The Good Doctor (7 page)

— C
hapter Seven
—

1940: Springfield, Massachusetts

***

Beyond the doctor's shoulder, through
the window, a thin elderly woman wrestles with a gardening stick. She tries to poke one end into the earth close to the stem of a rose bush.

Catching the direction of Judy's gaze, the doctor smiles. Unable to turn his head far enough, he raises himself from his chair, turns a half-circle, and stares out of the window. The stick drops to the ground. The bush shivers. Red petals fall and dance along the lawn. The woman starts again, picks up the stick once more, and prods it into the earth.

“Your housekeeper?” Judy asks.

The doctor doesn't answer straightaway, and some dim instinct tingles around Judy's shoulders; the question, she thinks, might be more pertinent than it seems.

“My wife,” he says.

A question burns on her lips. She doesn't know how to phrase it.

He turns to her and nods. “We've talked about her already.”

“No,” she whispers.

“Yes.”

“Nurse Mills?”

“These days we are not so formal. I call her Florence.”

Judy feels herself blush and coughs down her incredulity.

He smiles at her again. “But you knew I wasn't alone in Portland,” he says. “You knew I had a partner.”

“We knew the imposter had a woman accomplice, that's all. A secretary. Grenfell mentioned to a friend that he thought the fake doctor might be you. That was all we had to go on.”

“Fake doctor?” His eyes show surprise, but his face is sad.

“Fake Grenfell, sorry.”

He shrugs. “You didn't know for sure when you came here?”

“No.”

He turns back to the frail figure and the quivering bush. “You're surprised she fell for me.”

“Your own account made it all seem so unlikely.”

“Miracles are unlikely.” Petals go scattering with a fresh gust of wind. “You have, no doubt, noticed, Miss Agar, that at twenty years of age I had very little idea of women, how to read their moods, how to gauge their likes and dislikes.”

“Yet you seemed so confident in some ways. I thought you merely ignored their likes and dislikes and soldiered on regardless.”

“I was unmothered and unsistered,” he says, still gazing through the glass. “You know, literature is a terrible thing.” He turns now, the odd playfulness returning. “You should be careful with your words, Miss Agar. They can do real damage. I searched for mother, sister, and future wife in the books and plays that I read at school. Do you know how many stories and poems teach a young man to feel encouragement where they should feel defeat? Love, I noticed, never revealed itself until the very last chapter and often disguised itself as distaste, hatred, contempt, anything but its true self until those final pages. So it was with me and Nurse Mills. I had jumped from the cliff and dared the air to catch me. I had been led to believe in the nobility of such rashness. I gambled everything on her.”

They both stare through the glass at the old woman. She tethers her rose bush at last.

“She knows what we're talking about?”

“Of course.”

The stalk and twigs tremble with each revolution of twine. As she ties a knot, her face a study in concentration, the old lady no longer seems frail in the least.

“It's her story now,” he murmurs.

***

Judy raises the dainty, rose petal china cup to her lips. Even with its straight-backed chairs, oak table, and the dresser's immaculate display of porcelain, the kitchen is somehow more comfortable than the doctor's sitting room, his sumptuous chairs and spidery plants. This is a place of industry, and Judy can feel its wholesome energy in the gleaming taps and polished wood.

Judy turns back the pages of the woman before her. Beneath the grey hair, thin lips, and bony shoulders, there once lurked a rather pale, delicately featured red-haired woman, a “pre-Raphaelite beauty,” she might have been called then, with an earnest, morally centred personality to match.

“The doctor told me about the note he forged, the one in which he claimed to be Grenfell.”

“Yes.” There is a studied lack of emotion in her tone as she raises the pot and fills her own cup.

“You went to meet . . . Grenfell outside Dr. Johnson's house, but
he
met you instead.”

Her gaze flicks up to Judy's as she lays down the pot.

“My future husband, yes.” A warning note, perhaps.

“He said something to you . . . said several things. . . . Do you remember?”

Judy aches to pick up the notepad and pencil next to her cup, but a politeness she has never before felt in an interview prevents her. She first needs to establish trust.

“Yes,” Florence replies. She picks up her cup slowly, takes a sip, and keeps it raised, warming her lips with the steam.

Judy lays her hand upon her notepad.

Florence fans one hand toward the pad in a “go ahead” gesture and takes another sip.

Judy picks up the pad, opens it, and points her pencil toward the paper.

“'Mercy,' he said. I remember that.”

“He asked you for mercy?”

“As you must already know.”

“And that was enough?”

Florence lays down her cup. “Enough?”

“To influence you?”

“He told me I would never find a man more in need than him.”

“So?” Judy scribbles hard.

“So,” Florence replies as though this were a conclusion.

“There must be more,” Judy says. “He says you seemed distressed by all this.”

“Of course, he'd made a direct challenge to my vocation. I was duty-bound to at least give it some thought.”

“I see.” Judy gives a short cough, covering her mouth. “But it can't be enough to change a person's mind, can it?”

“I
believed
in helping humanity, Miss Agar. Do you understand belief? It doesn't change direction to oblige our every desire. It runs straight like an arrow. Our wishes must change to accommodate belief, not the other way around.”

Judy's face burns. Sitting before a woman who would sacrifice everything for one man's need, she feels as soiled as an old dishrag.

“But you were being courted by a man who would go on to build hospitals, taking medical knowledge into the darkness of poverty and want. And you ended up with a man—”

“My husband,” Florence interrupts. This time the warning is clearer.

“What about Grenfell?” Judy asks.

“Dr. Grenfell is of no consequence.”

The tense change is subtle enough, but the reporter notices it. Every event, save for Grenfell's irrelevance, has been in the past. She feels like pointing out that the subject of an imposture could hardly be of “no consequence,” least of all to the party who has perpetrated the fraud.

She tries to lock eyes with the old woman but finds her gaze slipping to her notepad. She doesn't fight it; she needs to get back to the narrative, anyway. “I know Grenfell and your husband had a fight very late outside Moody's tent. This was later the same evening after he met you at Dr. Johnson's house and asked for mercy. Grenfell must have known he had been followed. He also knew about the forged note.” She feels her face burn. It sounded like an accusation. “So you must have confided in Grenfell.”

“Yes,” Florence says calmly.

Judy is aware that during the short exchange the energy between them has altered radically. The pristine kitchen, the gently ticking wall clock, the china cups, the displays of shining crockery, the polished taps, and gleaming brass drawer handles, all these things seemed to amount to a cozy and reliable domesticity when Judy first sat down opposite the old lady. Now she sees the kitchen, with its displays of shining crockery, its polished taps, and gleaming brass drawer handles the way a would-be invader might view a wall of shield and armour.

“That must have felt awkward,” Judy says, tight-lipped and scribbling.

“Awkward, yes,” Florence replies.

“Would you tell me about it?”

“Of course,” she answers lightly.

— C
hapter Eight
—

1883: London

***

The young doctor's pleas sting
Florence's ears as she hurries through the street. It was an ambush, primitive and unfair, and she would like to dismiss him with fly-swatting ease. But she has not been brought up to ignore suffering or injustice. In the young doctor's words she can hear her father's voice.

Reverend Mills's favourite cautionary tale is that of Cain and Abel, and, more specifically, Cain's refusal to acknowledge that he is responsible for the fate of his brother. The reverend had good reason for his choice of lesson. Florence has sisters and brothers aplenty—four of each. Her mother died young. Under their father's watchful, guiding eye the sons and daughters quickly learned to be dependable.

One day Florence will marvel that Bible stories ever held such power, such influence, over her conscience. She will see how times have changed. People will be more capricious, less rooted, not because their forebears were morally superior, but because for her generation there were fewer distractions: no moving pictures to gaze upon, no glamorous lives that were not their own; no radio to draw a multitude of voices into the confines of a family home. In the days of Willy Grenfell and the young doctor, she will think, the lessons of childhood—Bible stories, fairy tales, sermons—were woven indelibly into dreams, nightmares, and day-to-day life simply because there was so little to oppose them.

When she draws close to her lodgings which are hidden in a grey brick mews, she sees Willy. His heels scrape restlessly on concrete, his head tilts to where he imagines her window might be. Although he has spent some time with her nephew, Malcolm, and her sister, Isabelle, he has never met the two women with whom she lodges. The sight of him; his manful stance, compromised subtly by some instinct he might be trespassing upon propriety; then, as he sees her, his swift turn and embarrassed grin, are all as welcome to Florence as a soft, feather nest would be to a bird injured on its first exploratory flight.

But confusion stirs within the gratitude. While the young doctor's advances are a burden from which she would like to be free, an undeniable intimacy lurked in his pleas. He opened himself up to her. It would be quite wrong for her to turn the exposed carcass of his soul to the eyes of another. So a confidence lies between them. And this confidence must shut Willy out.

She smiles and draws near to Willy.

“Something's wrong,” he says, his tone midway between observation and question. She slips her arm through his.

“Let's walk for a while.”

The sky is turning indigo, but a few respectable people mill around them, even a couple of white-frocked children with skipping ropes. Within the environs of the mews, she reasons, they are still half an hour from censure.

“You should tell me, you know,” he says as their footsteps echo around the low brick canyons of the mews walls. “I am a doctor, or soon will be.”

She laughs, but it's a strained laugh. With the gathering darkness, the enforced secrecy seems sinister. In the household of Florence's father, secrecy was tantamount to lying. Today she crossed a border against her will. Now she needs to return. “If I tell you,” she begins, and then realizes she's already committed herself, “it is to unburden myself alone. I require no action from you at all. Promise me.”

“You make it sound rather serious.” His voice is sober and thoughtful.

“It is, Willy, but not for me.”

“Tell me.”

Later she will tell herself what she should have noticed: no promise has been exchanged. At the time, however, something in his voice seems to imply he's ready to receive a confidence. She reaches into her purse, picks out the letter, and hands it to him. They slow to a standstill as he reads and reads again. Needing the distraction of the walk, she pulls him a step or two forward. He comes willingly enough. “It's not your note, Willy. He wrote it pretending to be you.”

“Who?”

She tells him.

“You met?” his face is bewildered, and almost amused.

“Just now at Dr. Johnson's house,” she says. Disclosing the next part of the story worries her most, but clearly it requires explanation. “He followed us, all last night, apparently.”

Any trace of humour drains from Willy's face. “Scoundrel!” he says and snaps the paper down to his side. He folds it in both hands once, twice, three times, sliding his thumb and forefinger along each new edge as though checking the blade of a knife.

“He thinks he's in love or some such nonsense,” she says, hoping this might soften him a little. He scans the brick and stone around them as if searching out an enemy. Finally, he slides the offending missive into the outside pocket of his jacket.

“Willy!”

He halts and looks down at her.

“Give it back.”

He frowns. “Why?”

“It isn't yours.”

He shakes his head as though such a notion is beyond comprehending.

“I have to deal with this,” he says.

“Give it back.” Peeling her body from him, she holds out her hand.

“What would you do with it?”

His anger turns once more to amusement, an expression a father might turn upon a fanciful child.

“Destroy it,” she decides.

He folds his arms over his chest and taps a foot against the paving. “That's not how it works, Florence. It's evidence.”

“Evidence?”

“We have to prove our young friend is unfit to practise. Dr. Bleaker and I couldn't possibly have such a fellow treating patients, mingling with staff, for your sake and everyone else's, too.”

“That's my problem, Willy. You promised me you would take no action.”

“How could I promise such a thing? There are oaths and ethics in medicine. The good of the patients and the good of the medical fraternity come before everything.”

Willy stands close enough for her to make a grab. Later, she will wonder how he would have reacted had she done so; a gentleman could hardly fight off a woman, but one never thinks of this at the time. History, she will decide, must be littered with battles lost that might have been won had her sex only had the courage to exploit the few advantages it possessed. And this night people are around them, too, an old lady—a newly retired sister—returning to her lodgings, a charwoman with a tin bucket and brush working away at a doorstep of a ground-floor entrance. But she merely stands holding out her hand, knowing moment by moment the power is slipping from her.

“It's not yours to use,” she says. “Give it back to me.” But her arm is beginning to ache, her stare faltering.

“It can't be done, Florence. I'm sorry.”

Pompous little fool
. The phrase flits through her thoughts like a passing shadow. It disturbs her, the unkindness, so unlike anything she has thought about him before, so similar to the criticisms levelled at Willy by the young doctor on the day he turned up under the dome of St. Paul's Cathedral. Has she been absorbing, through some mysterious process, some portions of the young doctor's philosophy?

She doesn't want to think of Willy as pompous. Willy and she seemed to fit together with the precision and ease of two adjacent pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. Both their fathers were ministers. They approached medicine with the same energy, the same goals. And there was so much else besides. She wants back to that feeling. With brothers of her own, she understands young men, and is happy to circle around his vanity, searching the entry point. “I know you're trying to protect me, Willy, and I appreciate it.” She lets her hand fall at last, and forces helplessness into her tone. “I want your help, otherwise I wouldn't have told you about it. But I'd like to think the note over before I make any decisions.”

“Florence,” he says earnestly, drawing closer and taking her hand, “you just trust me. Please.” His ardour makes things more difficult still; how does one challenge a man while he is exercising his right of stewardship? Her struggle must be obvious in the restless movements of her hand in his; he holds even tighter and his gaze scatters lovingly over her face. “Like the sweet, decent person you are, you fear the conflict that may arise when I put the letter to the use as I must. I understand. But this is about duty to my chosen profession.”

She pulls her hand free at last, half regretting the action as she does so.

“What about duty to me?” she says.

His face turns pink. “Florence!”

“I showed you something and asked for your trust.”

“Don't be childish,” he snorts. “I'm doing this for you.”

“Without my permission or consent.”

The charwoman looks up as she slops the last of her water over the step. The retired sister gives them a curious glance before disappearing through the opposite doorway.

“Keep your voice down,” Willy hisses. Anger and boyish confusion does battle in his face now. “If this rogue means as little to you as you claim,” he whispers, “you will let me deal with the matter.”

It's as if an invisible hand has just swiped her across the face. Small, burning tears spring into her eyes and her breath deserts. She turns—hands cupped over her mouth—and runs through the cool air around the corner, passes the skipping children, and scoops into her own lodging's entrance. He hasn't followed, but she has heard a feeble and rather bewildered “no” moments after she took flight.

***

Florence is equipped neither by temperament nor experience to hide her feelings. Jennifer Armstrong, the nurse with whom she lodges, and Jennifer's aunt, Miss Armstrong, a Chelsea Infirmary matron, see Florence's distress easily enough. That evening they absorb her story with the gentle but cavalier empathy expected from veterans of the battlefield. It's just another job for suture and bandage, another young nurse disillusioned by the fickleness of a dashing young doctor.

“My dear,” Miss Armstrong says over hot chocolate, “they don't look to nurses for romance and marriage. We know too much.” She exchanges a glance with her niece and they both smile sadly in the flickering firelight. Jennifer is a year or two older than Florence. There was talk of a doctor in her past, but he had since married an heiress and set up practice in Harley Street. “They want to be the key-holders to the great mysteries of life and death, and they want to hold the knowledge alone. How else are their wives to look up to them with the godlike devotion for which they yearn?”

“But the distrust, Miss Armstrong, this is what hurts, his suggestion that I wanted someone else to vie for my affections.”

Aunt and niece exchange another smile, indulgent but rueful, like the smiles of parents who see the pristine innocence of their own child, and feel the sudden weight of a thousand harsh disappointments to come.

“The vocation we have chosen,” Miss Armstrong whispers as though passing on a secret, “is one that magnifies every experience. It isn't life or death that concerns us; it's ulcers, infections, and a comfortable bed. We soothe and relieve one abrasion at a time. Within each separate gasp, each fever peak, there lays one soul enlarged. This is our world.” She takes a sip of cocoa, feels the steam against her face, and smiles. “The doctor sees a carpet of suffering. He views it from high above and through the pages of his textbook. Your young man's suspicions are not even the worst of it, my dear. They spring from the desire to have and control everything that comes within his circle. Every ruffle and opposition is intolerable. Forget his suspicions. It's the power of his
wants
that should give you pause. It's his wants that will turn those who love him to dust swirling around his feet. You have had a lucky escape.”

Despite the softness of Miss Armstrong's voice, and the concern in her face, there dwells in her words the harshest iron.