Phytotomy is the dissection of plants – vegetable anatomy, if you like – and there is even a family of South American birds called phytotomidae, who nip off the young buds and shoots of plants with their serrated bills…
Not that there are any of these birds in the institution so sadistically mismanaged by Archibald Roote – although Miss Cutts, who likes getting her hands round people’s necks, might be thought of as resembling one, as might some of the other employees, including the brutal and alcoholic Roote himself; patient 6457 has been cut down in his prime, and there is a new-born baby whose life will probably be nipped in the bud.
Any bureaucratic institution is a sort of hothouse, filled with strange and often disgusting growths, and Roote’s ‘rest home’, whose patients are ostensibly mental cases but seem really to be people who fallen foul of the mysterious ‘Ministry’, is no exception. There is Roote himself, whose senses seem to run through the building (he can ‘hear a whisper in the basement’). There is the aptly named Lush, spreading himself everywhere, Gibbs padding about like a cat (‘gib’ is a name for a tom-cat), and Tubb, who uses the Christmas raffle to amass stuff for himself. And then there is the poor little pet Lamb, whose innocence is savagely abused…
