32

I have become convinced of late that Dr. Belasco no longer regards me as merely a clinical dilemma but as an enigma which he is determined to solve. He has taken to bringing with him on his visits to me a dossier upon the front of which are written my particulars—full name, approximate age, file number and, obtusely, my military identification number.

Last evening, as I was lying on my bed after having eaten my supper, he came and sat with me, talking to me as always in soliloquy.

‘Steak-and-kidney pie,’ he remarked, looking at the remains of suet pudding on my plate. ‘The food of the working man. And how have we been today?’ He briefly studied the chart hanging in its metal folder at the foot of my bed. ‘Nothing to be unduly concerned about.’ He replaced it and sat on the chair at my writing desk, putting the dossier next to his elbow.

All this I watched at the periphery of my field of vision.

‘Tell me, Alec,’ he went on, ‘do you never wonder what the world must be like now, outside this room, or the garden? Beyond the gates of St. Justin’s? It has been many, many years since you last saw it.’

True, I thought, and the last time I was moved, it was in a cream-painted Daimler ambulance with a chromium-plated bell on the front bumper and blacked-out windows.

‘Are you not the least bit inquisitive?’ he enquired, continuing, ‘If I were in your shoes, I should be. I would not be able to contain my curiosity. Just to see how buildings have changed. I’d not necessarily want to revisit places I had known. It would be enough just to get out, if only for an hour, and see for myself.’

I made no response, gave him not the least indication that I was listening to him. He prattled on about how the world changed so rapidly these days, but he was not going to tempt me.

After about a quarter of an hour, there was a firm knock on the door and one of the orderlies, a young man sporting a fresh scar under his ear, entered. Paying me not the slightest heed, he quickly bent to the doctor’s ear and tersely whispered something to him. I tried to catch the gist of the message but could not. Immediately the doctor stood up and left the room. I could hear the two of them hurrying down the corridor, their voices louder now that they had left me, but still incomprehensible.

I waited for a minute or two, then, swinging my legs onto the floor, went to the chest of drawers upon which he had left the file. Taking great pains not to move it, for his departure could easily have been a subterfuge and, at this moment, he could have been standing out on the lawn, in the gathering darkness, watching me, I untied the bow of faded red twine that held it shut and opened it.

On top of the papers within was a medical record sheet detailing my general health, height and weight, distinguishing marks, current regime of medication, blood pressure and so forth. Beneath this was a single piece of paper giving my medical history, outlining every ailment from which I had suffered since entering St. Justin’s—a chipped tooth, a mild bout of influenza, a bad bruising from a stumble in the garden and a stye below my left eye which had proved resistant to repeated applications of Golden Eye Ointment and had necessitated the use of antibiotic cream and eyedrops. Attached to this by a white paper clip were three portrait photographs of me from the front, left side and behind. Next was a much dog-eared carbon copy, in faded blue ink, of the first page of another medical report that must have been written soon after my demobilisation from the army. This I picked up and held under the light the better to read it.

It was letterheaded ‘Craiglockhart War Hospital for Neurasthenic Officers.’ The typing was faint, but I was able to make out most of it:

Although not an officer, Private A. S. Marquand was referred to this establishment as a case worthy of our attention. He has been thoroughly examined and informed that his present condition and symptoms are the result of a disordered emotional state due to experiences he has received in the theatre of battle and not a disruption of his nervous system caused by the near explosion of grenades, bombs and shells. Although his hearing seems not to be defective, this information appears not to have registered with him in the least and he remains mute. His current state, in which he is completely uncommunicative, seems not to be physically but in fact psychosomatically induced. He responds by reflex to external stimuli, such as the application of a hot glass rod or a piece of ice, but does not react with any indication of pain. For all intents and purposes, he seems to have shut himself off from the world around him and has chosen to keep his own counsel. This form of psychotic behaviour, particularly to this degree, is not common and we suggest he is not simulating his condition in order to avoid further military service but is …

I turned the page over. The reverse was blank and the remainder of the report missing.

Although it was so very long ago, I remember that place, the austere house set on the southern edge of Edinburgh, the stonework always damp from the rain that blew incessantly from the Firth of Forth. It was full of men in far worse condition than those with whom I now reside. Here, they are mostly simple men whose minds have turned, for whom age or disease has distorted reality or created fantasies to keep their souls from fading. There, every one of us was young, some of us handsome, well educated, well brought up. A few were disfigured by wounds. One or two were amputees. Not a few were of the aristocracy, the sons of wealthy landowners who could call themselves Lord or the Honourable. Money and titles meant nothing, however. We were all reduced to the same level, blathering dolts trying to make sense of what we had seen, where we had been, how much we had had to suffer.

The next page in the dossier was the first of over twenty written in diarial form, each one outlining in detail what Dr. Belasco had said to me and what reaction, if any, I had made to his comments. Mostly, he remarked that I had made no response whatsoever, but every now and then he had noted that my eyes had blinked, my fingers had twitched or my lips had slightly parted.

Following this section in my file was the beginning of an introduction to a scientific paper concerning my psychological condition. I was inclined to read it but was soon lost in the medical terminology as arcane as an alchemist’s textbook.

It was flattering to have this young doctor take such an interest in me. It did occur to me that his attention might be more a matter of furthering his career prospects with an original piece of research, but I did not begrudge him this and was prepared to indulge him. Indeed, considering his possible motivation, I felt sympathy for him. There was no way in which he was going to break my barriers down, storm my barricades and loot the fortress of my soul.

For all his searching for a way through my armadillo scales, he has yet to discover the one place to which he could have access if only he were sufficiently cunning. He has not even looked for it.

When I first arrived in St. Justin’s, I was accompanied from my previous institution, as I had been throughout most of my adult life, by two wooden-framed canvas-covered suitcases. They were older than I was, the canvas originally green but now faded and blotched with small rusty spots of mould. The hinges were made of stoutly sewn leather straps that had suffered from mildew, the locks metal but no longer provided with a key. The lids were scattered with torn or peeling travel labels—‘Wanted on Voyage’ ‘Peninsular & Oriental Steam Navigation Co.,’ ‘Thomas Cook’ and ‘GWR First Class.’ In better days, these suitcases had belonged to my parents and, had they possessed voices, could have told of luxury cabins on white-painted liners bound for Port Said and walnut-veneered Pullman carriages, of dhows in Aden and gondolas in Venice, of the darkness in the Simplon Tunnel and seats at the captain’s table.

One case contained my clothes, the other my few pairs of shoes, toiletries and odds and ends. Or so my minders thought. What they did not realise was that the second suitcase had a craftily disguised false bottom. This was no deceit on my part but my father’s—or that of his luggage maker. When travelling my father had used the compartment to hide his foreign currency, circular notes of exchange, passport and tickets, cuff links and gold half hunter and my mother’s linen jewellery wrap. I utilised the space to transport those items that were dear to me, which I did not want to be found, scrutinised, studied and possibly used against me.

On arrival in St. Justin’s, I was shown to my room, that which I still inhabit, and left to unpack or not, as the case might be. Waiting until I was certain I was alone, I removed the bottom drawer from the chest of drawers. It is a heavy, ancient piece, crafted from solid wood in the days before the advent of cheap, flimsy chipboard and plywood furniture. Just as I had hoped, for I had come from a room with similarly old-fashioned fittings, beneath the lowest drawer was a space about three inches deep, the bottom of it the base of the whole structure. I quickly emptied the contents of the hidden compartment into it, replaced the drawer, closed the compartment and let the nurse on duty do the rest of my unpacking for me.

Since that day, my secret possessions have been secure. Even when the room is given a thorough cleaning and the chest of drawers moved, my secret remains safe. My only safeguard against discovery is a pencil I have nailed to the rear of the bottom of the drawer with five hypodermic needles: this acts as a back-stop and prevents the drawer from being pulled right out without being lifted for the last inch or so.

Sometimes, in dead of night, I remove the drawer and survey the contents. Not needing to check them, I rarely touch them, but I look at them much as a parent might gaze upon a book of family photographs of the children when they were young, playing with a dog or digging sand castles on a beach with a yacht sailing by in the distance.

Nothing in my cache of dreams is of financial value. There is a broken, tarnished military cap badge consisting of a tiger arching over a rose: from somewhere in my memory I seem to recall the emblem was referred to as the cat and the cabbage. The fragment of pallid glass from the broch, that might have been a piece of a lachrymonum, is next to it. I should have surrendered it to Mr. McGillivray, along with the arrowhead and the broken comb, yet I did not, for it reminded me—it reminds me still—of her skin. And there are other bits and pieces, flotsam washed up on the shore of my early life.

The real treasures lie in a cracked leather, quarto-sized writing compendium, the sort of item ladies carried their headed notepaper in whilst travelling abroad, with a gold Waterman’s pen, gauche-looking foreign stamps in indecipherable currencies and envelopes embossed with their initials. The compendium, scratched and battered with the zip broken, contains drawings I do not want to lose yet which I never look at for fear of what they, or the memory of them, might do to me.

Instead of opening the leather, the hinge crackling and leaving a thin trace of hide dust on the base of my secret closet, I merely stroke it, as if it were a creature I have loved which has long been preserved, mummified like those beasts buried with Egyptian noblemen and long since preserved not so much by the embalmer as by the hot sands of the desert.

I listened carefully. There were no footsteps in the corridor. Somewhere far off in the building, an inmate was yelling at the top of his voice. I could only catch the occasional word. It was obscene. Several of the inmates suffer from Tourette’s Syndrome. As an undertone I could just make out the subdued voices of the staff, cajoling, tempting, trying to calm down their antagonist.

Quickly I slipped off my bed and pulled the bottom drawer out, resting it on the floorboards. Were I to put it down on the rug, it might leave a suspicious indentation. Reaching into the space, I removed the compendium, opening it carefully. A shimmer of dust fell off it. I blew upon it to disperse the telltale sign. I did not rifle through the contents but, opening a manila envelope, felt inside and withdrew a sheet of paper at random.

For a moment, I wondered if I dared look at it. My life now, like that of any old buffer who’s nearing the end of his trespass upon earth, is constructed of memories. It is all the elderly possess. There is nothing else. The present follows a predetermined routine, whilst the future is creeping ever closer and predictable, even if the schedule is unclear. There is only the past in which to dwell. Yet what if, for whatever reason, the past must be denied? That is my dilemma.

I looked. It was just a fleeting glimpse, the sort a man might make at the sun or a bright light suddenly switched on in the darkness of his room. Or his life.

She was there, a head-and-shoulders portrait, the cartridge paper yellowed with age but still crisp to the touch, not yet fragile. Her eyes bore a faintly quizzical look. The wind was playing with her hair. Behind was the mountain beyond the summit of which, I suddenly remembered, was the plateau of Bealach na Clachan and the ruins of Saint Maelrubha’s little community.

Without further consideration, I slipped the sketch into the doctor’s file, beneath the third page of his treatise, closed and replaced the compendium, slid the drawer back into place and, checking there were no signs of my activity, returned to my bed.

Closing my eyes, I left the room and caught the paddle steamer from Glasgow.

The stern rope was let go and the steam capstan hauled it in. At a snail’s pace, like a reluctant child leaving its mother at the schoolyard gate, the vessel drifted away from the shore, the water starting to thresh between the hull and the stone quay hung with wicker painters. Within minutes, the steady rhythmic thump of the paddles commenced, the bow swinging tightly round to head west towards the sea.

For a while, I leaned on the rail of the passenger deck, watching the docks and ship-building yards slide by. Here and there, a brilliant pinpoint of light or scatter of sparks drifting to the water indicated where an arc welder was working. Small craft busied themselves close in to the shore, ferrying men or materials to the yards whilst, on the opposite shore, cargo ships lay alongside off-loading coal, pig iron, lengths of steel girder. The stiff onshore breeze carried the tang of coal smoke and the distant tattoo of riveters’ hammers.

Gradually, the sides of the firth parted, the dry docks and shipyards giving way to fields and woodland before becoming industrial again at Greenock. At Gourock, the vessel moved onto a southerly heading down the Firth of Clyde, the paddles accelerating and slapping into the water creating twin wakes. Over to starboard, behind Dunoon, the mountains of Scotland began.

I left the deck and entered my cabin, closing the door and flicking the venetian blinds down so the wooden vanes shut out the view. My luggage was piled in a corner, just where the porter had placed it.

Switching on a reading light on the bulkhead, I lay down on the bunk. The varnished wooden sides were high, to hold one in during rough weather, and the brass catches highly polished. It was bizarrely like a lidless coffin. The paddles lost their steady tempo. I sensed the vessel turning, keeling over slightly to starboard. It must, I thought, have reached the southern tip of the Isle of Arran and was veering south-southwest into the rougher waters of the Irish Sea.

In the darkness, I heard a latch open. A man in a white coat entered my cabin. I assumed he was the steward bringing the order of beer and sandwiches I had placed in the smoking room on embarking. Yet he carried no tray. Instead, he picked up a dossier and left. I felt a sudden urge to sit up and demand what the hell he thought he was doing. My father had told me of the risks of sailing to foreign climes. Robbers, he would recount, are as common east of Marseilles as ticks on a terrier. And east of Suez, he warned me, they have pole-fishers who, whilst a vessel is alongside in port, inveigle long bamboo canes culminating in a steel hook through portholes carelessly left open; if you tried to grab the pole, you would sever every one of your fingers, for the thieves lined the poles with razor blades.

I let him go.

In the early hours, I was made aware that the paddle steamer was slowing. Leaving my cabin, I went out on the deck, standing beside a derrick holding one of the lifeboats. On either side was land: the vessel was making its way north up the narrow Sound of Kerrera towards Oban. Along the deck aft of the paddles, two deckhands were busy preparing to lower a gangway over the side. On a low hillside off to port, a dim light shone where there was a village. A harbour surrounded by a small fishing town hove into view. The buildings showed few lights, but a number of lanterns were swinging to and fro on the quayside.

I returned to my cabin and sat at the table, listening to the sound of voices and footsteps on the deck outside. The paddles stopped, the vessel ceasing to vibrate. The plate of beef sandwiches, which had after all been delivered, was stale. The beer tasted flat. I took a sip, then poured the remainder away into the tiny porcelain hand basin in the lavatory leading off the cabin.

After a short while, the vessel cast off once more and the vibrations of the engines recommenced. I removed my shirt and shoes and, lying down on the bunk once more, pulled the blankets up to my chin and rolled onto my side.

I wanted so much to sleep, a deep sleep within a deeper slumber, a place in which to escape from what had passed and what had yet to be.