by John Wyndham
They shook hands.
‘You’ll have had a long drive,’ said the doctor. ‘I expect you’d like a drink. Dinner won’t be for half an hour yet.’
The younger man accepted, and sat down. Presently, he said:
‘It was kind of you to invite me here, Dr Harshom.’
‘Not really altruistic,’ the doctor told him. ‘It is more satisfactory to talk than to correspond by letter. Moreover, I am an inquisitive man recently retired from a very humdrum country practice, Mr Trafford, and on the rare occasions that I do catch the scent of a mystery my curiosity urges me to follow it up.’ He, too, sat down.
‘Mystery?’ repeated the young man.
‘Mystery,’ said the doctor.
The young man took a sip of his whisky.
‘My inquiry was such as one might receive from – well, from any solicitor,’ he said.
‘But you are not a solicitor, Mr Trafford.’
‘No,’ Colin Trafford admitted, ‘I am not.’
‘But you do have a very pressing reason for your inquiry. So there is the mystery. What pressing, or indeed leisurely, reason could you have for inquiries about a person whose existence you yourself appear to be uncertain – and of whom Somerset House has no record?’
The young man regarded him more carefully, as he went on:
‘How do I know that? Because an inquiry there would be your natural first step. Had you found a birth-certificate, you would not have pursued the course you have. In fact, only a curiously determined person would have persisted in a quest for someone who had no official existence. So, I said to myself: When this persistence in the face of reason addresses itself to me I will try to resolve the mystery.’
The young man frowned.
‘You imply that you said that before you had my letter?’
‘My dear fellow, Harshom is not a common name – an unusual corruption of Harvesthome, if you are interested in such things – and, indeed, I never yet heard of a Harshom who was not traceably connected with the rest of us. And we do, to some extent, keep in touch. So, quite naturally, I think, the incursion of a young man entirely unknown to any of us, but persistently tackling us one after another with his inquiries regarding an unidentifiable Harshom, aroused our interest. Since it seemed that I myself came low on your priority list I decided to make a few inquiries of my own. I –’
‘But why should you judge yourself low on a list,’ Colin Trafford interrupted.
‘Because you are clearly a man of method. In this case, geographical method. You began your inquiries with Harshoms in the Central London area, and worked outwards, until you are now in Herefordshire. There are only two further-flung Harshoms now on your list, Peter, down in the toe of Cornwall, and Harold, a few miles from Durham – am I right?’
Colin Trafford nodded, with a trace of reluctance.
‘You are,’ he admitted.
Dr Harshom smiled, a trifle smugly.
‘I thought so. There is –’ he began, but the young man interrupted him again.
‘When you answered my letter, you invited me here, but you evaded my question,’ he remarked.
‘That is true. But I have answered it now by insisting that the person you seek not only does not exist, but never did exist.’
‘But if you’re quite satisfied on that, why ask me here at all?’
‘Because –’ The doctor broke off at the sound of a gong. ‘Dear me, Phillips allows one just ten minutes to wash. Let me show you your room, and we can continue over dinner.’
A little later when the soup was before them, he resumed:
‘You were asking me why I invited you here. I think the answer is that since you feel entitled to be curious about a hypothetical relative of mine, I feel no less entitled to be curious about the motives that impel your curiosity. Fair enough? – as they say.’
‘Dubious,’ replied Mr Trafford after consideration. ‘To inquire into my motives would, I admit, be not unreasonable if you knew this person to exist – but, since you assure me she does not exist, the question of my motives surely becomes academic.’
‘My interest is academic, my dear fellow, but none the less real. Perhaps we might progress a little if I might put the problem as it appears from my point of view?’
Trafford nodded. The doctor went on:
‘Well, now, this is the situation: Some seven or eight months ago a young man, unknown to any of us, begins a series of approaches to my relatives. His concern, he says, is to learn the whereabouts, or to gain any clues which may help him to trace the whereabouts of a lady called Ottilie Harshom. She was born, he believes, in 1928, though it could be a few years to either side of that – and she may, of course, have adopted another surname through marriage.
‘In his earlier letters there is an air of confidence suggesting his feeling that the matter will easily be dealt with, but as one Harshom after another fails to identify the subject of his inquiries his tone becomes less confident though not less determined. In one or two directions he does learn of young Harshom ladies – none of them called Ottilie, by the way, but he nevertheless investigates them with care. Can it be, perhaps, that he is as uncertain about the first name as about everything else concerning her? But apparently none of these ladies fulfils his requirements, for he presses on. In the face of unqualified unsuccess, his persistence in leaving no Harshom stone unturned begins to verge upon the unreasonable. Is he an eccentric, with a curious obsession?
‘Yet by all the evidence he was – until the spring of 1953, at any rate, a perfectly normal young man. His full name is Colin Wayland Trafford. He was born in 1921, in Solihull, the son of a solicitor. He went to Chartowe School 1934. Enlisted in the Army 1939. Left it, with the rank of Captain 1945. Went up to Cambridge. Took a good degree in Physics 1949. Joined Electro-Physical Industries on the managerial side that same year. Married Della Stevens 1950. Became a widower 1951. Received injuries in a laboratory demonstration accident early in 1953. Spent the following five weeks in St Merryn’s Hospital. Began his first approaches to members of the Harshom family for information regarding Ottilie Harshom about a month after his discharge from hospital.’
Colin Trafford said coldly:
‘You are very fully informed, Dr Harshom.’
The doctor shrugged slightly.
‘Your own information about the Harshoms must by now be almost exhaustive. Why should you resent some of us knowing something of you?’
Colin did not reply to that. He dropped his gaze, and appeared to study the tablecloth. The doctor resumed:
‘I said just now – has he an obsession? The answer has appeared to be yes – since some time last March. Prior to that, there seems to have been no inquiry whatever regarding Miss Ottilie Harshom.
‘Now when I had reached this point I began to feel that I was on the edge of a more curious mystery than I had expected.’ He paused. ‘I’d like to ask you, Mr Trafford, had you ever been aware of the name Ottilie Harshom before January last?’
The young man hesitated. Then he said, uneasily:
‘How can one possibly answer that? One encounters a myriad names on all sides. Some are remembered, some seem to get filed in the subconscious, some apparently fail to register at all. It’s unanswerable.’
‘Perhaps so. But we have the curious situation that before January Ottilie Harshom was apparently not on your mental map, but since March she has, without any objective existence, dominated it. So I ask myself, what happened between January and March …?
‘Well, I practise medicine. I have certain connexions, I am able to learn the external facts. One day late in January you were invited, along with several other people, to witness a demonstration in one of your Company’s laboratories. I was not told the details, I doubt if I would understand them if I were: the atmosphere around the higher flights of modern physics is so rarefied – but I gather that during this demonstration something went amiss. There was an explosion, or an implosion, or perhaps a matter of a few atoms dri
ven berserk by provocation, in any case, the place was wrecked. One man was killed out-right, another died later, several were injured. You yourself were not badly hurt. You did get a few cuts, and bruises – nothing serious, but you were knocked out – right out …
‘You were, indeed, so thoroughly knocked out that you lay unconscious for twenty-four days …
‘And when at last you did come round you displayed symptoms of considerable confusion – more strongly, perhaps, than would be expected in a patient of your age and type, and you were given sedatives. The following night you slept restlessly, and showed signs of mental distress. In particular you called again and again for someone named Ottilie.
‘The hospital made what inquiries they could, but none of your friends or relatives knew of anyone called Ottilie associated with you.
‘You began to recover, but it was clear you had something heavily on your mind. You refused to reveal what it was, but you did ask one of the doctors whether he could have his secretary try to find the name Ottilie Harshom in any directory. When it could not be found, you became depressed. However, you did not raise the matter again – at least, I am told you did not – until after your discharge when you set out on this quest for Ottilie Harshom, in which, in spite of completely negative results, you continue.
‘Now, what must one deduce from that?’ He paused to look across the table at his guest, left eyebrow raised.
‘That you are even better informed than I thought,’ Colin said, without encouragement. ‘If I were your patient your inquiries might be justified, but as I am not, and have not the least intention of consulting you professionally, I regard them as intrusive, and possibly unethical.’
If he had expected his host to be put out he was disappointed. The doctor continued to regard him with interested detachment.
‘I’m not yet entirely convinced that you ought not to be someone’s patient,’ he remarked. ‘However, let me tell you why it was I, rather than another Harshom, who was led to make these inquiries. Perhaps you may then think them less impertinent. But I am going to preface that with a warning against false hopes. You must understand that the Ottilie Harshom you are seeking does not exist and has not existed. That is quite definite.
‘Nevertheless, there is one aspect of this matter which puzzled me greatly, and that I cannot bring myself to dismiss as coincidence. You see, the name Ottilie Harshom was not entirely unknown to me. No –’ He raised his hand. ‘– I repeat, no false hopes. There is no Ottilie Harshom, but there has been – or, rather, there have in the past been, two Ottilie Harshoms.’
Colin Trafford’s resentful manner had entirely dropped away. He sat, leaning a little forward, watching his host intently.
‘But,’ the doctor emphasized, ‘it was all long ago. The first was my grandmother. She was born in 1832, married Grandfather Harshom in 1861, and died in 1866. The other was my sister: she, poor little thing, was born in 1884 and died in 1890 …’
He paused again. Colin made no comment. He went on:
‘I am the only survivor of this branch so it is not altogether surprising that the others have forgotten there was ever such a name in the family, but when I heard of your inquiries I said to myself: There is something out of order here. Ottilie is not the rarest of names, but on any scale of popularity it would come a very long way down indeed; and Harshom is a rare name. The odds against these two being coupled by mere chance must be some quite astronomical figure. Something so large that I cannot believe it is chance. Somewhere there must be a link, some cause …
‘So, I set out to discover if I could find out why this young man Trafford should have hit upon this improbable conjunction of names – and, seemingly, become obsessed by it. – You would not care to help me at this point?’
Colin continued to look at him, but said nothing.
‘No? Very well. When I had all the available data assembled the conclusion I had to draw was this: that as a result of your accident you underwent some kind of traumatic experience, an experience of considerable intensity as well as unusual quality. Its intensity one deduces from your subsequent fixation of purpose; the unusual quality partly from the pronounced state of confusion in which you regained consciousness, and partly from the consistency with which you deny recollecting anything from the moment of the accident until you awoke.
‘Now, if that were indeed a blank, why did you awake in such a confused condition? There must have been some recollection to cause it. And if there was something akin to ordinary dream images, why this refusal to speak of them? There must have been, therefore, some experience of great personal significance wherein the name Ottilie Harshom was a very potent element indeed.
‘Well, Mr Trafford. Is the reasoning good, the conclusion valid? Let me suggest, as a physician, that such things are a burden that should be shared.’
Colin considered for some little time, but when he still did not speak the doctor added:
‘You are almost at the end of the road, you know. Only two more Harshoms on the list, and I assure you they won’t be able to help – so what then?’
Colin said, in a flat voice:
‘I expect you are right. You should know. All the same, I must see them. There might be something, some clue … I can’t neglect the least possibility … I had just a little hope when you invited me here. I knew that you had a family …’
‘I had,’ the doctor said, quietly. ‘My son Malcolm was killed racing at Brooklands in 1927. He was unmarried. My daughter married, but she had no children. She was killed in a raid on London in 1941 … So there it ends …’ He shook his head slowly.
‘I am sorry,’ said Colin. Then: ‘Have you a picture of your daughter that I may see?’
‘She wasn’t of the generation you are looking for.’
‘I realize that, but nevertheless …’
‘Very well – when we return to the study. Meanwhile, you’ve not yet said what you think of my reasoning.’
‘Oh, it was good.’
‘But you are still disinclined to talk about it? Well, I am not. And I can still go a little further. Now, this experience of yours cannot have been of a kind to cause a feeling of shame or disgust, or you would be trying to sublimate it in some way, which manifestly you are not. Therefore it is highly probable that the cause of your silence is fear. Something makes you afraid to discuss the experience. You are not, I am satisfied, afraid of facing it; therefore your fear must be of the consequences of communicating it. Consequences possibly to someone else, but much more probably to yourself …’
Colin went on regarding him expressionlessly for a moment. Then he relaxed a little and leaned back in his chair. For the first time he smiled faintly.
‘You do get there, in the end, don’t you, Doctor? But do you mind if I say that you make quite Germanically heavy-going of it? And the whole thing is so simple, really. It boils down to this. If a man, any man, claims to have had an experience which is outside all normal experience, it will be inferred, will it not, that he is in some way not quite a normal man? In that case, he cannot be entirely relied upon to react to a particular situation as a normal man should – and if his reactions may be non-normal, how can he be really dependable? He may be, of course – but would it not be sounder policy to put authority into the hands of a man about whom there is no doubt? Better to be on the safe side. So he is passed over. His failure to make the expected step is not unnoticed. A small cloud, a mere wrack, of doubt and risk begins to gather above him. It is tenuous, too insubstantial for him to disperse, yet it casts a faint, persistent shadow.
‘There is, I imagine, no such thing as a normal human being, but there is a widespread feeling that there ought to be. Any organization has a conception of “the type of man we want here” which is regarded as the normal for its purposes. So every man there attempts more or less to accord to it – organizational man, in fact – and anyone who diverges more than slightly from the type in either his public, or in his private life does so to the peril o
f his career. There is, as you said, fear of the results to myself: it is, as I said, so simple.’
‘True enough,’ the doctor agreed. ‘But you have not taken any care to disguise the consequence of the experience – the hunt for Ottilie Harshom.’
‘I don’t need to. Could anything be more reassuringly normal than “man seeks girl”? I have invented a background which has quite satisfied any interested friends – and even several Harshoms.’
‘I dare say. – None of them being aware of the “coincidence” in the conjunction of “Ottilie” with “Harshom”. But I am.’
He waited for Colin Trafford to make some comment on that. When none came, he went on:
‘Look, my boy. You have this business very heavily on your mind. There are only the two of us here. I have no links whatever with your firm. My profession should be enough safeguard for your confidence, but I will undertake a special guarantee if you like. It will do you good to unburden – and I should like to get to the bottom of this …’
But Colin shook his head.
‘You won’t, you know. Even if I were to tell you, you’d only be the more mystified – as I am.’
‘Two heads are better than one. We could try,’ said the doctor, and waited.
Colin considered again, for some moments. Then he lifted his gaze, and met the doctor’s steadily.
‘Very well then. I’ve tried. You shall try. But first I would like to see a picture of your daughter. Have you one taken when she was about twenty-five?’
They left the table and went back to the study. The doctor waved Colin to a chair, and crossed to a corner cupboard. He took out a small pile of cardboard mounts and looked through them. He selected three, gazed at them thoughtfully for a few seconds, and then handed them over. While Colin studied them he busied himself with pouring brandy from a decanter.
