The Citadel (48 page)

‘There’s only one thing to be done,’ he brought his brows together determinedly. Despite his nervous brooding he felt strong now, freed from a haze of illusion, ready to act. ‘We’ve got to clear out of here. I’m in too deep, Chris, far too deep. I’d only be reminded at every turn of the fake stuff I’d been doing, yes and maybe get pulled back. We can easily sell the practice. And oh! Chris, I’ve got a wonderful idea.’

‘Yes, darling?’

He relaxed his nervous frown to smile at her diffidently, tenderly.

‘How long is it since you called me that? I like it. Yes, I know, I deserved it – oh, don’t let me start thinking again, Chris! – this idea, this scheme – it hit me whenever I woke up this morning. I was worrying all over again about Hamson having asked me to join up with his rotten team idea – then suddenly it struck me, why not a genuine team? It’s the sort of thing they have amongst doctors in America – Stillman always cracks it up to me, even though he isn’t a doctor himself – but we just don’t seem to have gone in for it here much. You see, Chris, even in quite a small provincial town you could have a clinic, a little team of doctors, each doing his own stuff. Now listen, darling, instead of sticking in with Hamson and Ivory and Deedman why don’t I get Denny and Hope together and form a genuine threesome? Denny does all the surgical work – and you know how good he is! – I handle the medical side, and Hope is our bacteriologist! You see the benefit of that, we’re each specialising in our own province and pooling our knowledge. Perhaps you remember all Denny’s arguments – and mine too – about our hidebound GP system – how the general practitioner is made to stagger along, carrying everything on his shoulders, an impossibility! Group medicine is the answer to that, the perfect answer. It comes between State medicine and isolated, individual effort. The only reason we haven’t had it here is because the big men like keeping everything in their own hands. But oh! Wouldn’t it be wonderful, dear, if we could form a little front-line unit, scientifically and – yes, let me say it – spiritually intact, a kind of pioneer force to try and break down prejudice, knock out the old fetishes, maybe start a complete revolution in our whole medical system.’

Her cheek pressed against the pillow, she gazed at him with shining eyes.

‘It’s like old times to hear you talk that way. I can’t tell you how I love it. Oh! it’s like beginning all over again. I am happy, darling,
happy.
’

‘I’ve got a lot to make up for,’ he reasoned sombrely. ‘I’ve been a fool. And worse.’ He pressed his brow with his hands. ‘ I can’t get poor Harry Vidler out of my head. And I won’t, either, till I do something really to make up for it.’ He groaned suddenly! ‘ I was to blame there, Chris, as much as Ivory. I can’t help feeling I’ve got off too easily. It doesn’t seem right that I should get away with it. But I’ll work like hell, Chris. And I believe Denny and Hope will come in with me. You know their ideas. Denny’s really dying to get back into the rough and tumble of a practice again. And Hope – if we give him a little lab. where he can do original stuff between making our sera – he’ll follow us anywhere.’

He jumped out of bed and began to pace up and down the room in his old impetuous style, torn between elation for the future and remorse of the past, turning things over in his head, worrying, hoping, planning.

‘I’ve so much to settle up, Chris,’ he cried, ‘and one thing I must see about. Look, dear! When I’ve written some letters – and we’ve had lunch – how about taking a little run into the country with me.’

She looked at him questioningly.

‘But if you’re busy?’

‘I’m not too busy for this. Honestly, Chris, I have a fearful weight on my mind over Mary Boland. She’s not getting on well at the Victoria and I haven’t taken nearly enough notice. Thoroughgood is most unsympathetic and he doesn’t properly understand her case, at least not to my way of thinking. God! If anything happened to Mary after me making myself responsible to Con for her I would just about go crazy. It’s an awful thing to say of one’s own hospital but she’ll
never
recover at the Victoria. She ought to be out in the country, in the fresh air, in a good sanatorium.’

‘Yes?’

‘That’s why I want us to run out to Stillman’s. Bellevue’s the finest, the most marvellous little place you could ever hope to see. If only I could persuade him to take Mary in – Oh! I’d not only be satisfied, I’d feel I’d really done something worth while.’

She said with decision:

‘We’ll leave the minute you’re ready.’

When he had dressed he went downstairs, wrote a long letter to Denny and another to Hope. He had only three serious cases on his hands and on his way to visit them he posted the letters. Then, after a light meal, he and Christine set out for Wycombe.

The journey, despite the emotional tension persisting in his mind, was a happy one. More than ever it was borne upon him that happiness was an inner state, wholly spiritual, independent – whatever the cynics might say – of worldly possessions. All these months, when he had been striving and tearing after wealth and position and succeeding in every material sense, he had imagined himself happy But he had not been happy. He had been existing in a kind of delirium, craving more after everything he got. Money, he thought bitterly, it was all for dirty money! First he had told himself he wanted to make £1,000 a year. When he reached that income he had immediately doubled it, and set that figure as his maximum. But that maximum, when achieved, found him dissatisfied. And so it had gone on. He wanted more and more. It would in the end have destroyed him.

He glanced sideways at Christine. How she must have suffered because of him! But now, if he had wished for any confirmation of the sanity of his decision, the sight of her altered, glowing face was evidence enough. It was not now a pretty face for there were marks of the wear and tear of life drawn upon it, a little dark of lines about the eyes, a faint hollowing of the cheeks which had once been firm and blooming. But it was a face which had always worn an aspect of serenity and truth. And this reanimation which kindled it was so bright and moving he felt a fresh pang of compunction strike deeply into him. He swore he would never again in all his life do anything to make her sad.

They reached Wycombe towards three o’clock, then took a side road uphill which led along the crest of the ridge past Lacey Green. The situation of Bellevue was superb, upon a little plateau which though sheltered on the north afforded an outlook over both valleys.

Stillman was cordial in his reception. He was a self-contained, undemonstrative little man, seldom given to enthusiasm, yet he showed his pleasure in Andrew’s visit by demonstrating the full beauty and efficiency of his creation.

Bellevue was intentionally small, but of its perfection there could be no question. Two wings, angled to a southwestern exposure were united by a central administrative section. Above the entrance hall and offices was a lavishly equipped treatment room, its south wall entirely of vitaglass. All the windows were of this material, the heating and ventilating system the last word in modern efficiency. As Andrew walked round he could not help contrasting this ultra-modern perfection with the antique buildings, built a hundred years before, which served as many of the London hospitals, and with those old dwelling-houses, badly converted and ill-equipped, which masqueraded as nursing-homes.

Afterwards, when he had shown them round, Stillman gave them tea. And here Andrew brought out his request with a rush.

‘I hate asking you a favour, Mr Stillman.’ Christine had to smile at the almost forgotten formula. ‘ But I wonder if you’d take in a case for me here? Early TB. Probably requires pneumothorax. You see she’s the daughter of a great friend of mine, a professional man – dentist – and she’s not getting on where she is –’

Something like amusement gathered behind Stillman’s pale blue eyes.

‘You don’t mean you’re proposing to send me a case. Doctors don’t send me cases here – though they do in America. You forget that here I’m a fake healer running a quack sanatorium, the kind that makes his patients walk barefooted in the dew – before leading them in to a grated carrot breakfast!’

Andrew did not smile.

‘I didn’t ask you to pull my leg, Mr Stillman. I’m dead serious about this girl. I’m – I’m worried about her.’

‘But I’m afraid I am full up, my friend. In spite of the antipathy of your medical fraternity I have a waiting list as long as my arm. Strange!’ Stillman did at last impassively smile. ‘People want me to cure them in spite of the doctors.’

‘Well!’ Andrew muttered – Stillman’s refusal was a great disappointment to him. ‘I was more or less banking on it. If we could have got Mary in here – oh! I’d have felt
relieved.
Why, you’ve got the finest treatment centre in England. I’m not trying to flatter you. I know! When I think of that old ward in the Victoria where she’s lying now, listening to the cockroaches scramble behind the skirting –’

Stillman leaned forward and picked up a thin cucumber sandwich from the low table before him. He had a characteristic, almost finicky way of handling things as though he had just, with the utmost care, washed his hands and went in fear of soiling them.

‘So! It’s a little ironic comedy you are arranging. No, no, I mustn’t talk that way, I see you are worried. And I will help you. Although you
are
a doctor I’ll take your case.’ Stillman’s lip twitched at the blank expression on Andrew’s face. ‘You see, I’m broad-minded. I don’t mind dealing with the profession when I’m obliged to. Why don’t you smile? – that’s a joke. Never mind. Even if you’ve no sense of humour you’re a darn sight more enlightened than most of the brethren. Let me see. I have no room vacant till next week. Wednesday, I think. Bring your case to me a week on Wednesday and I promise you I’ll do the best for her I can!’

Andrew’s face reddened with gratitude.

‘I – I can’t thank you enough – I –’

‘Then don’t. And don’t be so polite. I prefer you when you look like throwing things about. Mrs Manson, does he ever throw the china at you? I have a great friend in America, he owns sixteen newspapers, and every time he gets in a temper he breaks a five cent plate. Well, one day, it so happened –’

He went on to tell them a long – and to Manson – quite pointless story. But, driving home in the cool of the evening Andrew meditated to Christine:

‘That’s one thing settled anyway, Chris – a big load off my mind. I’m positive it’s the right place for Mary. He’s a great chap is Stillman. I like him a lot. He’s nothing to look at, but underneath he’s just pressed steel. I wonder if ever we could have a clinic on these lines – miniature replica – Hope and Denny and me. That’s a wild dream, eh? But you never know. And I’ve been thinking, if Denny and Hope do come in with me and we pitch out in the provinces – we might be near enough one of the coalfields for me to pick up my inhalation work again. What d’you think, Chris?’

By way of answer she leaned sideways and, greatly to the common danger on the public highway, she soundly kissed him.

Next morning he rose early, after a good night’s rest. He felt tense, keyed for anything. Going straight to the telephone, he put the practice in the hands of Fulger & Turner, medical transfer agents, of Adam Street. Mr Gerald Turner, present head of that old established firm, answered personally and in response to Andrew’s request he came out promptly to Chesborough Terrace. After a scrutiny of the books lasting all that forenoon he assured him that he would have not the slightest difficulty in effecting a quick sale.

‘Of course, we shall have to state a reason, doctor, in our advertisements,’ said Mr Turner gently tapping his teeth with his case pencil. ‘Any purchaser is bound to ask himself – why should any doctor give up a gold-mine like this? – and excuse me for saying so, doctor, it
is
a gold-mine. I’ve never seen such spot cash receipts for many a day. Shall we say on account of ill-health?’

‘No,’ said Andrew brusquely. ‘Tell him the truth. Say –’ he checked himself, ‘oh, say for personal reasons.’

‘Very well, doctor,’ and Mr Gerald Turner wrote, against his draft advertisement: ‘Relinquished from motives purely personal and unconnected with the practice.’

Andrew concluded:

‘And remember, I don’t want a fortune for this thing – only a good price. There’s a lot of tame cats who mightn’t follow the new man around.’

At lunch time Christine produced two telegrams which had come for him. He had asked both Denny and Hope to wire him in reply to the letters he had written the day before.

The first, from Denny, said simply:
Impressed. Expect me tomorrow evening.

The second declared with typical flippancy:

Must I spend all my life with lunatics. Feature of English provincial towns pubs stocks cathedrals and pig markets. Did you say laboratory. Signed
INDIGNANT RATEPAYER.

After lunch Andrew ran down to the Victoria. It was not Doctor Thoroughgood’s visiting hour but that suited his purpose admirably. He wanted no fuss or unpleasantness, least of all did he wish to upset his senior who, for all his obstinacy and prim concern with the barber-surgeons of the past, had always treated him well.

Seated beside Mary’s bed he explained privately to her what he wished to do.

‘It was my fault to begin with,’ he patted her hand reassuringly. ‘I ought to have foreseen this wasn’t quite the place for you. You’ll find a difference when you get to Bellevue – a big difference, Mary. But they’ve been very kind to you here, there’s no need to hurt anybody’s feelings. You must just say you want to go out next Wednesday, discharge yourself – if you don’t like to do it yourself I’ll get Con to write and say he wants you out. They’ve so many people waiting for beds it’ll be easy. Then on Wednesday I’ll take you out myself by car to Bellevue. I’ll have a nurse with me and everything. Nothing could be simpler – or better for you.’

He returned home with a sense of something further accomplished, feeling that he was beginning to clear up the mess into which his life had fallen. That evening in his surgery he set himself sternly to weed out the chronics, ruthlessly to sacrifice his charm school. A dozen times in the course of an hour he declared firmly: