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PILCHARD

By Hamish MacLaren
Contact the author via the editor by e-mail at christopher.johnstone@ntlworld.com

"Let's see...", said the disembodied female voice from NHS 24. "There's a urinary retention in Boquhan, two hot tots in Dunipace, a 'pissed fell over' in Throsk, and some aristo in plaid has gone bonkers in the Carse of Lecropt. Where are you now?"

"Bridge of Allan. I'll take the loon in plaid. Closest."

"Sure?" She sounded dubious. "Mental health takes forever. He might need sectioning. That'll take you way past the bells."

The bells, the bells! But in truth I'd nothing to celebrate, nobody to link arms with and sing Auld Lang Syne. Work can fill the yawning, aching chasm. And besides, I was curious, to see how the other half lived, how they took their pleasure. Ronnie my driver scribbled down the directions and en route we speculated as to just how mad our patient would turn out to be.

"The wheel is turning but the hamster is dead... one sandwich short of a picnic..." And then, more outlandishly, "One fowl short of a parliament... one raven short of an unkindness..."

I must have passed this gatehouse by the concealed entrance a thousand times and never do I wonder where the driveway leads. The gate was totally nondescript. This is how the Scottish aristocracy keep going; they have made themselves invisible, only occasionally showing a head above the parapet, maybe to write a letter to The Scotsman about the amalgamation of the Scottish regiments, or riding to hounds, signed by Himself, somebody or other of that ilk, McSporran of McSporran and all that arrant, effete, redundant mediaeval claptrap. Ronnie pressed a button on the intercom.

"Yes?"

"Dr Malcolm."

There was a pause. The gate began to open.

"Drive through."

We drove for a mile through winter woodland towards the enormous floodlit ancestral pile. I'd never noticed it before; it mustn't be visible from the public highway. Silently it began to snow. The driveway split into two wide semicircles in chunky red gravel bracketing an erotic and statuesque classical scene, again floodlit, all buttocks and fountains. We drew up beside the anonymous Mercedes and BMWs. I grabbed my Gladstone, and ascended the steps. The woman in black at the vestibule reminded me of that mean housekeeper in Rebecca. I introduced myself. She didn't move a muscle.

"You have a business card?"

I was about to say, "Look, lady, I didn't ask to come here," when Himself took over. "Dr Malcolm, how terribly terribly kind." It was a rich RP voice, full of Havana smoke and peaty Islay malt, the voice of a man who knew how the world worked, and how to use people to secure his wants. He knew he sounded platitudinous and insincere, and he couldn't have cared less.

Himself was in full Highland regalia. The tartan was Black Watch. The outstretched hand was pronated, palm down, the handshake of the powerful. "Come away, come away. Thank you, Miss Duckmanton." I entered an oak-beamed atrium warmed by a blazing log fire and seemed to step back a hundred years. There was a red leather-top reception desk of Bismarckian proportions, beside it a handsomely bedecked Christmas tree, and, above it, a coat of arms out of which a host of bloodied, mythical heraldic creatures threatened to jump. To the right, there was a ceilidh, in full swing. The band was playing Highland Cathedral. I hate Highland Cathedral. It is second only in mawkish sentimentality to Flower of Scotland. If we could find a half-way decent anthem, maybe our first fifteen would stop dropping the ball.

"Will you take a dram doctor? No? Torquil - where is Archie? In the billiard room?" Now I found myself in a Richard Hannay thriller. I was going to take a fit of the giggles. We entered the swirl of the ceilidh, the kilts, the gorgeous ball gowns and plaid sashes, the noise and sweat. Himself bawled at me over his shoulder. "It's my nephew. He reads PPE at Oxford. He's up for the winter break. He's overwrought. Can't distinguish dream from reality. Now, far it be it from me to teach you your job..."

He proceeded to teach me my job. Sedation and admission apparently were to constitute the management plan. We entered an intensely claustrophobic lift with carpeted walls and a mirrored ceiling, and slowly ascended two floors. The noise receded.

"You local, doctor?"

"Glasgow."

"An ancient and revered medical school."

I grinned. "Actually I went to Edinburgh."

"Indeed!" The antennae were out. He was struggling to identify my social stratum, the accent, the demeanour, the provenance. The elevator lurched sickeningly to a halt. We spilled out into an anteroom occupied by close family. The conversational buzz momentarily diminished.

"There you are Lindsay! Torquil's holding the fort. Mr. MacKellar, would you take the doctor's coat? Ah, Imogen my dear, how is Archie?"

They were a concerned family, like any other concerned family. An anxious and tremulous lady of a certain age; a supportive brother or cousin; another professional man, perhaps a lawyer or accountant who had become a close family friend. Others remained vague shadows. Except for MacKellar. He must be the butler and general factotum. He was a cadaverous old retainer dressed in an ill-fitting dark suit. He was tall and slim and had the extreme parchment-dry pallor of a funeral director. He had an eye as sharp as a hawk. His gaze ran across me as if to measure me for a casket. Then there was no further eye contact.

Himself nodded towards the billiard room. "Archie's in there, doctor. I'll leave you to it."

I gently tapped on the door and went in.

They were seated together on a window seat. She had clasped her hands over his. It was so dark outside that the window panes might have been lacquered black. The only light came from the flickering log fire and the pall of the billiard table's overhead gantry. They looked absurdly young to me; he might have been twenty one and I doubt if she had reached her eighteenth birthday. He had loosened his black tie and opened the top of a heavily starched evening shirt. She was in a long gossamer creation in gunsmoke, with a tartan sash - ancient Campbell. She had deep blue eyes and auburn hair that fell to her waist. She was ludicrously beautiful. But of sullen hauteur there was no trace. I thought, she's on a gap year, just back from looking after Venezuelan street kids. They love her. And she's nice. Archie couldn't take his eyes off her. No wonder! But when he saw me he hurriedly rose and stretched out his hand.

"It's very good of you to come and see me, sir." I was taken aback by his old world courtesy. How wonderful to think they still spoke to one another like this in Brasenose. There was none of the deconstructed text-message "an' I was like - an' she was like- and it was so not cool" patois of the young. Subsequently I remember wondering if he had not after all been a ghost. He was of slender build; a thin pale face and high cheek bones, and a comma of wavy fair hair across one eye. "Please call me Archie. My cousin, Morag." The proffered hand was cool.

I leaned back against the billiard table, put the Gladstone down on the green baize, and folded my arms. "How can I help you?"

"I must get to London!"

"Oh?"

"It's vital."

"You're on a mission."

His eyes narrowed. "How did you know?"

I said easily, "I can tell a man who is on a mission. Are you able to tell me what it is?"

He stared at me fully for one minute without speaking. He never blinked. He was sizing me up. Was I to be trusted? Was I discreet? Abruptly he made up his mind.

"There is to be an explosion."

"A bomb?"

"Not just a bomb. A dirty bomb. A WMD."

"Where?"

"On the London underground."

"Again?"

"Yes." With respect to madness, true insanity, at the heart of the Freudian thesis lies not the notion of the defunct neuron, this overexuberant or that lackadaisical neurotransmitter, these mischievous synapses, no, at the heart, lies the notion of the "pathogenic idea".

"Which line?"

He took a slim diary out of his pocket and opened it at the map of the tube system.

"Circle & District."

"Which station?"

"Tower Hill."

"Why are you so sure?"

"Because that was the broadcast message."

"Who broadcast it?"

"The BBC."

"You mean you heard it on the telly?"

"Yes. City of London. Doomsday, January 1st, ground zero - between Charing Cross & Leicester Square."

"Did anybody else hear it?"

"I don't know. I suppose so."

"You sure you didn't imagine it?"

"I don't know. I don't think so. It's all so confusing..."

"You heard a voice?"

"Yes."

"This may seem a strange question, Archie, but is it possible the voice you heard was actually a thought - your thought - and that somehow it was being broadcast on the telly?"

Archie considered my question, wondering if I were part of the plot. He was so thin skinned, so sensitive; if I wasn't careful I would find myself mining a seam of irritability that lay just below the surface. I looked for a trace of insight in his hot gaze. I saw anguish, but no tears. I saw resolve.

"No. Absolutely not."

Mm. Stark, staring, mad-as-a-snake. Morag knelt by him on the window seat and stroked his hair. I couldn't resist probing a little more into his delusion, that had been so elaborately worked through. I reconsidered the message he had heard on the television. "Tower Hill isn't between Charing Cross and Leicester Square. They're on the Northern Line." It's a small talent I possess - an encyclopaedic knowledge of subterranean London.

"That's the whole point. That's how the security services have been diverted to search in the wrong place. It only came to me a couple of hours ago. It's lateral thinking. Where's Charing Cross on the London tube? It's at Trafalgar square. What's between these squares, Trafalgar and Leicester?"

I struggled to think. "The National Portrait Gallery."

"Squares, man, squares! Don't you see? It's Monopoly. It's Fenchurch St Station. It all makes sense. They're going to blow up the Square Mile. The bloody Bank of England! Goodbye to the old lady of Threadneedle Street!"

It was just the tip of the iceberg. Below the surface lay one vast and elaborately constructed Conspiracy Theory.

"Who are 'they'?"

"The Conglomerate."

"And where do they hang out?"

"In this house. Everybody in this house is in the Conglomerate - except Morag of course. And you, sir. I don't think you are a member. They're just trying to use you."

"In what way?"

"They want you to certify me of course. I dunno - give me an injection, put me in a straitjacket for the next twelve hours or so. Will you help me?"

"What do you want me to do?"

"Give me a lift to the station. I can pick up the London sleeper just after midnight. It's up to me, now. Tell them you've persuaded me to go into The Royal Infirmary."

This was fantastic. It was so seldom one came across the full house like this, the elaborate monodelusional state, the Messianic complex, the paranoia, the thought broadcasting. Everything. And no trace of irony in his dead-pan anachronistic delivery. I couldn't wait to present Archie at a medical meeting.

But what to do in the meantime? Call the psychiatrists, call out a social worker, enlist the help of the family, acquire the relevant papers, certify Archie for in-patient care under the Mental Health Act, Scotland. Messy business. Archie would grow suspicious, paranoid and then, seeing his chance of getting to London thwarted, he would become obstructive, combative. He would need to be restrained, physically, and then chemically. It could take all night.

Yet there was another way. Could I trick him into presenting as a voluntary patient? Offer him a ride to the station and then, as we drove past the skirts of the castle, hang a right and go like hell for Livilands. He might smell a rat. It could all go hideously wrong. He might try to jump out of a moving car. One of these ghastly scenarios might evolve in which he died of asphyxiation being held down in the back of a careering vehicle. Still, I had an idea about that. I'd recruit Morag. I could see he was love sick. Kissing cousins. He would follow her to the ends of the earth.

"So you'll help me?"

"Yes."

"You'll drop me off at the station?"

I couldn't hold his gaze. I smiled a sickly smile into his cousin's cobalt eyes. "What do you think, Morag?"

She nodded and gave me the full candlepower benefit of her smile. Archie rose to his feet and held out his hand.

"Deal?

"Deal."

Scheming, conniving lickspittle.

I reemerged into the anteroom. The company was positioned exactly as I had left it. I noticed that everyone was standing, facing me. I had the odd impression that they had been stuck in freeze-frame. The querulous lady named Imogen held interlocked fists before her bosom with elbows akimbo like a contralto at a church social.

"What do you think, doctor?"

"It's an acute psychotic episode no doubt. I think we should admit him. He has agreed to being driven into the hospital."

"Really?"

"Morag was a great help."

"Oh dear. What an upset. I shall have to telephone his mother. He will get better won't he?"

"I'm sure."

"But it could happen again?"

"I'm afraid that's a possibility. Early days. We just need to work through this."

MacKellar emerged through a doorway and made some completely banal housekeeping announcement. I hardly remember what it was. "The tart is in the oven." Something like that. It had an odd timbre, like the "personal messages" broadcast by the BBC to the French people just before D-Day.

As he swept back through the doorway the lapel of his jacket fluttered in the draught. Something under his jacket caught my attention. He's armed. I felt a prickle down my spine as if I'd dragged a fingernail across several strands of taut piano wire. And suddenly everything had metamorphosed. Everything was the same and yet it was totally different. Changed, utterly. Himself's smile never wavered. I made my movements as unhurried as possible.

"Best get going then." I turned on my heel and sauntered back casually towards the billiard room. I could feel Himself's eyes boring into the back of my head. Control the overwhelming autonomic surge, the flush, the sweat, the tremor, the palpitation, the threat of loss of bowel and bladder control, the myriad erector pili muscles springing to attention... The terrifying clinical jargon buzzed around my head.

Morag took one look at my face and stiffened.

I said, as easily as I could, "Okay, folks, nice and gently. Don't be in any rush. Off we go."

Back out into the anteroom. Archie's traverse was brilliant. "I'm so sorry, Aunt Imogen. I'll be all right. I just need a rest. Will you call mother?"

Now into the hideous, lurching closet. Himself and the ghastly Duckmanton woman squeezed in with us. The voyage back to earth was interminable. I was overtaken by a wave of nausea. Get outside, quick! Back into the ceilidh. I can't hear the music for the ringing in my ears. We weave our vertiginous way through the swooping swirling masque. Here is the atrium, the coat of arms, the tree, the reception desk. Out into the blessed freezing air. It has stopped snowing. Duckmanton is staring after us from the vestibule. For one crazy moment I imagine her pulling out an automatic weapon and ordering us to halt. Resist the temptation to run to the car. Economical movements. I take the front seat. Archie and Morag in the back. The doors close with muffled clicks in the mute winter air. No need for small talk, Ronnie. Just start the engine.

"Doctor!" Himself taps on the window. My heart is going to burst. I press the button and the window slides down silently.

"You forgot your coat." Clumsily I grab it from him and haul it through the window.

"Thank you."

"Happy New Year when it comes."

I let Ronnie head off gently back down the driveway and the floodlit house recede back into the darkness. Then I told him to drive like hell. He glanced across at me inquisitively.

"Don't ask."

As we passed Castle Hill the fireworks erupted from the battlements and exploded in great expanding spheres of a trillion silver scintillae. Morag said, "We are keeping you from your wife and family."

"My wife was killed in a car crash on this night last year. She was struck by a drunk driver. She was carrying our child."

"How ghastly."

And he, "I'm frightfully sorry, sir."

There was an awkward pause. Ronnie slowed at an intersection. "Livilands?"

"No. The train station. We can just catch the sleeper."

The rest of the journey is now a blur. So little time. On the platform I bundled them both into a carriage. "I can't tell you how grateful I am," said Archie, "for your trust. If I succeed, MOD will slap a "D" notice on the press. You will hear nothing."

"That is how I will know you have succeeded. Good luck."

The train snaked silently round the curved contour of the platform and began to pick up speed. I watched until the tousled fair hair and the dancing auburn curls were out of sight.

Back at the car, Ronnie stared at me and shook his head. I said, "I know. One pilchard short of a shirmer."

"Worse. You're barking."

Other online articles by Hamish MacLaren can be found at:
hoolet edition 50 - Pilchard
hoolet edition 49 - Truth or Dare?
hoolet edition 48 - Zeitgeist
hoolet edition 47 - Appraisal Appraised
hoolet edition 45 - Truth or Dare?
hoolet edition 44 - Reverie in a Sauna
hoolet edition 43 - Bump Up
hoolet edition 41 - Mayhem, Clock and Anti
hoolet edition 40 - Christmas Night on Call

hoolet is the magazine of RCGP Scotland. It is supported intellectually, financially and emotionally by RCGP Scotland.

This issue maintained by Robert Hallam.