"Enderby-Hogg, Enderby-Hogg," said Dr Wapenshaw, as though beginning a nursery rhyme. A thick file was open on the desk before him. "Enderby-Hogg. Bit of a mouthful, isn't it? I think we might drop the Enderby, don't you? Keep it, of course, in the background as an optional extra if you like. How do you feel about the Hogg?"
"Oh, fine," said Hogg. "Perfectly all right."
"What do you associate the name with? Pigs? Filth?" smiling. "Gluttony?" Humorously, Dr Wapenshaw pig-snorted.
"Of course not," said Hogg, smiling too. "Roses. A lawn in summer. A sweet-smelling woman at the piano. A silver voice. The smoke from a Passing Cloud."
"Excellent," said Dr Wapenshaw. "That will do very well indeed." He sat back in his swivel-chair, swivelling boyishly from side to side, looking kindly at Hogg. "That beard's coming along all right," he said. "You should have a pretty good one in a couple of weeks. Oh, yes, I've made a note about glasses. We're sending you to the oculist on Thursday."
"Thank you very much," said Hogg.
"Don't thank me, my dear fellow," said Dr Wapenshaw. "After all, it's what we're here for, isn't it? To help." Tears came into Hogg's eyes. "Now," said Dr Wapenshaw, "I've explained to you already just what it is we're trying to do and why we're trying to do it. Could you recap"-he smiled-"in your own words?"
"Enderby," said Hogg, "was the name of a prolonged adolescence. The characteristics of adolescence were well-developed and seemed likely to go on for ever. There was, for instance, this obsession with poetry. There was masturbation, liking to be shut up in the lavatory, rebelliousness towards religion and society."
"Excellent," said Dr Wapenshaw.
"The poetry was a flower of that adolescence," said Hogg. "It still remains good poetry, some of it, but it was a product of an adolescent character. I shall look back with some pride on Enderby's achievement. Life, however, has to be lived."
"Of course it has," said Dr Wapenshaw, "and you're going to live it. What's more, you're going to enjoy living it. Now, let me tell you what's going to happen to you. In a month's time-perhaps less if you continue to make the excellent progress you're already making-we're sending you to our Agricultural Station at Snorthorpe. It's really a convalescent home, you know, where you do a little gentle work-not too much, of course: just what you feel you can do and nothing more-and lead a very pleasant simple social life in beautiful surroundings. Snorthorpe," said Dr Wapenshaw, "is a little town on a river. There are summer visitors, swans, boating, nice little pubs. You'll love it. A group of you-under supervision, of course, if you can really call it supervision-will be allowed out to pubs and dances and cinemas. In the home itself there'll be chess competitions and sing-songs. Once a week," smiled Dr Wapenshaw, "I myself like to come down and lead a singsong. You'll like that, won't you?"
"Oh yes," breathed Hogg.
"Thus," said Dr Wapenshaw, "you'll gradually adjust yourself to living in society. You'll even meet women, you know," he smiled. "Some day, you know, I look forward to your making a real go of marriage. Enderby made rather a mess of that, didn't he? Still, it's all over now. The annulment's going through, so they tell me, quite smoothly."
"I can't even remember her name," frowned Hogg.
"Don't worry about that," said Dr Wapenshaw. "That's Enderby's affair, isn't it? You'll remember it in your own good time. And, moreover, you'll remember it with amusement." Hogg smiled tentatively, as in anticipation. "Now, as far as your future generally is concerned, I don't want you to think about that at the moment. There's going to be no worry about getting a really congenial job for you-we have our own department, you know, which sees to all that, and very efficient they are. The thing for you to do at the moment is to enjoy being this new person we're trying to create. After all, it is great fun, isn't it? I'm getting no end of a kick out of it all, and I want you to share that kick with me. After all," he smiled, "we've grown very close, haven't we, these last few weeks? We've embarked on a real adventure together, and I'm enjoying every minute of it."
"Oh, me too," said Hogg eagerly. "And I'm really most awfully grateful."
"Well, it's really awfully nice of you to say that," said Dr Wapenshaw. "But you've helped no end, yourself, you know." He smiled once more and then became genially gruffly business-like. "I'll be seeing you," he said, looking at his diary, "on Friday morning. Now off you go and have your tea or whatever it is and leave me to see my next victim." He sighed humorously. "Work, work, work." He shook his head. "No end to it. Run along now," he grinned. Hogg grinned back and ran along.
For tea they had Marmite sandwiches, fish-paste sandwiches (Mr Shap cried out PASTE with such exquisite appropriateness that everybody had to laugh), fancy cakes and a small plum cake to each mess of six. After tea Hogg walked the grounds and surprised Mr Killick whispering to some bread-guzzling starlings beyond the haha, "Come on now, you birdies, be good and kind to each other and love God who made you all. He was a bird just like you." Hogg returned to the sunny solarium to find Mr Barnaby triumphantly finishing another stanza of his Ode to the Medical Superintendent. He read this aloud with great feeling, having first shaken hands heartily with Hogg:
I saw you the other night out on the field
Walking with a big stick with which you struck the grass
Repeatedly, but the dumb grass would not yield
To your importunities. So it will come to pass
That that piece of china standing on your shelf
Will fall on your head and give quite a shock to your evil-smelling self.
For dinner there were fish and a rice pudding with sultanas embedded in it. Mr Beecham, his hands vermilion from his day's work on a large symbolical canvas, slowly picked out all the sultanas from his portion and arranged them in a simple gestalt on his bread-plate. After dinner there was television: amateur boxing which excited two patients so much that one of the nurses had to switch over to the other channel. On the other channel was a simple morality of good and evil set in the West of North America in the eighteen-sixties. It was interrupted at intervals by asthenic women demonstrating washing-machines, though some patients evidently could not see these as interpolations, taking them rather as integral to the plot. Integration was the theme: the building of a new human society under the sheriff's steadfast bright star. Hogg nodded frequently, seeing all this (conquest of new territory, death to the evil antisocial) as an allegory of his own reorientation.
3
High summer in Snorthorpe. Boats for hire by the bridge, by the bridge a hotel called the White Hart, much favoured by summer visitors. Drinkers squinting happily in moonlight on the terrace. Dogs yapping in glee, chased by children. Ducks and swans, full-fed, pampered. Willows. An old castle on a height far above the river.
A knot of men came walking, in loose formation though evidently a supervised gang, in the direction of the little town from the sunbrown fields of the Agricultural Station. They were men who looked as burnt and fit as the boating visitors, each carrying some such tool as a hoe or fork. By the bridge they halted at the cheerful command of their leader. "All right," he called. "Rest for five minutes. Old Charlie here says he's got a stone in his boot." Mr Peacock was a decent brown man, squat and upright, who treated his charges like young brothers. Old Charlie sat on the parapet and Mr Peacock helped him off with his road-dusty boot.