"But you haven't inquired what the other patients here think about Urchin?
Sorry -- of course: you've had a consultant riding herd on you all morning.
You haven't had time."
"Tell me what you've been hearing, anyway."
"Know Miss Browhart? Schoolteacher, keeps her skirt pinned together
between her legs because of 'those dirty boys?'"
"And they're behind every bush and around every corner. Yes, I know her."
"She buttonholed me this morning and told me about Urchin in confidential
tones. 'Poor thing' -- I quote -- 'she's not crazy, she's just terrified.'"
Mirza pulled cigarettes from his pocket. "Mind if I smoke while you're
eating?"
"Go ahead." Paul hesitated. "Do you agree with her?"
"Trying to make me commit myself about a patient I haven't even examined?
But I heard the same sort of thing from Sister Wells. 'Never had one
like her before,' she told me. 'She's not stupid -- in fact she's very
bright -- and I can't work out why she has to be shown everything, even
which way round to put her dress on.'" Mirza clicked his lighter. "And I
furthermore understand she's been getting people to tell her the English
names for all the things in the ward."
"Correct. She did that with me this morning."
"To coin a phrase, this strikes me as anomalous. What do you think?"
"Let's hear your view first. I'm busy eating."
"How can you stuff down so much of that slop . . . All right, though
I think this is simple cunning on your part." Mirza frowned. "I'll lay
a bet that Alsop has been trying to convince you she's suffering from
fairly conventional symptoms of hysteria: exhibitionism, hysterical
amnesia and all that jazz. While at the same time being perfectly aware
that she's way off the beam."
"I wish to God," Paul said with sudden passion, "that I had your gift
for predicting people's behaviour."
"It's not a gift. It's a means of intellectualising all the things people
in this country take for granted and I've had to learn because they're
foreign to me."
"What do you think about culture shock?" Paul demanded.
"What? Oh, you mean this condition that results from being dumped in
the middle of China or somewhere and not even being able to read the
signposts." Mirza tapped ash from his cigarette. "Well, I suppose a
lot of my Pakistani friends in this country are suffering a mild form
of it -- after being used to a wealthy family at home, they come here,
live like pigs in a slum district, can't be bothered to wash the windows
let alone paper their rooms, don't try and make any friends among the
local people but just sweat out the course of study or whatever they
came here for and go home with a sigh of relief." He paused. "Was that
question about anything, incidentally?"
"About Urchin," Paul said reluctantly.
-- It seemed like a paralysing fit of insight when the idea hit me. Spoken
aloud it just seems silly.
"I see. You're thinking of her as being -- let's see -- like the illiterate
dependants of some of the immigrants I know, haled off to Britain by
better-educated relatives without a word of any language but their own.
So what was she doing in the woods without clothing? Had some irate husband
taken her out after a row and dumped her to teach her a lesson?"
"I wouldn't make guesses as elaborate as that," Paul said, amused.
"But at least it may give me a line of attack."
"More power to your elbow. But if you suggest it to Soppy Al, make sure he
thinks it's his inspiration, not yours. He is rather intolerant of other
people's bright ideas, isn't he?" Mirza glanced at his watch. "Damn,
I promised myself ten minutes' reading after lunch and now I must
run. . . . What are you going to do about Urchin, anyway?"
"Oh, a string of things Alsop asked for: urinalysis, skull X-ray --
which reminds me, I must book an appointment at Blickham General. And
one or two wrinkles I dreamed up myself. By the way, do you happen to
know a really good non-verbal intelligence test?"
"No such animal, in my view. But you could ask Barrie Tumbelow."
Paul snapped his fingers. He had met Tumbelow the last time the latter
came to Chent to grade the congenitals -- the imbeciles and morons who
ought to have been in an institution of their own rather than an asylum,
but who had had to be shuffled off here for lack of other facilities.
"Thanks, I should have thought of that myself."
"He might be able to advise you, I suppose. I do feel it's typical of
Holy Joe to rely on a pediatrician with a hobby instead of a proper child
psychologist, though. If we -- Never mind! My prejudices are showing. See
you later."
Left alone, Paul mechanically absorbed rather than ate his stewed apples,
mind elsewhere.
-- Not crazy, just terrified? No, it's too pat, when one of the commonest
kinds of mental disorder consists mainly in groundless terror. And yet
there's something so rational about Urchin. . . . Granted, paranoids are
rational, with knobs on, but paranoia's psychotic and nobody seems to
think she's worse than a hysteric. . . . If she really wants to learn
English, we'll have to teach her. Without words, there's nothing to be
done whatever.
*13*
Trouble with Urchin started the following day.
Following his talk with Mirza, work kept Paul late in his office. With
conscious rectitude he stopped at the Needle in Haystack only to buy
a couple of quarts of beer, then went straight home to study over his
evening meal.
The nagging sensation that in some way he owed more to Urchin than to his
other patients because she was suffering a real equivalent to his imaginary
fears kept coming between him and his textbooks until in exasperation he
made a firm resolve not to think of her again before, at the earliest,
he had the lab reports and X-rays as a basis to work from.
Sticking to that decision, he spent most of next morning reviewing his
case-load and obtaining from the ward sisters and charge nurses comments
on the chemotherapy he'd been prescribing for the patients. He would
have got on well but for two major interruptions. The minor ones never
stopped and he was adjusted to them.
First there appeared a rather saddening new admission: an old woman
referred from Blickham General where she had been being treated for a
broken right hip. The long stay in hospital, as all too often happened,
had wasted what little remained of her independence; day by day her
personality had degraded until after postponing discharge to the latest
possible moment Blickham General diagnosed irreversible senile dementia
and contacted Chent.
It was like the delivery of a package, not a human being: a sticklike frame
swathed in blankets, toothless face blank with infantile preoccupations.
She had fouled herself on the journey and stank of faeces.
-- Selfish, but I feel glad that women live longer than men. I can expect
to be decently dead before I reach that stage.
Almost two-thirds of Chent's inmates were women, and the proportion
among chronic geriatric cases was higher still. Small wonder, Paul had
sometimes thought, that the ancients called hysteria after the womb if
throughout history women had been twice as likely to go mad as men.
The second interruption began by way of a phone call.
"Dr Fidler?" He recognised Sister Wells's voice. "Trouble in the ward,
I'm afraid, involving this girl Urchin."
One second of stupefaction. Then: "I'm on my way!"
-- Don't tell me she's broken someone else's arm!
He found Nurse Kirk and Sister Wells in the female dormitory, the former
standing aggressively over sly-faced Madge Phelps, who was clutching
a hair-brush with a gaudy floral back, while Urchin sat on an empty,
tidy bed occasionally touching an angry red mark on her cheek.
"What happened?" Paul demanded.
Sister Wells thrust a lock of stray hair back under her cap. "Madge says
she caught . . . uh . . . Urchin trying to steal her hair-brush, whereupon
she hit her with it. I've been trying to verify this, but it's not exactly
easy."
-- Among the other things lunatics make: their own version of truth.
Paul frowned. "What are they doing here anyway?"
Nurse Kirk spoke up. "Madge wouldn't go out this morning -- said she
was suspicious of Urchin. So we left her in her nightwear to be seen to
later. And there isn't much point in trying to get Urchin out of the ward,
is there -- not understanding what people say to her?"
"She's been keeping up this learning-English act," the sister amplified.
"I'm afraid it's been annoying the other patients rather, being followed
around and pestered for the names of perfectly ordinary objects."
--
Act?
But Paul let that pass without comment.
"Madge took an interest in her over breakfast and my guess is that not
finding anyone else left to talk to, Urchin started trying to get the
names of Madge's belongings. But not even the nurses touch Madge's stuff
without asking, or they're likely to lose a handful of hair. A smack
with the brush I'd call getting off lightly!"
"Dirty thief!" Madge said loudly. "Ought to be locked up in her cell
all day and all night and we could look through the peephole and laugh
at her."
Urchin got down off the bed. Dejectedly she walked back to her cell and
shut the door behind her.
"She understood that all right, apparently," Sister Wells said in surprise.
-- Did she? No, I think it was just a case of giving up against hopeless
odds.
Before Paul could speak again, however, there was a call from the far door.
"Sister! Sister -- Hello, what's going on?"
-- Matron in all her gory, as Mirza puts it.
Having heard the story, Matron Thoroday rounded on Paul. "Sedation,
don't you think, Doctor? Can't have this sort of thing wasting the
valuable time of my nurses."
"No," Paul said.
Matron blinked. "I beg your pardon?"
"I said no. I don't propose to prescribe any medication for Urchin until
I'm satisfied she's suffering from a disorder which requires it."
The matron was marginally too well-mannered to snort, but she implied it.
"Sister, how do you feel about it?"
"Stick needles in her," Madge said. "Lots of needles. Lots and
lots
of needles!"
"Be quiet," Matron ordered briskly, and Madge looked frightened. "Sister,
you were saying. . .?"
"Well, she isn't really being much trouble," Sister Wells murmured.
"A moment ago you were saying she was pestering the nurses and patients.
Make your mind up, Wells!"
-- There's something I detest about blotting out patients who make a
nuisance of themselves.
The realisation came to Paul accompanied by a faint aura of surprise.
Perhaps it was Mirza's remark of yesterday about the churchly associations
of the cracked bell in the clock-tower, bringing back an admonition
which once he had thought of frequently but not for many years:
suffer
fools gladly
.
-- Though there are fools and fools . . . No, nuisance is one thing,
and we tolerate it in those who are nominally sane. Violence, hurting:
that's of a different order, and when our skills are exhausted there's
no alternative. We call the pharmacy and . . . But why should we resent
being bothered by those who are trying to communicate with us, and to
communicate terrible things, at that? Even if we leave them no other
means of expression except their own filth!
He said sharply, "Please don't argue, Matron. In my judgment Urchin
needs neither sedation nor any other immediate attention."
"I feel you may be overlooking something,
Doctor
. This Urchin -- and what
a ridiculous name that is, by the way! -- this young woman definitely broke
a man's arm. I don't want that to happen in the hospital, and I'm sure
you agree with me." Matron Thoroday wasn't used to being talked back to;
the words lacked her normal forthrightness.
"On the contrary," Paul returned, "I think you're overlooking the fact
that she was the one who got hit, and you're talking as if she did the
hitting. Has Madge Phelps done this kind of thing before, Nurse?"
he added, turning.
"She goes for anybody who tries to touch her property," Nurse Kirk said.
"Whose patient is she?"
"Dr Roshman's."
"Is he prescribing anything for her at the moment?"
"She's on Largactil, but he has just reduced the daily dosage."
"Put her back on the farmer dosage for the rest of today, and if Dr Roshman
inquires why, refer him to me, will you?"