DR SHAWCROSS
Mr Williams - Mike, as he liked to be called - was Steven's friend in the hospital. He called Doctor Shawcross "Doctor Shock" because he said if you were bad and didn't do what they told you to do, they gave you electric shocks. Mr Williams was funny. He made Steven laugh lots and lots. He could be cruel sometimes, too, like when he had dropped the spiders into the lap of Harry-the-guy who-hated-spiders the other day (Mr Williams had used a long word instead of "the-guy-who-hated-spiders', but Steven couldn't remember what it was). That had been cruel, especially as they had been at dinner at the time, but it had been funny too.
Steven had been blamed for that, and they had punished him for it, but he couldn't recall what the punishment had been.
The crows called his name.
Dr Shawcross sat in his office, staring out of the window at the unleaved trees of the Kent countryside, watching a few crows flap lazily from tall branches, out over the bare brown fields. In front of him, spread out on his desk, was the file on Steven Grout. Dr Shawcross had to write a report on Steven, for the insurers of one of the vehicles involved in the accident which had resulted in Grout ending up here, in the Dargate Sheltered Unit.
It was February 16th, 1984 (Dr Shawcross had already noted the date on the sheet of paper he was going to draft the report on). It was cold. The car had been very slow to start that morning. Dr
Shawcross hummed tunelessly to himself and reached down to the floor where his briefcase was. He glanced over the previous reports on Grout as his right hand fumbled in the case for his pipe and tobacco. He found them, put the pipe on his desk and started to stuff the tobacco into the bowl.
His mind wandered when he saw the date of Grout's accident; June 28th last year. He sighed. Summer seemed such a long way away, but at the same time there was that paper he had to write for the conference in Scarborough in June; that would come around soon enough; he'd be pushed for time on that, he'd bet.
Steven Grout (no middle name) had been involved in a road traffic accident on June 28th, 1983. A beer barrel struck him on the head after bouncing off the back of a lorry. Grout had fallen into the stream of traffic and been run over by a car. His scalp was lacerated, skull fractured, both clavicles and the left scapula sustained fractures, and he had multiple rib fractures as well.
Dr Shawcross experienced an odd sensation of deja vu, then suddenly recalled that he'd read something about the trial of the case which resulted from this accident in the paper just the other day (was it yesterday?). Hadn't somebody famous been involved, or somebody connected with somebody famous? Some public figure, anyway, and some sort of scandal. He couldn't remember. Maybe the paper was still in the house. He'd check when he got back in the evening, if he remembered, and Liz hadn't thrown the paper out.
Dr Shawcross read through the previous reports, packing the tobacco into the bowl, putting the pipe in his mouth, then patting his pockets one by one as he searched for his matches. His eyes flitted over the typed sheets as he refreshed his memory, only certain important words and phrases really registering: cyanosed flail chest... intubation... raised intracranial blood-pressure and Dexamethasone and Mannitol... pulse slowing... blood pressure increase... very slow response to deep painful stimulus... eyes deviated dysconjugately... possible frontal lobe contusion... neck angle a tracheostomy was performed...
Dr Shawcross tutted to himself, pulled open a drawer, rummaged briefly, found a box of matches. He lit his pipe.
The latest of the reports concerned Grout when he was physically more or less recovered, and in the rehabilitation ward of a hospital in North London. Grout had been totally disorientated in time and space, the report said. He had been capable of holding a conversation but unable to remember any fact for longer than a few minutes; no recollection from day to day of the nursing staff who tended him.
Dr Shawcross puffed away on his pipe, once waving a lock of blue smoke away from his eyes as he read (he was supposed to have given up for the new year. Well, at least he didn't smoke in the house nowadays. Well, hardly ever).
The patient improved only slowly; conscious and alert but still disorientated; marked impairment of reading ability and memory; vague recollections of the distant past (now knew he had been brought up in a children's home), but thought the date was June 28th, 1976.
One phrase kept cropping up time after time in the report, as various follow-up and check-up examinations were recorded, and Grout's post-traumatic amnesia lengthened: little insight into his disability... no insight into his disability... lack of insight into his condition... still no insight into his disability...
Grout was usually quite euphoric, always smiling and nodding and giving the thumbs-up sign; he cooperated fully with physical examinations and seemed anxious to help and cooperate in the memory tests and other examinations of his mental faculties he was asked to undergo. But while he felt quite sure he was capable of living by himself, and of undertaking any job or career, his poor short-term memory and total lack of drive and initiative made him totally unfit for anything but the sheltered environment he now lived in. To that extent, he was permanently disabled, with little, if any, chance of any further improvement in his condition.
Dr Shawcross nodded to himself. That was it, all right. He'd examined Steven that morning, and the man, while quite happy and content, had no prospect of leaving the Unit in the foreseeable future. He was still euphoric, though when pressed did admit that his memory wasn't all it had been. Dr Shawcross had asked him if he recalled ever having been on any day trips with the other patients in the Unit. Steven had looked exaggeratedly thoughtful and said that he thought he had been to Bournemouth, hadn't he? Dr Shawcross knew from the file that Steven had been on one day trip, but that was only as far as Canterbury.
He told Steven a little story which he asked him to try and remember: a man in a green coat, with bright red hair, went for a walk with his dog, a terrier, in Nottingham. Then he talked to Steven about how he had settled into the Unit since his arrival in January.
After about five minutes he had asked Steven if he could remember the little story he'd told him. Steven had frowned, looked very thoughtful for a while. Was there something about a bald man? he had asked. Dr Shawcross had asked him if he could recall any colours involved in the story. Steven had creased his brows again. Was the man wearing a brown jacket? he had said. Dr Shawcross had said that sounded like a guess, and Steven had smiled sheepishly and admitted it was.
Dr Shawcross's mouth made small papping noises as he drew on the pipe. He sat back a little in his seat, looking out of the window again. The sky was full of low grey clouds.
He wondered if it would snow, or rain.
Steven was in his favourite place.
It was a sort of little tunnel under the raised bank of the railway line which passed along one side of the hospital grounds. Strictly speaking it was out of bounds, but only just. The tunnel was only about fifty or sixty feet long, but it was nice and dark and secluded because both ends were overgrown with bushes and small trees. In the direction that Grout sat facing, over the naked earth fields and the distant lines of trees, over low rolling hills, towards the unseen sea, the end of the tunnel was barred by a lop-sided wooden gate, twined round with brambles and long grass.
Steven sat on an iron seat; a saddle-shaped iron seat which itself sat on a rusty old grass-roller with a broken towing bar. The broken grass-roller was one of many interesting things in the dark, damp, soft-earthed tunnel. There was an old, pale pink plastic bucket with a split bottom, four woodwormed fenceposts with three staple nails in each, an old car battery with the top bit missing, a torn plastic Woolworth carrier bag, two crushed, empty Skol lager cans, an uncrushed Pepsi can, various sweet wrappers, an old damp matchbox with three dead matches inside, a yellowing sheet of paper from the Daily Express dated Tuesday, March 18th, 1980, and several dozen cigarette ends in various stages of decomposition.