of her. Then he thought of Sarah, waiting at home; he had told her there was a flap on at the office and he had to work late. Now he would have to tell her yet more lies. He looked away from Natalia, to the picture she was working on. ‘Where is that?’
‘Bratislava, in Eastern Europe. Once the city was ruled by Hungary, then it was part of Czechoslovakia, now it is the capital of Slovakia. One of Hitler’s puppet states.’ She looked at the painting, the people trudging along the narrow streets. ‘When I was growing up there the city was cosmopolitan, like most of Eastern Europe. Slovaks, Hungarians, Germans. Many people were some mixture of all three, like me.’ She smiled her sad, cynical smile again. ‘I am a cosmopolitan. But then the gods of nationalism rose up.’
‘Were there many Jews there?’
‘Yes. I had many Jewish friends. They are all gone now.’ Then David said abruptly, ‘I must get back to my wife.’ Natalia nodded her head slowly. He turned and walked out.
ON WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON, Frank had had another meeting with Dr Wilson. Ben walked him over to the Admissions Block again. He had come to like the young Scotsman more, he was kind to him, and Frank had seen enough of him to realize there was nothing of the world of Strangmans in his make-up. Yet there was still something about Ben, something he couldn’t put his finger on, that Frank didn’t trust.
In his office the doctor was working on some files. He motioned to Frank to sit down. ‘How are you?’
‘All right, thank you.’
‘The police have been in touch.’ Frank’s heart lurched with fear. ‘There’s still no decision about whether to prosecute. They can’t get hold of your brother, either. The case seems to be in limbo. If it does come to court,’ he added reassuringly, ‘we can make a defence of insanity. But I wish your brother would contact us. We can’t think about transferring you to the Private Villa until we have a trustee appointed to deal with your money. In the meantime you’ll have to stay on the ward.’
‘I understand,’ Frank said bleakly.
Wilson looked at him curiously. ‘I hear you’re still very withdrawn. Not interacting with staff or patients.’
Frank didn’t reply. Wilson sat back in his chair, picked up a pen and started fiddling with it. ‘Did you and your brother play together as children?’ he asked suddenly. ‘Perhaps together with your mother?’
Frank looked at him. He mustn’t be drawn into talk about Edgar. ‘Our mother wasn’t one for – playing.’
‘Did she prefer Edgar?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Did you feel she did?’
‘I don’t know.’
Wilson sighed. ‘I’m going to put you down for electric shock treatment, Frank. They’re booked up next week, but the week after. We must get you out of this depressive state.’
Ben took Frank back to the ward. The weather had turned colder, and there was frost in the air. Frank was terrified by the thought of shock treatment. He wished he could get away. He had been sent a get well card, of all things, from his colleagues at Birmingham but apart from that had heard nothing from anyone. And Edgar had probably decided to have nothing more to do with him. He was probably drunk somewhere in a bar in San Francisco, trying to forget it all, slugging whisky like Mrs Baker. Frank hated drink, it loosened people’s inhibitions and inhibitions were the only things that kept them from savagery. ‘Drunks,’ he muttered aloud.
‘What was that?’ Ben asked.
‘Nothing.’
‘You want to stop that, mac, muttering to yirsel’. It’s a bad habit in here.’
Frank wanted to ask Ben more about the shock treatment but he couldn’t face it. A desperate weariness had come over him.
‘What did Wilson have to say?’ Ben asked.
‘Just that they haven’t found my brother yet.’
‘Did you think any more about calling that old pal of yours?’
Frank didn’t answer, just looked down at his feet. He still wasn’t quite sure it was safe.
Ben left Frank in the day room. Patients were sitting round the television watching Fanny Cradock demonstrating how to make sauerkraut. Some were sitting round the table cutting up strips of paper with blunt children’s scissors; although it was still over a month to Christmas the patients had already been set to making decorations. Mr Martindale wasn’t on the ward any more; after his outburst he had been sent to one of the padded cells.
Frank slunk off to the quiet room, taking his habitual position in the easy chair, facing the window. He thought of his flat in Birmingham; would anyone have tidied it up? He had liked his flat, dingy though it was. Only Birmingham was so far from the sea. He had always loved the sea, ever since he and his mother had gone to visit a cousin of his father in Skegness, when he was ten. Edgar hadn’t come; he was on a school trip to France. Frank had spent days wandering the sands on his own; the beach was full of holidaymakers but the sea was so vast and blank, yet always moving. It was too cold to swim; he had paddled in the surf but even that had made his feet ache, and yet he would have loved to disappear into the water. His mother, back at his father’s cousin’s, would be trying to persuade them of the spirit world just beyond and Mrs Baker’s unique contact with it. They were never invited again.
Over the past few days Frank had thought about killing himself, taking his secret away with him for ever, rather than risking anyone finding out, even David. But he knew he didn’t have the courage. And they were always on the watch in here. The blunt knives and forks the patients used were counted after each meal, and there were no strong light fittings in the rooms to hang a rope from. There was a big picture, though, on the nicotine-yellow wall in the quiet room, a Victorian painting of a stag at bay in the Highlands; there must be a strong nail or hook holding it to the wall. Frank closed his eyes, his body shuddering involuntarily. He didn’t want to die, though he had sometimes yearned to do so at school. He wished he could stop thinking about that place.
Strangmans College was a long square block of a building set on a bleak, windy hillside just outside Edinburgh. One of the city’s many private schools. A Victorian headmaster had moved the institution to a new site, where the bracing air would be good for the boys.
It had been bracing all right, when Frank got off the school coach which had met him at Waverley Station, that Sunday afternoon in 1928. A gale was blowing off the Forth, full of freezing rain. It almost knocked him off his feet. There were three other new boarders on the coach – most Strangmans pupils were day boys but there was a minority of boarders – and the four eleven-year-olds in their new red uniforms stood there frightened and apprehensive, each clutching his red cap against the wind.
Frank stared down the drive at the sandstone building. It seemed huge, still a reddish yellow though all the buildings he had passed in Edinburgh were black with soot, worse than London. The day boys would not arrive for the start of term until next day and the place seemed deserted. Frank had hoped that Edgar, who had travelled up the day before, might be there to welcome him, but there was only a master with a clipboard, a tall, spare man in hat and raincoat with glasses and a severe expression.
Frank was still looking around in the hope of seeing Edgar when a sharp poke in the ribs made him jump. ‘Hey,’ the teacher said in a sharp voice. ‘You’re in a dream, laddie!’ The long ‘R’ made it sound like ‘drrream’. ‘Whit’s yer name? Are you Muncaster?’
‘Yes. I’m Frank.’
The man frowned. ‘Yes, what?’
Frank stared at him blankly.
‘Yes,
The master led the boys to an annexe behind the main building, where he took them into a bleak room with four iron beds, a locker beside each. Rain lashed and spat at the windows. ‘This is your dormitory,’ the master said. ‘Number 8, remember that. I’m Mr Ritner and your form number is 4B. Remember, 4B. There’ll be tea at four, the dining room’s on the first floor. Get yourselves unpacked now, go on.’ He walked off, footsteps clumping on the bare boards. Frank stood gawping, the rapped instructions swirling in his head.
