‘I’ve got money. Surely your administration can sort it out.’
Dr Wilson smiled wryly. ‘You can be clear and direct when you wish, can’t you? The problem, Frank, is that as a lunatic your money has to be held by a trustee. That’s the law. For that we need a relative.’
‘There’s only my brother. They said he’s gone back to America.’
‘We know. We’ve been trying to get in touch with him.’ Dr Wilson raised his eyebrows. ‘I even went to the trouble of telephoning him at his university in California. But they said he’s away on government business and can’t be contacted.’
‘He won’t reply,’ Frank said bitterly.
‘You sound angry with him. You must have been, to do what you did.’
Frank said nothing.
‘Why did you become a scientist like your brother?’ Dr Wilson asked, his tone conversational again. ‘Did you want to compete with him?’
‘No,’ Frank replied wearily. ‘I was just interested in science, in geology, how old the Earth is, what a little speck in space we live on. I did it for myself.’ He spoke with a sudden vehemence.
‘Nothing to do with Edgar?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Frank, if I’m to help, you must tell me more. I wonder if a course of electric shock treatment might help jolt you out of this withdrawn state. We shall have to start thinking about it.’
Afterwards the Scottish attendant, Ben, took Frank back to the ward. The rain had stopped. The light was beginning to fade. ‘How did it go?’ Ben asked.
Frank looked at Ben again. The thought crossed his mind that Dr Wilson might have asked him to report back on what Frank said. So he fell back on his staple answer. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Lucky youse is middle-class and educated, Wilson’s no’ interested in the chronic cases, the poor sods wi’ no money that have been on the wards for years. He thinks he’s too good for this place anyway. His father was a doctor, his cousin’s a civil servant at the Ministry of Health. Aul’ snob. Class is everything.’ Ben spoke quietly, but with an undertone of bitterness.
‘He talked about shock treatment,’ Frank said hesitantly. He swallowed. ‘I’ve overheard other patients discussing that.’
Ben grimaced. ‘It’s not nice. They tie you down with leather straps and put electric shocks through your brain. They say it cures depression. I think it does, sometimes. But they’re a bit free and easy with it. And they should use anaesthetic.’
‘It hurts?’
Ben nodded.
‘Have you seen it done?’
‘Aye.’
Frank’s heart began to pound. He took deep breaths. His bad hand hurt and he massaged the two atrophied fingers. Their footsteps slapped along the wet path.
Ben said, ‘There are worse things. Lobotomies – a surgeon comes up from London every few months to do those. Cuts part of your brain out. Jesus, the state of some patients afterwards. Don’t worry, they won’t do that to you.’ Ben gave Frank a sudden guilty look. ‘Sorry I mentioned it.’
Frank asked, cautiously, ‘What part of Scotland do you come from?’
‘Glasgow.’ Ben smiled. ‘Glesca. D’ye know Scotland?’
‘I went to school near Edinburgh.’
‘I thought I heard a trace of Morningside. One of those Edinburgh private schools?’
‘Yes.’
‘Which one?’
‘Strangmans,’ Frank answered quickly. He wanted to change the subject.
‘I’ve heard those places can be hard. Harder than Glesca schools even.’
‘Yes.’
‘Still, I hear there’s public schools just as tough in England.’
‘Yes, perhaps,’ Frank said, his voice catching. ‘Before I came in, I heard on the news about this new law they’re planning, the compulsory sterilizations. Dr Wilson was reading something about it.’
‘That’s just for the mentally deficient, and what they call the moral degenerates. Wilson’ll be quite happy to see them sterilized. Dregs of society, that’s how he sees them, the auld scunner.’ That bitter note in Ben’s voice again. He looked at Frank’s bad hand. ‘What happened there?’
‘An accident. At school.’ Frank turned to him. ‘I want to get out of here.’
‘Ye canna, no’ unless Wilson says you’re sane again.’ Ben considered, then added, ‘Unless someone can bring influence, maybe get you transferred, maybe tae a private clinic away from here. What about your brother?’
Frank shook his head despairingly. ‘Edgar won’t even take their calls.’
‘What about the people where you work?’
‘Dr Wilson asked me that. They wouldn’t be interested. They don’t really want me in the department. I’ve known that for a while.’ Frank’s face spasmed into his smiling rictus.
They had reached the door of the main building. ‘I’m going to be working on your ward for a while,’ Ben said. ‘Maybe I could help with finding someone to help ye.’
‘There’s nobody.’
‘What about people you knew at school? Or at university? You must have gone to university.’
An image of David Fitzgerald came into Frank’s head; an autumn evening sitting with him in their rooms at Oxford, talking about Hitler and appeasement. His astonished realization that for the first time in his life someone was actually interested in what he was saying. As this attendant Ben seemed to be, for some reason Frank couldn’t fathom. He hadn’t been in touch with David properly for years, but at one time he had been closer to him than anyone. ‘There might be someone,’ he said, cautiously.
Chapter Six
THE FOLLOWING THURSDAY David left for work at eight as usual, walking up the street to Kenton Station in his bowler, black jacket and pinstripe trousers. Opposite the house was a little park, no more than a small lawned area with flowerbeds; at the far end there still stood one of the square concrete shelters that had been built in 1939 in anticipation of the air raids that never came, squat and ugly and abandoned now. Children went in there to smoke sometimes; there had been a petition to the Council. He nodded to neighbours, other men dressed in similar uniform, also heading for the station. The weather was bright and clear, cold for mid-November. His breath formed a cloud in front of him, like the exhaust of an old Austin Seven sputtering by.
The tube was crowded, the air thick with cigarette smoke. Hanging on to the strap he read The Times. There was a bold headline: ‘Beaverbrook and Butler fly to Berlin today for economic talks’. That was sudden – there had been nothing on the news last night. ‘Optimism on new German trade links’, the article continued. He wondered what the Germans would want in return.
Victoria Station was heaving, thousands of commuters walking through the great vestibule, steam and smoke from the trains belching up to the high ceiling. A group of grey-uniformed German soldiers stood by a platform gate, probably on their way to the base on the Isle of Wight. They were very young, laughing and joking. They had probably been on leave in London. Those with an Isle of Wight posting were the lucky ones; the endless mincing machine of the Russian front had been killing boys like these for eleven years, would probably take these ones too in the end. David felt an unexpected stab of pity for them.
He walked down Victoria Street to Parliament Square, then up Whitehall to the Dominions Office. Sykes was on duty again behind the desk. ‘Morning, Mr Fitzgerald. Another cold day, sir.’
The lift was full, clanking painfully as it rose. David stood next to Daniel Brightman from the Economic Department, who had joined the service at the same time. Like David he was a grammar-school boy, but over the years Brightman had adopted an upper-class drawl. ‘Another day in the salt mines,’ he said.