Free Dominion by C. J. Sansom Page B

said little to anyone since his admission but this attendant seemed
friendly.
    ‘What sort of treatment?’
    Frank shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’
    ‘He likes new treatments, Dr Wilson. I suppose some of his ideas aren’t bad – this new drug Largactil, it’s better than the old phenobarb and the paraldehyde –
Jesus, how that stuff used to stink.’
    ‘I told him I wanted to leave, go back to work, but he said I wasn’t nearly ready. He asked if I’d like to talk about my parents; I don’t know why.’
    ‘Aye, he does that.’ Ben’s voice was amused, half-contemptuous.
    ‘I said what was the point, my father died before I was born and Mother’s dead, too, now. He looked cross with me.’
    ‘You were a scientist afore you came here, weren’t you?’
    ‘Yes.’ A touch of pride entered Frank’s voice. ‘I’m a research associate at Birmingham University. Geology department.’
    ‘I would have thought you could have afforded the Private Villa then. Ye get yer own room there.’
    Frank shook his head sadly. ‘Apparently as I’ve been certified I’ve lost the right to control my money. And there’s no-one to be a trustee.’
    Ben shook his head sympathetically. ‘The almoner should sort that out. You should ask Wilson.’
    They reached the Admissions Block, a square, two-storey rectangle, redbrick like all the asylum buildings. In the doorway Ben shook out the umbrella. Frank glanced back at the enormous main
building. It stood on a little hill; across the countryside, on a clear day, you could see the haze over Birmingham in the distance. From outside, the asylum, with its many-windowed front and neat
grounds, looked like a country house; inside it was quite different, a thousand patients packed into cavernous wards with dilapidated furniture and peeling paint. Two nurses from the women’s
wing, capes over their starched uniforms, came out of the block. ‘Good morning, Mr Hall,’ one said cheerfully to Ben. ‘Filthy day.’
    ‘Aye, it is.’
    The nurses raised umbrellas and walked quickly down the drive to the locked gates. Frank watched them go. Ben touched his arm. ‘Come on, pal, wake up,’ he said gently.
    ‘I wish I could get out.’
    ‘Not after what you did, Frank,’ Ben said gravely. ‘Come on, let’s get ye inside.’
    Frank’s mind shied away from the event that had led him here. But sometimes, when the effects of the Largactil were wearing off, he would think about it.
    It had started with his mother’s death, a month before. She was past seventy, a little, bent, querulous old woman living alone in the house in Esher. Frank visited her a couple of times a
year, out of duty. His older brother, Edgar, only saw her on his rare visits from California. When Frank went to see her, Mrs Muncaster would compare him unfavourably with his brother, as she had
all her life. There Edgar was, married with children, a physicist in a great American university, while Frank had been stuck in the same boring job for ten years. She lived for Edgar’s
letters, she said. Frank didn’t think his mother saw anyone apart from him these days, as her involvement with spiritualism had ended five years before when Mrs Baker, her spiritual guru, had
died, and the weekly séances in the dining room had ended.
    The police had phoned Frank at work to tell him his mother had had a stroke while out shopping, and died two hours later in hospital. Frank sent a telegram to Edgar, who replied, to
Frank’s surprise, at once, saying he would come over for the funeral. Frank did not want to see Edgar, he loathed him; but even though he didn’t like train journeys, he had travelled
from Birmingham to Esher to meet Edgar at the house where they had been brought up. On the journey he wondered what his brother would be like. He was an American citizen now. The letters their
mother showed him were always full of his busy life at Berkeley, how he loved San Francisco, how his wife and three children were getting