Cards of Identity

by Nigel Dennis

  ‘Thank you, Mr Jellicoe,’ she answered coldly, and began slowly and grimly to roll up her sleeves.

  *

  ‘This passage, doctor,’ said the captain. ‘No, no, turn round, down here, another turn – that’s better; now, pray, follow me.’

  ‘Which door, which door?’ cried Dr Towzer, racing down the long corridor. His bag was in his left hand, his right winked eager fingers at every passing knob. He was in a sweat; his eyes were ready to fly from their sockets like marbles from a cupped fist.

  ‘Patience, my dear sir,’ begged the captain: ‘The room is not in this passage at all. I brought you this way because the carpet has not yet been laid on the shorter route.’

  Dr Towzer gave a loud neigh. ‘Do you think I notice dust or carpets, sir, in this day and age?’ he cried. ‘I have twelve more patients to see before midday. The whole nation, sir, is on its last legs. Or rather, on its doctors’!’ He gave a shriek of laughter.

  ‘Left here and up these little stairs,’ said the captain.

  ‘Are we nearly there?’

  ‘We are getting warm.’

  ‘Surely this is where we began?’

  ‘Quite another place. Doctor, if I may say so, you need a holiday.’

  ‘Where is the door?’ begged the doctor, giving a dreadful groan.

  ‘My dear sir, we are in sight of it. It is the last on the left.’

  The doctor broke into a canter, storming down the corridor like a mad race-horse. ‘You would not first like a glass of Madeira and a slice of dry cake?’ cried the captain, keeping to a trot.

  ‘No, no, no! Here?’

  ‘Permit me,’ said the captain. Tapping softly on the door he opened it a crack and murmured: ‘Milly, Milly. I have a little surprise. You’ll never guess. Don’t be cross. I felt I really ought to.’

  A faint scream came from inside. ‘A doctor! Let me put on my shawl!’

  ‘We will give her just a moment,’ said the captain, giving Dr Towzer a man-to-man look. ‘Tell us when you are ready, darling.’

  ‘Sir, you seem to come from another planet!’ panted the doctor, stamping his feet. ‘These winsome approaches are not made nowadays. Little delicacies are become monstrous obstacles. The looks of patients are not so much as noticed. Why, sir, I shall come away from here scarcely knowing to what sex your wife belongs.’

  ‘In this little backwater …’ began the captain apologetically. But he was interrupted by a musical cry from within: ‘You may come in now!’

  Mrs Mallet’s bed was large and lavish. A pink eiderdown two feet thick foamed over it with herself rising from one end.

  ‘Dr Towzer, dearest,’ said the captain. ‘Like yourself, a lover of roses.’

  ‘So, doctor?’ she piped, giving him a fragrant smile.

  ‘I used to be. Good morning.’ He made for the bed like a horse at a manger.

  ‘Used to be, doctor? But how can that be? I think you never loved them if you no longer do.’

  ‘No time now, madam, I mean,’ he barked. ‘What is the trouble?’

  ‘But you must make time, naughty man,’ she said, wagging a cross finger. ‘Or your life will become quite empty.’

  He gave a prolonged, hysterical cackle, ending by chewing savagely at his lips. Dropping his bag with a clash of instruments he held out his hands so that his ten fingers quivered like antennae. In a panting voice, he said: ‘Chair-chair-chair?’

  ‘Why bless my soul,’ said the captain, smiling ruefully. ‘Where are my wits? Of course you must have a chair. Which sort shall it be? stiff, low, high, easy?’

  ‘Any chair; just chair-chair.’

  ‘From here one hears the trains,’ said Mrs Mallet. ‘But few of them stop.’

  Dr Towzer gave another neigh and suddenly exclaimed: ‘Life quite empty – he-he-he!’

  ‘Here is a promising chair, Towzer,’ said the captain, re-entering from the passage. ‘Or is it, in your estimation, too hard?’

  ‘No. It will do,’ said the doctor, his voice suddenly slow and faint. ‘All chairs are now as one to me.’

  ‘When you have examined me, Doctor Brewster,’ said Mrs Mallet, ‘you must tell me what varieties you particularly loved, and we will compare notes.’

  ‘Then you think this one will be all right?’ said the captain, pushing the chair slowly across the room.

  ‘I think it will be excellent,’ answered the doctor, his voice becoming absolutely level.

  ‘I hope soon to be among my beloved standards again,’ said Mrs Mallet. ‘They become obstreperous without me.’

  ‘What she really needs is a good nurse,’ said the captain.

  ‘For God’s sake, madam!’ cried the doctor, abruptly recovering both his high tone and his hysteria: ‘tell me what is the matter with you.’

  ‘On that point, doctor,’ said the captain, ‘I think I should have a word with you in private. We could withdraw to the dressing-room.’

  ‘Ignore him, doctor,’ said Mrs Mallet. ‘He always looks on the dark side, and would only pour poison into your ear. To me, even sickness can be a part of happiness if we know how to make it so.’

  ‘Now, do seat yourself, Dr Benson,’ said the captain, pressing the chair seat against the back of the doctor’s knees. ‘I see you are under stress.’

  ‘If the lady will kindly begin …’

  ‘From the very beginning, doctor?’ she asked. ‘Or merely the present symptoms?’

  ‘What you call the present symptoms will do, madam,’ he answered, suddenly hanging his head again. He went on, in the dull tones of an old man recalling some text learnt in youth: ‘Though it is not for us to cure symptoms. We merely appraise them. It is their origin we pursue.’

  ‘By Jove, that’s well put!’ said the captain. ‘It shows medicine in quite another light.’

  ‘Begin, madam,’ said the doctor, raising a pair of dog-like eyes to hers.

  She responded by fixing on him the intense, horrified gaze of a revelationist. Her breast rose and fell rapidly. The words began to tumble from her mouth:

  ‘A sort of trembling, doctor, every morning when I wake up – as though I was somehow anticipating the worst. At first, snug in my warm bed, I am puzzled – why, I ask myself dreamily, should I feel afraid? Suddenly it dawns on me – oh, heavens! this is morning and I am me! I am myself, and nothing I can do will mitigate the horror of this fact. This realization – which is too agonizing to describe – is followed by a “Hah-hah-hah-hah” sort of panting, like that of a sheep caught by its horns in a thicket.’

  ‘Omit sheep and thickets, madam, for God’s sake!’ cried the doctor, turning white. ‘We are not a Bible class.’

  ‘… Then everything abruptly becomes denser and more tangled; my every limb gets wrapped in strands of millions of encircling tendrils – horrid, tough tendrils that quickly rise and pinion my head. And at this moment, as if at a signal, everything in the room begins to revolve, at first quite slowly, so that I am able to tell myself that if I can stop it now I will escape the worst. For a second, indeed, I do succeed in rendering the scene static once more – at which, as if enraged by my interference, it instantly starts to whirl again, and this time at lunatic speed – crockery, furniture, walls, doors, husband, night-light – all whizzing round like checkered lightning – and even this I could bear were it not that gradually I feel myself pulled into the circular tow. I scream, scream, but I am caught in the heart of it, suffocated, dumb, the pillow now-over-now-under what once was my head. I have no option, doctor, no option at all, nor any sense of direction other than circular; all I feel by then is the horror of realizing that the bed, too, my very foundation and root, has been dragged up from under me and that, even while spinning madly, we are also rising higher every second to meet the wheeling, intangible ceiling. Now I am turned on my side, my toes chilled to frangible ice, my gorge rising, my hair streaming out behind me so far that it is caught in my pursuing open mouth – a decisive moment, because at once my taut head begins to strain
at its trunk and, failing to break away there, splits brusquely in half with a ripping noise, and the two halves, cloven, chase each other at a distance like mad half-moons, I trying my utmost to recapture and reassemble them. But how can one grasp anything when one has no foothold? “Is this hysteria?” I ask myself – and though my voice is inaudible it is nonetheless the only solid object within reach, so I attempt to clutch it, but cannot place its whereabouts. I strive to imagine its sound, so that I may track it down and thus find some clue to myself, but all I hear is the note of a trip-hammer ringing on my ear-drums as on an anvil – thus, what with speed reducing everything to a blur, and sound and vision endeavouring to split this blur into a thousand slivers, I am simultaneously beaten and smothered into the likeness of a jelly and yet fired through the centre of myself like hard machine-gun bullets. I am far beyond screaming by now; and yet questions, hard as rocks and written in black, appear like print across the centre of my cloven mind: Who am I? Who are you? At which there is a chuckling, dancing mixture of sound and movement inside me, and a burst of words such as: Only rend, tear, compress, slaughter, dismember, and yet hammer eternally compact!’

  At this point Dr Towzer, whose eyes had been glistening for some time, gave a loud shriek and fell with a crash against the back of the chair.

  ‘My dear, what a diagnosis!’ exclaimed the captain admiringly, hurrying forward and laying his fingers on the doctor’s pulse. ‘A veritable bonfire; I felt quite trembly myself.’ He laid his lips close to the doctor’s nearest ear and said in a strong, curt voice: ‘Now, Towzer, we have had quite enough of your stoic tantrums! You have driven us too far. We are exasperated. It is time for you to reform. A fundamental change, please! Henceforth, sir, you will kindly regurgitate those senses, those fires, that you have so disgracefully swallowed down and banked. From now on, you will remember that it is roses, roses, all the way. Those two poignant names, Towzer and rose, are no longer poles apart. They are linked into one – man conjoined once more with vegetable nature. Do you understand me, sir? In place of your repugnant stoutness, breeding such evil nonentity throughout the globe, you will set the most delicate responses to the queen of flowers. Assume and love her soft petals, Towzer; brush gently across her tender sides the soft fringe of your abundant beard; touch her soft lips, and never part. Oh, Towzer, reborn Towzer, take up a new spade in behalf of the rose – that apostle of peace, that loving fire in which steeled hearts first look soft as wax and then firm afresh in the substance of naked gold! All your road now, Towzer, till life’s very end, is beds of roses – roses dewy, roses dungy, roses sprayed with draughts of health-giving soap and nicotine:

  ‘Polyantha, hybrid tea,

  Pernetiana, pray for me!

  Ah, perpetual delight!

  Ah, the open, sunny site!

  Roses, roses all the day,

  Seed of Towzer and his Tray.

  Nevermore will Towzer walk

  Where the earnest microbes stalk;

  Aphid, black-spot, now his cure,

  Scurf of mildew his allure.

  Slide at last the sick-bed back,

  Blanket down the baggèd quack.

  In the gizzard of the rose

  Hairy Towzer finds repose.’

  ‘And where do we put him while his beard’s growing?’ asked Mrs Mallet, stepping from the bed and smoothing down her wrinkled tweed.

  ‘In the Paradise cottage, my dear.’

  ‘I hope you can make him walk. Poor darling, we came just in time. Another month and he’d have been carried out.’

  ‘I am sure he will walk anywhere, provided it’s not in the direction of the surgery … Towzer, my man, do you feel at peace?’

  ‘I feel that with time and proper attention he may be on his way to it,’ replied the doctor.

  ‘Well, we have made sure that he will get all that. We are returning him to private practice. His intruder has gone for ever. He was not us. He was only a scoundrel who pretended to be.’

  ‘Thank God for that!’

  ‘Yes. He leaves us to our roses. Let us move towards those roses. Let us stand up, take three steps back and turn to the right.’

  ‘To the right,’ groaned the doctor, sluggishly obeying.

  Beaufort came in at that moment and said: ‘I say, you have been quick. He looks another man already. It’s a good thing, because I’ve got Tray and Finch downstairs.’

  ‘Then fetch my curved briar, the psychiatric one, and velvet smoking-jacket, like a good boy,’ said the captain, pushing Dr Towzer slowly to the door. ‘I’ll take Tray first, while I’m still fresh. And for this man, a shiny-bottomed pair of dark blue trousers – not corduroys, remember – some boots, a clean jacket, a shining watch-chain and a hat, with waistcoat and stiffish collar to match – and don’t get too clever by stuffing the pockets with tarred string, Old Moore, and foul handkerchiefs – true gardeners respect Nature far too much to be slovenly in her presence. You’ll find all you want in the big chest … Now, Towzer, march! Onward to rosy peace!’

  ‘To posy wreath!’ cried the doctor.

  ‘To union with the sluggish infinite!’

  ‘T’union!’

  ‘Tray is none too easy’ said Beaufort, as the procession moved slowly down the long corridor. ‘She was relieved, though, when she saw Towzer’s car, and remarked with a giggle: “Now I know Dr Towzer really asked for me and I’ve not been abducted!”’

  ‘Vulgar little tart!’ said the captain. ‘I suppose you drove like mad, as usual.’

  ‘Well, yes, I did rather. Finch was in the back seat, you see, and I felt she would benefit from a terrific shaking. Tray said just the right thing to her: “Oh, you’re the person who doesn’t know who she is, aren’t you?” I then left Finch with Florrie, who also opened-up on exactly the right note: “Well, Miss Chinch, or whatever you are, I’ve been waiting to hear your name, or whatever it is, all the morning.” “It’s Finch,” said Tray, “It’s Chirk,” I said. We sounded like a trio of canaries.’

  ‘Well, hurry up and fetch those things for me,’ said the captain, impatiently fitting the doctor’s legs to the first steps of the back stairs.

  ‘Give him to me, dear,’ said Mrs Mallet.

  ‘Never swap horses while crossing a stream.’

  ‘But you are getting testy.’

  ‘I think I know my business, don’t I?’ cried the captain.

  ‘He was my business until a moment ago, unless I dreamt it all,’ said Mrs Mallet sharply.

  ‘My apologies,’ said the captain suddenly, propping the doctor against the wall and giving Mrs Mallet a ceremonious bow. ‘My head is so full of ideas, there’s no room for sense. Take him by all means. And Beaufort, after you have brought me those clothes, do just glance over the ones Jellicoe arrived in and see if they wouldn’t be just the thing for Tray.’

  *

  She was fidgeting in the breakfast-room when the captain swept in breezily, dressed in a frogged jacket and swinging a curved pipe between his teeth like a vane. ‘And what can I do for you, Miss Tray?’ he asked briskly.

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘I said, what brings you here, my dear young lady – on what errand, to what end, to which entity? Though it is perfectly splendid to see you.’

  ‘I thought you said Tray.’

  ‘Miss Tray, my dear, Miss Tray.’

  ‘But then I am not the one you want?’

  ‘Who is to say that? To be unwanted is no fate to impose upon a charming visitor.’

  ‘Oh, never mind who I am, then. Where’s the doctor, please?’

  ‘Doctor?’

  ‘The doctor – who wanted me.’

  ‘What doctor wanted you, my dear?’ asked the captain gently, reflectively pulling the pipe from his mouth and squinting at the nurse over the looping stem. ‘Is something the matter with someone?’ he inquired, moving a little closer to her.

  ‘Dr Towzer!’ she exclaimed. ‘He summoned me. There’s his car outside.’

  ‘We do have a T
owzer here,’ he answered, puzzled; ‘but he never hinted that he was a doctor.’

  ‘Then why on earth did he come?’

  ‘For roses, of course. He has done so for years. Are you sure we are talking of the same Towzer?’

  ‘No, I am not. Though I do know the doctor likes roses. I have sometimes cut him some.’

  Suddenly the captain waved his pipe in the air. ‘Dear me, I am very dense this morning!’ he exclaimed. ‘I have only just realized who you are and why you are here. Tell me, now, if I may start with a personal question: are you often in the mood of feeling wanted by doctors? You don’t have to answer, of course; I ask only as a psychiatrist.’

  ‘I think there must be some mistake,’ she answered, turning pale when she heard his last, forbidding word. ‘I am the nurse from the surgery.’

  ‘Why, of course! Had you thought yourself to be some other?’

  ‘Certainly not. Why should I?’

  ‘Oh, never mind. Let’s answer that another time.’ The captain replaced his pipe, swung it through a few arcs and then asked: ‘Who brought you here, may I ask?’

  ‘A young man in a sports car.’

  This was too much for the captain, and he quite failed to hide a knowing smile. ‘A young man in a sports car, was it?’ he asked gently. ‘Did he drive you very fast?’

  ‘We came up the drive at seventy-five.’

  ‘Dear me! What a speed for a respectable young lady to travel at! I assume you were alone in the car with this young man?’

  ‘No. A Mrs Chirk was in the back seat.’

  ‘In the back seat?’ repeated the captain curiously. ‘Now, I wonder what she was doing there. At least, she did not interpose herself between you and the young dare-devil at the wheel?’

  ‘Why should she? She was frightened to death.’

  ‘And you?’

  ‘I like going fast.’

  ‘Ah-hah! Well, we can’t deny that you boldly took your seat beside dashing youth and left timid age in the dickey.’

  ‘He opened the front door and I got in. What could be more natural?’

  ‘Why nothing, my dear. It is a perfectly intelligible reversal of roles. By the way, have you met this Mrs Chirk before?’