Over the Darkened Landscape - By Derryl Murphy Page 0,29

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