Asylum by Patrick McGrath Page B

very nature of their work, the long periods of isolation followed by public self-display, and the associated risk of rejection all conspire to create unnaturally intense relationships with their sexual partners. Then, when disillusion occurs, as of course it must, the sense of betrayal is profound, and will in some individuals translate into a pathological conviction of the other’s duplicity.
    But what particularly impressed me in Edgar was this retroactive adjustment of the memory so as to bring the early years of the marriage into line with the delusions that so tragically dominated it at the end, to the point that they now involved hundreds of men and a bizarre set of false memories. Insight, I realized, this is what we must work toward, a moment of insight when the inherent absurdities in his thinking undermined the foundations of the delusional structure and brought it crashing down. Only then could we begin to rebuild his psyche.
    But now, this affair with Stella, this would set us back months; for in deceiving me he blocked the flow of candidconfidences essential to our reaching our goal, and rendered the psychotherapeutic process a travesty.
    They had the French windows wide open for the dinner party and a warm breeze drifted in from the back lawn, carrying with it the scents of the garden. It was all for Brenda. The visiting dignitary expected to be honored by the psychiatric aristocracy of the estate, and Max would not disappoint her. Dinner was seven-thirty. I was the first to arrive, and found Stella composed and in control. My attitude to her had naturally undergone a profound revision since my discovery of the previous week, or rather, since my intuition that there was more between her and Edgar than simple friendship; but I showed nothing of this.
    She had had two and a half hours in the kitchen by herself, she told me quietly as she took me out into the garden, Her Majesty leaves me alone if I appear to be actually working. Max had been sent to the pub for brandy. Stella saw me as an ally; she was unaware of course of the suspicion I now harbored toward her. I was sorry in a way that we couldn’t talk about it, about Edgar’s sexuality. She asked me to entertain Brenda, who was sitting in the back garden, so I went out and settled down beside the matriarch, and Stella stayed in the kitchen.
    “It is all rather pastoral,” Brenda said with a sigh, as we gazed across the lawn at the back of the house and the trees beyond. “Peter, do you have the impression Max is happy? Stella worries that he’ll never want to leave.”
    I understood of course that it was Brenda who was worried.
    “It’s ideal,” I said carefully, “for a certain sort of psychiatrist. Fascinating population, a few truly glorious specimens, all in an institution large enough to simulate the outside world.”
    “But do you suppose he wants to be superintendent?”
    I was diplomatic.
    “It is tempting,” I allowed, “to run one of these large closed hospitals. To exercise Victorian paternalism on the grand scale …”
    I trailed off. There was a silence.
    “You sound as though you’re tempted yourself.”
    I laughed with light self-deprecation. “Oh no,” I said, “not me. No, it’s a young man’s game, running the big bins. I’m much too long in the tooth.”
    She turned toward me and fastened on me a gimlet eye. “Hm,” she said skeptically.
    Max joined us soon afterward; a little later the Straffens arrived, and the party was complete. We stayed out in the garden, all except Stella, who was still in the kitchen, and Bridie Straffen, who went upstairs to see Charlie. Brenda guided the conversation, and we three psychiatrists found ourselves directing all our remarks to her, in deference to her matronly authority. Max made sure all glasses were filled and then went back inside, and ten minutes later we were called in to the dining room. Stella had been selfish about the table, and put me at her end, and Brenda down at