Man in his Time
MAN IN HIS TIME
Brian W. Aldiss
His absence
Janet Westermark sat watching the three men in the office: the administrator who was about to go out of her life, the behaviourist who was about to come into it, and the husband whose life ran parallel to but insulated from her own.
She was not the only one playing a watching game. The behaviourist, whose name was Clement Stackpole, sat hunched in his chair with his ugly strong hands clasped round his knee, thrusting his intelligent and simian face forward, the better to regard his new subject. Jack Westermark.
The administrator of the Mental Research Hospital spoke in a lively and engaged way. Typically, it was only Jack Westermark who seemed absent from the scene.
Your particular problem, restless
His hands upon his lap lay still, but he himself was restless, though the restlessness seemed directed. It was as if he were in another room with other people, Janet thought. She saw that he caught her eye when in fact she was not entirely looking at him, and by the time she returned the glance, he was gone, withdrawn.
“Although Mr. Stackpole has not dealt before with your particular problem,” the administrator was saying, “he has had plenty of field experience. I know”
“I’m sure we won’t,” Westermark said, folding his hands and nodding his head slightly.
Smoothly, the administrator made a pencilled note of the remark, scribbled the precise time beside it, and continued. “I know Mr. Stackpole is too modest to say this, but he is a great man for working in with people”
“If you feel it’s necessary,” Westermark said. “Though I’ve seen enough of your equipment for a while.”
The pencil moved, the smooth voice proceeded. “Good. A great man for working in with people, and I’m sure you and Mr. Westermark will soon find you are glad to have him around. Remember, he’s there to help both of you.”
Janet smiled, and said from the island of her chair, trying to smile at him and Stackpole, “I’m sure that everything will work” She was interrupted by her husband, who rose to his feet, letting his hands drop to his sides and saying, turning slightly to address thin air, “Do you mind if I say good-bye to Nurse Simmons?”
Her voice no longer wavered
“Everything will be all right, I’m sure,” she said hastily.
And Stackpole nodded at her, conspiratorially agreeing to see her point of view.
“We’ll all get on fine, Janet,” he said. She was in the swift process of digesting that unexpected use of her Christian name, and the administrator was also giving her the sort of encouraging smile so many people had fed her since Westermark was pulled out of the ocean off Casablanca, when her husband, still having his lonely conversation with the air, said, “Of course, I should have remembered.”
His right hand went half way to his foreheador his heart Janet wonderedand then dropped, as he added, “Perhap she’ll come round and see us some time.” Now he turned an was smiling faintly at another vacant space with just th faintest nod of his head, as if slightly cajoling. “You’d lik that, wouldn’t you, Janet?”
She moved her head, instinctively trying to bring her eye into his gaze as she replied vaguely, “Of course, darling.” He voice no longer wavered when she addressed his absen attention.
There was sunlight through which they could see each other “There was sunlight in one corner of the room, coming through the windows of a bay angled towards the sun. For a moment she caught, as she rose to her feet, her husband’s profile with the sunlight behind it. It was thin and withdrawn.
Intelligent: she had always thought him over-burdened with his intelligence, but now there was a lost look there, and she thought of the words of a psychiatrist who had been called in on the case earlier: “You must understand that the waking brain is perpetually lapped by the unconscious.”
Lapped by the unconscious
Fighting the words away, she said, addressing the smile of the administratorthat smile must have advanced his career so much”You’ve helped me a lot. I couldn’t have got through these months without you. Now we’d better go.”