'Incredible taste you get at the back of your throat with these vitamin shots,' said Hunter, looking past them at the wall. 'I don't think I shall ever be able to drink barley water with the same relish after this. Not that it does much to take the taste away. I think perhaps… a couple of nice solid sandpaper sandwiches might help. But they don't provide those here.'
'Good boy, Maxie.' The nurse patted Hunter lightly on the top of the head. 'You'll be able to see in the dark now. Just what you could do with, eh? You know, you blokes don't want to take your old pal's troubles too seriously. He's just a bit of a boozer, is our Maxie. Nothing compared to some we got here.'
He took a cigarette from Hunter's bedside table, lit it with a lighter from a pocket in his white knee- length coat, blew out a shred of tobacco and continued to talk, slowly stroking his forehead with the fingers of the hand that held the cigarette.
'That geezer over there, now. Fellow with my colleague in attendance.' Although the nurse did not drop his voice at all, the man who had been carefully examining the room went on doing so without any sign of having heard. 'Keen as mustard. In love with the stuff. This conditioned-reflex treatment, now that's no buggy-ride, I can tell you. It's this idea where they start off by giving you a bomb that makes you throw up. Strychnine was what they used to use, but as the years rolled by they got to notice that it had, uh, undesirable side-effects. You know, like death.' The nurse gave a long chuckle, bowing deeply once like an actor taking a curtain call. 'All that's been ironed out. Anyway, you know the form, I dare say: fill him full of emetine hydrochloride and the rest of it and let the old tachycardia and sweating and vertigo soften him up a bit. Then the technique is to slip him a glass of Scotch or whatever he's hooked on about half a minute before the emetine makes him spew his ring. It's an art, really. If you do it right you get to where just the Scotch'll make him throw up. Our brother got that far and it's only about twenty-five per cent that do. Then the big white chief sends him out on probation-great on timing, the old chief. Comes a fortnight later and our brother's back in. Acute exhaustion and malnutrition. What he'd been doing, he'd been knocking back the Scotch and spewing his bloody guts out and then knocking back the Scotch. And so on. You see what I mean. There's a geezer who really cares about drink. It's what I said, our little Maxie's still in the kindergarten.
'Well, I'll be getting along.' The nurse picked up his tray and shook his head philosophically. 'Oh, you get some peculiar buggers in here,' he added, seemingly by way of introduction to further material.
'Don't let us keep you,' said Naidu.
'Not on your life, General. And you'd better not stay around too long either. We don't want our Maxie getting over-excited and tossing and turning all night. He's being tapered off on the sodium amytal, see. Well, so long, my trusty lads. Fix bayonets and charge the old bomb, eh? That's the style.'
The man walked smartly away.
Naidu said, 'I'd be happy to go straight to whoever's in charge here and lodge a complaint in person. You've only to say the word, Max.'
'Oh, Moti, where's your sense of humor? He's really a very nice lad. In his way. He's as gentle as a child. When another child's trying to take its toy railway train off it. No, that's not quite fair.'
'Is he the one you call the nice nurse?' asked Churchill. 'Because I'd hate to-'
'No, the nice nurse is truly and demonstrably nice. He says I need looking after. He's promised to sit next to me on the coach trip to St. Jerome's Priory on Sunday.'
Ayscue grinned. 'What are you going to do there?'
'Look at it, I suppose, and then come back. It'll make a break.'
A minute later the three visitors had taken their leave and were walking back along the corridor. Churchill was brooding. He said in a strained voice,
'Why does this sort of thing have to happen? A chap like Max in that horrible situation. It isn't right.'
'He's being made well,' said Naidu. 'It's necessary, James. I didn't like that swine of a nurse any better than you did, but you may be sure that if he over-stepped the mark in a big way then the authorities would get to hear of it and take necessary action. You know that. You must be reasonable.'
'I'm trying to be. I'm trying to see the reason in it. It isn't the nurse so much. I don't want there to be people like that but I'm not against the idea of it. What I'm against is it being possible for a man like Max being able to damage himself in that way. A man like anybody, come to that.'
They emerged into the brilliant sunshine. Naidu said earnestly,
'Man has free will. He has the things of this world before him and it's up to him what he does with them. That we must all recognize. There is such a thing as alcohol and if a man indulges in it to an excess then he has only himself to blame. I trust I'm not sounding censorious towards our good friend when I say that, you understand.'
Averting his eyes from the stone figure of the lion-like creature, which they were now passing, Churchill looked at Naidu. The small neat handsome face with its shapely bones and rich brown skin was troubled, but not unhappy. It was as if new reasons for envying him came up every day.
'I see that, Moti,' said Churchill. 'But why couldn't alcohol just have had good effects, or at least not have had such bad ones as it's had on the fellows in that ward? It could have been, you know, no worse than overeating, making you fat or something if you went on with it. So why did it have to be so bad?'
'My dear James, why is there arsenic, why are there poisonous snakes, why is there cholera and bubonic plague and the other things of that sort? Come along, padre, you're the expert here. You must render me some assistance.'
'I'd be worse than useless, I'm afraid,' said Ayscue. 'I've been into this with James before, more than once. I just make him angry.'
Churchill flushed. 'Not angry, Willie, merely disturbed to find someone of your intelligence defending the indefensible.'
'Don't let's start.'
'All right. Sorry.'
As they drew level with the water-tower, a door in the adjacent building opened and the two women
