"Urchin, Dr Alsop wants to come and talk to you this afternoon.
You remember Dr Alsop?"
"Yes."
"Urchin, what do you think would happen if you told him about Llanraw?
Do you think he would believe you?"
A hesitation; then a shake of her head.
"And if he didn't believe you, what do you suppose he would think?"
She shuddered. "That I'm crazy!" she forced out.
"I'm afraid so." Paul leaned forward with an urgent air. "So listen to me
very carefully. When anybody else but me is in the room, you will forget
about Llanraw. When anybody but me is talking to you, you will not say
anything about Llanraw. You will not answer any questions about where you
come from or how you came here. In another few moments I shall wake you
up; you will go out on the landing and sit in the window-seat until I call
you back in here. When you come back I will put you into trance again,
but you will not talk about Llanraw if anybody else is in the room!"
Alsop was frowning as he came in. Shutting the door, he said, "What's
Urchin doing out there on the landing by herself? I thought I asked you
not to send for her until I'd had a chance to speak to you."
"I'm sorry," Paul shrugged. "She comes up here on her own now --
she's quite trustworthy -- and I suppose she looks forward to her daily
session with me. When she turned up I simply told her to hang on for a
few minutes."
"I see. Well, anyhow, what I want to say won't take long." Alsop lowered
himself into the chair which Urchin had been using a little while
previously. "I've been running over your recent case-notes, including
Urchin's, and they won't do, Paul, they simply won't do."
A pang of alarm drew Paul's nerves taut.
"I know about your wife, and all that," Alsop pursued. "I sympathise,
believe me. That's why I've been putting off my comments until now,
hoping you'd recover without my having to prompt you. But while you're not
actually in arrears with your notes -- it might be better if you were --
you're turning out the most uninformative bald
scrappy
stuff I've ever
seen. And Urchin's a case in point. No doubt some of the sketchiness of
your other notes is due to the amount of time you're devoting to her;
well, I'd accept this, provided only that you were making such rapid
strides towards a cure for her that these long daily sessions were likely
to come to an end in the immediate future. As far as I can tell, though,
they are more likely to continue."
He drew from the pocket of his coat an envelope folded double. "This is
the sum total of the notes you've shown me about her. Apart from minor
details, you could swap the latest of them for any other six or eight
weeks old and never know the difference."
"But I am making enormous progress," Paul said. "How is one to define a
'cure?' If you're expecting me to restore her memory in full -- "
"It's not stated anywhere here that you've proved she's amnesiac."
"Good lord, half these sessions have been language lessons, not therapy!
Until I was certain we both meant the same thing by any given word, I
couldn't make my mind up. But now I'm satisfied. She is suffering from
amnesia, the cause of which I haven't completely determined, but she's
now capable of fluent communication about her recent experiences and in
my judgment the best thing is to grant her gradually increasing liberty,
keeping a watchful eye out in case of a recurrence of that unforeseen
outburst at Blickham General, in the hope that exposure to a less rigid
environment than Chent will encourage her to relax and come to terms
with the repressed material."
The words poured out glibly enough, but Alsop's face remained set in
a dubious frown. "You haven't even established her nationality?" he
suggested.
"Uh . . . well, no. Beyond a comment from the philologists
that the language she speaks is an eastern one."
"There's something funny about her," Alsop said with decision. "Her amnesia,
if that's what it is, is too . . . too all-embracing. If it related to some
isolated subject, that would make sense. But . . . Well, never mind."
He rose and moved to the side of the room. "Call her in and go through
a normal day's session with her. Just ignore me and pretend I'm not here."
Palms sweating, Paul complied. He mentioned Alsop to Urchin as she
sat down, and she gave him a mechanical smile; then he performed the
induction as he had done earlier, and spent about ten minutes racking
his brains for questions to ask her that would both satisfy Alsop and
evade the subject of her origins.
Dismayed, he suddenly noticed that Alsop was gesturing for his attention.
There was nothing else he could do except instruct Urchin to relax and
sit still while he turned to the consultant.
"This isn't getting you anywhere, young fellow," Alsop told him briskly.
"You want to hammer away at the key areas -- sensitive subjects like sex
and violence, background material like the family she comes from. Let me
ask her a few things and show you what I mean."
Trembling, Paul had to counteract the standard order in the induction --
"You will hear no voice but mine" -- which he normally dispensed with
but had included today because of Alsop's intrusion.
-- She's so used to talking about it in this room at this time of day.
Will my spur-of-the-moment command to keep her mouth shut hold good?
He caught himself biting his thumb-nail as Alsop launched into his
interrogation, and thrust the hand into his pocket; it would be fatal
to betray signs of agitation.
Relief welled up as he listened. Determinedly, Urchin was evading every
attempt Alsop made to get her to discuss her home and family, although
whenever he switched to some more recent event she gave ready answers.
-- Bless you, Urchin. This is . . . this is loyal of you. I do my best
for you, and you certainly show how much you appreciate it.
Next, however, Alsop swung away on a new tack, and Paul's burgeoning
relief -- dissipated.
"You remember in the woods where you first met Dr Fidler," Alsop said,
"there was another man just before that. You do remember?"
She gave a vigorous nod.
"What happened when he saw you, Urchin?"
-- Jesus God. I've never talked to her about Faberdown. What was I
thinking of? That ought to have been in all my case-notes. No wonder
Alsop isn't satisfied! "Papa Freud he say . . . !"
"I . . . I came to say hello, and he said something I didn't understand
and took hold of my arm and wanted to . . . I don't know the word in
English. Push me on the ground and have pleasure from me."
"So what did you do?"
"I was first very surprised, not understanding what he said. Then he hurt
me, push me over --
pushed
-- so I realised I must fight him. He was heavy.
I did this," pantomiming clawed nails raking his cheek. "Then I hit him.
He moved back, but when he started again I knew I must stopping him."
"How?"
"Hit him on a tree," she muttered, almost inaudibly as if ashamed of
the violence she had used.
"And before you saw him," Alsop continued, "what happened then?"
Silence.
"Were you walking in the woods, or in the fields?"
Silence.
Alsop pressed her for a little longer. Eventually he sighed and relinquished
control to Paul, who ended the trance and sent Urchin away, glad to have got
it over with.
"I see your difficulty," Alsop admitted after the door had closed behind
her. "Nonetheless, that's a line you should have been pursuing a bit more
intensively -- working back from the earliest time she remembers clearly.
But the sharp cut-off, contrasted with the accuracy of her memory of what
one might expect to be a highly charged incident immediately following,
makes me wonder about brain damage. We never did get those skull X-rays,
did we?"
Paul shook his head.
"Do you think you could persuade her to lie down quietly and let them
X-ray her now?"
"Yes, I'm sure I could."
"Right, better make the arrangements as soon as you can. The whole thing
is very puzzling, but there are definite signs that she's co-operating,
I suppose, which is encouraging. . . . You'll bear in mind what I said
about your scrappy casenotes, though, won't you?"
"Yes. I'm very sorry. But it is losing Iris which has upset me so much."
"You don't think you ought to take a week or two off?" Alsop suggested.
"Thanks very much, but . . . no. I'd only mope by myself and probably
end up worse rather than better. This way I at least have my work to
occupy me."
"There are other things in life than work, you know," Alsop said. He got
to his feet. "Still, I agree that solitary moping would be bad for you.
When can you have the X-rays done?"
"It would be best if I went with her, I think, as a precaution." Paul
flipped the leaves of his desk diary. "I'm not on duty this weekend.
Perhaps I can arrange for it to be done on Saturday morning, like the
first time we tried."
"Haven't you got one of your whatsit committee meetings this Saturday?"
"Blast -- so we have. I'd forgotten to put that down. Never mind,
though; there'll be time afterwards. Dr Holinshed prefers to keep the
meetings short."
*34*
-- I'm scared.
Paul sat silent, listening to the meaningless voices of the other members
of the Operating Committee as they discussed a complaint from the union to
which most of the maintenance staff belonged about patients undertaking
too many repair jobs around the hospital. He was making little attempt
to follow what was said. Wordless, the concept of being afraid was
shaking his head as the maddening cracked bell of the hospital clock
shook its tower.
-- I've told her, explained to her, repeated to her, that there's nothing
to fear from the X-ray equipment; I've shown her plates of heads and
hands. I think she understands. But if she breaks down again, they'll
. . . No, I don't want to think of what they'll do. But what did she
imagine the equipment was, when she panicked? She won't confess that.
Roshman was talking: a roly-poly man, very Jewish, horn-rimmed glasses
seeming to rest as much on his chubby red cheeks as on his nose, his
hair thinning over the scalp so that his comb drew it into parallel
strips between which the skin was visible.
-- I've stood off Alsop for the moment, but I made a dreadful mistake
not asking Urchin about Faberdown and putting all the details into my
summary notes. He's after something neat and tidy and conventional which
will give him everything he wants: the superior feeling that comes from
telling one's juniors that father knew best all along, the relief of
knowing that there isn't going to be any trail-blazing paper to make
the junior's name more important than his.
A change of subject. This time Paul ignored it altogether.
-- I want . . . What do I want? I think, to put a little of Llanraw into
this sick world. On this very spot where stupid droning voices buzz like
flies hammering window-glass, flowers taller than a man breathing scent
to the distant sea. I hope to bequeath them a whole person, lonely,
but strong with an inner vision. What would Holinshed understand about
Llanraw, where the men in authority are those who are best loved, not
those who most crave power?
Holinshed, about to announce the next item on the agenda, grew aware of
Paul's gaze fixed on him and raised his head.
"You wanted to say something, Dr Fidler?"
"Ah . . . no. No thanks. It's not important after all."
Suspicious, the medical superintendent's hard eyes scanned his face at
length before resuming their focus on the documents in his hand.
-- To be cut off from Llanraw: torment. But to have it to remember,
at least: I envy that. I recall a sort of echoing tunnel, a house with
a mile of like ones either side, schools that trained me to answer the
questions of a stranger through the second-hand medium of ink, a woman who
knew her son to be brighter than average and every spare second breathed
on his shine and rubbed it new, another who perfectly understood how the
former felt but would not give me the chance to undo the harm in another
generation. Out there on the far fork of time's delta, is there a Paul
Fidler like the myriads I've heard complaining on their dead ends of
disaster, but happy? If he's there, he will think no thoughts with my
brain. I'm unattuned to happiness.
He began to draw on the back of his agenda. He designed a sort of map of
lines fissioning outward from a central stem. From the bottom upwards
he labelled them; naming the first junction "Failed eleven-plus," he
put a sketch of a road-sweeper's barrow against it, and at the second --
"Expelled" -- the broad arrow, sign of prison. There was no real system
in the labels he attached to the forks; he could have included a hundred
of them had there been room.