Stanley and the Women

by Kingsley Amis

  ‘They’re normal.’

  ‘Normal?’

  ‘Normal for the patient at this stage.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

  ‘Like his father coming to see him?’

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

  ‘Oh my God,’ I said.

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

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

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

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

  ‘Attention-seeking?’ I said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

  ‘But don’t the others, Dr Collings and Dr Gandhi, surely they know about anything like side-effects, don’t they? Or are they using some new treatment or something?’

  ‘No, it isn’t that, they know about them. They just haven’t recognized them in this case. I mentioned them to Dr Gandhi, you know, said that was what I thought they were, and he said Oh no, and went on about attention-seeking, well, you heard. The thing is, Dr Collings thinks it’s that, and Dr Gandhi, he always tends to agree with her. It’s not easy for him. She rather … I can’t say any more but perhaps I don’t need to.’

  I thanked her and said, ‘I’ve just come from Dr Collings, and she mentioned these reactions, but she didn’t seem to think they were all that important.’

  The sister looked back at me without replying. She had very clearly defined black eyebrows.

  ‘But those twitches can be no fun at all,’ I said.

  She nodded. ‘And they’d start to clear up in minutes if the drug was changed, not the treatment, just the drug.’

  ‘There’s a Dr Stone here, isn’t there? Couldn’t he …’

  ‘He’s tried before,’ she said at once, ‘in the past, I mean. There’s a limit to what anyone can ever do. Just, doctors have their patients.’

  ‘I suppose so. But surely if —’

  Between being ordered to stop by Dr Gandhi and a moment ago, about when I mentioned his twitches, Steve had hardly moved. Now, having slowly sat half up, he made a clumsy turning movement so that his legs dangled over the edge of the bed, and the twitches began again. They seemed worse this time, more violent, perhaps because in his unstable position they threw him about more. The sister put her arm round his shoulders and told him to stop in a firm and strict but not unkind voice. I said he was all right and similar things, rather like the two ambulance men with the old loony outside Rorschach House about fourteen hours previously. It had no effect, but just when his eyes looked ready to roll up and back in that unpleasant way the tension left him in a couple of seconds, the twitching stopped and he let himself be eased back into a more restful position under the clothes. He had always been a docile sort of chap and still was, even now he was mad.

  Soon afterwards the sister went away, having assured me that these attacks would do no lasting harm and that his medication was bound to be changed soon. I wanted to stay and talk to him, but that was obviously not a good idea if I had set him off on a round of spasms just by turning up — perhaps it had been the sound of my voice that had done it again a minute before — so I left. When I inquired, Dr Collings was not in her office. Would I like a call to be put out for her? No thank you, I said, and went back to the Apfelsine and drove to work.

  I thought it best to keep out of Steve’s way, for the time being anyhow. Phone-calls told me he was satisfactory, nothing more. After turning it over in my mind for twenty-four hours or so I rang Nash. He listened to only a small part of my story before suggesting I might go to see him at noon the following Tuesday. When I asked if I could bring my wife he said I could if I thought it would help, making the helping sound a fairly remote possibility. It would have taken a good deal more than that to get me to leave her behind, not that I expected anything remotely like a replay of the morning at St Kevin’s, but you never knew.

  Down Rosslyn Hill we rolled when the time came in a brisk downpour. With her ideas about Nash as a literary figure Susan had dressed in a bit of her best in a check suit and black-and-white shirt, but I had allowed for that and knew that she was perfectly serious about whatever might turn up. At the lights at England’s Lane I said, ‘Have I ever told you about Don Barley?’

  ‘I don’t think so. Who’s he?’

  ‘Oddly enough, I was just coming to that. Don Barley and his mother lived next door but two to us in SW16 during the war. There wasn’t a Mr Barley, I’ve forgotten why. I suppose things might have turned out different if there had been. I can’t really remember what he looked like either, Don. I was only about five at the time and he was seventeen. Anyway, one day Don got a poisoned foot from cutting it on a tin or something. His mother fetched the doctor along. He did the necessary and said he’d be back Friday. He must have rubbed it in somehow that there was absolutely no need for him to see Don before the Friday, Mrs Barley bein
g a bit of a fusspot. Well, Friday comes and the doc turns up, and he takes one look at Don and rushes out for an ambulance, and gets him into hospital right away. And he died there at nine o’clock that night — they hadn’t got penicillin in those days, you see. His mother had noticed he was poorly, but the doctor had told her nothing needed doing till the Friday, and doctors (a) knew what they were talking about and (b) you did what they said regardless.

  ‘I can’t really say I remember that happening, any of it. I doubt if I was as much as five. But I remember very clearly my mother telling the story, time and again and always in a very horrified way. It was a rotten thing to happen all right, but she went on about it sort of more than that. It wasn’t that we knew the Barleys all that well. My mum certainly didn’t blame Mrs Barley or anything like that — she always said how awful it must be to have to live with it for the rest of your life. What it was, I think, I didn’t see it at the time, actually I didn’t see it in full until I started telling you about it just now, what it was, she realized that if it had been her and one of us she’d have done the same, or she easily might have done. My dad would have had more sense, probably, but only probably, and there again he could have been off on his travels. I’m pretty sure his Midland trip used to take the inside of a week. Just right, in fact.

  ‘So if you should think I spent rather a long time making up my mind to get hold of Nash this last time, I don’t say you do or you have or you ever will, but if you ever do, or anything else like that, just remember I’m a boy from SW16 whose parents were so much in awe of the doctor that they might have let him die of blood-poisoning rather than do what the doctor didn’t order. I suppose I might have reacted against it, but I don’t think you do with that sort of thing. Anyway I haven’t.’

  Susan put her hand gently over mine on the wheel. ‘How dreadful.’ She was nearly crying. ‘Poor Mrs Barley. And I understand about your mother too. But as far as I’m concerned you can forget the rest of it, the last part of what you said. Remember I’m not like the others, Nowell and Trish Collings and the rest of them. I don’t think things like that about you.’ Now she was cheering up. ‘With me you don’t need excuses. I say, how terrifically Jewish that sounds, doesn’t it?’

  ‘By me would be even better,’ I said, squeezing her hand. ‘There must be an accident or a demonstration or something. They’re not moving at all up there.’

  But in the end we were being let into 100 New Harley Street at only two minutes past the hour. It was a big old place with eight doctors in it, if as I assumed they were all doctors. Nash’s part was at the back, looking out on to a garden with a lot of trees in it now being rained on steadily. The room reminded me of a men’s club in St James’s, the sort where they keep out the under-seventies. Nash himself was got up in full professional gear, including a tie that was obviously the tie of something or other, no doubt for Susan’s benefit, and the same could be said of his manner —bland, almost hearty. Not quite so obviously, but nearly, he found her a good deal better-looking than he had expected to, which I thought was a bit cheeky of him. Susan must have taken that in, though busy at the same time on the furniture, curtains, etc.

  On Nash’s suggestion I began again at the beginning of the main Rorschach House episode. He seemed to be paying close attention, not interrupting, now and then holding his breath for a moment and letting it out in a kind of voiceless groan, either as a comment on what I was telling him or because it was a thing he did while he was listening. Susan never took her eyes off me.

  When I had reached the schizophreniform-disorder passage near the end of Part 1, Nash came to life and said, ‘Thank you, Mr Duke, I think perhaps I’ve heard all I require to know of that conversation. But you mentioned an earlier encounter with, with Dr Collings in — am I quite mistaken or was it in a pub?’ He shook his head slightly once at what things were coming to. ‘Can you describe that occasion to me? Not in full, please, just the general drift, or anything that impressed you particularly.’

  I tried to oblige. After a minute or two of highlights Nash gave a faint whimper with his mouth shut, like someone taking a nap and dreaming.

  ‘Would you mind,’ he said, ‘could I ask you to repeat that, Mr Duke? Your son is trying to — what was it?’

  ‘To find out who he is.’

  ‘That of course is an approximation, your paraphrase of a partial recollection of what she said.’

  ‘Word for word, I promise you. Only half a dozen of them, after all.’

  ‘I find that very difficult to believe.’

  ‘It stuck in my mind the moment she said it.’

  ‘Which doesn’t mean I can’t believe it, I just find the effort rather extreme. Just as — if you told me that a foreigner, say a Frenchman, had said to you, with serious intent as far as you could make out, er, “You English, you are so cold,” or a writer, a novelist, a practising one, had solemnly assured you that his object was to strip away the smooth surface of things and show the harsh reality underneath, well, I would quite likely be sceptical, would I not, properly too. Then I might well reflect that somebody, some real person, was bound to pronounce those words sooner or later and it was just a question of waiting long enough and being in the right place at the right time. I’m sure you take the point.’

  With a touch more than simple even-handedness, Nash delivered the item about the novelist to Susan. He would naturally have heard from Cliff Wainwright what she did and was, but even so there was more than a touch more than up-your-street to the way he handled it. She chuckled very prettily and did one of those little sweeps of the eyes showing polite sexual approval. All of which was perfectly fine with me.

  ‘There are a couple of further comments I might make at this stage,’ he went on. ‘Schizophreniform disorder. The Collings woman gave you to understand that it was a condition substantially different from schizophrenia itself. This is not the case. The difference is no more than legal. She clearly, even she clearly agreed with my diagnosis but couldn’t face letting you see that. I could have wished to be spared the insult of her confirmation, in fact the danger-flag, the, the, the tocsin of it. M’m.

  ‘Now as to the matter of your son’s, er, need to be himself, not what … other … people … want … him to be, this as the cause of his illness. That’s rather surprising in a way. Not fashionable any longer. Nowadays it’s more the sort of stuff peddled by quacks and gurus and social workers rather than psychiatrists. But it has the advantage of leading directly to attaching blame for the patient’s condition to his parents or parent. Now any decent parent, almost any parent whatever, is going to be upset, harrowed, thoroughly daunted by that accusation and will show it, will very likely protest, make an issue of it, claim good intentions and so on, which leaves the way open to the supplementary accusation that he’s allowing his own self-esteem to take precedence over his child’s welfare. Checkmate. Or rather, one more to their side.’

  I said, ‘I didn’t think I’d mentioned that part.’

  ‘No, I don’t recall your having done so.

  ‘So how did you …

  Nash went into an elaborate dumb-show, sucking in his breath, dilating his eyes, shaking his head slowly from side to side and turning his hands palm upwards on his lap. Then he caught sight of Susan and went back to normal in a twinkling. ‘Oh, I’ve come across that sort of,’ — here he faltered slightly — ‘person before.’

  ‘But why would anybody play a game like that?’ asked Susan indignantly. ‘I don’t know, Mrs Duke,’ he said, having done the first half-second of the dumb-show over again. ‘I’ve no idea. Why anybody should behave in that fashion.’

  ‘There you are,’ she said to me, meaning she had been broadly right about Collings.

  After waiting politely for a moment or two, Nash said, ‘Following your … interview with Dr Collings you say you were allowed to visit your son. Tell me about that if you would.’

  I told him, a selective version only because I found I had got a bit tired of telling
people things. He listened as before, nodding every so often in an as-I-thought way. Susan was as before too.

  ‘This other doctor you saw,’ he said firmly. ‘Dr Gandhi? Was he, er, did he, er, an Asiatic I take it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Nash sat on for a long time behind his desk without saying anything.

  He might have been trying to make up his mind to say something he had on the tip of his tongue, or just as likely wondering what was on television that evening. If it was the first he never got there but woke up suddenly and said, ‘I can’t tell you that your son didn’t resent your arrival at the place where he was, I can only tell you that his distressing behaviour wasn’t caused by anything of that sort. As Dr … Gandhi must have known.’

  ‘What?’ I said, totally baffled. ‘Why did he say it was, then?’

  ‘Why? You’d been making a nuisance of yourself, hadn’t you, asking questions and generally using up time he could have spent reading his sex manual. A brilliant method of getting you out of the way.’

  ‘But a doctor doing a thing like that, even a —Nash interrupted me by sighing theatrically. ‘I’ve noticed, Mr Duke, I’ve noticed before that you have an exaggerated respect for doctors. Before it’s too late you must learn that doctors are no better at doctoring or about things to do with doctoring than… m’m, motor-mechanics are at what they do.’

  ‘Oh no. You don’t know what you’re saying.’

  ‘The point is clear. Now. One would have to see him to swear to it but I’m sure, h’m, that your son’s discomfort was the result of large doses of one of a group of tranquillizing drugs. Not nice to see, no, but … no actual harm, the sister was right there, and of course he won’t remember any of it when it’s over. Anyway, don’t worry, I’ll get it changed. Yes, I’ll just tell Dr Collings. After I’ve had a look at the boy, naturally.’

  ‘But then she’s bound to know I’ve been on to you, and I thought you weren’t supposed to …