The Irresistible Inheritance Of Wilberforce by Paul Torday Page A

that’s 7.5 units per bottle, and if I drink five bottles a day then that’s 260 units per week, you see. I’m sorry if my arithmetic’s gone wrong somewhere. My brain is still not working properly.’
    I could see the nurse doing some mental arithmetic of her own, as her lips moved silently. She said, ‘You’re a very sick man, Mr Wilberforce. I don’t know that there’s any point in any further questions.’ She left me alone.
    I began to wonder whether I could not discharge myself and get a taxi home. The only snag was, I could not remember where home was. I could remember some details of what it looked like. I could, for example, remember my bedroom ceiling. I was fairly convinced that my home was in London, too, rather than Bogotá. When I had been in Bogotá, I had stayed in a hotel the name of which also escaped me for the moment. Someone else came into the bedroom, and at first I assumed it was a doctor, because he was holding a large board in front of him of the kind used by opticians for sight tests, so that all I could see was the hands gripping the board, which obscured the doctor’s face and most of his body. More tests. I hoped this was not going to go on all afternoon.
    ‘Can you read the letters?’ asked my visitor, in a hoarse whisper, and with the words came an exhalation of something mouldy, something rotten. But the voice sounded familiar. It reminded me of Francis.
    ‘How nice of you to look in on me. How did you know I was in here?’
    But my visitor made no acknowledgement of my greeting. He simply repeated, ‘Can you read the letters?’
    I looked at the board. It read:
     
TNMWWTTW
TNMWWTTW
TNMWWTTW
TNMWWTTW
TNMWWTTW
TNMWWTTW
TNMWWTTW
     
‘Can you read the letters, Wilberforce?’ whispered my visitor. His fingers, holding the board, were long and very bony, and the fingernails were uncared for, almost talons.
    ‘Yes, I can,’ I said shortly, holding my breath. Whoever he was, the smell of body odour was sweet and corrupt.
    ‘Then tell me what they say?’
    ‘Ten Naughty Mice Went Walking Towards The Wensleydale, ’ I told him. There! I knew it was a mnemonic. I knew it would come back to me. But what was it a mnemonic for?
    A movement distracted me and I turned from my visitor and his sight-test board to see someone else, this time definitely a doctor, come into the room. When I turned back to look at the sight-test board to see if it would give me any further clues it, and the person holding it, had gone. So had that foul smell, thank God.
    The doctor came up to me and asked how I was.
    ‘Feeling better,’ I said. ‘I’d quite like to go home soon.’
    ‘Oh, I think we’d better keep you in overnight, just to see how things go. Now, if you don’t mind, I’d just like to check your vision is OK.’
    ‘What, again? Someone’s just been giving me a sight test. I could read all the letters.’
    ‘Someone? I’m the only doctor on this ward this evening. Do you mean a nurse?’
    ‘Ten Naughty Mice Went Walking Towards The Wensleydale, ’ I said proudly. ‘I could read all the letters, even the ones right at the bottom of the board.’
    ‘What sight board are you talking about?’
    ‘Didn’t you see him? He must still have been in the room when you came in just now.’
    The young doctor ran his hand through his hair, and then said, ‘I’m afraid you must be mistaken, Mr Wilberforce. There’s no other doctor on duty on this ward tonight, there was no one in the room when I came in, and there could have been no one, because the ward cannot be entered except by people who have the code number for the key pad. The main door is kept locked at all times. It may be you are experiencing some slight after-effects from your concussion, you know. Let me shine this torch into the back of your eyes for a minute.’
    He looked into my eyes, then made a dissatisfied noise and left without any further explanation. Time passed and I lay in my bed halfway between waking and sleeping,