Stanley and the Women by Kingsley Amis

he said a bit at a time, ‘but his illness does seem to have progressed
as fast as any I’ve known, of its type. From your account, and Wainwright’s, a
remarkable rate of development. And to be so specific, comparatively specific,
at this early stage, about his delusion that is — most unusual, if not …’
His voice died away, and it did seem just briefly that for once in his life he
was not sure, or had let it be seen he was not. Then he charged on, ‘But very
sick in any sense of unusual resistance to being made better, no. At least
there’s no sign of that at the moment. We’re only at the beginning, you know.’
    ‘What
causes it, doctor, this sort of illness?’
    Nash
shook his head, either not knowing or knowing but not saying. ‘What …
triggers it off is often some sort of shock to the emotions. Which means I
think that it’s always that but sometimes the psychiatrist can’t find it or is
uncertain about it. In this case the Fawzia episode looks rather a long time
ago and the Mandy episode looks rather slight, but one never knows. It isn’t
all-important to find the shock.’
    ‘He
seems less frightened than he was.’
    ‘These
things come and go. Large changes of mood from no visible cause are
characteristic.’
    I
thought of that when Steve reappeared, so soon I thought at first my luck had
run out and Nowell had failed or not tried to do what she had promised. But I
soon saw that was wrong. He had stopped being animated and he looked different,
physically exhausted, like somebody who had been up all night. I was sure Nash
noticed it too.
    ‘All
right, I’ll go there.’ Steve said that without much expression, but he sounded
quite convincingly fed up when he went on to say, ‘So I changed my mind. Does
it matter why?’ The question was for me personally, though I had not been
conscious of even asking myself anything on those lines. ‘You’re getting rid of
me, aren’t you? That’s what you want. Father.’
     
     
    Those last few words of
Steve’s turned out to be very easy to remember. They stayed around while I
watched him silently — except for eating noises —get through a couple of bowls
of soup and some ham and some bread in the kitchen, and incidentally while Nash
sat on in the sitting room and wrote a lot of stuff for the hospital and ate
Brie and cream crackers and drank a glass of red wine, just what he had ordered
actually, though without specifying the rather pricey Burgundy that, feeling a
bit of a coward, I had opened for him. There was a distraction when a young man
dressed like a dustman, or so I thought, came to the front door and turned out
to be the municipal psychiatric social worker summoned earlier by Nash to take
Steve off. He, the social worker, wasted no time, but made two phone calls,
handed me a piece of card that had an address and phone number written on it
with amazing legibility, made it clear in the same movement that I would not be
needed on the expedition and started a move to the door.
    ‘Cheers,
dad,’ said Steve, not at all hostile now and so a lot more effectively
reproachful than he could ever have been on purpose.
    ‘Cheers,
son.’ Hugs were out, so I said a few things about him being well looked after
and me coming to see him soon, and more deep stuff like that.
    When
the two had gone, Nash said, ‘He should indeed be well looked after at St Kevin’s,’
surprising me slightly — I had put him down as a man who saved his attention
for the job. ‘There really is a saint called that, you know. Irishman, of
course. How he got his name on a hospital near Blackheath I can’t imagine.
Anyway, it’s a cheerful sort of place, not one of your Victorian dungeons.
Amusing lot, the Victorians, but when it came to institutional interiors they
just gave up. I know somebody there called Dr Abercrombie who’s a very good
man. I couldn’t get hold of him just now, but, er, he’s a very good man.’
    After
that Nash made a whole operation of taking a