The Citadel (50 page)

Strangely, his mood had altered as he came along Paddington Street. It always affected him to pass the Vidlers’ shop. Out of the corner of his eye he saw it –
Renovations Ltd.
One of the assistants was pulling down the shutters. The simple action was so symbolic it sent a shiver through him. Subdued, he reached Chesborough Terrace and ran the car into his garage. He went into his house with a curious sadness pressing upon him.

Christine met him joyfully in the hall. Whatever his mood might be, hers was vivid with success. Her eyes were shining with her news.

‘Sold!’ she declared gaily. ‘Knocked down, lock, stock, and basement. They waited and waited for you, darling – they’ve only just gone. Doctor and Mrs Lowry, I mean. He got so agitated,’ she laughed, ‘ because you weren’t here for the surgery that he set to and did it himself. Then I gave them supper. Then we made more conversation. I could almost see Mrs Lowry deciding that you’d had a motor smash. Then
I
began to worry! But now you are here, dear! And it’s all
right.
You’ve to meet him at Mr Turner’s office tomorrow at eleven to sign the contract. And – oh! yes – he’s given Mr Turner a deposit.’

He followed her into the front room, where the supper had been cleared from the table. He was pleased, naturally, that the practice should be sold, yet he could not, at present, summon any great show of elation.

‘It is good, isn’t it,’ Christine went on, ‘that it should all be settled up so quickly. I don’t think he expects a very long introduction. Oh! I’ve been thinking so much before you came in. If only we could have a little holiday at Val André again, before we start work – it was lovely there, wasn’t it, darling – and we had such a wonderful time –’ She broke off, gazing at him. ‘Why, what’s the matter, dear?’

‘Oh, nothing,’ he smiled, sitting down. ‘I’m a little tired, I think. Probably because I missed my dinner –’

‘What!’ she exclaimed, aghast. ‘ I made certain you’d had it at Bellevue, before you left.’ Her glance swept round. ‘And I’ve cleared everything away, and let Mrs Bennett out to the pictures.’

‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘But it
does.
No wonder you didn’t jump when I told you about the practice. Now you just sit there one minute and I’ll bring up a tray. Is there anything you’d especially like? I could heat up some soup – or make you some scrambled egg – or
what?
’

He considered.

‘The egg, I think, Chris. Oh! but don’t bother. Well, if you like, then – and perhaps a bit of cheese afterwards.’

She was back in no time with a tray on which stood a plate of scrambled eggs, a glass of celery heart, bread, biscuits, butter and the cheese-dish. She placed the tray upon the table. As he pulled in his chair she brought out a bottle of ale from the sideboard cupboard.

While he ate she watched him solicitously. She smiled.

‘You know, dear, I’ve often thought – if we’d lived in Cefan Row, say a kitchen and one bedroom, we’d have fitted in perfectly. High life doesn’t agree with us. Now I’m going to be a working-man’s wife again I’m awfully happy.’

He went on with his scrambled egg. The food was certainly making him feel better.

‘You know, darling,’ she continued, placing her hands beneath her chin in her characteristic way, ‘ I’ve thought such a lot these last few days. Before that my mind was stiff, somehow, all closed up. But since we’re together – oh, since we’re ourselves again everything has seemed so clear. It’s only when you’ve got to fight for things that they really become worth while. When they just drop into your lap there’s no satisfaction in them. Don’t you remember those days at Aberalaw – they’ve been living, simply living in my mind all day – when we had to go through all those rough times together. Well! now I feel that the same thing is starting for us all over again. It’s our kind of life, darling. It’s
us!
And oh, I’m so happy about it.’

He glanced towards her.

‘You’re really happy, Chris?’

She kissed him lightly.

‘Never happier in my life than I am at this moment.’

There was a pause. He buttered a biscuit and lifted the lid of the dish to help himself to cheese. But there was anti-climax in the action which revealed, not his favourite Liptauer but no more than a barren end of cheddar, which Mrs Bennett used for cooking. The instant she saw it Christine gave a self-reproachful cry.

‘And I meant to call at Frau Schmidt’s to-day!’

‘Oh! it’s all right, Chris.’

‘But it isn’t all right.’ She whipped the dish away before he could help himself. ‘Here am I mooning like a sentimental schoolgirl, giving you no dinner at all – when you come in tired – starving you. Fine sort of working-man’s wife I’d be!’ She jumped up, her eye upon the clock. ‘I’ve just time to rush across for it now before she closes.’

‘Don’t bother, Chris –’

‘
Please,
darling.’ She silenced him gaily. ‘I
want
to do it. I want to – because you love Frau Schmidt’s cheese and I – I love you.’

She was out of the room before he could protest again. He heard her quick step in the hall, the light closing of the outer door. His eyes still were faintly smiling – it was so like her to do this. He buttered another biscuit waiting for the arrival of the famous Liptauer, waiting for her return.

The house was very still: Florrie sleeping downstairs, he reflected, and Mrs Bennett at the cinema. He was glad Mrs Bennett was coming with them on their new venture. Stillman had been great this afternoon. Mary would be all right now, right as rain. Marvellous how the rain had cleared off this afternoon – beautiful it had been coming home through the country, so fresh and quiet. Thank God! Christine would soon have her garden again. He and Denny and Hope might get themselves lynched by the five doctors in Muddletown. But Chris would always have her garden.

He began to eat one of the buttered biscuits. He’d lose his appetite if she didn’t hurry up. She must be talking to Frau Schmidt. Good old Frau; sending him his first cases. If he’d only gone on decently instead of – oh, well, that was finished with now, thank God! They were together again, Christine and he, happier than ever they had been. Wonderful to hear her say that a minute ago. He lit a cigarette.

Suddenly the door-bell rang violently. He glanced up, laid down his cigarette, went into the hall. But not before the bell had been wrenched again. He opened the front door.

Immediately he was conscious of the commotion outside, a crowd of people on the pavement, faces and heads interwoven with the darkness. But before he could resolve the mingling pattern, the policeman who had rung the bell loomed up before him. It was Struthers, his old Fife friend, the pointsman. What seemed strange about Struthers was the staring whiteness of his eyes.

‘Doctor,’ he breathed with difficulty like a man who has been running. ‘Your wife’s got hurted. She ran, oh! God Almighty! She ran right out of the shop in front of the bus.’

A great hand of ice enclosed him. Before he could speak the commotion was upon him. Suddenly, dreadfully, the hall was filled with people. Frau Schmidt weeping, a bus conductor, another policeman, strangers, all pressing in, forcing him back, into the consulting-room. And then, through the crowd, carried by two men, the figure of his Christine. Her head drooped backwards upon the thin white arch of her neck. Still entwined by its string in the fingers of her left hand was the little parcel from Frau Schmidt. They laid her upon the high couch of his consulting-room. She was quite dead.

He broke down completely and for days was out of his mind. Moments of lucidity there were when he became aware of Mrs Bennett, of Denny, and, once or twice, of Hope. But for the most part he went through life, performed the actions demanded of him in sheer automatism, his whole being concentrated deep within himself in one long nightmare of despair. His frayed out nervous system intensified the agony of his loss, by creating morbid fancies and terrors of remorse from which he awoke, sweating, crying out in anguish.

Dimly he was conscious of the inquest, the drab informality of the coroner’s court, of the evidence given so minutely, so unnecessarily by the witnesses. He stared fixedly at the squat figure of Frau Schmidt upon whose plump cheeks the tears kept rolling, rolling down.

‘She was laughing, laughing all the time she came into my shop. Hurry, please – she kept on telling me – I don’t want to keep my husband waiting –’

When he heard the coroner expressing sympathy with Doctor Manson in his sad bereavement he knew that it was over. He stood up mechanically, found himself walking upon grey pavements with Denny.

How the arrangements for the funeral were made he did not know, they all came mysteriously to pass without his knowledge. As he drove to Kensal Green his thoughts kept darting hither and thither, backwards through the years. In the dingy confines of the cemetery he remembered the wide and wind-swept uplands behind Vale View where the mountain ponies raced and reared their tangled manes. She had loved to walk there, to feel the breeze upon her cheeks. And now she was being laid in this grimy city graveyard.

That night in the stark torture of his neurosis he tried to drink himself insensible. But the whisky only seemed to goad him to fresh anger against himself. He paced up and down the room, late into the night, muttering aloud, drunkenly apostrophising himself.

‘You thought you could get away with it. You thought you
were
getting away with it. But my God! you weren’t. Crime and punishment, crime and punishment! You’re to blame for what happened to her. You’ve
got
to suffer.’ He walked the length of the street, hatless, swaying, to stare wild-eyed at the blank shuttered windows of the Vidler shop. He came back muttering, through bitter maudlin tears, ‘God is not mocked! Chris said that once – God is not mocked, my friend.’

He staggered upstairs, hesitated, went into her room, silent, cold, deserted. There on the dressing-table lay her bag. He picked it up, pressed it against his cheek, then fumblingly opened it. Some coppers and loose silver lay inside, a small handkerchief, a bill for groceries. And then, in the middle pocket he came upon some papers – a faded snapshot of himself taken at Drineffy and – yes, he recognised them with a throbbing pang – those little notes he had received at Christmas from his patients at Aberalaw:
With grateful thanks
– she had treasured them all those years. A heavy sob broke from his heart. He fell on his knees by the bed in a passion of weeping.

Denny made no effort to stop him drinking. It seemed to him that Denny was about the house almost every day. It was not because of the practice, for Doctor Lowry was doing that now. Lowry was living out somewhere but coming in to consult and pick up the calls. He knew nothing, nothing whatever of what was going on, he did not wish to know. He kept out of Lowry’s way. His nerves had gone to pieces. The sound of the door-bell made his heart palpitate madly. A sudden step made the sweat break out on the palms of his hands. He sat upstairs in his room with a rolled-up handkerchief between his fingers, wiping his sweating palms from time to time, staring at the fire, knowing that when night came he must face the spectre of insomnia.

This was his condition when Denny walked in one morning and said:

‘I’m free at last, thank God. Now we can go away.’

There was no question of refusal, his power of resistance was completely gone. He did not even ask where they were going. In silent apathy he watched Denny pack a suitcase for him. Within an hour they were on their way to Paddington Station.

They travelled all afternoon through the south-west counties, changed at Newport and struck up through Monmouthshire. At Abergavenny they left the train and here, outside the station, Denny hired a car. As they drove out of the town across the River Usk and through the rich autumnal tinted countryside he said:

‘This is a small place I once used to come to – fishing. Llantony Abbey. I think it ought to suit.’

They reached their destination, through a network of hazel fringed lanes, at six o’clock. Round a square of close green turf lay the ruins of the Abbey, smooth grey stones, a few arches of the cloisters still upstanding. And adjoining was the guest-house, built entirely from the fallen stones. Near at hand a small stream flowed with a constant soothing ripple. Wood smoke rose, straight and blue, into the quiet evening air.

Next morning Denny dragged Andrew out to walk. It was a crisp dry day but Andrew, sick from a sleepless night, his flabby muscles failing on the first hill, made to turn back when they had gone only a short way. Denny, however, was firm. He walked Andrew eight miles that first day and on the next he made it ten. By the end of the week they were walking twenty miles a day and Andrew, crawling up to his room at night, fell immediately into insensibility upon his bed.

There was no one to worry them at the Abbey. Only a few fishermen remained, for it was now close to the end of the trout season. They ate in the stone-flagged refectory at a long oak table before an open log fire. The food was plain and good.

During their walks they did not speak. Often they walked the whole day long with no more than a few words passing between them. At the beginning Andrew was quite unconscious of the countryside through which they tramped, but as the days passed the beauty of its woods and rivers, of its sweeping bracken-covered hills penetrated gradually, imperceptibly, through his numbed senses.

The progress of his recovery was not sensationally swift, yet by the end of the first month he was able to stand the fatigue of their long marches, eat and sleep normally, bathe in cold water every morning and face the future without cowering. He saw that no better place could have been chosen for his recovery than this isolated spot, no better routine than this spartan, this monastic existence. When the first frost bit hard into the ground he felt the joy of it instinctively in his blood.

He began unexpectedly to talk. The topics of their discussion were inconsequential at the outset. His mind, like an athlete performing simple exercises before approaching greater feats, was guarded in its approach to life. But imperceptibly he learned from Denny the progress of events.