A Bit About Face Slapping & A Very Short Extract from Susan's Cell - A chapter from the upcoming Institutionalised vol 2: Confined in the Workhouse

This weekend has been both hectic and traumatic: first revolves on Saturday I spent pretty much the whole day at The Wedding show at Earls Court accompanying my fashion-journalist partner and long-term fiancee (it's part of one way that I earn my daily crust - not being engaged to fashion journalists - doing a bit of freelance retail analysis and research). Then a friend phoned me to tell me that Bradford & Bingley (a dodgy, it turns out, British bank and once building society) was going tits-up (as we say here in Blighty when things go badly wrong). Needless to say a big chunk of my savings is tied up in said bank and I spent the rest of the day - and the whole of the next - in a state of high anxiety and near blind panic (not to mention drunk of course - how else would you expect me to handle it?). Anyway, very little writing got done of any sort - but the wedding show did inspire me to look through some old vintage pics - of which more in a later post .

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For now, though, I thought it was about time to offer up another little taste of INSTITUTIONALISED vol 2: Confined in the Workhouse, just to give some idea of how things are coming along. None of the work has been properly proof read as yet and so there may well be typos and odd irritating bits of dodgy grammar. I'm currently finishing off two of the chapters and at the same time struggling with the preface. This latter part I'm finding particularly difficult; it needs to be fairly concise, so as not to go over too much well trodden ground and so risk becoming repetitive and boring to those who have previously read volume 1 while, at the same time, providing enough outlining of the characters and storyline so as to make volume 2 accessible to some extent as a stand-alone novel in its own right. It is something that is probably not entirely achievable in a completely satisfying manner - and yet the non-linear time-flow of the storytelling does allow for a fair bit to be sketched in as flashbacks: even to the extent of filling in some of the holes and loose threads left in volume 1. Incidentally, I would be very interested to know reader's reactions to, an interests in, alternative forms of corporal punishment, for example face slapping - you will see why as you read on. By the way: if you click on the matron-with-cane pic on the right you can read another extract taken from elsewhere in the book (but you'll have to work your way back to the first part - I have yet to properly work out the navigation).

Susan's Cell - A small Fragment for your Delectation and Delight

They had come to a halt, the trio of staff and their wheelchair- immobilised subject. There were the two nurse-wardresses in the flare-skirted polyester-cotton ‘hospital-blue’ dresses, their trim waists smartly and sharply belted and each with her breast pocket proudly embroidered with the hospital badge, name and those damning words picked out in the gold thread; psychiatric wing. There was the Senior Wardress, the woman dressed so smartly yet sinisterly in the deepest navy blue. And then there was their charge; a wide-eyed teenage girl seated quietly in a wheelchair with the complacency that comes of learnt-helplessness, herself uniformed and seeming younger than her years in her short black braided pigtails and plastic-bib covered green and white striped dress. To their right lay a continuum of softly glowing, white plastic gloss.

To their left, a narrow alcove, of no more than two meters in breadth at most, was delineated from the corridor by an array of white glossy floor-to-ceiling bars and extended back somewhat less than that. Indeed, the space - the term room being something of an exaggeration - was only of sufficient depth as to allow for the length of an average bed; the latter being the only obvious function of the raised platform area that ran at approximately waist height for the entire length of the right-hand side. This latter elevated area appeared to emerge seamlessly from both wall and floor, as if at one with both, rising up from the latter by around half a metre and extending out from the former by one meter, thus accounting for fully half the available floor-space. Its upper surface was inset, the hollow so formed holding a mattress that rose proud of its edge by perhaps ten centimetres and that had the appearance of the rubber-covered foam construction that Susan was now familiar with and that was seemingly ubiquitous in this institution; already she could detect its latex-warmth intermingled within the sterile, disinfected-polythene ambiance. Towards its far end, where it practically butted up against the end wall, the mattress thickened markedly and sigmoidally. This latter feature formed a gently rising hillock clearly intended to perform something of the function ordinarily provided by a pillow yet its U-shaped central contouring seemed to argue for some augmentation of that function; indeed, an element of restraint seemed to be suggested.

.....

This latter theme was echoed along the entire length of the ‘bed’. Medical restraint straps lay abandoned in various random orientations upon the mattress, broad white bands held soft padded plastic cuffs of various diameters, their distal ends permanently fixed at purpose-moulded anchor points spaced regularly along the inner edge of both sides of the platform, from its foot, at those prison bars, right up to and including the ‘pillow’, at the end wall, whereupon a broad strap lay roughly corresponding to the position that might be expected of an occupant’s forehead. Here again, at the ‘pillow’, there was a sinister element that went beyond that of mere restraint, being in the guise of a three centimetre diameter circular hole in the relevant strap, neatly let-in at its very centre; its relevance was mercifully obscure to the girl and would remain so if her present docility persisted.

.....

Roughly one third of the height of the wall alongside the bed platform was presently occupied by rack of closely spaced white cylindrical bars of an appearance similar to those occupying the cell’s front but of a third of their diameter, being of perhaps just over one centimetre in thickness, and longitudinally cross-braced at regular intervals. At its lower edge its weight was taken at a broad hinge, set into the wall fifty centimetres above the bed’s surface and running the entire length of the bed and thus of the wall. Along its upper edge ran a smaller, yet still substantial, hinge from which hung a secondary array of bars; at present positioned parallel to the first, this set was clearly designed to swing out into a perpendicular orientation when the entire contraption was released from the catches securing it to the wall and swung out into position. The length of the bars, being fifty centimetres and matching the elevation of the wall hinge above the bed’s surface, this second set would then form one side of what amounted to a cage around the bed; the array’s lower edge forming a flange designed to dock with, and lock into, a matching slot running the length of the bed-platform’s outer edge. The far end wall had embedded within it, although being difficult to see from the outside being white on white, a curving channel or runner that served to locate and guide the contraption. The external bars to the alcove’s front also incorporated a similar channel, manifested externally as a curving arc interrupting the linear fall of the bars.

.....

The girl stared dumbfounded; she could do nothing but sit in her wheelchair looking on numbed with fear and incomprehension in equal measure. She had never seen such a thing outside of a flickering wallpaper of images behind an outraged investigative reporter within a report about the mistreatment of psychiatric patients in some far-off ex Soviet bloc country. Nevertheless she recognised the implications of the contraption immediately; it was designed to form, when unfolded from the wall, a caged bed. Here was a device historically employed in asylums and supposedly endowed with almost magical qualities of calming. In truth, although of undoubted efficacy, the patient tending to fall into a stupefied submission given time, its long-term use had always been morally and ethically dubious at best and its mechanism of action even more so; such devices had long ago been abandoned in enlightened, mainstream, psychiatric practice in the west. Indeed, in Britain, it was, and had been for some very long time, illegal and yet here it was, in the flesh as it were and very much extant.

.....

Any suggestion that what stood here was merely yet another of the building’s Victorian asylum-legacy fitments could only be expected to meet with incredulity; it is noteworthy that no mention was made of, nor attention drawn to, the device, it was just there and that was all there was to it. Indeed it was obvious that there had been much ‘ improvement ’ made upon the antique original; it and the entire cell, despite the apparent antiquity of the layout, had benefited from the incorporation of modern design and technology, as this, its newest occupant, would soon

discover.

.....

The wheelchair having now been turned to face the bars, the seated, restrained, girl viewed, for the first time, this new home of hers in all its limiting-entirety and did so through fear-widening eyes. Straight ahead and to her left, two chunky square blocks, each of around twelve centimetres on a side, were set within the bars, one above the other and separated in the vertical dimension by approximately ten centimetres, at the point at which the grille met the wall at that side. Mounted at approximately waist height to a standing adult, the uppermost of these was notably dominated by the overly-obvious keyhole at its centre with its bygone-age appearance. Its lower-down sibling had, housed at its centre, an altogether more contemporary key-slot; the latter being of slim profile and mounted in a raised oval section of around three centimetres at it longest axis that extending proud of the surface by, perhaps, two centimetres. Little more than one meter to the right of those locks, a floor-to-ceiling rectangular member, interleaved within the screen of cylindrical bars, housed, a hinge running uninterrupted from the floor to three quarters of the barrage's rise whereupon a horizontal square-section beam ran across to the left-hand side, interrupting the bars and giving notice that here transit was possible, while making quite clear that such movement was not to be subject to the vagaries of free will.

.....

Within moments that view had been interrupted, the navy-blue, tailored contours of the Senior Wardress’ ample, rounded, rump almost pressing into her face as the woman, having selected a key from the large silvered key ring that hung from her belt by a chain, turned away from her and bent forwards so as to better deal with a lock that was presumably being somewhat awkward in its operation.

.....

Fleeting though her first full view had been the girl had nevertheless seen enough to send her spirits tumbling in free-fall and for trepidation to turn to despair; indeed she had seen everything that was to be seen, for in truth there was little to see and that sparsity of detail, in itself, weighed her down with its leaden dread. There was nothing there, nothing at all, it was just a bar-fronted glowing white plastic-box of space; the raised bed platform and the contraption on the wall lay to the right and directly ahead, beyond the entry gate, lay a ‘living space’ comprising an open section of flooring of a similar area as that occupied by the bed platform itself. There were no other furnishings or contents to be seen of any kind save for what appeared to be a white plastic hospital bedpan. The latter squatted up close against the rear wall as if trying to merge with it, cringing back from the bars, vainly seeking privacy and to evade prying eyes as if infused with some essence of the previous occupant's fading and flickering spirit; it was a semi-successful camouflaging, an optical illusion that brought with it a strange pearly-transparent quality to the object.

.....

Simultaneously, from each side, soft-looking, velvety-pink, hands came and went and were accompanied by flashes of white, buttoned, cuffs and rustling, light blue, sleeves. The two women that had, up to that point, existed only in the rhythmically-familiar polyester-swish of their dresses and in the trundle of the wheelchair, began to tackle the various restraints and attachments surrounding her. Turning her head to the left, to the direction from which they had come, she glimpsed a concealed-button, panelled, dress-front constraining an amply-rounded bosom, a flash of gold thread on a blue breast pocket and the silver glint of a ball-clasp belt buckle against a white crepe nurses’ belt...

.....

It was shocking rather than painful as such but it was that very acuteness that punished the most, that and the shame of being struck in such a manner; more to the point it was the shame of excepting such correction without comment, as if such were simply an expression of the natural order of things. It was just three fingers of the nurse’s left hand, three fingers not particularly long yet notably tapered and slender. There was no movement at all in the arm; the woman's wrist flicked sharply but, describing only a small fraction of its potential arc, contributed little to the actual force of the blow while the majority of the travel originated in the folding of the woman's palm. The efficacy of the slap’s sting lay not in its force but rather in the accuracy of its landing, the sharpness of its delivery and in the commanding confidence of the accompanying rebuke. It was a precisely and expertly delivered sharp little sting, laid diagonally across the lower innermost quadrant of the girl's right cheek, the nurse’s index finger landing close to, but not touching, the girl's right nostril; the side-cheeks of the girl's bonnet limited the

area available to strike.

.....

“Face forward.” The nurse didn't raise her voice, she didn't have to; the requisite correcting sharpness was there in the crystal-hard crispness of that educated enunciation, her authority was embedded in the tone.

.....

For Susan's part, a surprised, shocked, exclamation accompanied an embarrassingly, for the girl, contrite compliance and a spreading blush that was already outgrowing and swamping the reddened site of her chastisement. Even then, even as, in obedience to the order she looked away, even though disorientated by the sudden numbness of shock, she knew that something was missing, had been omitted; was there still time to make amends? To the latter the answer came quickly and in the negative; this time delivered by the other nurse, the woman standing to her right hand side, her right-hand delivering a similar sharp-shocking slap to that of her comrade’s and overlapping the site of the latter's sting, her voice just as crisply punishing. There was just a single word this time, it was all that was needed; the girl's detention had already been long enough for the nurse to be confident of that. “Manners” was all she said, her voice soft yet her enunciation crisp, polished, superior.

.....

“Yes n,n,nnurse, a,at w,w,once n,n,nurse,”

.....

Immediately there came another slap, this time delivered to the corresponding position on the girl’s left cheek and coming from the left hand of the nurse on her left hand side, the woman accompanying it with yet another prompting rebuke; “what do we say?”
“ S,s,sorry n,n,nurse, I,I m,m,mean th, th, th,ank y,you n,n,nurse.”