The Good Doctor (9 page)

— C
hapter Eleven
—

1940: Springfield, Massachusetts

***

The clock ticks louder.
A glance shows Judy it's just past midday.

“So,” she says, “it was pity.”

An expression of amused irony skips across Florence's face. Judy knows what it means. It was Judy—the vulgar hack reducing every experience to an easily digestible platitude—who should be pitied. The old woman doesn't even respect her enough to be offended.

“Do you ever plan to marry, Miss Agar?” she asks.

“I haven't been asked recently, why?” The ticking becomes harsher.

“When you do, you might do well to consider one thing.”

Judy holds her pencil suspended over the pad.

“It isn't admiration, physical appearance, or background that determines the degree of compatibility.”

“Yes?”

“It's what's inside you, the substance of your thoughts. It's beyond contrivance and runs far deeper than desire. Willy was dashing, he was upright. He wanted to deliver help, advice, and medicine to the deserving. I, too, believed in using the energy I had to cure the sick.”

“But?”

“I wasn't
like
Willy. I didn't want to gather the reins of moral authority in my own hands. In truth, I distrusted anyone who did.”

Judy frowns, remembering the conversation outside St. Paul's Cathedral.

“I
wanted
to be like Willy, yes,” she says with a frown. “At least I thought I did. But you can't fake who you are, and in the end you don't really want to. That day in the clinic, and perhaps before, I recognized myself not in Willy but in the other young doctor who came in so frequently dishevelled and wild-eyed.”

“Did you want to try and reform him?”

“No!” Her eyes flash. “No, Miss Agar, I didn't. I wanted to reform the world
for
him.”

“By marrying him, then helping him imitate Dr. Grenfell?”

Florence sighs and leans back as far as the kitchen chair will allow. “I wonder, Miss Agar, what quality does a woman or man need be a good reporter?”

Journalist
, the correction almost comes to Judy's lips, but she thinks better of it.

“Would it be curiosity?”

“I would say so.”

“I ask, Miss Agar, merely because you appear to have none.”

Judy meets Florence's steady gaze, expecting to see an anger to match her words. But there is only mild puzzlement.

“One question screams above all others. Yet you have asked it neither of my husband, nor of me.”

Judy shifts in her seat like an errant schoolchild. Several possible answers juggle inside her mind, but resentment takes hold of her before she can choose one. It's the privilege of age only that allows the doctor's wife to keep her squirming; there's no other indication of greater penetration or wisdom. “I'm merely trying to find the reason your husband set about posing as Sir Wilfred Grenfell.” For the first time her tone betrays her impatience, but the old lady merely smiles.

“Are you, Miss Agar?” she replies. “I wouldn't have known it. Every one of your questions is leading. And you haven't once used that simple but extremely useful word, ‘why.'”

Her certainty infuriates Judy, but she looks down and scribbles the question. “All right, then,” she says with a tight smile, “I'd like to know why.”

— C
hapter Twelve
—

Every living person who has
experienced the sharing of romantic love has dwelt in the blessed and glowing state in which for a time—and if they are lucky, for life—they feel they are a source of light and the centre of the universe. This is how it is in those first years during which Florence really gets to know her future husband. She comes to understand the relentless struggle of a wheel misaligned on the track of life. And she comes to appreciate the valour. Nothing is insignificant to a man like Florence's fiancé. No slight can leave his soul undamaged. Every risk is life or death. And happiness, when it comes, is a tidal wave of joy.

They marry as soon as the young doctor graduates and settle away from London. Without friends or influence, his practice is small. With all that has been said about his habitual lateness in training, his weakness for drink, he is rather a good doctor, sympathetic, alert, and thorough. He gathers new patients, and for a while it seems as though this will be enough to sustain their happiness. But there is always the taint of dissatisfaction. Something always turns up to remind him he is a star without an orbit. Every social event he attends by virtue of his profession carries some sense of peril. Conversation—about brothers, aunts, sisters, and cousins—seeks to place a man somewhere in the fabric of English life. England is about belonging. If a handshake seems too reluctant, if eyes leave him before he has finished speaking, he departs the function early and in a sullen mood that does not easily lift.

Florence doesn't realize its importance at first. It seems no more than a series of gnat bites, sore and lingering, this sense of being outside of the circle. It's something to get used to, nothing more. But it gets worse. Restless and still young, without children to distract them, they begin to roam. America, or perhaps their own imagined version of it, seems to open its arms to them. They do not follow Grenfell. To Florence he is a warning of false virtue, the man whose solicitude turned to anger when his will was thwarted. They hardly talk about him. They merely leave the gloom of England for the expanse of a new continent.

They move to a small town in Maine where the local doctor, a man named Abbott, is due to retire. Florence's husband has few patients, so very little income, but they brace themselves for the influx that will surely come. When old Dr. Abbott sees that competition has arrived, however, he changes his mind and remains in practice. He cites “duty to ensure proper treatment for his patients” as the reason. The implied slight to Florence's husband sends his mood into a deep trough. He is seen drunk in the town more than once.

Dr. Abbott brings a young nephew, newly graduated, to work in his practice. At least among the well-to-do and middle class, Florence's husband cannot compete with the sterling recommendation of a young practitioner with the same blood and the same name as his long familiar uncle. It seems that America is about belonging, too.

One night in the fall, weeks after they put up the “for sale” sign and began packing in anticipation of a quick departure once the deal is made, someone knocks hard at the rear of their house. Florence dries her hands quickly on a tea towel and opens the door. A farm labourer she knows by sight—a young man with startling blue eyes and broad shoulders—holds his pregnant wife high in his arms. The sky is clear, so she knows right away the wetness of her hair is due to perspiration, fever, or pain. She calls to her husband while the man carries the patient through to the living room and lays her silently and without effort on the couch. He has somehow managed to slip off his shoes while still holding his load. As he now steps back from his wife, lips tight with worry, he snatches his hat from his head and clasps it to his chest. Florence is struck by his simple good manners and humility, even when extremes of emotion must be whipping up a storm inside him.

Her husband arrives from his study, trailing, to her relief, no fumes of spirit. As he bends toward the woman, checking her pulse, then moving up to her eyes, the man begins flapping his hat in apology. “I had to bring her here, Doctor,” he says. “Dr. Abbott wouldn't take her. I had to leave work before the end of the harvest and I got no pay.”

Unable to catch the doctor's attention, he looks to Florence with a kind of terrified appeal. The doctor is on his knees now and feeling around the woman's belly. Instinctively Florence moves forward for instructions.

“It's breeched and she's in labour,” he mumbles. Then he glances up at the man.

“Carry her upstairs.”

***

It isn't an especially difficult birth, as it turns out. A little massage and patience, and the baby comes, head first, fists tight and waving, little blue vein disappearing under a swath of black hair.

When Florence skips downstairs to report on mother and child, the young man stares at her from within the tight confines of an armchair. A faint, moist-eyed smile forms, and then, with no warning at all, his head drops into his hands and his broad shoulders begin to wrench up and down like a bull stuck between gateposts. As his sobs become louder, Florence retreats back upstairs. Despite the fact that she has been married for several years now, a physical expression of grief by a man still terrifies Florence. Her father never cried in front of her. Even her brothers became too proud and stoical to shed tears by the time they returned from their first terms at school. The sight of man unprotected was deeply shocking because man, himself, is supposed to protect others.

***

Later that same day,
at
the farm worker's own insistence, mother, child, and father leave the doctor's house. By Florence's insistence, she sees them home. Their house is a tiny, bare-board shack. A bundle of soiled linen, a few cupfuls of flour, and mothers' milk will be the sole support for this new baby and her family until payment in kind or in cash can be arranged from his employer, who also owns this meagre habitation.

Two small children, hair bleached and skin freckled by the sun, scamper in from nowhere as mother settles on the floor to nurse her baby. Brother and sister stare with wonder as their mother eases her nipple into the baby's open mouth. The boy's cheekbones protrude, making his face seem too old for his three or four-year-old body. His sister's tongue wets her cracked lips.

As Florence turns to leave, the man stops her, his fingertips touching her wrist. “Please,” he says.

His big hands hold several shrivelled potatoes, white shoots poking through the gaps in his fingers. He eases them carefully into the bag that hangs over Florence's arm. She knows enough not to refuse him.

***

Back home, Florence and her husband sit in silence for hours gazing at the fire. The landowner who employs all the farmhands is the one who dispatches Dr. Abbott or his nephew to the sick. The fees are either taken from their wages or paid by the patients directly. But there are always some who are out of grace and itinerant workers who have no credit with any employer.

As the windows blacken slowly and the night breezes stir outside, destiny chooses Florence and her husband. No words are spoken, but when they rise to go to bed, Florence absent-mindedly takes a towel from one of the packed boxes. The doctor pulls out an old pair of shoes from the same box and polishes them. When she wakes the next morning and looks out of the window, Florence sees her husband has already taken down the “for sale” sign. She goes into the kitchen and peels the potatoes their patient's husband gave them.

They are needed here. This is half the requirement for a satisfying life. The other half, how to prosper or survive, will have to sort itself out in time. A few shrivelled potatoes yield a passable mash, and this will do for now.

***

One day far in the future, Florence will try to explain to a young reporter how fate had decided for them. And as it turned out, they survived well enough through the years and always with a sense of purpose. Compared to those of his profession, the doctor's income remained very modest, but they had reconciled themselves to a vocation that was tailor-made to their environment. Prudent management when money came in and the ability to adapt when it did not saw material realities slowly improve. When middle age came to them, quite suddenly, it seemed, with stiffening joints and slackened skin, they still felt they were the centre of their own universe; sufficient harmony existed between them to ensure some of the warmth of that blessed and glowing state had remained. They had no reason to question the course their lives had taken.

— Chapter Thirteen —

January 1908: New York City

***

Florence catches sight of the
man's face as soon as she and her husband are through the hotel's revolving doors.
Wounded
is the word that comes to her mind. Shades of her husband's personality lie within that face, though she scarcely cares to admit this even to herself. With his straggly half-beard, dark skin, moist eyes, and dishevelled hair, he seems less human than beast. In his face there is pain and anger. It must be the contrast, she thinks. The city of grand hotels, washed stone, liveried porters, tuxedoes, doormen, and honking motor cars has rendered emotion obsolete along with unshaven faces.

Three blue-suited doormen create a triangle around the offending creature but hesitate before closing in. A swift intelligence passes between them. One, the elder, approaches; the others stay where they are, several yards off. The senior doorman speaks to him; Florence can't catch the words, but she thinks she hears the answer from the dark-skinned man. “Grenfell,” he says.

The doorman lifts up a warning finger. “Stay away,” he says. “You hear?” He turns and leaves the man, companions following at his heels.

Florence pulls her husband along. The doctor's reactions have become rather slow of late and she doesn't want to create a belated audience to the poor man's humiliation. Neither does she want her husband to dwell on the man's answer in the unlikely circumstance he might have heard it. This is a rare holiday for them, and Florence feels her husband needs to breathe new air, have the jolt of fresh experience. Ancient ghosts would be most unwelcome.

The habitual bustle and steady murmur of guests seems louder and more frenetic than usual as Florence and the doctor make their way to the elevators. Clumps of men and women move in eddies from the left corridor into the lobby's main expanse. Others overtake Florence and the doctor as they scurry past. Beneath the lofty ceiling—cathedral-like in its vastness—fur coats bristle. Close by Florence, the glassy black eyes of a stole catch the light from the overhead chandelier, giving the impression of sudden, primal excitement, a simulated thunderstorm about to break in an artificial forest. Frequent exclamations and laughs spill from these groups, and Florence becomes aware of a figure in evening dress in the centre of the largest gathering. Though his back is turned, something about the shoulders, broad yet compact, and a vaguely familiar stance lock her gaze as she moves towards the elevators.

A porter pulls open the elevator cage and an instinct, as subtle as the twitch upon a spider's thread, keeps Florence's eyes from leaving the man in evening dress. She has heard his name already, or thought so. It could be him.

They step into the elevator, her husband for once slightly ahead, and the elevator boy inside pulls the cage across. Now the stranger, as though aware of the same spider thread instinct, turns, and for a second his eyes meet Florence's and flicker with recognition. Willy Grenfell, puffy-faced as before, but greying and lined like a child's toy bear, aged into the very picture of benign authenticity. There was no warning of an event when they checked in, but this is a huge hotel with two lecture halls, and many scheduled lectures and presentations. There is no doubt now the crowd in the lobby has come here to listen to Grenfell.

The outer door closes and the elevator rattles into motion. Of course, thinks Florence. She's painfully aware of her husband's distaste for men who hold court, who move in finely woven suits through the conference rooms of great hotels, accepting congratulations and the backslapping of peers and admirers. Now this distaste—which always seemed rather vague and laced with possible envy—comes full circle; her husband was at least self-aware and consistent enough to recognize such a character in embryo. This is why he had so heartily disliked the young Grenfell.

She pulls her husband's arm closer and gives it a squeeze. He reciprocates distractedly. She knows he didn't see Grenfell, had already sensed the tightening of his self-protective shell and a dropping of his gaze almost as soon as they came into the lobby. This is his standard withdrawal when he encounters large groups, especially when there is the hiss of silk cravat and the shimmer of fur.

It is only when they arrive at their own floor, when the cage rattles open and the smiling elevator boy pockets the coin the doctor gives him, that Florence wonders at Grenfell's expression, which seemed to comprise a wave of unhappy memory and a kind of shifty-eyed embarrassment—but very little surprise.

As they reach the door to their suite, the doctor fumbles for his key and Florence shivers. Pulling the squirrel collar closer around her neck, she gazes down the broad, silent corridor with its lush chandeliers and sparkling electric lights moulded ironically into the shapes of candles. The steady flames seem as sharp as knives and the stillness seems unnatural and threatening. As her husband gets the door open on the second attempt, Florence resists an urge to push him in or out of the way. He steps aside at last, and Florence enters with one more glance down the corridor. Irrational as it seems, she fears that Grenfell may have followed. She comforts herself not with the simple, obvious fact that he would have no reason to do so, but rather with the observation that he was too surrounded to break away. It's as though she has been plunged back a quarter of a century, believing that these two men may at any moment begin to follow each other afresh, that a new scuffle will break out, leaving one with a bruise mark upon his swollen wrist and another with scratches upon the neck. It's an odd, tingly feeling that the past should be so close to them.

Her husband shuffles over the threshold after her and closes the door, a faint smile on his pink face. He helps her off with her fur, his hands trembling only slightly. At the feel of his warm fingertips on her shoulders, she has a wish to tell him that she loves him, that she appreciates the great efforts he has made so far this holiday abstaining from the warmth he found only in alcohol. The wish hangs in a smile that he acknowledges only vaguely. Neither of them has ever quite learned the lexicon of intimacy.

The ache remains. She knows her husband well enough to expect that seeing Grenfell will be a great challenge for him, one that will shake the delicate balancing act that has kept him from the bottle during the last two days. Should he come face to face with his ancient rival, the delicate fibres of his soul will be exposed to every failing the world sees in him.

The doctor takes off his own coat, gives a mock shiver, and rubs his hands together in a gesture that used to announce the pouring of a stiff drink but which is now usually accompanied by a sad, ironic smile. He hangs her coat and his upon the rack.

“Why don't you ring down and order yourself a drink?” Florence says.

Her husband looks at her, his puffy eyes almost apologetic. It's a kind of defeat. She can see this from the lowering of his head, but his body is instantly more relaxed, like that of a patient suddenly released from a gnawing pain.

No decision forewarned Florence of her suggestion, just a great heaving sadness for him. Here he is on holiday, pretending to look at the sights: the rising iron girders which form partial skeletons of skyscrapers yet to be completed; vast blocks assembled beneath; the Metropolitan Museum with its artifacts of ancient Egypt and its European masters. But he is a mere shell, a walking burden, empty of joy, struggling, always struggling. He deserves some kind of relief.