Stanley and the Women

by Kingsley Amis

  ‘Oh… uh … ooh …’ The girl made long remembering noises. Then she said briskly, ‘I’m all booked up today and tomorrow and next week.’

  ‘I’m sure you are. I just wanted to tell you that Steve’s been a bit poorly these last couple of days, and I was wondering —’

  When the dialling tone sounded in my ear I was fooled a second time, and imagined for a moment that something technical had happened. For another moment or more I was filled with rage and amazement, almost with disbelief as it struck me that Mandy had not sounded at all fed up with her own thickness, let alone apologetic — not a bit of it, she was too busy being tickled pink by her powers of recall. To hear her, anybody would have thought she had managed to come up with the name of the pet rabbit belonging to the boy next door but two when she was little.

  Thinking of childhood fitted in well. Then, places you had been to and people you had seen shot out of mind with incredible speed, not necessarily into oblivion but somewhere more remote than the ordinary past, like another life. Steve really had seemed to Mandy very far away. But she still needed a good hiding.

  That set me remembering him myself. I turned out not to be much good at it. Innumerable things were in my memory as having happened, but not as full events with visual bits I could play back in my imagination. For instance, I was very clear that when Steve was fourteen I had gone to see him take part in his school’s swimming sports, or rather in the finals of them, that he had been in the diving competition and that he had come second in his age-group, but I could not pick up a mental glimpse of the swimming-baths where this had taken place, let alone of Steve in them. When I tried to picture him in his pram, sitting on Nowell’s lap, as the boy of eleven he had been when she left me, all I got was a version of present-day him scaled down as required. The few little flashes I had were no more than that, not so much as a face, just a smile, a look. I still had a few photographs, but Nowell had taken most of them with her when she went.

  I had just not been able to do any of the Daily Telegraph crossword when I heard Nash calling my name from upstairs. His tone of voice made it clear that while there was no crisis on at the moment no delay was needed. My mother-in-law would have handled it in rather the same style.

  ‘Gone for a bath,’ Nash explained when I found him alone in the sitting room. ‘Most opportune. Some interesting books here. They yours?’

  I said, ‘No.’

  ‘What, none of them?’

  ‘No. Is he mad?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘Oh my God.’

  ‘But most likely not in any settled or irreducible way and very possibly not even for more than a short time. Mad — oh, without any doubt a depressing and frightening word,’ said Nash, staring at me, ‘but advisedly or not you were right to use it. There’s no sphere in which it’s more important to call things by their right names.

  ‘How sure are you, doctor? That he’s mad?’

  ‘In one sense I’m not sure at all. There’s always the chance, on the face of it quite a fair chance these days with a person of that age, that some drug or other chemical influence has been at work, but you ruled that out earlier, and your son was quite clear on the point, and …’

  ‘But my son’s mad. He might say anything.’

  ‘He’s also frightened. If he had taken anything harmful I think he would say so when asked, and anyhow … There are remoter possibilities too. But in another sense I’m perfectly sure. I was sure within five minutes of setting eyes on him. Less.

  ‘One of the troubles with psychiatrists in England is that because of the system here they often don’t see a madman for months on end. In my youth I worked in the admissions department of a large mental hospital in Sydney and I saw madmen from morning till night. Fresh ones, if you follow me. And there’s no teacher like simple quantity of experience. You yourself, now. Young Wainwright …’ Nash lingered over this characterization, though without making any point with it that I could see. ‘Er … tells me you know a great deal about cars. When there’s something wrong there, aren’t you … sure … what it is before you establish the fact?’

  ‘Yes, but —’

  ‘Of course there are differences. But go back to the time you describe, when your son appeared late at night. Isn’t it possible that you were sure then that he was mad,’ — for once, just on that last word, Nash’s voice softened — ‘or nearly sure, or you might have been sure if you hadn’t told yourself you knew nothing about the subject, or you would have been sure if it had been anyone less close to you? Mr Duke? Nearly sure or just about quite sure? Yes? Straight away?’

  I hesitated, remembering what Cliff had said about Nash being rigid and the rest, but it made no difference. When Nash answered my first question just now, I knew at last that I had indeed been sure straight away, and that only huge powers of self-deception had kept the memory buried till that moment, through all his wild talk and behaviour — even over the phone to Cliff I had still not meant the word seriously, not altogether. Anyway, I nodded my head at Nash. ‘Quite sure,’ I said.

  He nodded back with his eyebrows raised, then said with heavy emphasis, ‘My judgement would be that he’s suffering from acute schizophrenia.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said.

  ‘Another frightening word. Two, in fact. The acuteness distinguishes not the gravity or intensity of the illness but a stage in its development, an early stage. Schizophrenia itself has of course nothing to do with split minds or multiple personalities or colourful stuff of that sort, which comes in well enough for the films obviously, and in life I can see there must be great advantages in pretending there’s somebody else in your head who does all the shoplifting and child-molesting that you wouldn’t dream of doing yourself. M’m. Nowadays I’m told chic persons use the adjective schizophrenic to mean something like inconsistent. But then. As to what it is, what schizophrenia is, discussion can be deferred. More important at the moment, it responds to treatment, and I’d like him in hospital for that.’

  The last bit came quite fast and I had not considered the idea at all. ‘Is that necessary?’ I asked at about the third try.

  ‘Desirable. Highly desirable.’ Nash looked down at his hands, which were big and rather battered, not upper-class at all at first sight. ‘It’s only fair to let you know why and how. Briefly, then — your boy hasn’t offered any violence to persons so far, but he’s plainly shall we say unpredictable and needs treatment that’ll work fairly quickly. Which in practice means full doses of tranquillizing drugs,’ he said with his voice going slightly singsong, ‘which will probably have side-effects which may be alarming and even a little bit risky if not professionally supervised and which may lead the patient to shirk taking his pills, which again can be dangerous. For instance he might —’

  Here I interrupted him. I had been trying to follow what he said while fighting off memories of visiting my mother in hospital three years previously. The place itself had not been too bad and she had thought she was coming out in a few weeks — so had everybody else until the last couple of days. What had stuck in my mind were things like the sight and sound of those other sick people everywhere and my mother’s feelings of being cut off and not in any control of the situation, and she had been completely clear about what was going on. Steve had been confused and scared in his mother’s sitting room, and where he looked like being sent would be worse in some serious ways than where my mother had been, I thought, and I said to Nash,

  ‘Can’t he just stay here and go to the hospital as an out-patient? My wife and I could give him his pills and see he took them.’

  ‘Do you really think so? Can’t you hear him telling you he’s not a child, stop treating him like an idiot, don’t stand over him like that, don’t you trust him? What you actually have to do to see he takes his pills, to monitor compliance as I’m afraid it’s called, is a rather undignified and intrusive business, you know. Much better left to nurses. He’d agree.’

  ‘Surely it can’t do him any
good to be surrounded by …

  ‘All those loonies. Yes. I can only say it won’t do him any harm. No doubt that sounds rather a breezy remark. The fact is that mental illness isn’t communicable.’

  ‘But he’ll be frightened.’

  ‘He’ll be under medication. Tranquillized. As I said. There’s really no need to worry about that.’

  ‘What happens then, doctor? Does he get some sort of therapy, or does he just go on being tranquillized? I’m only asking.’

  ‘He gets chemotherapy, which is drugs. As for what you probably mean, psychotherapy, which is corrective training — not recommended in this case. But let me explain about the drugs. They’re quite distinct from palliative tranquillizers like Valium and Librium that you may have come across and which are almost useless in treating schizophrenia. Over the last thirty years these, these others have helped a great many patients to recover quickly and well. I realize you may have gained the impression from me or in some other way that all that can be done is keep the patient quiet until he either recovers or doesn’t. No, much more than that.’ Perhaps he misread or read correctly something in my expression, because he went on to say, ‘Or possibly you have ideas of your own on the point.’

  ‘How on earth would I have ideas of my own on that kind of point? All I’m doing is trying to take this in. It’s rather a lot in one go and I’ll probably get some bits wrong the first time round. If that, doing that, sounds like me having ideas of my own it’s not meant to,’ I said. Christ, I also said, but not out loud.

  Nash smiled for the first time, showing a couple of rows of old-ivory teeth and looking like an unreliable dog. ‘I really beg your pardon, Mr Duke, but these days everybody seems to think he knows something about the subject, about psychiatry that is, usually after reading a newspaper article to the effect that all the work so far done has been mistaken. A little crushing, you may think. I mean all the work? Imagine an astronomer hearing the same. I agree not a close parallel. A jurist. To revert to your son. There’s at least one other good reason why I want him in hospital —he needs various medical and neurological tests which would be much better done with him there.’

  ‘Can’t he have them done as an out-patient?’

  ‘Yes. Theoretically. But finding the right building, and the right part of the right building, and waiting for the clerk to come back if she isn’t there when you arrive, and don’t be too upset if it turns out the machine isn’t working that day, and fix up another appointment and turn up on time for that, but don’t be too sure, don’t be too sanguine about its working then either, and don’t walk out in a huff if they’re rude, and don’t lose the form I gave you because they won’t do it without, and remember always to leave yourself plenty of … well …’

  ‘I could take him myself.’

  ‘Mr Duke, I must stress to you that it would be very much simpler and more straightforward, and quicker which is important, if these tests were done in the normal way, with everything organized by the hospital.’

  ‘Yes, I can see,’ I said. What I said to myself this time was what it was I could see, or a good half of it — that the ones it would be simpler for in the first place were the doctors, the hospital staff, Nash himself, all of them, the other lot as against Steve’s and my lot.

  Nash too seemed to have seen something. He said, quietly for him, ‘People in your position usually find it hard to face the prospect of their child disappearing for an indefinite period into the shadowy world of mental hospitals, which they don’t understand in the way they feel they understand places you go to with something wrong with your inside and have it cut out. They find the notion of madness easier to accept than that of mental illness, which can’t be an illness really, can it? Doctors and nurses for that? Something that just comes over you? Then a lot of them feel they’d be abdicating the proper … Ah, here we are.’

  Steve had put on one of the shirts Susan had got for him, in fact part of the cardboard stiffening it had been packaged with was showing under the collar. I noticed his trousers were very shiny as well as shapeless. His whole appearance and manner seemed ordinary, not worth bothering about, so completely free of strain that just for a moment I thought I was going to tell Nash we were not going to need him after all. Then I caught Steve’s eye and he recognized me instantly, which does sound like what he should have done in a way, and it was not that he mistook me for someone else he knew or thought he knew, at least that never occurred to me then. He looked at me in a contented, relieved, friendly way that held not an atom of what gets built up and taken for granted between a parent and a child who get on all right together, different from anything else. After that he gave Nash a polite glance and dropped suddenly on to the velvet settee, soon wriggling into one of his awkward positions.

  ‘Good bath?’ Nash asked loudly, rather like somebody talking to a foreigner in a sketch. ‘Splendid. M’m, now just, if you would …’ He made what were probably encouraging movements with his hand. ‘Er … just …’

  Without any more prompting Steve said, ‘I told you I couldn’t blame her.’

  ‘Yes, you did, but let’s go into it again. Why not? Why couldn’t you blame her?’

  ‘Well, she couldn’t have done any different.’

  ‘Why not? Why couldn’t she have done any different?’

  ‘She couldn’t for my sake. She had to freeze me out.’

  Nash shook his head and drew in his breath. ‘I don’t see that,’ he said firmly.

  ‘She didn’t want to know me,’ said Steve, with a lot of patience and a look in my direction. ‘Did she?’

  He really seemed to be appealing to me. ‘Not when I spoke to her,’ I said.

  ‘You what? You … spoke to Fawzia?’ That was what the name sounded like.

  ‘I thought you meant Mandy,’ I said, blushing like a schoolkid.

  ‘Mandy? That slag?’ He sounded quite good-natured, but was a bit bothered or suspicious when he said, ‘What was she on about then?’

  ‘I rang her, just to see if she could —’

  Holding his hands up now, shushing me, Nash said, ‘This freezing you out as you call it, what was the point of all that, it makes no sense to me at all.’

  ‘Well, you know, she was protecting me, wasn’t she?’

  ‘I’m terribly sorry, but do you mean she was protecting you by freezing you out? I should have thought …

  Steve nodded in a tolerant way, prepared to admit that parts of his story did need some explanation. ‘This girl Fawzia, right? She and I had a big thing going, not out in the open, but I knew, just from the little things she said, wouldn’t mean a thing to anybody else, and even just the way she looked at me sometimes, it was all there, I just knew. Then she became involved in certain undercover activities, which made her extremely unpopular in certain quarters.’

  ‘When was this?’

  ‘Year ago.’

  This seemed to disappoint Nash. He smoothed his moustache and waited.

  ‘So then they get after me, because I know too much. So she starts ignoring me, see, to try and throw them off and to warn me. I know too much not only about her but their systems. Also their organization, which is extremely high-powered, extremely ruthless, and extremely … undercover. ‘Then, coming to the climax of a horrendously embarrassing and pathetic take-off of a hundred would-be brilliant films, he said, ‘The gentlemen involved … call themselves … the chosen.’

  Poor old Steve of course belonged to one of the generations which had never been taught anything about anything, and he obviously thought his reference to the chosen was about as advanced and wrapped-up as words could get, well out of sight of a poor bugger as cut off as his dad, let alone any associated other-worlders like Nash. The next moment I remembered him once or twice just about a year before bringing along to the house somebody who could have been a fellow-student of his during his brief stint at the polytechnic, a remarkably unaccommodating female with a short upper lip and a sallow skin and a name very like Fawzia
.

  With that established, a lot of things became as clear as they were probably ever going to. Jews, or people who might have been Jews or counted as Jews or Israelis, were after him because he had once known —not, I was sure, ever very well — a girl who was quite likely one kind of Arab or another and on that ground could, at the sacrifice of all the common sense and humour in the world, have had them after her too, or something of the sort.

  The realization shoved me into a state of combined gloom and boredom. Had Steve really put himself through the whole business of going mad just so as to be able to believe that? At the same time its moderation was a relief — it was only untrue, silly, ridiculously improbable, not mad in itself. There undoubtedly were such things as Arab intelligence agents, even if a female one was a pretty dodgy concept, and presumably Israeli counterintelligence went around trying to do them a bit of no good. It was another relief that however confused he might actually be he seemed not to feel confused for the time being, nor in the least frightened.

  He had been looking at me with cheerful mild contempt, an expression I had never seen on his face before. I tried to remember where he had finished speaking. ‘You don’t believe any of that, do you?’ he asked.

  ‘You’ve been going a bit fast for me,’ I said.

  He nodded as before. ‘Okay,’ he said, and got energetically to his feet. ‘We can take a look outside now. Yeah, come on.’

  Nash and I followed him to the window, which gave a good view of the street. Hunched up in the slight drizzle a man I immediately recognized was walking along it at that very moment, a man who worked at one of the banks in the High Street and whom I had seen a few times in the Pheasant and who looked like half the other men you would expect to see in places like that. Otherwise there was nothing moving in sight at all.