A UNIQUE CASE
The Reverend Dr Phelim MacLeod is a healthy, boyish-looking bachelor who has outlived all his relations except a distant cousin in Canada. Though unsurpassed in his knowledge of Latin, Hebrew and Greek his main reading since retirement has been detective stories, but he can still beat me at the game of chess we play at least once a fortnight. I tell you this to indicate his apparent normality before the accident last year. A badly driven, badly stacked glazier’s van crashed beside his garden gate as he walked out of it, and a fragment of glass sheered off a section of skull with his right ear on it. I am his closest friend. At the Royal Infirmary I heard that no visitors could be allowed to see him in his present state, but I would be called if it changed.
I was called a week later. The brain surgeon in charge of him said, ‘Dr MacLeod has regained consciousness. We are providing him with peace, privacy and a well-balanced diet. His unique constitution makes it impossible for us to do more.’
“But is he recovering?”
“I think so. Judge for yourself. And please tell him nothing about his appearance that would needlessly disturb him.”
In a small ward of his own I found Dr MacLeod propped up in bed reading one of his detective thrillers. He greeted me with his usual calm, self-satisfied smile. I asked how he felt.
“Very well,” he said. “You are interested in my wound, I see. How does it look? The staff here are less than informative.”
In war films I had seen many buildings with an outer wall missing and the side of my friend’s head resembled one. Through a big opening I saw tiny rooms with doors, light fittings and wall sockets, all empty of furniture but with signs of hasty evacuation. There was also scaffolding and heaps of building material suggesting that repair was in progress. I said hesitantly, “You seem to be mending quite well.”
Dr MacLeod smiled complacently and pointed out that he would be seventy-six on his next birthday. I asked if he had any pain.
“No pain but a deal of inconvenience. I am forbidden to move my head and am sometimes wakened at night by hammering noises inside it. I sleep best during the day.”
After chatting with him about the weather and our acquaintances I returned to the surgeon’s office. I told him that my friend seemed surprisingly fit for a man in his condition and asked who was responsible for the improvement.
“Agents,” said the surgeon slowly, “who seem to inhabit the undamaged parts of his anatomy, only emerging to operate on him when nobody is looking — nobody like us, I mean. I am carefully keeping students and younger doctors away from this case. Mere curiosity might lead them to kill your friend by delving into what they understand as little as I do.”
“There are obviously more things in heaven and earth,” I said, “than are dreamed of in your …”
The surgeon interrupted testily, saying every experienced medical practitioner knew that better than Shakespeare. A year seldom passed without them encountering at least one inexplicable case. A hospital he would not name recently treated a woman, otherwise normal, for panic attacks caused by her certainty that a sudden shock would crack her into a million pieces. When every other therapy had failed a psychiatrist, thinking a practical demonstration might work, suddenly tripped her so that she fell on a padded surface which could not have injured a child, and she had cracked into a million pieces.
“With tact,” said the surgeon, “your friend’s case may have a happier conclusion.”
It did. A month later the wound had been closed. Skin grew over it, a new ear, also a few strands of the white hair which elsewhere surrounds Dr MacLeod’s bald pink dome. He returned home and we meet once more for regular chess games. His character seems in no way changed by the accident. I am sometimes tempted to tell him that he is worked from inside by smaller people and always refrain in case it spoils his play. But maybe it would have no effect at all. Like many Christians he believes that a healthy body is a gift from God, no matter how it works. And like most men he has always thought himself unique.
THE COMEDY OF THE WHITE DOG
On a sunny afternoon two men went by car into the suburbs to the house of a girl called Nan. Neither was much older than twenty years. One of them, Kenneth, was self-confident and well dressed and his friends thought him very witty. He owned and drove the car. The other, Gordon, was more quiet. His clothes were as good as Kenneth’s but he inhabited them less easily. He had never been to this girl’s house before and felt nervous. An expensive bunch of flowers lay on his lap.
Kenneth stopped the car before a broad-fronted bungalow with a badly kept lawn. The two men had walked halfway up the path to the door when Kenneth stopped and pointed to a dog which lay basking in the grass. It was a small white sturdy dog with a blunt pinkish muzzle and a stumpy tail. It la y with legs stuck out at right angles to its body, its eyes were shut tight and mouth open in a grin through which the tongue lolled. Kenneth and Gordon laughed and Gordon said, “What’s so funny about him?” Kenneth said, “He looks like a toy dog knocked over on its side.”
“Is he asleep?”
“Don’t fool yourself. He hears every word we say.”
The dog opened its eyes, sneezed and got up. It came over to Gordon and grinned up at him but evaded his hand when he bent down to pat it and trotted up the path and touched the front door with its nose. The door opened and the dog disappeared into a dark hall. Kenneth and Gordon stood on the front step stamping their feet on the mat and clearing their throats. Sounds of female voices and clattering plates came from nearby and the noise of a wireless from elsewhere. Kenneth shouted, “Ahoi!” and Nan came out of a side door. She was a pleasant-faced blonde who would have seemed plump if her waist, wrists and ankles had not been slender. She wore an apron over a blue frock and held a moist plate in one hand. Kenneth said jocularly, “The dog opened the door to us.”
“Did he? That was wicked of him. Hullo, Gordon, why, what nice flowers. You’re always kind to me. Leave them on the hallstand and I’ll put them in water.”
“What sort of dog is he?” said Gordon.
“I’m not sure, but when we were on holiday up at Ardnamurchan the local inhabitants mistook him for a pig.”
A woman’s voice shouted, “Nan! The cake!”
“Oh, I’ll have to rush now, I’ve a cake to ice. Take Gordon into the living room, Kenneth; the others haven’t arrived yet so you’ll have to entertain each other. Pour yourselves a drink if you like.”
The living room was at the back of the house. The curtains, wallpaper and carpets had bright patterns that didn’t harmonize. There was an assortment of chairs and the white dog lay on the most comfortable. There was a big very solid oval table, and a grand piano with two bottles of cider and several tumblers on it. “I see we’re not going to have an orgy anyway,” said Gordon, pouring cider into a tumbler.
“No, no. It’s going to be a nice little family party,” said Kenneth, seating himself at the piano and starting to play. He played badly but with confidence, attempting the best known bits of works by Beethoven and Schumann. If he particularly enjoyed a phrase he repeated it until it bored him; if he made a passage illegible with too many discords he repeated it until it improved. Gordon stood with the tumbler in his hand, looking out the window. It opened on a long narrow lawn which sloped down between hedges to a shrubbery.