by James White
The ‘back door’ opened into a network of bright, cool corridors smelling of the usual hospital combination of antiseptic and floor polish. There was nobody in sight. They were about to move to the next floor when they heard footsteps coming down the stairs three at a time.
‘Doctor Morris!‘ called Jean.
A small, wiry figure in a discordant sports shirt who was on the way down the stairs stumbled, took four and two instead of two threes, but still managed to land upright at the bottom.
‘Marshall!’ it said in a surprisingly resonant bass. ‘Jean, it’s nice to see you again. What are you doing here anyway? And who is your large friend?’
‘Joe Carson,’ said Carson, shaking hands, ‘from Hart-Ewing’s. I wanted some information about a one-time patient of yours. John Pebbles.’
‘Is he in trouble?’
Carson shook his head. ‘He is doing very well. But he has problems which, for some reason, he won’t let me help him with. I wanted to talk to someone who knew him when he first arrived here. That was before Jean’s time here but she offered to ... ‘
‘Of course, Doctor,’ said Morris. ‘But the one you should talk to is Nurse Sampson. Unfortunately, she left on the first coach. Unless you fancy a trip with us to the beach, and in the circumstances we would understand if you refused, you’ll have to come back later this evening.’
‘We were planning on going for a swim,’ said Carson, ‘so we might as well mix business with pleasure. But I should explain that I’m not...’
He did not get a chance to explain that he was not a doctor because Morris was already trotting towards the entrance, calling back that they should follow the last coach which would be leaving in ten minutes.
On the way to the coast they had the choice of being boiled alive in their own body juices or opening the car windows and eating the coach’s dust, so they alternated by doing both. By the time they arrived at the narrow and secluded stretch of beach Carson was looking forward to a swim. But there was work to do first, Jean told him, and suggested that he change in the car while she found out how best they could help.
It was rather like setting up butchers’ stalls in a marketplace.
First they unrolled the gaily coloured wind-breakers and pushed their supporting poles into the soft sand, then they unfolded and positioned the deck-chairs. The ... goods ... were carried out of the coaches then, carefully but awkwardly, and put on display in the deck-chairs like so many lumpy pink sacks with furiously talking heads on top. They seemed to talk all the time but that was probably because they were capable of doing nothing else.
During the first few minutes Carson thought he was going to be sick. The close, almost intimate contact with the bodies--they had been dressed for the beach before being loaded into the coaches--was bad. The horrible lightness of these people--arms and legs, it seemed, accounted for about half of a person’s body weight--was even worse. But worst of all was the way they talked and joked with him, especially the girls. But gradually the feeling passed as he worked until eventually he was able to arrange the pink bundles on their deck-chairs as if he had been doing it all his life, and even rub suntan lotion on some of them.
He wondered if he was an adaptable, sympathetic type or just insensitive.
During a pause for breath before starting to unload the last coach, Carson nodded towards the two muscular male nurses who were sitting back to back on the coach roof, looking through binoculars. He said, ‘We could use some help.’
Jean laughed. ‘Do I detect a note of criticism, Joe? But seriously, those two are our deterrent. We don’t often need them because most people know this section of the beach is reserved for us and they wouldn’t come within miles of us in any case. But there are others who would and sometimes they even carry cameras. When that kind turns up the boys go out to meet them and dissuade them from coming too close. Sometimes their telephoto lenses are heaved into the sea or they get sand in the works of their expensive cameras, and there are times when the action is even more direct. The boys feel very strongly about that particular type of peeping Tom ...’
Carson said, ‘My criticism is disarmed by your deterrents. Now let’s unload this bunch so’s we can cool off in the sea...’
But by the time they had unloaded the last coach the people on the deck-chairs wanted to cool off in the sea as well. This was the best part of the outing. Instead of the clinic’s tiny swimming-pool with its clutter of special floats and harnesses, here were real breakers, acres of hot sand and thousands of smooth, brightly-coloured pebbles. They did not have arms or legs so they had to be carried into the sea, and because they could not swim without them they had to be ducked and splashed and towed around the shallows. All except one, that was, who had fingerless hands growing out of her shoulders and who could swim like a tail-less fish.
She was enjoying herself so much, they were all enjoying themselves so much, that Carson wanted to curse horribly just to relieve his feelings. Normally he did not consider himself a particularly fortunate man, but right now he felt so lucky that it was almost a physical pain.
The pain remained with him for the succeeding two hours, during which patients were floated, towed, chased, returned to their chairs and dried. It made it impossible for him to think of anything else, so much so that it was Dr Morris who brought his mind back to the reason for his being here.
‘I expect you two had your own plans for the rest of the day,’ he said to Carson while his eyes wandered admiringly along Jean who lay between them on the sand. ‘We’re grateful for your help but we don’t want to work you to death. You can leave any time you feel like it, Doctors. But before you go you wanted to ask about John Pebbles, Joe... ‘
Carson pushed himself on to one elbow and looked down at Jean. She was smiling faintly, eyes closed and obviously waiting to see how, or if, he would extricate himself. He said awkwardly, ‘I’m not a doctor, Doctor. Not even a psychologist … ‘
Morris stared at him for an uncomfortable three seconds, then said, ‘You could have fooled me, Joe. But you wanted to know about Pebbles.’ He broke off for a moment to whistle, wave and beckon to someone farther along the beach. Carson turned to see a small girl in a yellow swimsuit wave back then move towards them. She was beautiful by any man’s standards, with skin like smooth dark chocolate. Morris went on, ‘He liked her more than any of us--thought she was different, for obvious reasons. She liked him, too, and took special care of him. It was she who found him, after all.’
‘Nurse Sampson,’ he said as she stopped above them, ‘will be able to tell you everything you want to know about John Pebbles...’
Chapter Thirteen
It had happened more than four years ago in the early spring. Because the weather was too cold for swimming the patients had been wrapped warmly in rugs, and needed little attention. Nurse Sampson had gone for a walk along the beach to the little bay about half a mile along the coast. It was an attractive spot but unsuitable for swimming because of the sharp rocks lying beneath the surface, the seaweed which clung to them and the carpet of stones covering the spaces between.
She had found him curled up completely naked on the sheltered side of a rocky outcrop. At the time she had thought only of the patient, assuming he was exhausted after swimming ashore from a sunken motorboat or yacht. When she remembered about the clothing which might have helped identify him, the tide must have washed it away. All she noticed at the time was a large, torn sheet of bright orange plastic material. She had thought that it was part of a rubber dinghy at first, but the material was different. There had been no lettering or serial numbers on the plastic so far as she had been able to see.
She had lifted him clear of the water, which had begun to wash over his legs, wrapped her coat around him and run for help.
The thing she remembered most clearly about the incident was the difficulty they had getting his right hand unclenched. It had contained five small, brightly coloured pebbles from the beach and he had cried like a baby when
they tried to take them away. He still had them with him when he left the clinic eight months later.
On that first day his physical condition was all that concerned them. As well as suffering from exposure, incipient pneumonia and widespread lacerations and abrasions to his hands, arms, elbows, knees and shins caused by crawling--he did not know how to walk--over rocks, he had cried a lot. It had been the completely unashamed crying of someone who did not know or had never learned about stiff upper lips.
Gradually as the abrasions healed and his surroundings became more comfortable and familiar, he cried only when he was hungry or faced with a similar form of personal emergency. He had no more control over his motions than a baby, he did not understand a single word spoken to him and he replied to everything that was said with gurgles or other nonsense sounds. He had to be taught to do everything.
His physical co-ordination was very good, however. He learned how to stand and sit and walk about very quickly. In two months he could use the toilet unaided, in three he could eat without making too great a mess of the table-top and when he had been at the clinic six months, Nurse Sampson arranged a party for him at which he was able to make a very short speech and read five pages from a book intended for five-year-olds. During the whole of his stay he had displayed the intense, innocent curiosity of a small boy. He had no illnesses of any kind and the minor injuries he had sustained were usually caused by trying to climb trees, drainpipes and furniture.
He began to wander, disappearing from the hospital for hours at a time, but he always came back. He was always muddy and excited and quite incoherent about whatever it was he had been doing. His independent trips outside seemed to help his condition; he seemed to be avoiding trouble or injury, and so they were encouraged.
Then one afternoon he had returned with a friend in tow--literally pulling him up the clinic steps like a newly-discovered uncle he wanted to show off. The friend’s name had been Tillotson and from him they had discovered among other things what John Pebbles had been doing during his twice-daily disappearances. Tillotson was rather embarrassed at the raw hero-worship Pebbles displayed towards him, but this had not stopped him putting forward a strong case for the other’s discharge from the hospital. Tillotson had insisted that Pebbles was much brighter than he seemed, that he could almost certainly wangle him a job in surroundings which he would find pleasant and that it was wrong, anyway, to institutionalise people unnecessarily.
Tillotson could have saved his breath and his eloquence because he was preaching to the converted ...
‘... We kept him for another four weeks,’ Nurse Sampson went on, ‘giving him an intensive survival course--you know, how to get on and off buses and trains, how to judge the speed and direction of traffic, reading traffic lights, that sort of thing. Finally we turned him loose on the world.’
Her teeth were dazzling as she smiled, but from her tone it was obvious that Nurse Sampson had been very sorry to see Pebbles go.
Morris joined in then. Defensively, he said, ‘We aren’t being callous about this, Joe. It’s just that the clinic gets the really bad cases, the ones who have no chance of making it in the outside world even with complicated harnesses or gadgetry. We’re very glad about Pebbles, but too busy with the failures to take a close interest. In any case, Doctor Kennedy and Mr Savage at Hart-Ewing’s promised to let us know if John ran into any trouble. They haven’t and now you tell me he hasn’t ...’
‘He has done very well,’ said Carson. He was convinced, without knowing why, that if he told Morris and the nurse just how well that was he would not be believed. He went on carefully, ‘He has been doing very well at night school and he doesn’t sweep floors any more. But the thing which intrigues me is where he came from originally. Had you any luck tracing his parents or relatives?’
‘The chances are that they didn’t want to be traced,’ said Morris. ‘That does not necessarily mean that they were heartless or callous, either. I can imagine circumstances where taking care of him properly could be too much for ordinary people. Physically he was very well cared for and there was no evidence of cruelty. But whoever was responsible for bringing him up from a baby could have been about to succumb to illness or old age, or have been about to marry or just have decided that he might do better under the care of professionals. Which he did.’
‘At first we thought he might be a simple amnesiac,’ the doctor went on, ‘but there were no signs of head injuries and it is unusual for amnesia to be so complete without massive injury to the brain. I don’t think it was intended for him to take off his clothes or cut himself on the rocks--he must have crawled away from the place where he had been left--where we would probably have found him much sooner. As I said, he had been very well fed and cared for and we didn’t want to raise a stink with the police over a case of unintentional cruelty, so we looked after him and kept quiet about it.’
‘If he wasn’t suffering from amnesia,’ said Carson, ‘what was his trouble, Doctor.’
‘Amnesia is not completely ruled out, Joe. But total loss of memory is uncommon. It is usually caused by severe brain injury or a very severe traumatic shock, but even then the loss is not total because the patient can still talk and eat and dress himself even though he may not know who he is or recognise any of his friends for a time. Unless there is physical damage to the brain, surrounding the patient with friends and familiar objects will usually bring his memory back, and there is medication available these days which aids the remembering process. We tried both forms of treatment with Pebbles, even though we could not know what he would have considered familiar surroundings or people.’
The doctor wriggled a little deeper into the warm sand, then went on. ‘In some areas he responded quickly--learning to walk, dress, open doors and so on. He could have picked these up quickly because he already had known how and the memories were coming back--familiar surroundings and activities can bring an amnesiac’s memory rushing back, sometimes. But he had forgotten how to speak. No amount of talking at him would bring that memory back, and that is the one ability which is very rarely forgotten even by so-called total amnesia cases. We had to teach him as if he was learning a new language --at no stage did he show signs of prior knowledge or familiarity with it. That is why I’m not happy about the amnesia theory.
‘There were no indications of physical damage,’ Morris concluded, ‘and a purely mental shock which would give those symptoms is something which does not bear thinking about.’
‘I suppose,’ said Carson a few minutes later, ‘that he could not have been pretending to have forgotten everything … ‘
Immediately he knew that he had said the wrong thing --it was suddenly very chilly on the hot sand. Even Jean was looking coldly at him. He went on quickly, ‘Obviously the answer is no. But quite apart from the fact that he was dumped on you like a thirty-year-old foundling, he was and is an unusual case. My mouth may be full of foot again, but there is one more question I’d like to ask and it’s this. Bearing in mind the facts that he showed no signs of physical injury or neglect, that his symptoms were not those of a normal amnesiac and that, with loving care, good tuition and proper medical attention you were able to bring him along to the point where he is now able to live a fairly normal life, is it possible that he was not born the way you found him? Could some of the drugs you used to support his therapy have been misused to leave him in that condition? Could his memory have been obliterated deliberately, or perhaps by accident as the result of an experiment which went wrong? Could he have been a volunteer who ... ‘
‘For God’s sake ...!‘
Morris sat bolt upright, showering them with sand. He went on, ‘So instead of being left by relatives who could no longer cope with looking after him for thirty odd years you are suggesting that he is a waste product of a too-efficient brain-washing experiment left with us for possible salvage? You’ve got a too-vivid imagination, Joe, and I wish to blazes you wouldn’t put such uncomfortable thoughts into people’s minds ...!‘<
br />
Jean and he dressed and left shortly afterwards. In the car neither of them spoke as Carson drove towards the airfield. Suddenly he pulled into a lay-by, let the car coast until they were in the shade of some overhanging trees, then he braked and switched off, still without speaking.
‘You look bothered and your hands are shaking,’ she said when the silence had grown so long and deep that the insects were beginning to sound noisy. ‘Is it passion or delayed shock?’
Carson did not answer.
‘I was a bit rough on you, letting you go with them to the beach,’ she went on apologetically. ‘But there are far too many people who just don’t want to know about the clinic’s patients--if they don’t know then nobody can accuse them of not caring, I suppose. But it was bound to be a shock for you, seeing and handling really bad thalidomide and dystrophy cases. I thought you were taking it very well and I’m sorry if ... Joe, are you going to sit and sulk all day...! ‘
Carson said, ‘What did you say?’
He had heard every word but he had been feeling so angry and betrayed and disgusted that the meaning of the words had seemed to slide past him. He had also been coming to a decision which was completely at variance with everything he had ever been taught as a security man. But he badly needed help of a very specialised kind, and instinctively he knew that time was running too short for him to get it by the roundabout methods he had been using over the past weeks. Without telling Jean Marshall everything--he could withhold the names and the nature of the project--he might still be able to get the help he needed in exposing John Pebbles for what he was.
Even though the man might not know what he was himself ...
He said suddenly, ‘I’m not sulking, Jean. I was going to spend the rest of the day at the flying club, where I would have let you watch me doing good take-offs and very bad landings after which I would have plied you with booze during dinner and taken you home--yours or mine, depending on the psychological effects of the alcohol in your bloodstream ...’