The Citadel (16 page)

A pause. Then, muttering under his breath: ‘The guv’ner’ll give me what for, if I don’t sell you!’ the salesman padded disconsolately away. He did not return. Four minutes later a short red-faced common man came bustling towards them. He shot out:

‘What do you want?’

‘Good second-hand furniture – cheap!’

The short man fired a hard glance at Andrew. Without further speech he spun round and led them to a trade lift at the back which, when manipulated, dropped them to a large chilly basement, crammed to the ceiling with second-hand goods.

For an hour Christine probed amongst the dust and cobwebs, finding a stout chest here, a good plain table there, a small upholstered easy-chair beneath a pile of sacking, while Andrew, following behind, wrangled long and stubbornly with the short man over prices.

Their list was complete at last and Christine, her face smudged but happy, pressed Andrew’s hand with a thrilling sense of triumph as they ascended in the lift.

‘Just what we wanted,’ she whispered.

The red-faced man took them to the office, where, laying down his order book on the proprietor’s desk with the air of a man who has laboured to do his best, he said: ‘That’s the lot then, Mr Isaacs.’

Mr Isaacs caressed his nose. His eyes, liquid against his sallow skin, were sorrowful as he studied the order book.

‘I’m afraid we can’t give you HP terms on this, Doctor Manson. You see, it’s all second-hand goods.’ A deprecating shrug. ‘ We don’t do our business like that.’

Christine turned pale. But Andrew, grimly insistent, sat down upon a chair like a man who meant to stay.

‘Oh, yes, you do, Mr Isaacs. At least it says so in your letter. Printed in black and white on the top of your note-paper. New and second-hand furniture supplied on easy terms.’

There was a pause. The red-faced man, bending over Mr Isaacs, made rapid mutterings accompanied by gesticulations in his ear. Christine plainly caught impolite words which testified to the toughness of her husband’s fibre, the power of his racial persistence.

‘Well, Doctor Manson,’ smiled Mr Isaacs, with an effort. ‘You shall have your way. Don’t say the Regency wasn’t good to you. And don’t forget to tell your patients. All about how well you were treated here. Smith! Make out that bill on the HP sheet and see that Doctor Manson has a copy posted to him first thing tomorrow morning!’

‘Thank you, Mr Isaacs.’

Another pause. Mr Isaacs said, by way of closing the interview, ‘That’s right, then, that’s right. The goods will reach you on Friday.’

Christine made to leave the office. But Andrew still remained fast to his chair. He said slowly: ‘And now, Mr Isaacs! What about our railway fares?’

It was as if a bomb had exploded into the office. Smith, the red-faced man, looked as though his veins would burst.

‘My God, Doctor Manson!’ exclaimed Isaacs. ‘What d’you mean. We can’t do business like that. Fair’s fair, but I ain’t a camel!
Railway fares!
’

Inexorably Andrew produced his pocket-book. His voice, though it wavered slightly, was measured.

‘I have a letter here, Mr Isaacs, in which you say in plain black and white that you will pay customers’ railway fares from England and Wales on orders over fifty pounds.’

‘But I tell you,’ Isaacs expostulated wildly, ‘you only bought fifty-five pounds worth of goods – and all second-hand stuff –’

‘In your letter, Mr Isaacs –’

‘Never mind my letter,’ Isaacs threw up his hands. ‘Never mind anything. The deal’s off. I never had a customer like you in all my life. We’re used to nice young married people which we can talk to. First you insult my Mr Clapp, then my Mr Smith can’t do nothing with you, then you come here breakin’ my heart with talk of
railway fares.
We can’t do business, Doctor Manson. You can go try if you can do better somewhere else!’

Christine, in a panic, glanced at Andrew, her eyes holding a desperate appeal. She felt that all was lost. This terrible husband of hers had thrown away all the benefits he had so hardly won. But Andrew, appearing not to see her even, was dourly folding up his pocket-book and placing it in his pocket.

‘Very well, then, Mr Isaacs. We’ll say good afternoon to you. But I’m telling you – this won’t make very good hearing to all my patients and their friends. I have a large practice. And this is bound to get round. How you brought us up to London, promising to pay our fares, and when we –’

‘Stop! Stop!’ Isaacs wailed in something like a frenzy. ‘How much was your fares? Pay them, Mr Smith! Pay them, pay them,
pay
them. Only don’t say the Regency didn’t ever do what it promised.
There
now! Are you satisfied?’

‘Thank you, Mr Isaacs. We’re very satisfied. We’ll expect delivery on Friday. Good afternoon, Mr Isaacs.’

Gravely, Manson shook him by the hand and taking Christine’s arm, hastened her to the door. Outside, the antique limousine which had brought them was waiting and, as though he had given the largest order in the history of the Regency, Andrew exclaimed:

‘Take us to the Museum Hotel, driver!’

They were off immediately, without interference, swinging out of the East End in the direction of Bloomsbury. And Christine, tensely clutching-Andrew’s arm, allowed herself gradually to relax.

‘Oh, darling,’ she whispered. ‘You managed that wonderfully. Just when I thought –’

He shook his head, his jaw still stubbornly set.

‘They didn’t want trouble, that crowd. I had their promise, their
written
promise –’ He swung round to her, his eyes burning. ‘ It wasn’t these idiotic fares, darling. You know that. It was the principle of the thing. People ought to keep their word. It put my back up too, the way they were waiting for us, you could see it a mile away – here’s a couple of greenhorns – easy money. Oh, and that cigar they dumped on me too, the whole thing reeked of swindle.’

‘We managed to get what we wanted, anyhow,’ she murmured tactfully.

He nodded. He was too strung up, too seething with indignation to see the humour of it then. But in their room at the Museum the comic side became apparent. As he lit a cigarette and stretched himself on the bed, watching her as she tidied her hair, he suddenly began to laugh. He laughed so much that he set her laughing, too.

‘That look on old Isaacs’s face –’ he wheezed, his ribs aching. ‘It was – it was screamingly funny.’

‘When you,’ she gasped weakly, ‘when you asked him for the fares.’

‘Business, he said, we can’t do business.’ He went off into another paroxysm. ‘“Am I a camel,” he said. Oh, lord! – a
camel
–’

‘Yes, darling.’ Comb in hand, tears running down her cheeks, she turned to him, scarcely able to articulate. ‘But the funniest thing – to me – was the way you kept saying “I’ve got it here in black and white” when I – when I – oh dear! –
when I knew all the time you’d left the letter on the mantelpiece at home.
’

He sat up, staring at her, then flung himself down with a yell of laughter. He rolled about, stuffing the pillow into his mouth, helpless, out of all control, while she clung to the dressing-table, shaking, sore with laughter, begging him, deliriously, to stop or she would expire.

Later, when they had managed to compose themselves, they went to the theatre. Since he gave her free choice she selected
Saint Joan.
All her life, she told him, she had wanted to see a play by Shaw.

Seated beside her in the crowded pit he was less engaged by the play – too historical, he told her afterwards, who does this fellow Shaw think he is, anyway? – than by the faint flush upon her eager entranced face. Their first visit to the theatre together. Well, it wouldn’t be the last by a long way. His eyes wandered round the full house. They would be back here again some day, not in the pit, in one of those boxes there. He would see to it; he would show them all a thing or two! Christine would wear a low-necked evening dress, people would look at him, nudge each other, that’s Manson, you know, that doctor who did that marvellous work on lungs. He pulled himself up sharply, rather sheepishly, and bought Christine an ice cream at the interval.

Afterwards he was reckless in the princely manner. Outside the theatre they found themselves completely lost, baffled by the lights, the buses, the teeming crowds. Peremptorily Andrew held up his hand. Safely ensconced, being driven to their hotel, they thought themselves, blissfully, pioneers in discovering the privacy afforded by a London taxi.

After London the breeze of Aberalaw was crisp and cool. Walking down from Vale View on Thursday morning to commence his duties, Andrew felt it strike invigoratingly on his cheek. A tingling exhilaration filled him. He saw his work stretching out before him here, work well and cleanly done, work always guided by his principle, the scientific method.

The West Surgery, which lay not more than four hundred yards from his house, was a high vaulted building, white-tiled and with a vague air of sanitation. Its main and central portion was the waiting-room. At the bottom end, cut off from the waiting-room by a sliding hatch, was the dispensary. At the top were two consulting-rooms, one bearing the name of Doctor Urquhart and the other, freshly painted, the mysteriously arresting name, Doctor Manson.

It gave Andrew a thrill of pleasure to see himself identified, already, with his room, which though not large had a good desk and a sound leather couch for examinations. He was flattered too, by the number of people waiting for him – such a crowd, in fact, that he thought it better to begin work immediately without first making himself known, as he had intended, to Doctor Urquhart and the dispenser, Gadge.

Seating himself, he signed for his first case to come in. This was a man who asked simply for a certificate adding, as a kind of afterthought, beat knee. Andrew examined him, found him suffering from beat knee, gave him the certificate of incapacity for work.

The second case came in. He also demanded his certificate, nystagmus. The third case: certificate, bronchitis. The fourth case: certificate, beat elbow.

Andrew got up, anxious to know where he stood. These certificate examinations took a great deal of time. He went to his door and asked:

‘How many more men for certificates? Will they stand up, please.’

There were perhaps forty men waiting outside. They all stood up. Andrew reflected quickly. It would take him the best part of the day to examine them all properly – an impossible situation. Reluctantly, he made up his mind to defer the more exacting examinations until another time.

Even so, it was half past ten when he got through his last case. Then as he glanced up, there stamped into his room a medium sized, oldish man with a brick-red face and a small pugnacious grey imperial. He stooped slightly so that his head had a forward belligerent thrust. He wore cord breeches, gaiters, and a tweed jacket, the side pockets stuffed to bursting point with pipe, handkerchief, an apple, a gum elastic catheter. About him hung the odour of drugs, carbolic and strong tobacco. Andrew knew before he spoke that it was Doctor Urquhart.

‘Dammit to hell, man,’ said Urquhart without a handshake or a word of introduction, ‘where were ye these last two days? I’ve had to lump your work for ye. Never mind, never mind! We’ll say no more about it. Thank God ye look sound in mind an’ limb now ye have arrived. Do ye smoke a pipe?’

‘I do.’

‘Thank God for that also! Can ye play the fiddle?’

‘No.’

‘Neither can I – but I can make them bonny. I collect china too. They’ve had my name in a book. I’ll show ye some day when ye come ben my house. It’s just at the side of the surgery ye’ll have observed. And now, come away and meet Gadge. He’s a miserable devil. But he knows his incompatibles.’

Andrew followed Urquhart through the waiting-room into the dispensary where Gadge greeted him with a gloomy nod. He was a long, lean cadaverous man with a bald head streaked with jet-black hair and drooping whiskers of the same colour. He wore a short alpaca jacket, green with age and the stains of drugs, which showed his bony wrists and death’s door shoulder blades. His air was sad, caustic, tired; his attitude that of the most disillusioned man in the whole universe. As Andrew entered he was serving his last client, flinging a box of pills through the hatch as though it was rat poison. ‘Take it or leave it,’ he seemed to say. ‘You’ve got to die in any case!’

‘Well,’ said Urquhart spryly, when he had effected the introduction. ‘Ye’ve met Gadge and ye know the worst. I warn ye he believes in nothing except maybe castor oil and Charles Bradlaugh. Now – is there anything I can tell ye?’

‘I’m worried about the number of certificates I had to sign. Some of these chaps this morning looked to me quite capable of work.’

‘Ay, ay. Leslie let them pile up on him anyhow. His idea of examining a patient was to take his pulse for exactly five seconds by the clock. He didn’t mind a docken.’

Andrew answered quickly. ‘What can anyone think of a doctor who hands out certificates like cigarette coupons?’

Urquhart darted a glance at him. He said bluntly:

‘Be careful how you go. They’re liable not to like it if you sign them off.’

For the first and last time that morning Gadge made gloomy interjection.

‘That’s because there’s nothing wrong wi’ half o’ them, ruddy scrimshankers!’

All that day as he went on his visits Andrew worried about these certificates. His round was not easy for he did not know the neighbourhood, the streets were unfamiliar and more than once he had to go back and cover the same ground twice. His district, moreover, or the greater part of it, lay on the side of that Mardy Hill to which Tom Kettles had referred and this meant stiff climbing between one row of houses and the next.

Before afternoon his cogitation had forced him to an unpleasant decision. He could not, on any account, give a slack certificate. He went down to his evening surgery with an anxious yet determined line fixed between his brows.

The crowd, if anything, was larger than at the morning surgery. And the first patient to enter was a great lump of a man, rolling in fat, who smelled strongly of beer and looked as if he had never done a full day’s work in his life. He was about fifty and had small pig eyes which blinked down at Andrew.