back to near where Wain was standing, hearing the lock on the door click behind him. There he stood quietly, waiting for the artist to speak.

“They’re back, Wells,” he said eventually. “They’re back.” His face looked pale and haunted now.

Wells, fully understanding the depths of the paranoia that gripped this poor man, did his best to sound sympathetic. “Who are back, Louis?”

Wain pointed to the canvas. What had been a random collection of colours just minutes ago had now taken shape as a group of cats, although Wells could swear that Wain had only touched the canvas one or two brief times.

He stared at the painting, trying to fathom what was happening here. There were three cats in the painting, and while the style was recognizably Wain’s, the cats were not posed in the jolly fashion Wells was accustomed to seeing in Wain’s work. Instead, the three cats, while posed as humans on their hind legs, seemed to be maliciously toying with something that had yet to be finished, that appeared so far as only a pale yellow blob.

“This certainly isn’t what we’ve grown accustomed to expect from you, Louis,” said Wells. The madness must have really taken its toll.

Wain shuddered, as if he were holding in a great sob. Then he staggered over to the cot and sat at the end of it, paints and brush still in his hands. “It isn’t, it isn’t what I, what I want,” he said. His voice was breaking, and Wells was sure he would begin to cry like a child at any moment. “I try to leave them out of it, but they keep, keep, keep coming back.”

Wain looked back at the painting, and the look of stark terror that crossed his face transfixed Wells for the moment. Then he said, “I’m sorry, H.G. So very sorry,” in a voice that was almost less than a whisper. “The cats, oh, the cats . . .” His voice trailed off again and he gradually tilted over until gravity won out over his muscles and his face fell to the mattress.

Wells turned to go back to summon the doctor, but his eyes tracked quickly past the canvas with the cats on it and then snapped back. There was now a figure, seemingly human rather than feline, lying in a foetal position beneath the three cats, obviously the object of their tortures.

But that was impossible! Wain had sat down, had not been near the canvas!

Wells’ eyes cast about the room, feverishly looking for another, logical explanation for the anomaly in the painting. He could find none. He rubbed his eyes and looked again, but it was still there. Was this form of madness contagious?

He looked back to Wain, hoping to find an answer there, but the man had his face buried in the covers and was mumbling to himself; a long line of drool hung from the corner of his lips to the tattered blanket.

Another scratching sound came from the far corner opposite the door, and when Wells turned to look there he caught a brief glimpse of something small and black. Too brief, though; he feared it had been just a trick of the light or his mind.

Then he looked back at the painting, and froze in horror. The figure now had its face turned towards Wells, and it was a face he recognized well. It was Jane, his wife!

She looked frightful. Her face was long and drawn out, her beautiful hair matted and coarse, and her normally droopy, sad eyes were wide open, a look of terror and extreme agony in them. Her cheekbones were sunken, and she was dressed in her bedclothes.

Shock settled into Wells. He could do nothing but stare at the canvas, horrified by the sight. It took him a moment to lose the feeling of helplessness, but it immediately came back when he realized that the painting had slowly changed positions, the figures moving at some glacial pace so that he did not notice their movements but could see their new placement.

“Dear God,” he whispered.

Another scratching sound came from the right, but Wells was too caught up in the tableau to look. The cat on the right side of the painting, a simple orange alley cat, had bent all the way over and was now using one claw to gouge a line in the flesh of Jane’s cheek. Bright, unnaturally red blood welled up, oozing out of the fresh wound more slowly than blood had the right to flow.

Wells could feel his gorge begin to rise; the taste of bile was sharp in the back of his throat. He turned his head away, and jumped back at the sight that greeted him now, knocking over the canvas in the process.

Wain was still lying on the cot, but now more than a dozen cats stood around him and over him. All were silent, except for the padding of their feet if they moved, and the distant scratching sounds as several dug their claws into Wain’s back, arms and legs. He could see Wain shudder and shake each time a cat scratched him, but the artist also made no sound. One cat, which Wells realized with even greater horror was the orange one from the painting, turned and looked him in the eye, staring calmly at Wells for a second before arching its back, flattening its ears, and hissing.

The sound of the cat broke Wells out of his horrified reverie. He turned and stumbled for the door, kicking the canvas that he had knocked over a moment before. His eyes cast down once more to the abominable thing, like steel to a magnet.

The painting had changed once more. Now four numbers were jaggedly scrawled across the width of it; “1927” it said, in a most sickly gray. One glance at the painting of Jane showed him that she, or at least the figure in the painting, now appeared to be dead, although there was now no blood to be seen. The cats were no longer anywhere in the picture.

He pulled on the door, it wouldn’t open, knocked frantically, and when the door opened he staggered out, gasping for air. He heard the door shut behind him, and disembodied hands held him up while similarly removed voices chattered at him in a fashion beyond comprehension.

Gradually, his breathing calmed down, and his vision returned. He looked around.

An intern was holding him up, and the doctor was examining him worriedly. MacDonald looked on in concern, and the others watched with interest as well. Only the mad that shuffled by paid him no heed, already used to such behaviour on a regular basis.

“Are you all right?” asked the doctor, at the same time that MacDonald asked, “What happened in there?”

Wells waved them both off. “Nothing, nothing,” he said, “Just my claustrophobia acting up, is all. Can we get outside?” Wouldn’t do to tell them what he saw. Just be locked up like Wain and the rest of these poor mad souls.

MacDonald nodded and marched off. The intern who wasn’t holding onto Wells and the two guards hurried to catch him, and Wells slowly followed, careful to keep his eyes down.

The one time he did look up there were three inmates standing only a few feet away. Each man seemed to be unaware that he had a cat sitting on his shoulders, and each of the cats were intently watching Wells as he walked by. He sucked in a breath and did his best not to whimper, then looked back to the floor and picked up his pace.

Wells said farewell to MacDonald and the doctor and then staggered away, too in shock to call a cab, first trying to understand, and then rationalize, what he saw.

Whatever it was, he couldn’t face Jane now. He resolved to leave for his home in France that night, to join his love Odette at Lou Pidou.

To get away from cats forever.