Dr. Rochfort-Smith’s tuning forks struck again and Winceworth’s face buckled.
There really should be a specific word associated with the effects of drinking an excess of alcohol. The headaches, the seething sense of paranoia—language seemed the poorer for not having one. Winceworth decided he would bring this up with one of his editors.
Whisky was the cause of his morning’s horrors, and on this point Winceworth was sure, but the preceding night’s wines, eaux-de-vie and spirits no doubt contributed. Some of the blame must also lie in not having eaten sufficiently prior to the birthday party. Winceworth remembered buying some chestnuts from a barrow. He could not swear that he had dined on anything more than this, and on reflection he suspected that the chestnuts may have been boiled to look plumper before roasting. Bad chestnuts, enough drink to fell a buffalo—Winceworth had returned this paltry meal onto the frost-glazed early-morning pavement somewhere near the Royal Opera House. Memories coalesced and glistened with new brightness. A lady had dropped her lorgnette into the mess and, profuse with brandied bliss, Winceworth had scooped up the eyeglasses in order to return them. The lady had reeled away from him, aghast.
Winceworth rediscovered this lorgnette still nestled in his coat pocket as he hurried from bed to Dr. Rochfort-Smith’s rooms. One of the lenses had a small asterisk shatter across it.
* * *
—
Winceworth dipped his hand into his trouser pocket while Dr. Rochfort-Smith spoke. There he experienced one of the most exotic disappointments possible—his fingers closed, firmly, around an uneaten slice of birthday cake.
“Are you all right, Mr. Winceworth?”
The patient coughed. “It is rather—ah, only that it is rather warm today, I think,” he said.
“I do not think so,” said the doctor, looking at his fire.
“A trifle close, perhaps,” Winceworth said. He made sure to emphasise the false wasp-wing buzz of the lisp. He added an extra heartfelt sorry too to compound the effect, and across the room the songbird looked disgusted.
Dr. Rochfort-Smith made a scribble in an orange notebook. “Never lose heart, Mr. Winceworth. You are in good company—after all, Moses lisped, God lisped.”
“Is that right?”
“Yes!” Dr. Rochfort-Smith spread his arms. “And it would be remiss not to pass on my congratulations: there have been some definite improvements in your diction these few weeks.”
Winceworth dabbed his upper lip with a sleeve. He noticed there was cake icing on his thumb and he folded his hands into his lap. On his way to the doctor’s rooms he had mistakenly walked through a spiderweb—that horrible feeling of being snagged, caught by an unseen force, had stayed with him all morning. “That is heartening to hear, thank you.”
“And now,” Rochfort-Smith went on, bringing the tuning forks back down to his knees, “with your chin slightly relaxed: ‘ “Zounds!” shouted Ezra as he seized the amazed Zeno’s ears.’ ”
It was never entirely clear to Winceworth whether these phrases were standard tests or just borne of Dr. Rochfort-Smith’s own invention. After their first meeting Winceworth had been sent home with instructions to repeat Silly Susan sitting on the seashore stringing seashells and seaweeds, softly singing or listening in silence to the sirens’ songs. From chit-chat during the session Winceworth gleaned that “Susan” was the absent Mrs. Rochfort-Smith’s name. Her sepia portrait hung above the doctor’s fireplace like a crinolined gnat in amber, memorialised as if she were dead. Dr. Rochfort-Smith described the absent Susan as suffering from some mysterious, debilitating illness for a good many years, currently sequestered to a sanatorium in the Alps for the sake of her health. A number of her letters littered the doctor’s desk, detailing the tonic of Alpine air and new-fangled Müesli breakfasts. Poor Susan with the sirens. Winceworth had not felt entirely comfortable invoking the doctor’s ailing wife in such a winsome setting as a sibilant fantasy beach, whether softly singing or listening in silence to the sirens’ songs. After the fortieth repetition, he found that he could inject a real impassioned emphasis on the word silly.
Winceworth became ever more certain that rather than reporting the detheption to Thwansby’s or upbraiding his patient on the waste of his valuable time, Dr. Rochfort-Smith had devised ridiculous vocal exercises to see how far his patient would be prepared to carry on the charade. Winceworth was sure that the blasted songbird definitely knew he was lying, possibly by using the same instincts animals are said to use when sensing ghosts or storms before they hit.
This new abuse of amazed Zeno and his ears, however, was impossible to attempt without laughing. Winceworth’s face, head nor stomach lining could not manage that today. He hazarded for a distraction.
“Did you—sorry, did you say God lisped?” he asked.
Clearly anticipating the question, the doctor leapt to his desk. “I refer you to the Coverdale! I have marked the very place in Isaiah, Chapter twenty-eight, I think—”
Winceworth tried to crumble some of last night’s rediscovered birthday cake into the fabric under the cushion of his seat. The songbird noticed and began banging the bars of the cage.
“Yes, and, elsewhere, Moses, did you know,” continued the doctor, “yes, Moses too! All to be found in Exodus.” Dr. Rochfort-Smith closed his eyes. “ ‘But Moses said unto the Lord: “Oh, my Lord, I am a man that is not eloquent, from yesterday and heretofore and since the time that thou hast spoken unto thy servant: for I have a slow speech, and a slow tongue.” ’ ”
“I had no idea I was in such elect company,” Winceworth said once he was sure the doctor had finished.
The Coverdale shut and the doctor’s face grew sorrowful. “It was through hissing that sin entered into this world—” Winceworth stopped crumbling the birthday cake and stiffened in his chair—“and it is perhaps more beneficial to consider your affliction as nothing more than a reminder of this.”
CLANG, went the birdcage.
The doctor brought his hands together sharply. “It is nothing that cannot be remedied, however. So, now, if you would: ‘ “Zounds!” shouted Ezra—’ ”
* * *
—
Winceworth had managed some dialogue, some repetition, and he had not been sick onto his own shoes: he should be proud, he remembered thinking, as the blood drained from his head and his eyes swam.
“And so must end our penultimate session,” the doctor said. He dusted his hands on his knees.
“No more tongues and pebbles? No more Zeno?” Winceworth dragged the heel of his hand through his hair.