But while the decision was still untaken Alsop had gone on.

 

 

"You ran foul of some local bigwig, I gather -- hm?"

 

 

Paul scowled. "Mrs Weddenhall, Jay Pee ! Who told you about that -- Dr Holinshed?"

 

 

"Of course."

 

 

"I thought I'd set him straight on the matter. But apparently I didn't shout loudly enough to make him listen."

 

 

"Well, there's no need to shout at me," Alsop said, glancing up. "Candidly -- mind if I speak straight out?"

 

 

"Of course not," Paul muttered.

 

 

"I think you're letting things get on top of you. Bad. Mustn't do it. If you try and identify with these unfortunates all around us you're much too liable to wind up joining them. You had some psychotherapy once, didn't you?"

 

 

"A course of analysis," Paul said. And repeated his habitual cover-story: "Thought it was the simplest way of getting a patient's-eye view of psychiatry."

 

 

"Yes." Alsop nodded slowly once, and said again, "Ye-es. . . . Well, there's nothing to be ashamed of in feeling the strain. This isn't the easiest of hospitals to work in, despite its size. But it'd be damned silly if you let yourself crack up under the petty kind of pressure Chent can generate. So you ought to take precautions while there's time."

 

 

-- Like what? Cultivate Holinshed and lick his boots a bit? Tell Iris to go to hell?

 

 

"However," Alsop went on briskly, "the schedule's too full this morning to worry about healing the physicians. Fuller than you appear to realise. I asked you to add Mrs Chancery to the roster for today, and you didn't."

 

 

Paul started. "I'm sorry! It quite slipped my mind."

 

 

"Papa Freud he say . . ." Alsop drew a large black arrow to exchange the order of two patients on the list. "You don't like the Chancery woman, I know. No more do I, but at least I remember to hide the fact. And who in the world is this 'Urchin' I see mentioned?"

 

 

"You should have the admission report on her. We brought her in last night -- emergency."

 

 

Alsop rifled papers. "Not here. Holinshed must be sitting on it. Lots of gory details in it? I find that kind usually take longest to get out of your boss's clutches."

 

 

-- What am I to make of cracks like that? Is it camaraderie or an assertion of superiority over Holinshed? You're fine, how am I?

 

 

Paul summed up the story as concisely as he could.

 

 

"And you find this dreadfully puzzling," Alsop commented. "I'm surprised. Female exhibitionism is rarer than male because it has more . . . ah . . . institutionalised outlets, like strip-tease dancing, but it does exist and can generally be fitted into a coherent diagnosis. I'd hypothesise an excessively restricted childhood with so much stress laid on bodily exposure that the mind just" -- he pantomimed crumpling a sheet of paper -- "folds up under the pressure. Did you tranquillise her on admission?"

 

 

"No, I gave her no medication at all."

 

 

"Therapeutic nihilism is an obsolete standpoint even in psychiatry, young fellow! I worked under a medical superintendent who suffered from it, but I thought he was the last surviving dinosaurian exponent of the notion. Why not?"

 

 

"Well . . ." Paul fumbled for words. "Because she came quietly, I suppose you'd say."

 

 

"The fact remains, she had a mere hour or so earlier broken a man's arm with her bare hands. You say she's a tiny little thing. Well, a black widow spider isn't exactly a ferocious great monster, but I wouldn't start keeping one as a pet."

 

 

-- Stuff the sarcasm, for heaven's sake!

 

 

"But how about what's happened this morning? I never heard of a case of hysterical aphasia where the patient set about getting the doctor to teach her English. Besides which, she isn't aphasic."

 

 

"All right, what's she suffering from, then?" Alsop waited with a triumphant air, expecting and receiving no answer. He sighed at length.

 

 

"I have this nasty suspicion you're convincing yourself you've run across a brand-new subspecies of mental disorder which you can write up for publication, talk about at the next congress you go to, and ultimately name after yourself."

 

 

-- Sounds like a capsule version of your life story!

 

 

And a tacit admission of the truth of that followed.

 

 

"Fell into the same trap myself when I was your age or a bit younger. Remind me to dig out the case-notes sometime. They're . . . well . . . illuminating. Reserve judgment, young fellow, and then hang on a bit longer still. There's nothing so damaging to your opinion of your own competence as having to climb down in public from some limb you've wandered out on. Brrr!"

 

 

He acted a fit of the shivers and laughed without humour.

 

 

"Let's settle the matter, shall we? Deal with her first. Charrington's not going to cut his throat while he waits."

 

 

 

 

At first Paul was gratified by the thoroughness with which Alsop set about double-checking the results of last night's examination of Urchin, first by satisfying himself that the girl didn't understand English yet was capable of talking some language of her own, then by repeating the physical examination with a running commentary.

 

 

"Get me a urine sample, Nurse -- first thing tomorrow morning, please. . . . We should have a blood sample too. Ought to type every patient who comes in and give them a card showing it on discharge. Might save lives later, case of accident. . . . Curious facial structure! Nothing Asiatic about it whatever except this very marked epicanthic fold. . . . I think you should book her an appointment for a skull X-ray, young fellow. I agree she's quite fluent in this odd language of hers -- which I imagine you'll check up on, won't you? -- but she could hardly have got to the middle of England on Upper Slobovian or whatever unless somebody brought her here, so injury may have caused her to revert, say to a childhood language. . . ."

 

 

-- Admirably comprehensive. And yet there's a false note. I'm damned certain there's a false note.

 

 

Abruptly, with a stab of dismay, he decided he knew the nature of it.

 

 

-- The bastard! He thinks I might be right in calling this an anomalous condition not in the literature; he won't admit it, but he's making damned sure he doesn't let slip the chance of reporting it before I manage to!

 

 

 

 

 

 

*12*

 

 

The clock was marking a quarter to two with the inevitable bang boom and clink as Alsop climbed into his Vanden Plas Princess R and Paul turned wearily towards the mess.

 

 

-- I suppose he's right about these courses I ought to go on, but why can't the damned things crop up at a convenient time, while Iris is away? Just see her face when I say hullo darling nice to have you home I'm off tomorrow for a course and I'll be back in a fortnight. On the other hand, maybe I should try it. Declaration of independence.

 

 

He felt a stir of vague puzzlement. The proprietary attitude regarding Urchin which had come on him unbidden, because he felt his own long-standing nightmare of waking into a "wrong" world gave him special insight into her condition, had made him speak more sharply to Alsop this morning than he would normally have dared, culminating with a ten-minute argument about one of the patients due for discharge today. To his surprise, far from being annoyed Alsop had been positively cordial; for the first time in two months he had volunteered suggestions about some courses Paul might attend.

 

 

-- I'll . . . think about it.

 

 

Ferdie Silva was leaving the mess as he entered; neither Phil Kerans nor Natalie was present -- only Mirza, distastefully examining a plate of stewed apples and custard which Lil had just placed before him.

 

 

"Has Natalie gone?" Paul demanded.

 

 

"I saw her go off with Rosh Hashanah, the Newish Jew Here," said Mirza, touching a spoonful of the dessert with the tip of his tongue on the last word and pulling a face. "Lil dear, lose this somewhere, would you? And give me a piece of cheese if we have any fit for human consumption. The soup is ghastly too, Paul, in case you were thinking of trying it."

 

 

"I must eat something," Paul sighed. But Mirza was quite right: the soup was half cold with patches of grease floating in it. At least the bread-rolls were today's delivery. He munched on one of them.

 

 

"Why did you want our golden-hearted Dr-rudge, anyhow?" Mirza inquired, making a mouthful of the rolled r's.

 

 

"Oh, she asked to be kept informed about Urchin."

 

 

"She'll get it all on the grapevine, I imagine. I've been hearing about no one else all morning."

 

 

"Why in the world?" Paul put down his spoon, staring.

 

 

"You mean you haven't realised that no remotely identical case has arrived at Chent since the year dot or the birth of Holy Joe whichever is the earlier?" Mirza sliced his cheese with rapid elegant motions and laid it out tidily on a biscuit. "The patients know, the staff know, how is it you don't?"

 

 

"Pretty sure of the patients' diagnostic ability, aren't you?" Paul snapped.

 

 

Mirza gave him an astonished glance. "Paul, I thought a night's good sleep would have cured you of yesterday's fit of grumps! I'm sorry if I trod on your corns."

 

 

Paul controlled himself with an effort. "No, I'm the one who should say sorry. Go on with what you were saying."

 

 

"About the patients' diagnostic ability, you mean?" Reassured, Mirza reverted to his habitual mocking lightness. "Actually I have enormous faith in it. How else do you think I could get along in England?"

 

 

"If you're making a serious point, make it seriously. Otherwise shut up. I'm not in a joking mood."

 

 

"Yes, I am serious." Obediently Mirza put on voice and expression to match. "Bear in mind, Paul, I come from a country which is" -- he raised fingers to count off the successive items -- "Moslem, underdeveloped, recently ex-colonial, predominantly rural, different in just about every possible way from industrialised, citified, nominally Christian Britain. And here I am pretending to tinker with precisely that aspect of a human being which is affected most by cultural conditioning. So I was sent to an English-speaking school and an English university -- so what? This is merely a late gloss on my basic orientation. I haven't been inside a mosque since I was eighteen, but the mosque is inside me. Your cracked bell up there in the tower" -- a jerk of his thumb towards the ceiling -- "bothers you at least partly because this is a country of Sunday morning church-bells. To me it has no cultural associations. But when that fellow in Disturbed has a bad spell and starts wailing at the top of his voice -- do you know the one I mean? -- I jerk like a frog's leg on a galvanic plate, because to begin with he hits the same three notes as I used to hear every sunrise during my childhood and before I can remember where I am my mind has already completed the call in anticipation: Ya-Allah il-Allah . . . . The muezzin was stone-blind and about ninety, but he used to climb forty feet of stairs before sunrise every day."

 

 

Reminiscently he paused, eyes focused on some faraway spot beyond the wall of the room.

 

 

-- I ought to be ashamed of myself, thinking that struggling against this damned silly British class set-up is bad. How'd I make out with Mirza's problems of adjustment? Culture shock.

 

 

-- Culture shock!

 

 

The idea was so dazzling he completely lost the thread of what Mirza was saying, and was only recalled a minute later by the Pakistani's offended question about being bored.

 

 

"Sorry, Mirza I" Paul recovered hastily. "Something just hit me. Tell you about it in a second. Go on -- this is very interesting."

 

 

"Wouldn't have thought so from the blank look on your face just now," Mirza grunted. "I was saying that in my view no patient here is entirely insane. Even the ones out of reach of communication probably aren't -- a few of them do occasionally come back with memories of the disturbed phase, incomplete though the memories may be. Or incommunicable, which I suspect is nearer the truth. But the milder ones, suffering from things like compulsion neurosis and in here more because they get on their families' nerves than because they're overtly dangerous to themselves or society, do retain huge areas of relative sanity. Day and night they associate with their fellow patients, and though they lack the professional background required to organise their observations into the basis for a diagnosis, that doesn't prevent the sheer volume of what they see and hear from distilling into clear patterns. I've often had a patient say to me about a new admission, 'Ah, that's another of them like Mr So-and-so!' And when I looked up Mr So-and-so's case-notes, damned if they weren't right. Do you follow me?"

 

 

Paul abandoned his soup and Lil exchanged it for a plate of macaroni cheese and chipped potatoes.

 

 

"Ought to have a resident dietician," Mirza said sourly. "Do you know I've put on two inches around the waist since I came to Chent? Disgusting!"

 

 

"I see what you mean now," Paul said, having tasted this course and found it at least edible. "Once when I was a student I was told to write up a new admission to see if what I said matched the real admission report, and I was completely muddled until one of the other patients made a comment that set me on the right lines."

 

 

"But you haven't inquired what the other patients here think about Urchin? Sorry -- of course: you've had a consultant riding herd on you all morning. You haven't had time."

 

 

"Tell me what you've been hearing, anyway."

 

 

"Know Miss Browhart? Schoolteacher, keeps her skirt pinned together between her legs because of 'those dirty boys?'"

 

 

"And they're behind every bush and around every corner. Yes, I know her."

 

 

"She buttonholed me this morning and told me about Urchin in confidential tones. 'Poor thing' -- I quote -- 'she's not crazy, she's just terrified.'" Mirza pulled cigarettes from his pocket. "Mind if I smoke while you're eating?"

 

 

"Go ahead." Paul hesitated. "Do you agree with her?"

 

 

"Trying to make me commit myself about a patient I haven't even examined? But I heard the same sort of thing from Sister Wells. 'Never had one like her before,' she told me. 'She's not stupid -- in fact she's very bright -- and I can't work out why she has to be shown everything, even which way round to put her dress on.'" Mirza clicked his lighter. "And I furthermore understand she's been getting people to tell her the English names for all the things in the ward."

 

 

"Correct. She did that with me this morning."

 

 

"To coin a phrase, this strikes me as anomalous. What do you think?"

 

 

"Let's hear your view first. I'm busy eating."

 

 

"How can you stuff down so much of that slop . . . All right, though I think this is simple cunning on your part." Mirza frowned. "I'll lay a bet that Alsop has been trying to convince you she's suffering from fairly conventional symptoms of hysteria: exhibitionism, hysterical amnesia and all that jazz. While at the same time being perfectly aware that she's way off the beam."

 

 

"I wish to God," Paul said with sudden passion, "that I had your gift for predicting people's behaviour."

 

 

"It's not a gift. It's a means of intellectualising all the things people in this country take for granted and I've had to learn because they're foreign to me."

 

 

"What do you think about culture shock?" Paul demanded.

 

 

"What? Oh, you mean this condition that results from being dumped in the middle of China or somewhere and not even being able to read the signposts." Mirza tapped ash from his cigarette. "Well, I suppose a lot of my Pakistani friends in this country are suffering a mild form of it -- after being used to a wealthy family at home, they come here, live like pigs in a slum district, can't be bothered to wash the windows let alone paper their rooms, don't try and make any friends among the local people but just sweat out the course of study or whatever they came here for and go home with a sigh of relief." He paused. "Was that question about anything, incidentally?"

 

 

"About Urchin," Paul said reluctantly.

 

 

-- It seemed like a paralysing fit of insight when the idea hit me. Spoken aloud it just seems silly.

 

 

"I see. You're thinking of her as being -- let's see -- like the illiterate dependants of some of the immigrants I know, haled off to Britain by better-educated relatives without a word of any language but their own. So what was she doing in the woods without clothing? Had some irate husband taken her out after a row and dumped her to teach her a lesson?"

 

 

"I wouldn't make guesses as elaborate as that," Paul said, amused. "But at least it may give me a line of attack."

 

 

"More power to your elbow. But if you suggest it to Soppy Al, make sure he thinks it's his inspiration, not yours. He is rather intolerant of other people's bright ideas, isn't he?" Mirza glanced at his watch. "Damn, I promised myself ten minutes' reading after lunch and now I must run. . . . What are you going to do about Urchin, anyway?"

 

 

"Oh, a string of things Alsop asked for: urinalysis, skull X-ray -- which reminds me, I must book an appointment at Blickham General. And one or two wrinkles I dreamed up myself. By the way, do you happen to know a really good non-verbal intelligence test?"

 

 

"No such animal, in my view. But you could ask Barrie Tumbelow."

 

 

Paul snapped his fingers. He had met Tumbelow the last time the latter came to Chent to grade the congenitals -- the imbeciles and morons who ought to have been in an institution of their own rather than an asylum, but who had had to be shuffled off here for lack of other facilities.

 

 

"Thanks, I should have thought of that myself."

 

 

"He might be able to advise you, I suppose. I do feel it's typical of Holy Joe to rely on a pediatrician with a hobby instead of a proper child psychologist, though. If we -- Never mind! My prejudices are showing. See you later."

 

 

Left alone, Paul mechanically absorbed rather than ate his stewed apples, mind elsewhere.

 

 

-- Not crazy, just terrified? No, it's too pat, when one of the commonest kinds of mental disorder consists mainly in groundless terror. And yet there's something so rational about Urchin. . . . Granted, paranoids are rational, with knobs on, but paranoia's psychotic and nobody seems to think she's worse than a hysteric. . . . If she really wants to learn English, we'll have to teach her. Without words, there's nothing to be done whatever.

 

 

 

 

 

 

*13*

 

 

Trouble with Urchin started the following day.

 

 

Following his talk with Mirza, work kept Paul late in his office. With conscious rectitude he stopped at the Needle in Haystack only to buy a couple of quarts of beer, then went straight home to study over his evening meal.

 

 

The nagging sensation that in some way he owed more to Urchin than to his other patients because she was suffering a real equivalent to his imaginary fears kept coming between him and his textbooks until in exasperation he made a firm resolve not to think of her again before, at the earliest, he had the lab reports and X-rays as a basis to work from.

 

 

Sticking to that decision, he spent most of next morning reviewing his case-load and obtaining from the ward sisters and charge nurses comments on the chemotherapy he'd been prescribing for the patients. He would have got on well but for two major interruptions. The minor ones never stopped and he was adjusted to them.

 

 

First there appeared a rather saddening new admission: an old woman referred from Blickham General where she had been being treated for a broken right hip. The long stay in hospital, as all too often happened, had wasted what little remained of her independence; day by day her personality had degraded until after postponing discharge to the latest possible moment Blickham General diagnosed irreversible senile dementia and contacted Chent.

 

 

It was like the delivery of a package, not a human being: a sticklike frame swathed in blankets, toothless face blank with infantile preoccupations. She had fouled herself on the journey and stank of faeces.

 

 

-- Selfish, but I feel glad that women live longer than men. I can expect to be decently dead before I reach that stage.

 

 

Almost two-thirds of Chent's inmates were women, and the proportion among chronic geriatric cases was higher still. Small wonder, Paul had sometimes thought, that the ancients called hysteria after the womb if throughout history women had been twice as likely to go mad as men.

 

 

The second interruption began by way of a phone call.

 

 

"Dr Fidler?" He recognised Sister Wells's voice. "Trouble in the ward, I'm afraid, involving this girl Urchin."

 

 

One second of stupefaction. Then: "I'm on my way!"

 

 

-- Don't tell me she's broken someone else's arm!

 

 

He found Nurse Kirk and Sister Wells in the female dormitory, the former standing aggressively over sly-faced Madge Phelps, who was clutching a hair-brush with a gaudy floral back, while Urchin sat on an empty, tidy bed occasionally touching an angry red mark on her cheek.

 

 

"What happened?" Paul demanded.

 

 

Sister Wells thrust a lock of stray hair back under her cap. "Madge says she caught . . . uh . . . Urchin trying to steal her hair-brush, whereupon she hit her with it. I've been trying to verify this, but it's not exactly easy."

 

 

-- Among the other things lunatics make: their own version of truth.

 

 

Paul frowned. "What are they doing here anyway?"

 

 

Nurse Kirk spoke up. "Madge wouldn't go out this morning -- said she was suspicious of Urchin. So we left her in her nightwear to be seen to later. And there isn't much point in trying to get Urchin out of the ward, is there -- not understanding what people say to her?"

 

 

"She's been keeping up this learning-English act," the sister amplified. "I'm afraid it's been annoying the other patients rather, being followed around and pestered for the names of perfectly ordinary objects."

 

 

-- Act?

 

 

But Paul let that pass without comment.

 

 

"Madge took an interest in her over breakfast and my guess is that not finding anyone else left to talk to, Urchin started trying to get the names of Madge's belongings. But not even the nurses touch Madge's stuff without asking, or they're likely to lose a handful of hair. A smack with the brush I'd call getting off lightly!"

 

 

"Dirty thief!" Madge said loudly. "Ought to be locked up in her cell all day and all night and we could look through the peephole and laugh at her."

 

 

Urchin got down off the bed. Dejectedly she walked back to her cell and shut the door behind her.

 

 

"She understood that all right, apparently," Sister Wells said in surprise.

 

 

-- Did she? No, I think it was just a case of giving up against hopeless odds.

 

 

Before Paul could speak again, however, there was a call from the far door.

 

 

"Sister! Sister -- Hello, what's going on?"

 

 

-- Matron in all her gory, as Mirza puts it.

 

 

Having heard the story, Matron Thoroday rounded on Paul. "Sedation, don't you think, Doctor? Can't have this sort of thing wasting the valuable time of my nurses."

 

 

"No," Paul said.

 

 

Matron blinked. "I beg your pardon?"

 

 

"I said no. I don't propose to prescribe any medication for Urchin until I'm satisfied she's suffering from a disorder which requires it."

 

 

The matron was marginally too well-mannered to snort, but she implied it. "Sister, how do you feel about it?"

 

 

"Stick needles in her," Madge said. "Lots of needles. Lots and lots of needles!"

 

 

"Be quiet," Matron ordered briskly, and Madge looked frightened. "Sister, you were saying. . .?"

 

 

"Well, she isn't really being much trouble," Sister Wells murmured.

 

 

"A moment ago you were saying she was pestering the nurses and patients. Make your mind up, Wells!"

 

 

-- There's something I detest about blotting out patients who make a nuisance of themselves.

 

 

The realisation came to Paul accompanied by a faint aura of surprise. Perhaps it was Mirza's remark of yesterday about the churchly associations of the cracked bell in the clock-tower, bringing back an admonition which once he had thought of frequently but not for many years: suffer fools gladly .

 

 

-- Though there are fools and fools . . . No, nuisance is one thing, and we tolerate it in those who are nominally sane. Violence, hurting: that's of a different order, and when our skills are exhausted there's no alternative. We call the pharmacy and . . . But why should we resent being bothered by those who are trying to communicate with us, and to communicate terrible things, at that? Even if we leave them no other means of expression except their own filth!

 

 

He said sharply, "Please don't argue, Matron. In my judgment Urchin needs neither sedation nor any other immediate attention."

 

 

"I feel you may be overlooking something, Doctor . This Urchin -- and what a ridiculous name that is, by the way! -- this young woman definitely broke a man's arm. I don't want that to happen in the hospital, and I'm sure you agree with me." Matron Thoroday wasn't used to being talked back to; the words lacked her normal forthrightness.

 

 

"On the contrary," Paul returned, "I think you're overlooking the fact that she was the one who got hit, and you're talking as if she did the hitting. Has Madge Phelps done this kind of thing before, Nurse?" he added, turning.

 

 

"She goes for anybody who tries to touch her property," Nurse Kirk said.

 

 

"Whose patient is she?"

 

 

"Dr Roshman's."

 

 

"Is he prescribing anything for her at the moment?"

 

 

"She's on Largactil, but he has just reduced the daily dosage."

 

 

"Put her back on the farmer dosage for the rest of today, and if Dr Roshman inquires why, refer him to me, will you?"

 

 

-- Unanswerable question: am I doing this to spite Matron, or is it the right thing in view of Roshman's vacillating habits? It's true he changes his mind more often in a week than Alsop does in a year, so I'll just have to pray that his first guess was the right one.

 

 

Matron's cheeks were turning scarlet, but he tactfully kept his eyes averted, addressing Nurse Kirk.

 

 

-- The way I'm going on, they're liable to start accusing me of favouritism among the patients. One further point. One.

 

 

"Apart from trying to get them to teach her English, has Urchin been annoying the other patients?"

 

 

"Well, yes," was the reply, to Paul's dismay. "She watches them."

 

 

"What's so bad about that?"

 

 

"I mean she stares at them and tries to copy what they're doing."

 

 

"Because she doesn't know what to do herself?"

 

 

"I suppose so. But I'm not surprised they find it a bit irritating." The nurse hesitated. "Then, of course, they didn't like the way she behaved in the washroom this morning."

 

 

"How?"

 

 

"She took off all her clothes and positively scrubbed her private parts. And it shocked the others. We have several patients who've been brought up to always use a separate face-towel, and seeing her wipe her whole body with her face-cloth upset them dreadfully."

 

 

Paul made a mental note to follow up that hint. Obsession with the cleanliness of the sexual parts could indicate the nature of the underlying disorder.

 

 

-- If there is one. I think my good resolution is going to hell. Too many enigmas for my peace of mind.

 

 

"I'd have thought there was a fairly simple solution," he said aloud. "Let her have a shower, or a tub."

 

 

"But we don't normally do that in the mornings before breakfast," Matron said with an air of restrained triumph. "I imagine the other patients would regard this as a special treat, wouldn't they, Sister?"

 

 

"I'm afraid they might," Sister Wells admitted.

 

 

"Sometimes people get my goat," Paul said, his patience running out. "A person who's exceptionally clean gets called dirty by those around her. This is ridiculous -- in the strict sense, it's crazy. Just make your minds up which will cause less trouble, having her wash all over in public or having her sent for a shower in private, and then let her get on with it. Now, if that's all, I have work to do, and so have you!"

 

 

 

 

 

 

*14*

 

 

"This is Holinshed," the phone muttered. "Come down to my office, will you?"

 

 

-- Blast the man. As if I didn't have my hands full! My turn for duty again tonight, and the Operating Committee tomorrow, and I'm drowning in a sea of papers.

 

 

But Paul remembered to put on his politest face as he tapped at Holinshed's door.

 

 

"Ah, Fidler! Sit down. You know Inspector Hofford, I believe."

 

 

Raincoat unbelted and dragging on the floor either side of his chair, the policeman nodded his greeting.

 

 

"Sorry to bother you, Doctor," he said. "It's about this girl Urchin, of course. Mr Faberdown won't let the matter rest. I've been trying to work out some means of passing it off lightly, with the help of Dr Holinshed here. But . . ."

 

 

"Are you going to prefer charges against the girl?"

 

 

"I don't see much alternative," Hofford sighed.

 

 

Holinshed broke in, his voice brittle. "Inspector Hofford is prepared to co-operate in every possible way, but apparently it's largely up to us. As I understand it, the tidiest course is to certify the girl unfit to plead."

 

 

"Except," Hofford murmured, "that when we spoke before, Doctor, you gave me the impression you thought she might have been . . . ah . . . temporarily upset by attempted rape, rather than mentally deranged, in which case the whole affair takes on a different complexion."

 

 

"Is Faberdown sticking to his story?" Paul asked.

 

 

"Like a leech, sir," Hofford grunted. "And I gather you haven't yet found an interpreter to tell us the girl's side of it, so she's in no position to contradict him, is she?"

 

 

Paul turned over the alternatives in his mind.

 

 

-- Well, it would certainly be cruel to put her on show in a public court, which is what I suppose it would come to. But there's something so dreadfully final about the piece of paper which sets it down in black and white: so-and-so is clinically insane. It revolts me. Mirza is right. Even the worst of our patients remains a little bit sane.

 

 

"Inspector, is this very urgent?" he inquired.

 

 

"Of course we'd like to clear the whole business up as quickly as we can, but . . . well, no, not what you'd call urgent. Mr Faberdown is still in the hospital himself and certainly won't be out until after the weekend, and I take it the girl will remain here."

 

 

Holinshed coughed gently. "You sound worried, Fidler. May I know the reason?"

 

 

"Frankly, sir, I wouldn't be prepared to certify her unfit. I honestly don't think anyone could."

 

 

"But I gather from Matron that she's been behaving in a hr'm! -- disorderly manner in the ward today."

 

 

-- What was I thinking earlier about lunatics making their own version of truth? Why specify lunatics?

 

 

"The way it was reported to me, sir, she was in fact attacked by another patient, and the nurse stated she made no attempt to retaliate. Matron insisted that I sedate her, but I refused."

 

 

-- Oh-oh. I think I just went a step too far.

 

 

A frigid light gleamed in Holinshed's eyes. "If I follow you correctly, you're implying that she's a miserable victim of circumstances and the salesman despite his denials is the one who should be arraigned in court. Now this," he continued, raising a hand to forestall Paul's indignant interruption, "strikes me as a highly speculative standpoint. Where are the traces of this attempted rape? I didn't find them in the admission report. And in any case, according to Inspector Hofford, this leads to enormous complications."

 

 

"Well, yes," the latter agreed. "To take the worst aspect of the problem, she's presumably an alien, and once we try to establish what a foreigner is doing wandering around a Shropshire wood without clothes, let alone identification, we get mixed up with the immigration authorities, the Home Office, and lord knows who."

 

 

"Have you checked with Missing Persons?"

 

 

"That's one of the reasons I called here today. I'd like to arrange for a photograph of her."

 

 

"Well, she's going to Blickham General tomorrow for a head X-ray. They have an arrangement with a local photographer; I can probably organise it through them."

 

 

"I'd be much obliged," Hofford said, and made to rise. "I think that's as far as we can take matters today then, Dr Holinshed," he added.

 

 

"Just a moment," Holinshed put in, eyes on Paul. "Does Dr Alsop share your view that the girl is actually normal, Fidler?"

 

 

"That's not what I've been saying," Paul snapped. "But it was drummed into me during training that one should never mistake the result of different customs or some physical handicap for true mental disorder."

 

 

"And what . .. ah . . . physical handicap applies to this girl?"

 

 

"Matron told you about the rumpus involving her. But apparently she neglected to mention that she's trying to get the patients and nurses to teach her English."

 

 

"Seriously?" Hofford brightened. "Well, that's some consolation. Of course, you don't learn a language in a day, but if she's making the effort we may eventually get her side of the story. Oh, by the way, while I think of it! Have you found out what the language is that she can speak?"

 

 

"If I get time today," Paul said with a meaning glare at Holinshed, "I shall try and make a tape of her talking, and send it to the philology department at the university with a sample of some peculiar writing she did for us. Someone's bound to recognise it."

 

 

"Bound to?" Holinshed echoed. "And suppose she's fabricated an imaginary language?"

 

 

Paul retained self-control with an effort. "According to a friend of mine who lectures in languages, it's next to impossible to invent a wholly new one. Something shows through -- sentence structure, or the roots of the words. Proof that she's talking an invented form of some natural language would be the evidence we need to show that she's mentally disturbed."

 

 

-- Thought so; you'd missed that.

 

 

Holinshed gave him a suspicious glance: are you having me on? But his tone was cordial as he gave his blessing to the idea.

 

 

-- Tomorrow you'll be convinced it was your own suggestion in the first place.

 

 

"If that's all, then, Inspector . . .?" the medical superintendent added.

 

 

"Yes, thank you, sir."

 

 

-- If I ever get good at hospital politics, I think I shall start to hate myself.

 

 

Paul dropped into his chair and picked up the phone. He dialed.

 

 

"Stores," a voice said.

 

 

"Dr Fidler here. We have a tape-recorder, don't we?"

 

 

"Yes, sir. But Dr Rudge has it at the moment. She's making up a programme of music for the Saturday dance."

 

 

"Well, she's gone to Birmingham with Dr Roshman. So would you have it sent up here, please?"

 

 

-- Saturday? Blazes: tomorrow. And my duty, too. The ghastly parody of a festive occasion. Still, it's at least a gesture towards normality.

 

 

He dialed again, this time the office in Urchin's ward, and gave instructions for her to be brought up in ten minutes.

 

 

During that time he made cursory preparations for the monthly meeting of the Operating Committee, due the next day. The committee was a half-arsed body including senior and junior medical staff, admin staff, and a representative from the committee in charge of the entire local hospital group. With the departure of Holinshed they would probably get around to rationalising the running of Chent and put it under a proper medical advisory committee. Until that time, however, Holinshed -- like all the medical superintendents Paul had ever come across -- preferred to retain his personal power despite being constrained to pay lip-service to modern organisational methods.

 

 

-- I swear the reason he holds these meetings on Saturdays is to keep them short. Everybody's always eager to get away.

 

 

Then the door was opening and there was the tape-recorder, but no tape, because they'd taken off the one on which Natalie was compiling music for the dance, so he had to send for one, and then Urchin was being brought in and another slab of work was destined to be held over for this evening.

 

 

-- I shall never get my DPM at this rate.... Oh well: I shall just have to sit up late tomorrow night, cramming facts into my brain against the bell in the clock-tower.

 

 

He forced a smile and waved Urchin to a chair.

 

 

"All right, Nurse, no need for you to hang around," he told the girl who, had escorted Urchin up from the ward. And added with a trace of bitterness as the door closed, knowing the question would receive no answer, "I wish to God I could tell, Urchin -- are you crazy or not?"

 

 

 

 

 

 

*15*

 

 

She gave a hesitant sweet smile and murmured, "Pol!" He grinned back.

 

 

-- Done something to herself since I saw her earlier. Looks even more attractive despite the baggy cotton dress. Oh yes: not so baggy. Got a belt from somewhere. That'll annoy Matron. Visions of strangulation and hanging herself in the toilet

 

 

. . . Better start with a sample of her writing, I guess.

 

 

Opening a notepad, he pantomimed the action with a ball-pen. She gave a curious little twitch of her head which, since it was different from the quasi-Balkan negative she had used before, presumably implied "yes."

 

 

Taking the pen, she inscribed, rather than wrote, a series of symbols. He had meant to watch the movement of her hand, but somehow his gaze got delayed on the way and he found he was studying her face instead. She had the child's habit of putting her tongue-tip between her teeth when she was concentrating.

 

 

She showed him the paper, and he realised with a start that she had written FEMALF WAAD.

 

 

-- Not bad for a person wholly unused to our alphabet, I suppose. Indicates a good visual memory. But not what I wanted.

 

 

He took the notepad, balled up the sheet she had used, and attempted to imitate the spiky symbols she had produced on the evening of her arrival. At first she looked bewildered; after a few seconds, though, she gave a peal of laughter and reached for the pen again.

 

 

This time she worked more quickly. The result was a table of twenty-five symbols arranged in a square. She pulled her chair around so that she could sit up to the desk with him and point at each in turn with the pen.

 

 

"Beh!" she said, naming the first. "Veh. Peh. Feh. Weh." The pen flicked along the top line.

 

 

-- Hang on, young lady. You're not supposed to be teaching me your alphabet, which for all I know you made up in your spare time. But I ought to know what sounds attach to the letters, I guess.

 

 

With a sigh, because this involved further expenditure of precious time, he wrote transliterations for each sound she uttered. Studying them, he frowned. There were two or three cases where he had had to approximate; the sound didn't occur in English. In particular there was a harsh aspirate akin to the Swedish "tj" which he couldn't even imitate. Yet . . .

 

 

-- Odder than ever. No vowels. Nonetheless it's a more logical grouping than the ordinary alphabet: that series at the top, for instance, voiced and unvoiced plosives with their aspirated forms alongside . . . If you did invent this, you're certainly not stupid.

 

 

He made to tear the sheet off so that he could send it to the university's philology department, but she checked him with a hurt expression.

 

 

-- Damnation. You thought you were here for a language lesson, didn't you? How can I explain that I simply haven't the time?

 

 

He pointed to all the papers stacked in his in-tray, and pantomimed removing them, dealing with them and sending them away. She watched with her usual triple reaction: incomprehension, understanding and amusement. Eventually she interrupted him by catching at his hand to save him repeating the whole routine, and for a moment her cool small fingers linked with his.

 

 

With a sinking feeling Paul recognised the predicament he had drifted into.

 

 

-- Oh hell. . . . You like me and you trust me. I owe it to you to help you more than this.

 

 

So, resignedly, he invested more irreplaceable time in what could too easily prove to be pandering to a lunatic's fantasy. In exchange for the table of symbols she had given him he wrote out the alphabet and added where possible the values from hers, then pronounced the vowels for her.

 

 

In return she demonstrated that her system was a syllabary, not an alphabet, provided with a series of dot-and-dash modifiers like Hebrew. To conclude, she wrote two brief words at the foot of the page: her own name, and his.

 

 

-- Enough! Enough!

 

 

Paul set aside the notepad, to her dismay, and started the tape-recorder. Picking up the microphone, he said, "I'm going to try and get a sample of her own language from a patient here at Chent whom we've nicknamed Urchin. There may be one or two false starts since she doesn't speak any English."

 

 

He played back what he'd said. The sound of his voice emanating from the machine didn't appear to surprise her. Add one to the list of inconsistencies she displayed: she could have missed tape-recorders far more easily than cars in the modern world.

 

 

He aimed the microphone at her.

 

 

"Woh" she said, pointing at the wall. "Flaw-er. Wind-daw. Daw-er. Cil-ling . . .

 

 

He withdrew the mike with a sigh. As well as a good visual memory she clearly had a keen facility for auditory learning, but while it was reassuring to know she was progressing with her study of English it didn't help much. Wiping the tape, he considered ways of explaining what he wanted.

 

 

But he didn't have to. She figured it out almost at once and said something rapid in her own tongue. He smiled broadly and restarted the machine.

 

 

This time he taped about two minutes of totally unrecognisable speech. It had a certain rhythmical quality, but he had no way of telling whether that was because she was reciting a bit of poetry, as anyone might do at a loss what else to say on a recording, or whether it was characteristic of the language generally. Anyhow, it should suffice for the experts to begin on. He shut the recorder off.

 

 

She caught his hand and gave him a pleading look.

 

 

-- Why can't I be as quick to work out your meaning as you are to deduce mine? Hmmm . . . I get it, I think. You want to hear a voice, even if it's your own, say something you understand.

 

 

He replayed the brief passage and discovered he was right. She put both hands together between her knees and squeezed, lips trembling in echo of herself. At the end she blinked, and a tear ran down her cheek.

 

 

-- Oh, lord. Why doesn't somebody come and rescue you from Chent? I don't care what you were doing out in the woods the other night; you don't look crazy.

 

 

And yet . . .

 

 

In imagination he heard the sound of a human arm-bone snapping. He winced and recovered his professional detachment. Mechanically, very conscious of her large dark eyes on him, he rang for a nurse to escort her back to the ward.

 

 

When he put down the receiver she touched the notepad questioningly. He waved her to go ahead. Taking the pen, she started to sketch. He recognised the drawing before it was complete: a map of the world, with a triangle and a lozenge for the Americas, a sprawling Eurasian land-mass, a bulging-pear version of Africa and Australasia jammed into the bottom corner more to show she knew it belonged than in any attempt at accurate location.

 

 

-- This girl is a hell of a lot brighter than I am. It just never occured to me to show her an atlas and get her to point out her homeland on it.

 

 

He jumped up and crossed to the shelf of reference books at the far side of the office. Surely there must be a map of some sort among them. At random he selected a tome on Climatic and Other Environmental Factors in the Aetiology of Disease . The frontispiece obligingly proved to be a world map.

 

 

He showed it to her, and she pushed aside her crude sketch with an exclamation of delight. Her finger stabbed down on the British Isles.

 

 

-- So she knows where she is, at any rate. How about where she comes from?

 

 

Convinced that scores of questions were about to be answered at a single blow, he tapped his own chest, then the map, hoping she would see the connection Paul-England. Then he pointed at her. She obediently imitated him, but her finger landed on the same spot as his: the west of England.

 

 

Paul sighed. This girl's intelligence seemed to operate by fits and starts. He made wiping gestures to convey a wrong response and once more pointed at her.

 

 

The same thing happened, accompanied this time by an expression of infinite sadness.

 

 

He shrugged and gave up. But the recognition of her intelligence, even though it was patchy, reminded him that he wanted to give her some non-verbal tests. Waiting for the nurse to come and fetch her, he put through a call to Barrie Tumbelow as Mirza had recommended.

 

 

Tumbelow was at his Friday afternoon clinic and couldn't be reached. Paul left a message for him to ring back, and cradled the phone just as the nurse arrived.

 

 

Unwilling to leave, Urchin rose reluctantly to her feet. She seemed trying to make her mind up about something. Paul gestured for the nurse to stand back, wondering what was coming now.

 

 

Abruptly Urchin touched the notepad with a questioning tilt of her head. Paul snapped his fingers, and exclaimed aloud, "Of course you can!"

 

 

He handed her the pad and a pen, and she clasped his hand with gratitude before turning docilely to the nurse and following her away.

 

 

 

 

 

 

*16*

 

 

Half past nine clang-clinked from the clock-tower as Paul dumped his overnight bag on a spare chair at the side of the committee-room. Hollinshed's secretary, a stiff-mannered fortyish woman named Miss Laxham -- about whom Mirza had once posed the question of what it was she lacked and concluded that it was gonads -- was distributing duplicated copies of the minutes of the previous month's meeting; they exchanged a cool good morning.

 

 

Paul leafed through the documents laid before his place. Relieved, he saw that the agenda was straightforward and the meeting would be a short one. He pushed it aside and unfolded his copy of the local weekly paper. Published on Fridays, it had been waiting for him when he got home yesterday, but he hadn't bothered to read it. Only this morning, gulping down a hasty breakfast, had he wondered whether the affair of Urchin and Faberdown was reported in it.

 

 

-- Nothing on the front page. Good. But it might be on the middle spread. . . . Oh my God. Here it is by the shovelful.

 

 

He flapped the paper over centre to fold it back and read with a sinking heart: MADWOMAN ATTACKS SALESMAN NEAR YEMBLE. About ten inches of it, with a blurred photo of the copse where it happened. a quote from Mrs Weddenhall in which she appealed irrelevantly to people to keep their children from talking to strange men, and a statement that Dr Holinshed of Chent Hospital had no comment to make.

 

 

-- At least they left me out of it by name. I'm just "a psychiatrist from Chent."

 

 

He glanced up as another committee-member entered: Dr Jewell, a local GP who served as medical consultant for the hospital.

 

 

"Morning, Fidler," he grunted as he settled his portly body into a chair. "See you're reading up on our local sensation. What do you think of the editorial comment, hm?"

 

 

Paul turned back to the preceding page, dismayed. What he found there was worse yet.

 

 

"While no one can fail to sympathise with the plight of the mentally afflicted . . . The complexity of the human mind is such that its breakdown defeats the best efforts of psychologists. . . . Our primary duty is to society . . . We must act in full knowledge of the fact that the Beast in Man can and all too often does break loose. . . .

 

 

-- So what do they want us to do? Keep the inmates in chains on dirty straw? Wait till it's a member of your family who goes crazy. Though maybe you'd just pretend it hadn't happened. After all, when I myself . . .

 

 

"Morning!" And here was Holinshed, with Matron Thoroday, Ferdie Silva, Nurse Foden on behalf of the nursing staff, Mr Chapcheek from the Hospital Group -- about whom Mirza had a very Mirzan theory regarding which of his cheeks were chapped and why -- and finally the hospital secretary, Pratt-Rhys, a greying man who had clawed his way up the promotional ladder in lay admin posts through sheer determination and was never tired of reminding his colleagues that he had left school at sixteen and had no university degree.

 

 

"Dr Roshman sends his apologies," Holinshed announced. "But everyone else appears to be here . . .? Yes! Let's get straight down to business, then. Ready, Miss Laxham?"

 

 

She poised her pencil and Holinshed rattled his copy of the minutes.

 

 

"Minutes of the meeting of Chent Hospital Operating Committee held on blah-blah, present the following blah-blah. Dr Bakshad deputising for Dr Silva indisposed, apologies from Mr Chapcheek unavoidably detained until after start of business, Item One the minutes of the previous meeting were read by the chairman and agreed by all present as a true and correct record . . ."

 

 

Letting the drone of words pass him by, Paul recalled Mirza's comment on that meeting, which he had attended because Ferdie Silva was laid up with a temperature of a hundred.

 

 

"Why not draft a set of permanent all-purpose minutes for that committee, like a perpetual calendar? Think of the time it would save -- especially time spent listening to Holinshed!"

 

 

He hid the smile which the idea brought to his lips. Holinshed didn't approve of people smiling while he was talking.

 

 

His own situation on this committee, as indeed at the hospital, was anomalous. In a larger hospital he would have been working under a senior registrar. Chent, with its average of less than three hundred patients, was torn between Holinshed's desire to have it treated as a "large" hospital and the determination of the Hospital Group to regard it as a "small" one. The staff structure exhibited the consequences.

 

 

In passing, Paul remembered suddenly a phrase from a letter Iris had received, years ago, from an official at the Ministry. During their engagement, as though having second thoughts after learning how determined he was to work in mental hospitals rather than go into general practice, she had written to inquire about prospects for promotion and salary if he stuck to his plan.

 

 

"This Ministry," the official told her frostily, "does not lay down a rigid staffing pattern or establishment of ranks for individual hospitals."

 

 

-- You can say that again!

 

 

His discovery of the letter had precipitated a row that almost terminated the engagement.

 

 

-- Suppose it had broken up? Would I be here now?

 

 

As always, his imagination conjured up a painful vision of being resident here in conventional fashion, having to lie awake night after night listening to that maddening cracked bell overhead, until exhaustion drove him to a fatal error, a patient killed himself, censure followed from the General Medical Council . . .

 

 

With an effort Paul dragged his mind back to the things that had attracted him about his post. In particular, the psychiatric registrar here enjoyed a large measure of independence compared to his opposite number in a hospital with more patients, because there was a gap in the ladder above him. What he had failed to reckon with was the way in which the extra responsibilities piled on top of his routine work, thus slashing the time he had expected to devote to study.

 

 

-- When did I last have a clear weekend? Beginning of December, I think, when Iris insisted on doing the Christmas shopping. . . . Oh, come off it. Suppose I were at Blickham General: I could easily be working a twenty-hour day, with premature labours, survivors from car accidents, scalded children, drunks with their heads cut open . . .

 

 

There would be a chance to catch up with his textbooks tonight, at least; he'd jammed three of them into his overnight bag. He'd have to look in at the patients' dance, but he could get away with an hour of that, possibly less, and retreat to the staff sitting-room for peace and quiet.

 

 

He sneaked a glance at the clock on the wall. They were down to the halfway mark on the agenda and it wasn't quite ten o'clock yet. Marvellous: and an even shorter session than usual, and he hldn't been called on to utter a word.

 

 

"Thank you," Holinshed murmured as yet another item on the agenda was rubber-stamped. "That brings us to number ten, any other business. Has anybody . . .?"

 

 

"I think we should discuss the item which appears in this week's local paper," Dr Jewell said firmly. "Dr Fidler, you have a copy of it. Perhaps you'd show the chairman?"

 

 

Dismayed, Paul pushed his copy of the paper towards Holinshed. There was a frigid pause.

 

 

At length Holinshed said, "Are you certain that will serve any useful purpose?"

 

 

"It's aroused a lot of public concern," Jewell countered. "Several of my patients have raised the matter with me. A mental hospital is an awkward neighbour at the best of times, but when something like this happens the situation is aggravated."

 

 

Paul edged forward on his chair. "Dr Jewell, you're talking as though one of our patients had escaped! The way to look at it, surely, is to remember it's just as well it happened near here, so that there were people on the spot capable of coping with the problem."

 

 

-- I think I just earned a smidgin of approval from Holy Joe!

 

 

"I'm afraid you aren't quite with me," JeweIl said. "What I'm referring to is not the event itself but the way it was handled. I don't wish to bring personalities into this, just to remind everyone that relations between Chent and the public aren't improved by discounting the legitimate fears of lay people regarding lunatics."

 

 

The words burst from Paul's lips before he could check them: "Has Mrs Weddenhall been getting at you?"

 

 

"Dr Fidler, please!" Holinshed muttered.

 

 

"I don't know what you mean by 'getting at me,'" Jewell retorted. "But she's taken a good deal of interest in all this, and as a JP and a prominent local figure she'd bound to influence public opinion."

 

 

Somehow, without realising, Paul was on his feet. "Then let me tell you something which she didn't! What your precious Mrs Weddenhall was proposing to do was to hunt this maniac down with wolf-hounds and a posse armed with shotguns! And the -- the maniac turned out to be a half-pint girl who wouldn't come up to the shoulder of the man she's supposed to have attacked. Do you want me to send for her so that you can see for yourself?"

 

 

"I hardly think that will be necessary," Holinshed declared in a forceful tone. Paul sat down again, shaking as much from embarrassment at his own uncharacteristic outburst as from the anger that had prompted it.

 

 

"My apologies, Dr Jewell," Holinshed continued. "But I'm compelled to agree with Fidler -- though not with the way he expressed himself. The matter does not fall within the purview of this committee and I propose to rule further discussion out of order. And if that's all, I think we should adjourn right away."

 

 

 

 

The door of the hall was open. Still trembling. Paul walked towards it for a breath of fresh air.

 

 

-- Christ, there are times when I want to get to hell out of this place and forget I ever saw it!

 

 

He lit a cigarette with unsteady hands, eyes fixed on one of the big white Daimler ambulances which was parked across the driveway, rear doors open. People moved towards it. For a second he didn't recognise who was among them, his mind being too full of other things. Suddenly it penetrated. He checked his watch: not quite twenty to eleven, and he'd made the appointment at Blickham General himself for eleven sharp. He swung on his heel, catching sight of Ferdie Silva making for the stairs.

 

 

"Ferdie! Do me a favour? Are you going to be in for lunch?"

 

 

The plump Guianese nodded.

 

 

"It's my duty. Stand in for me till I get back, will you?" The duty tour ran from noon until noon, though this was seldom a nuisance except at weekends.

 

 

"Provided you're not too long about it," Silva consented doubtfully.

 

 

"No, two o'clock should be the latest." Feverishly Paul thrust his overnight bag through the window of the porter's office. "Look after this for me, would you? Thanks a million, Ferdie -- do the same for you sometime."

 

 

And he dashed out of the door just in time to flag down the ambulance taking Urchin for her head to be X-rayed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

*17*

 

 

This ambulance, he noted with relief as he squeezed in alongside the male nurse occupying the passengers' section of the bench seat in the cab, was not one of the security vehicles used for transporting the badly disturbed cases, but what he'd heard one of the drivers refer to as a "walking wounded bus" -- its stretcher-racks convertible into ordinary seating or else capable of being folded back to make room for wheelchairs.

 

 

He twisted around in his place and peered through the glass separating the cab from the rear compartment. The security vehicles had such glass, too -- more of it, indeed, if you thought only in terms of area -- but theirs was reinforced with wire until what it brought to Paul's mind was the back of Mrs Weddenhall's Bentley, caged for the transport of her enormous dogs.

 

 

The moment he showed his face, Urchin made as though to jump from her seat. She was dragged back by the nurse beside her, a girl called Woodside, pretty, but much too tall to be popular with the men -- easily matching Paul's five feet eleven. She had a reputation for treating patients roughly. He scowled at her.

 

 

There was only one other patient in the back, a harmlessly silly man called Doublingale. Paul decided he should have ridden there rather than in front -- the nurse beside him had extremely sharp hip-bones -- but it was too late to change his mind now.

 

 

The trip was slower than usual owing to the Saturday morning shopping traffic in Blickham. Paul kept sneaking glances over his shoulder, noting Urchin's reaction to her surroundings. These were hardly attractive: the fringe of red-brick houses that turned the nearer side of Yemble into a dormitory for the larger town was itself dull, and beyond it lay bleak towers of council apartments served by another parallel road. It gave way shortly to small untidy factories, a scrapyard, the cattle-market and some railway goods sidings.

 

 

To Urchin, however, the view was apparently something to be absorbed without criticism. Only at one point did she display anything but intent interest: when they halted for a red light outside a butcher's shop just before reaching their destination. For a long moment she gazed in seeming disbelief, then swallowed hard and shut her eyes until they moved off.

 

 

-- Of course. The episode with the bacon. Hmmm. . . . Not just vegetarian, but actually revolted by the sight of meat. Which brings me back to this notion of culture shock. But what the hell kind of culture?

 

 

He'd sent the tape and sample of writing to the university, but there was no telling when he would receive a verdict from the experts.

 

 

 

 

The young houseman in charge of the morning's X-ray schedule at Blickham General was very apologetic about the three emergencies from a car-crash who had shot his appointments to hell, but by the sound of it all three might be suffering from skull fractures, so Paul was undisposed to complain. He glanced around the outpatients' waiting-room, chilly and depressing, and abruptly snapped his fingers as he recalled what Hofford had said about photographs of Urchin.

 

 

"That's all right," he exclaimed. "In fact, it suits me very well. I'll bring her back later, shall I?"

 

 

"Suit yourself, but try not to be longer than thirty minutes." The houseman looked lingeringly at Urchin, huddled in a child's woollen overcoat. "Nothing serious, I hope?"

 

 

"It's hard to say. The poor kid doesn't speak English."

 

 

"As a result of something? I see. Pity! Dreadfully young to go off her rocker, isn't she?"

 

 

 

 

-- Are you? Aren't you?

 

 

The problem buzzed maddeningly in Paul's brain like a trapped fly as he led Urchin across the entrance yard of the hospital, very conscious of the eyes of the driver in the ambulance which had brought them. The photographer's shop he had mentioned to Hofford was virtually opposite, and the driver watched them all the way.

 

 

Portrait photos mounted on thread jumped as he pushed open the door. Behind the counter, a suave young man framed by a black velvet curtain looked up.

 

 

"Good morning, sir, Harvey Samuels at your service, what can I do for you?"

 

 

His tone was weary, as though he was tired of doing anything for anyone.

 

 

"You do passport photos while you wait?" Paul asked.

 

 

"Yes, sir. Fleeing the country, are you?" An insincere smile. "Never mind me, sir, just my little joke, you know. Is it for yourself or the young lady?"

 

 

"For her."

 

 

"Three for ten and six, that all right? Come this way, please," be added to Urchin, raising a flap of the counter.

 

 

"I'll have to come with her, I'm afraid," Paul said. "She doesn't understand English."

 

 

Surprise fleeted across Samuels's face. "The pictures are for a British passport, are they, sir? I'm afraid I wouldn't know if they're suitable for any other country."

 

 

"They're not for a passport at all. I just want some pictures in a hurry."

 

 

Samuels shrugged and pushed back the curtain. Encouraging Urchin with a smile, Paul accompanied the photographer into a cramped little room dominated by floodlights and a group of three cameras aimed at a plain metal stool. On the wall behind the stool a white sunburst was painted to give portraits a sort of halo effect.

 

 

"Get her to sit down, please," Samuels said, switching on his lights.

 

 

"Don't go to a lot of trouble," Paul warned. "A good plain likeness is all I need."

 

 

"Making the young lady plain is probably beyond even my abilities, sir," Samuels answered as though it were a stock compliment,

 

 

Paul attempted to lead Urchin to the stool, but she baulked and clung to his hand, wide eyes staring at the cameras.

 

 

-- Don't let me down now, Urchin! You weren't put off by the tape-recorder, so why should this bother you?

 

 

He gave her shoulder a reassuring pat, and she timorously yielded. But the hard fear remained on her face. Since Samuels took the injunction about a simple likeness literally, it was captured on the plate.

 

 

-- I hope her friends or family or whatever recognise her with that ghastly expression!

 

 

Relieved that the job was over, she stood as close to the door as possible while he was paying for the pictures and arranging to pick them up before returning to Chent.

 

 

-- Did she expect to be shot, or something?

 

 

But she surprised him for the latest of many times when he opened the door to go out. Catching his arm, she pointed at one of the pictures on display, then at her own face. She suddenly turned down her mouth and narrowed her eyes in a parody of the expression she had worn in the studio. It lasted only a second, and was wiped away in a peal of laughter.

 

 

-- in other words: I must have looked hideous!

 

 

Grinning, he escorted her back to the hospital. A car drove by as they left the shop; absently he put his arm on her shoulder to prevent her walking in front of it. Equally absently he forgot to take it off until they were crossing the hospital yard and he realised the ambulance driver was still at the wheel of his vehicle.

 

 

-- That's how to start gossip. Mustn't do it.

 

 

But the impulse was hard to resist, nonetheless. Urchin was so childlike in many ways that all his paternal instincts were aroused.

 

 

-- If only Iris . . . But we've been through that, and I don't feel ready for a replay of the argument yet.

 

 

The houseman was just coming in search of them when they arrived, and led them straight to the X-ray room. A nurse entered Urchin's particulars on a form, made a quick check of her hair for metal clips or anything that might show on the plate, and opened the inner door with its red radiation-danger sign.

 

 

Over Urchin's shoulder Paul had one clear view of the equipment: a couch, a chair, various supports for legs and arms requiring examination, and the blunt-snouted machine itself.

 

 

Then Urchin had spun around.

 

 

"Hey, where do you think you're going?" the nurse said, making to seize her arm. Fast as a striking snake the arm was out of reach, and back again, fingers straight in a jab to the inside of the nurse's elbow. She screamed and dropped the papers she was clutching.

 

 

Paul, petrified with astonishment, put up a hand as though to ward Urchin off, saying stupidly; "Now just a second . . . !"

 

 

But he was in her way, and that was enough. She slammed him off balance with the point of her shoulder, hurling her tiny body upwards like a pouncing cheetah and driving at the vulnerable base of his sternum. He doubled up, all the wind knocked out of him, and she was past him, out of the room, and gone.

 

 

 

 

 

 

*18*

 

 

"Patient exhibited unaccountable fear of the X-ray equipment," Paul wrote with careful legibility. "It was judged inadvisable to make a second attempt at securing plates of her skull, as her violent reaction -- "

 

 

He stopped, set down the pen, and lit a cigarette, wondering about the rest of the sentence he was entering in his report. Absently his left hand wandered to the pit of his stomach where Urchin had charged into him with such deadly effect.

 

 

-- No matter how carefully I phrase it, anybody is going to get the impression she's really dangerous. What was the bit in the paper about the Beast in Man breaking loose?

 

 

He shuddered gently at the narrowness of the margin by which he had escaped real trouble. If Urchin had taken to her heels and got lost in the crowded town, there would have been no end to it: police, a search, a major local scandal and demands for an official inquiry. . . .

 

 

She'd let him off lightly, by going no further than the hospital yard and waiting passively until he staggered out after her. She had resisted being taken indoors, again, but she'd climbed peaceably back into the ambulance and ridden alongside him with no more trouble.

 

 

Nonetheless, the matter couldn't be allowed to slide. The nurse she had attacked was very ill; the blow had ruptured the vein on the inside of her elbow, resulting in a horrible-looking haemorrhage, and the poor girl had fainted from pain. So Urchin was in her cell with the door locked, and he had taken advantage of the trust she still reposed in him to pour a heroic dose of tranquilliser down her. At last report she was asleep.

 

 

-- God's name, what did her mind conjure up from an innocent X-ray machine? A mad scientist's gadgetry out of a horror picture?

 

 

But the moral was clear. He'd seen and felt for himself what she was capable of. Faberdown couldn't have stood a chance agaimt her; with her skills she could have broken not just his arm, but his neck.

 

 

-- Which, I suppose, is evidence for a fundamental personality disturbance. Even if she is a little shrimp, the average girl isn't so scared of her fellow human beings that she trains as a killing fighter.

 

 

The idea was still a trifle frightening. It was one thing to see the hero of a TV thriller or a movie bashing the villains in a struggle choreographed as formally as a ballet. It was something else entirely to find himself face to face with a lethal weapon in the shape of a slender, attractive girl.

 

 

-- And there's half the trouble, if you'd only confess it. Hasn't living with Iris taught me not to judge by appearances? If Urchin had come in with a typical slack face, slopped around careless of how she looked instead of trying to be clean and neat, and shown apathy instead of lively interest in what goes on around her, I'd have shoved her to the back of my mind and got on with my work.

 

 

Determinedly be picked up the pen and poised it to continue his report. The phrase on which he had paused, however -- "her violent reaction" -- seized his imagination by the scruff and dragged it off down one of the familiar, fearful alternative world lines which so often haunted him.

 

 

-- Demanding of the ambulance driver which way she went: "I didn't see her, Doc, I was lighting a cigarette." Wandering crazily around the streets and mistaking other people for Urchin, a child in a similar coat, a woman with a similar head of hair. Informing the police, having to face Hofford, having to face Holinshed: "This is an unforgivable breach of your professional responsibility which I shall be compelled to report to higher authority." Explaining to Iris when she gets back why I'm facing probable dismissal . . .

 

 

The pen he was holding cracked with a noise like a dry stick. He stared at it stupidly. The vision obsessing him had been so agonising that he had closed both hands into fists; his palms and face were moist with sweat. Angrily, he hurled the broken pen into the wastebasket and took up another.

 

 

-- But it was almost more real than this desk, this office with its windows darkening towards sunset! As if I, this consciousness looking out of my eyes at such innocuous surroundings, were not the real Paul Fidler; as if, at some inconceivable angle to this actual world, the real "I" were trapped in some disastrous chain of events and crying out so fiercely that this brain which till so recently we shared thinks with his thoughts instead of mine!

 

 

Hand shaking, be drove himself to complete the report: " . . . proved that she had been trained in unarmed combat. She did not resist being brought back to Chent; however, I judged it advisable to sedate her, and . . ."

 

 

-- Bloody hell. Now I've used "advisable" twice in three lines.

 

 

 

 

He hated the atmosphere of the hospital at weekends. The sense of purpose which the daily activity of the staff normally lent to the place was exchanged for one of vacuous futility. The coming and going at Saturday lunchtime -- mostly going -- awakened in the patients a fresh awareness of being confined, and resentment stank in his nostrils. Living out, he escaped the worst impact, but on a duty day it struck him all the harder for not being accustomed to it. To compound his depression, the food provided for the staff was worse than ever at weekends, because the real cooking was done beforehand and the meals were a succession of warmed-up leftovers.

 

 

-- At least I can study for a few hours before I turn in.

 

 

He pushed open the door of the sitting-room, not expecting to find anyone else here. Given the chance, the resident staff quit the premises and stayed away till the last permissible moment. To his surprise, Natalie was sipping a cup of tea in a chair facing the door. She looked tired.

 

 

"Hullo!" he said. "Of course, you're looking after the dance tonight, aren't you?"

 

 

"Bloody farce," she said morosely. "Like the worst village hops plus one extra horror -- canned music instead of a proper band, which can at least be relied on to liven the proceedings by getting drunk. Well, I let myself in for the job, so I can't complain."

 

 

"How's the tea today?" Paul asked, tinkling the hand-bell.

 

 

"Above average. Probably they didn't tell the girl that they use stale leaves on Saturdays. . . . I hear Urchin was in trouble today, incidentally."

 

 

"I'm afraid so," he acknowledged; then, when she continued to regard him with a speculative expression but did not speak, he added, "What do you want me to do -- show you my bruise?"

 

 

"Sorry. I didn't mean to stare." She drained her cup and set it aside. "It's just that you looked somehow . . . annoyed?"

 

 

"Should I not be?"

 

 

"But who with?" she countered. "Getting annoyed with mental patients is a waste of time, and in any case I don't think it's Urchin you're upset about."

 

 

Who, then?" Paul snapped.

 

 

"Yourself. You've been going a bit by appearances in her case, haven't you? The episode this morning must have been a considerable let-down."

 

 

"Is this meant to be advice or sympathy?"

 

 

"Sympathy," Natalie said, unruffled by Paul's obvious irritation. "But there's advice coming, if you don't mind. Gossip positively pours in while we're getting ready for a patients' dance, you know, and this had better come from me rather than from Holinshed. Is it true you were seen in Blickham with your arm around Urchin?"

 

 

"God's name!"

 

 

"Paul, simmer down. This is a segregated institution and like every other of its kind it's positively obsessed with sex. I know without being told that it was a bit of fatherly reassurance for this girl who seems totally disoriented But if there's going to be any more of it you'd better leave it to -- well, to me."

 

 

"Who told you this?"

 

 

"Like I said, gossip goes the rounds while we're making ready for a dance."

 

 

"Well, it might be better if you didn't listen to so much of it!" Paul barked, and strode out of the room.

 

 

 

 

He was half inclined to skip dinner, since it meant sharing the otherwise empty dining-room with Natalie, but he came to the conclusion that that was ridiculous. There had been no call to shout at her, and he ought to apologise.

 

 

As it turned out, she had ordered dinner early to get back and supervise the start of the dance. She was on the point of leaving when he arrived and he had to compress the planned apology into a few hasty words. She accepted it anyhow, pleasantly enough.

 

 

Eating his solitary meal, he thought about Natalie's comment that the hospital was obsessed by sex. It was no exaggeration; the mere fact that expression of physical love was impossible because there was nowhere that patients could find privacy made sexuality not just the greatest single root cause of the inmates' disorders apart from senility, but far and away the richest source of rumour and scandal.

 

 

Gloomily he wondered, as he had done the other evening at the Needle in Haystack, whether any other of the hospital gossip concerned himself and if so what it said.

 

 

-- Dance. Christmas dance, the only time Iris has ever been further into this building than Holinshed's office. Did they see deeply enough into her personality to guess or half-guess my problems? The zest seemed to go out of it when I realised she was going to go on refusing to have children, and that seemed to suit her okay, so . . . But a psychiatrist of all people should know that out of sight doesn't mean out of mind. Do something about that, maybe . . .?

 

 

He toyed with the idea, remembering Mirza's suggestion which had so disturbed him. Then he tried to push it aside, but everything conspired to prevent him: in particular, the spectacle of the female patients assembled for this ghastly parody of merrymaking.

 

 

Most of the time, shut away from men, they neglected their appearance, but a dance was always preceded by a flurry of titivating, of changing into a dress set aside for "best" and so seldom worn it had survived the disintegration of the rest of what they had when they arrived and the issue of ugly standard replacements, and of making up. Even the most withdrawn cases dabbed on a bit of powder and smeared lipstick inaccurately across their mouths.

 

 

The result was ghoulish, especially in the case of someone like Mrs Chancery, who at sixty-five was still convinced she was a flapper capable of laying men low in swathes with one deadly flash of her kohl-rimmed eyes.

 

 

The dances were held in the large female sitting-roam, decorated for the occasion with a few paper streamers and some jars of early flowers. The idea was to make the women feel they were the "hostesses" at the party. A table covered in white cloth served as a bar for tea, coffee and soft drinks.

 

 

When Paul arrived, the male patients had barely started to trickle in, but the tape-recorder was already blasting out music and two or three couples were on the floor. Young Riley was showing off, partnered by Nurse Woodside, whose smile was glassy and self-conscious. At present the music was recent pop; later, to placate the older patients, it would go over to sentimental ballads with lots of strings, and at the end they would probably abandon dancing, as usual, for a singsong accompanied at the piano by Lieberman the overambitious locksmith.

 

 

-- How seriously do they take it all?

 

 

The question crossed his mind as he exchanged greetings with patients on his way to collect an orange squash at the bar. The lordly patronising of Holinshed, who would drop in later and "show the flag"; the fact that the nurses were in mufti instead of starched aprons; the presence of a handful of visitors from outside, either friends of the staff, relatives of patients, or dogooders undertaking a charitable act -- none of this added up to festivity!

 

 

-- Who do we think we're kidding?

 

 

Abruptly the thought evaporated. Through a gap in a group of women patients around the far door of the room he had suddenly caught sight of an all-too-familiar figure peering at the dancers.

 

 

-- God damn, has Lieberman been up to his tricks again? Urchin's supposed to be shut in her cell!

 

 

 

 

 

 

*19*

 

 

The tune blaring from the recorder ended. Nurse Woodside, casting around for a way of avoiding another dance with Riley, scanned the assembly and at once spotted Urchin. A hard expression deformed her attractive face, and she made to march in the girl's direction.

 

 

"Nurse!" Paul hissed. He caught up with her in a few long strides.

 

 

"What . . .? Oh, it's you, Doctor." Nurse Woodside shook back her nape-long blonde hair; she was certainly very pretty tonight, in a black dress with fine red stripes which minimised her Junoesque bulk. "I thought that girl Urchin was supposed to be locked in!"

 

 

"She is. But we mustn't kick up a public fuss. Ask around, will you, and see if anybody admits having let her out?"

 

 

He was uncomfortably aware of Riley's gaze fixed on him as he spoke. When the nurse moved to comply, Riley called out, demanding another dance; the sharpness of her refusal annoyed him, and he stamped ostentatiously towards the bar.

 

 

-- I hope he's not building up to a scene later. Paul had considerable sympathy for young Riley. He came from the sort of background calculated to act as a forcing-bed for homosexuality, being the only child of an overprotective slut of a mother who regarded her son's girl-friends as a threat to her hold over him. The strain, against which he had fought with tenacity Paul rather admired, had ultimately driven him to beat his mother up and wreck her flat, whereupon he had been committed to Chent -- quite correctly, because by then he was really deranged. But he was improving now his mother was out of his way, and Paul had high hopes for his early release.

 

 

Nonetheless, he did have a terrible temper.

 

 

A fresh influx of male patients followed, under the discreet supervision of Oliphant in a blue suit and red tie. Several of them, to cover their nervousness -- they were much shyer than teenagers when it came to asking for a partner -- made a production of greeting Paul, and it was with difficulty that he extricated himself to hear Nurse Woodside's report.

 

 

"Doctor, she must have got out by herself. No one admits to unlocking her door, and I don't see how one of the other patients could have done it."

 

 

"Better go and inspect the cell, then," sighed Paul.

 

 

 

 

The empty female dormitory had a peculiarly awful air tonight, like a ship which the passengers had abandoned in a panic: on the beds a confusion of clothing, on the lockers makeup kits, vanity mirrors, hair-brushes, all as if their owners had dematerialised in the act of using them.

 

 

Like the doors of all the other cells, Urchin's was fitted with a somewhat old-fashioned lock, but it was sunk in the wood, not screwed to the surface, and the keyhole on the inner side was blanked off with a solid metal plate. The paint was so chipped by the battering of desperate patients it was impossible to tell if it had been tampered with. Paul shrugged.

 

 

"Well, however she got out we can hardly drag her back. After her performance in Blickham this morning I wouldn't care to try it, anyway. We'll just have to keep a careful eye on her until the dance breaks up. She's heavily tranquillised, so she's unlikely to cause trouble."

 

 

That was true; nonetheless he returned to the dance with a tremor of apprehension. Urchin was in the same place as before. By now, however, Riley had spotted her too, and -- sensibly enough, since she was more attractive than any of the women around her -- was vainly trying to get her to dance with him. The bystanders were sniggering at his lack of success, and this was making him irritated.

 

 

-- Poor devil. Apart from the nurses, who is there of his own age to partner him? Most of the young girls here are congenitals, too stupid to manage their own feet.

 

 

With a final scowl Riley gave up the attempt, caught sight of Nurse Woodside and approached her again. She would rather have declined, but a pleading glance from Paul persuaded her and she took Riley's hand, sighing.

 

 

Some while later Paul concluded that Urchin was only interested in watching and could safely be left to her own devices. He wandered around the floor to the tape-recorder table, and there, after a dismal shuffle in company with one of the older male patients, Natalie joined him.

 

 

"Thanks for sticking it out, Paul," she murmured. "Give it another half-hour and I think it'll be okay. Twenty couples dancing seems to be the break-even point; after that they unwind and actually enjoy it."

 

 

"Anyone else coming? Mirza, maybe?"

 

 

"Not after the Christmas dance, and I'm glad."

 

 

"How do you mean?"

 

 

"There was almost a free fight over who should have the next dance with him. Weren't you there?"

 

 

"Er . . . no. Iris talked me into leaving early."

 

 

Natalie nodded. "Mirza's too damned handsome, that's the trouble. And a wonderful dancer into the bargain. . . . But Holinshed's promised to drop in. Should be here any minute."

 

 

A man came up and diffidently asked her for the next dance. Excusing herself to Paul, she moved away.

 

 

For some time after that he just stood, lacking the willpower to do as he knew he ought to and dance with two or three of the women. Holinshed arrived and duly showed the flag, as he always called it, chatting with elaborate condescension to the staff but too remote for the patients even to address him. Paul was watching him from the far end of the room when Sister Wells came up to him, gawky in a dress patterned with blue roses.

 

 

"There's a phone-call for you, Dr Fidler. It's your wife. Would you like to take it in the ward office?"

 

 

-- Iris? What can she want on a Saturday night?

 

 

Puzzled, he walked into the office, shut the door to exclude the booming music, and picked up the receiver.

 

 

"Iris?" he said neutrally.

 

 

"What on earth are you doing there?" the distant voice said. "I've been calling and calling you at home! What's all that noise I can hear?"

 

 

"We've got a patients' dance on."

 

 

"Oh. Well, I want you to come and rescue me."

 

 

"What? Where are you?"

 

 

"Freezing to death on Blickham Station!"

 

 

"Well . . . ah . . . can't you get a taxi home?"

 

 

"Don't take me for one of your patients, will you?" Iris countered acidly. "If I could get in when I got home there might be some point in using a cab. But I left Bertie and Meg's in rather a hurry and I forgot my door-key."

 

 

A sinking feeling developed in Paul's stomach.

 

 

-- I suppose I could; Natalie would cover for me, though I hate the idea of asking. I could run into Blickham, drop her at home and come back, all within the space of forty minutes. But . . . Damn it, I just don't want to very much.

 

 

"Paul, are you there?" Iris demanded shrilly.

 

 

"Yes, of course. . . . Well, it's a bit awkward, you see. I'm on duty tonight."

 

 

"All by yourself?" The words were charged with sarcasm. "Big deal! Anybody would think you were one of the patients, the way they keep you in."

 

 

-- Oh my God. She can't possibly have found out about . . .? No, it's just a cheap gibe. But am I going to do it, or not?

 

 

"If you'd let me know you were coming -- "

 

 

"I didn't know myself until four o'clock!"

 

 

-- There's a terrible blankness in my mind. I can think words but I can't utter them. What I want to say is . . .

 

 

The door of the office slammed open and there was Sister Wells, gasping.

 

 

"Doctor, quickly !"

 

 

"What?" Paul covered the phone.

 

 

"It's Riley. There's going to be trouble."

 

 

"Right away!" He added, "Darling, there's an emergency. Hang on, I'll be back in a moment."

 

 

"Never mind," Iris rasped. "I suppose I can break a window and climb in!"

 

 

"I'm sorry, but I must dash."

 

 

He dropped the receiver on the table, as if he expected to continue the conversation, but the click of the connection being cut followed him out of the office.

 

 

-- Now there'll be a row and she'll make out it's my fault but if she'd let me know when she was coming home I could have arranged to swap duties with someone and . . .

 

 

But all his private concerns evaporated the moment he entered the room where the dance was being held. The scene was as fixed as a photograph. Everyone had drawn back around the walls, cowering, except the two figures in the centre of the floor: Nurse Woodside and Riley. The girl's face was as white as chalk.

 

 

-- Small wonder.

 

 

For Riley had taken a bottle from the bar, smashed its end, and now held the jagged neck poised like a knife.

 

 

Movement resumed. Natalie switched off the tape-recorder. Nurse Woodside attempted to back away, but a threatening wave of the bottle froze her again. Oliphant and another male nurse sidled past the jabbering patients, trying to get out of Riley's field of vision and tackle him from behind. But he was aware of this, and as they moved so did he, following the rim of a circle with the miserable nurse at its centre. Seeming hypnotised, she turned with him, always facing him.

 

 

"What happened?" Paul whispered to Sister Wells, gnawing her knuckles beside him.

 

 

"I think he tried to kiss her and she wouldn't let him," Sister Wells muttered. "So then he shouted something about making her, and went to get that bottle, and that was when I fetched you."

 

 

Paul's eyes darted swiftly over the room. "Has Dr Holinshed gone?"

 

 

"A moment ago. I sent someone after him, but I think it was too late."

 

 

-- So it's up to me.

 

 

The thought was chilling; it seemed to congeal the progress of time. At an immense distance he heard Riley's voice, wheedling: "Make your mind up, Woodsy dear -- are you going to do it, or shall I make sure no one ever wants to kiss you again?"

 

 

Paul took a deep breath, gestured to Oliphant to come forward with him, and strode out to the middle of the floor with a sense of fatalistic resignation. "Riley!" he snapped, and was infinitely relieved that his words didn't come out thin and squeaky. "That's enough! Put that bottle down -- and sweep up the mess you've made!" he added, inspiration coming from the crunch of glass underfoot.

 

 

As though the interruption had broken a spell, Nurse Wooaside rolled her eyes up in their sockets until the whites showed and slid fainting to the floor.

 

 

"Scared of us, aren't you?" Riley taunted, and spun to confront Paul, the bright sharp glass weaving in his hand. "Scared silly of us lunatics! You make us bow and scrape and order us about, and all the time you're pissing yourselves with fright in case we stop cringing. Come on then, let's have you! Where's Lord Godalmightly Holinshed gone?"

 

 

-- Have to rush him. Nothing else for it. Do I have to be first? Come on, somebody. Anybody? No, it must be me. . . .

 

 

Beyond Riley he saw Natalie inch cautiously forward. He felt a pang of shame at standing still himself and his feet moved involuntarily. Taking advantage of the distraction of Riley's attention, Oliphant made a lumbering grab for the bottle. He was too slow. Riley dodged, jabbed -- and there was a red mark on Oliphant's knuckles, dripping.

 

 

Paul exclaimed and charged Riley. He missed the hold he was aiming for, on the right arm, and knew at once it was a mistake to have come within reach. Desperately he clawed at the younger man's clothes. His left hand got a purchase on the sleeve of his jacket above the elbow, but Riley had too much leverage; the grip lasted a heartbeat and was lost and the round horrible end of the broken bottle like the rasping sucker of a leech loomed vast as a tunnel before Paul's eyes. He had an instant to prepare himself for pain, and thought with curious detachment of being blind.

 

 

-- So this is the moment when the other Paul Fidler and I become one: the moment when the vision of the disastrous future moves from my imagination into the real world. I've always known it had to come, some day, somehow.

 

 

He let his eyelids roll down in a last childish flicker of hope that if he couldn't see the broken bottle it would go away.

 

 

Astonishingly the pain never came. Instead there was a smashing sound -- the bottle on the floor. Then a thud -- Riley keeling over. And a scream -- Riley, snatching his right hand with his left.

 

 

Paul blinked. Everyone was suddenly there: Oliphant, Natalie, Sister Wells. Paul had eyes for none of them. He could only see, standing over the prostrate Riley, the small determined figure of Urchin, who had done . . . something . . . so that he was still alive.

 

 

 

 

 

 

*20*

 

 

After which there were all the loose ends to tidy up.

 

 

In the vain hope of minimising the sensation, they tried to continue the dance after Riley had been sedated and taken to a security cell, but the idea was absurd. The gloating gossip that spread among the patients nauseated Paul. Eventually, still shaking with remembered terror, he ordered them bedded down. But that was a long job, involving extra issues of tranquillisers for the most excitable.

 

 

Perhaps the saddest part of it was that Lieberman missed his chance to show off by leading the traditional sentimental singsong by way of finale. He sat at the side of the room, face long as a fiddle, and resisted all attempts to move him until two of the male nurses carried him bodily away.

 

 

On reviving, Nurse Woodside was violently sick in the middle of the floor, to the hysterical amusement of the patients. But Paul only heard about that. At the time he was examining Riley and trying to figure out what on earth Urchin had done to him. The right arm which had seemed to give him such agony was unmarked, bar scratches where he had flailed it about among the crumbs of glass on the floor. It was almost by chance that he spotted a small oblong bruise beside the shoulder-blade, exactly the right size to have been caused by Urchin's fingertips.

 

 

Awkwardly he reached behind his own back to poke at the corresponding area and located the site of a sensitive nerve.

 

 

-- Christ, where did she get her knowledge of anatomy? Half an inch and she'd have hit bone, harmlessly!

 

 

But as it was, the shock had jolted Riley's arm straight and opened his fingers.

 

 

-- And saved my sight, if not my life. But how can I express my thanks?

 

 

With or without words, he needed to try; when he left Riley, however, he found that Urchin had gone meekly back to her cell, which was now securely locked. Peering through the peep-hole he saw she was in bed with the light out, and gave up his intention of disturbing her.

 

 

He sat with Natalie in the staff sitting-room for a while, drinking a late cup of tea and carrying on a desultory conversation from which an annoying point kept distracting him: only the other day he had ordered Riley transferred from the Disturbed wing against Oliphant's wishes, and now here was Oliphant with his fingers bandaged because of Riley. The cut was shallow, but that hardly signified.

 

 

When Natalie left to go to bed, he opened one of his textbooks and sat staring at its pages. Time and a great many cigarettes wore away, and his mind refused to absorb the words.

 

 

He had never before in his life been so close to being killed. But simple death was not so terrifying. Earlier today he had had that curious notion about another, somehow more real, version of Paul Fidler diverging from a moment of crisis down another and more disastrous life-line, so that what was to the alter ego real experience provoked these recurrent vivid imaginings. Paul Fidler in a world where he had died was inconceivable to Paul Fidler still alive and breathing.

 

 

But Paul Fidler blinded, moaning through a red mask of blood . . .

 

 

He had put up his hands before his face without realising, to reassure himself that he could see them. With a shudder he forced his churning mind back to the here and now and once more stared at the open book on his lap.

 

 

-- No good. Suppose I'd insisted on Urchin being shut in her cell again; nobody else could have stopped Riley. Suppose Natalie hadn't thanked me for staying at the dance up to what she called the break-even point, and I'd slipped away early as I'd at first intended: who would have had to tackle Riley then -- Natalie herself, one of the nurses? Would Urchin have done the same for somebody else?

 

 

Those questions were too remote to conjure up equally clear visions; they didn't involve him so personally. Nonetheless they possessed a dull, nagging power to distract him, and the book remained open at the same page, unread.

 

 

The clanging and chinking of the clock at midnight was the last straw. "Oh, God damn !" he exploded, and slammed the book on a nearby table.

 

 

"What the -- ? Paul! You look terrible!"

 

 

Mirza must have been on the landing opposite, about to enter his own room. Startled by the noise, he had put his head around the door of this one.

 

 

"We had some trouble during the dance," Paul explained apologetically. "Riley went for me with a broken bottle."

 

 

" What? No wonder you're pale! Hang on, let's see what we can do about that."

 

 

Mirza picked up the two empty teacups and disappeared. There was a sound of splashing from the direction of his room; then he was back, the cups freshly rinsed and dripping.

 

 

"This'll set you up," he murmured, and handed Paul three fingers of whisky.

 

 

"I didn't know you drank," Paul said irrelevantly, accepting the liquor with eager gratitude.

 

 

"I was raised not to touch alcohol, of course, but I was also taught to think for myself, and what I think is that you need a drink. Sit down and tell Uncle Mirza the whole story."

 

 

By fits and starts Paul complied. Mirza listened intently. At the end of the recital he jumped to his feet.

 

 

"It was the clock, I suppose, that made you swear so loudly before I came in?"

 

 

Paul nodded.

 

 

"Well, lying awake listening to it is about the worst possible treatment for you tonight. This your bag here? Go on -- take it and go home."

 

 

"But -- "

 

 

"I'm on duty, not you. As of this moment. Shift yourself before I change my mind about being public-spirited!"

 

 

 

 

-- Thank God for Mirza. Though I'm not sure sending me home to an argument with Iris is any better than lying awake at the hospital. . . .

 

 

The lights were out along the street now; an economy-minded council switched them off at midnight. He dipped his headlamps as they swerved across the frontage of the house. All the windows were dark.

 

 

-- Put it off till morning if she's asleep? Lie down in the living-room on the couch?

 

 

He crept up to the door. How had she got in? No sign of a broken window. Perhaps he'd forgotten to bolt the kitchen door; he'd left in a hurry this morning.

 

 

He was just hanging up his coat when the lights snapped on and there she was on the stairs in gossamer-thin shortie pyjamas.

 

 

"Well!" she said. "What happened to this night duty you were telling me about?"

 

 

Dazzled after the darkness outside, Paul blinked at her. Somehow during her absence he had kept a mental picture of her only with make-up on; encountering her with her face cleansed for sleep, a trifle shiny with some sort of nourishing cream, was like meeting a stranger by the same name.

 

 

He said, "I told Mirza you'd come home, so he volunteered to stand in for me."

 

 

"Who?" She came the rest of the way down the stairs, huddling her arms around her body as if to screen it from his gaze.

 

 

-- What did Mirza call her: "lovely but unsociable"? I don't know that "lovely" is the word. Pretty, yes . . . I suppose.

 

 

Belatedly he answered her question. "Mv friend from Pakistan that you were so rude to when I brought him here."

 

 

She stopped dead. She might have been on her way to give him a kiss, not wanting to make a grand issue of what had happened earlier, but that settled the matter.

 

 

"If I'd known this was the sort of welcome home I was going to get I wouldn't have bothered to come! I was stranded at the station for nearly a bloody hour, and then when I did get hold of you you wouldn't come and pick me up, you wouldn't even finish talking to me before you ran away to see to one of your precious lunatics -- "

 

 

"You got in all right, didn't you?" Paul snapped. "I suppose when you looked again you found you did have your key!"

 

 

"No, I did not! The taxi-driver went around the house with me and we found the kitchen door unbolted. Anybody could have walked in and looted the house!"

 

 

-- My heart's not in this. I haven't got the head of steam up for a proper row.

 

 

Paul turned aside and dropped into a chair. "Sorry to disappoint you," he said. "I'm not in the mood for a bust-up. I was just damned nearly carved up by a madman with a broken bottle."

 

 

"What?"

 

 

"You heard me. He was threatening one of the nurses. That's why I had to run away from the phone, and why I'm damned if I'm going to apologise for not coming to fetch you from the station."

 

 

"Are you serious?" she said in a thin voice.

 

 

"Of course not. I'm tremendously amused. It positively made the evening for me and I don't know why I'm not shrieking with laughter!"

 

 

"Darling, how was I to know?" Iris said after a pause. She advanced on him uncertainly, eyes scanning his averted face. "Goodness, it must have been awful. . . . Look . . . ah . . . Bertie Parsons gave me a bottle of vodka. Would you like some?"

 

 

-- I don't know what I'd like. Except out. Stop the world I want to get off.

 

 

Exhausted, he sat without stirring except to light a cigarette, while she scampered up to the bedroom for a robe, then produced the vodka and mixed drinks for them both.

 

 

"Who was it?"

 

 

"A young fellow called Riley. I thought he was on the mend because he hadn't given any trouble lately. I was wrong."

 

 

"What started it?" She came over and put the glass into his hand, then fetched a cushion from the settle opposite and squatted down at his feet, turning to poke the fire; she must have lit it on coming in.

 

 

"He tried to kiss one of the nurses. Woodside. You met her at the Christmas dance -- pretty, but very big, as tall as I am."

 

 

She set down the poker and rested her arm on his knee. Her blue eyes turned up to his face, large and liquid. "It would have been nasty, wouldn't it?"

 

 

"Nasty!" He gave a short laugh. "Ever seen a man who's had a bottle ground in his face?"

 

 

"Tell me exactly what happened," she insisted, and began to caress the inside of his leg.

 

 

-- Where's the affection come from all of a sudden? You haven't behaved like this in nearly a year!

 

 

Mechanically, as he recounted the story, he pieced together the reason, and damned the training which gave him insight for that.

 

 

-- It excites you, doesn't it? Starts the little juices running! Thinking about Riley threatening Nurse Woodside to make her kiss him: that gets the breath rasping in your throat. I can hear it.

 

 

He gulped the last of his drink and roughly thrust his hand down the neck of her robe, groping for her nipple with the tips of his fingers. The contact made her stiffen and shiver. He flicked the butt of his cigarette into the fire and slid forward off the chair.

 

 

"Paul . . ." she said, the words muffled by a tress of hair that his movement had drawn across her mouth.

 

 

"Shut up," he said, his lips against her neck. "You've been away for over two weeks, and I came within inches of never seeing you again and I want to celebrate."

 

 

"But I . . ."

 

 

Yet, even as her mouth breathed reluctance, her hands were tearing at his clothes.

 

 

-- Christ. Married four years, nearly five, and I find this out the night I'm bloody nearly killed.

 

 

That was the last thought before he gave himself up to the plunging and churning of her body under his.

 

 

 

 

 

 

*21*

 

 

On Sunday Paul drove Iris to Ludlow in chilly spring sunshine, and they had a good dinner in Cornminster before going home. The other Paul Fidler kept his distance; thoughts of death and blindness had no place in a countryside hesitantly emerging from winter lethargy, showing new green on the trees and shy flowers under the hedgerows.

 

 

But once Paul was at work again on Monday, his alter ego crept back at the edge of awareness. By force of will he reduced his accumulated work to manageable proportions, and only then did he allow himself to consider the problem weighing on his conscience: what he might do for Urchin to balance the debt he now owed.

 

 

He reached for a notepad and began to map out what he was already thinking of under the somewhat grandiose title of "Project Urchin." Instantly the telephone rang.

 

 

With a mutter of annoyance he picked it up.

 

 

"Barrie Tumbelow here," said the distant voice. "I gather you've been trying to reach me. I did call up on Saturday morning, but apparently you'd just gone out."

 

 

-- Of course. When I dashed off to Blickham I completely forgot about the message I left asking him to contact me.

 

 

"I need some advice," Paul said. "We have a patient here who speaks absolutely no English, and I want to measure her IQ."

 

 

There was a moment of silence. "You do realise," Tumbelow said at last, "that this isn't my speciality? I can claim to know a good deal about measuring infantile intelligence because that's part of my . . . ah . . . basic armoury, but . . . You do mean an adult patient?"

 

 

"Yes."

 

 

Tumbelow click-clicked his tongue against his teeth. "Well . . . Ah-hah! I think you may have come to the right shop after all. I picked up a preprint at a congress I went to recently about IQ testing of deaf-and-dumb adults. That ought to include some suitable non-verbal material for you. Hang on. . . . Yes, here we are. This was a project to correlate the g coefficient of several different testing methods wholly exclusive of any verbal content. Does that sound like what you're after?"

 

 

"Absolutely ideal," Paul agreed.

 

 

"I'll let you have the loan of it, then," Tumbelow promised, and rang off.

 

 

Pleased, Paul reverted to what he had been doing when he was interrupted.

 

 

Obviously, the first step was to list everything he knew about Urchin in the order in which the facts occurred to him, like an amateur detective in a mystery novel collecting clues. Ultimately, perhaps, a pattern would emerge, but at this stage he felt baffled.

 

 

-- She took the tape-recorder in her stride, but she was scared of the photographer's cameras. And what in the world frightened her so badly about the X-ray machine?

 

 

He ploughed on until be had filled three sheets of the notepad, then went back to the beginning and entered against each item action he might take to answer the implied questions. The phone rang a second time while he was busy with this, and he picked it up, sighing.

 

 

"Dr Fidler? Oh, my name's Shoemaker. You sent us a tape and a sample of writing by one of your patients."

 

 

"Oh, yes!" Paul sat up straight. "Have you identified the language for me?"

 

 

"I . . . uh . . . I'm afraid not. But I judged from the tone of your covering letter that you were in a hurry for the information, so I thought I'd better let you have a progress report. The matter sort of fell into my lap, you see, because I happened to be here on Saturday morning when it arrived. I took the sample of writing home with me -- easier to deal with than the tape, naturally, because there are so many thousands of different spoken languages -- and I went all the way through Diringer's book The Alphabet , which is pretty much the standard work, and I drew a complete blank."

 

 

"Are you certain?"

 

 

"Well, I suppose it might be something that Diringer missed, but that seems most unlikely to me. There's a slight resemblance to runic in the form of the letters, but the vowel-determinants given alongside certainly don't belong to a runic system."

 

 

"How extraordinary!" Paul said.

 

 

"Yes -- yes, it is." Shoemaker hesitated. "Don't take my word for gospel, though. There are still a lot of other lines I can try: I'll play the tape over to everyone I can corner during the next few days, and I'm making a transcription of it in Bell Phonetic which I'll send down to London. But while I was doing that it suddenly struck me: if this is material from a mental patient, could it possibly be an invented language?"

 

 

"That occurred to me too," Paul said. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the door open, and waved impatiently at the intruder to wait. "But I thought it was next to impossible to devise an imaginary language."

 

 

"Quite right. It's almost bound to bear traces of the inventor's . . . uh . . . linguistic preconceptions. There was the case of a girl in France at the end of last century who claimed to be in telepathic communication with Martians, and hoaxed people right and left until a philologist showed that she was talking not 'Martian' but a crude variant of her native French. Nonetheless, I'd be grateful if you could make absolutely certain we're not wasting time on something she's made up from whole cloth."

 

 

Paul promised to do his best and cradled the phone. Turning, he saw that the visitor he had so casually made to wait was Dr Alsop.

 

 

"I'm dreadfully sorry!" he exclaimed.

 

 

Alsop waved the apology aside. "It sounded important -- but what was it all about, anyway?"

 

 

Paul explained his plan for "Project Urchin" and handed Alsop the notepad on which he had made his preliminary list.

 

 

"Very thorough," the consultant approved in a cordial tone. "There are some things here, of course, which puzzle me, but I assume that's because I haven't been told about them yet. What have X-ray machines got to do with the case?"

 

 

"Thanks for reminding me. I missed one thing." Paul reclaimed the notepad and wrote in: Knowledge of anatomy, karate or other unarmed combat. Meantime, he described the near-disaster at Blickham General and the events of Saturday night.

 

 

"Sounds like a useful person to have on your side," Alsop murmured. "Question is, how do you persuade her to stay there without being able to talk to her?"

 

 

"She seems to be trying to learn English."

 

 

"Seriously, or as a way of gaining attention for herself?"

 

 

"Seriously, as far as I can tell."

 

 

"Now that is interesting. . . . May I just see that list again? Thanks." Alsop ran his eye down all three pages of it. "You've certainly gone into great detail. What do you expect to get out of it -- a paper, a series?"

 

 

-- A healed girl.

 

 

But Paul didn't voice that. He said merely, "It's too early to guess, isn't it?"

 

 

"Very wise. Well, you can rely on me for any advice I can give. I've been hoping you'd settle to something ambitious instead of loafing along with your routine work, and I'm very pleased."

 

 

Paul chose his next words carefully. "What I really would appreciate is some backing. If there's any difficulty about my asking for special facilities, for instance. Dr Holinshed and I -- "

 

 

"Don't say another word," Alsop smiled. "It wouldn't be good for inter-staff relations. But you can count on me."

 

 

He slapped both thighs with his open palms. "Well, we'd better get on, hadn't we? There's a full roster of patients at the clinic today, and I daren't be late. Which reminds me: I have to go up to London next weekend, and I'd rather like to stop over on Monday and see my publisher about this book I'm doing. Would you mind taking next week's clinic for me?"

 

 

-- Breakthrough!

 

 

Throughout the morning's series of interviews with patients Alsop continued to eye Paul with curiosity. However, it was not until the door had closed behind the last of those on the stand-up-and-yell list that he leaned over confidentially and spoke what was on his mind.

 

 

"You haven't said anything about it, young fellow, but I've reached a conclusion. Your wife's back. Am I right?"

 

 

For a moment Paul was taken aback. Then he managed a sickly grin, while Alsop chortled appreciation of his own insight.

 

 

Alsop had another appointment before proceeding to the clinic, and asked Paul to drive into Blickham and join him later. Pleased with the good impression he'd made today, Paul returned to his office and continued with his routine tasks, free from thoughts of the disasters that might have been.

 

 

Until the phone rang, and Holinshed's voice ground in his ear like icebergs crashing in a stormy sea.

 

 

"Fidler? Come down to my office right away!"

 

 

 

 

 

 

*22*

 

 

Paul closed the door briskly behind him and sat down without being asked. Holinshed scowled disapproval of the act and adopted his familiar headmasterly pose with elbows on chair-arms, fingertips together.

 

 

"I am informed, Fidler, that you have been guilty of what one can only term a number of gross errors of professional judgment during the past few days. It's very seldom that I have cause twice within a week to rebuke a member of my staff, particularly one who holds a position of responsibility. One is prepared or this kind of mistake among the very junior staff who are as yet lacking in experience, but in people such as yourself one looks for a degree of caution and foresight."

 

 

Paul stared at him incredulously.

 

 

-- Maybe Iris was right after all. Maybe I don't belong in this line of business. Not when the psychiatrists sometimes seem madder than their patients!

 

 

He said, completely forgetting the technique for dealing with Holinshed which he had been so pleased to master at their last interview, "What are you talking about?"

 

 

"I don't like your manner, Fidler," Holinshed snapped.

 

 

"And I don't like your accusations. Substantiate them or apologise."

 

 

The words hung in the air like smoke. Paul felt anger turn slowly sour in his belly until it was transmuted into alarm at his own outburst.

 

 

"Are you denying" -- Holinshed was practically whispering -- "that you gave instructions for the transfer of Riley from the Disturbed wing, thus directly setting in motion the train of events that climaxed in one of my nurses nearly being killed?"

 

 

-- Oh my God. How am I going to get out of this one? Hang on: "Your wife's back." Therapeutic value of orgasm. Mostly double-talk but it'll sound convincing.

 

 

"Are you familiar with the background of Riley's case?"

 

 

"What? Fidler, I make it my business to acquaint myself with the history of every patient committed to Chent!"

 

 

"Then you can't have overlooked the element of extreme homosexual tension which contributes so much to his condition. He's making valiant efforts to achieve normality, but at his age he's still a virgin, simply because his inability to establish a stable relationship with a girl is resulting in impotence. Keeping him under maximum security is going to compound his problems by preventing even casual contact with women. I stand by my decision to transfer him, I'd do it again tomorrow if the occasion arose, and what is more I risked my own life on Saturday night in support of this belief. Were you not told about that?"

 

 

"What would you have had the nurse do -- stand necking with him in the middle of the dance-floor?"

 

 

"Do you think I want to make things worse for him by encouraging him to imagine that one of the nurses finds him irresistible? But she rebuffed him as fiercely as if he was liable to rape her. He's incapable of that, as far as we can tell. What he needs is acknowledgment of his masculinity from other people to reassure him that he's not queer. Dr Alsop has brought to my attention some work by a man in Sweden on the relationship between sexuality and delinquency, and there appears to be some relevant material there."

 

 

Gradually Paul had been working back towards self-control. He wound up the last statement in exactly the stuffy tone calculated to impress Holinshed, and knew he had recouped most of the lost ground. Everything now depended on what the other "professional errors" might be.

 

 

-- He's never going to like me. But by God I think I might make him scared of me before I leave this disgusting hole!

 

 

"The fact remains," Holinshed said, with marginally less conviction than before, "a patients' dance is hardly a proper proving ground for your theories about Riley, and more than Blickham General is for your theories about the girl you've decided to call Urchin. A nurse there was actually injured!"

 

 

"It was on Dr Alsop's recommendation that I took her for the X-ray. I took every precaution I could think of, including having the photographs made which Inspector Hofford asked for, since it occurred to me that to undergo a strange but innocuous experience would predispose her to submit quietly to the X-ray."

 

 

"Instead of which she proved not merely uncooperative but downright dangerous!"

 

 

"On the other hand, on Saturday evening she was both cooperative and courageous." Paul glanced at his watch, but kept talking to stop Holinshed breaking in. "I have to join Dr Alsop at his clinic this afternoon, but I can spare a few minutes to outline the project which we've been mapping out this morning. We propose to conduct an exhaustive analysis of Urchin's behaviour, with a view to reconciling the obvious inconsistencies into . . ."

 

 

 

 

When he came out, he was shaking. He was late for lunch and had to gobble his food to avoid being overdue at the clinic. Nonetheless he was triumphant. Not one further word had been breathed about his "errors."

 

 

However, talking wasn't enough. He was under no illusions about the price he'd paid for facing Holinshed down. So far, Holinshed's dislike had been on principle; he liked his juniors to be subservient, and had even less affection for Mirza than for Paul.

 

 

All that was changed. Within the past half-hour Paul had staked his claim in the arena of hospital politics, and the side he had chosen to come down on was his own.

 

 

At the cost of probable indigestion, he reached the clinic five minutes early, gloomily preoccupied.

 

 

Alsop was refreshing his memory with the notes of last week's session; glancing up on Paul's entry, he exclaimed, "Hullo! What's happened to your sunny disposition since I left you?"

 

 

"To be candid," Paul said wryly, "Dr Holinshed has."

 

 

"Need I have asked? Tell me the worst, then."

 

 

He heard Paul out with a judicious air. "You're going to have to watch yourself," he opined. "Cede a little ground in Riley's case, for example, because being dead right all the time is a sure way to aggravate the situation. Tactics, young fellow, with the emphasis on the tact. Your overall strategy, though, is sound, and if you stick to it you'll make him wish he'd never opened his mouth to you. Okay?"

 

 

Without waiting for a reply, he went on, "There's one thing I should have thought of this morning, incidentally, which didn't strike me until I was driving out of the gate. After Urchin attacked the nurse here, how was it she was allowed to join the other patients at the dance? I'd have expected her to be safely shut away."

 

 

A chilly sensation, like a cold wet hand, passed down Paul's spine.