Elizabeth Speller - The Return of Captain John Emmett

Laurence had no cousins but through Charles had observed their mysterious degree of social penetration.

And for God's sake keep him out of the Artists' Rifles; being mad is practicaly a prerequisite for joining.'

In the end Charles had suggested an empire regiment. 'That's where a lot of oddbals ended up.' They had debated the merits of the Canadian and South African Expeditionary Forces.

'Anyway, Chilvers was far too old for service, even as a medic,' Laurence had said, 'and his son was never a soldier, and Holmwood's a tiny place, and it's not as if the existing patients have a committee of acceptance. It's not White's, Charles.'

He was finding that dissembling was moving from a necessity to something approaching a game with someone to share it with. Charles had given him a long, appraising look.

'Queen Victoria's Own Madras Sappers and Miners,' Laurence now said confidently to Chilvers.

'Do you have a connection with India?'

'Yes,' said Laurence. At least my sister— our sister—lives out there with her family.' It was strange to be teling the truth, briefly.

'And you have other siblings?'

'No.'

'Parents?'

'Both dead.'

Chilvers wrote carefuly, his expression attentive. Laurence tried to ignore a pang of guilt.

'Your brother is unmarried?'

'Yes.'

'This must be quite a burden for you,' Chilvers observed matter-of-factly. 'The sole responsibility for an invalid is never easy.'

'I have an aunt,' Laurence said. He needed the aunt to provide a place where Robert was currently domiciled.

'Any ilnesses before the war?' he asked.

'We both survived diphtheria as children,' Laurence said, letting the imaginary brother share his infections. 'Otherwise just childhood diseases.' He was becoming more relaxed, soothed by the anodyne questions.

'Any sign of previous mental instability? In your brother's case or with any other family member?'

Laurence was briefly surprised; it was not as if shel-shock was hereditary.

'No.'

They went on to discuss Robert's general background and then his present condition and treatment, al mapped out for Laurence by Eleanor Bolitho. Laurence had learned it by heart and hoped it didn't sound too pat.

'I should warn you,' said the doctor, 'not to expect miracles and not to be disappointed if there are setbacks. What we sometimes see is that when a patient is taken out of his usual environment to this place where there are few expectations of him, least of al to be the man he once was, and with our regime, good food, plenty of rest and encouragement to move beyond his war experiences, he visibly improves, sometimes quite fast. Splendid for his loved ones, of course. But sometimes the cost of dismantling the habits he may have assembled to help him bear the unbearable—abandoning him unarmed, as it were, to confront his memories—may leave him vulnerable. We've had men who arrive here refusing to sleep, or who never speak. We have men who compulsively folow exact and occasionaly quite outlandish routines: who won't remove soiled clothes or bathe. One, I recal, kept his ears plugged with wool and Vaseline jely. Al of these protections are barriers; al serve to keep them as solitaries. We try to equip a man with better ways to confront the terrors he suffers but there is nevertheless a dangerous period of raw, unprotected insight.

'There was a mother once whom I particularly recal; her son came in as a living body inhabited by a dead man. He lay in the dark, mute, apparently unhearing, curled up, facing the wal. He responded to neither heat nor cold, pinprick, bright light nor sudden noise. To be honest, I thought it was a hopeless case. He was very frail: his temperature was always abnormaly low, his pulse slow; we wrapped him in blankets and hot-water bottles, and we chafed his hands. We fed him by tube.

'We did everything for this patient. My son urged me to have him removed to a larger, probably more permanent institution, but his mother begged me to keep him. She didn't want him moved again. She sat there, stroking him, talking to him. About his dog, about fishing. She brought the seasons into the room: leaves fel, snow drifted, corn ripened in the fields, the pond at home dried up, the barley was gathered in, the wind brought down an old barn. She continualy changed the photographs by his bed. She put books there for him, which she selected carefuly and replaced every so often. Sometimes they were children's picture books, some were boys'

adventure stories. One was about Captain Scott's expedition, I recolect.

'And slowly, over months and months, he improved. Astonishingly, he improved. His senses came back. His wits came back. He began to eat, to talk, to read and to smile when he saw his mother. To remember. Eventualy she suggested he should be alowed home for a weekend and we agreed. He cut his throat in his mother's bed on his first evening back. He wrote one line to say he simply couldn't live with his memories. His mother told me she sometimes wished he'd been kiled outright in Flanders or that she'd accepted him as he was before we treated him.'

Chilvers was obviously stil moved by the case. He looked drawn and tired. Laurence felt uncomfortable, hearing this tragic account in response to his own lies.

Chilvers took off his spectacles and started to polish them. 'In a little while, I shal get my son to escort you round the premises and explain a little of how we treat such cases as you go along. I find that is usualy the most effective way of covering al the possibilities.' He rang a smal bel. 'But in the meantime, no doubt you have questions of your own?'

Laurence struggled to articulate the apparently innocent but potentialy fruitful enquiries he'd planned with first Eleanor and then Charles's help, and the questions that he felt Chilvers would expect him to ask if he realy had a brother in need of care. For reasons he could not put his finger on, their discussion had unsettled him. He also knew that he had come prepared for a charlatan, even a sadist, and Chilvers, although perhaps a little certain in his ideas, was neither. Confronted with Chilvers'

insights, and given that the man had naturaly enough heard plenty of stories of war from his patients, Laurence was acutely aware that it was he who was in fact the impostor.

'By the way,' the doctor said, 'I wondered how you heard of us. I assume it was a personal recommendation?'

Laurence flailed. 'Yes.' Could he name the Emmetts? Would the family of a runaway suicide have suggested he put his brother in the same institution? Suddenly a conversation he'd had yesterday came to him.

'It might have been Lord Verey, I think. I met him at a dinner. For charity,' he improvised. 'And I mentioned Robert only towards the end.'

The room was silent. Laurence thought that he probably cut an implausible figure as a dining companion for the great and good.

Then the doctor said slowly, 'As I believe I mentioned earlier, we are always discreet, but I think Lieutenant Verey's case—a very sad situation—could be considered one of our successes. His physical injuries were so severe that I thought at first his state of mind was entirely contingent on those limitations. It was also obvious that he would need virtualy ful-time nursing care and I had some doubts as to whether he would be suitable for Holmwood at al. We pursue quite... vigorous treatment here and to have cases that are not susceptible to any kind of improvement is bad for the morale of the others, quite apart from taking up a bed that might be better used by another. But his lordship was very insistent—perhaps at that stage he felt a confidence only a father could—and he was happy to support the hiring of extra nursing staff. Young Verey improved more than I could ever have hoped.'

Before Laurence could respond, and while he was stil trying to disguise his relief that his improvisation had succeeded, there was a knock on the door and a man, probably in his middle thirties, came in. Though the newcomer was slimmer and lighter-haired than Dr Chilvers, the similarity was such that Laurence realised it must be his son. There was a certain formality in their response to each other but presumably that was because Laurence was there.