Nothing personal about it-it's a standard trip, all part of the service. I was expecting him to take the opportunity to deliver a little lecture on the perils of self-abuse, but for once he let things speak for themselves.'
When none of the other three said anything, Hunter went on, 'I had our old buddy Brian Leonard round here a couple of days ago. He'd really come to keep Fawkes up to the mark, he told me, but having come so far he saw nothing against walking the few extra yards to my bedside. He wasn't entirely happy, he said. He seemed to think that a dipsomaniac in charge of the administration of a secret-weapons training unit represented some kind of danger to security. I did what I could to reassure him. I pointed out that if the worst threat of that sort came from the odd dipsomaniac then he hadn't much to worry about. He agreed with that, and said that anyway he was satisfied I didn't know enough to be a menace.'
Naidu had thrown off the slight uneasiness he had been betraying in the previous few minutes. 'If that is so,' he said accusingly, 'how does brother Leonard justify this quite ridiculous fandango with the unfortunate Corporal Fawkes at the door like the recording angel?'
Hunter did his silent laugh. 'We went into that. He was very man-to-man about it-I've never felt so close to him before. He was sure I'd agree that one had to go through the motions in matters of this sort. He never knew when his master in Whitehall mightn't want to know what was being done to stop this dipso admin officer's mouth, in the talking sense, that is, and the Fawkes arrangement would cover him. I asked him whether in that case a sentry in radiation battle order mightn't be even more impressive, and he said he could tell I was joking and clapped me on the back and we had a jolly good laugh together. You know, I must introduce Brian to Dr. Best one of these days. They'd get on like a house on fire.'
'Did Leonard say anything about this spy idea of his?' asked Naidu.
'Only that he was more convinced than ever that there was one, at least one, somewhere in the unit. In fact he said he now had positive proof-he wouldn't tell me what sort. But he still had very little idea of who the spy might be, except that he'd now more or less ruled out the high-security people, plus me and the Colonel and you, Willie. I put it to him that any proof of a thing like there being a spy in a place ought to throw a good deal of light on who the spy was or else it was a pretty odd sort of proof. He turned all bland and mysterious and said yes, it was.'
'Very helpful indeed.' Naidu stood with his hands behind his back, evidently pondering. 'Did he voice any particular suspicions?'
'Not really. All these Indians and Pakistanis coming into the unit made his job frightfully tricky-I'm just telling you what he told me, Moti. He saw that they had to come, but he wasn't happy about the efficiency of their Governments' screening systems. His master in Whitehall is going to have a word with someone about it.'
After more thought, Naidu said, 'He seems most curiously ready to discuss the problem, even if he doesn't give much away. I ask myself why this should be. Would it not seem that a prerequisite of catching a spy would be to avoid putting him on his guard by letting it be known that his presence is suspected?'
'I asked him that very question. Apparently what's called the philosophy of phylactology-spy-catching to you-has been transformed. Keeping dead mum until the final pounce is old hat now. You go round saying how near you're getting and wait for somebody along the line to get anxious enough to show a break in their behavior- pattern. The new method works better except with very brave spies and there are figures to prove that only nine per cent or something are that. Anyway, no more about Security. It's a subject for fools and madmen, as my chat with Brian Leonard might well suggest to you. But like everything else it has its compensations. One or two of Fawkes's mates have turned up to see him when they're off duty and they tend to look in on me as well. Somebody called Signalman Pearce, who works on the camp telephone exchange, appeared this very morning and discussed jazz and popular music with me for over half an hour. A most charming lad. Which somehow reminds me to tell you the only really interesting thing Dr. Best had to say about my difficulties. According to him I'm probably a repressed homosexual.'
All four men burst into laughter.
'These repressed lesbian tendencies of yours,' said Dr. Best, smiling. 'If it's all right with you I want to go into them rather more deeply than we had time for last week. Do you agree that we should?'
'Yes,' said Catharine. 'If you want to.'
'It isn't what I want, Mrs. Casement, it's what you want. And I ask you whether you want to because, as I've warned you several times before, whenever we go down at all deep we're virtually certain to find something rather unpleasant waiting for us. Do you follow? Something that must be pretty shocking or it wouldn't be hiding away from us like that.'
'Just carry on, doctor. Another shock or two won't make much odds to me.'
Dr. Best chuckled and shook his head in a kind of admiration. 'You're incorrigible, Mrs. Casement. The very first time you were able to talk to me intelligibly, just after Christmas, you made exactly the same point, and I told you then what I see I must tell you again now, that a mere unpleasant experience, however much it may happen to distress you, does not in itself constitute a shock in the scientific, psychoanalytic sense. Let me tell you a couple of typical stories, both relating to patients that have been through my hands in the past year, which I hope will make the distinction clear to you.'
The doctor's manner became even more relaxed than hitherto, if that were possible, and there was a note of affectionate reminiscence in his voice when he continued, 'A little girl, ten years of age, is going home from school through a public park. It's a winter evening and dusk is falling, but it isn't dark yet, the park is only a few hundred yards across, and at this time there are usually plenty of people about-but not, unfortunately, on the evening in question. A man springs out on her, drags her into the bushes and rapes her, very thoroughly. After a time she makes her way home and is naturally taken to hospital.
'Today that child is happily watching television and playing her gramophone records just as before. Even her work at school has shown no significant decline in quality. It's true that there are gynecological complications which may affect her ovulatory capacity, but emotionally and mentally she's quite untouched. What happened to her, you see, was an unpleasant experience.
'The picture's very different I'm sorry to say, with the second case. Here we have a young man of twenty-five-which leads me to make an important secondary point. I say ‘a young man of twenty-five' because this is how we customarily refer to persons of that age-group. But in psychoanalytic terms that man is no longer young. This is very far from being a technical quibble, Mrs. Casement. All our experience shows that the psychoanalytically young are far better equipped to resist both unpleasant experiences-as we saw with the little girl-and shocks in comparison with, let's say, the psychoanalytically non-young. Of which group you yourself are a member. (Indeed, at thirty-two you are hardly young in any sense.) I mention this distinction by way of reinforcing my warning to you about the dangers of beginning to go down deep.
