If symptoms

persist.. .

I WAS CALLED last week to a case of what — if one were cynical — one might call the pre-trial suicidal gesture syn- drome. This fell disorder usually consists of an overdose of tablets, and/or some superficial cuts on the wrist and forearm, insufficient to cause death or anything like it, but sufficient to postpone the next day's trial by a few weeks.

I arrived chez Darren at about seven in the evening. His entire family — mother and father, uncles and aunts, assorted step-parents and half-siblings — had gathered in the tiny sitting-room down- stairs in a show of family solidarity, and to impress upon me the importance to Darren's health and well-being of his non-appearance on the morrow before the beak.

"E's terrible doctor,' said his mother, her hair in curlers, her breath shortened by a million fags. 'We can't do nuthink with 'im.'

I climbed the stairs while his mother wheezed from below, 'Darren, the doc- tor's 'ere to see-yer.'

Darren was a young man of unprepos- sessing appearance, not improved by the absence of four front teeth. These, he told me later, were knocked out of his mouth with a baseball bat wielded by a neighbour during a disagreement as to who owed whom five pounds. (I've never seen a baseball round here, but I've seen plenty of missing teeth extracted with bats.) Darren had stabbed himself in the face a few times with a kitchen knife, and had later lunged at his mother's throat with the same implement. Now, however, he was calm, if a little tearful.

`I'm not trying to get out of court, doc- tor,' he sobbed. 'I just want to see me babby first. I int seen 'im for free days.' I asked what he was accused of. `Cars,' he replied.

There is no need to elaborate: those of us who have been carred, to coin a verb, know what he meant.

`I don't mind goin' to prison, but I got to see me babby first, otherwise I'll do myself in.'

`Where is the babby?' I asked.

Wiv his mower.'

`And where's she?'

`That's what I don't know. She upped and went free days ago.'

`Where to?'

`I don't know — some battered wives' ohm.'

`You battered her?'

He was shocked at the suggestion. 'No, I never.' He paused for a moment. 'I did hit her over the 'ead wiv the telephone though.'

Was she injured?'

`She had to have stitches in her skull.' `That's not battering?'

`No. Me mum says a battered wife is when her 'usband comes ohm drunk and beats his wife every night.'

`Still,' I said, 'I've seen some nasty injuries inflicted with a telephone.'

'She says I punched her on the nose as well, but I never. If I punched her on the nose she would've had blood all over her face, but there wasn't even a mark.'

`Have you ever hit her before?' I asked.

`I've slapped her about a couple of times, but I've never really hit her.' 'Perhaps she's scared of you.'

`But I love her to bits and she loves me back. It's only sometimes I black out and then I don't know what I'm doing.'

'That's why she's scared of you.'

`But I don't know what I'm doing, doc- tor, it's not me.'

`Who is it, then?' I asked.

`I don't know, but it's not me. I'm not like that.'

So will the real Darren please stand up?

Theodore Dalrymple