Dutch? Did Reymaker not let them know that she was a South African? Or had been. But now she is not at all sure what Reymaker might think others need to know about her. What would he have let them know? He must surely have spoken to his friend Rivers about her, because that’s how she ended up here – he’d facilitated the introduction. And what had Reymaker told Rivers? Do you have room here for a woman, and – don’t laugh – one with an interest in shellshock?
Oh well, it was not shellshock per se that had lured her here, even though Reymaker thought so. Or, rather, he thought she had some kind of morbid interest in the war. That’s what he threw at her the first time she told him about her “war plan”. When she asked him whether there might not perhaps be a position for her in one of the British military hospitals, his answer was: But it is not our war.
Indeed. It is not “our” war. Not even the fact that South Africans were being trampled into French mud made it her or Reymaker’s war. Their war, hers and Reymaker’s, was there in their clinic in Dordrecht. Their daily battle was to give a few people a grip on reality, perhaps even a grip on meaning.
On happiness? But that is not what Reymaker meant. He was simply alluding to the fact that the Netherlands was neutral, and not part of the war.
Or is that really what he meant? Reymaker had collapsed into the chair behind his desk, behind that bronze statue of a seated cat. His beloved cat. He’d peered past the cat at her; his eyes steady and coal-black above his sparse beard. She had remained standing with her hands on the back of a chair. Through the window she could see a rippled canal, on the skyline the squat spire of the Grote Kerk and fleecy clouds that seemed strange to her, even after fifteen years in the country. But to Reymaker and his peculiar habits, she had long grown accustomed.
She tried again to explain why she was so interested in the work of Rivers. It was not as if Dr W.H.R. Rivers’s approach had any specific connection to Africa, even less so to South Africa, but something that appealed to her from the outset was that his work was based on his research on traditional medicines of primitive tribes. She couldn’t believe it. Superstition! Magic! Witches! Those were all swearwords in the world where she lived and worked – and yes, she did still occasionally darken the door of a church. But he had seen that there was art in those accursed practices, the art of healing. Not the science, the art! And that insight is what had brought Rivers to the forefront of modern Western psychiatry. She had understood that almost instinctively. The first time she heard about it, she felt quite moved. A dry, factual account in a professional journal had touched her deeply.
Reymaker had not taken to it as easily, even though he and Rivers knew each other. Had met at some or other conference. They were perhaps even friends; she had bargained on them being more than just passing acquaintances. Reymaker had, after all, attended Rivers’s Fitzpatrick lecture in London, even though he was fairly sceptical of his colleague’s “new approach” to the treatment of soldiers’ hysterical episodes. But the two of them, she and her boss, had debated the subject often enough so that when she had her plans in order, there was little need for a preamble. She’d cut to the chase: “You have contact with Dr Rivers?” And then, “I was wondering whether you could perhaps arrange a position for me.” When his eyebrow arched, she quickly added: “The experience could mean something for the practice in the long run.”
His mouth fell open, and then he looked down sullenly at the papers on his desk. “I see,” he grumbled, “your burning ambition.”
Oh, old Reymaker! His irritability did not surprise her, and hadn’t for years. Their skirmishes had become a form of familiarity. “No, this is about Rivers,” she’d said emphatically, “I mean, his method.” Ensuring that her voice remained at an even pitch, she went on, “It’s new, not so? You said so yourself. And more than that, the whole phenomenon … indeed …” She did not spell it out; it was not necessary to say the word, the word that the war had given to the world. Even in the Netherlands, where people continued to tend their little city gardens, and also in their clinic in Dordrecht where words like neurasthenia, dementia and idiotism were put to bed under pure white sheets daily, even there the mere mention of the word brought a shiver down the spine: shellshock.
Shellshock. Shellshock hospital. Soldiers who have been shot of all sense, rendered mute, robbed of memory, of muscular control; bodies beset by spasms of an otherworldly horror, soldiers who desired nothing more than death.
It is however where she wanted to go. No, “wanted” is not the word. She had thought about this determination of hers on the boat coming over, and if she were to be honest, she was probably driven here by an inner strength of which she was totally unaware. Or rather, unaware then, because that strength had manifested earlier in her life. It was more than likely the same vigour that had spurred her on when she was only eighteen to go off and study in a foreign country, a foreign culture, virtually woman alone, eventually to get a post at Reymaker Psychiatrie.
It was he, Reymaker, who’d come specially to recruit her during her final practical year at Wilhelmina House in Amsterdam, by which time she already had years of training behind her. He wanted none other than the best psychiatry student to assist him in his clinic in Dordrecht. The most reliable, is what he was actually after, she thought bitterly at times in later years, although bitterness is an emotion she has guarded against her whole life.
The one who would complain least, that is what he wanted.
But what he did not know then, and what her lecturers didn’t suspect either, was that her diligence was the result of her passion. Or volatility. but call it what you wish, she still believes, sitting here under Hurst’s cool appraising gaze, that she conveys her opinion in a civil manner. She is direct, she can take strong positions, but she is decent. Decent in an Afrikaans way? Oh well, it’s not important, she then decides. For all practical purposes, she is Dutch.
She therefore does not bother to correct Hurst. “In the Netherlands,” she says, “psychiatric nursing care is primarily the domain of women.” That’s the simple truth, although not just any woman gets awarded the yellow cross. They must be middle class, seeing that this class of woman is considered the standard-bearer of the founding values of a healthy society. Psychiatric patients are seen as people who have strayed from these values and should thus be brought back to the path of righteousness. She thinks again of the farming women she’d seen at the roadside and says: “Here, things are possibly different, but we must … I must accept that the war has turned everything upside down.”
“No, we also have many women here, as you will soon realise. But not many foreigners. I assume people help in their own countries, but yes, in neutral countries it is another matter altogether. You could just as well have gone to work in Germany.”
Strange that the issue of where she was going to work had come up for discussion when she’d sounded out Reymaker.
He’d sat staring at his beloved cat, and gave the question a wide berth. “Against England I have no objection. On the contrary. I am talking about the idea of England.” He had tilted his head sideways so that one of those charcoal pupils could pin her down.
The idea of England? She wanted to let that phrase simply drift along the stream of words, a description that was little more than a formality, but it had stuck. She immediately wanted to dismiss this vague irritation, but failed. The idea of England? What had it meant to her? As she quickly reflected, some impressions fluttered through her mind like startled nocturnal birds: keening bagpipes playing “God Save the King”, a bell tent glowing like a lantern in a black, black night, a lantern jerking and swinging as if dangling from a wagon. The onset of anxiety was immediate, and she could recall nothing other than this tumult of images. Only later, when she’d probably already returned to her room, did the realisation dawn on her that England would always be only that to her, that was the problem. Always back to that same scene. A scene with its own background music, its own lighting, its own words; the choreography of that macabre dance for ever etched into her mind.
But that realisation only came to her later. Right then, there, in that office, Reymaker spoke again: “And Rivers? What you know and admire about him is what I have told you. I tend to think he takes his admiration