-- Fear of spiritual failure, particularly the compensatory phenomenon
which induced weak personalities to conclude that if they could have
no other claim to notoriety they might at least be selected by God
for exceptionally harsh punishment, has been dethroned as the primary
constituent of mental disorder by elements related to sexuality. However
. . .
-- The following remarkable case involving systematised delusions of
otherworldly origins elaborated by a patient of outstanding intellect,
whom we shall refer to as "U," suggests that elements derived from still
other features of our changing society may well enter into our . . .
He was half minded to set about drafting a preamble there and then,
and got as far as rolling a sheet of paper into his typewriter before
realising that for all he knew the fragmentary admission he had secured
today from Urchin might be strenuously denied tomorrow. He shrugged and
got to his feet. A better way of using his time would be to tackle Iris
while he still had his excitement to buoy him up.
A quarter of a mile before he reached home, however, the engine of his
car spluttered and died. With a wrenching sense of his own stupidity he
recalled that this morning, on the way to work, he had noted the low
reading of the fuel gauge, but neglected to stop and fill up because
he was late. Tonight he had been so wrought up he hadn't glanced at the
instrument board.
Cursing, he rolled to the side of the road and got out. He could do one
of two things: walk home and collect the two-gallon can which ought to
be in the car but wasn't, because the other morning he'd found there was
no dry kindling to start the living-room fire with and he'd had to pour
petrol on the hearth before he could make it burn; or walk back to the
filling station in Yemble and borrow a can from there, which would mean
driving back to collect the ten shillings deposit and wasting extra time.
It would be quicker to go home.
Of course, it would undermine the impact he hoped to make on Iris if he
started by admitting he'd run out of petrol. Best of all would be if he
could sneak around the back of the house without her noticing, collect
the can from the kitchen, and slip away again, returning noisily with
the car in another ten minutes.
-- Lord, I wish I wasn't built the way I am! Running out of juice can
happen to anybody, but I have to take it as an insult to my ego and
I'm reduced to creeping around by back doors and hoping my wife won't
notice. This isn't how I thought marriage would be. I expected to be
able to share everything, even the big disheartening problems, spread
their load and make them easier to carry.
Nonetheless, shamefacedly, he put his plan into effect. When he quietly
entered the gate, he was relieved to see Iris's silhouette on one of the
leaded windows; she was talking on the phone. He heard a peal of laughter
as he passed.
-- Keep at it. I never thought I'd be glad that you can't enjoy a
phone-call if it lasts less than twenty minutes.
The kitchen door was unbolted. He tiptoed inside and found the can of
petrol where he had left it. Just as he was about to pick it up, Iris's
voice came to him clearly.
"How do you spell that? . . . S -- W -- E . . . Swerd. Good, thanks
a million."
It was exactly as though someone had opened the top of his head and
poured ice-water into his brain. The world froze.
-- Oh my God. No, it can't be true. Not Swerd. Not that slick bastard
with so many rich patients the law daren't touch him!
Like a man in a dream he forgot what he was in the house for, forgot
about returning to the car and making his triumphant official entry
armed with his good news and the suggestion they go out to dinner. He
walked to the door of the kitchen and flung it open.
At the phone Iris exclaimed in alarm, spun on the stool where she sat
to make long calls, and dropped a pencil tap-tap on the tiled floor.
Her face went milky pale.
"Paul!" she whispered. "Goodness, you gave me a fright!"
And, with a creditable attempt at recovery, continued to the phone:
"No, it's okay, Bertie. It's just Paul coming in. Thanks very much --
see you."
She put down the hand-set and made to tear a sheet from the memo pad on
the telephone table. Paul strode across the room and clamped his fingers
on her wrist.
"Paul! What's the matter? Stop it, you're hurting me!"
Teeth so tightly together the strain on his jaw muscles made his ears
sing, Paul roughly forced apart her grip on the paper. Crying out,
she let go and retreated a couple of paces.
"Paul, what's wrong?" she whimpered.
"You damned well know what's wrong!" he snapped. Stomach knotted in anger,
voice thick with anguish, he shook the incriminating note at her.
She had copied down the name "N.J. Swerd" and a telephone number.
"It's . . . it's nothing! It's a friend of Bertie's! He rang up just
now and -- "
"Liar," Paul said. "Dirty, rotten, stinking,
silly
liar. Do you think
I don't know who Newton Swerd is? Christ, he's a standing bloody joke
in every medical school in Britain, the dean of the Harley Street
abortionists, five hundred guineas and no questions asked!"
Her mask of prevarication crumpled. She began to edge away from him as
though to avoid a physical attack; when she had managed to get the high
back of a black oak chair between them she halted, teeth chattering.
"How the hell did you think you could keep that sort of secret, living
in the same house as a doctor? Did you imagine I wouldn't realise you
were pregnant?"
-- This isn't the way I wanted to start talking about my child. I wanted
it to be a happy thing. How did I come to tie myself to this selfish,
bossy, greedy woman Iris?
Staring at her, his anger too cold to blur his eyes with tears, he read
on her face that indeed she had hoped to deceive him until the job was
done. She was trembling so much she had to cling to the chair for support.
He waited. After another minute she regained enough self-possession to
speak coherently.
"What the hell do you mean by sneaking in and spying on me?"
"Spying on you!"
-- Where do women like her learn such effrontery? Raised to it,
I suppose. Taught it in the nursery by starched nannies, the hands
slapped when the lesson isn't properly absorbed!
"God damn it, Iris, I want to be a father! Can't you get that through
your head? I
want
children! It's
natural
to want children! Marriage
is
about
children!"
"It's easy enough for a man to say that! Men don't have to produce
the babies!"
"If you're that scared of childbearing you need treatment!"
"Don't I get it from you every day of the bloody week? This isn't a home
-- it's an asylum! You can't take off your professional hat long enough
to behave like a normal husband!"
"How in hell is a normal husband supposed to behave when his wife
goes behind his back to her dirty-minded friends begging the name of
an abortionist?"
"What the hell makes you so sure it's
your
child I want to get rid of?"
Uttered in a near-scream, the words filled the air like choking
smoke. Behind the screen of their echo, Iris realised what she had
said. First her hands clamped on the chair-back so tightly all the
blood faded, leaving the skin dry and stark as parchment; then she
began to shake in terror, her jaw moving up and down, so that her
white teeth tapped and tapped at the brilliant red of her lower lip,
the only remaining trace of colour in her whole face being the lipstick
and mascara that she wore. Her eyelids had dropped like curtains to shut
out the fearful world.
At last the dam broke and the tears came. Blinded, she stumbled towards
the stairs, while Paul stood stupidly in the middle of the floor, folding
and refolding the sheet of paper with Swerd's name on it as though his
hands had taken on independent life.
"But I don't care," he heard himself say, and then when she showed no
sign of having heard, repeated in a shout: "I don't care, you silly
woman. I
just . . . don't . . . care
!"
*29*
Overhead there was a soft heavy plumping noise: Iris throwing herself
on the bed, her usual refuge from a row. Paul stood with one hand on the
banister rail, feeling the rage drain from him and leave nothing behind
but a hollow emptiness.
Shaking, he took out a cigarette, and realised when he had finally got it
to his lips why the job had been so difficult: he was still holding the
scrap of paper on which Iris had written Swerd's number. With conscious
theatricality he rolled it into a taper and thrust it at the embers of
the fire. It caught. He raised the flame of his cigarette and let the
rest of the note fall among the ashes.
-- What can I do if she persists? It's not in my nature to make threats
and carry them out. I could say that if she goes ahead I'll report the
matter to the GMC and the police, and where would it get me? What weight
will Paul Fidler's word carry against the famous Newton Swerd and his
two tame psychiatrists certifying that the child would "permanently
impair the health of the mother?"
He drew on the cigarette with quick ragged puffs.
-- It'd be grounds for divorce. . . . But I don't want to be divorced.
If someone asked why not, when Iris can behave like this, I wouldn't
be able to explain, but it's somewhere in the fact that I don't want to
have to start all over again at that adolescent business of picking up
and making a good impression on and wearing down the resistance of . . .
At that point his thinking became too incoherent to form words. He waited,
mind blank; eyes fixed on the fire, until the cigarette burned his fingers;
then he turned and began to walk upstairs, movements sluggish from a vast
invisible load.
Iris was lying on the bed, face buried in the pillow, moaning softly.
He sat down beside her and tried to take her hand, but she jerked it
away from him.
He stayed where he was. In a little while, as he'd expected, she quietened
and stole a glance at him which she hoped he wouldn't notice.
"Iris?"
"Leave me alone, damn you."
-- So that next time we have an argument you can use my going to charge
me with heartlessness? No thank you.
Alarmed at his own cynicism Paul said, "Iris, please!"
"Oh, shut up," she muttered.
"You must try and understand! Look, we went over this when we first got
married, didn't we? It made sense then to put off having a family. But I'm
not a struggling new doctor any longer -- I'm holding a pretty responsible
post, and even if it's not overpaid it does carry a reasonable salary. We
aren't compelled to delay our family now."
"All you can think of, isn't it?" Iris whimpered. "How much is it going
to cost, can we afford it?"
Stonily Paul said, "I never made it a secret that I want children."
"You didn't try and make me like the idea, did you? You just kept your
mouth shut until I was caught by surprise and now you're spying on me
and threatening me and I could kill you, I really could."
The venom in her tone startled him. He lost the thread of what he had
been about to say. While he was silent she swung her legs to the floor
and reached for a cigarette from the bedside table.
"Look, darling," he ventured at last, "if you're really so terrified of
having your own children, we could do what we thought of doing before,
and adopt . . .? I mean, could we sort of make a bargain? We could apply
to an adoption society right away, and I'm sure I could make the . . . uh
. . . the arrangements you want without your having to go to Swerd,
who charges the earth."
The words almost choked him, but he was so desperate for compromise that
he spoke them regardless.
"Thank you for that, anyhow," she muttered.
"For what?"
"For not saying that if I don't like the messing painful business of
having children I must be out of my mind. Christ, what kind of an ivory
tower do you psychiatrists live in, with your glib generalisations? None
of my women friends like having kids! Why don't you stop making these
wild statements about what's 'normal' and go and ask some women how they
actually feel?"
"You're not going to take your selfish pampered glamour-girl friends as
a fair cross-section of the human race!"
What makes them more selfish than men, for God's sake? They're not asking
any more than the same advantage men are born with!"
"If you want to make excuses, surely you can do better than that."