Anyone, I found, could drive through the gatehouse without being stopped, and the endless internal roads that wound past the great buildings gave the impression that Summerfield was open to the world. In fact, the gatehouse, like the dead lawns and the visitors’ car parks, was part of a decoy. The central enclave of the asylum, the citadel of the insane, remained securely sealed within itself. From the windows of David’s ward, through one clear pane that had replaced the original frosted glass, I could see the internal courtyards attached to the high-security wings. Into these bleak stone pits, walls topped by steel claws, the deeply insane were occasionally released to stare in their haunted way at the mystery of the open air. Puzzlingly, the exercise yards were all of different shape, some triangular, others rectangles or gnomons, with small recesses that served no conceivable purpose, as if they together formed a jigsaw of a fractured mind, to be completed before a patient’s release.

Two vehicles occupied opposite corners of the car park, breaking that companionable rule by which drivers arriving at an empty car park place themselves alongside each other. Most of the patients, I noticed, were visited only by the poorer of their friends and relatives, who had to make the long walk from the gatehouse and were too tired to do more than sit and listen. A signpost pointed to the short-term wards—NARCISSUS, ROSEMARY, and HYACINTH. Carrying my chessboard and a bag filled with fruit, aviation magazines, and newspapers, I set off towards the entrance lodge. As always, however hard I tried to repress the sensation, I felt that I was arriving with my luggage to begin my own stay at Summerfield. These impassive buildings possessed a moral authority far more intimidating than the tired psychiatrists who worked within their wards.

While the superintendent checked my name against the roster I rattled the chessboard and guessed that it would soon be lighter by a piece. The battered chess sets at Summerfield had lost half their men. In his matter-of-fact way, David explained that these destitute patients, often abandoned by their families, possessed nothing and would treasure a stolen piece like a precious doll. Usually, as I sat in the dayroom with David, one of the old men he had befriended would be staring at his private pawn on an open board. A former accountant at the Church Commissioners, he had tried to suffocate his invalid wife. After an hour of thought he would at last embark on a cautious move.