Authors: Margaret Pemberton
‘I’m sorry, Doris,’ Dr Roberts said compassionately, ‘but there is no “tonic”, as you call it, that I can prescribe for Wilfred that will
put his mental health back on an even keel again. And while he isn’t a physical danger to himself or to anyone else, it’s impossible for me to recommend he be detained in a mental home.
Religious mania isn’t a mental illness as such, not unless the person in question is seeing visions and hearing voices, and to the best of my knowledge Wilfred is doing neither.’
‘But what about the great whore he keeps on and on about?’ Doris said piteously, wringing her hands in her aproned lap. ‘He must be able to see her, mustn’t
he?’
Bob Giles put his hand gently on her shoulder. He’d tried many times to explain to Doris that the Great Whore of Babylon was a biblical city, not a woman, but whenever he did so
Doris’s confusion only grew worse. ‘What Dr Roberts is saying, Doris, is that Wilfred is deluded, but that he isn’t certifiably insane.’
It was all too much for Doris. How could they say Wilfred wasn’t insane when he was as mad as a March hare? And how did they expect her to live with him when he frightened her so?
‘There must be
something
you can do,’ she pleaded desperately, looking from Dr Roberts to Bob Giles.
Dr Roberts shook his head unhappily. Bob Giles looked anguished.
Doris twisted round in her chair to where Pru was protectively standing and seized hold of her hands. ‘Tell them they have to do something, Pru! Tell them if your father isn’t insane
enough to be put away, I soon shall be!’
Pru had every intention of telling them, and of telling them a great deal more, but not in her mother’s hearing.
Dr Roberts cleared his throat, well aware of Pru’s silent, burning disappointment in him. ‘Your mother needs a sedative and an iron tonic to strengthen her nerves,’ he said,
fully aware that he was on the verge of having not just one mentally disturbed patient at number ten, but two. He took out his prescription pad, writing in a heavy scrawl. ‘Here,’ he
handed Pru the flimsy piece of paper. ‘Take this to the chemist and I’ll call in again towards the end of the week.’
‘And I’ll call by again this evening,’ Bob said, aware that he, too, had to be on his way. His next meeting was with his archdeacon and they had a lot to discuss, not least how
most tactfully to relieve Wilfred of his position as churchwarden.
Doris made no effort to rise from her chair and accompany them from the room. She had begun crying again, rubbing at her arms, her thoughts whirling and spiralling down to a dark, terrible,
inescapable conclusion.
Immediately Pru was alone with Dr Roberts and Bob Giles in the narrow hallway she said tautly, ‘My mother needs a lot more help than a sedative and a nerve tonic! Unless my dad’s
sorted out soon, she’s going to have a complete breakdown.’
Dr Roberts cleared his throat uncomfortably. He, too, knew that Doris was heading for a nervous collapse, but with the best will in the world he could see no obvious and easy solution to her
problem. ‘Perhaps if your mother could be made to understand that she isn’t the only person having to cope with a mentally disturbed partner, it might help her,’ he said, edging
towards the door. ‘Thanks to the stress and strain of the war, and especially as a result of last year’s V1 and V2 rocket attacks, I have several other patients on my panel list
suffering mental breakdowns similar to your father’s.’
Pru wasn’t interested in other people. ‘How long are you going to be able to keep issuing Dad with sick notes for work?’ she asked bluntly. ‘How long is it going to be
before he loses his job? And what will happen when he does? I’ve had to give up work because Mum can’t manage Dad on her own. If I go back to work, Mum’s going to give way
altogether, and even if I do, I’ll only be on a junior’s wage and that isn’t going to be enough for the three of us, is it?’
Dr Roberts sighed heavily. He certainly couldn’t keep on supplying Wilfred’s employers with sick notes stating he was suffering from a virus infection, nor could he be expected to
saddle himself with all the consequent problems of his patient’s illness.
Bob Giles looked down into her pale, pinched face, and his heart felt as if it were being squeezed within his breast. She was far too young to be bearing her present burdens. ‘Don’t
worry about possible financial problems just now, Pru,’ he said quietly. ‘Leave that to me.’
With Dr Roberts’s silence thundering in her ears, knowing she had guessed right about the imminent cessation of the sick notes, Pru opened the door. As she did so, Doris stepped into the
hallway behind them.
‘Goodbye, Dr Roberts,’ she said waveringly, remembering her manners. ‘Goodbye, Vicar.’
‘Cooee there, Pru!’ a neighbour from Magnolia Terrace called out as she hurried home with a basket full of groceries. ‘Your dad’s just caused ever such a ruckus in
Lewisham High Street! The Lady Mayoress was paying a visit to Chiesemans and he called her a whore and a harlot! Ever so entertaining it was. Best fun I’ve had in years!’
Doris gave a low cry, like an animal in pain. Pru didn’t speak. Instead, tight-lipped and ashen-faced, she slammed the door behind her, pushing past Dr Roberts and Bob Giles, running,
running, in the direction of Lewisham High Street.
Kate was in the middle of doing her weekly wash when Doris disturbed her, knocking on the front door and stepping into the house, saying in a fraught voice, ‘Can you lend
me sixpence for the gas meter, Kate? I’m out of change and Pru isn’t in and—’
‘Of course I can.’ Kate flashed her a sunny smile, putting down the wooden tongs she had been using to transfer steaming clothes from her copper to her dolly-tub.
‘Are you all set for the wedding tomorrow?’ With wet hands, she took a purse out of a kitchen drawer and unclasped it.
‘Wedding?’ Doris looked blank, her eyes red-rimmed from weeping.
‘Harriet and Charlie’s wedding,’ Kate said, finding a sixpence and handing it across. ‘Harriet hasn’t sent out individual invitations, but she’s hoping
everyone in the Square will be there.’
Doris clutched hold of the sixpence with childlike intensity. ‘Yes . . . no . . . I don’t know . . .’
‘Why don’t you stay and have a cup of tea?’ Kate continued, aware that Doris was distressed and hoping that over a cup of tea she might be able to offer her some comfort.
‘I’m just about to make one and—’
‘No!’ This time there was nothing indecisive in Doris’s voice. ‘No. I mustn’t. I can’t.’ Agitatedly she backed out of the kitchen, turning around in the
passageway and almost running for the still-open front door.
Kate stood for a moment, staring after her, wondering what to do for the best. Doris was an intensely private person. Unlike every other house in the Square, neighbours had never been encouraged
to drop in at number ten. Forcing her own presence on Doris now might do more harm than good.
‘
Mummmmy!
’ Luke shouted plaintively from the back garden where he was digging a hole in the hope of reaching Australia. ‘
Mummmmy!
There’s a nasty wriggly
thing and it’s fwightening me!’
Kate dried her hands on a tea-towel and stepped out into the garden to rescue him. She would speak to Bob Giles about Doris. He would advise her on the right action to take. And she would speak
to him today, just as soon as she had her weekly wash out on the line.
‘Come home, Dad,’ Pru was saying urgently, agonizingly aware of the small groups of people gathering on the pavements at either side of the road.
‘
Get thee behind me Satan!
’ her father roared at her. ‘
I am a prophet of Jehovah bearing record of the word of God, and of the testimony of Jesus
Christ!’
A number twenty-one bus slowed down on its way past the clock-tower’s triangular-shaped traffic-island, and a group of youths standing on its platform cat-called derisively.
‘Take ’im ’ome, luv!’ a woman shouted, watching the show from outside the Midland Bank on the corner of Lewisham High Street and Lee High Road. ‘’E’ll
be gettin’ ’imself in trouble with the police if he carries on much longer!’
On the opposite corner, outside the entrance to Chiesemans department store, another well-intentioned bystander called out, ‘Let ’im alone, why don’t yer? ’E ain’t
causin’ anyone any ’urt, is ’e?’
Pru resisted the urge to shout back that he was causing his wife plenty of hurt. Instead she tugged yet again on his arm. ‘Come on, Dad. You’re not supposed to be down here today.
It’s Friday today, not Saturday.’
As often happened when she tried to confuse or divert him by such statements, she attracted and held his attention.
‘Friday?’ he frowned. ‘What’s wrong with Fridays?’
Pru desperately tried to think of what could be so wrong that it would persuade him to return home. Before she could do so, a young man leaning out of one of the Midland Bank’s upper
windows, cried out in sudden recognition, ‘Hey! That’s Wilfred Sharkey! He’s a churchwarden at St Mark’s! What’s happening to St Mark’s then? Is it going all
Evangelical?’
Something very like hysteria began to bubble up in Pru’s throat. Now a connection had been made between the clock-tower’s Bible-basher and St Mark’s, the situation could only
get worse.
‘What’s wrong with Fridays?’ her father demanded again, oblivious of the interest he was arousing. ‘The time is at hand to read and listen to the words of the prophets.
He that hath an ear let him hear what the Spirit saith! And the Spirit saith repent, for the end of the world is nigh!’
‘If he’s a churchwarden someone should write to the papers about him,’ a smartly dressed woman announced to those standing nearby her. ‘He’s an affront to public
order!’
Pru’s self-control snapped. ‘
Shut up!
’ she shouted, still holding tightly on to her father’s arm. ‘Shut up, you silly woman! Why don’t you go home and
mind your own business instead of making things worse?’
There were ‘tut-tutts’ from many of the bystanders, but whether their sympathy was directed at herself or the woman on the pavement, was unclear.
Pru tugged violently on her father’s arm. ‘Come on, Dad,’ she said again, her voice cracking. ‘Please don’t do this! Please come home!’ As her father remained
obdurately unresponsive, she became aware of a slim-hipped figure sprinting towards them from the direction of the number twenty-one bus stop. ‘Oh no!’ she whispered, her cheeks
flooding scarlet with mortification. ‘Oh
no
!’
Malcolm Lewis dodged a number thirty-six bus on its way to Catford, avoided a cyclist and breathlessly made the comparatively safe haven of the clock-tower’s tiny island. ‘What on
earth’s going on?’ he demanded, concerned. ‘I saw you both from the top of the number twenty-one. Is your father ill?’ He turned towards Wilfred. ‘Are you ill, Mr
Sharkey? Are you not feeling quite yourself?’
Wilfred glared at him, still troubled by Pru’s insistence that if it were Friday he shouldn’t be in Lewisham High Street. ‘Of course I’m not ill!’ he said
querulously, wondering if he should be in Woolwich or Greenwich instead. ‘I’m full of the spirit of the Lord and the gift of prophecy!’
‘Then if that’s the case, you’re not likely to come to any harm,’ Malcolm said, much to the prophet’s satisfaction. He turned towards Pru, now knowing why her
neighbours had been seeing so little of her, and why the Sharkeys’ front-room curtains were almost permanently drawn. ‘Let me take you home,’ he said compassionately. ‘You
can’t protect your father from the kind of attention he’s attracting, all your presence is doing is making the situation worse.’
‘What do you know about it?’ Pru was on the brink of hysteria. ‘It isn’t your dad who’s making a public spectacle of himself, is it? It isn’t your dad
who’s about to get himself arrested and whose name will be in all the papers!’
‘Not today it isn’t, no,’ Malcolm agreed matter-of-factly. ‘But my father was a flat-earther, and he’s spent a very large part of his life haranguing anyone and
everyone about his belief, just as your dad is haranguing people now.’
Pru stared at him. ‘In the street?’ she asked, the hysteria she was about to give vent to held in precarious check. ‘He marched up and down in the street? Just like Dad’s
doing?’
‘Speakers’ Corner was my father’s favourite spot,’ Malcolm said, taking her gently by the arm and leading her a few feet away from where the prophet of God was adjusting
his placards. ‘So you see, I
do
know how you’re feeling. I also know the best way of handling such a situation, and it isn’t by having public confrontations. At the present
moment, the most sensible thing you can do is to let me take you home and leave your father to come home under his own steam and in his own good time.’
Pru’s eyes held his, her hysteria beginning to ebb. ‘What’s a flat-earther?’ she asked, as she unresistingly allowed him to lead her off the clock-tower’s
traffic-island and into the busy main road. ‘Is it a kind of Jehovah’s Witness?’
Despite the awfulness of the situation a glimmer of a smile tugged at Malcolm’s mouth. ‘No,’ he said, as he guided her through the traffic. ‘It’s someone who
believes that the earth is flat, and that it’s possible to topple over the edge of it.’
As they stepped up on to the pavement outside Chiesemans, Pru said incredulously, ‘He couldn’t possibly have believed that! Not when ships sail right round the world!’
Malcolm looked down at her. Her hand was still where he had tucked it, in the crook of his arm. He rather hoped she would keep it there. It felt as if it belonged there.
Behind them, on the clock-tower’s traffic-island, Wilfred’s voice rose stentorously.
‘Repent! For the end is nigh! The world will be destroyed with fire and
brimstone!’
Neither of them turned their heads.
‘That’s
exactly
what my father believed,’ Malcolm said, wondering what was on at the local flicks that evening; wondering if Pru would go with him to see whatever was
showing. ‘He thought ships were simply going round and round on a flat surface.’
They rounded the corner on which Chiesemans stood, continuing down the bottom end of the High Street into Lewisham Road, heading towards the turn-off for Magnolia Hill.