Stanley and the Women (9 page)

Cliff
had come out with me. On our way down to the kitchen he nodded to me again, not
so dramatically as before but at least as expressively. I got us a gin and
tonic each and we sat down at the table. The chairs there were supposed to be
particularly good in some way, but to me they were straightforward all-wood
jobs with slatted or splatted backs.

‘We’re
doing well so far, obviously,’ said Cliff. ‘Him being so amenable. You should
see some of them. But it’s not just handy for everyone else, it’s a good sign.
I can’t believe he’s really ill. He’ll have been sniffing glue or chewing this,
that and the other — you see. Anyway, what did you think of him? Freddie Nash.’

I said,
‘Well, he’s hardly my cup of tea, is he? That voice. And isn’t it rather a
performance?’

‘Oh
Stan,
of course it’s a performance, among other things. Doctors are colossal
actors, you know that well enough. Worse than actual actors, because they’ve
got more power.

‘What
were you going to say about him over the phone earlier? You said you thought he
was a bit something but you didn’t say what. A bit what?’

‘Oh, a
bit … Well, a bit rigid. Inflexible, kind of style. If that sounds as if he
thinks he knows everything then I’ve got it wrong. Just, when he does know
something then that’s it. And I’ve heard one or two of the younger people say
there are areas he hasn’t kept up with. You’d expect that at his age. But they
all agree he’s very good.’

‘Has he
got a wife?’

‘Yes,
lots. Four at least. He may still be on the fourth, or he may not, or he may be
on the fifth by now, I don’t know, but it’s one of those. Why?’

‘Well,
I naturally wondered, when he came out with that about all women being mad.
Does he believe it himself, would you say?’

‘Oh, I
see. Christ, after all those wives he can’t help but, poor old bugger. Only in
a manner of speaking, you understand, in the sense you and I believe it — no,
sorry, of course
you
don’t think they’re all mad, do you? Just most of
them.’

Cliff
laid great stress on it being me who made the exceptions, as an indicator or a
reminder that he made none, especially not his own present wife, one of the few
women I had met who could give Nowell a hard game. I remembered an evening not
long after we first started to get chummy, which had not been all that long
before Nowell had sheered off. Last thing that night, while she and I were
getting ready for bed, she had launched into a long monologue which I had
thought at first was an amazingly, almost frighteningly clear-headed analysis
of her own character and conduct, put in the third person so as to be extra
clinical and objective, and it had taken a sudden reference to Cliff being
spineless to reveal to me that she had been on about Sandra Wainwright all the
time. There was very little from my first marriage that had stayed so clear in
my mind as those few minutes.

Cliff
had gone quiet, probably thinking about Sandra. I said, ‘Yes, I didn’t actually
imagine it was Dr Nash’s professional opinion that all females over the age of
eighteen were suffering from recognized mental disorders. But then it’s not
only an expression, not
just
a manner of speaking. There’s more to it
than simply them being a pest. A lot of them. That’s what I was trying to say
just now. The ones like that have got a distorted picture of reality. Not as
distorted as thinking they’re Napoleon, but distorted. More distorted than a
bloke who thinks the earth is flat, because you can have a decent discussion of
football with him. Their thing covers everything.’

‘What?
That’s right. Absolutely.’ He looked at his watch, finished his drink and stood
up, so perhaps he had not been thinking about Sandra after all. ‘You’ll be okay
now,’ he said. ‘He’ll take a bit of time yet. When he’s through he’ll tell you
the score so far.’

‘What
about his lunch?’

‘He’ll
tell you that too. Don’t worry yourself on that account. Fellows like that don’t
wait to be asked anything.’

‘Does
he drink?’

‘No.
You know, wine. He won’t mind you having a couple, but he might mind you falling
down in front of him. Use your judgement.’

Cliff
added that he felt sure things would turn out all right and that I was to ring
him later, I thanked him and he left. I would have kept him if I had had an
excuse. Today I might have welcomed even Mrs Shillibeer’s company, but she said
her husband made her stay with him all the time at weekends.

There
was some of her not-bad soup on the stove, enough for two at a pinch, and in
the larder a board of cold meats, a jar of gherkins and some prepared celery and
spring onions, and normally just my fancy — not today. I imagined I had
anything up to an hour to get through before the next stage was reached. The
only thing I could think of to use up some of the time was making myself
another gin and tonic, and that used up less than a minute. On a normal
Saturday at past twelve-thirty I’d have been somewhere else, at the golf club,
at the squash club, at friends’, always with people. So how was unaccompanied
Duke to fill in? Read? Read what?

Suddenly
Mandy came into my head, Mandy’s flat with perhaps a Swede in it, perhaps still
in it but perhaps by now Mandy as well or instead. The next part was slower.
Susan had mentioned the surname. Blackburn. Here was a chance of establishing
that there was nothing gruesome or otherwise interesting in Steve’s recent
past, and I suppose I also had some dim idea of getting a spot of help, though
I could hardly have started to think what sort.

Finding
the house phone-book certainly used up some time. When it turned out to be
missing from its slot alongside the cook-books I searched the kitchen as usual
before running it down in Susan’s study. No helpful crossed lines or wrong
numbers turned up, though. Quite soon a young girl’s voice said Hallo with a
great deal of alertness and amiability packed into two syllables, English too,
very much not the reported Swede, and when I mentioned Mandy I was told she was
speaking.

‘It’s
Stanley Duke here, Mandy, Steve’s father. I’m afraid he hasn’t been too well.
How was he when you saw him last?’ That should fetch anything worth fetching, I
thought, and very likely much else.

The
silence at the other end was so complete that I wondered if I had been cut off.
After a moment I said, ‘Mandy?’ and she said simultaneously, ‘Who is that
speaking, please?’

‘Stanley
Duke. I’m —’

‘Sorry?’

‘Stanley
… Duke. Father of Stephen … Duke.
Steve.
You know.’ Good God, I
wanted to bawl, you were going round with him for four months at least,
probably more like six, and it can only be three or four weeks since, etc.

‘Who
did you want to speak to?’

‘To
you, Mandy. You are Mandy Blackburn, aren’t you? Well then, you remember Steve,
surely.’ More silence. ‘Tall, rather thin, fair, with a slightly crinkled nose,’
I struggled on, feeling a perfect idiot, but not knowing how else to go about
it. ‘Leans forward when he walks … Likes Mahler … Always cleaning his
fingernails.’

‘Oh… uh … ooh …’ The girl made long remembering noises. Then she said
briskly, ‘I’m all booked up today and tomorrow and next week.’

‘I’m
sure you are. I just wanted to tell you that Steve’s been a bit poorly these
last couple of days, and I was wondering —’

When
the dialling tone sounded in my ear I was fooled a second time, and imagined
for a moment that something technical had happened. For another moment or more
I was filled with rage and amazement, almost with disbelief as it struck me
that Mandy had not sounded at all fed up with her own thickness, let alone
apologetic — not a bit of it, she was too busy being tickled pink by her powers
of recall. To hear her, anybody would have thought she had managed to come up
with the name of the pet rabbit belonging to the boy next door but two when she
was little.

Thinking
of childhood fitted in well. Then, places you had been to and people you had
seen shot out of mind with incredible speed, not necessarily into oblivion but
somewhere more remote than the ordinary past, like another life. Steve really
had seemed to Mandy very far away. But she still needed a good hiding.

That
set me remembering him myself. I turned out not to be much good at it.
Innumerable things were in my memory as having happened, but not as full events
with visual bits I could play back in my imagination. For instance, I was very
clear that when Steve was fourteen I had gone to see him take part in his
school’s swimming sports, or rather in the finals of them, that he had been in
the diving competition and that he had come second in his age-group, but I
could not pick up a mental glimpse of the swimming-baths where this had taken
place, let alone of Steve in them. When I tried to picture him in his pram,
sitting on Nowell’s lap, as the boy of eleven he had been when she left me, all
I got was a version of present-day him scaled down as required. The few little
flashes I had were no more than that, not so much as a face, just a smile, a
look. I still had a few photographs, but Nowell had taken most of them with her
when she went.

I had
just not been able to do any of the
Daily Telegraph
crossword when I
heard Nash calling my name from upstairs. His tone of voice made it clear that
while there was no crisis on at the moment no delay was needed. My
mother-in-law would have handled it in rather the same style.

‘Gone for a bath,’ Nash
explained when I found him alone in the sitting room. ‘Most opportune. Some
interesting books here. They yours?’

I said,
‘No.’

‘What,
none of them?’

‘No. Is
he mad?’

‘I
think so.’

‘Oh my
God.’

‘But
most likely not in any settled or irreducible way and very possibly not even
for more than a short time. Mad — oh, without any doubt a depressing and
frightening word,’ said Nash, staring at me, ‘but advisedly or not you were
right to use it. There’s no sphere in which it’s more important to call things
by their right names.

‘How
sure are you, doctor? That he’s mad?’

‘In one
sense I’m not sure at all. There’s always the chance, on the face of it quite a
fair chance these days with a person of that age, that some drug or other
chemical influence has been at work, but you ruled that out earlier, and your
son was quite clear on the point, and …’

‘But my
son’s mad. He might say anything.’

‘He’s
also frightened. If he had taken anything harmful I think he would say so when
asked, and anyhow … There are remoter possibilities too. But in another
sense I’m perfectly sure. I was sure within five minutes of setting eyes on
him. Less.

‘One of
the troubles with psychiatrists in England is that because of the system here
they often don’t see a madman for months on end. In my youth I worked in the
admissions department of a large mental hospital in Sydney and I saw madmen
from morning till night. Fresh ones, if you follow me. And there’s no teacher
like simple quantity of experience. You yourself, now. Young Wainwright …’ Nash
lingered over this characterization, though without making any point with it
that I could see. ‘Er … tells me you know a great deal about cars. When
there’s something wrong there, aren’t you … sure … what it is before
you establish the fact?’

‘Yes,
but —’

‘Of
course there are differences. But go back to the time you describe, when your
son appeared late at night. Isn’t it possible that you were sure then that he
was mad,’ — for once, just on that last word, Nash’s voice softened — ‘or
nearly sure, or you might have been sure if you hadn’t told yourself you knew
nothing about the subject, or you would have been sure if it had been anyone
less close to you? Mr Duke? Nearly sure or just about quite sure? Yes? Straight
away?’

I
hesitated, remembering what Cliff had said about Nash being rigid and the rest,
but it made no difference. When Nash answered my first question just now, I
knew at last that I had indeed been sure straight away, and that only huge
powers of self-deception had kept the memory buried till that moment, through
all his wild talk and behaviour — even over the phone to Cliff I had still not
meant the word seriously, not altogether. Anyway, I nodded my head at Nash. ‘Quite
sure,’ I said.

He
nodded back with his eyebrows raised, then said with heavy emphasis, ‘My judgement
would be that he’s suffering from acute schizophrenia.’

‘Oh,’ I
said.

‘Another
frightening word. Two, in fact. The acuteness distinguishes not the gravity or
intensity of the illness but a stage in its development, an early stage.
Schizophrenia itself has of course nothing to do with split minds or multiple
personalities or colourful stuff of that sort, which comes in well enough for
the films obviously, and in life I can see there must be great advantages in
pretending there’s somebody else in your head who does all the shoplifting and
child-molesting that you wouldn’t dream of doing yourself. M’m. Nowadays I’m
told chic persons use the adjective schizophrenic to mean something like
inconsistent. But then. As to what it is, what schizophrenia is, discussion can
be deferred. More important at the moment, it responds to treatment, and I’d
like him in hospital for that.’