Cards of Identity

by Nigel Dennis

  ‘I’ve seen her at surgery.’

  ‘Oh yes. Surgery is where doctors collect, is it not? We don’t have it in psychiatry, you see. I suppose you often have quite long chats with the doctors at this so-called surgery?’

  ‘I’m much too busy to talk, I assure you.’

  ‘Indeed. And while you and the doctors are busying yourselves, may I ask what Mrs Chirk does?’

  ‘She keeps her seat, of course. Until I call her.’

  ‘Ah-hah. A back-seat?’

  ‘Any seat she can get. Like all the others, she moves gradually to the front.’

  ‘Dear me, how trying! Tell me, is she always Mrs Chirk?’

  ‘Sometimes she answers to Finch,’ confessed the nurse, blushing.

  ‘And you resist that, do you? You balk at Finch?’

  ‘Well, records are records, aren’t they? What’s Chirk can’t be Finch.’

  ‘That’s a point, of course. Excuse me, but may I ask what was your mother’s name?’

  ‘The same as mine, doctor.’

  ‘Why, yes, no doubt. But it meant something different, did it not? I mean, when you think of your mother’s name you don’t automatically feel: “That’s me too”.’

  ‘Certainly not.’

  ‘In other words, despite the surface likeness, your name is not the same as your mother’s?’

  ‘I suppose it isn’t, yet I had never seen the question that way.’

  ‘Well, it’s not too late. Tell me, did this name of your mother’s in any way resemble Finch? Was it Lynch or Tench for instance?’

  ‘Not at all. She was a Mrs Hamilton.’

  ‘And her maiden name?’

  ‘Theobald.’

  ‘In short, a complete disguise.’

  ‘I don’t quite understand.’

  ‘It’s quite simple, really. Say, for instance – just say – you identified your mother with Mrs Finch. Naturally, you would not wish to do so too openly, would you? We none of us like guilt-feelings, do we? So we put mama at three removes, so to speak; we start her as Theobald, transform her into Hamilton, mask her as Chirk, and finally make everything absolutely safe by thinking of her as interchangeable only with Finch. In my profession, we describe that as “fantasy of the nominal exit”. On the other hand, of course, if your mother’s name had been Lynch, Tench, or even Hawk or Sparrow, the identification with Finch would have been equally clear. That is what is so satisfying about the psychological method; we get you disguised, we get you plain. Your mother is dead, I presume? Was her departure a happy release?’

  ‘In a way, yes. But I loved her very much.’

  ‘Don’t we all, my dear? Nevertheless, we like them to keep in the back seat, do we not?’

  The nurse gave a wan smile.

  ‘I see you are an intelligent girl, Miss Tray, and know how to put two and two together. I hope we all do nowadays, because life seems to have lost all its threes. Well, we have gone a long way in this short chat – or rather, you have gone a long way: I have merely followed where you led. That is what I like about your case – the fact that you were moving so rapidly in the right direction long before you met me. It was you, not me, who relegated Mrs Grundy to the boot, thus taking the first, decisive step to independence, creativeness, fulfilment of suppressed desires and other things we consider desirable today. And yet, I believe I can help you a few stages further. After all, we don’t want this interfering old lady in our lives, do we? If we are chummy with a doctor or out for a spin with a gay blade, we would prefer, I think, not to have her even in the dickey. Let me make a suggestion, Miss Tray. This is a friendly, quiet house. Mrs Finch works here. If you stayed here, too, you would see her every day. This might suggest that you would be getting the opposite of what you want – to expel her from your life forever. But the contrary is true: it always is in the higher reaches. Escapist tactics would be impossible. It might be painful at first, but one day we would wake up and discover that she has ceased to matter.’

  ‘But what about my job, doctor?’

  ‘Dr Burke assures me that the last thing the surgery wants is to lose your services. Let me read what he says,’ and the captain took a paper from his pocket. ‘“Our one aim in sending her to you,” he writes, “is to make her full talents available to us.” That’s quite clear, isn’t it? He goes on: “Her stream of unconsciousness is swift and fed by many a promising tributary: it is only the guilty boulders and insanitary blockages of decayed repression-tissue that prevent it coursing in full flood toward … etc. etc.” He seems to think that you are also anxious and worried.’

  ‘Well, think of the state of the world, doctor.’

  ‘Of course, Miss Tray. But we know, don’t we, that many an atom bomb is merely a Mrs Finch? Think of her as a piece of film, wedged deep in the unconscious. We cannot eject her, so we place behind her the powerful light of guilty evasiveness, which projects her upon the screen of the outer world, distorted into the likeness of a bomb. Thus we rid ourselves of an internal mother, by transforming her into an external explosive.’

  ‘Then the atom bomb does not exist?’

  ‘Some of my colleagues say that it doesn’t: they lump it in with all the other internal problems, like road-accidents, industrial injuries, cancer, death, and so on. Personally, I’m a middle-of-the-road sort of man: I believe that machinery, and motor-cars in particular, are intrinsically dangerous. I even claim that they have the power of moving quite often in a direction opposite to the one demanded by their victim’s neurosis. But be good enough not to repeat my remark in the presence of any of my colleagues: any rehabilitation of the external world injures them far more than could the heaviest motor-lorry.’

  ‘I have much to learn, doctor.’

  ‘Not nearly as much as you suppose. It depends on your attitude to what I tell you. What often makes things arduous in my profession is the patient’s insistence on arguing about everything. It is astonishing how few people realize that there is no longer room for argument, and even blame the poor analyst for prolonging the agony. Everything will happen at breathtaking speed if you once get clear in your mind that the theory by which I work is unalterably complete. It was made watertight many years before you came along, and there is simply no argument you can raise which has not been anticipated and answered. Try and imagine this theory as a big hall, in which you find yourself. Unwilling to remain, you walk to the nearest exit, only to find a huge sentry barring your way with a friendly smile. Well, our theory has such a sentry posted at every possible exit, including the skylight and the main drain. The sentries are infallible; they never sleep, they know no error. They were awaiting you many years before you entered the hall, they already know by heart every word of the pleadings and tearful briberies that you will use against them. They are the perfect servants of a perfected theory – by which I mean, a theory which no conflict with experience can ever alter or revise.’

  ‘I’d love to know which one is your theory, doctor.’

  ‘I don’t think it would help you, to know. There are so many nowadays, and all divided and subdivided into groups, splinter-groups, and even chips off the old splinter-groups. As they are one and all infallible, despite being utterly different, there’s little point in describing the differences. What does it matter to you, after all, whether you are diagnosed on a principle of ancestry, heredity, environment, instinct, the lavatory, or genetics? Nothing you can say is going to make the slightest difference to the outcome.’

  ‘Will I have to give up my surgery?’

  ‘Dr Burke thinks so. So do I. We want to extract your surgery-image, like a decayed tooth, sluice Mrs Finch out of it, and then give it a few new screws and a lick of fresh paint before we put it back.’

  ‘How will I occupy myself?’

  ‘I suggest you help Towzer in the garden. We can give you the proper corduroys. Towzer is a shy, charming, bearded man, and you could share the gardener’s cottage with him.’

  ‘Would that be proper, doctor?’
>
  ‘At this stage of treatment it might be invaluable. Incidentally, he has temporarily lost his beard as a result of illness, and you may think he resembles someone you once knew. If you do, don’t be alarmed; it is a common illusion in the Finch stage of neurosis. After all, we only see what we think, don’t we? Gradually, as we change your apparatus of thought, you will find yourself with a brand-new set of images.’

  ‘It sounds quite exciting, doctor. Shall I tell the other Towzer, the Dr Towzer, while he’s here? Oh, I see his car’s gone. It was here, wasn’t it? Didn’t I see it?’

  The captain gave a broad, very human smile. ‘What a little sightseer it is!’ he exclaimed, wagging his forefinger. ‘Not content with mother and surgery images, it must have car and doctor images to boot – and all in a single morning.’

  ‘Oh, doctor, somehow I want to cry!’

  ‘That’s just joy, my dear: you see the broad new path ahead. We’ll chat about it together nearly every day. It won’t be a lengthy business. I am not a believer in the analysis that goes on for ever. It makes the psychiatrist so dependent upon the incoming image of his patient that when, after ten or twenty years, the patient fails to show up, the analyst feels like the victim of an optical levy. No, Miss Tray; by all means let me be your father, but not your grandfather.’

  ‘You are so kind,’ she said, sighing; ‘and if you keep calling me Miss Tray, I suppose you must have good grounds.’

  ‘They will emerge as we proceed, my dear … Ah, splendid! Here comes my intern with your corduroys.’

  *

  ‘The place is beginning to feel like a home already,’ said Mrs Mallet at dinner a few days later. ‘Bitterness, rivalry, and questions of dignity are apparent everywhere. Florence is being sweet to old Mrs Finch, to stop her becoming an ally of Jellicoe. She has taken also a wine jelly to Towzer, much to Tray’s annoyance. Beau, dear, you are eating like a pig; what has come over you?’

  ‘I’ve had such a frightfully busy day. Being boyish with so many people is a dreadful strain.’

  ‘We must give them all some money,’ said the captain. ‘There’s nothing like it for giving people a settled feeling.’

  ‘The garage is offering £750 for Towzer’s car,’ said Beaufort. ‘That’s two hundred below the market price; but that’s because it will need licence plates.’

  ‘They were quite amiable about it, were they?’ asked the captain, unbuttoning the top of his trousers and sitting back.

  ‘Lord, yes! They said if I stumbled on another, do bring it. They’re sending a man up with new plates tonight. He’ll bring the money in pound notes and take the car away.’

  ‘Those awful heaps of notes from garages,’ said Mrs Mallet, shuddering; ‘tattered, oily, so depreciated. And on the watermark of each one, made with a ball-point pen, the cyphers and hieroglyphs of a hundred unscrupulous strangers. As lamp-posts to a host of dogs. I hate to tender them at a decent shop.’

  ‘And I hate to think of throwing away a good car like that,’ said the captain. ‘I am sure the Club would like it. Beaufort, just in case, I shall go and put on my big-business suit. If the garage emissary looks at all promising, bring him up. Take the money first, of course.’

  ‘Very well. And may I be rather more grown-up, just for a change? I don’t want to grumble, yet I do find it wearing to have to spring about so much and show my teeth in those incessant grins. I am almost running out of old-fashioned slang, too. Luckily, I recently remembered “bonzer”.’

  ‘Oh, yes; dear “bonzer”!’ said Mrs Mallet. ‘How long ago it seems! I shall not admit to remembering it.’

  ‘By the way,’ said the captain, reaching into his pocket, ‘would either of you like to see the rough Session schedule? It came this morning.’

  Beaufort and Mrs Mallet gave cries of excitement and snatched at the paper.

  ‘I thought I’d keep it under my hat,’ said the captain apologetically, ‘knowing what a busy day we were going to have.’

  ‘Dr Gluber to open?’ cried Mrs Mallet, scanning the paper. ‘Why such a Russo-German start?’

  ‘I imagine to get pure theory out of the way as soon as possible,’ said the captain. ‘It’s better to depress people at the beginning than at the end.’

  ‘And Arthur Murray Stanstead second! Identity in the Middle West.’

  ‘That’s wise, too. First theory, then statistics. Only then, chaos.’

  ‘But where’s the Old Guard?’ cried Beaufort, peering over Mrs Mallet’s shoulder.

  ‘Look, darling,’ she said, ‘here they all are – Orfe, Shubunkin, Musk – dear me, how exciting!’

  ‘I’ll leave you to gloat,’ said the captain, rising: ‘I must do our first report to the President.’

  As the captain went out, Beaufort began to pace the floor so restlessly that Mrs Mallet said: ‘What on earth are you so desperate about?’

  ‘I’m sick and tired of being young.’

  She burst out laughing and put her arms round his neck.

  ‘I mean it,’ he said angrily. ‘You two are like people in another world. You do your work professionally. You stay so calm. There is such polish in the cases you handle. I feel clumsy and ridiculous.’

  ‘What silly ingratitude! Everyone showers love and compliments on you. Everyone is astonished by the grasp you have of your work – and what’s more they tell you how astonished they are. You are terribly spoiled, you know.’

  ‘I’m loved because I’m not grown up.’

  ‘You’re loved because you’re so disgracefully talented.’

  ‘Then when am I to be trusted with something more adult?’

  ‘Be thankful for what you’ve got. Do you think he doesn’t wish he could still be Prince Charming? Do you think I don’t wish I could be the one who gives and gets all the love and tenderness, instead of just the respect and politeness?’

  ‘Well, whatever you say, I’m going to be different with the garage man tonight. I shall be aloof and mature.’

  ‘You’ll be, I know, what the situation demands – what the Club, and I, expect of you.’

  ‘Only if you promise to be passionately loving afterwards. I want a simply enormous reward.’

  ‘But I might not feel in a very rewarding mood.’

  ‘I shall make love to you with immense dignity and sternness. When you look up, you will see the worn visage of an elderly bureaucrat, wearing an expensive black hat.’

  ‘You will be the loser. You will find nothing in your arms but a Permanent Undersecretary.’

  *

  Out of the dark park came a sibilant whistling. Footsteps shuffled over the cobbles of the yard.

  ‘So it’s you, is it,’ said Beaufort. ‘Fancy that! Found your uncle and aunt yet?’

  ‘Oh, no,’ said Lolly, giving a weary smile as if to suggest that he had long since reached the limits of search. ‘Nice car,’ he said, peering at the sports model. ‘Nice car,’ he said, turning to Dr Towzer’s. ‘Which one?’

  ‘The M.D.’

  Lolly sighed, and untied some half-rotted string at the foot of his trouser-legs. Out of each leg slid a licence-plate. ‘And Mr Brown said this was for you,’ he said, handing Beaufort a small sack designated as self-raising flour.

  ‘Thank you. Do thank him.’

  Lolly studied the doctor’s car for some moments and then said: ‘The old plates are still on.’

  ‘That’s right. You have to take them off before you put the new ones on.’

  ‘If you had some wire, I could just tie the new ones over the top of the old ones.’

  ‘Certainly not.’

  ‘Oh, all right. Got a hammer and chisel?’

  ‘Here’s a spanner. You undo the nuts.’

  ‘Takes longer.’

  ‘Works better.’

  Beaufort left the garage and paced the courtyard for a few minutes. When he returned, Lolly was inspecting his work on the rear plate.

  ‘If I were a policeman,’ said Beaufort, ‘I should feel a dry suspicion
that someone had tampered with that car.’

  ‘Think so?’

  ‘And now how do you attach the new one?’ asked Beaufort, studying Lolly with deep professional interest.

  ‘Nothing like wire,’ said Lolly. He bound on the new plate at a raffish angle. ‘See? Now I’ll do the same in front.’ He moved off slowly.

  When he had finished, Beaufort said: ‘You know, you remind me of a chap I used to know named Stapleton. He had one of these huge red moustaches.’

  ‘R.A.F.?’

  ‘That’s right. If you had one, you’d be the image of him. Like you, he loved machinery. Do come in and meet my father. He owns a huge car firm. He’d give you an important position.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because he loves people who have a natural bent.’

  ‘Well, all right.’

  ‘If he calls you Stapleton, be sure to play up, won’t you?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Well, he never forgets a face, or thinks he doesn’t, so it’s wiser not to contradict him. He has hundreds of total strangers working for him under faces he thinks he remembers them by. I have often known him to turn an old friend down for a job on the grounds that he is already employing him. I’ll go ahead and make sure he’s free.’

  He soon came back and led Lolly to the breakfast-room. The captain was invisible behind the Economist, above which he rose slowly like a model of big industry from the sea of popular imagination: his brows sourly knit, his eyes well-trained to fire bullets at balloons of pure theory. A downward bend at the corners of his lips suggested a man who wrests Nature’s secrets from her depths and, at small profit to himself, hurls them broadcast to the world’s needy. A thoroughly aggrieved expression covered his whole face, as if his life had been an endless struggle against slander and taxation. A cigar-lighter shaped like a Canberra bomber stood at his elbow.

  ‘Stapleton!’ he barked at once, snapping his fingers. ‘I never forget a face. Whiskers or no whiskers.’

  ‘He’s known as Lolly Paradise in these parts, father,’ said Beaufort. ‘Nephew of the old couple who were at the lodge in the old days.’