The Return of Captain John Emmett (14 page)

Laurence went on, 'It sounds terribly worthy, doesn't it? I really just want to get a look at these people.'

'You need to keep an open mind, that's all,' Charles said, slowly. 'Not because I personally doubt for a minute that things go on that would make your hair stand on end. In fact, from what I've heard, quite literally there's electric stuff and so on. Wouldn't be allowed on a chap in Wormwood Scrubs, yet their families empty their coffers for it.' He reached for the pickle jar. 'But what really bothers me is that you're not a very good actor. Never were. Seriously, old chap. Think you're so British, sang-froid and so on, when really your face is an open book. When you go in and meet Dr Caligari, you've got to be believing they might help Reginald.'

'Robert.'

'Just testing you.' Charles continued, unperturbed, 'Take the embarrassment of the unhinged Bertie Bartram off your hands. Possibly even make him better. Return him to the bosom of his relieved family. Or keep him safely out of it. You've got to look as if you hope they can work miracles, not as if you suspect them of negligence at best and atrocities at worst. You've got to forget everything those girls told you. I mean you're dealing with mind doctors. They'll be on to you in a minute. Well, half an hour, certainly. Probably charge you two guineas to boot.'

'Thank you,' Laurence said simply.

'Still,' Charles said after a moment's pause while he sawed an inch-thick slice of bread off the loaf, 'they're not entirely popular in Fairford by all accounts.'

'The landlord?' Laurence guessed.

'Well, I only had a brief chat. Explained we were down here to find a place for your brother, stricken war hero and all that. Turns out he—our landlord—was at Mons same time as my lot, and lost a nephew in the Glosters. Main gripe seems to be that Master Caligari—what is the man's name?'

'If you mean the son, it's George Chilvers.'

'Yes, well, young Chilvers didn't fight. He had been a keen cricketer, so was apparently healthy, and he's not a medic himself, so no reserved status. Bad feeling all round especially as most of the lads in these parts fought together and took a drubbing in '17.'

'But that doesn't mean that Holmwood itself is suspect,' Laurence said.

'No,' Charles conceded. 'Apparently one of the older attendants who made it back lost an arm. Worked at Holmwood before the war, when it was a place for mad gentlefolk—men and women. Came home, hero's welcome, medal, expected to get his place back as Dr C had promised, but young Chilvers laid him off three months later while Pa was away. Said he couldn't pull his weight. He—the ex-employee—believes he was got rid of because he didn't approve of young Chilvers' marriage.'

'But why on earth should a warder have an opinion, or anyone care if he did, about his employer's marriage plans?'

'Because, old chap, it seems that Chilvers married a wealthy heiress.'

And so?' There was obviously more to come.

And she had been a patient at Holmwood. That's how Chilvers Junior met her. She'd tried to kill herself.' Charles couldn't keep a triumphant note out of his voice. Laurence was astonished that he'd managed to keep this juicy morsel of gossip to himself for so long.

'Well, you were obviously a lot more alert after our drive than I was.'

'I'm hoping to find out more tomorrow. Our man, the disgruntled warder, usually comes in for a drink on Wednesday lunchtime. He's bringing a friend who still works there. So I plan to be in the bar with a generous wallet while you are interrogating the Chilverses.'

Despite sleeping so deeply before dinner, Laurence was pleasantly tired when he got back to his room. A small fire was burning and the thin curtains had been drawn, the water bowl emptied and his bed straightened. He opened the window a little, slipped between the cold sheets and slept until morning when he woke with an aching bladder and, loath to use the chamber pot, went briskly downstairs, the linoleum cold under his feet. On the way back up he crossed with Charles going downstairs with equal urgency.

Half an hour later after a agreeably silent meal of thick bacon, dark-yolked eggs and blood-pudding, they planned Laurence's day.

'Got the wind up yet?' asked Charles hopefully.

'Not really. Either I get some information or at least a general feel for the place or I make a complete fool of myself, get away quickly and never have to see them again.'

'Or they could take you for a maniac and strap you into a straitjacket,' Charles said benignly. 'But although the locals may grumble, the place is quite well thought of by the nobs. Landlord, the wonderfully named Cyril Trusty, by the way, tells me that they've had various scions of the great and good tucked up in there. Lord Verey's heir for a start, and the son of a bishop, though Trusty can't remember which one. Not much of a man for matters theological, our landlord.'

'And where do all these pillars of the establishment stand on shell-shock, then?'

'Well, I don't think Verey's been giving speeches in the Lords,' Charles said. 'Probably not too keen for the world to know the heir's of unsound mind.'

Laurence decided to walk up to Holmwood. It lay on the edge of the small town, the landlord had told them, sketching out a pencil map.

'You'll know it when you see it,' said Cyril Trusty. 'High walls and spikes on top. To stop them scarpering. Impale 'em instead. Doesn't look as old as it is. Bits added on. Solid. Paid a fortune to install proper asylum locks just before the war. Had to get a man from London. Ordinary locks won't do for lunatics. Ingenious type, your madman, they say.'

Laurence's appointment was at eleven and he set off along the riverbank with a quarter of an hour to spare. Where the path reached some water meadows he looked back to see the fine church standing on higher ground. It reminded him that the churchyard at Fairford was the last place anyone had admitted to seeing John Emmett. Which way had he gone then, Laurence wondered? Not across the meadows, obviously, as that would have led him straight back towards Holmwood, the direction he was taking now. Not due east, as he could see a wide river and no sign of a bridge. And if he'd turned down into the market place, along the main road and towards the station, surely he would have been identified, if not as himself, certainly as an outsider: a patient. Beyond the church lay farmland as far as Laurence could see, with a few stands of beech and a Dutch barn right on the horizon. John must have headed that way.

Presumably the main service on Christmas Day was Matins. John's disappearance could have been discovered no later than midday, once the church party got back to Holmwood at the latest, though the youth he'd stunned in order to escape must surely have raised the alert before then. That left three to four hours or so of decent daylight to look for him. But it also meant that John would soon have needed shelter.

Could he have known anyone in the area? Could someone have come to fetch him? It would have needed a car. Branch-line trains ran a reduced service on Christmas Day and, anyway, he was sure the police and Holmwood people would have checked at the station. But in concentrating on how, he was no nearer knowing why. Where was John going so determinedly and who could he have persuaded to help him if that was what he'd done? And why hadn't that person come forward?

He had a sense that he was almost on to something when the sight of what he guessed were the closed gates of Holmwood distracted him. A large iron bell pull was set in the wall beside a small nameplate. He couldn't see Cyril Trusty's promised spikes but he noticed that the small upper windows, at least, were barred like a prison. The rooms up there must be dark, he thought. The building he was approaching was tall and square, its roof shallow and, unusually for the area, he noted, of slate rather than Cotswold stone. That added to its slightly sombre appearance but the man who opened one gate a minute or so later had a perfectly pleasant expression on his face.

'Mr Bartram?'

He stood back to let Laurence through. Inside, an oval of grass was studded with a few fallen crab apples. A cream Bentley was pulled up by steps to the front door. It was one of the few cars Laurence could recognise. He thought of Charles, who was able to identify anything on wheels at any distance and by any visible part. Charles would love this car. Perhaps one of the eminent parents was visiting a son?

'Could you come this way, sir?'

A gravelled drive wound away behind a shrubbery but they were heading to a pillared porch on the left.

'Sorry.' Laurence caught up. 'Just admiring the motor car.'

'Mr George's car,' said his guide. 'He's a great man for cars. Dr Chilvers now, he still takes the trap if it's fine, but Mr George loves a beautiful bit of machinery.'

They came into a half-panelled hall. Stained glass in the door filtered a wash of colour on to the stone floor but the space was mostly lit by a skylight three storeys above. The building was absolutely quiet, smelling of beeswax and, faintly, of cooking. It took Laurence back instantly to his prep school. Wide stairs curved up to a landing while several doors led off the hall. The man knocked at the nearest one and opened it without waiting for a response. The room he entered was a large, book-lined study, a room to receive guests rather than treat patients.

Dr Chilvers looked more the rural doctor than hospital physician. Dressed in a shapeless country suit, he was a spare man in his sixties, his hair sandy grey and wavy above a pale, almost waxy face. As he stepped forward his eyes held Laurence's. His handshake was firm. The doctor's demeanour was presumably intended to put Laurence at ease but, perhaps because he was here under false pretences, Laurence felt decidedly on edge.

'Come in, come in.'

Chilvers indicated an upright leather chair, then sat down himself behind a wide and tidy desk.

'You came up last night? Stayed at the Regent? It's comfortable enough and the owner is a good man. Used to work for us, in fact, but took on the hotel when his late father became ill.'

'Actually, I'm at the Bull.'

Chilvers looked surprised. 'The Bull?' he said, as if, although he recalled it, it was an effort to remember where it was. 'Well, there's not much alternative, when the Regent is full, I suppose. We do have a couple of guest rooms here but we tend to keep them for family. Of patients, that is. Especially ladies travelling alone or where a visit seems likely to be distressing.'

Laurence nodded.

'Did you come by train?' Chilvers asked.

'No. I motored down with a friend.'

'Quite so. Quite so.'

Again Laurence had the feeling that it would have been better to have conformed to expectations.

'You're here about your brother,' Dr Chilvers said in a slightly brisker tone of voice. He put on his spectacles and pulled over a sheaf of paper from the right-hand side of his desk. The first page was blank.

'I should tell you at the outset that at present we have no room at all. We take a maximum of eight patients. This permits us to give highly specialised care, adapted—I think I may say with confidence, very finely adapted—to individual patients' needs. However, I would anticipate a vacancy, possibly two, in the very near future. One patient returning home. Very much improved. The other into longer-term convalescent care. We could be looking at—' He reached for a large morocco leather diary, opened it, leafed through a few pages. 'Certainly before New Year. Late December, I would imagine. Would that be suitable?'

Chilvers evidently mistook for something else Laurence's look of alarm at the conversation's swift and specific direction, because he continued, 'Of course we haven't discussed your brother or what we could do to assist his condition, but I feel it is important not to hold out any false hopes for an immediate solution.' His eyes met Laurence's. 'Families come to me, some accustomed through rank or wealth to resolving a problem with some immediacy. But in these cases a swift and satisfactory outcome is not always possible. Despair is not susceptible to the usual processes of society. It is not just those who enter here but their families who may find their circumstances have very much changed. We help them all adapt.'

Chilvers had made this speech before, Laurence was sure. He nodded again, then he found himself saying aloud what he was thinking. 'It sometimes feels as if the fixed points have moved. It's as if we can't be sure how things might fit together any more.'

He spoke quite urgently and stopped, suddenly embarrassed, but Chilvers did not seem to find it odd.

'I think the essential aspects of human nature remain unchanged,' the doctor responded. 'Love, fear, jealousy, indolence, opportunism, hope—even nobility of spirit—but the relationship of one to another may have altered; some aspects may have moved to the fore, others have receded. Of course for every man whose response is to tread carefully, recalculating those fixed points,' he paused and looked at Laurence, 'others abandon it all and live lives of remarkable recklessness.

'It seems to me,' he continued, 'that one might argue that man has evolved to be a warrior; indeed, few generations have escaped that role. Of course, I was not there,' he gave a respectful nod to Laurence, 'but I judge, from speaking at length to many of the recent war's more invisibly injured, that what was hard for them was a lack of clarity—in orders, aims, even as to whether engagements had been won or lost, and the constant anticipation of random catastrophe. The realisation that the traditional skills of the top-class fighting man—strength, courage, dexterity with his weapon and so on—might not be rewarded, not even by a heroic death, but rather, that a man's fate depended almost entirely on the inequities of fortune. It exploded profound understandings of what it meant to be a soldier.'

Laurence stared out of the window where crimson Virginia creeper blocked a full view of what was obviously a lawn beyond. After a matter of probably a few seconds but which felt like several minutes, Chilvers seemed to throw him a lifeline:

'Have you read your Homer?'

'At school.' However, he'd known men who had their Homer with them on the battlefield. He'd heard less talk of Homer's inspirational qualities as the war ground on.