Mindgame Read Free

sitting here in your office…
    FARQUHAR: There’s a Happy Eater on the A12.
    STYLER: I didn’t see it.
    FARQUHAR: Just outside Colchester.
    STYLER: Maybe it was closed.
    FARQUHAR: I was there yesterday.
    STYLER: It wasn’t open today.
    FARQUHAR: A cup of tea.
    STYLER: If it’s not too much trouble.
    FARQUHAR hesitates. But he can see that STYLER is determined. He reaches out and presses a button on the intercom.
    FARQUHAR: ( Into the intercom .) Nurse Plimpton. Could you come up, please? ( Pause .) There…
    STYLER: Plimpton?
    FARQUHAR: Yes.
    STYLER: Is that her name?
    FARQUHAR: Yes. Why do you ask?
    STYLER: Well, I knew a Plimpton once. That’s all. I suppose it’s just a coincidence.
    FARQUHAR: She can take you through to the kitchen and get you a cup of tea.
    STYLER: Thank you.
    FARQUHAR: On your way out.
    STYLER: Right. ( Pause .) You were about to tell me about Fairfields.
    FARQUHAR: Was I?
    STYLER: You were going to tell me what you do here. I was wondering about the name.
    FARQUHAR: Well of course we changed the name when I first came here. It used to be called the East Suffolk Maximum Security Hospital for the Criminally Insane.
    STYLER: That can’t have done much for the local house prices.
    FARQUHAR: There are no local houses but anyway that’s not the point.
    STYLER: How many inmates do you have here?
    FARQUHAR seems tetchy. He glances at his watch.
    Forgive me, Dr Farquhar. But can’t we at least use the time until your nurse arrives?
    FARQUHAR agrees.
    FARQUHAR: Actually, I’m not very partial to the word ‘inmate’. It smacks too much of the judiciary. True, the patients here have been sentenced by the courts and are here for life. They have no hope of release or remission. But what drives Fairfields — our philosophy if you like — is that the very worst examples of humanity, what the tabloids and writers like yourself call monsters still have some hope of redemption and reparation. That a lifetime incarcerated need not be a lifetime entirely wasted. I’m a great believer in the work of Ronny Laing…R D Laing. And as he put it: ‘Madness need not be all breakdown. It can also be breakthrough.’
    STYLER: So how many patients do you have?
    FARQUHAR: At the last count there were fifteen.
    STYLER: Are they all dangerous?
    FARQUHAR: Not all of them. No. Two of them are well into their eighties although even with them I wouldn’t go too close to their dentures. As for the rest…I’m sure you know perfectly well. Fairfields houses the serial killers. Society’s bogey men. The monsters who’ve murdered their wives and their children. Who have tortured and raped and killed. Who have eaten their victims and kept parts of them as souvenirs. Who have committed atrocities so appalling that even the tabloids have had to show some deference, tiptoeing round the truth. We are what most people would call a Chamber of Horrors.
    STYLER: I have to say, I didn’t see a lot of security coming in here.
    FARQUHAR: Did that make you nervous?
    STYLER: No. There was one thing though.
    FARQUHAR: Go on.
    STYLER: The man at the gate. The guard.
    FARQUHAR: Yes?
    STYLER: Well, I don’t want to be cruel, but there did seem to be something wrong with him. I mean, he was disfigured.
    FARQUHAR: Ah — that must have been Borson.
    STYLER: He was quite badly disfigured — his face. He must have had some sort of accident.
    FARQUHAR: Yes. It happened when he was a child. He never talks about it but I’d hate to think that you believe it disqualifies him for the job.
    STYLER: No. Not at all. It’s just that he didn’t ask me for ID or anything. I could have been anyone. And if as you say this institution is meant to be maximum security…
    FARQUHAR: It is.
    STYLER: …well, to be honest with you, once I’d got through the gate, I felt more as if I was coming into a country hotel than a…
    FARQUHAR: …lunatic