The Treatment and the Cure Read Online Free

your face, listening to the talk. Then a screw will sigh wearily and say: “Ah well, boys, we’d better strike another blow or Arthur’ll be after our balls,” and the men get up slowly and go back to work. We stop work at eleven-thirty and hand our tools in at the tin shed. Anyone who wants a swim can go to the pool. Almost everyone does. There are piles of swimming trunks and towels and a big red ball to play with. For thirty minutes you float in the cool blue chlorinated water or join in a rough game of water-polo, or sunbake, hardly able to believe you’re really in the madhouse you’ve heard such awful tales about.
    Electric Ned comes round after a couple of days. He wants to see the new man.
    “He’s a bit absent-minded,” Bill Greene tells you. “Once he asked old Tom Hawksworth how he was settling in. Tom had been here for twenty-two years.”
    This incident is famous here. If anyone asks you how you’re settling in, you know they’re having a joke.
    Electric Ned wears thick glasses and a white coat. He comes up to you on the verandah and shakes your hand very politely.
    “You’re Mr Tarbutt then,” he says.
    “Yes, doctor.”
    “How are you settling in?”
    “Very well, thanks.” You get ready to grin, but he’s quite serious.
    “No problems?”
    “No, doctor.”
    “Feeling all right?”
    “Yes, doctor.”
    “Doing a bit of work around the place?”
    “Yes, gardening, doctor.”
    “Fine.”
    He gives you a long look through the thick lenses and goes away into the office.
    “He seems all right,” you remark to Bill Greene. Your heart is still thumping. You wonder what he’s doing in the office. Maybe ordering immediate treatment for you.
    “Yeah, as long as you stay on the right side of him,” Bill replies.
    You’re going to try. Christ, you’re going to try!
    It’s almost nine o’clock and you’ve got your work gear on and you’re waiting near the verandah gate with the other men. A screw comes down the verandah carrying a tray with a cloth over it. You can see things sticking out. A silver kidney tray and cotton wool and some short lengths of rubber hose about four inches long. There’s an antiseptic smell. The screw goes into a small room at the end of the verandah. Then Dave Lamming comes down the verandah looking deathly afraid. A screw is walking beside him, holding him by the elbow, and the doctor and Arthur are coming behind. As Dave goes past you turn your eyes away, as though there’s something terribly interesting on the far side of the lake. Dave and the doctor and Arthur go into the small room after the screw. There is silence for a couple of minutes and then you hear Dave yelling: “I don’t want it! Please! I’m all right! Oh please don’t! Oh please! Oh please!” There is a sound of struggling. You hear screws’ voices: “Don’t be such a bloody kid, Dave!” and “The doctor knows what’s best!” and “Hold his arms!” and other things. Then there’s a sudden buzzing sound and a choking and gargling, then silence. Your stomach is watery and you’re shaking.
    “Poor little bastard,” says one of the men.
    “He’ll need Aspros now,” says Bill Greene.
    A screw comes to unlock the gate.
    “Come on,” he says, “it’s not a friggin’ side-show!”
    You go down into the garden with the others and start digging. You work steadily, not daring to take a breather much. You want to show what a good inmate, a model inmate, you are. Dedicated. Eager to please. Then you get afraid you might be giving a wrong impression. You might be overdoing it. Showing “Obsessional Tendencies”. Digging too much might be like cleaning windows too much. Two screws are sitting on a knoll a little way behind you. You imagine what they might be saying:
    “Tarbutt’s going pretty hard.”
    “Yeah, I noticed.”
    “Seems agitated.”
    “Better mention it to the doctor.”
    So you slow down and take a lot of breathers. Then you get afraid again. You wonder what the