Stanley and the Women (20 page)

‘What
an extraordinary woman,’ said Nowell as we walked, referring I assumed to Collings.
‘What did you think of her? Did you fancy her at all?’

‘Good
God no, and even if I did I wouldn’t dream of laying a finger on a dodgy little
bag like that.’

‘You
must be getting old, Stanley. You used not to be so particular. As regards dodginess,
that is.’

There
was a good deal I could have said on this subject, especially to Nowell, but I
gave a peaceable grunt instead.

‘I
thought it was a bit thick, the way she went on about you being to blame for
what’s happened to poor little Steve. I hope you didn’t take that too
seriously.’

‘Actually
she went on rather a lot about me not being what you’d call
to blame,
didn’t
she?’

‘Oh
yes, but that was only what she said afterwards, you could tell she was really
trying to blame you. I think that’s really mean, it’s bad enough to have your
son have a breakdown without being told that it’s your fault on top of it. Bloody
disgusting.’

I moved
my eyes to take in her face. Its thick-and-thin look was very much on view at
the moment, plus a touch of generous indignation. There had been a time — I
could remember it distinctly — when I would have at once asked her why, if that
was her view of the matter, she had told Collings those lies about my having
neglected Steve in his childhood, and would have been amazed when, instead of
answering the question, she asked me why I had suddenly started being foul to
her, what was the matter with me and the rest of the list. That certainly made
me feel old.

‘Well,
whatever you may think of her,’ she said, ‘the bag fancies you.’

‘Surely
not.’

‘Oh
yes, darling, I’m never wrong about that kind of thing. So no wonder she gave
you a bad time — hell hath no fury, no? Now I’m sorry, Stanley, but I’m afraid
I’ve suddenly realized that after that grilling in that frightful room the
thought of picking my way through a bunch of madmen to see Steve doing unusual
physical reactions is just too much for me. I’m not like you, tough as old
boots, I simply can’t face it. Is that awful of me? I’d be afraid of upsetting
him. I wonder, could you angelically give him my love and tell him I’ll be over
to see him in a day or two? And let me know how he is, yes?’

I said
I would, and found myself going on to say, ‘I should think probably one visitor
at a time is as much as he can cope with at the moment.’

Nowell
gave me a radiant smile, full of affection and gratitude, and kissed me warmly
on the cheek. ‘You are a nice man, Stanley,’ she said, holding me at arm’s
length a moment and gazing at me. Then she was off with a spring in her step. I
had been sweet to her when I could just as well — rather more easily, in fact —
have been foul to her.

I
remembered Cliff Wainwright saying once that women were like the Russians — if
you did exactly what they wanted all the time you were being realistic and
constructive and promoting the cause of peace, and if you ever stood up to them
you were resorting to cold-war tactics and pursuing imperialistic designs and
interfering in their internal affairs. And by the way of course peace was more
peaceful, but if you went on promoting its cause long enough you ended up Finlandized
at best. Calling this to mind now somehow helped me to see that Nowell’s line
on Steve’s childhood came out of no sort of hostility, just self-protection,
forestalment of the possible and well-founded charge that it was she who had
done most of the neglecting. I had forgotten that her whole character was based
on a gigantic sense of insecurity, not that remembering that had ever done me
the slightest good.

Ebbinghaus House was more
of a house than the other place, with two storeys and proper windows. Inside
too it was laid out after a different mode. I went into a small ante-room with
a linoed floor and a porter’s cubby-hole behind a partition drawn far enough
aside for me to see that there was nobody behind it. However, there was
somebody in front of it, a young black man standing with his hands clasped
together, I thought at first over his privates but actually, as a not very
searching second glance showed me, just above them, for the time being at any
rate. He was rolling his eyes, though not towards me, and opening and shutting
his lips about every second. I decided quite quickly against asking him for
directions. The partition and a board on an easel were covered with notices,
but they all referred to places like bathrooms or the library or to amusements
like chess and boxing. Boxing? Here?

I had
just given the notices up when a middle-aged woman in some sort of overall and
with a pleasant, capable look about her came bustling towards me out of a
passage at the rear. I only got as far as drawing in breath to speak to her,
because she shook her head at me and in a flash lay down on her back on the
lino with her arms crossed over her chest, like a crusader on a tomb. So I
stepped over her and left her and the black fellow to it.

The
corridor here had a carpet running down it, one of a pattern my mother would
have really liked, and a lot of rooms opening off it. Most of them in fact had
their doors open to show quite nicely and brightly decorated insides, rather in
the style of a mid-market boarding house in somewhere like Worthing or
Hastings. Usually there were people sitting on the beds and chairs or standing,
some chatting, some reading, some drinking from paper cups, but all the ones I
noticed looked as though they were just filling in time and the rooms were
parts of one large waiting room — half of them glanced up and away again as I
passed. None seemed in any way mad. After going round a couple of right angles
and through a kind of arcade of dispensers of soft drinks, hot drinks, peanuts
and bubblegum I came to a doorway beyond which a female sat at a desk with
papers and telephones on it.

She
leaned over slightly in my direction. ‘Can I help you?’ she asked, meaning what
the hell was I doing there and making me wonder whether she had nipped down
here from behind the Rorschach House desk.

‘My son
is a patient here,’ I said, and gave his name.

‘Wanted
to visit him, did you?’

‘If
possible. Dr Collings said I could.’

The
girl, in her middle twenties with pale hair and a great many moles on her face,
consulted a list at her side. ‘Stephen Duke, was it?’

‘That’s
it.’

‘He’s
in one of the rooms upstairs.’ This too seemed to mean something more or other
than what it said.

‘How do
I get there?’

‘By the
stairs.’ Before I was actually forced to ask another question she went on, ‘Along
on your left.’

I
thanked her and she silently went back to whatever she had been doing before.
The conversation had made me feel old again, also this time out of touch, high
and dry, a survivor from a bygone era.

The
stairs were indeed along on my left, a single steep flight ending at a closed
door. Here a worryingly incompetent hand-lettered notice asked me to ring and
wait. When I rang I heard a pair of feet running away from just inside the door
to some remoter part. After about a minute, in other words a longish time, the
door opened a few inches and stayed there while a high-pitched voice spoke in a
very foreign language, angrily I thought. In the end the door opened properly
and a male Asian stood there, Indian or Pakistani, small, middle-aged and
without any expression at all. I explained my errand and whether or not he
understood he let me in. I just had time to notice that this floor looked quite
different from the one below, more like what I had seen of Rorschach House,
when he showed me into a small room containing four beds. Three of them were
empty and made up and the fourth had Steve in it.

Steve
was apparently asleep. He was rather pale in a sort of transparent way. When I
said his name his head made a sudden twisting movement and his eyes opened,
though if he recognized me he gave no sign. He began to sit up while his head
and neck went on jerking sharply backwards and to one side in a way that must
have been most uncomfortable, if not painful. His eyes focused on me again for
a few seconds, but then they rolled up and sideways in the same direction as
his head, which soon followed, along with the shoulder on that side. I said his
name again, louder, and he said something back, or perhaps just made a noise, a
distressed noise. When he had been taken by another, more marked spasm I went
back into the passage I hurried back into the passage and called for a doctor.

The
Asian put his head out of the next room but one to Steve’s. ‘Yes?’ he said, not
sharply, not kindly or in a concerned way either.

‘Would
you come here, please? Something’s wrong.

He
frowned and put his head back in for a moment before emerging and moving
towards me carrying a millboard with papers clipped to it and followed by a
Caucasian girl of about thirty in a uniform with something that looked like an
officer’s badges on the shoulders. When the three of us got to Steve his tongue
was sticking out quite a long way. The Asian nodded his head as if satisfied.

‘What’s
the matter with him?’ I asked.

‘He is
suffering from schizophreniform disorder.’

‘Yes,
but does that cover these … whatever they’re called … colossal
twitches? Are they all part of the disorder?’

‘They’re
normal.’

‘Normal?’

‘Normal
for the patient at this stage.’

‘Well,
what’s he doing in bed? Is that another part of the disorder?’

‘He’s
in bed because he prefers. He spends a very great deal of his time there.’

‘But he’s
much worse now than he was when he came in. He reacted to his name but I doubt
if he knew me.’

‘In
some respects he may indeed be worse.’ The Asian spoke with a touch of
impatience. ‘That too is not uncommon.’

‘But
what does he … Does he go on like this all the time? How does he get to
sleep?’

‘No no,
it’s intermittent. It may be brought on by some sudden change in environment,
some unexpected thing. Some unwelcome thing.’ He was staring at me.

‘Like
his father coming to see him?’

The
fellow did a sort of shrug with his face and looked away.

‘Oh my
God,’ I said.

‘Now I’m
going to try something.’ The Asian took a pace towards Steve. ‘Stop that! Stop
what you’re doing!’

Obediently
Steve relaxed almost in the act of twitching and his tongue crept back between
his teeth. He caught my eye briefly, then drifted away.

The
Asian sniffed daintily. ‘It’s nothing so terrible. Mainly a matter of attention-seeking,
you see.’

At my
side, the nurse or more likely sister made a small sound or movement that might
have meant she disagreed. She was dark and serious, not pretty but
wholesome-looking. Also sympathetic in manner.

‘Attention-seeking?’
I said.

‘Yes, er,
my colleague Dr Collings and I agree between ourselves that that is the main
thing that the patient is doing, namely seeking attention, though not
necessarily in any planned, purposive way. As you yourself saw, the behaviour
there is under his control. He can pull himself out of it if he so desires. To
my mind, to
my
mind, that rules out the possible alternative
explanation, that what we are witnessing is catatonic phenomenon. When he
feels a little more relaxed and confident, when he realizes he’s in good hands,
then we shall see a very great change for the better. Oh yes.’

It
struck me that this Asian, quite apart from being an Asian, looked tremendously
unmedical, much more like a bloke in charge of loading stuff on to a ship or
train, not necessarily in this country, what with his khaki-style shirt worn
outside his matching trousers, the row of pens in his top pocket and of course
the millboard. Steve, sunk back on his pillows, seemed completely apathetic,
more than half asleep. From the sister I got the message that she was going on
disagreeing with the doctor.

I said
without thinking much, ‘It’s not his way, trying to make people notice him. He’s
always been one to keep himself to himself.’

There
was a colossal click from somewhere, a roaring whisper and then a loud boxed-in
voice that said, ‘Dr Gandhi to B.1, please. Dr Gandhi, B.1. Thank you.’ Then a
silence that was a bit like being slapped lightly across the face.

I
reckoned it was just what you might have expected when the doctor in front of me
obviously took his message to refer to him and without hesitation, or anything
else, left the room. The sister at once turned to me in a friendly confidential
way.

‘There’s
no need to be actually alarmed, Mr Duke.’ Her voice sounded like nothing in
particular, which was a relief. ‘I couldn’t have said this in front of Dr
Gandhi, and perhaps I shouldn’t be saying it to you now, but I’ve seen patients
with those symptoms before, and attention-seeking may come into it, I don’t
know, but what they mostly are are side-effects of drugs. You see, he’s had big
doses of this powerful tranquillizer which have certainly tranquillized him all
right, but they’ve also given him those involuntary movements you saw.