Ramage and the Freebooters

'I... I... I can't remember, thir.'

'Think, man! You had them for breakfast, didn't you?'

'No... didn't eat breakfatht.'

'Supper, then.'

'Nor thupper; at leatht, I don't think mo.'

Douglas, the steward, appeared as Ramage realized the man probably hadn't eaten a proper meal for days, if not weeks.

'Douglas, Mr Bowen has mislaid his teeth. They're in his cabin somewhere—fetch them, please.'

As Douglas left, Ramage turned back to the surgeon.

'How long have you been drinking like this?'

'Like what, thir?'

The voice revealed he was—well, not exactly cringing, nor trying to seem innocent. Ashamed? Yes! So perhaps there was the remnant of pride there, and he prayed it had not sunk too deep.

'Don't play the fool,' Ramage said harshly, hoping the man would soon be completely sober, and that a few hard words would speed up the process. 'You're a gin-sodden wreck; just a pig swilling from a trough. Now, how long have you been drinking like this?'

Pressing his hands to his temples, Bowen seemed to be trying to stop his head spinning. He stared at the deck a few inches in front of Ramage's feet and said in a near whisper:

'Three yearth, thir.'

'For a year before you joined the Service?'

'Yeth . . .'

'In other words, your first year's drinking wrecked your life. Eventually only the Navy would employ you as a doctor?'

'I thuppothe thath true, thir: I hadn't thought of it.'

Douglas knocked at the door, came in and discreetly handed the surgeon his teeth as though they were a pair of spectacles.

He left the cabin and Ramage busied himself with some papers while Bowen fitted them, fumbling with shaking hands.

'Thank you, sir.'

Ramage nodded and turned bade to face him.

'Tell me, Bowen, he said conversationally, 'when you were a doctor in London, I imagine you often had patients who drank too much and came to you for treatment?'

'I'm afraid so, sir. Drink's a curse which afflicts the rich and poor alike. Cheap gin or expensive brandy—the effect, medically speaking, is just the same.'

'If it isn't cured, I suppose the patient dies?'

'Invariably. The liver, you see: it can't stand the damaging effect of all that liquor.'

Ramage realized Bowen was now talking in a completely detached manner; once again a doctor discussing a medical problem. Well, he thought grimly, maybe 'physician, heal thyself might work.

'What do doctors consider the chances of effecting a cure? How many, say in a hundred cases?'

'Depends entirely on the patient, sir. And on his family and friends. No nostrums can cure. Fashionable quacks prescribe expensive medicines and treatments, but the patients the or go mad and the quacks get rich...'

'But what starts a man drinking so excessively? I mean, not every hard drinker gets like—well permanently besotted.'

'Well, that's hard to say. Most people drink a normal amount—a glass of claret, a sherry, port, a good brandy after dinner. Hot toddy on a cold night. They have a drink because it tastes well, it livens the spirit...'

'But that's far removed from being drunk all the time.'

'Yes, that's the puzzling part. It's not a fashionable view among medical men, but I think it is an illness, like a fever. It affects some and not others. Like yellow jack. It strikes down one man and leaves another.'

Ramage was interested now, conscious that something quite different was emerging from the drunken man seated in front of him. Bowen's voice was becoming brisk and assured. Although the words were slightly blurred, for he was not yet fully sober, here was the man of medicine talking to the brother of a patient.

'You see, sir, the strange thing is you can take two men and each can drink the same amount. Wine with the midday meal, wine and brandy at supper. Perhaps several brandies. Now one of those men will, all his life, drink the same amount with no difficulty. He'll never feel the need to drink more.

'But the other man,' Bowen continued, his eyes brighter now and emphasizing his words with a wagging finger, 'will find he starts having just one more drink on each occasion. Particularly in the evening. One more, then another. He doesn't get particularly drunk—until perhaps one evening he's enjoying an argument, or quarrels with his wife, or something is worrying him. Then he gets very drunk. The next morning...'

Ramage nodded. He knew the feeling, though in his case because he'd drunk more in one evening than he had the previous month.

'Yes,' Bowen said sharply. 'Next morning he feels terrible. But by midday he has got over it. But it happens a few days later. And again and again. Then some friend offers him a drink before breakfast one morning when he feels dreadful. The friend assures him one drink will make him feel better. The thought is revolting because his head is throbbing, mouth dry, stomach upset... But he takes the drink... And almost immediately he does feel better.

'That,' he almost shouted, pounding his knee with his fist, 'that's tie moment the illness starts. I am certain that's the point when the liquor has so penetrated the man's essential parts that he's lost.

'But of course he doesn't know it. On the contrary, he thinks he has made a discovery more important than finding a way of changing base metals into gold: he's learned he can get vilely drunk but next morning feel no after-effects—as long as he can have just one drink.'

'Just one?' Ramage's eyebrows lifted in disbelief.

'Ah!' Bowen said knowingly. 'He thinks it's only one, and one's enough for a while. Then comes the day—the second stage of the fever, in fact—when one isn't enough. He needs two to stop the headache, settle the bile, focus the eyes, stop the slight tremble which has begun to affect his hands. Then as the weeks go by it's three, four, five—and he's drunk by noon."

'By this time he's past curing?'

Bowen shrugged his shoulders. 'By this time his life is collapsing, unless he is a man of leisure. If he's a professional man—a man of medicine, for instance—he finds his patients complaining he's drunk when he examines them at ten o'clock in the morning, so he sucks cashews to disguise the smell on his breath. His wife begins to complain, and he gets angry with her. A friend might drop hints. Then he suddenly finds many of his patients are calling in other doctors.'

'But are his actual abilities affected by then?'

'I don't know,' Bowen admitted. 'Probably, because he's not so alert, and he'll be getting worried. Fewer patients means having fewer bills...

'Anyway,' he continued, 'the man has already begun to feel ashamed. He's already keeping a bottle hidden away, so he can have his first drinks of me day in secret. At first he thought it was secret; then he discovers everyone knows. That makes him more ashamed. Then he swears he won't have a drink before noon—but noon gets earlier every day, and so does the evening for his evening drinks. And he finds he can't stop. Drink, drink, drink... In secret, or openly and defiantly. He's possessed by a devil. In lucid moments he knows his family, his career, his very life is ruined; and a drink—he thinks one drink—is enough to drown the thought for a while. It isn't of course; it never is. Since he's sick, the very nature of the sickness means one drink is too many— and a thousand not enough. Well-meaning friends, parsons, priests—even doctors—bid him have courage, have strength, leave the bottle alone! They extract promises—and he gladly gives them: anything for peace, anything to make them go away—so that he can get at the bottle he's hidden somewhere.'

'But the promises?' Ramage asked.

'Oh yes, they're meant at the moment he makes them. That's what's so degrading because a moment later the fever drowns them. The man knows nothing can save him: he's doomed to drink and drink until he dies or kills himself.'