by C. J. Sansom
Frank stared blankly at the smashed window. The October breeze blew into the room. There was a groan from the garden below. He stepped forward, hesitantly, and looked out of the window. Edgar was lying on his back on the stone flags below, clutching his right arm and writhing in pain. Frank thought, that’s it, I’ve done it, the police will come and they’ll find out everything. He screamed at the top of his voice, ‘It’ll be the end of the world!’ Rage and terror filled his whole being. He turned and, pushing the table over, ran into the kitchen and opened cupboards and pulled out plates, sending them crashing to the floor. The insane notion had come into his head that if he smashed and broke everything in sight somehow he could drive the terrible knowledge of what Edgar had told him from his head, along with all the rage that filled it. He was still running around the flat, breaking furniture, bleeding from several cuts, when the police arrived.
Dr Wilson was a small round man with a bald head, wearing a white coat over a brown three-piece suit. He sat at a big cluttered desk. The eyes behind his tortoiseshell glasses were keen but weary. As Frank entered he put down a document stamped with the government crest: shield and lion and unicorn. Frank saw the title, ‘Sterilization of the Unfit; Consultative Document’. Wilson gave a quick, tired flicker of a smile. ‘How are you today, Frank?’
‘All right.’
‘What have you been doing?’
‘Just sitting on the ward. They didn’t take us for our walk round the airing courts today, because of the rain.’
‘No,’ Dr Wilson said, smiling. ‘We’re organizing a special day out for some suitable patients in a couple of weeks. To Coventry Cathedral. The Dean has offered to take a dozen patients on a tour, with some attendants, of course. I wondered if you might like to go. It’s a beautiful medieval building. Fifteenth century, I believe. I’m looking for some – educated – patients to take. Might you be interested?’
‘No, thank you,’ Frank answered, his face twisting into its monkey grin. He wasn’t interested in churches, had never been to one – Mrs Baker hadn’t approved – and to go in his shapeless hospital clothes, part of a group of lunatics, would be shaming.
Dr Wilson considered his response, then said quietly, ‘The charge nurse on the ward says you avoid the other patients.’
‘I just like sitting on my own.’
‘Do they frighten you?’ Dr Wilson asked.
‘Sometimes. I want to go home,’ Frank said pleadingly.
Dr Wilson shook his head. ‘It does pain me, Frank, that someone of your education, your class, should end up on a public ward. You’re actually Dr Muncaster, aren’t you? A PhD?’
‘Yes.’
‘You shouldn’t really be with the pauper lunatics. Some of those poor people – they barely have minds any more. But I can’t just let you leave, Frank. You pushed your brother through a first-floor window. It’s a miracle he got off with a broken arm. To say nothing of screaming about the end of the world. Someone heard that out in the street. There’s still a police case open: causing grievous bodily harm is an imprisonable offence. Fortunately your brother didn’t want to prosecute. As it is, you’ve been certified as insane and you must stay here till you’re cured. How are you getting on with the reduced Largactil dose?’
‘All right. It makes me feel calm.’
A self-satisfied smile crossed Wilson’s face. ‘Good. This is one of the first British hospitals to use Largactil. My idea. It’s French, you know, so it’s more expensive with the import duty. But I persuaded the Board. My cousin working in the Ministry of Health gives me a certain influence.’ He gave a superior little smile.
‘It makes my mouth dry. And I feel tired.’
‘It keeps you calm. That’s the main thing, in the circumstances.’
‘I’ll never do anything like that again.’
The doctor made a steeple of his hands. They were small and surprisingly delicate. ‘The question is, why did you do it in the first place?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘If we’re going to help you, you have to talk about it.’ He pursed his small mouth. ‘Do you believe the end of the world is coming? Some religious people do.’
Frank shook his head. The end could come, but religion would have nothing to do with it.
Dr Wilson persisted. ‘When you arrived you were asked what your religion was. You said your mother was a spiritualist but you didn’t believe in God.’
‘Yes.’
‘Did your mother take you to spiritualist churches?’
‘No. She had séances at her house with a woman who said she could contact the dead.’
‘Do you think she could, this woman?’
‘No,’ Frank answered flatly.
‘So you didn’t believe in any of it?’
‘No.’
‘You have no relatives apart from your brother.’
‘No.’
‘No-one’s been to visit.’
‘They never did like me in the labs. I didn’t fit in.’ Frank felt tears coming now.
‘Well, there’s a stigma, people are frightened of asylums. Even relatives usually stop coming after a time.’ The doctor shifted in his seat. ‘But if we’re to get you into the Private Villa, which I think would be more suitable for you, the board will need funds.’
‘I’ve got money. Surely your administration can sort it out.’
Dr Wilson smiled wryly. ‘You can be clear and direct when you wish, can’t you? The problem, Frank, is that as a lunatic your money has to be held by a trustee. That’s the law. For that we need a relative.’
‘There’s only my brother. They said he’s gone back to America.’
‘We know. We’ve been trying to get in touch with him.’ Dr Wilson raised his eyebrows. ‘I even went to the trouble of telephoning him at his university in California. But they said he’s away on government business and can’t be contacted.’
‘He won’t reply,’ Frank said bitterly.
‘You sound angry with him. You must have been, to do what you did.’
Frank said nothing.
‘Why did you become a scientist like your brother?’ Dr Wilson asked, his tone conversational again. ‘Did you want to compete with him?’
‘No,’ Frank replied wearily. ‘I was just interested in science, in geology, how old the Earth is, what a little speck in space we live on. I did it for myself.’ He spoke with a sudden vehemence.
‘Nothing to do with Edgar?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Frank, if I’m to help, you must tell me more. I wonder if a course of electric shock treatment might help jolt you out of this withdrawn state. We shall have to start thinking about it.’
Afterwards the Scottish attendant, Ben, took Frank back to the ward. The rain had stopped. The light was beginning to fade. ‘How did it go?’ Ben asked.
Frank looked at Ben again. The thought crossed his mind that Dr Wilson might have asked him to report back on what Frank said. So he fell back on his staple answer. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Lucky youse is middle-class and educated, Wilson’s no’ interested in the chronic cases, the poor sods wi’ no money that have been on the wards for years. He thinks he’s too good for this place anyway. His father was a doctor, his cousin’s a civil servant at the Ministry of Health. Aul’ snob. Class is everything.’ Ben spoke quietly, but with an undertone of bitterness.
‘He talked about shock treatment,’ Frank said hesitantly. He swallowed. ‘I’ve overheard other patients discussing that.’
Ben grimaced. ‘It’s not nice. They tie you down with leather straps and put electric shocks through your brain. They say it cures depression. I think it does, sometimes. But they’re a bit free and easy with it. And they should use anaesthetic.’
‘It hurts?’
Ben nodded.
‘Have you seen it done?’
‘Aye.’
Frank’s heart began to pound. He took deep breaths. His bad hand hurt and he massaged the two atrophied fingers. Th
eir footsteps slapped along the wet path.
Ben said, ‘There are worse things. Lobotomies – a surgeon comes up from London every few months to do those. Cuts part of your brain out. Jesus, the state of some patients afterwards. Don’t worry, they won’t do that to you.’ Ben gave Frank a sudden guilty look. ‘Sorry I mentioned it.’
Frank asked, cautiously, ‘What part of Scotland do you come from?’
‘Glasgow.’ Ben smiled. ‘Glesca. D’ye know Scotland?’
‘I went to school near Edinburgh.’
‘I thought I heard a trace of Morningside. One of those Edinburgh private schools?’
‘Yes.’
‘Which one?’
‘Strangmans,’ Frank answered quickly. He wanted to change the subject.
‘I’ve heard those places can be hard. Harder than Glesca schools even.’
‘Yes.’
‘Still, I hear there’s public schools just as tough in England.’
‘Yes, perhaps,’ Frank said, his voice catching. ‘Before I came in, I heard on the news about this new law they’re planning, the compulsory sterilizations. Dr Wilson was reading something about it.’
‘That’s just for the mentally deficient, and what they call the moral degenerates. Wilson’ll be quite happy to see them sterilized. Dregs of society, that’s how he sees them, the auld scunner.’ That bitter note in Ben’s voice again. He looked at Frank’s bad hand. ‘What happened there?’
‘An accident. At school.’ Frank turned to him. ‘I want to get out of here.’
‘Ye canna, no’ unless Wilson says you’re sane again.’ Ben considered, then added, ‘Unless someone can bring influence, maybe get you transferred, maybe tae a private clinic away from here. What about your brother?’
Frank shook his head despairingly. ‘Edgar won’t even take their calls.’
‘What about the people where you work?’
‘Dr Wilson asked me that. They wouldn’t be interested. They don’t really want me in the department. I’ve known that for a while.’ Frank’s face spasmed into his smiling rictus.
They had reached the door of the main building. ‘I’m going to be working on your ward for a while,’ Ben said. ‘Maybe I could help with finding someone to help ye.’
‘There’s nobody.’
‘What about people you knew at school? Or at university? You must have gone to university.’
An image of David Fitzgerald came into Frank’s head; an autumn evening sitting with him in their rooms at Oxford, talking about Hitler and appeasement. His astonished realization that for the first time in his life someone was actually interested in what he was saying. As this attendant Ben seemed to be, for some reason Frank couldn’t fathom. He hadn’t been in touch with David properly for years, but at one time he had been closer to him than anyone. ‘There might be someone,’ he said, cautiously.
Chapter Six
THE FOLLOWING THURSDAY David left for work at eight as usual, walking up the street to Kenton Station in his bowler, black jacket and pinstripe trousers. Opposite the house was a little park, no more than a small lawned area with flowerbeds; at the far end there still stood one of the square concrete shelters that had been built in 1939 in anticipation of the air raids that never came, squat and ugly and abandoned now. Children went in there to smoke sometimes; there had been a petition to the Council. He nodded to neighbours, other men dressed in similar uniform, also heading for the station. The weather was bright and clear, cold for mid-November. His breath formed a cloud in front of him, like the exhaust of an old Austin Seven sputtering by.
The tube was crowded, the air thick with cigarette smoke. Hanging on to the strap he read The Times. There was a bold headline: ‘Beaverbrook and Butler fly to Berlin today for economic talks’. That was sudden – there had been nothing on the news last night. ‘Optimism on new German trade links’, the article continued. He wondered what the Germans would want in return.
Victoria Station was heaving, thousands of commuters walking through the great vestibule, steam and smoke from the trains belching up to the high ceiling. A group of grey-uniformed German soldiers stood by a platform gate, probably on their way to the base on the Isle of Wight. They were very young, laughing and joking. They had probably been on leave in London. Those with an Isle of Wight posting were the lucky ones; the endless mincing machine of the Russian front had been killing boys like these for eleven years, would probably take these ones too in the end. David felt an unexpected stab of pity for them.
He walked down Victoria Street to Parliament Square, then up Whitehall to the Dominions Office. Sykes was on duty again behind the desk. ‘Morning, Mr Fitzgerald. Another cold day, sir.’
The lift was full, clanking painfully as it rose. David stood next to Daniel Brightman from the Economic Department, who had joined the service at the same time. Like David he was a grammar-school boy, but over the years Brightman had adopted an upper-class drawl. ‘Another day in the salt mines,’ he said.
‘Yes. Keeping busy?’
‘Meeting with the Aussies on wheat tariffs today.’ He sighed. ‘I expect they’ll be shouting as usual. The trials of Empire.’
David got out on the second floor and passed the Registry. The clerks were all in. From behind the counter Carol, at her desk, gave him a quick smile and a wave. He smiled back, guiltily remembering what he had done on Sunday.
Old Dabb, checking a card index at the counter, looked up. ‘Mr Fitzgerald,’ he said. ‘A brief word, if I may.’
‘Of course.’ David noticed dandruff on the old man’s collar.
‘I was concerned, sir,’ the Registrar said in his slow sad voice, ‘to observe you left the High Commissioners’ meeting file on the counter last night, without getting a clerk to sign it back in.’ He shook his head sadly. ‘A moment of time now can spare much confusion later.’
‘I’m sorry, Dabb, we’ve been so busy. It won’t happen again.’
It was a quiet morning; David telephoned South Africa House and discussed who might attend the meeting the SS officials were asking for. He had spoken several times that week with an eager young Afrikaner, stressing the need for secrecy. ‘Teach the Russians who’s boss, hey?’ the South African had chuckled. ‘The Germans aren’t settling the Congo, are they, got enough on their hands trying to settle Russia.’
No, David thought, they’re just looting the Congo, like the Belgians did. David hated these apartheid people and their friendship with the Nazis, but he was formally, coolly polite as he discussed which SS officials would go – out of uniform, of course – to South Africa House. Then he studied a report on the forthcoming Birmingham Empire Week, who would be manning stalls from the various High Commissions, the important businesses taking part, like Unilever and Lonrho. He thought he might go for a swim at lunchtime, to the pool at a club he belonged to nearby. He still loved diving down into the empty, peaceful silence.
Late in the morning there was a brusque knock on the door and Hubbold came in, frowning.
‘Word’s come down from the Permanent Secretary. We’ve to stall on the Coronation arrangements at the High Commissioners’ meeting.’
‘The Times said they might tie it in with Hitler’s twentieth anniversary celebrations.’
Hubbold laughed softly. ‘Ah, The Times. Forever planting the right seeds in our minds. Anyway, instructions from on high are for everyone to stonewall. It’s a nuisance, you know how potty the High Commissioners are over royalty. They’ll want to know if it’ll be the spring or summer, whether Hartnell will design the dress. Pity we’ll have to say nothing’s decided, leaves more time for awkward subjects under Any Other Business. I’ve had word the Canadians may bring up the Jew laws again.’
‘Has that come from Canada House, sir?’ David asked, antennae alert.
‘Not officially,’ Hubbold smiled. ‘Arcana imperii, you know. Secrets of authority.’ He liked it to be known he had his own sources; it was another mark of seniority for him. Some of David’s colleagues were
on first-name terms with their superiors, but Hubbold had never even suggested David drop the ‘sir’. Hubbold continued, ‘The minister does get rather embarrassed when that one comes up. Anyway, useful for you to know what the nuances will be.’
Shortly after eleven one of the interdepartmental messengers knocked at David’s door. He gave him a letter inside a Colonial Office envelope: Can you meet for lunch at the club at 1.15 not 1.30? Geoff.
When the messenger had gone David sat frowning. The words were a code that meant there was something they needed to talk about; they would meet at the Oxford and Cambridge Club at one fifteen. They never spoke on the telephone if possible, as there were rumours Civil Service phones were routinely tapped by Special Branch now. David lit a cigarette and stared anxiously through the window at Whitehall. This had only happened once before, when Jackson had advance notice of a raid on the Soho brothels, and called off a regular meeting at the flat. But at least it wasn’t an emergency, there was a separate code for that.
David left the Office at one and walked up to Trafalgar Square. A huge poster had been placed on the plinth of Nelson’s Column. We Need Exports. We Work or Want. A Challenge to British Grit. David wondered what the trade talks with Germany would bring; Volkswagens to replace the Hillmans and Morrises chugging round Trafalgar Square?
He turned into Pall Mall. Two Auxiliary policemen in their blue uniforms and caps walked slowly along, guns at their waists, watching the passers-by. Two more patrolled in parallel on the other side of the road. Something was up. He thought, Sarah’s coming into town today for one of her meetings. On Sunday, after the talk about Charlie, they had made love, an increasingly rare occurrence. He had felt detached, the brief moment of warmth quickly gone.
David entered the club. A hum of conversation came from the dining room but he went directly to the library. Few people ever came in at lunchtime and only Geoff was there now, in an armchair with a view of the door. David sat opposite him.