Umbrella (52 page)

doesn’t help matters much
. . .
because there are further oddities, such as a globular rattan chair dangling from a chain attached to the ceiling, and a new-model colour television set plumped on a leather pouffe, which is switched on with the volume mercifully turned down, but displaying the Black and White Minstrels in lavender tailcoats and top hats
hoofing it
. . .
All of these things, in their various ways, refer Busner back to the supervening factor of Sir Albert’s mind, and
nor
does it help matters
. . .
that on the tray-table set across the arms of the old man’s chair are ranged a number of hearing aids, the wires of which are belayed up the slopes of his eminence to where two or three disappear into the confusing outcroppings of his
Gautama ears
. . .
And most of all,
it doesn’t help matters
. . .
that the first words Sir Albert says are, Are you a Jew? then he rearranges the spectacles so as to align the lenses of three pairs, through which his eyes swell alarmingly. Yes, he says eventually, I see that you are one. Busner is at a loss – he thinks back to his first encounter with Marcus six months before. He had thought that a tricky encounter, and the St John’s Wood flat a bizarre habitation –
but now this!
Clearing his throat, he offers a shameful exculpation: Erhem, yes, well . . . but not at all an observant one. If Sir Albert had had any eyebrows he might have been raising them, but as it is his spectacles coruscate from the corrugating of his iron brow, then he continues blithely: People often claim that their friends are Jews, as if this were in some way meritorious . . . He pauses, giving Busner time to savour the accentless quality of his voice and its lack of resonance or timbre . . . None of my friends, he resumes, were ever Jews – to my knowledge, some members of your tribe can pass exceptionally well. However, I have had many Jewish colleagues, subordinates and some superiors throughout my career, and on the whole I’ve found them to be markedly more efficient than gentiles. If, Doctor Busner, we can maintain a professional demeanour in our dealings with one another, I see no reason why there should be any unpleasantness – d’you smoke? Wrong-footed, Busner blurts: Y-Yes, I’m afraid I do. Sir Albert smiles encouragingly – a worrying sight. If, he says, you lift the top of that model lighthouse you’ll find it is, in point of fact, a cigarette box – the lighter is beside it in the guise of a rickshaw. While Busner flips up the rickshaw-wallah’s head, the ancient Mandarin fiddles with one of the hearing aids on his tray-table, so that for the remainder of their interview a high-pitched electronic whistling ebbs and flows in unnerving accompaniment. Do you know much about the application of the transistor to the amplification of sound? Sir Albert asks once Busner’s cigarette – a bone-dry Senior Service – has been lit, and he stands puffing on it with what he hopes is a semblance of relaxation: one elbow propped on the mantelpiece in among its welter of knick-knacks – clearly, he is not going to be offered a seat. Um, no, he answers, I’m afraid I don’t know a great deal about deafness generally, it’s not my special –. No, the old man interrupts him, it isn’t necessary for you to raise your voice – I know a great deal about it, and these devices are the latest and most efficient models. As to your specialism, Missus Haines told me that you are a psychiatric practitioner, on the staff of the Colney Hatch asylum I believe? Yes, Busner agrees, unwilling to correct the Mind
on a point of fact
. . .
Where, or so I’m informed, you are responsible for the supervision of various lunatics, among them my sister, Audrey Death. Again, Busner assents, although this was a flat statement – but then, full of acrid seniority, he at last
finds the balls
to cavil: Your sister, Sir Albert, is not remotely insane – indeed, she’s very possibly one of the sanest people I’ve ever met, especially considering the ordeal she’s been through these past fifty years. Stunned by his own bravado, he wonders distractedly whether the ashtray is in the guise of a pottery tortoise. Next, he ponders the grate, which is piled with neatly arranged coals. Don’t, Sir Albert says perfunctorily, the fire is coal-effect – far more efficient, there’ll scarcely be a coal-mining industry left in this country in twenty years’ time – not that this will affect the domestic-pricing structure . . . For a moment it appears that Mind may be exhibiting the very human vagaries of age, and wandering, but then: You’ll find that the tortoise you suspect is indeed – if you raise its shell – a viable receptacle. I’m surprised by what you tell me regarding my sister – the last time I saw her she attempted to assault my wife and young son, and had to be removed from this house by the police. She had suffered, it seemed, a complete mental collapse. I discovered soon after that that she’d been confined at Colney Hatch – as next of kin they sent me a questionnaire they wished me to fill out, it concerned her health, her habits, her moods, mode of life and so forth – I was ill-equipped to assist, having had virtually no contact with her for some years preceding this. It is scarcely any business of yours, Doctor Busner, but I suppose Alea iacta est, so I may as well tell you that her morals were loose and her politics, frankly, extreme. It seems to Busner that Sir Albert has timed this speech to coincide with Missus Haines’s entrance: she comes through the door bearing . . .
a Teasmade?
Busner moves to intercept and so help her, but she evades him by slipping behind the wooden cabinet of a twenties vintage foldaway bed. – I have . . . Sir Albert says as the elderly woman kneels to plug the Teasmade into a socket hidden by the skirts of the velvet curtains . . . a conviction that tea should be drunk as soon as possible after it has been made – both for reasons of taste and health. He flashes his compound eyes at Busner, clearly wishing to solicit a Why?, but Busner sticks to his own professional agenda: You did see her during the First War, though – I’ve read your entry in Who’s Who, sir, and I know from Miss Death that she worked at the Arsenal as well –. True enough, Sir Albert’s flat tone hacks in, but I assure you I didn’t see her more than once or twice – we were at polar opposites to one another, she a cog, so to speak, in the machine, while I was concerned with the administration of all shell production – and latterly the entire Arsenal –. He is interrupted by the alarm going off on the Teasmade, and they wait in silence while Missus Haines concocts two cups of tea, adding a large slop of milk to both together with
one, two, three . . . four!
lumps of sugar. Busner doesn’t object – he’s grateful to be getting any refreshment at all, and wonders if
he’ll have her disinfect the cup when I’ve gone
. . .
The teas distributed, Missus Haines unplugs the device and retreats with it – both men
suck on our
tooth rot
, Sir Albert noisily so. Once cup and saucer are reunited, he says,
apropos of everything!
I owe my longevity to my messery. Pardon? Busner says, nonplussed. Mind motors on serenely: My messsery, it’s an adjuvant of my own devising, a mixture of raw cane molasses, Bemax, vitamins and milk stout – although this last ingredient has become problematical, with only Mackeson’s to be had. Of course, when I first hit on it – during the Great War as it happens – I wasn’t yet aware of what is was an adjuvant for, I thought it simply an efficacious stimulant-cum-dietary supplement – but in recent years, prescribed really quite toxic compounds for my blood pressure and so forth, I’ve come to understand that it also functions to boost their therapeutic effects while also reducing their side ones. Sclerosis . . . he remarks sententiously . . . being endemic in the males of my line, I should’ve been dead long ago without it – and, if not dead, my mental capacities would undoubtedly be in decline. If, Doctor Busner, you had a more practically useful specialisation, you might find it profitable to research my messery’s pharmacological properties –. Well, Busner puts in, sensing a possible source of merit, there’s no reason why I shouldn’t run some preliminary tests on your, um, messery – we have a basic laboratory at Friern, and a . . . um, reasonably biddable pharmacist. Mind considers this from on top of his gabardine mountain, then he says: Yes, Friern Barnet Road to here, assuming you took the most direct route and came under the river via the Rotherhithe Tunnel – what motor car do you have? Busner replies bemusedly: An . . . Austin. Yes, yes, Mind raps back, but what model? Busner dutifully offers up: A Maxi, the new five-door hatchback. Mind pauses, and Busner braces himself for a swerve into the follies of government policy, the farrago of British Leyland . . .
and who knows what else!
But Mind takes an unforeseen turn: In that case your wheels are sixty-nine point eight inches in circumference, resulting in thirteen thousand, two hundred and eighty-nine point three six three nought five seven three two four eight four nought seven six four three three one two one nought one nine one six eight three revolutions of them throughout the journey – approximately. Marvelling at his own sangfroid, Busner says: Why only approximately? Mind ruffles: Well, obviously I can know neither your exact route, nor how conscientious you are regarding tyre pressures – they might be variable. If I knew how variable I could give you different results for each wheel – quite possibly to greater than twenty-seven places. It is markedly stuffy in the big room, so full is it of everything that Sir Albert
retains, but where on earth could he have seen a technical-specifications manual for an Austin Maxi?
Trapped behind the closed curtains, it’s impossible to tell if the rain has stopped – Busner wishes to believe it has, and that a summery evening will ensue, featuring wine poured on a damp, cooling terrace, and small but witty talk among good friends. These are not desiderata that he, personally, pursues – but in a voyeuristic fashion
I want them to be going on
. . .
with the understanding that at some unspecified time in the future . . .
I’ll make the effort needed to have them in my own life
, rather than . . .
this weirdness
. His hand twitches to the row of Biros along his breast pocket, and the old man scythes in: Not much of a display handkerchief, eh, colour-coded according to subject matter, I assume? Green for poetical tropes, blue for reminiscences, black for your own insights – and the aperçus of others – red for observations picked up in the exercise of your medical duties, am I right? Busner says, You’re right – although I’m at a loss to understand how you knew –. Come, come, Mind chides him, you knew it, and it isn’t that complex a system. Busner says, The other thing – calculating the car-wheel revolutions, that’s not too unusual an example of eidetic memory, you being, Sir Albert, what’s termed in the literature, a savant –. So, the red pen? Mind offers up. The psychiatrist laughs: No, I might use the red one if your messery were responsible for your calculating ability, but I don’t think you believe that any more than I do. No, the blue pen, Sir Albert, for my memories of a superior mnemonist – not the only one in your immediate family either – Miss Death, is, I’m convinced, similarly gifted, and perhaps has an advantage over you, given that for the past fifty years there has been scarcely any new data –. Explain, Mind utters, and if it will aid your concentration help yourself to another cigarette. Busner says, I’d rather sit down, Sir Albert, and as the old man raises no objection, he does, after removing a stiff-legged and mouldering stuffed dog from a wooden swivel office chair. Your sister . . . he begins, and then . . . lays it all out for him: the encephalitis lethargica epidemic, the characteristic form of Audrey Death’s collapse, her hospitalisation and long, long period of effective misdiagnosis and mistreatment. He glosses his own arrival at Friern, then moves swiftly on to the discovery that L-DOPA could have a therapeutic application for these long-since-abandoned patients. Busner has no idea what to expect from Sir Albert when he has finished speaking. Viciously erect in his wing armchair, his lenses shining forth from his oppressive cranium, his expression presumably unchanged from when he
last carpeted this, that or however many other merely human subordinates
, the old man still manages to confound him by offering up a single word: And? Busner, forgetting to be intimidated, shoots back: And what? A cappuccino machine froths in the region of Sir Albert’s larynx, and Busner realises with amazement that . . .
he’s sighing
: Khhhherrr . . . then he says
with just a soupçon of warmth
, And what d’you want me to do about any of it? Busner creaks forward to get a better view of this emotionality before he replies, Do? Um, well, I suppose I assumed you might like to see your sister, or, at the very least, offer assistance of some kind. The allowances for long-stay mental hospital patients are worse than paltry – in the region of forty pounds a week is spent to feed, house and clothe them, probably not much more – allowing for inflation – than was allocated during the Edwardian era. He had hoped that this appeal to the fiscal question would engage the old civil servant – instead Sir Albert indulges in another hiatus, during which Busner scrutinises the many, many degree certificates that he now sees framed on the walls – so many that they constitute a sort of