When Pat came home that Saturday, Dr Macgregor was ensconced in the conservatory, a small pile of such journals beside him. He became aware of his daughter’s presence as she opened the French windows across the lawn, but he was so thoroughly immersed in his reading that he looked up only when Pat pushed open the conservatory door and stood before him.
“That must be interesting,” she said.
He smiled, taking off his glasses and placing them down on the table beside him. “Very,” he said. “Some of these articles are intriguing, to say the least. Do you know what Ganser’s Syndrome is? That’s what I was reading about.”
Pat shook her head. “No idea,” she said.
Dr Macgregor gestured to the journal lying open on his lap.
“I was just reading this case report about it. A classic case of Ganser’s walked through the author’s door. He was asked what the capital of France was and he replied Marseilles. And how many legs does a centipede have? Ninety-nine. When did the Second World War begin? Nineteen thirty-eight. And so on.
Do you see the pattern?”
“Just marginally out on everything?”
“Yes. People who have Ganser’s talk just round the edge. Dr 10
Some Words of Warning from Pat’s Father Ganser identified it and he called that aspect of it the Vorbeireden.
They may not know that they’re doing it, but their answers to your questions will always be just a little bit off-beam.”
Pat looked at her father in astonishment. “How odd! Why?”
Dr Macgregor spread his hands in a gesture of acceptance.
“It’s probably a response to intolerable stress. Reality is so awful that they veer off in this peculiar direction; they enter a state of dissociation. This poor man in the report had lost his job, lost his wife, lost everything, in fact, and was being pursued by the police for something or other. You can imagine that one might start to dissociate in such circumstances.” He paused.
“Anyway, you’re home.”
He smiled at Pat and was about to ask her what sort of morning she had had, but then Pat said: “Remember Bruce? I saw him this morning. Or at least I thought I saw him.”
“You thought you saw him?”
“It may not have been him. Maybe I just thought that it was him. Maybe it was somebody who was just dressed like Bruce.”
“How interesting,” said Dr Macgregor. He looked thoughtful.
“Fregoli’s Syndrome.” He added quickly, “I’m not being serious, of course.”
But Pat was interested. “Who was Fregoli?”
“An Italian clown,” said Dr Macgregor. “An Italian clown who never had the condition bearing his name.”
4. Some Words of Warning from Pat’s Father
“Yes,” said Dr Macgregor. “Fregoli came from Naples, or somewhere in those parts. He found himself in the forces of an Italian general sent to Abyssinia back in the late nineteenth century.
The Italians, as you know, bullied Abyssinia . . .” He trailed off.
“You did know that, didn’t you?” Pat shook her head. Her father knew so much, it seemed to her, and she knew so little. The Some Words of Warning from Pat’s Father 11
Italians bullied Abyssinia, did they? But where exactly was Abyssinia?
Dr Macgregor looked away, tactfully, as any sensitive person must do when he realises that the person to whom he is speaking has no idea where Abyssinia is. “Ethiopia,” he said quietly. “Haile Selassie?” He looked up, in hope; but Pat shook her head again, in answer to this second query. Then she said: “But I do know where Ethiopia is.”
That, at least, is something, he thought. And he realised, of course, that it was not her fault. His daughter belonged to a generation that had been taught no geography, and very little history. And no Latin. Nor had they been made to learn poetry by heart, with the result that nobody now could recite any poems by Burns, or Wordsworth, or Longfellow. Everything had been taken away by people who knew very little themselves, but did not know it.
“Ethiopia used to be called Abyssinia,” he said. “And the Italians had skirmishes with it from Somaliland. In due course, Mussolini used this as the casus belli for later bullying, and he invaded them. The world stood by. The Ethiopians went to the League of Nations and begged for help. Begged. But they were little men with beards, and it took some time before anyone would listen. Little dark men with beards.”
They were both silent for a moment. Pat thought: he makes it all sound so personal. He thought: we have all been such bullies; all of us. The Italians. The British. The Americans.
Bullies.
Pat looked at her father. “Mussolini was the one they hung upside down, wasn’t he?”
He sighed. “They did.”
“Maybe he deserved it.”
“No. Nobody deserves it. Nobody deserves even to be hung the right way up. Whatever somebody does, however bad he is, you must always forgive him. Right at the end, you must forgive him.”
For a moment, they were silent. He felt like saying to her 12
Some Words of Warning from Pat’s Father that there were people, right at that moment, somewhere, even in advanced countries, who were awaiting capital punishment; people whose days and hours were ticking away under such sentences; such was the hardness of the human heart, or of some human hearts. But he did not say it; instead, he looked up at her and smiled.
“Yes,” he said. “Our friend Fregoli impressed this Italian general – and can’t you just imagine the splendid uniform that general would have had? Such stylish people. He impressed him so much with his quick-change act that he was taken off military duties and became a performer. He would appear on stage wearing one thing, nip off, and then appear within seconds wearing a completely different outfit. People loved it.”
“And why . . .” Pat began to ask.
“The human mind,” said Dr Macgregor, “is capable of infinite deception – both of others and of itself. If you began to think that somebody in your life was really another person in disguise, then you would have, I’m afraid, Fregoli’s Syndrome.
You might begin to think that I was not really myself, but was a very accomplished actor.”
“How strange.”
“Yes, how strange,” said Dr Macgregor. “But it gets even stranger. There’s another condition, one called Capgras Syndrome, where you believe that people you know have been replaced by imposters. The whole thing is a carefully orchestrated act put on by a team of imposters. That may be your best friend talking to you, but you’re not fooled!
You know that it’s really an actor pretending to be your best friend.”
Pat laughed. “But it was Bruce,” she said. “Or at least I thought it was.”
“Then I’m sure it was,” said Dr Macgregor. “You’re a very reliable witness of things. You always have been.”
But now it was Pat’s turn to doubt. “Isn’t it true, though, that the mind can fill in the details if it sees just one thing that it Some Words of Warning from Pat’s Father 13
recognises? One of our lecturers said something about that. He was talking about how we look at paintings.”
“It’s certainly true,” said Dr Macgregor. “We want to reorganise the world, and that makes our brains jump the gun –
sometimes. You look at a newspaper headline, take in one word, and before you know it your brain says: yes, that’s what it says.
But it may not.”
Pat looked thoughtful. What had she seen? A rugby shirt.
And a pair of trousers. Perhaps her mind had filled in the rest, filled in the hair with the gel, filled in the look of Bruce.
Dr Macgregor decided to get up from his chair. He stood, and then walked over to the window and looked out over the garden. The lawn was dry.