Doctor Who_ The Sleep of Reason - Martin Day [32]
suppose is now the oldest, his fur prominently marked with streaks of black –
seemed to answer by trying to jump into my lap.
‘Easy,’ I warned. ‘Time aplenty for fun and games once we’re outside.’
Steadying myself, I gripped the three leashes, and led Lyell, Grant and Huxley through the door and outside. The enormous tug on my arms as the dogs pulled me through the doorway left me in little doubt as to who was leading whom for a greatly deserved walk!
I am, I suppose, a creature of habit. I took the dogs on their usual route, following the western outbuildings before ascending the gentle rise towards the coppice. As I have said, there was a definite chill in the air – snow was not out of the question – but I welcomed the freshness of it all, the freedom, the pretext of peace that allowed me to think. I wondered if I had, pointlessly, spent too long within Mausolus House; perhaps I served the patients there better if I remained true to myself, to my interests and passions. There are, I tried to reassure myself, only so many hours in the day, and there is only so much I can do.
And yet such limited aspirations did not sit easy in my heart. I have been accused of having a reformer’s zeal and an evangelist’s passion; in losing myself in my work I truly believe that I can find myself. (I write this as the stub of my candle is guttering down to almost nothing; all good folk are in their beds, I am sure. And yet it is during these long, night-time hours – when sleep does not come easily and I feel so strangely active and alert – that I feel most alive, most connected with my fellow man. Some people, I am told, feel at their most lonely in social situations, when they are surrounded by folk clamouring for their attention. I know exactly what they mean. After all, I have no wife or family to think of, no other claims on my time – apart from my precious hounds.)
If I sometimes find my work at Mausolus frustrating – for every room that I order be cleaned and put straight, another seems to appear that is caked with decades of filth and abuse – I know also that the fate of many rests in my hands, and I do not wish to let a single one of them down. Every time the trustees threaten to reduce the staff, or lower their weekly wage, I feel the old passion burn within me – the passion to do good things for the unfortunate few most deserving of pity and respect. When I confront the vested interests, the money-lending and acts of vainglorious public charity that allow Mausolus to operate, I know that I am sailing dose to the wind – but my patients deserve nothing less. (Of course, the trustees cannot be too unhappy with my work.
Under Porter the reputation of the place had so declined that the well-off were less inclined to send their mad there; now they need a man with a fair and humanitarian reputation in order to restore their privileged standing!) I know that money speaks with a loud voice, but I take solace from the fact that 55
occasionally it has to listen, too.
But I am repeating myself interminably – and all to justify (if not to myself, then to whom?) a walk with my dogs! Alas, my delight at so simple a pleasure would soon turn to frustration and a growing sense of unease.
The dogs pulled me away from the coppice and towards the old folly, set as it is slightly apart from the crown of the hill and surrounded by stunted shrubs and unmanaged elms. Brambles trailed over the folly, rendering its walls and domed ceiling almost organic. A few feet in front of the folly stands a statue of a scythe-wielding angel, blanched white by the sun and softened by the rain. With little ceremony, one of the hounds trotted over and urinated against the base of the statue. I pulled on the leash, but could not resist a hearty chuckle. My hounds are innocent with love of life; frankly, they behave better than some of the supposed God-fearing folk who work at the hospital, and I couldn’t find it in me to judge the creature too severely.
I was still pondering such idle thoughts – paying scant attention to the dogs, or my surroundings