7. RED AS RUBIES

A psychological expert takes a look at the stranger...

Professor Jeremy Dingle had a sparkling career both behind him and, hopefully, in front of him. He had studied at Oxford and moved on to gain a Master’s in Human behaviour, had researched the relationships between all manner of things pertaining to humanity and its foibles, and reckoned he could delve deeper than anyone else into the ways and weary failures of the human brain.

He had been called as an expert witness in several cases involving the law and unfortunates who had no idea who they were or why a man was asking them hard questions. He had spoken up on behalf of the weak and feeble-minded and had even exposed the deceitful pretending to be feeble-minded.

Jeremy was an unmarried man, though he and Ian Prothero (a fellow high flyer in the world of understanding the mind) had set a date. In the world of personal relationships, they had both come to terms with preferences that they would have considered unworthy in an earlier age, but now, in the twenty-first century, they revelled in their individual idiosyncrasies. Their love was just as deep and meaningful as the love of a heterosexual couple, and none the worse for the fact that were both male.

And now here he was being presented with a problem he might not be able to solve. He knew that because, vast as his ego was, he knew that somewhere in the grandness of the Universe there was an edge beyond which his theoretical limitations might find their parameters. And this might be that.

He sat there facing a man with the mind of a new born baby. That’s what it must be. He had lived, possibly to his seventies though nobody as yet was quite sure of his age, and to all intents and appearances he had no past. There was nothing in the way he related to anyone around him that suggested he had more than a few weeks experience of life at best. He couldn’t (or wouldn’t) talk. His constant utterances of one or two simple syllables said nothing but his awareness, possibly, that there might be such a thing as parents, and as an interpretation that was dubious. Professor Dingle was of the opinion that mankind had hard-wired into his brain sounds like mamma and dadda. He had even written a paper on the subject.

They weren’t in the interview room because that was too formal, too resonant of wrong-doing, too sterile. Instead they were in the police station cafeteria which was far from formal and of dubious sterility.

“Maybe a cup of tea?” asked the Professor in a light and friendly voice, knowing that the beverage was usually a key that opened doors to memory, to past cups of tea in awkward situations or the slaking of long forgotten thirsts. And anyway, he rather wanted one himself and it was impolite if one out of two people sipped tea whilst the other was denied a cup. It would put backs up for sure.

“Goo goo,” replied his smiling companion, “goo goo goo.”

“A nice cup of tea,” remarked Professor Dingle, “that’s the way to start your day. It clears remnants of toothpaste off the palate and helps the memory sort things out in order to achieve great things on this brand new day.”

It was a brand new day. The odd prisoner (whose only crime so far as he could tell was the wearing of red female knickers that occasionally risked him indecently exposing himself as he walked along) completely failed to respond to his offer. Instead he smiled rather awkwardly and repeated “goo goo” as though the two syllables contained every ounce of knowledge in the Universe.

The man was dressed in overalls, police issue and almost threadbare overalls that had taken three officers half an hour to dress him in. It wasn’t that he had been deliberately difficult, just that he hadn’t seemed quite sure what to do, where to put his legs, how to wriggle his arms into sleeves that were too tight for them. But in the end the three officers had succeeded and so far all was well. He was dressed. And try as he might, dressed as he now was he couldn’t quite manage to play with the rather silly organ at the top of his legs.

“I always say that a nice cup of tea does things no other beverage can,” mused the Professor, and he ordered two cups anyway. A constable was in attendance ready to perform such perfunctory duties as collect cups of tea whilst the sergeant and his inspector sat at an adjacent table, far enough away to seem not to be there. Not that the man they looked on as their prisoner seemed to care one way or other that he was being monitored. He seemed happy enough staring about himself and gurgling.

“Now tell me,” smiled the Professor when the cups of tea had arrived, “tell me what to call you?”

“Dadda,” responded the man facing him with a giggle and a dribble. Then as if to make sure he was being properly understood he repeated “dadda, dadda,” in a voice devoid of either emotion or sense.

“Are you a daddy?” asked Dingle, “is that what you mean, that you have a son somewhere, or a daughter, and you can’t find them? Maybe they’re married or maybe,” he paused, frowning, “maybe they’re gay?”

“Goo,” nodded the man, but Professor Dingle could detect no trace of meaning in the syllable. It was as if the man was learning the sounds that would one day make up speech, but as it was merely a rehearsal for the physical reality of the spoken word it was devoid actual meaning or intent.

“So what shall I call you?” asked the Professor, “shall I suggest a few names for you? Maybe you’ve forgotten your own. It’s easy forgetting stuff like names, isn’t it? I’ve got a friend called Jeremy and maybe he forgets his name sometimes...”

No response whatsoever. Just a brilliant smile, the sort that usually accompanies humour and jokes but here merely indicated a mental vacuum.

“Are you a John?” asked the Professor slowly and thoughtfully. But the prisoner, if that’s what he was, didn’t even shake his head to indicate he’d understood the question.

“Or David? Paul? Emanuel? Anything like that?”

But the suggestions fell onto ears that failed to understand them. The smile remained. It was warm and refreshing yet meaningless. Devoid of emotional content. Representative of a vacuum.

Professor Dingle sighed and looked at the Inspector, shaking his head sadly.

“I can’t break through,” he said, “I can’t find a way to bypass whatever wall he’s put up, and he must have done that because, look at him, he’s no baby! He’s had a life, experiences, maybe a family, and yet he’s cut the lot out. But I can tell you one thing: it might look like dementia, but it isn’t.”

“We made no progress either,” the Inspector assured him. “But what of the underwear he was so proud of? The red female knickers?”

The professor shook his head. “I can’t help you there either,” he said sadly, “they don’t seem to mean one damned thing so far as I can tell. Red for blood? Red for fire? Red for rubies...”

And as the last word spilled out the man in the police overall yelped and stood up, knocking the table and two cups of tea to the floor.

“Ruby, ruby, ruby!” he shouted, “rube, rube, rube!”

© Peter Rogerson 17.09.19