Mr Vogel

by Lloyd Jones

  ‘Got any further?’ he asked me when we sat down.

  ‘Got any further? How can I get any further if I don’t know what happens next? I can’t just make it up you know I seem to remember that this is your story as well as mine, Mr Vogel my man, so I think you’d better tell me some more, don’t you?’

  And that’s the way we did it: every evening I would listen to him, and the next afternoon I would read out what I’d written. It wasn’t all plain sailing, mind you: we were held up for days at a time whilst he nit-picked about my version, or remembered something else which he wanted to include, or corrected inaccuracies. He was a pretty hard task-master, actually. But I enjoyed it. It gave me a purpose in life, I suppose.

  Like Don Quixote and Sancho Panza we needed one another for our own reasons: he wanted his story told, and I wanted to occupy my hours, to ward off the phantoms. We moved on with the story, and this is how it developed:

  Donovan studied the lame man. An odd-looking fellow. He had green eyes and a thin residue of red hair plastered onto his waxy scalp. He wore a faded purple pullover with a hole in it, and baggy black trousers. Even at this distance Donovan could see a halo of white around the man’s collar – he obviously had terrible dandruff.

  ‘When’s this Vogel character being seen?’ asked Donovan, flicking through the night report.

  ‘He’s first on the list,’ said Debbie. ‘One of the general doctors will do a physical later. Dr Jackson will see him at twelve tomorrow. We should have the blood tests back by then. They had a hell of a job getting blood from him. He wasn’t very co-operative.’

  A chair came sailing out of the breakfast room. Donovan sighed and went to sort it out. It was going to be a long shift. As he went through the door his pager went and he broke into a run. Trouble on another ward. The chair-thrower would have to wait.

  ‘Why all the detail?’ asked Mr Vogel, irritably. ‘Can’t you get on with my story?’

  ‘Actually, it’s my story now as well,’ I answered huffily. ‘I’ve always wanted to know what it’s like in a funny farm.’

  Mr Vogel looked round, as if he was seeing the place for the first time.

  ‘You mean I’m in a mental hospital?’

  ‘They’re called psychiatric units now, and you’re here just for a while because they need to assess you. Come on now, you’ll soon be out.’

  ‘You mean I can’t walk out of here right now?

  ‘Not just yet.’

  ‘Christ, I thought I’d just walked to freedom.’

  ‘You have Mr Vogel, you have. By the time we finish this story you’ll be as free as a bird, don’t worry. We’re just unlocking the last few doors. Understand?’

  He was mollified for now. I continued his story.

  By the time a doctor arrived from the general hospital, stethoscope trailing from his pocket, there were three sitting in the circle of twelve chairs. Debbie pointed to the one in the middle.

  ‘He’s the one.’

  They looked at him. He seemed to be talking to his new companions. Sylvia the Hoover sat by his side, head upturned, like Mary Magdalene looking at Christ in a Florentine altarpiece. This was particularly striking because above her head there was a depiction of Christ, mawkishly Catholic, which had faded and turned almost blue in the sunlight.

  On Mr Vogel’s other side a man with a huge walrus moustache sat slumped in his chair. They looked like friends lounging about, talking and laughing softly in the shade.

  Mrs Williams stood looking out of the window, towards the island. She was thinking about her children, when they were small, playing on banks of daffodils and cowslips and wild garlic in the wood behind her old home on the hill. They had all gone, visiting briefly on wet Sundays with their cheap flowers from motorway service stations, and their fall-and-cry children. She wished them all away; she felt as if she was being pulled downwards into a vortex of guilt; she shied away from their mental and physical anorexia, the famine of their childhoods. Her husband had been a wastrel and a fool, but she had put up with him; not until the children were grown up did she find out what he had done to them. She felt sick to her core. What a terrible waste; what a terrible mistake she had made.

  Sunday morning ground on, and everyone was beginning to avoid Peter, whose sole mission was to go round in a continuous circle greeting everyone and shaking their hand; this became wearisome after a dozen or so times.

  Mr Vogel was talking to the man with the walrus moustache.

  ‘Absolutely amazing,’ he was saying, ‘I thought I was in the middle of a war. Lovely day, spring in the air, and I was walking – do a lot of walking, you know, in fact I’ve walked right round Wales, first one to do it actually – I was walking along the Caldicot Levels – that’s on the coast between Chepstow and Newport – when gunfire broke out right by me, just over the hedge. Threw myself to the ground – I thought I was being shot at. Guns going off everywhere, drrrrrrrrrr [he tried to make the noise of a machine gun], hellish loud, I know what it’s like now to be in a war – I thought I was going to be shot to pieces.’

  The walrus man nodded, pretending to listen. He looked wise and professorial, but his eyes were blank.

  ‘Anyway, turns out I’m in the middle of an army firing range, missed the red flags warning people. There was a big bank of earth between me and the soldiers. But it certainly had me worried. Then I walked up to a checkpoint and there were two young Ghurkhas standing around, just kids really, and I shook hands with them and talked for a few seconds, but their English was very poor, and they certainly couldn’t speak Welsh. Big smiles though, then they told me to walk through the fields, right round this shooting range. They’re all over the place down there – got to be careful where you go. Thought I was a dead un!’

  Mr Vogel fell silent, but only for a few seconds. Then he jerked back to life.

  ‘Reminds me of the time I was in Paraguay, actually. Friend of mine, police inspector, was bathing in one of the rivers, not a care in the world, when out of the blue he was attacked by a shoal of piranhas – took him completely by surprise. Anyway, these piranhas, nasty little buggers, chewed him in such an unfortunate place, if you know what I mean, that he immediately swam to where his clothes were on the shore, got his gun out and shot himself through the head. Man’s man and all that. Couldn’t face the shame. Not a very nice ending at all.’

  The walrus man nodded sagely.

  The doctor sat in the staff station, an empty chair between him and the rest of the staff. They rarely spoke to each other, the medics and the nurses, and when they did so it was in a tersely professional way. Protocol hasn’t changed much since Hattie Jacques swept around the wards behind James Robertson Justice in the Carry On films.

  ‘I’ve examined the lame man,’ he said to Debbie and Donovan. He was a Muslim, and could smell last night’s alcohol exuding from their skin.

  ‘Rather odd chap, I think. Do we know who he is?’

  ‘No, he’s not talking normally,’ Debbie answered. ‘He seems to be reciting Welsh place-names, mainly.’

  ‘They all seem to be places by the sea,’ Donovan added helpfully. He would quite like a stethoscope dangling from his own pocket. Stethoscopes had magical powers, he had noticed, to which females seemed especially susceptible.

  ‘We need to know who he is, so I can get his medical records,’ said the doctor. ‘Run a check on him and get in touch with the police – ask them to follow up the usual lines, and if that doesn’t work ask them to get the local papers involved.’

  The doctor’s hand scurried away on the medical notes, already thickening with information on the latest arrival.

  ‘He seems to have a nasty limp, but I’m not sure... he could be putting it on for my benefit,’ said the doctor. ‘I wonder if some sort of test could be devised?’

  They all sat there, trekkers on the bridge of the USS Enterprise, waiting for Spock to beam them a bright idea.

  Debbie looked around the station and had a bright idea. In the corner wa
s a giant cuddly toy, a large fluffy teddy bear which was being raffled among staff and visitors. They had to guess its birthday.

  ‘How about the bear,’ she said, pointing to the toy. ‘We could take it into the day room and start messing about with it. Perhaps you could drop it a few feet away from the Vogel man to see if he reacts, Donovan. If he gets up easily and walks straight up to it we’ll know he’s OK.’

  The doctor pondered for a while.

  ‘Seems worth a try,’ he concluded eventually, rather gloomily. They sortied onto the ward with the bear, chatting and laughing amiably, which marked them out immediately as staff. They formed a rough triangle as they mingled with the patients. Seeing that Mr Vogel’s shoes were undone, Debbie knelt in front of him to refasten the Velcro. When she finished she patted his knee and said: ‘There you are, that’s better isn’t it?’ But his eyes were fixed mesmerically on the bear.

  Debbie got up and sat in one of the empty seats, next to Sylvia the Hoover, and winked at Donovan, her swaggering paramour of three glutinous nights.

  Donovan took his chance and pretended to throw the bear to her, but he miss-threw deliberately and the bear landed a yard or so in front of the lame man. The ploy worked perfectly. Mr Vogel hurried to his feet to retrieve it, but stopped with a cry of pain as soon as he took a step, and tottered towards the bear clutching his left hip, wincing as he went. There was no doubt now – there really was something wrong with him. Debbie, Donovan and the doctor looked at each other with wise looks, like three poor actors in a village play. They wended back to the staff station, Donovan carrying the bear by one leg. They closed the door.

  ‘Well that’s that then,’ said the doctor. ‘I’ll arrange X-rays as soon as possible.’

  After a longish scribble in the endless note-taking – he often felt more like a novelist than a medic – he looked out, and was startled to see Mr Vogel’s face pressed against the reinforced glass just inches from his own face. He was squinting at the bear.

  Debbie followed his gaze, and talked to him slowly and loudly in idiot-speak through the glass:

  ‘It’s a raffle. RAFFLE. The bear’s a prize in a RAFFLE. You have to guess its birthday. Got any money? HAVE YOU GOT TWENTY PEE? You can choose a date if you like. YES, YOU HAVE TO GUESS ITS BIRTHDAY.’

  Mr Vogel shook his head and returned to his seat.

  ‘I’m sure I’ve seen him somewhere,’ said Donovan. He looked at the man’s face. He was rather distinctive, and Donovan tried to imagine him with a mop of frizzy red hair and glasses. In a bar perhaps? Had he seen him in one of the town’s many pubs?

  Dinner rattled in on a trolley and the doctor went. Debbie and Donovan shepherded the patients into the dining room, those who were willing to go. Some remained in their rooms, hiding from the world. It was a quiet dinner. There was no small talk on the ward. Small talk is a sane pastime. The patients, generally, were either very quiet or highly voluble. There didn’t seem to be an in-between. Mr Vogel cried silently; big pearly tears splashed into his grey plastic tray, which had individual indentations for each course and his drink. He cried through the meal, tears trickling softly down his cheeks. His glasses steamed up and he sat silently like a man in a fogged-up car on a wet and miserable day in nowhere. In the dayroom the television droned on, alone in the corner, showing a film to no-one. It was Forrest Gump, and Forrest was still a little boy, running down a track, away from a gang of boys throwing stones at him. The callipers on his legs were falling off as he escaped.

  When Debbie went up to him to reassure him, and to cajole him into eating something, Mr Vogel said in an elaborately polite way:

  ‘I’m very sorry. I don’t seem to be hungry. Walking does that to me. Most people get hungry, don’t they? But no, not me. If I walk all day I seem to lose my appetite.’

  A couple of extra big tears bounced off the lid of his food tray.

  ‘I hope you don’t mind. Would it be all right if I went now?’

  He looked at her expectantly.

  ‘It’s the party, you see. I really must be there. They’re all expecting me. They’ll wonder what’s happened to me. I’m really looking forward to seeing them all again. Agnes Hunt will be there, and Doctor Robert Jones, and the old man, Mr Hugh Owen Thomas. It’s going to be quite a do. And I really need to go because I must pay the band.’

  Debbie patted him and parcelled up the tray.

  ‘Never mind. Don’t worry, perhaps you’ll be able to manage some toast later,’ she said kindly. ‘You like walking then,’ she added, stooping so that her eyes were looking directly into his. ‘Do a lot of walking do you?’

  ‘Right round Wales,’ he said seriously, and a bit of a smile broke through his tears.

  ‘Right round Wales – the whole country. That’s why I’m tired. Can I go now?’

  Debbie looked at him with her great brown eyes.

  ‘Can’t go yet – you’ll have to stay until you’re better. WE’VE GOT TO MAKE YOU BETTER.’

  Later, in the staff station, when she was updating the patients’ notes – as the staff seemed to do endlessly, leaving them little time to spend with the patients – she noted in her large, looping handwriting:

  Mr ‘Vogel’ rather unsettled, didn’t eat lunch. Tearful but pleasant. Possibly delusional – says he has walked around Wales, and wants to go to a party. Most of the time he sits with Gwydion, talking. They have asked me if they can get some books, and they have given me a long list. I have agreed to help them.

  Debbie looked at Donovan and asked him for his opinion on Mr Vogel.

  ‘Mmm, that’s hard... bit early yet, don’t you think?’ he answered. ‘Seems to be in a fantasy land. Says he’s walked round Wales. Keeps going on about a party he’s missing. Don’t know what the likely story is. Crackers probably. Alzheimer’s? Some sort of dementia? Alcoholic fantasist?’

  They both watched Mr Vogel through the glass. He was thrusting his hand down all the backs of the seats as though he were searching for something. Suddenly he straightened, with a small object in his hand between forefinger and thumb – he held it up to the window, and then turned towards the staff station. He lumbered up to the station, holding his hip. Soon his face was up against the window again, and he tapped the glass with the newly-found item – a twenty pence piece.

  ‘The bear,’ he said. ‘The bear.’

  Debbie guessed first.

  ‘You want to guess the bear’s birthday?’

  ‘Yes – the bear’s birthday.’

  She opened the door, and he tried to limp in, but she put the palm of her hand against his chest and said: ‘Wait there.’

  He did.

  Debbie got the tray with the competition paperwork.

  ‘Right then,’ she said, twisting a biro from a plat in her hair. ‘You’ve got twenty pee, so that’s just one go. What’s it going to be?’

  ‘February 29th,’ he replied immediately, breathlessly.

  She looked at the list, then looked up at him.

  ‘There isn’t a February 29th on here,’ she said. ‘They only happen on leap years, you know.’

  Mr Vogel stood there, quivering. He just stood and looked at her. He was a freakish man who wanted a freakish date, but that was what he wanted.

  ‘Oh what the heck,’ she said. ‘I’ll add it to the list – after all, it could be a leap year couldn’t it?’

  ‘It is a leap year,’ said Donovan behind her. They both looked at the year planner on the wall.

  ‘So it bloody well is,’ she said. ‘They’re out of order. They should have it on here. That’s made my mind up. I’ll put it in between February the twenty-eighth and March the first, and underline it so they won’t miss it,’ she said. ‘And I’ll put a little note in the margin saying it’s a special request from Mr Vogel.’

  He limped back to his chair in the ring of twelve. He sat there for the rest of the evening with Sylvia the Hoover and the Walrus Man.

  Later, when Donovan removed Debbie’s bra swiftly in the lin
en room, she said: ‘We’re bloody crackers doing this here.’

  ‘A lot more fun than walking round Wales,’ he replied as his mouth sped down towards her.

  ‘Very nice,’ said Mr Vogel when I read this little episode to him. ‘Very nice. Can’t wait for the next bit. Any more sex?’

  He’d changed his tune. I tut-tutted him: ‘Don’t be naughty,’ I said reprovingly.

  Looking at him there, lying in his hospital bed, with his two hands on the folded-back sheet in front of him, like a little dormouse, I was consumed with guilt. Having got him in here, I had to get him out.

  He smelt slightly waxy and milky, like a baby. My little lame friend.

  ‘Have you ever read Culhwch ac Olwen?’ I asked him, wanting to while away a few more minutes, so that I didn’t have to leave him alone to gather unpleasant thoughts.

  ‘No.’

  ‘It’s the very first Welsh story. There’s a giant in it, and he’s got a beautiful daughter called Olwen – she’s so beautiful that white flowers spring up in her footsteps wherever she walks. Anyway, the hero of the story, Culhwch, who was born in a pigsty, falls in love with her and asks for her hand in marriage, but the giant’s having none of it. Culhwch is set a number of impossible tasks which involve King Arthur, incredible bravery and guile, and a chase around Britain and Ireland after a wild boar who has a comb, a mirror and shears between its ears – these are needed to trim the giant’s hairy bits ready for the wedding.’

  ‘What’s this got to do with our story?’ asked Mr Vogel suspiciously.

  ‘Just bear with me. One of the tasks is this: the giant demands a white head-dress for his daughter on her wedding day, but any old head-dress won’t do – it must be made from flax seeds which the giant sowed in the ground many years previously, but which failed to grow One day, as a warrior involved in Culhwch’s quest journeys over a mountain he hears wailing and lamentation. The noise is coming from an ant-hill, which is being engulfed by fire. The warrior saves the ants, and in gratitude they recover the flax seeds from the ground, so that a fine head-dress can be made for Olwen. But what I like best about this story is the final line.’