The Citadel (38 page)

‘Glad to see you with us, doctor,’ fussed little red-faced Ferrie. ‘Did you approve of my speech? We’ve got to hold out for our fees. On night calls especially, I am taking a firm stand. The other night I was knocked up by a boy – a mere child of twelve, if you please. “ Come round quick, doctor,” he blubbers. “ Father’s at work and my mother’s taken awful bad.” You
know
that two a.m. conversation. And I’d never seen the kid in my life before. “My dear boy,” said I, “ your mother’s no patient of mine! Away and fetch me my half guinea and
then
I’ll come.” Of course he never came back. I tell you, doctor, this district is
terrible
–’

On the week after the divisional meeting Mrs Lawrence rang him up. He always enjoyed the graceful inconsequence of her telephone conversations, but today, after mentioning that her husband was fishing in Ireland, that she might possibly be going later to join him there, she asked him, dropping out her invitation as though it were of no importance, to luncheon on the following Friday.

‘Toppy’ll be there. And one or two people – less dull, I think, than one usually meets. It might do you some good – perhaps – to know them.’

He hung up the receiver between satisfaction and an odd irritation. In his heart he was piqued that Christine had not been invited too. Then, gradually, he came to see that it was not a social but really a business occasion. He must get about and make contacts, particularly amongst the class of people who would be present at this luncheon. And, in any case, Christine need know nothing at all of the affair. When Friday came he told her that he had a luncheon engagement with Hamson and jumped into his car, relieved. He forgot that he was an extremely bad liar.

Frances Lawrence’s house was in Knightsbridge, in a quiet street, between Hans Place and Wilton Crescent. Though it had not the splendour of the le Roy mansion its restrained taste conveyed an equal sense of opulence. Andrew was late in arriving and most of the guests were already there: Toppy, Rosa Keane the novelist, Sir Dudley Rumbold-Blane, MD, FRCP, famous physician and member of the board of Cremo Products, Nicol Watson, traveller and anthropologist, and several others of less alarming distinction.

He found himself at table beside a Mrs Thornton who lived, she informed him, in Leicestershire, and who came up periodically to Brown’s Hotel for a short season in town. Though he was now able calmly to sustain the ordeal of introductions, he was glad to regain his assurance under cover of her chatter, a maternal account of a foot injury, received at hockey by her daughter Sybil, a schoolgirl at Roedean.

Giving one ear to Mrs Thornton, who took his mute listening for interest, he still managed to hear something of the suave and witty conversation around him – Rosa Keane’s acid pleasantries, Watson’s fascinatingly graceful account of an expedition he had recently made through the Paraguayan interior. He admired also the ease with which Frances kept the talk moving, at the same time sustaining the measured pedantry of Sir Rumbold, who sat beside her. Once or twice he felt her eyes upon him, half smiling, interrogative.

‘Of course,’ Watson concluded his narrative with a deprecatory smile. ‘ Easily one’s most devastating experience was to come home and run straight into an attack of influenza.’

‘Ha!’ said Sir Rumbold. ‘So you’ve been a victim too.’ By the device of clearing his throat and placing his pince-nez upon his richly endowed nose, he gained the attention of the table. Sir Rumbold was at home in this position – for many years now the attention of the great British public had been focused upon him. It was Sir Rumbold who, a quarter of a century before, staggered humanity by the declaration that a certain portion of man’s intestine was not only useless but definitely harmful. Hundreds of people had rushed straight away to have the dangerous section removed and, though Sir Rumbold was not himself amongst this number, the fame of the operation, which the surgeons named the Rumbold-Blane excision, established his reputation as a dietitian. Since then he had kept well to the front, successfully introducing to the nation bran food, Youghourt, and the lactic acid bacillus. Later he invented Rumbold-Blane Mastication and now, in addition to his activities on many company boards he wrote the menus for the famous Railey chain of restaurants:
Come, Ladies and Gentlemen, Let Sir Rumbold-Blane, MD, FRCP, Help You Choose Your Calories!
Many were the muttered grumbles amongst more legitimate healers that Sir Rumbold should have been scored off the Register years ago: to which the answer manifestly was – what would the Register be without Sir Rumbold?

He now said, glancing paternally at Frances:

‘One of the most interesting features of this recent epidemic has been the spectacular therapeutic effect of Cremogen. I had occasion to say the same thing at our Company meeting last week. We have – aha! – no cure for influenza. And in the absence of cure the only way to resist its murderous invasion is to develop a high state of resistance, a vital defence of the body against the inroads of the disease. I happened to say, I flatter myself rather aptly, that we have proved incontestably, not on guinea-pigs – aha! aha! – like our laboratory friends – but on
human beings
the phenomenal power of Cremogen in organising and energising the vital antagonism of the body.’

Watson turned to Andrew with his odd smile. ‘ What do you think of Cremo productions, doctor?’

Caught unawares, Andrew found himself saying:

‘It’s as good a way of taking skim milk as any other.’

Rosa Keane, with a swift approving side-glance, was unkind enough to laugh. Frances was smiling, too. Hurriedly, Sir Rumbold passed to a description of his recent visit, as a guest of the Northern Medical Union, to the Trossachs.

Otherwise the luncheon was harmonious. Andrew eventually found himself joining freely in the conversation. Before he took his leave from her drawing-room, Frances had a word with him.

‘You really do shine,’ she murmured, ‘ out of the consulting-room. Mrs Thornton hasn’t been able to drink her coffee for telling me about you. I have a strange presentiment that you’ve bagged her – is that the phrase? – as a patient.’

With that remark ringing in his ear, he went home feeling that he was much the better, and Christine none the worse for the adventure.

On the following morning, however, at half past ten he had an unpleasant shock. Freddie Hamson rang him to inquire briskly:

‘Enjoy your lunch yesterday? How did I know? Why, you old dog, haven’t you seen this morning’s
Tribune?’

Dismayed, Andrew went directly into the waiting-room, where the papers were laid out when Christine and he had finished with them. For the second time he went through the
Tribune
, one of the better known pictorial dailies. Suddenly he started. How had he missed it before? There, on a page devoted to society gossip, was a photograph of Frances Lawrence with a paragraph describing her luncheon party of the day before, his name amongst the guests.

With a chagrined face he slipped the sheet from the others, crushed it into a ball, flung it in the fire. Then he realised that Christine had already read the paper. He frowned in an access of vexation. Though he felt sure that she had not seen this confounded paragraph he went scowling into his consulting-room.

But Christine had seen the paragraph. And, after a momentary bewilderment, the hurt of it struck her to the heart. Why had he not told her? Why? Why? She would not have minded his going to this stupid lunch. She tried to reassure herself – it was all too trivial to cause her such anxiety and pain. But she saw, with a dull ache, that its implications were not trivial.

When he went out on his round she attempted to go on with her work in the house. But she could not. She wandered into his consulting-room, from there into his surgery, with that same heavy oppression in her breast. She began in a desultory fashion to dust the surgery. Beside the desk lay his old medical bag, the first he had ever possessed, which he had used at Drineffy, carrying it along the Rows, using it in his emergency calls down the mine. She touched it with a strange tenderness. He had a new bag now, a finer one. It was part of this new, this finer practice which he was striving after so feverishly, and which, deep in her heart, she so distrusted. She knew it was useless to attempt to speak to him about her misgivings on his behalf. He was so touchy now – the sign of his own conflict – a word from her would set him off, instantly provoke a quarrel. She must do her best in other ways.

It was Saturday forenoon and she had promised to take Florrie with her when she set out to do her shopping. Florrie was a bright little girl and Christine had become attached to her. She could hear her waiting now, at the head of the basement stairs, sent up by her mother, very clean and wearing a fresh frock, in a state of great preparedness. They often went out together like this on a Saturday.

She felt better in the open air with the child holding her hand, walking down the Market, talking to her friends amongst the hawkers, buying fruit, flowers, trying to think of something especially nice to please Andrew. Yet the wound was still open. Why, why had he not told her? And why had she not been there? She recollected that first occasion at Aberalaw when they had gone to the Vaughans and it had taken all her efforts to drag him with her. How different was the position now! Was she to blame? Had she changed, withdrawn into herself, become in some way antisocial? She did not think so. She still liked meeting and knowing people, irrespective of who or what they were. Her friendship with Mrs Vaughan still persisted in their regular exchange of letters.

But actually, though she felt hurt and slighted, her main concern was less for herself than for him. She knew that rich people could be ill as well as poor, that it was possible for him to be as fine a doctor in Green Street, Mayfair, as in Cefan Row, Aberalaw. She did not demand the persistence of such heroic effects as leggings and his old Red Indian motor-cycle. Yet she did feel with all her soul that in those days his idealism had been pure and wonderful, illuminating both their lives with a clear white flame. Now the flame had turned yellower and the globe of the lamp was smudged.

As she went into Frau Schmidt’s she tried to erase the lines of worry from her brow. Nevertheless she found the old woman looking at her sharply. And presently Frau Schmidt grumbled:

‘You don’t eat enough, my dear! You don’t look as you should! And you haf a fine car now and money and everything. Look! I will make you taste this. It iss good!’

The long thin knife in her hand, she cut a slice of her famous boiled ham and made Christine eat a soft bread sandwich. At the same time Florrie was provided with an iced pastry. Frau Schmidt kept talking all the time.

‘And now you want some Liptauer. Herr doctor – he has eaten pounds of my cheese and he never grows tired of it. Some day I will ask him to write me a testimonial to put in my window. This is the cheese what has made me famous –’ Chuckling, Frau Schmidt ran on until they left her.

Outside, Christine and Florrie stood on the kerb waiting till the policeman on duty – it was their old friend Struthers – should signal them across. Christine kept a restraining hand on the impulsive Florrie’s arm.

‘You must always watch out for the traffic here,’ she cautioned. ‘What would your mother say if you were to get run over?’

Florrie, her mouth stuffed with the end of her pastry, considered this an excellent joke.

They were home at last and Christine began to undo the wrappings from her purchases. As she moved about the front room, putting the bronze chrysanthemums she had bought into a vase, she felt sad again.

Suddenly the telephone rang.

She went to answer it, her face still, her lips slightly drooping. For perhaps five minutes she was absent. When she returned her expression was transfigured. Her eyes were bright, excited. From time to time she glanced out of the window, eager for Andrew’s return, her despondency forgotten in the good news she had received, news which was so important to him, yes, important to both of them. She had a happy conviction that nothing could have been more propitious. No better antidote to the poison of a facile success could ever have been decreed. And it was such an advance, such a real step up for him as well. Eagerly she went to the window again.

When he arrived she could not contain herself to wait but ran to meet him in the hall.

‘Andrew! I’ve got a message for you from Sir Robert Abbey. He’s just been on the telephone.’

‘Yes?’ His face which had drawn into sudden compunction at the sight of her, cleared.

‘Yes! He rang up himself, wanted to speak to you. I told him who I was – oh! he was terribly nice – oh – oh! I’m telling you so badly. Darling! You’re to be appointed to out-patients at the Victoria Hospital – immediately!’

His eyes filled slowly with excited realisation.

‘Why – that’s good news, Chris.’

‘Isn’t it, isn’t it,’ she cried, delighted. ‘ Your own work again – chances for research – everything you wanted on the Fatigue Board and didn’t get –’ She put her arms round his neck and hugged him.

He looked down at her, indescribably touched by her love, her generous unselfishness. He had a momentary pang.

‘What a good soul you are, Chris! And – and what a lout I am!’

Upon the fourteenth of the following month Andrew began his duties in the out-patients department of the Victoria Chest Hospital. His days were Tuesdays and Thursdays, the hours from three until five o’clock in the afternoon. It was exactly like his old surgery days in Aberalaw except that now all the cases which came to him were specialised lung and bronchial conditions. And he was, of course, to his great and secret pride, no longer a medical aid assistant but an honorary physician in one of the oldest and most famous hospitals in London.

The Victoria Hospital was unquestionably old. Situated in Battersea in a network of mean streets close to the Thames, it seldom caught, even in summer, more than a stray gleam of sunshine, while in winter its balconies, on to which the patients’ beds were intended to be wheeled, were more often than not blanketed in river fog. Upon the gloomy, dilapidated façade was a great placard in red and white, which seemed obvious and redundant. VICTORIA HOSPITAL IS FALLING DOWN.