Dominion (10 page)

Edgar frowned, the seriousness of what he had just done beginning to penetrate his fuddled brain. ‘Of course I haven’t told anyone,’ he answered sharply. ‘Calm
down.’

‘You’re drunk. You’ve been drunk half the time since you came here.’ Frank reached out and grabbed his brother’s arm. ‘You must go home, you mustn’t
tell anybody else. If anyone found out what you’d told me—’

‘All right!’ Edgar was looking anxious now. ‘All right. Forget I said it—’

‘Forget!’ Frank howled. ‘How – can – I – forget!’

‘For God’s sake shut up, stop shouting!’ Edgar was sweating now, his face beetroot. He stared at his brother for a long moment. Then he said quietly, as much to himself as to
Frank, ‘Even if you did talk, no-one would believe you. They’d think you were mad, they probably do already – look at you, grinning little cripple—’

And then, for only the second time in his life, Frank lost control. He ran at his brother, all flailing arms and legs. Edgar was much bigger than Frank but he was very drunk and he stepped
backwards, raising his arms ineffectually to try and defend himself. Frank came on, hitting him again and again, and Edgar tripped and fell over, against the window. His weight broke the rotten
sash and he fell through it in a shower of glass, arms windmilling, wildly crying out as he disappeared.

Frank stared blankly at the smashed window. The October breeze blew into the room. There was a groan from the garden below. He stepped forward, hesitantly, and looked out of the window. Edgar
was lying on his back on the stone flags below, clutching his right arm and writhing in pain. Frank thought, that’s it, I’ve done it, the police will come and they’ll find out
everything. He screamed at the top of his voice, ‘It’ll be the end of the world!’ Rage and terror filled his whole being. He turned and, pushing the table over, ran into the
kitchen and opened cupboards and pulled out plates, sending them crashing to the floor. The insane notion had come into his head that if he smashed and broke everything in sight somehow he could
drive the terrible knowledge of what Edgar had told him from his head, along with all the rage that filled it. He was still running around the flat, breaking furniture, bleeding from several cuts,
when the police arrived.

Dr Wilson was a small round man with a bald head, wearing a white coat over a brown three-piece suit. He sat at a big cluttered desk. The eyes behind his tortoiseshell glasses
were keen but weary. As Frank entered he put down a document stamped with the government crest: shield and lion and unicorn. Frank saw the title, ‘
Sterilization of the Unfit; Consultative
Document
’
.
Wilson gave a quick, tired flicker of a smile. ‘How are you today, Frank?’

‘All right.’

‘What have you been doing?’

‘Just sitting on the ward. They didn’t take us for our walk round the airing courts today, because of the rain.’

‘No,’ Dr Wilson said, smiling. ‘We’re organizing a special day out for some suitable patients in a couple of weeks. To Coventry Cathedral. The Dean has offered to take a
dozen patients on a tour, with some attendants, of course. I wondered if you might like to go. It’s a beautiful medieval building. Fifteenth century, I believe. I’m looking for some
– educated – patients to take. Might you be interested?’

‘No, thank you,’ Frank answered, his face twisting into its monkey grin. He wasn’t interested in churches, had never been to one – Mrs Baker hadn’t approved –
and to go in his shapeless hospital clothes, part of a group of lunatics, would be shaming.

Dr Wilson considered his response, then said quietly, ‘The charge nurse on the ward says you avoid the other patients.’

‘I just like sitting on my own.’

‘Do they frighten you?’ Dr Wilson asked.

‘Sometimes. I want to go home,’ Frank said pleadingly.

Dr Wilson shook his head. ‘It does pain me, Frank, that someone of your education, your class, should end up on a public ward. You’re actually Dr Muncaster, aren’t you? A
PhD?’

‘Yes.’

‘You shouldn’t really be with the pauper lunatics. Some of those poor people – they barely have minds any more. But I can’t just let you leave, Frank. You pushed your
brother through a first-floor window. It’s a miracle he got off with a broken arm. To say nothing of screaming about the end of the world. Someone heard that out in the street. There’s
still a police case open: causing grievous bodily harm is an imprisonable offence. Fortunately your brother didn’t want to prosecute. As it is, you’ve been certified as insane and you
must stay here till you’re cured. How are you getting on with the reduced Largactil dose?’

‘All right. It makes me feel calm.’

A self-satisfied smile crossed Wilson’s face. ‘Good. This is one of the first British hospitals to use Largactil. My idea. It’s French, you know, so it’s more expensive
with the import duty. But I persuaded the Board. My cousin working in the Ministry of Health gives me a certain influence.’ He gave a superior little smile.

‘It makes my mouth dry. And I feel tired.’

‘It keeps you calm. That’s the main thing, in the circumstances.’

‘I’ll never do anything like that again.’

The doctor made a steeple of his hands. They were small and surprisingly delicate. ‘The question is, why did you do it in the first place?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘If we’re going to help you, you have to talk about it.’ He pursed his small mouth. ‘Do you believe the end of the world is coming? Some religious people do.’

Frank shook his head. The end could come, but religion would have nothing to do with it.

Dr Wilson persisted. ‘When you arrived you were asked what your religion was. You said your mother was a spiritualist but you didn’t believe in God.’

‘Yes.’

‘Did your mother take you to spiritualist churches?’

‘No. She had séances at her house with a woman who said she could contact the dead.’

‘Do you think she could, this woman?’

‘No,’ Frank answered flatly.

‘So you didn’t believe in any of it?’

‘No.’

‘You have no relatives apart from your brother.’

‘No.’

‘No-one’s been to visit.’

‘They never did like me in the labs. I didn’t fit in.’ Frank felt tears coming now.

‘Well, there’s a stigma, people are frightened of asylums. Even relatives usually stop coming after a time.’ The doctor shifted in his seat. ‘But if we’re to get
you into the Private Villa, which I think would be more suitable for you, the board will need funds.’

‘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.

T
HE FOLLOWING
T
HURSDAY
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.