Doctor Who_ The Sleep of Reason - Martin Day [13]
Miss Thorne is some forty years of age, but today especially had the appearance of one far older, with her hair greying and pulled into a tight bun. Her face is dominated by a broad, noble forehead and large, beguiling eyes; she seems forever to be brushing invisible dust from her clothes.
‘Good morning, sir,’ she said.
‘Good morning, Miss Thorne.’
I sat in an old armchair in one corner of the room; it had lost an arm and stuffing was falling from underneath, but it was comfortable enough. With the exception of the letter I had been writing when Mr Sands had arrived –
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a trivial but necessary appeal to the philanthropic nature of our patrons and neighbours – I felt that I had been on my feet all morning. There may be precious little festive cheer at Mausolus House, but what there is, I must oversee.
But it felt good to return to what I feel I do best – talking and listening, all the while looking for any signs of progress.
(I know that I am a product of my time. I am not so arrogant – despite what my critics might say! – as to think that I may be remembered by future gener-ations as a doctor who changed the course of medicine. But it still saddens me that, even in the twentieth century, it is unusual to treat the insane as people. I agree with most of my colleagues that madness is caused by a defect in the organic structure of the brain, and yet I remain equally committed to the effect that this has on the whole person. For all their faults and hallucinations, they are still people, made in imago Dei – notwithstanding whatever intellectual concerns I might have with the place of an interventionist God in a Darwinian world. They are blessed with souls and spirits that naturally yearn for release.
I feel duty bound, as a doctor and fellow human being, to treat them as such –
and now feel regret at, once more, frittering away precious writing time on self-justification and self-important pomposity. It is a most unappealing trait of mine, and one that seemingly limitless ink and parchment cannot quench.)
‘Are you better, my dear?’ I asked.
‘Much better, doctor. The influenza seems to have finished with me.’
She was right – she has been spared from that vile disease, at least for a season.
Remembering Samuel Sands’s earlier confusion of chronology, I asked her,
‘How long have you been here, Miss?’
Miss Thorne shrugged. ‘I couldn’t rightly say. It is a few years, I feel.’
‘A few years?’
‘So I would imagine.’
‘And what do you remember of your life before you came here?’
‘Much the same as anyone else, sir,’ said Thorne, her brow furrowed in attempted recollection.
‘What is your earliest memory?’
‘I recollect little from early times. I have. . . images, no more. . . until I was six or seven years of age.’ Suddenly her face lit up. ‘There was a rocking horse. I cried when paint chipped off the eye – I thought he would be blind.
He was. . . mended.’
‘Where were you when this happened?’
‘At home.’
‘Do you remember home?’
Almost immediately Thorne shook her head. ‘No, sir. It is a word I have associated with. . . certain things. It brings no memories with it.’
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‘And more recently? What do you recall?’
‘I am not sure my memory is working properly. Is the memory in the brain, doctor?’
‘Yes, my dear, that’s where your memories are.’
‘Perhaps a bang on my head when I was young hurt my memory. That’s my earliest recollection, sir – falling out of bed.’
‘Did it hurt?’
‘Oh