Gay Phoenix Read Online Free PDF Page B

turned away and took a walk through the village to think the thing out. He met a rustic character who tugged his forelock and said “Good day to ’ee, Dr Tennyson” – or words to that effect. “My God, my man, you’re right!” Dr Tennyson said. And so he was able to get on with the day’s work. Amnesia is simply a grand name for commonplace occurrences of that sort.’
    ‘Very good, William!’ Budgery said cheerfully. ‘A capital story. But you must admit that my patient went one stage further. He believed himself to be somebody else.’
    ‘Nothing to that, either.’ William, who sounded younger than his fellow diners, was airily dismissive. ‘There’s a kid in Freud who was convinced he was a cock. He’d do nothing but crow.’
    ‘Identification even with inanimate objects is not unknown.’ Appleby was prompted to join in this amiable fun at the expense of Adelaide’s professor of clinical medicine. ‘My own grandfather actually died while believing he was a motor car. Not that he was simply at the wheel of one, but that he was one. His last breath went into making what he judged to be the appropriate noises. Of course, cars weren’t so thick on the ground then as now.’
    ‘Which is a relevant point, no doubt.’ Budgery was entirely amenable to nonsense. ‘You might have expected my patient – who, unlike Appleby’s grandfather, survived – to suppose himself a yacht. Not a bit of it. He was simply his own brother. A remarkable instance – don’t you think? – of family solidarity. But there was a real problem. Don’t shut me up before I come to that. What the devil was I to do?’
    ‘Nothing at all, I’d suppose.’ It was the young man called William who said this. ‘If Colin wanted to be Adam, why not let him be – at least for the time being? It wasn’t doing any harm. Unless, of course, you were beginning to get enquiries from relations, and so on.’
    ‘There wasn’t a chirp of that sort. And, as a matter of fact, leave the thing alone was pretty well what I did. You see, the delusion didn’t remain a settled one. Quite suddenly the chap would be talking about his poor dead brother Adam, and would accept without protest or any appearance of bewilderment remarks implying that he himself was Colin. That, it seems, is how dissociated personalities work: first one takes over, and then the other. I read it all up, and thought the situation out for myself. I wasn’t at all keen, if the truth be told, to let my patient fall into the hands of the professional alienists. They’d simply start telling him he was in love with his mother, or God knows what. Drive him a damned sight madder than he was already.’ Professor Budgery delivered himself of this persuasion with complete assurance. ‘After all, the chap was sick, but he was on the mend. He was putting on weight, and there’s really nothing more definitive than that. And a better circulation of blood to the brain: in proportion as that happened, all this confused thinking about himself would fade out. Time was on his side – and on mine.’
    ‘Did you discover,’ Appleby asked, ‘whether they occasionally knew about one another’s existence?’
    ‘What’s that? Oh, I see! It can be expressed – can’t it? – schematically. A person suffering from this sort of dissociation sometimes believes himself to be A , and sometimes B . A may know of the existence and erruptive behaviour of B , and B of the existence and erruptive behaviour of A . Alternatively, A may have the advantage – so to speak – over B , or B may have it over A . The one may know he possesses a dual personality, and the other may not. Yes, my dear Appleby, I’ve read all about that too. Most interesting, I agree. But I confess to being a practical man. My job was simply to coax Colin into asserting himself; into keeping his chin above water, so to speak, for progressively longer periods each time he surfaced. It required a good deal of tact, I’m bound