A Ripple From the Storm (14 page)

Another night passed and a slow hot morning. Flies buzzed against the curtains through which the glare beat in threads of yellow. Martha was thinking: If my mother would come in again, and just be kind, instead of hating me so much … the weak listlessness of this frightened her again. She thought: Just because I’m sick, I start crying for mother. And I’m probably not sick at all, just trying to get out of something? But what am I trying to get out of? I simply must not give in. And she got limply out of bed, brushed her hair and made up her face. She lay tidily back on her pillows thinking: If I make up my mind to it, I needn’t be sick. But almost at once she was back in sleep, and nightmare-ridden delirium.

In the late afternoon she woke to see Anton seated by her bed. The sight of him was an exquisite relief.

‘Yes, yes, yes,’ he said. ‘If people don’t look after themselves, they get sick.’ He held her wrist tightly: it was partly a brotherly caress and partly because of the necessity for taking her pulse.

‘So,’ he commented. ‘And what does the doctor say?’

‘I don’t need a doctor.’

‘So you don’t need a doctor. That may be so, but you must excuse me: I shall telephone your doctor and he will come and visit you.’

He sat smiling at her. Martha could scarcely recognize him. She said to herself: Suddenly he’s human. She was also thinking: Suppose he is in love with me? The thought was half-exciting, half pure panic. Oh my God! she thought involuntarily, it’s just as bad as the others – just an accident, falling in love, if you can call it that. All the same, a pulse of excitement was beating in her. She looked through her fever at the stiff controlled face, now softened with a small paternal smile, and thought: He may not know it himself, but he’s attracted to me.

And now Anton lifted himself up to his height, and stooping, kissed her on the forehead. ‘Yes, yes,’ he said. ‘And now you will lie quite still and the doctor will come.’ For a moment they were both embarrassed because of that kiss, and he said quickly: ‘I will come in again this evening and see you. It is Dr Stern, isn’t it? I will make the arrangements.’ And he went out on tiptoe stiffly, like a lean high-stepping bird.

When I’m with him I feel safe? she wondered, remembering how he had said: women’s problems are not sufficiently considered, and how she had responded to the promise of understanding. Yes, he’s kind, she decided.

Now she was looking forward to the doctor’s coming. If Anton took the responsibility for this act of weakness, the act of admitting one was ill, then it was all right, it was off her shoulders.

She lay facing the door, where Dr Stern would come in. When she woke it was to see Jimmy, entering with the same exaggerated caution as Anton had used in leaving, absorbed in his caution. He carried a big bunch of pink zinnias in his large red hand and, thinking Martha was asleep, was looking for some place to put them. He went out again, leaving the door open, and Martha heard him talking to the servant in the kitchen. He was speaking with earnest friendliness, but the man was being nervously evasive: the contrast between Jimmy and Mrs Carson was too much for him. Jimmy returned with the stiff flowers stuck in a big ornamented green vase. Martha could see that he liked the vase, from the proud way he regarded it. She consciously suppressed a wince of disapproval at his bad taste, thinking: That’s snobbish, they are right to call us names, middle-class and the rest … When he had set the vase down beside her, he found her awake and smiled self-consciously when she thanked him.

Although the sunlight on the curtains was now a pale yellow, and the heat no longer beat into the room, it was stuffy and Jimmy’s large bony face was scarlet. He was wearing the thick clumsy uniform issued for winter use.

‘Why don’t you take off your jacket?’ she asked, and all at once was embarrassed. She remembered her mother had said her nightgown was indecent; and she pulled the sheet up high to her chin thinking: I wasn’t conscious of it at all when Anton was here, but I am with Jimmy.

It was true that he was frowning with hot disapproval of her. He undid the top button of his jacket, and set himself to improve her situation: having studied her face he said: ‘You don’t look too good, and that’s a fact.’

With which he scientifically studied the arrangement of her bed until he had decided what should be done. ‘Now hold it a minute. I’m the boy for this.’ He put his hand under her head, lifted it, adjusted her pillows, pulled off a thick wodge of blankets which Martha was not aware were too heavy for her, and said with authority: ‘Now lie easy. No good twisting yourself up like that.’ Martha obediently unknotted all her limbs.

That’s better. You can take it from me. I’ve had it myself.’

‘Had what?’

‘I was in the san for ten months before the war. I know all the gen about being sick.’

‘You’re cured?’ she asked, looking how the red flared on his great bony cheeks.

‘I’m in the RAF, so I’m cured.’

She laughed, but he did not. ‘That is why I came to see you. You should sweat. You have a temperature.’

He was possessed by his role of nurse. ‘You’ve got a drop of something here? Brandy? Then I’ll wrap you up in the blankets and that’ll do the trick.’

‘But Jimmy, the doctor’s coming.’

He said: ‘You don’t want to trust them. Pack you full of poison and lies when nature can cure.’

‘But Dr Stern is coming.’

He said stiffly: ‘Oh well, if you feel like that.’ He was so offended that he buttoned his jacket again, and made a move towards the door.

‘Jimmy, you’re surely not going to be cross because I’ve called the doctor when I’m sick?’ Her voice came plaintive, and she frowned, thinking: Well, if I’m going to strike that note, then … He had already weakened into a smile and sat down by the bed. ‘While I’m here I’ll give you the gen about
The Watchdog
round. I’ve been doing it for you with Murdoch and Bill.’ He gave her a report, an almost house-by-house report, and she lay watching the so deeply serious face, silent until he said: ‘We’ve fixed Ronald. He’s OK. There’s nothing for you to worry about.’

‘Ronald? The man dying of …’ She stopped herself.

‘Dying? He’s not dying. Let me tell you, comrade, what he needs is some good food and rest. There’s no such thing as TB.’

‘Well, what have you done?’

‘We took a collection among the lads and we’ve fed him up. We’ve given him a good feed and paid his rent. These sicknesses are just poverty. That’s all, poverty. You wouldn’t know, with your class background, but believe you me, when the doctors talk about TB and cancer and all that caper, they’re just helping the capitalists. They’d be out of work without poverty.’

Martha’s head ached. She said: ‘Jimmy, for all that, he’s so sick he should be in hospital.’

‘Sick? Of course he’s sick. He’ll be better in a week, with us lads looking after him. And now there’s you. How long have you been in bed?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Why doesn’t that old woman look after you?’

‘Oh, she’s too busy being neurotic about the natives.’

‘What do you mean neurotic? What’s that kind of talk?’

‘If you like it better, she’s got the African problem on her mind.’

‘You’re full of bourgeois talk, comrade, do you know that?’

She said flippantly: ‘I’m middle-class to the backbone,’ and thought: Now he’ll lose his temper, and then laugh.

But his deep-socketed eyes were too indignant for anger.

‘If you weren’t sick, I’d have it out with you, I would straight. Look at you, comrade, lying here alone in bed with lipstick on. What sort of caper is that?’

‘I’m not alone,’ she said, ‘you’re here.’ And grinned at him. But he went dark red and said: ‘There you are. Listen. Believe you me, there’s a lot of rottenness in you you’ve got to lose before you’re a good comrade.’

‘Oh God,’ said Martha, suddenly angry, ‘you’re such a bloody prig.’

‘And your language. I don’t like to hear girls using that kind of language.’

Martha, prickling all over with exasperation, moved angrily about in her bed. Quite unconsciously he reached out his large hand to adjust the covers, as if he were saying: ‘Be still.’

‘You bourgeois girls, you need a wood working-class husband to teach you a thing or two. When I see you bourgeois girls I think of my mother and what she had to take from her life, and believe you me you could learn a thing or two from her.’

‘All of you,’ she said, ‘all of you working-class men have this damned sentimental thing about your mothers.’

‘Sentimental, is it? Let me tell you, it’s the working-class woman that takes the rap every time.’

‘I imagined that was why we wanted to change things.’

‘What do you mean?’ he said hotly. He was leaning forward, sweat-covered, scarlet-faced. She was sitting up, clutching the blankets to her, her face running with sweat.

She said, in a change of mood, grimly: ‘We’ll abolish poverty, and give women freedom and then they’ll simmer and boil, sacrificing themselves for everyone – like my mother.’ She laughed at the look of bewildered anger on his face. ‘There’s no good your talking to me about women sacrificing themselves for their families – I’ve had that one. And I don’t want to talk about it either,’ she added, as the explosion of his emotion reached his eyes in a hot stare of protest.

‘What do you mean, you don’t want to talk about it? I’m going to talk you out of this one, believe you me. Women are the salt of the earth. I’m telling you. My mother was the salt of the earth. My dad died when I was ten and she brought up me and my two sisters on what she got by cleaning offices until I went to work and helped her out.’

‘Good, then let’s arrange things so that women have to work eighteen hours a day and die at fifty, worn out so that you can go on being sentimental about us.’

She collapsed back, shaking with weakness.

He said: ‘I don’t know what you’re saying, comrade, and that’s a fact.’ He stretched out his hand again to pull the sheet up to her neck. ‘And you should be keeping still. I keep telling you, keep still. When my mum was ill once I nursed her three months day and night – you should lie still and let nature take its way. The doctors couldn’t do anything for my mum, but I could. They gave her this and they gave her that, but I kept her in bed warm and still for three months. It was the rest she needed and the rest she got, with me helping her. You should let the powers of nature flow through you, comrade. It’s a fact.’

‘That may be so, but the doctor’s coming now – I can hear him.’

She could hear Dr Stern and Anton talking in the passage. Jimmy got up, saying: ‘Then I’ll make my way outside and wait until he’s gone.’ He went out through the doors on to the veranda. She could see his big patient shape through the curtains against the red of the setting sun.

Good Lord, she thought, he’s taken me over. He’s responsible for me. And through the wall on the other side Anton was talking her over with Dr Stern. An old feeling of being hemmed in and disposed of prickled through her. I hate it all, she thought wildly, not knowing what she hated or why she was imprisoned. I wish to God everyone would leave me alone. She had a nightmare feeling of sliding helpless into danger.

When Dr Stern came in, bland and weary as always, she rememebered she had not seen him since she left her husband, and sat up, thinking: He’ll disapprove of me and show it, and I’ll pretend not to see it. Besides, there’s the bill. I’d forgotten – I simply can’t afford to be sick.

But his eyes were professional. ‘Well, Mrs Knowell,’ he asked, as she heard him so often: ‘And what can I do you for?’

She laughed obediently at the joke and lay down as he held her wrist.

‘You should have called me in before,’ he remarked. ‘Who’s looking after you?’

‘My landlady.’

‘I think we’ll find a bed for you in hospital.’

‘Oh,
no
.’ Martha sat up again, in an impulse to escape the whole situation. Dr Stern held her by the shoulder and said: ‘If it’s a question of paying, then don’t worry. There are times when people can pay and times when they can’t. You’re an old patient of mine, aren’t you?’

Martha’s eyes filled with tears and she turned away to hide them. But her voice shook as she thanked him.

‘Yes, Mrs Knowell, and you’ve been here all these days with a high temperature letting things ride – and you’re a sensible girl, so I’ve always thought.’

‘Perhaps I’m not sensible,’ she muttered. ‘Dr Stern, I really don’t want to go to hospital.’

‘And who will nurse you?’

‘I have friends.’ She thought: If he understands this then he’s a real doctor and not just a medicine man. He let his eyes rest on her face for some time: her lips were trembling. At last he nodded and said; ‘Mrs Knowell, there are times when we all find life too much for us.’

Oh Lord, she thought, he’s trying to make me cry.

‘I understand the divorce is going through between yourself and Douglas. Well, that’s not my affair. And you must be missing your daughter.’

The reference to Caroline dried Martha’s tears at the source. She said: ‘Dr Stern, I’ll do anything you say, but please make it possible for me to stay here.’

He was annoyed, and – as Martha knew, not because she wouldn’t go to hospital, but because she had closed against him. He said coldly: ‘Very well. I can’t take the consequences. I’ll have the medicines made up. I’ll come to see you tomorrow. Does a sensible girl like you have to behave like an uneducated person who is afraid of hospital? You’re like my native patients, who think they’re going to die in hospital.’

Martha felt as she had with Mr Maynard: Dr Stern, in using such an argument, was so infinitely removed from her that it was as if he had moved back into the past. He stood at the foot of the bed waiting to see if she would react; when she did not he said: ‘Very well,’ and went out. Again she heard Anton talking to him in the passage. She realized that Anton would be looking after her. When he came in, she had succumbed to being ill; for the first time she was gone under waves of sickness. She was aware that he had again kised her forehead and hot nausea came with the thought: Well, that means now Anton and I will be together. She did not define how they would be together. He sat by her a few minutes, then said he would go to collect the medicines. She did not hear him leave; nor hear Jimmy enter. She opened her eyes to see Jimmy large and looming over her. His attitude expressed something hostile to her.