Gordon Ferris: The Unquiet heart

“How’s that for timing?” I called to Miss V Allardice sitting stiffly behind her newly polished desk with its wooden wedge displaying her initial and surname.

She pursed her lips, and kept typing, pretending not to have noticed me. Levity was frowned on within these serious walls. I suppose she was needed as a counterpoint to Haggarty.

She hit the return, the carriage slid across with an efficient ping and she deigned to look up. She unzipped her lips. “Good morning, sir. It’s Mister McRae, isn’t it? The Professor will call you when he is ready. Please take a seat.”

She expected to be obeyed. She was just the sort you’d need on Judgement Day to keep order. No coffin lids opened until we say so, thank you very much. Everyone lined up in strict order of sinning, worse ones to the rear. I’d barely parked my bum on the hard seat when Haggarty’s voice boomed down the hall.

“Is that McRae? Show him in, Viv!”

Miss Vivienne Allardice flushed at the treacherous revelation of her first name but she kept a steady grip on her sangfroid and her keyboard.

“Professor Haggarty will see you now, Mr McRae. Straight through that door…”

“Thanks, Viv.”

She glared, and the glare turned to horror as I dropped my coat and hat on the chair. She leapt out to hang them up and reinstate order before I got through the door. Haggarty was standing in the corridor like a pub landlord welcoming his first customer after some remodelling by the Luftwaffe.

“How have you been, man? Come in, come in. Take a pew. Isn’t this a glorious day? Better than you and I are used to in our wet native lands, eh?” His great paw dragged me in to his lair. After one session with the Prof, I knew I didn’t have to respond to any of his early questions. I sat down in the big armchair set aside for his victims.

“So, how’ve you been?” he asked again, this time requiring a reply. He settled his great bulk in a double of my chair and flung my file on the table between us. It was a thick file. I’d given them plenty to write about.

“I’ve been fine, Professor. I get the odd bad head but it passes.”

“Are you still using Scotch to clear it?”

“It works.”

“Aye, so it does. For you. As long as it doesn’t get to be a habit. How much do you drink?”

“A glass or two a day.”

“Liar. But never mind, eh? I enjoy a tipple myself. What about smoking?”

I shrugged. Everybody smoked. “A packet a day, sometimes more.”

“That, you should stop. Or at least use the ones with filters. But you’re not here to chat about your lungs.” He began to sift through his thick pile and pulled out a piece of black film. “The hospital sent me the x-ray we had taken the last time. Shall we take a look?”

He was on his feet and holding a foot-square panel of dark film up to the light streaming through the window. I walked over and stared at the outline of my skull. I didn’t know what I was looking for. Something that told me what sort of man I was. Something less like poor Yorick. How could that be me? This is how I’ll look ten years after they bury me, after the worms have had their fill. Is that all there is to us?

Haggarty’s big finger traced the outline of the white wedge that sat across much of the skull like a smudge on the plate. “They made a good job, so they did.

Nice. Neat. No sign of movement.” Then he turned to me and looked down at me from his great height. “But it doesn’t tell me what’s going on under there.” He stabbed the film, then prodded my skull in the same place.

“Nothing you should worry about, Prof, I’m sure.”

“That’s for me to find out. Let’s have a chat. Are you keeping the journal?”

I pulled out a little notepad from my inside jacket pocket and waved it at him.

“Good man.”

We took our seats again and got down to it. He made me talk through the last month and the number of headaches. According to my records they seemed to be getting fewer.

“And what about the dreams?”

“They’re not like before. I mean I don’t have one of my fits and wake up and find cryptic notes.” I pointed at the pad. Thank god. It had been like living with someone else in my body, sometimes being taken over and waking from a fugue to find this parasite had left me a message. Usually a nasty one. From the time in the camp.

“I still get nightmares, but somehow I know that’s what they are. Which makes it bearable. Does that make sense, Prof?”

“Perfectly. These nightmares – are they about Dachau?” He said it the way everybody does since they showed the pictures; as though voicing those two guttural syllables would reopen its gates and let evil loose. Or maybe that’s just how I hear it. It still makes me flinch.

“It’s not that clear. Let me check.” I opened my pad and ran through some of the jottings. “There’s one that keeps popping up. It’s hard to describe. I’m in a big space without colour or definition. Alone. And I’m being crowded by big boulders. They keep closing in on me. It’s not violent or scary, just oppressive somehow. An air of gloom and foreboding. Pretty obvious, I guess.”

“Really? And what might these boulders be?”

Haggarty had that look in his eye, the one that says I’m interested in what you’re saying but not necessarily because you’re talking sense.

“I’m trying to get on with my life. But things keep getting in my road.

Obstacles…” I trailed away.

He was nodding. “Sure, sure that could be right. But it might also be that you’re trying to hide something from yourself. And you won’t let it go.”

“Hide? What would I hide from myself?”

“Feelings? Recognition of yourself? You went through a rough time. For a while there you lost yourself. A year of your life erased, and you couldn’t connect the time before with the time after.”

I nodded. “I could remember who I was, but not recognise who I’d become?”

“Possibly.”

“You blokes never come off the fence,” I laughed. “But if you’re right, what do I do about it?”

“Nothing. You’re sane – as sane as me.” He ignored my raised eyebrow. “You’ve got a job – a strange one, mind – but you can fend for yourself. The fact you’ve got holes in your memory isn’t unusual. How many of us can recall every bit of our time for the last week, far less a year? From what you’ve told me, you’ve got plenty enough recollection. And a lot of stuff that’s better forgotten.”

“So I just put up with the dreams?”

“Sure, we all dream.” He said nothing for a moment, then leaned forward over the table. “Tell me a thing. What language did they speak… in the camp?”

“I hadn’t thought about it. All languages. There were Poles, Roma, French, Germans of course… lots of German Jews.”

“What language did you speak?”

“I suppose English and French. I took French at school and two years of it at Glasgow Uni.”

He looked down at my file and casually asked, “Sprechen sie Deutsch?”

“Ja, ein bisschen. Ich habe… Meine Gott!” I put my hand up to my mouth.

“Coming back, is it? Don’t be so surprised. Even though you had a hard time of it, you would have picked up the language around you. Like a kid does. I expect you have a good basic grasp.”

I wasn’t listening to him. I was lying in my cramped bunk whispering to the other men around me. We were discussing the news filtering through about the progress of the allies. The guards were getting edgy. The word was they were within fifty miles. It seemed impossible. Seemed wrong to hope. I tugged at the filthy bandage around my head to ease the pressure. I was asking them what they thought the guards would do. Would they kill us all to get rid of the evidence?