An Instance of the Fingerpost (3 page)

It was not my intention, but it rather took the wind out of her sails, to use a nautical expression beloved of my dear father. Her anger faded on finding itself met with gentility rather than rebuke,
and she looked at me curiously, a little wrinkle of confusion playing most attractively over the bridge of her nose.

Having started in this vein, I resolved to continue. ‘You must forgive me for approaching you in this fashion, but I could not help overhearing that you have need of physick. Is that correct?’

‘You are a doctor?’

I bowed. ‘Marco da Cola of Venice.’ It was a lie, of course, but I was sure I was at least as able as the sort of charlatan or quack she would normally have engaged. ‘And you?’

‘Sarah Blundy is my name. I suppose you are too grand to treat an old woman with a broken leg, for fear of lowering yourself in the eyes of your fellows?’

She was, indeed, a difficult person to help. ‘A surgeon would be better and more appropriate,’ I agreed. ‘However, I have trained in the anatomical arts at the universities of Padua and Leiden, and I have no fellows here, so they are unlikely to think any the worse of me for playing the tradesman.’

She looked at me, then shook her head. ‘I’m afraid that you must have overheard wrongly, although I thank you for your offer. I cannot pay you anything, as I have no money.’

I waved my hand airily and – for the second time that day – indicated that money was of no concern to me. ‘I offer my services, none the less,’ I continued. ‘We can discuss that payment at a later stage, if you wish.’

‘No doubt,’ she said in a way which again left me perplexed. Then she looked at me in the open and frank way which the English can adopt, and shrugged.

‘Perhaps we could go and see the patient?’ I suggested. ‘And you could tell me what happened to her as we go?’

I was as keen as young men are to engage the attention of a pretty girl, whatever her station, but I won little reward for my efforts. Although she was not nearly as well dressed as I, her limbs showing through the thin cloth of her dress, her head only as covered as decorum dictated, she seemed not at all cold, and scarcely appeared even to notice the wind, which cut through me like a knife. She walked fast as well, and even though she was a good two inches shorter than myself, I had to hurry to keep up. And her replies were brief and
monosyllabic, which I put down to concern and preoccupation with her mother’s health.

We walked back to Mr van Leeman’s to collect my instruments and I also hastily consulted Barbette on surgery, not wishing to have to refer to a book of instruction in mid-operation, as this does not reassure the patient. The girl’s mother had, it appeared, fallen heavily the previous evening and had lain alone all night. I asked why she had not called out to some neighbours or passers by, as I assumed that the poor woman would scarcely have been living in splendid seclusion, but this received no useful response.

‘Who was that man you were talking to?’ I asked.

I got no answer to that either.

So, adopting a coldness that I thought appropriate, I walked by her side down a mean street called Butcher’s Row, past the stinking carcasses of animals hung on hooks or laid out over rough tables outside so that the rain could wash the blood into the gutters, then continued into an even worse row of low dwellings that lay alongside one of the rivulets that run around and about the castle. It was utterly filthy down there, the streams clogged and unkempt, with all manner of refuse poking through the thick ice. In Venice, of course, we have the flow of the sea which every day purges the city’s waterways. The rivers in England are left to block themselves up, without anyone thinking that a little care might sweeten the waters.

Of the miserable huts down in that part of the town, Sarah Blundy and her mother lived in one of the worst: small, with the casements boarded with planks of wood rather than paned with glass, the roof full of holes blocked with cloth, and the doorway thin and mean. Inside, however, everything was spotlessly clean, though damp; a sign that even in such reduced circumstances, some pride in life can continue to flicker. The little hearth and the floorboards were scrubbed, the two rickety stools were similarly looked after, and the bed, although rough, had been polished. Apart from that, the room had no furniture beyond those few pots and platters which even the lowest must have. One thing did astonish me: a shelf of at least half-a-dozen books made me realise that, at some stage at least, some man had inhabited these quarters.

‘Well,’ I said in the cheerful way my master in Padua had employed as a means of inspiring confidence, ‘where is the invalid, then?’

She pointed to the bed, which I had thought empty. Huddled under the thin covering was a little broken bird of a woman, so small it was difficult to imagine she was anything but a child. I approached and gently pulled down the covers.

‘Good morning, madam,’ I said. ‘I’m told you’ve had an accident. Let us have a look at you.’

Even I realised instantly that it was a serious injury. The end of the shattered bone had pushed through the parchment-like skin and protruded, broken and bloody, into the open air. And if that wasn’t bad enough, some bungling fool had evidently tried to force it back into place, tearing more flesh, then simply wrapped a piece of dirty cloth around the wound, so that the threads had stuck to the bone as the blood had congealed.

‘Holy Mary, Mother of God,’ I cried in exasperation, fortunately in Italian. ‘What idiot has done this?’

‘She did it herself,’ the girl said quietly when I repeated this last in English. ‘She was all on her own, and did what she could.’

It looked very bad indeed. Even with a robust young man, the inevitable weakness from such a wound would have been serious. Then there was the possibility of rot setting in and the chance that some of the threads would create an irritation in the flesh. I shivered at the thought, then realised that the room was bitterly cold.

‘Go and light a fire immediately. She must be kept warm,’ I said.

She stood there, unmoving.

‘Can’t you hear me? Do as I say.’

We don’t have anything to burn,’ she said.

What could I do? It was hardly fitting or dignified, but sometimes the task of the physician goes beyond merely tending to physical ailment. With some impatience, I pulled a few pence from my pocket. ‘Go and buy some wood, then,’ I said.

She looked at the pennies I had thrust into her palm, and, without so much as a word of thanks, silently went out of the room into the alleyway beyond.

‘Now then, madam,’ I said, turning back to the old lady, ‘we will
soon have you nice and warm. That is most important. First we have to clean up this leg of yours.’

And so I set to work; fortunately the girl came back quickly with wood and some embers to light a fire, so that I soon had hot water. I thought that if I could clean it up fast enough, if I could reset the broken bone without causing her so much discomfort that she died, if she didn’t develop a fever or some distemper in the wound, if she was kept warm and well fed, she might live. But there were a lot of dangers; any one of them could kill her.

Once I began she seemed alert enough, which was a good start, although considering the pain I was giving her a corpse would have become aware of its surroundings. She told me that she had slipped on a patch of ice and fallen badly, but apart from that she was initially as uncommunicative as her daughter, although with more excuse.

Perhaps the more thoughtful, and those who were more proud, might have walked away the moment that the girl confessed she had no money; perhaps I could have left when it became clear there was no heating; certainly I should have refused outright even to have contemplated the provision of any sort of medicines to the woman. It is not for oneself, of course; there is the reputation of the profession to be considered in these matters. But in all conscience, I could not bring myself to act as I should have done. Sometimes being a Gentleman and Physician do not always sit easily together.

Also, although I had studied the proper way of cleansing wounds and setting bones, I had never had the opportunity to do so in practice. It was very much more difficult than the lectures had made it seem and I fear that I caused the old lady considerable suffering. But eventually the bone was set and the leg bound, and I dispatched the girl with more of my scarce pennies to buy materials for a salve. While she was gone, I cut some lengths of wood and bound them to the leg to try and ensure that, were she lucky enough to survive, the shattered bone would knit correctly.

By this stage I was in no good humour. What was I doing here, in this provincial, unfriendly, miserable little town, surrounded by strangers, such a long way away from everything I knew and everyone who cared for me? More to the point, what was going to happen when,
as was bound to occur very shortly, I found myself without money to pay for lodging, or food?

Bound up in my own despair, I completely ignored my patient, feeling I had done more than enough for her already, and found myself examining the little shelf of books; not out of interest, but merely as a way of turning my back on her so that I could avoid looking at the poor creature who was rapidly becoming the symbol of my misfortunes. This sentiment was compounded by the fact that I feared that all my efforts and expense were going to prove a waste: even though I was young and inexperienced, I already knew death when I stared it in the face, smelt its breath and touched the sweat it produced on the skin.

‘You are unhappy, sir,’ the old lady said in a frail voice from her bed. ‘I’m afraid that I am a great trouble to you.’

‘No, no. Not at all,’ I said with the flatness of deliberate insincerity.

‘It is kind of you to say so. But we both know that we cannot pay you money for your help, as you deserve. And I saw from the look in your face that you are not a rich man yourself at the moment, despite your dress. Where do you come from? You are not from around here.’

Within a few minutes, I found myself perched on one of the rickety stools by the bedstead, pouring out my heart about my father, my lack of money, my reception in London, my hopes and fears for the future. There was something about her that encouraged such confidences, almost as though I was talking to my old mother, not to some poor, dying, heretical Englishwoman.

Throughout she nodded patiently and spoke to me with such wisdom that I felt comforted. It pleased God to send us trials, just as He did with Job. Our duty is to bear them quietly, use the skills He has given us to overcome them, and never to abandon our faith that His design was good and necessary. More practically, she told me I must certainly visit Mr Boyle; he was known as a good Christian gentleman.

I suppose I should have scorned this combination of puritanical piety and impertinent advice. But I could see that, in her way, she was trying to make amends. She could offer no money, and no service.
What she could give was understanding, and in the coin that she had she paid freely.

‘I shall soon be dead, shall I not?’ she asked after she had listened to my woes for a good long while and I had exhausted the topic of my hardship.

My master in Padua had always warned about such questions: not least because one might be wrong. He always believed that the patient has no right to confront the physician in such a way; if one is right and the patient does die, it merely makes them morose for the last few days of their life. Rather than composing themselves for their imminent ascent into the presence of God (an event to be desired rather than regretted, one might think), most people complain bitterly at having this divine goodness thrust upon them. On top of this, they tend to believe their physicians. In moments of frankness, I confess that I do not know why this is the case; none the less, it seems that if a physician tells them they will die, many dutifully oblige, even though there may be little wrong with them.

‘We will all die in due course, madam,’ I said gravely, in the vain hope that this might satisfy her.

However, she was not the sort of person who could be fobbed off. She had asked the question calmly and was plainly able to tell truth from the opposite.

‘But some sooner than others,’ she replied with a little smile. ‘And my turn is near, is it not?’

‘I really cannot say. It may be that no corruption will set in, and you will recover. But, in truth, I fear that you are very weak.’ I could not actually say to her: Yes, you will die, and very soon. But the sense was clear enough.

She nodded placidly. ‘I thought so,’ she said. ‘And I rejoice in God’s will. I am a burden to my Sarah.’

Come l’oro nel foco, così la fede nel dolor s’affina
. I hardly felt like defending the daughter, but muttered that I was sure she performed her obligations with a happy heart.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘She is too dutiful.’ She was a woman who spoke with a decorum far beyond her station and education. I know that it is not impossible for rude surroundings and coarseness of upbringing to bring forth gentleness, but experience teaches us that it is rare. Just as
refinement of thought naturally requires refinement of circumstance, so brutality and squalor in life begets the same in the soul. Yet this old woman, although surrounded by the meanest of states, talked with a sympathy and understanding I have often failed to meet with in the very best of people. It made me take an unwonted interest in her as a patient. Subtly, and without even becoming aware of it, I moved from seeing her as a hopeless case: I may not be able to cheat death, I found myself thinking grimly, but at least I will make him work for his prize.

Then the girl returned with the little packet of medicines that I had demanded. Staring at me, as though challenging me to criticise, she said that I had not given her enough: but Mr Crosse the apothecary had allowed her to have twopence credit, when she had promised I would settle the account. I was speechless with indignation at this, because the girl seemed to be rebuking me for having sent her out with insufficient money. But what could I do about it? The money was spent, the patient was waiting, and it was beneath me to enter an argument.