Through Streets Broad and Narrow (34 page)

At this point the patient was shown in, another man in a grey suit who stood a little behind the two attendants, only the top of his head visible since he was evidently looking at his feet.

Glancing up at him, his eyes swelling for a moment and then, as he turned his head, swivelling into smallness behind their lenses, Dr. Lesselbaum went on smoothly, “Physically this man presents the typical pyknic build associated with affective disorder, shows signs of premature aging and endocrine insufficiency in his early obesity and has what the Germans describe as the ‘Schnauzkrampf facies.' ” He looked up to make his first joke, “The nearest English equivalent being the ‘nipped pile expression.' ” But nobody laughed and the doctor resumed. “He is unmarried and posits no positive sexual attitude towards his own sex. He states that his occupation is that of casual labourer in an agricultural capacity.”

There was a pause while the doctor adjusted his spectacles and sat down on his high stool to think over the questions he would put. The two male nurses motioned the patient forward and John saw that he was Groarke.

Groarke stood there in the grey suit, his unpolished shoes covered with dusty abrasions, his once red face a little greyer, his heavy hands at his sides and his chin up; his whole head tilted up so that with the extra height of the rostrum he looked over the heads of everyone else, out through a window or beyond it.

John got up immediately. He was going to have gone forward until he realized that everyone else was looking at him with sharp hostility and that the doctor was already speaking. He had not heard the first words of the question, he heard only, “—anyone speaking against you lately, Heggatty?”

Groarke did not answer for a moment; he was absorbed in his regard of John. He smiled as he had so often smiled, with a great bitterness, and said, “Thanks for the letters. Sometime I'll answer them. I've to catch up on things first.”

John began, “Mike, for God's sake—”

But Groarke interrupted him. “They make mistakes in here; this American's all whirled up, we expect him to abreact any day.”

Dr. Lesselbaum said to John, “Would you mind resuming your seat? You, sir, over there? This patient gets a little confused, don't you, Heggatty?”

John said, “I'm sorry, Doctor, but there's been a mistake. This patient is a friend of mine, he's a fellow—” He was going to have said “fellow student at Trinity,” but remembered in time that this would embarrass Groarke, who said, “There are certain subject to be avoided, conversationally, Blaydon. I'm catching up on a lot of things in here. Remember the green baby?”

Signalling to John again, Dr. Lesselbaum asked, “Are you quite sure you're feeling all right. Is this your first visit? You, sir, the Englishman over there?” and he added to the others, “Occasionally a mental hospital triggers something off in a visitor. He thinks he's been there before.”

“Déjà vu,” said Groarke with fatigue. “Same old jargon. What price another paper?”

John went over to the doctor's desk. “Excuse me, sir, but there really has been a mistake. Look at your notes. This man is not fifty, he's the same age as myself. I know him well.”

Lesselbaum ignored him, “Now what was this about a green lady, Heggatty? We are all mighty interested in that little piece of local colour. Where did you see a green lady and how long ago?”

Groarke said, “I said
baby
, not lady.”

John said, “You're doing incalculable harm to this man, sir.”

“I am, am I? Now who the hell are you?”

“He should ask
me
that,” said Groarke, laughing.

John said, “The remark about the green baby was quite rational under the circumstances, sir. Mike was referring to Herbert Read's book,
The Green Child
. We discussed it together some time ago; it was a private reference between friends. If you will read this, sir, I think you'll understand.”

The psychiatrist was disposed to humour again, “Gentlemen,” he said to the class, “the way things are going you'd certainly think this was a mad house.”

This time they did laugh and Lesselbaum read what John had scribbled on a piece of foolscap.

“This patient is a medical student of Trinity College. His name is Michael Groarke. Your staff have made a grave mistake.”

The doctor referred immediately to his notes and then asked Groarke which ward he was in.

“That's for you to find out,” Groarke said. “I find this instructive, particularly the Schnauzkrampf expression. You made other minor mistakes in my history: I am attracted by women, I have always disliked my father and I have never worked on a farm in my life. If you want my own opinion of my case I'm a psychopath with mildly paranoid features. I have every intention of recovering as soon as it suits me. Incidentally, I'm a voluntary patient and was on my way to the canteen when one of your gorillas insisted on my joining your clinic.”

Dr. Lesselbaum took Groarke's arm at this. “You're from the voluntary wing, are you, Mr. Groarke?”

“I've been there six months.”

“I really am covered with confusion. I owe you an apology. Though most things have happened to me in my seven years of psychiatric practice, this is a new one, and, sir, I'm not enjoying it one little bit. You do realize that, don't you, Mr. Groarke?”

“I'm quite sure it is worse for you than for me,” Groarke said.

“You're a philosopher then?” A little abashed, the doctor raised his voice. “Gentlemen, I feel I scarcely need to ask you to keep this little incident to yourselves on your return to your faculty. I think that the terms of the Hippocratic oath apply very strongly in this particular case.”

“It's a question of the name only,” Groarke said. “If that could be kept out of it—?”

“Why certainly, Mr. Heggatty,” said Lesselbaum with a quick swell of his eyes. “I know you can rely on that. And if I might come around to your room at teatime maybe we could straighten things out a little further?”

He walked Groarke towards the door and signalled one of the male nurses. Before the door shut Groarke called out to John,
“Don't think after this you'll get a visiting ticket. You'll get nothing. It's what you came for: it's the great solution.”

Lesselbaum was very calm after the door had shut. He spoke to the remaining attendant.

“For that sort of ineptitude you'd get the sack if I were anyone but the man I am. You just about sabotaged the clinic and my local reputation.”

The man protested: “But Doctor Lesselbaum, sir, he'd got himself into ‘A' Block. He never denied the name of Heggatty.”

“Heggatty is his name, fellow! From now on just you remember that.”

“Well I wasn't to know, sir, not when he answered to—”

“That'll do, if you don't mind,” sighed Lesselbaum. “Go out and check up on the three others.”

He turned to John. “After that maybe you'd like to go? I don't know what the hell you're doing here anyway, but to a lesser extent I owe you an apology too. This game gets you down, how was I to twig a reference from way back to
The Green Child?
If you take anything out of context, any damn thing at all—”

“What context, sir?” Someone asked.

“That,” said Dr. Lesselbaum, “is the point. If you can answer that one you'll be contributing.”

With a private key he let John out into the corridor by which he had entered. He left the building and caught a tram back into College Green.

There was no one to tell about it all. He knew no one well enough to make sweet so evil a communication. So he slept with it for several nights and then wrote to Groarke's parents asking them if they could arrange for him to visit Michael. He wrote:

… For some reason, he imagines he does not want to see me. I think this must be part of his illness; for, as I explained to you some weeks ago, we have always been very close friends and I have the greatest affection for your son. In addition I owe him a debt as he has always encouraged me to work.

I am going to send him oddments like cigarettes and books, of course; but I feel that this is not enough; that I could perhaps help him to recover from this temporary breakdown which is obviously due to overwork.

Mike is a very brilliant man. He has an assured future; and though he did not make friends easily I know that those of us who knew him and still know him would be willing to do anything to help him at this time.

Please reply by return of post.

The days passed in which he was increasingly aware of Groarke in the incomplete world of the asylum with its tapless washbasins, blocked windows and viewless views. Groarke arrested in a nearly moodless mood, bitter but amused; more alive than dead, deader than alive; catching up on things, and thinking what sort of thoughts about his present and past?

When four or five days had elapsed without bringing any reply from either Mr. or Mrs. Groarke, John was seized by a demon of energy and wrote first to Cloate care of the War Office, then to the Superintendent of the asylum and, finally, by registered post, to Groarke himself.

Until you arrange for me to come and see you I cannot possibly complete my course in psychological medicine. We seem to be linked in some way that I cannot explain. You were the first man I met on my arrival at Trinity and though since then we've had our difficulties, principally over Dymphna, I'm certain they were vital ones: the sort that maintain a relationship rather than destroy it.

I can talk to no one else in the way I talk to you; I suspect that you, at any rate in the old days, found this true of yourself as well. Therefore, I'm convinced I could help you as much as anyone in the hospital—and incidentally, help myself as well.

Write back as soon as possible; and in the meantime, if you don't feel like making a full reply just yet, let me know if there is anything you want?

When he had finished this letter he re-read it: phrases like “we've had our difficulties,” “linked in some way I cannot explain,” and “if there is anything you want,” filled him with scorn and a ready sort of despair.

He thought that there must be something about tragedy which stereotyped the vocabulary. Where did I get such words from? They read like an obituary and would sooner reach a corpse in a coffin than Mike.

No matter how many times he rewrote the letter it turned out more or less the same. In the end he decided to get a little drunk before trying to write the final version at all. So he swallowed three large glasses of brandy and ginger ale in the Ranelagh and then went up to the Club library where there was a large writing-desk hidden behind one of the bookshelves. Few people ever came up there; it was filled with old political biographies bound in calf; it was still and silent, rich with the scent of rubbed leather and worm-riddled pages.

The writing-table swayed but he held it down with his arms and, catching it at the zenith of a roll, pinned it down with a sheet of the club notepaper.

Speaking. The journey is past not-doing. She is the rock on which we supposed we foundered; not so. We jam on selves. You look at you and say “Refuge in refusal because I, Michael, did not; therefore will do not!” Paralysis. Loving what you hate. Must love what you love and so continue. John knows, his word is true. Recall him for he has once been past your place. Love is: please.

He rang the bell and gave this to the page-boy to post, with sufficient money to register it. But Groarke did not reply. Instead John got a brief typewritten letter from the Superintendent of the asylum.

Dear Mr. Blaydon,

Michael Groarke.

I regret that it is not at present possible to allow you to visit this patient. Apart from the fact that neither his parents nor the patient himself wish you to do so, my colleague, Dr. MacBrien feels that such a visit would be against the patient's own best interests. He has therefore asked me to return to you the letter you recently sent Mr. Groarke, and suggests that you should confine yourself only to practical matters in any future letters you may send. He adds that should you yourself feel the need to consult him at any time he is willing to try and help you.

Yours faithfully,
                                            Ian Melhuish, M.W., D.P.M.

A few days later John received a reply from Groarke's parents. The father wrote angrily on a pen-spattered sheet in terms reminiscent of James Joyce.

You made him jealous by every intrudageous power at your command. Tormented him with the smell of your money and manifold perquisites in the cherchering of the infamous flamme you swordbuckled him into bring and buying. If there was Fancy Bread in his heart or wrong-headed wanderings it was your perfidious black Albion grew it there. Get you back to your blood holstered island of knock down opportunity and take with you your filthy silver and scare clothes.

And to this Mrs. Groarke appended a postscript which said simply:

Keep away from my son. You've done enough damage as it is, God forgive you.

Signed: Moira Theresa Jesu Groarke (his mother) S.A.G.

When he next met Kerruish he asked him what S.A.G. stood for. “Is it some Catholic thing?” And Kerruish replied, “Thank God now you're corresponding with some little girl of the True Faith; you'll be saved yet. S.A.G. stands for Saint Anthony's Grace and isn't it a sweet habit to be putting him in charge of the journey of what you've written with your own hand and the proper understanding of the good eyes that will read it when it gets to them?”

He could not understand why John found this amusing and John did not bother to explain it to him. Why should he have done so when, no matter what anyone had said, they would have been quite incapable of giving even a hint of meaning to the whole incident?

For that is how John came to look upon it. As an incident only. He tried to persuade himself that Groarke had never been a particular friend of his at all. Certainly no one else at Trinity seemed to be interested in his failure to return.