The Citadel (45 page)

‘I should think I have. We
all
have. Eh, Mrs Bennett? Eh, Florrie? Con! What the devil are you doing with that luggage?’

He was out in a second, giving Con a hand, performing unnecessarily with suitcases. Then, before anything more could be done or said, he had to leave on his rounds. He insisted that they could expect him for tea. As he slumped into the seat of his car he groaned:

‘Thank God that’s over! She doesn’t look a lot the better of the holiday. Oh, hell! – I’m sure she didn’t notice. And that’s the main thing at present.’

Though he was late in returning, his briskness, his cheerfulness were excessive. Con was enraptured with such spirits.

‘In the name of God! Ye’ve more go in ye than ever ye had in the old days, Manson, my boy.’

Once or twice he felt Christine’s eye upon him, half pleading for a sign, a look of understanding. He perceived that Mary’s illness was distracting her – a conflicting anxiety. She explained, in an interval of conversation, that she had asked Con to wire Mary to come through at once, tomorrow if possible. She was worried about Mary. She hoped that something, or rather everything, would be done without delay.

It fell out better than Andrew had expected. Mary wired back that she would arrive on the following day before lunch, and Christine was fully occupied in preparing for her. The stir and excitement in the house masked even his hollow heartiness.

But when Mary appeared he suddenly became himself again. It was evident at first sight that she was not well. Grown in these intervening years to a lanky girl of twenty, with a slight droop to her shoulders, she had that almost unnatural beauty of complexion which spoke an immediate warning to Andrew.

She was tired out by her journey and though she wished, in her pleasure at seeing them again, to sit up and continue talking, she was persuaded to bed about six o’clock. It was then that Andrew went up to auscultate her chest.

He remained upstairs for only fifteen minutes but when he came down to Con and Christine in the drawing-room his expression was, for once, genuinely disturbed.

‘I’m afraid there’s no doubt about it. The left apex. Llewellyn was perfectly right, Con. But don’t worry. It’s in the primary stage. We can do something with it!’

‘You mean,’ said Con, gloomily apprehensive. ‘You mean it can be cured?’

‘Yes. I’d go as far as to say that. It means keeping an eye on her, constant observation, every care.’ He reflected, frowning deeply. ‘It seems to me, Con, that Aberalaw’s about the worst place for her – always bad for early TB at home – why don’t you let me get her into the Victoria? I’ve got a pull with Doctor Thoroughgood. I’d get her into his ward for a certainty. I’d keep my eye on her.’

‘Manson!’ Con exclaimed impressively. ‘ That’s one true act of friendship. If ye only knew the trust that girl of mine has in ye! If any man’ll get her right it’s yourself.’

Andrew went immediately to telephone Thoroughgood. He returned in five minutes with the information that Mary could be admitted to the Victoria at the end of the week. Con brightened visibly and, his bounding optimism responding to the idea of the Chest Hospital, of Andrew’s attention and Thoroughgood’s supervision, Mary was, for him, as good as cured.

The next two days were fully occupied. By Saturday afternoon when Mary was admitted and Con had boarded his train at Paddington, Andrew’s self possession was at last equal to the occasion. He was able to press Christine’s arm, and exclaim lightly on his way to the surgery:

‘Nice to be together again, Chris! Lord! What a week it has been.’

It sounded perfectly in key. But it was as well he did not see the look upon her face. She sat down in the room, alone, her head bent slightly, her hands in her lap, very still. She had been so hopeful when first she came back. But now, within her, was the dreadful foreboding: Dear God! When and how is this going to end?

On and on rushed the spate of his success, a bursting dam sweeping him irresistibly forward in an ever-sounding, ever-swelling flood.

His association with Hamson and Ivory was now closer and more profitable than ever. Moreover, Deedman had asked him to deputise for him at the Plaza, while he flew to Le Touquet for seven days’ golf, and by way of acknowledgment, to split the fees. Usually it was Hamson who acted as Deedman’s locum, but lately Andrew suspected a rift between these two.

How flattering for Andrew to discover that he could walk straight into the bedroom of a paroxysmal film star, sit on her satin sheets, palpate her sexless anatomy with sure hands, perhaps smoke a cigarette with her if he had time!

But even more flattering was the patronage of Joseph le Roy. Twice in the last month he had lunched with le Roy. He knew there were important ideas working in the other man’s mind. At their last meeting le Roy had tentatively remarked:

‘You know, doc, I’ve been feeling my way with you. It’s a pretty large thing I’m going on to and I’ll need a lot of clever medical advice. I don’t want any more double-handed big hats – Old Rumbold isn’t worth his own calories, we’re going to pin the crape on him right away! – and I don’t want a lot of so-called experts goin’ into a huddle and pulling me round in circles. I want one level-headed medical adviser and I’m beginning to think you’re about it. You see, we’ve reached a wide section of the public with our products on a popular basis. But I honestly believe the time has come to expand our interests and go in for more scientific derivatives. Split up the milk components, electrify them, irradiate them, tabloid them. Cremo with vitamin B, Cremofax and lethecin for malnutrition, rickets, deficiency insomnia – you get me, doc. And further, I believe if we tackle this on more orthodox professional lines we can enlist the help and sympathy of the whole medical profession, make every doctor, so to speak, a potential salesman. Now this means scientific advertising, doc, scientific approach and that’s where I believe a young scientific doctor on the inside could help us all along the road. Now I want you to get me straight, this is all perfectly open and
scientific.
We are actually raising our own status. And when you consider the worthless extracts that doctors do recommend – like Marrobin C and Vegatog and Bonebran – why, I consider in elevating the general standard of health we are doing a great public service to the nation.’

Andrew did not pause to consider that there was probably more vitamin in one fresh green pea than in several tins of Cremofax. He was excited, not by the fee he would receive for acting on the board, but at the thought of le Roy’s interest.

It was Frances who told him how he might profit by le Roy’s spectacular market operations. Ah! it was pleasant to drop in to tea with her, to feel that this charming sophisticated woman had a special glance for him, a swift provoking smile of intimacy! Association with her gave him sophistication too, added assurance, a harder polish. Unconsciously he absorbed her philosophy. Under her guidance he was learning to cultivate the superficial niceties and let the deeper things go hang.

It was no longer an embarrassment to face Christine, he could come into his house quite naturally, following an hour spent with Frances. He did not stop to wonder at this astounding change. If he thought of it at all it was to argue that he did not love Mrs Lawrence, that Christine knew nothing of it, that every man came to this particular impasse some time in his life. Why should he set himself up to be different?

By way of recompense he went out of his way to be nice to Christine, spoke to her with consideration, even discussed his plans with her. She was aware that he proposed to buy the Welbeck Street house next spring, that they would be leaving Chesborough Terrace whenever the arrangements were complete. She never argued with him now, never threw recriminations at his head and if she had moods he never saw them. She seemed altogether passive. Life moved too swiftly for him to pause long for reflection. The pace exhilarated him. He had a false sensation of strength. He felt vital, increasing in consequence, master of himself and of his destiny.

And then, out of high heaven, the bolt fell.

On the evening of the 5th of November, the wife of a neighbouring petty tradesman came to his consulting-room at Chesborough Terrace.

She was Mrs Vidler, a small sparrow of a woman, middle-aged, but bright-eyed and spry, a regular Londoner who had all her life never been further from Bow Bells than Margate. Andrew knew the Vidlers well, he had attended the little boy for some childish complaint when he first came to the district. In those early days, too, he had sent his shoes there to be mended, for the Vidlers, respectable, hard-working tradespeople, kept a double shop at the head of Paddington Street named, rather magnificently,
Renovations Ltd
– one half devoted to boot repairs and the other to the cleaning and pressing of wearing apparel. Harry Vidler himself might often be seen, a sturdy, pale-faced man, collarless and in his shirt-sleeves, with a last between his knees or, though he kept a couple of helpers, using a damping-board, if work in the other department was urgent.

It was of Harry that Mrs Vidler now spoke.

‘Doctor,’ she said in her brisk way, ‘ my husband isn’t well. For weeks now he’s been poorly. I’ve been at him and at him to come, but he wouldn’t. Will you call tomorrow, doctor? I’ll keep him in bed.’

Andrew promised that he would call.

Next morning he found Vidler in bed, giving a history of internal pain and growing stoutness. His girth had increased extraordinarily in these last few months and inevitably, like most patients who have enjoyed good health all their lives, he had several ways of accounting for it. He suggested that he had been taking a drop too much ale, or that perhaps his sedentary life was to blame.

But Andrew, after his investigations, was obliged to contradict these elucidations. He was convinced that the condition was cystic and although not dangerous, it was one which demanded operative treatment. He did his best to reassure Vidler and his wife by explaining how a simple cyst such as this might develop internally and cause no end of inconvenience which would all disappear when it was removed. He had no doubt at all in his mind as to the upshot of the operation and he proposed that Vidler should go into hospital at once.

Here, however, Mrs Vidler held up her hands.

‘No, sir, I won’t have my Harry in a hospital!’ She struggled to compose her agitation. ‘ I’ve had a kind of feeling this was coming – the way he’s been overworking in the business. But now it ’
as
come, thank God we’re in a position as can deal with it. We’re not well-off people, doctor, as you know, but we ’ave got a little bit put by. And now’s the time to use it. I won’t have Harry go beggin’ for subscribers’ letters, and standin’ in queues, and goin’ into a public ward like he was a pauper.’

‘But, Mrs Vidler, I can arrange –’

‘No! You can get him in a private home, sir. There’s plenty round about here. And you can get a private doctor to operate on him. I can promise you, sir, so long as I’m here no public hospital shall ’ave Harry Vidler.’

He saw that her mind was firmly made up. And indeed Vidler himself, since this unpleasant necessity had arisen, was of the same opinion as his wife. He wanted the best treatment that could be had.

That evening Andrew rang up Ivory. It was automatic now for him to turn to Ivory the more so as, in this instance, he had to ask a favour.

‘I’d like you to do something for me, Ivory. I’ve an abdominal here, that wants doing – decent hard-working people but not rich, you understand. There’s nothing much in it for you, I’m afraid. But it would oblige me if you did it for – shall we say a third of the usual fee.’

Ivory was very gracious. Nothing would please him more than to do his friend Manson any service within his power. They discussed the case for several minutes and at the end of that discussion Andrew telephoned Mrs Vidler.

‘I’ve just been on to Mr Charles Ivory, a West End surgeon who happens to be a particular friend of mine. He’s coming to see your husband with me tomorrow, Mrs Vidler, at eleven o’clock. That all right? And he says – are you there? – he says, Mrs Vidler, that if the operation has to be undertaken he’ll do it for thirty guineas. Considering that his usual fee would be a hundred guineas – perhaps more – I think we’re not doing too badly.’

‘Yes, doctor, yes.’ Her tone was worried yet she made the effort to sound relieved. ‘It’s very kind of you, I’m sure. I think we can manage that some’ow.’

Next morning Ivory saw the case with Andrew and on the following day Harry Vidler moved into the Brunsland Nursing Home in Brunsland Square.

It was a clean, old-fashioned home not far from Chesborough Terrace, one of many in the district where the fees were moderate and the equipment scanty. Most of its patients were medical cases, hemiplegics, chronic cardiacs, bedridden old women with whom the main difficulty was the prevention of bedsores. Like every other home which Andrew had entered in London it had never been intended for its present purpose. There was no lift and the operating theatre had once been a conservatory. But Miss Buxton, the proprietress, was a qualified sister and a hardworking woman. Whatever its defects, the Brunsland was spotlessly aseptic – even to the furthest corner of its shining linoleumed floors.

The operation was fixed for Friday and, since Ivory could not come early, it was set for the unusually late hour of two o’clock.

Though Andrew was at Brunsland Square first, Ivory arrived punctually. He drove up with the anaesthetist and stood watching while his chauffeur carried in his large bag of instruments – so that nothing might interfere with his subsequent delicacy of touch. And, though he plainly thought little of the home, his manner remained as suave as ever. Within the space of ten minutes he had reassured Mrs Vidler, who waited in the front room, made the conquest of Miss Buxton and her nurses, then, gowned and gloved in the little travesty of a theatre, he was imperturbably ready.

The patient walked in with determined coolness, slipped off his dressing-gown, which one of the nurses then whipped away, and climbed upon the narrow table. Realising that he must go through with the ordeal, Vidler had come to face it with courage. Before the anaesthetist placed the mask over his face he smiled at Andrew.