Among the Mad (6 page)

Setting the two boxes on the table, he began to attach
tubing to a demijohn. Had an onlooker been observing the man, he might have
been reminded of the tale of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and might have felt
concern at the recollection. Having completed construction of what was to be
something of an experiment, the man pulled at the string around his diary,
opened the leather-bound book again and took up his pencil.

I was good at something, once. I was good at
something, one thing, that could be of service. But they don’t want to know
now. I’ll just have to show them. Toil and trouble, toil and trouble.

THREE

Maisie slotted her key into the lock and opened the
outside door to the mansion in Fitzroy Square that housed her oneroom office on
the first floor. She closed the door behind her and walked upstairs with a
certain weariness, but stopped to listen when she heard voices coming from the
office. At first she was concerned, but then a child’s squealing laughter
echoed across the room, and a young voice said, “Chase us, Dad, chase me and
Bobby.” She wondered why Billy was at work—not only was Boxing Day a holiday,
but they often only worked a half day on a Saturday, unless a significant
assignment demanded their round-the-clock attention. And he had his children
with him.

“Hello, Billy—and young Billy, and Bobby.” Maisie
smiled as she entered the office, taking off her hat and scarf, but keeping her
coat on. “It’s cold in here, Billy—why didn’t you put on the gas fire? You
don’t want the boys catching cold.”

Billy had been on the floor playing with his sons, but
stood up, blushing, when Maisie came in. “You two play with your toys while I’m
talking to Miss Dobbs—and what do you say, again, for the presents she bought
you?”

The two boys stood up side by side and in unison said,
“Thank you, Miss Dobbs,” with young Billy adding, “I really liked my fire
engine!”

Maisie tousled the wheaten-hued hair of each boy in
turn and told them they should play with their toys where the carpet gave way
to wood. “Your fire engine will go faster there.” She turned to Billy. “Come
on, let’s have a cup of tea and you can tell me what’s going on—if you want
to.”

Over tea Billy explained that Doreen had become more
withdrawn as the festive season approached, and though they had never been able
to afford a big Christmas Day, as a rule they would try to put by enough money
for a roast chicken, and a gift each for the boys. This year she had taken
almost no interest at all, except for placing a small collection of toys for
Lizzie under the tree, toys that Billy tried to remove so as not to upset the
boys.

“She’s just a shadow at times, Miss, a shadow. I
thought over the summer she’d picked up a bit, that we were getting through it.
I mean, I miss my little Lizzie too, but we’ve got two cracking boys here and
they need their mum. I tell you, Miss, I come home of an evening and sometimes she’s
just sitting there, staring. The stove’s gone down, she’s got some dressmaking
half done and I have to sort of get her going again, you know, help her to her
feet, show her how to do this or that. There’s days when you’d think she was
right as rain, then it comes again. She’s not eating much either, and I’ve
always made sure there was food on the table. We might not live in
clover—there’s folk round our way making do in terrible conditions, rats from
the river up and everywhere—but we always kept the house nice, kept the boys
clean and going to school. Now it’s like trying to stop someone falling down a
big black hole.”

“Oh, Billy, I am so sorry.”

“So, I didn’t think you’d be here until Monday, and
we’d nowhere else to go, because I wanted to give Doreen a bit of a rest in
peace and quiet, and—to tell you the truth—I wanted to get the boys out of the
house, away from it all for a bit. The museums on Exhibition Road are closed
today—and I wanted to take them to the Science Museum, you know, to that new children’s
gallery they’ve opened, with all the little machines for the kids to see how a
steam train works and what happens down a mine, that sort of thing. But the
office was here, so after we’d been for a walk to look in the shop windows, I
brought them back for a bit of a play before we went home to Shoreditch.”

“That’s all right, Billy. You and the boys can stay
here as long as you like today.” Maisie paused. “Has Doreen seen a doctor? Or
the nurse?”

“Well, she went when we first lost Lizzie, but it’s hard
to get her to go anywhere.”

“But she might need a tonic, something to give her a
bit of a lift. And she needs to be eating properly.”

“I bought a tonic for her, and as for food, as I said,
she’s eating like a sparrow, and it’s not as if Doreen ever carried weight.” He
put his hand to his forehead and rubbed it from side to side. “I tell you,
Miss, it scares me sometimes, reminds me of me when I came back from the
war—reminds me of men I saw in the hospital, you know, the ones you weren’t
supposed to see before they were sent off to another special hospital in the
plain black ambulance. There’s times she’s got that look in her eyes, as if she
were staring across an ocean.” He paused again. “And every time she’s like that
now, I think about the bloke on Christmas Eve. That was just how he looked, out
into the distance, as if there was no one else there.”

“I think she needs to see the doctor again, Billy.
She’s suffering and she should see someone.”

“I’ve got the bonus money. I thought I’d put it away
for Canada, you know, to save for the passage, but I’ll put it toward Doreen
getting better.”

“Do it soon, Billy.”

“I will, Miss.” Billy looked across the room to his
boys, who were making motor noises as they pushed their toys back and forth.
Then he brought his attention back to Maisie. “I didn’t think you’d be here
today, Miss—weren’t you going to stay with your dad until tomorrow?”

“Yes, I was, but I was brought back by D.I.
Stratton—and this is confidential, mind: Special Branch is involved.”

Billy exhaled with a low whistle.

“I know—if they’re on the job, it’s serious. A threat
has been received by the Home Secretary and my name is mentioned in the letter.
In addition, it is likely that the threat has some connection to the man with
the Mills Bomb who committed the crime of suicide on Christmas Eve.”

“Can’t get that out of my mind, Miss. At first I was a
bit scared, I’ll be honest with you. For a minute I thought I was back over
there. But there’s Doreen and the boys to think of, so I can’t be letting
myself slip now, can I?”

“No, you can’t.” Maisie paused, thinking of the time,
two years before, when Billy’s own slide into the abyss was caused by the
lingering pain from his war wounds. “I’ve been seconded to work on the case
with Special Branch,” she went on, “so I’m going to have to depend upon you to
keep our present customers happy. I’m to meet with Stratton each day, though
you and I can start here in the mornings to go through work in hand.”

“Right you are, Miss.”

“But about the man in the street—we both believe he’d
been a soldier, wounded in the legs, and it’s likely he’d been shell-shocked to
some degree.”

“I would say so.”

“So, who was he? The police don’t seem able to get to
the bottom of it, and I would like to have a name as soon as possible. If we
know who he is, we can find out who he knows, then with luck we can find our
way to the man who sent the threat.”

“What will he do, the man?”

“I don’t know—he wasn’t specific. But he said he would
wait forty-eight hours for his requests to be met, which means we now have only
a very limited time to find a very angry or unhappy person in London who could
be mentally ill.”

“That doesn’t narrow the field down much.”

“I know. I sometimes wonder who’s sane.”

Their conversation was interrupted as a squabble broke
out among the boys.

“Now then, now then, what’s all this about?” Billy
moved toward his sons and held each of them gently but firmly by the arm.
“You’re brothers, you’re not supposed to fight—that’s how wars start, with
people fighting over the little things.”

Blaming started as one boy pointed at the other, and
vice versa, but Billy soon calmed the situation and the brothers made up,
shaking hands like little men.

“We’d better be going, Miss. They’ll be hungry by the
time we get home.”

Maisie helped Billy put the boys’ coats on, winding
scarves around their necks and slipping mittens onto little hands that would
only too readily feel the cold. As she pulled a woolen hat down on young
Billy’s head, she saw his father take out a handkerchief and wipe Bobby’s
mouth.

Billy saw her watching him and shrugged. “I hope he
gets over this soon. He’s going on five now, you know, and this dribbling
business started when we came home after the hop-picking. I reckon it’s to do
with his mum. She used to give them cuddles a lot, but now she don’t. I’ve seen
him run to her, but she just pushes him away, same with young Bill here.” Billy
spoke softly while the children claimed their toys. “I try to give him a
cuddle, when I see it happen, but I’m not there when they come in from school.
He sits there with his fingers in his mouth and before you know where you are,
the front of his cardigan is all wet and matted.”

Maisie was thoughtful. “The best thing for now is not
to draw attention to it. Just keep him dry so that he doesn’t get chapped in
this weather. You’re doing the right thing in trying to step in when Doreen
can’t, but it just points to the fact that she needs to see someone, as soon as
possible.”

Billy sighed. “We’ll be off now. See you on Monday
morning, Miss.”

Maisie bid farewell to Billy and the boys, and walked
to the window to watch them make their way across the square, each boy holding
on to his father’s hand as they skipped alongside him. Although she had been
aware of time passing, and the letter-writer’s deadline looming ever closer,
she understood that Billy needed to talk about his wife and the threat her
state of mind represented to the well-being of their family. Now Maisie knew
she needed to think. She turned back into the room and pulled the armchair
closer to the gas fire.

Sitting down, she gazed into the flaming jets,
reflecting upon Bobby Beale and his distress as his mother receded into
herself. She wanted to support the family as much as she could, but knew her
efforts must be balanced with an employer-employee relationship with Billy, and
must not compromise his pride. But she kept going back to the child and his
physical response to emotional disappointment. Of course, one couldn’t draw too
many conclusions from a single serendipitous event, but she could not help but
reflect upon the days following recuperation from her own war wounds. Once well
enough, she had felt drawn to return to nursing, and because of the wounds
suffered by her sweetheart in the same incident, she decided to work in a
secure hospital caring for men whose minds were ravaged by war.

Now, still staring into the rasping white-hot gas
jets, she saw once more the twisted bodies, muscular responses not to physical
injury but to mental anguish. She saw the eyes rolled back or staring into the
distance, the constant weeping, the uncontrolled reflexes. There were men who
cried, those who could not eat, those who would cause themselves injury, as if
to feel, physically, the wounds that lay in their souls. And there were those
who would sit alongside a wall, banging their heads against the hard surface
again and again and again while saliva streamed from their open mouths, as if
to mirror the cavernous hell they looked into from the time consciousness
claimed them in the morning, until nightfall, when a sedative would send them
into oblivion.

Maisie came to her feet and walked across the room to
a chest of small drawers that resembled something one might find in a pharmacy.
She opened a drawer and flicked through the cards until she found the one she
wanted. Tapping it against her hand, she walked back to the desk, picked up the
telephone receiver and dialed one of two numbers listed on the card. She
continued looking at the card until her call was answered. Only someone close
to her would have heard her whispering, Please be there, please be there,
please be there . . .

Maisie started when the telephone was answered. “Yes,
is Dr. Anthony Lawrence on duty today, by any slight chance? Oh, good. May I
speak to him, please?”

Maisie waited while the doctor was summoned, running
the telephone cord through her fingers as the seconds ticked by.

“Lawrence here.”

“Oh, Dr. Lawrence, I’m glad I’ve caught you,
especially on Boxing Day. I don’t know if you remember me, my name is Maisie
Dobbs—I was a staff nurse on Oak ward at the Clifton Hospital in 1918, then
sister on Ash, and—”

“You’re the one who left to go back to Cambridge.
Sustained a nasty head wound in France, if I remember correctly.”

“Yes, that’s right.”