September 5th, 1964
Freshly gassed with Coconut, Haworth waited at the end of his bed for the mist to settle and his breakfast to be brought in. When his door opened at 8:00 o’clock sharp – contrary to most employers who had to grant some leniency with time once Joy had been introduced, Verloc insisted that the daily schedule be maintained with exacting punctuality – a new nurse he didn’t recognize came in with his morning meal.
“Oh! You’re a new face,” Haworth said, slipping into his tried and true harmless old man act. “And a pretty one too! Just when I thought it couldn’t get any brighter in here.” While he usually acclimated to his increased dosage of Coconut by the second day enough as to be in more deliberate control of himself, this was an act he’d perfected over his years in here so well that he no longer needed cunning to perform it. He could play it entirely on instinct now.
“Don’t try to sweet talk me, Dr. Haworth,” the new nurse said. Her tone was brusque and her posture guarded. She kept a close eye on him as the door closed behind her. “The others warned me about you.”
Haworth let out a plaintive sigh. “You play one innocent prank on an orderly and it stays on your board forever,” he complained. Denying his patient notes only made new staff suspicious of his lies; re-contextualizing his notes made a new caretaker more comfortable in disregarding them, which then left them open to exploitation.
“A headbutt is hardly an innocent prank, doctor,” she scolded as she set his tray on his tea table. “And neither is throwing hot tea on people.”
“Oh. That. I’m afraid I’ve grown a bit clumsy in my old age,” Haworth said, affecting bashfulness. “I didn’t throw the tea; I turned too quickly and it splashed out of my cup. Though I suppose there’s not much difference to poor Eunice,” he said, trailing off with mock-regret. “And I tripped and fell into Petcher,” he went on, feigning embarrassment. “Be a dear, though, and don’t let on that I told you. If he’s claiming it was a fight, it’s because he’s worried he’ll get in trouble with Dr. Verloc otherwise. He’s very particular about the care of his patients.” It was a good day when he could let a new caretaker in on a “secret”, especially if it was to the benefit of someone else. It framed the two of them as co-conspirators, blurring the line between warden and ward.
“Quite so,” the nurse agreed. “Especially yours. He has a lot of rules for you. There must be blue currant jam. There must be three sugar cubes,” she rattled off. “You must call him Dr. Haworth-“
“That one is just his preference,” Haworth interrupted. “He earned that degree and, by god, he wants you to acknowledge it. But I don’t mind if you call me Harry. I’d prefer it, in fact. I’ve never been too fussed over honorifics.” And he would prefer it. Getting on a first name basis was a quick way to establish a false sense of camaraderie with his caretakers.
The nurse demurred, giggling. “I don’t think Dr. Verloc would like that.”
“I won’t tell him if you won’t, Miss… ?”
“Burke,” the nurse answered. “Marnie Burke.”
“Well, Nurse Burke,” Haworth said, not pressing the boundary on first names, “you’ve seem to have observed all of Dr. Verloc’s breakfast rules.” He moved from the bed to sit at his tea table and made a playful show of taking inventory of his meal. “Three sugar cubes, as prescribed. The jam is present. This all appears to be in order,” he said, making a sweeping gesture over his plate. His hand hit his already opened can of grapefruit juice and knocked it off the table. It hit the floor with a weighty metallic thunk and the juice chugged out into a pinkish-orange pulp-laced puddle.
“Oh, bloody hell,” he said as Nurse Burke swooped down to grab the can before it could make too big a mess. “What did I tell you? Clumsy. Terribly sorry, dear.”
“Not to worry!” Nurse Burke said. “I’ll just run and get a towel to wipe this up and a new can of juice for you.”
“Don’t go to extra trouble on my account,” Haworth said, “I can live without juice for a day. It’d be my own fault anyway.”
“Nonsense. Dr. Verloc would have my head. And you need the vitamin C. It doesn’t look like you get much sunlight in here,” she supposed, glancing about the room. “You’re like to get scurvy if you don’t keep on top of it.”
Haworth sat back in his chair and offered her a grateful smile. “I can hardly argue with nurse’s orders.”
“I’ll be back in just a tick then,” Nurse Burke said, giving him a warm smile in return. She let herself out. Haworth smeared jam on one of his pieces of toast and took a bite.
He was fortunate that Joy – and his more memorable antics – kept his less remarkable tricks out of memory. He must have wasted a cumulative few cases of grapefruit juice over the last four years.
—
“What are you looking so pleased about?” Haworth asked as Verloc let himself in. Verloc started at the question and his look of mild self-satisfaction fled from his face.
“Nothing,” he said. “Just… Miss Olsen said she thinks my hair is “striking”.”
“Did she?” Haworth said. He stood cross-armed in the far corner, between the observation window and that into Plantagenet’s cell, as far as he could be from Verloc in his own assigned corner by the door. It could be a trick on her part. Or perhaps not. In any event, Haworth was not going to speculate on it out loud. If Gemma was pulling some sort of gambit, he didn’t want to interfere. And either way, he was not going to give Verloc advice.
“She’s obsessed with it,” Verloc explained nonetheless. “She asks questions about it every day.”
“An interesting new side effect,” Haworth commented. “Preferable to thinking one can fly, I suppose. A more benign form of madness. You’re taking your time with this one then?”
Verloc’s face shifted into a downward grump at that, recognizing this as one of several stock subjects Haworth called upon to get a rise out of him. But he fell for it every time.
“I told you, that was an unfortunate chemical reaction. I can hardly be blamed for that. She didn’t tell me she was using Chronobalm,” Verloc dismissed. “And how would I have ever guessed? Who uses Chronobalm to read faster?”
“So it was her own fault you drove her mad? I’m sure that knowledge is a great comfort to Mr. Tinker,” Haworth said.
“You hardly hav-” Verloc begun, but then stopped himself. He breathed in deep and let it out in a slow huff that culminated in a brisk, frustrated snort.
“You know, Anton, you don’t have to talk when you’re in here,” Haworth said. They only had these visits every day to excuse the time necessary to dose him with Crash. There was no need to exchange unpleasantries like this.
“I want to,” Verloc said, crossing his own arms sullenly. “You wouldn’t let me talk to you for three years.”
“I didn’t want to talk to you then and I still don’t now,” Haworth said. “Every day, you’re stealing more of my life from me. Why would I want to spend any of it talking to you?”
“I saved your life!” Verloc snapped.
“Such as it is, I’d rather you hadn’t,” Haworth said.
“You’d still be in Wellington Health if it weren’t for me,” Verloc rebuked. “And who knows what Dr. Defoe would have done with you.”
“Lock me in a cell and experiment on me, I’d imagine,” Haworth intoned.
“You’d probably be dead by now.”
“Wouldn’t that be a shame. I’d have missed out on all this sitting and sleeping. To say nothing of the pacing!”
“I would have given you whatever you wanted in here if you would just take it. Books, records, anything!” Verloc said, then quickly qualified, “Within reason.”
Haworth stared in disbelief at Verloc’s offer, furious that he thought idle entertainments would make any of this acceptable. Scowling, enough anger boiling over the Coconut to manage it, he said, “I don’t want anything from you.”
He then turned away to stare out his observation window, at his patient notes, the detailed accounting of exactly how much time Verloc had stolen from him. So he remained, resolute in ignoring Verloc until he gave up on today and let himself out.
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