“The orange squash cut out,” Albert confirmed. “The additives, youngsters can't take. E-numbers, they are. E for extinction and exit. The very least you can expect from E-numbers is hyper something. And good that’s not. The Eskimos think of. They are hyper something but with a capital H. They get their E-numbers from the fish. And the fish get them from the North Sea oil platforms. It’s from the bottles of orange squash that the oil workers throw over the side. Tonic water feed them instead.”
“And that,” the colonel cut in excitedly. “Will keep the malaria away. It's difficult bringing up kids. In today’s world even more. We didn't have drugs in our day. Apart from Woodbines. In our day the nation produced first class soldiers. They didn't go around moaning about cocktails of drugs. They got on with it. Dug in. Took what the krauts threw at them. No Common Market in those days. Nothing at all common about the krauts. They were good soldiers, let down only by a predilection for fornicating with their own mothers and eating children. We brewed up. Lived on bully beef. How old did you say Paul was?” Mr Lawrence replied, “I didn't. He's about twenty-five but acts a lot younger, as a lot of people do.”
“Difficult age," Albert said reflectively. "When I was that age it was difficult. Wanking took up most of my time.”
The colonel agreed. “In the army we used to stop the wanking with jungle juice and a standing order. And there was a chemical that they added to your tea, but I forget the name.” He nodded in agreement with himself.
“A sex destroyer,” Roger suggested.
“Exactly,” the colonel said.
“They should have tried married life, mate. Better than any chemical known to man.”
The colonel’s nod was despondent. “The thing is,” he said. “Age is the enemy. It’s not like the krauts. You can’t beat it. You can’t run at it with a bayonet and shout ‘Have that you child-molesting jerry bastard!’ It creeps up on you, more like a Nip or the taxes in a Brown budget, and you don’t see it coming.”
A stranger standing between the colonel and Rasher cut in: “With regard to Paul, it sounds a bit like schizophrenia or something similar.” Albert asked, “What about the something similar?”
“Yes, you're right. I didn't mean similar. I mean he sounds like a raving schizo.”
They were all ears. Even Rasher managed a series of blinks. The stranger, well turned out in a suit and dark coat, had a bedside manner about him and an acceptable accent from the home counties. He was probably a doctor or a double-glazing salesman.
The colonel cut in, “Don’t know about your schizophrenia but it seems to me that half the country is off with stress, the twenty-first century cop out. What’s wrong with a good old-fashioned backache or even ME?”
“Ah, indeed,” the stranger said. “Myalgic encephalomyelitis, also known as CFS, chronic fatigue syndrome. Caused quite a stir a few years back with half the establishment denying its existence, much like schizophrenia some years before. Mind you, even now, much of the establishment along with many old soldiers still believe it’s a malingerer’s charter.”
They looked at the colonel who nodded his agreement. “Just like stress, then,” he said. “Just like the vaccines and the Gulf War syndrome. We never complained about DDT in the porridge. So long as they kept it away from the old undercarriage we were happy.” “Mosquitoes?” Albert asked.
“In the desert? No. It kept away the flies. The real soldiers, the professionals, didn’t mind the flies. You could always find an Arab by following the flies. And if you could find the Arab you could find the kraut. The krauts liked to fuck the Arabs. Little bits of information like that won us the war.”
The stranger shook a bewildered head and went on, “The popular press and Hollywood, Hitchcock in particular, created the misnomer of the multiple personality but that has more to do with dissociative identity disorder than schizophrenia. The split personality is very unlikely, largely unfounded. Schizophrenia was originally called dementia praecox – mental deterioration in the early life – praecox. Usually a sensitive, retiring child who starts to develop peculiar behaviour in his early twenties, hallucinations, delusions, general withdrawal from society. When it occurs in later life it generally takes the form of a persecution complex – paranoia.” The stranger swept back his greying hair. It was the narrow sideburns that worried the regulars. Beware of men with narrow sideburns and those who wore brown shoes. The regulars were, however, all ears.
“A steady mental deterioration,” Albert said gravely. “Cured can it be…cured?”
“Doubtful. In some cases drugs can help. Then there's electric shocks and cold water treatment. Then there's leucotomy. Crucifixion, as a last resort, cures it once and for all. But that has nasty side effects
– religious wars and stuff like that.”
“But the voice…?”
“Yes, there is generally a voice.”
“And violence?”
“Sudden violent outbursts, certainly. Can't have a half-decent mental disorder without violence.”
Roger, the manager, something of a movie buff, said, “When Alfred Hitchcock released his Psycho back in fifty-nine, the critics thought it was a joke on them. That at the end of the first reel he killed off his leading lady. That wasn't the done thing. Their cosy world was shattered.”
“Shattered I was too, when that scene I saw,” Albert said. “It's a good thing to shatter the critics,” the colonel said. “They’re as useless as an Eyetie soldier. Having said that, Hitchcock was one of my favourite directors. I also liked David Lean and Robert Young.” “Robert Young?”
“He did that telly thing, GBH.”
“Television doesn't count,” Roger said. “It never did. Not when you’re talking movies. Not even if their movies are better. My favourite film is Paths of Glory, a Kubrick movie. Every time I see that last scene where the German bird sings, I cry.”
“You cry?”
“At the movies, I do. In real life, that’s different, I don’t.” While he had listened to Roger the colonel nodded and his eyes dulled as he recalled another day. He said, “When my wife was alive I had about two thousand films to watch – videos in those days. But by the time she had watched her soaps and all the other crap that was on I was too tired to start a film. I thought about installing a television in the other room but then I’d never have seen her. An odd consideration, but once she died, I couldn’t be bothered watching the films. Came here instead.”
Roger said impatiently, “Get back to the point. What’s your favourite film?”
“OK then”, the colonel said. “I liked Ice Cold In Alex with John Mills.”
Albert was sheepish. Finally he admitted, “All right, all right. Fun in Acapulco.”
Everyone took a step back from Albert and waited for clarification. Albert sucked on his thin lips and, although there was nothing remotely Gallic about him, shrugged a Gallic shrug, playing for time and all the time wondering if he’d made a terrible mistake. “Well,” he said nervously, “He was a nice lad.”
Unfortunately this explanation, when all was said and done, made things much worse. Roger wandered away to the other end of his long bar, the colonel bristled with indignation and Mr Lawrence wondered who the nice lad was but one thing was certain, Albert was left quite alone.
He was out when Mr Lawrence got in. The following morning he was running in the electric cable. The electricity distribution box in the stair recess was open and a coil of black cable snaked out towards the shop. It was a worrying sight and Mr Lawrence was rightly worried. He reached the door when an almighty crash had him ducking for cover and for a moment he wondered if one of the colonel’s krauts had followed him home and lobbed a hand-grenade. The shop lights went out without a flicker and Paul yelped and a bronze ballerina in the shop window pirouetted off her stand.
“It's arced!” Paul screamed. “It's arced!” He vaulted from the recess and crashed into the wall opposite and, as he slid slowly southward, smiled sweetly at Mr Lawrence.