What It Takes to Be Human

by Marilyn Bowering

  “Just tell me, sir.” I brush at the blood drying on my hands. It flakes onto the carpet.

  “It’s from your friend, Mrs. Jones-Murray.”

  “Georgina?”

  Dr. Frank keeps his eyes on the paper. “It’s about her son, Brentwood. He’s missing and believed to have lost his life as a result of air operations over France.”

  “No, that was his gunner. He was shot and killed; Georgina wrote to me about it.”

  Dr. Frank hands me the letter and I read the details that have been sent to Georgina by one of her son’s friends. The weather was good—one of these clear September nights with a bright moon—and at about 22:00 hours there was an enemy intercept. Brent turned and made visual contact and closed with a JU-88 and attacked from level and dead astern. One of the other fighter pilots saw flashes in the enemy aircraft fuselage, and then it returned fire from the rear. Brent attacked twice more, the JU rapidly slowed, and Brent’s aircraft overshot, narrowly missing a collision. The observer then saw a red glow in the cockpit; Brent’s plane started vibrating then went into a steep dive. There was a patch on the water where it hit the sea.

  “Yes, I suppose that’s clear,” I say.

  “Sandy?” Dr. Frank’s eyes are wide and brown, they brim with tears. “Is that all you can say?”

  “Just one more thing, Dr. Frank.” I get to my feet. “Why didn’t Alan Macaulay run for it when he could? There was time after he accidentally shot MacKenzie—about four hours—before the police came. No one would have stopped him. He must have known, with Kennedy there to lie about what happened, that he didn’t have a chance. He could have escaped to the woods, changed his name and appearance…. Yet he stayed and waited for justice.” I shake my head. “But you know, and I know, Dr. Frank, there is no justice.”

  It takes me three long steps to reach the window. I punch my hand through the glass and grab a piece of glass.

  “What are you going to do with that, Sandy?” Dr. Frank says calmly. His hand reaches under the desk for a button. Never mind. They’ll be too late.

  “If a member offends you, cut it off,” I say. “I’m going to finish the job.” I open my trousers, close my eyes and cut.

  THIRTEEN

  December 31 and following, 1941

  I turn on my side and see a guard carrying a tray and a newspaper stop in front of my cell. Keys jangle from his belt. “How’re you doing today, Sandy?” he says. “Think you can eat something?”

  He’s friendly enough. He unlocks the door and swings it wide. “Still feeling woozy?” He sets the tray down at the foot of the bed. I try to sit up but only get so far before the room tilts and I fall back. The guard catches me and holds me upright until I can get my legs over the side and look down at my bare feet on the floor. I’m wearing pyjamas.

  “What time is it?”

  “Time for you to wake up.” He stuffs a pillow behind my hips to keep me straight. He places the tray in my lap. On it is a serving of turkey, mashed potatoes and Brussels sprouts. “Dr. Love will be here anytime.”

  “Dr. Love?”

  The guard checks over his shoulder then bends down, his face close to mine. “Between you and me,” he murmurs as he uncovers another plate to reveal two cookies, an apple and a piece of cake, “you’re a lucky man.”

  “Why am I lucky?”

  “Yes, why are you, Sandy?” a new voice says. A tall man with a long bearded face stands at my threshold. “That will be fine, Don,” he says to the guard. “Leave the door as it is, I won’t be long.”

  He turns to me and holds out his hand. “I’m Dr. Love. We’ve met before, but you may not remember.” My hand is sweaty, my whole body reeks with perspiration. I wipe my hand on the sheet. “Don’t mind that,” he says, watching me, “it’s just the drugs wearing off.”

  We shake hands. “You don’t remember me at all, do you, Sandy?”

  I shake my head. He pulls a stethoscope out of a pocket and leans forward, and as he does, I recognize his scent of Bay Rum.

  “There’s something familiar…” I say, but he holds up his hand so that he can continue to listen to my chest without interruption. He checks my heart and lungs, then takes out a penlight and looks into my ears, my throat and lastly into my eyes. I have to struggle to keep them open. The lids feel weighted. “Everything tickety-boo?”

  “Just fine, Sandy, just fine.” He sits beside me, crosses one leg over the other and swings a brown oxford-clad foot. He seems entirely at his ease. “Don’t mind me, eat your dinner before it gets cold.” He’s waiting for something, what is it?

  I’m raising a forkful of turkey to my lips, worried that I’ll spill in front of him, when the image of a figure dressed in red silk shirt and cape, and tall black boots, and with whiskers drawn onto its cheeks springs into mind. “I remember something! It’s Puss in Boots!” It is so vivid and sudden and stupid that I’m shocked. Not only that, but how grey my world is by contrast: grey walls and flooring, grey blankets and sheets, the grey pyjamas I wear. Even the overcooked food on the plate partakes of shades of grey. Grey, that’s my name, I think. I’m Sandy Grey.

  “Very good, Sandy,” Dr. Love says. He grins. “That was the pantomime three weeks ago, ten days or so before we put you under. Considering the state you were in, that anything stuck is tremendous. With any luck, the rest should come back to you relatively quickly. You’ve made the bridge.”

  “I’m a lucky man!”

  Another smile. I find the courage to look at him more closely. He’s dressed too warmly for indoors. He has the usual doctor’s stethoscope, yes, but he wears no white coat. Instead, he’s sporting a sweater vest beneath a heavy tweed jacket. His trousers are wool, walking weight, the clothes of a gentleman. Instead of a tray of instruments (what tray? how do I know he should have a tray?), he has carried in with him, and placed on the floor, a black doctor’s bag. “Do you work here?” I ask him.

  “Your friends, Mrs. Jones-Murray and her father, Mr. Dunblane, sent me. We agreed with your other doctors that I should sedate you for a period of time to see if we could bring you back.”

  “Sedate me? Bring me back?”

  “You’ve been away, in a manner of speaking. Not yourself; not permitted to be yourself. Mostly, in my opinion, because of the treatment you’ve received. Not that I’ve said that, not even to you. Do you understand?”

  “You don’t want to be seen to criticize.”

  “Exactly.”

  “It won’t do me any good.”

  “There’s my boy.” He pats my knee in a friendly manner. “From here on in, Sandy, it’s mostly up to you. Your friends and I have done what we could. As I said, you will begin to remember now and the memories may be difficult at first. You must prepare yourself. They will become less painful with time.” He gives me his gentle smile. “Sleep is a marvellous cure, too little used.”

  “How long have I been asleep?”

  “Ten days. We’ve managed to keep you fed, more or less, during this time, but you must be hungry. You should eat to get back your strength.” He gets up to go.

  “I’m a Rip Van Winkle.”

  “Or Cinderella.” He holds my gaze. “Now, I have to go.”

  “Don’t leave. I don’t remember. I don’t understand…”

  “I’m afraid I must.” He’s out of the cell now and closing the door behind him. The guard pops up from his post nearby and locks it. “You have a visitor waiting, Sandy,” Dr. Love says. “I’m sure she’ll do her best to answer your questions.”

  He’s gone, with rapid footsteps, then sharp heels click my way over the black-and-white tile, and she’s here, Georgina, looking thinner, and a little stooped. From what I can see of her hair, beneath the hat, I believe it’s been dyed! The blond strands are dark! She raises her veil. Her eyes are set deeply into a white face. She peers at me through the bars, “Geez, Sandy, you look like hell. For Christ’s sake, you’ve gone white!”

  I put my hand to my hair. I can’t see the colour—I had no id
ea—but I can feel short, stubby, unfamiliar bristles on my scalp. My head has been shaved. Why?

  “Georgina! What are you doing here?”

  “Getting you out of trouble, as usual.” In the aisle in front of the cells are groupings of tables and chairs. Georgina draws a chair close to the cell door, sits, then leans forward, and reaches a gloved hand between the bars. I stumble to my feet and grab hold.

  “Oh, George,” I say, reading the lines of grief on her face, and remembering why they are there, “I’m so sorry.”

  —

  “I thought I’d die, but of course I didn’t,” she says, talking quietly. There are others in the cells nearby, scarcely breathing, listening. I’ve only just become aware of them. We’re like fish in a tank, on display. “I’d just heard about Brent, and then you—I couldn’t believe it, none of it, I didn’t believe it, but there was nothing I could do.”

  “I’m so sorry, Georgina,” I say again. Tears spill from her eyes and run unchecked into her collar.

  “I was saving his letters—he would have made a beautiful writer, Sandy—his descriptions of England and the way he made me feel, even that I could fly a plane myself, and so marvellous. I was going to put the letters into a book so he’d have them later. He was all I had.”

  I squeeze her hand. “You’ve still got me, Georgina. I’ll help you make a book. It will be a greater success than War Birds. He won’t be forgotten.”

  “I know I was drinking, but who wouldn’t have, what with the worry? Oh, God.”

  She’s going to break down completely; her face scrunches up; but then she gets hold of herself. She dabs her face one-handedly with a hankie, blows her nose and sniffs. Fumbles the hankie back into a pocket. “But I didn’t come to talk about me. We have to get you fixed up first, don’t we?” She smiles bravely.

  “Yes,” I say. Then there’s a silence, for I’m sure there are things I should say, but what are they? “Dr. Love says I’ve been asleep,” I try, for it’s one of the few facts I’ve got. I’m getting tired, so I lean against the bars.

  She nods vigorously. “He thought it might work in your case. He indicated to me, when I saw him just now, that it has! He’s been such a help. Without him, I’d still be locked up too.”

  “You, George? What happened?”

  “I was shanghaied—kidnapped!—Sandy. My sister talked our father into it, said I wasn’t responsible, I’d drink through his money; she had him sign papers. Well, he’s a senile old coot, he can’t be blamed, but it’s the second bloody time! What do they think I’m made of, wood? You’d think, in the circumstances….” She takes several deep, sustaining breaths. “They took me to a clinic and left me there. It was only through the help of the admiral that I got out. He couldn’t find me—well, I’d disappeared, hadn’t I?—so he investigated, God bless him! You remember him, don’t you? He discovered where I was and contacted Dr. Love. And then, voila!”

  Voila? It’s a horrifying tale: It’s one thing for me to be locked up, but Georgina! She’s a woman, and she’s not as strong as she thinks. “You’re a lucky woman, Georgina,” I say.

  “Yeah, I guess.”

  “Why would your sister do such a thing?”

  “You know what she told me the night the telegram came about Brent? That she was glad, that I’d always been spoiled and now I might get what I deserved. She said terrible things about the love I had for my son. She thinks I’m a monster, and I’m not! How would she know?—she’s had no one to think about except herself!”

  “Oh, George!”

  “She was jealous of my husband, too. She thinks it’s all about money. You don’t know how lucky you were to be born poor.”

  “I’m a lucky man.”

  “I was drunk for a week afterwards and I’m still glad of it. I couldn’t have borne it otherwise.”

  “I don’t blame you, George. Of course you couldn’t.” But I’m thinking, am I lucky, really lucky, in ways I haven’t before understood? Has my ignorance of the rest of the world and how it lives led me to misconstrue my own case? Are terrible families and terrible parents normal?

  “I can’t drink a goddamn thing anymore. Dr. Love says I shouldn’t.”

  I look around for some clothes. I feel naked in my pyjamas with Georgina here. I don’t see any, so I make do with a blanket from the bed. I sit on the floor so if we like, we can hold hands again.

  “I’ve missed you, Sandy.”

  “What can I do to help?”

  Once more she tears up. The tip of her nose is red, as are her ears where they show between the too-dark strands of her hair. “Just be well, be my friend.”

  “What kind of a friend would you like me to be?”

  For an answer, she reaches a hand through the bars to touch me.

  We talk for a few more minutes about her family problems: the vicious sister, the increasingly incapable father who is used to, as a lumber baron, wielding unlimited power. We discuss where she should live and decide—now that she has Dr. Love and the admiral on her side—that it’s best if she remains at home, with her father, “to keep an eye on things.” Her sister, who is married and lives in Victoria, won’t repeat her attack on George, we think, not now that she’ll face real opposition. In fact, Georgina is going to visit a lawyer with a view to prosecuting her.

  “Can you do that?”

  “Sue her? Goddamn right I can. At least scare the pants off her! But we must talk about you before I go. You’ve had a bad time of it, Sandy.”

  I bob my head in agreement, but then I say, for there is no point in not being honest about the fact that my memory is like Swiss cheese, full of holes, “Why am I here? What happened to me?”

  She nods as if she’s half expected to hear something like this—briefed, perhaps, by Dr. Love—and she tells me what occurred in the rabbitry and how I was blamed for it. I close my eyes and I see Pete Cooper’s face and behind him the smashed rabbit hutches and rabbit blood. My gut clenches with sadness for the poor blameless creatures, but not with guilt.

  “It wasn’t me, Georgina, I didn’t do it!”

  “I know, Sandy. Everyone knows that now.”

  “What about Attendant Cooper? He said…”

  “Pete Cooper!” she says, and laughs. “His lies caught up with him. While I was locked up, somebody sent an anonymous letter to Dr. Frank, explaining that you were innocent. You were set up. The letter writer suggested that we count the corpses and the number of rabbits’ feet and that if we did, we’d find one extra foot. Dr. Frank, who understood what that could mean, got on it right away. There was indeed one too many, and then Ron Signet said he remembered seeing you tuck just such a rabbit’s foot into your pocket after you and Kosho had spent a day dressing rabbits.”

  “Kosho!” Pete Cooper’s terrible words about Kosho’s suicide return with a rush.

  “Yup, even the Jap stood up for you. Can you imagine? Although, especially after all that’s happened, without Signet’s corroboration, he wouldn’t have been believed.”

  “Kosho’s alive!”

  “Of course!”

  I tell her what Cooper had said, then ask the next question that troubles me. “You said he wouldn’t have been believed, on his own, because of something that’s happened….”

  “The Japs bombed Pearl Harbour and the Americans are in the war. They’ll have to round up all the Japs now or we’ll be sitting ducks.”

  I try to digest this news, but what she’s said doesn’t make sense. “But why? What Japs?”

  “All the Japs. We’re not safe. The coastal fishing fleet is full of them. The admiral says…”

  “George,” I interrupt, now I see what this means, “can you look after Kosho?”

  “Oh, Sandy,” she says. She won’t meet my eyes.

  “He saved my life.”

  “He and a few others,” she says tartly. Her foot, on the floor, starts tapping.

  “I know, George, Dr. Love told me that it was you and your father who sent him to help me. Tha
t must have cost money; and in the midst of your troubles…”

  “Well, the old goat will sign anything these days if I get him by himself.” She clasps her gloved hands round her knees. Both feet still. She sees me watching her and tugs her blue wool skirt down farther. I can tell by the stitching at the hem that it’s been shortened and by the fact that the stitches show, that she must have done it herself. She stands up. She’s not wearing stockings. I stand up, too.

  “I’ll do what I can, Sandy, of course I will.” She steps close to the bars and we’re nose to nose.

  “It won’t be long,” she whispers.

  “No.” Her perfume of cigarettes and Chanel. “I can’t bring him back for you, George. I wish I could. I’d do anything…”

  “I know you would, Sandy.” She sniffs deeply and digs in her pocket for the damp handkerchief. Wipes her eyes, blows her nose.

  “What happens now, Georgina?”

  “For you? Well, we have to wait until you’ve fully recovered, then you’ll be examined by a Board and then, well, we’ll see.”

  “But if I’m innocent, what do I have to recover from?”

  She looks at me sadly. Those blue eyes—“You tried to harm yourself, Sandy, don’t you remember?” Her lids flutter. Her body is a crucible of pain. “I’ll see you soon.” Then she’s gone, and I scarcely know what to think, but it doesn’t matter much because already, as I turn towards the bed, it’s like walking through water. It’s up to my knees, my hips, my neck. Over my head.

  It’s night when I next awake. I lie on the cot—for that’s what it is, not a real bed, there’s no proper mattress, only a sheet of canvas and a blanket—and try to ignore the stench from the toilet next to me. The guard paces the corridor. It’s embarrassing to have to pee where anyone can watch, but at length I get up and try to time it so I have at least a minute or two before he comes by again. I finish and lie down and listen to the sound of other men, awake or sleeping, coughing, sighing, crying out.

  I know, now that I’ve read the newspaper Don left for me, that it’s New Year’s Eve. For all I know, it could be after midnight and we’ve already begun 1942. I wonder what the new year will bring, and I feel terribly frightened. Not so much by what I recall, but by all the chasms in my thoughts. Sometimes a thought will begin, it trips along, and then it’s just swallowed up. Some of these thoughts are important. They have to do with who I am. What I can remember, though, and what I hold on to, is that consciousness is a light and that the light exists even when I can’t see it. It’s up to me to find it, I have to find my way.