In a Dry Season

by Peter Robinson

  “I’ve heard that’s all a load of bollocks,” said Banks. “But I’m impressed. Sorry we don’t have anything at the moment.”

  “I know—don’t call us . . . Story of my life.”

  “I do want to ask your advice on something, though.”

  “Go ahead. I’m finished blubbering and moaning. And I didn’t even ask about you. I haven’t seen you since Sandra left. How are you doing?”

  “I’m doing fine, thanks.”

  “Seeing anyone?”

  Banks paused a moment. “Sort of.”

  “Serious?”

  “What kind of a question is that?”

  “So it is serious. How about Sandra?”

  “Do you mean is she seeing anyone? Yes, she is.”

  “Oh.”

  “It’s okay. I’m fine, Jenny.”

  “If you say so. What was it you wanted to ask me?”

  “It’s about Matthew Shackleton. Gwen’s—possibly Vivian Elmsley’s—brother. Apparently he was captured by the Japanese and spent a few years in one of their prison camps. By all accounts, he was pretty disturbed when he came home. Ended up committing suicide five years after the war. Thing is, all I can come up with in terms of psychiatric diagnoses are such vague terms as ‘shell-shock.’ ”

  “I thought that went out with the First World War.”

  “Apparently not, they just changed the name to ‘battle fatigue’ or ‘combat fatigue.’ I was wondering what sort of diagnosis you’d come up with today.”

  “That’s a good one, Alan.” Jenny pointed her thumb at her chest. “You want me, a psychologist, to come up with a psychiatric diagnosis of a dead man’s mental problems? I like that, I really do. That takes the biscuit.”

  Banks grinned. “Oh, don’t be such a nitpicker, Jenny.”

  “This had better be between you and me.”

  “Cross my heart.”

  Jenny toyed with her beer-mat, ripping off little pieces of damp cardboard. “Well,” she said, “I’m only guessing, you understand, but if your man had indeed been a prisoner of war under such terrible conditions, then he was probably suffering from some kind of post-traumatic stress disorder.”

  Banks took his notebook from his inside pocket and jotted a few words down.

  “Don’t you dare quote me on this,” Jenny warned him. “I told you, it’s strictly between you and me.”

  “Don’t worry, you won’t be called upon to testify in court. I realize this is pure speculation. Anyway, it all happened a long time ago. This condition would have been caused by his experiences in the war and the camp, right?”

  “Right. Basically, PTSDS are caused by some event or series of events well beyond the normal range of human experience. Maybe we should redefine exactly what that means these days, given the state of the so-called normal world, but it generally refers to extreme experiences. Things that go way beyond marital breakdowns, broken love affairs, simple bereavement, chronic illness or bankruptcy. The things most of us suffer from on a daily basis.”

  “That bad?”

  Jenny nodded. “Things like rape, assault, kidnapping, military combat, floods, earthquakes, fires, car crashes, bombing, torture, death camps. The list of divine and human atrocities goes on and on, but I’m sure you get the picture.”

  “I get the picture. What are the symptoms?”

  “Many and varied. Recurrent nightmares about the event are common. As is feeling that the event is recurring—things like flashbacks and hallucinations. Anything that reminds the person of the event is painful, too, such as an anniversary. Also things that were part of it. If a man was kept in a small cage for a long period, for example, then he would be likely to experience suffocating claustrophobia whenever those conditions were approximated. Maybe in a lift, for example.”

  “What about amnesia?”

  “Yes, there’s psychological memory loss sometimes.

  Believe me, most of the people who suffer from this would find the memory loss preferable to the persistent nightmares. But the problem is that strong feelings of detachment, estrangement and separation come with it. You can’t even enjoy your lack of recollection of the horror. People who suffer from PTSDS often find it difficult to feel or accept love, they become alienated from society, from their families and loved ones, and they have an extremely diminished sense of the future. Add to that insomnia, difficulty in concentrating, hypervigilance, depressive or panic disorders.”

  “Sounds like me.”

  “Much worse. Suicide is also not uncommon. He’s a suspect, I assume?”

  “Yes. That was another thing I wanted to ask you. Might he be likely to become violent?”

  “That’s a difficult one to answer. Anyone can become violent given the right stimulus. He would certainly be prone to irritability and outbursts of anger, but I’m not sure they’d necessarily lead him to murder.”

  “I was thinking he might have killed his wife because he found out she’d been having an affair.”

  “I suppose it’s possible he got a bee in his bonnet about it,” Jenny said.

  “But you don’t think so?”

  “I didn’t say that. Let me just say I hold reservations.

  Don’t forget the constraints you’ve got me working under.”

  “I won’t. Tell me about your reservations.”

  “The outbursts of anger in PTSD are usually fairly irrational. By linking them to his wife’s behaviour, you’re making it all far more logical, do you see? Cause and effect.”

  “Yes.”

  “And the other thing is that if he did feel detached and was unable to love, then where does the hate come in? Or the jealousy?”

  “So could he or couldn’t he?”

  “Oh no, you’re not trapping me like that. Of course he could have committed murder. People do all the time, often for no reason whatsoever. Yes, he could have heard about his wife having it off with some other bloke and as a result he could have, quite reasonably, come to hate her and to want to get rid of her. Or he could have just done it in an outburst of irrational rage, for no apparent reason.”

  “Whoever did it probably strangled the woman, at least until she was unconscious, then stabbed her about fifteen or sixteen times.”

  “Such rage. I don’t know, Alan. From what you’ve told me about this man, and from what I know of PTSD, I’d say that most of his pain and anger would have been directed inwards, not out at the world. While I wouldn’t rule it out, I’d maybe hedge on the side of saying it’s unlikely he would have killed that way for that reason. But it’s hard to say anything about someone you’ve never met, never had the chance to talk to. Also, it’s often too easy to pick on the mentally disturbed person as the most likely murderer. Most mentally ill people wouldn’t harm a fly. I’m not saying all of them—there are some really sick puppies out there who managed to keep it well hidden—but most of the obvious ones are harmless. Sad and pathetic, perhaps, sometimes even a little scary, but rarely dangerous.”

  “Thanks. You’ve given me a lot to think about.”

  “Well I’m just glad I can still be of some use to somebody.”

  They both sat in silence, nursing what was left of their drinks. Banks thought about Matthew Shackleton’s suffering and about what Jenny had said about his possible alienation, his estrangement from the world of normal human affairs. Maybe that could have made a killer out of him and maybe not. If you couldn’t feel love for someone, why would you feel hate? When Banks first found out about Sandra and Sean, he had hated them both because he still loved Sandra. If he hadn’t cared, he wouldn’t have felt so passionate. Now, the feelings were receding into the distance. He wasn’t sure if he loved Sandra any more. At least he was trying to make a life without her, reinventing and discovering himself. If she came and asked him to take her back tomorrow, he honestly didn’t know what he would do.

  “I fell apart, you know,” Jenny said suddenly, startling him out of his train of thought.

  “You did what?”<
br />
  She played with her hair. A number of expressions battled for pride of place on her face. A sort of crooked grin won out. “I had a breakdown. After all that with Randy. I suddenly found myself alone out there, completely cut off from everything and everyone I’d grown up with, alone in a foreign country. It’s one of the scariest feelings I’ve ever had. I mean, they speak sort of the same language and all, but that only makes things worse, like a parody of all you’ve known. I’m not making myself clear . . . I felt like I was on another planet, a hostile one, and I couldn’t get home. I fell to pieces.” She laughed. “Do you know the song?”

  “I’ve heard it,” said Banks, who tried to avoid country-and-western music the way he did a dose of clap.

  “Well, I’ve done it.” She shook her head slowly. “I even went to see a shrink.”

  “Do any good?”

  “Some. One of the things I realized was that I wanted to go home. I mean, that wasn’t part of being ill. The desire was real and perfectly reasonable. It wasn’t just Randy or not having the contract renewed; I could have got a teaching job somewhere else if I’d wanted. But I missed this place too much. Can you believe it? I actually missed overcooked scampi and chips. And, bloody hell, wouldn’t you know it if I didn’t miss winter, too. It gets you down, all that sun, day in day out, only the occasional flood, fire or earthquake for variety. Pretty soon you begin to feel like you’re living in some kind of suspended animation, like everything’s on hold. Or maybe you’re not really living at all, you’re in limbo. You keep telling yourself one day the snow’s going to come, but it never does. Anyway, as soon as I realized what I really wanted to do, I gave myself the best therapy I could think of. I chucked my tranquillizers down the toilet and took the next flight home. Well, almost the next flight.

  I had a few things to do first—including, I’m almost ashamed to admit, a little act of girlish revenge on poor, dear Randy.”

  “What did you do?”

  Jenny paused for a moment, then licked her lips and flashed him a wicked grin. “I planted one of those little voice-activated tape-recorders in his office and taped one of his trysts. Then I retrieved the machine and sent the tape to the dean.”

  “In his office?”

  “Yes. Over the desk. Don’t be such a prude, Alan. It happens all the time over there. What are offices for? Oh, you should have heard them: ‘Give it to me, big boy. Fuck me. Go on. Oh, yeah. Stick that big hard cock in me. Go deep. Fuck me harder.’ ”

  Her voice had risen, and one or two tourist families looked at her uncomfortably. “Oops, sorry,” she said, putting her hand over mouth. “Wash your mouth out, Jenny Fuller. Anyway, there was no mistaking whose voices they were.”

  “What happened?”

  “I don’t know. I left before the shit hit the fan. So if I get murdered, you know where to start looking. I should imagine he got suspended. Maybe fired. Of course, it was hardly evidence you could use at a tribunal, but they can get quite stroppy about things like that over there. Fucking your students is almost as bad as being caught smoking in a restaurant.” She tossed back the rest of her drink and looked at her watch. “Look, I’m sorry, I’ll have to go. The university’s been very good to me so far, but they won’t continue to be unless I get my courses prepared. It’s great seeing you again.” She picked up her bag, paused and rested it on her lap. Then she looked Banks in the eye, reached out and touched his hand softly and said, “Why don’t you give me a ring? We could . . . you know, have dinner or something together, if that’s okay?”

  Banks swallowed. “I will. That would be great. And you’ve got to come out and see the cottage.”

  “I’d love to.” She patted his hand, blew him a kiss and then she was gone in a whirl of red, jade and black, leaving a faint trace of Miss Dior behind in the smoky air. Banks looked down at his hand. It still tingled where she had touched him. Now that he had found the courage and desire to start a relationship with Annie, Jenny was a complication he didn’t need. But she was a friend; he couldn’t turn his back. And there was no reason at all why Annie should object to his having dinner with her. Even so, he felt more confused than he had half an hour earlier, as he picked up his books and left the pub.

  Thirteen

  It took some time, but after I had run and fetched Gloria from the farm, I was finally able to piece together what had happened. Matthew himself wouldn’t say a word. He looked at us as if he remembered knowing us once, as if some sort of deep homing instinct had brought him here, but our fussing didn’t make much sense to him.

  Gloria and Mother comforted him while I went down to the telephone and began the long round of calls. The Ministry was about as much help as usual, the Red Cross a little more forthcoming, but it was ultimately a doctor in one of the big London hospitals (for it was clear Matthew was ill and had probably discharged himself from hospital) who told me the most.

  At first, he didn’t know who I was talking about, because they didn’t know the name of the man who had walked out of the hospital yesterday. When I described Matthew, however, he was certain we were talking about the same person.

  Matthew had been found, along with several other British and Indian soldiers, at a Japanese POW camp near Luzon, in the Philippines. His identification was missing, and all anyone could tell about him, from the scraps of his uniform that remained, was that he was British. He hadn’t spoken to any of the other prisoners and none of them had been captured in the same place or at the same time as he had. Consequently, nobody knew where he had come from or who he was.

  When I asked the doctor why Matthew wouldn’t speak and why he also refused, when offered pen and paper, to write anything down, he paused, then said, “He’s probably suffering from some form of combat fatigue. That’s why he won’t communicate. There may be other problems, but I’m afraid I can’t be any more specific than that.”

  “Is that why he refuses to talk?”

  He paused again, longer this time, then went on slowly. “I’m sorry to say, but when we gave him a thorough physical examination, one of the things we found was that his tongue had been cut out.”

  I could think of nothing to say. I stood there, head spinning, clinging onto the telephone as if it were all that was holding me to earth.

  “Miss Shackleton? Miss Shackleton? Are you there?”

  “Yes . . . I’m sorry . . . Please go on.”

  “I’m the one who should be sorry. It must have sounded so abrupt and callous to you. I didn’t know how else to tell you. If you only knew—some of the lads we’ve got in here. Well . . . I apologize.”

  “That’s all right, Doctor. So Matthew is physically incapable of talking?”

  “Yes.”

  “But he could write if he wanted?”

  “There’s no reason why not. There’s some damage to the fingers of his left hand, as if they have been broken and badly reset, but his right hand is fine, and as far as I can tell, he seems to be right-handed. Am I correct?”

  “Yes, Matthew’s right-handed.”

  “All I can assume then is that he simply chooses not to communicate.”

  “What should we do?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, he ran away, didn’t he? Should we send him back?”

  “I can’t see much point in doing that,” said the doctor. “And, quite frankly, we need all the beds we can get. No, physically, there’s nothing more we can do for him. There’s some deformity of the spine, probably due to being forced into a cramped environment, like a box or a cage, for long periods of time. A pronounced limp in the left leg, caused by an improperly set fracture. He was also shot in the arm and the abdomen. The wounds are healed now, though by the looks of the scars the surgery was of a poor quality.”

  I swallowed, trying not to think of all the suffering poor Matthew must have gone through. “And mentally?”

  “As I said, we don’t really know what’s wrong. He refuses to communicate. It’s a good sign that he came home, though.
He knew his way and he negotiated the journey with what little money he took.”

  “Took.”

  “Ah, yes. Please don’t worry about it. We hadn’t supplied him with any clothes or money. He took another patient’s suit before he left.”

  “Will there—”

  “Don’t worry. The other patient is most understanding. He knows something of what your brother has been through. Please don’t worry about it any further.”

  “But the money?”

  “There wasn’t much. Enough for his train fare and perhaps a bite to eat.”

  “He doesn’t look as if he’s eaten in months. Is there any treatment? Will he get better?”

  “It’s impossible to say. There are treatments.”

  “What sort of treatments?”

  “Narcosynthesis is the most common.”

  “And that is?”

  “A drug-induced re-enactment of the traumatic episode, or episodes. It’s used to assist the ego to accept what happened.”

  “But if you don’t know what the traumatic episode was—?”

  “There are ways of getting at that. But I don’t want to get your hopes up. The problem is, of course, that Matthew can’t express himself vocally, and that could mean a severe limitation in the value of narcosynthesis.”

  “What do you suggest?”

  “I suggest you tell me where you live and I’ll do my best to put you in touch with a doctor who knows about these things.”

  I told him where I lived and where it was.

  “It may mean visits to Leeds,” he said.

  “That will be no problem.”

  “I promise I’ll get working on it. In the meantime, just take good care of him. I don’t think I need to tell you that he has suffered appallingly.”

  “No. Thank you, Doctor.” I put down the receiver and went back upstairs.

  Matthew was sitting staring towards the window, though not through it, and Mother and Gloria seemed at their wits’ end.

  “I’ve tried to talk to him, Gwen,” Gloria said, voice quivering. “I don’t think he even knows me. I don’t think he even knows where he is.”