The Rose of Sebastopol (15 page)

The heat was atrocious. Sun blasted through a skylight and the room stank of butchery. I would have fainted but for the horror of falling into the arena below. I forced myself to breathe deeply, to disconnect myself from Rosa, whom I loathed passionately at that moment for getting us into this situation and who was now gazing avidly down.

A high-pitched whimpering could be heard above the general hubbub. From somewhere Henry had acquired a long leather case which he passed to a man behind him. Then he approached the table, lifted his arms, and drew them backwards, as if performing a breast-stroke. The effect was to cause the circle round the boy to open up, for light to fall more strongly from the skylight above, and for me to be able to see exactly what was happening. The boy was propped on his elbow as if he would bolt if only he could. His trousers had been cut off and a towel thrown carelessly across his genitals.

Don’t look, Mariella, I told myself. You mustn’t. You’ll never forget it if you do.

But of course I couldn’t help myself. I had to see.

There was a slow gathering of quiet and the child’s weeping became more audible, a sort of whining snuffle like a young dog.

“So my dear young lad, Tom. Tom.” Henry’s voice was low and caressing. Meanwhile the boy’s head was held by another doctor and brown liquid dropped between his lips until his gaze became unfocused. Henry handed his case to an assistant who unpacked it rapidly, laying instruments one by one out of sight behind the patient’s head. The boy’s wrists and good ankle were strapped down. And all the time Henry went on speaking, even as he rolled his cuffs and flexed his fingers: “So I hear you and your friends were playing leap-frog near the building site on the Mile End Road? Bad luck to fall like that. I’ve asked someone to tell the authorities to see about that site being fenced off in the future. I hope your mother doesn’t give you too hard a time for it. She’s outside. You’ll be seeing her in a moment and then I’m afraid you’ll catch it. So Tom, what I want you to do is watch the eyes of this gentleman here, see, do you know he’s called Thomas too . . .”

It dawned on me at last, above the zooming flies, the raucous shout of someone in the street below, the horror of being there at all, what I was about to witness. Dear God, dear God, I thought, the child doesn’t realize what is about to happen to him.

Henry now spoke to his colleagues in a dispassionate voice I’d never heard before. “I wonder if anyone can tell me why I don’t choose to employ chloroform with this particular patient.”

Silence. Tom whimpered. Someone said: “Too young, sir.”

“Precisely. It would be very difficult to administer a safe dose to such a slight child. So. Are we all set?” There was a moment of great tension as Henry lifted his head and looked about him; I distinctly felt his piercing gaze fall upon first me, then Rosa, and saw one eyebrow raise a fraction before I turned my face away.

“You can start the clock,” he said and whipped off the towel. He laid two fingers on the pulse in the child’s groin, put out his hand and received a shiny instrument, waited an instant for a basket to be kicked closer to the bottom of the table, then became utterly intent. My mind fogged and I swayed against Rosa. I remembered the child’s mother and how she had sent her son out for milk. When I looked again Henry’s assistants were stooped over the boy and I couldn’t see anything, but I heard a noise that took the strength from my legs altogether. Smashed bone, it could only be, and then a high-pitched, dying howl. An eerie silence fell, the men around us pressed closer, and Henry’s measured voice said: “The essential is to tie off the artery with all expedition, loss of blood being the chief cause for concern . . .”

Afterwards I was half carried by Rosa into the passage outside, where she propped me against a wall, her arm locked through mine.

I heard Henry’s voice through a mist of faintness: “. . . these two women are doing here. Extraordinarily inappropriate ... loss of concentration.”

Then he was actually in front of us, a black column smelling of blood. I pulled myself upright and found that he had taken my hand, although his fingers barely pressed mine, and his voice was so chilly that I scarcely recognized it as his. “Mariella. Miss Barr. I had quite forgotten that I arranged to meet you this morning. Forgive me. There was something of an emergency, as you see. I’m afraid that you have come at rather a difficult time. Perhaps another day we could give you a more detailed tour of the hospital.”

“Thank you,” said Rosa, “but I don’t want just to tour, I want to be useful.”

“So I remember. Well, I’m glad to hear it. We don’t have enough ladies prepared to take an interest in our work here.”

He moved away but her voice rang out: “I would like to take more than an interest, Dr. Thewell. As I said, I should like to work here. Tell me how I can do that.”

“I see.” Henry’s voice was clipped. “The chapel is close by. It will be cooler there and I’ll have some water brought for Miss Lingwood. But I’m afraid I have only a few minutes to spare.”

The chapel was mercifully empty and civilized, with a gallery and pillars. It even smelt of plaster and flowers, like a proper church. I sank into a pew and pretended to sip from the glass, although in fact I wouldn’t consume a drop of anything in that place. There was a brownish smear on my white glove above the index finger. Blood, surely, transferred from Henry’s hand to mine.

“What will happen to the boy?” asked Rosa.

“He will possibly survive but it is by no means a definite outcome. Shock, loss of blood, or infection, perhaps all three, will probably do for him.”

“You sound as if you scarcely care. In fact, you all seemed more interested in breaking a record for speed than in saving the boy. Isn’t it the case that the real reason you didn’t use chloroform is that it would have slowed you down?”

Even in my befuddled state I could tell that Henry was still far from his usual self. He was very pale and his eyes, which had smiled so warmly at the patient and his mother, were expressionless. “It’s true that there are certain rash doctors who might have used chloroform in this case but the process is still relatively untried and the last person I’d experiment on is a young boy, already in shock. But whatever decisions were taken by my colleagues and me, I believe we all had the best interest of our patient at heart.” He paused. “I must say though, I was amazed to see you both in the theater.”

Of all the experiences that morning, the most terrible was realizing that Henry now disapproved of me. Rosa, however, was undaunted. “Why? We simply followed you.”

“You were a distraction. Operations are private affairs and students are only allowed at the discretion of the surgeon.”

“I wanted to see if I could bear it. If I am to be a student here ...”

“I am not thinking about you, Miss Barr, so much as the patient. And Mariella. Look at her. She is faint, as any lady would be. It was a brutal thing to expose her to. I must wonder at your motives.”

“My motives? ”

“Are you sure it was not just sensation you were after? ”

“How dare you?” She too was white-faced and her voice was low and passionate. “I suspect that you are angry because you object to us women experiencing what you have seen dozens of times. How did you know that you wanted to be a doctor, except by seeing what doctors do?”

“I went through the proper channels; I studied for years; I earned access to the operating theater through my work with patients and my knowledge of anatomy.”

“And what about me? I wish to go through the proper channels but there are none for a woman interested in medicine. How will I know whether the hospital is to be my vocation if I am not allowed to see the worst or the best that it has to offer?”

They stared at each other—it was as if neither was prepared to give ground by shifting their gaze. “What you say is unanswerable,” Henry said at last, “except for two things. In the first place I cannot help thinking that you have abused your acquaintance with me. When I invited you to the hospital I by no means gave you permission to enter its private rooms. In the second place, the operation was performed on a child who may die. At the very least he will be a cripple. The attention of all should have been on the patient. The essential issue, at that moment, was not testing whether or not you could withstand the sight of such an operation, it was thinking about what was best for the child. I therefore propose that we should talk carefully about how you can be introduced to the work of the hospital a little at a time, in the future, and what will be of benefit to all parties. Come and visit my clinic, if you wish, and I will explain how you might be of use. But please. There is a proper time for everything. It’s a matter of respect.”

For a moment she went on staring at him and I expected her to argue further but she said nothing more.

“Well, I will accompany you to the carriage,” he said, and held the door open for us. We walked in silence down the hateful corridors, each far apart from the others. The building repulsed me with its echoing shouts and rushing feet. Every breath I took, it seemed to me, was rank with disease. I didn’t know Henry in this place, and when he handed me into the carriage my glove barely brushed his fingers.

R
osa and I rode in silence,
seated side by side so that we couldn’t see each other’s face past the brims of our bonnets. At first the shock of what had happened seemed an external thing, like a blow to the stomach, but gradually it filled me up so that I was nauseous and aching. Hope was dead. By being present during the operation we had humiliated Henry before all his colleagues; he would become a laughingstock for being followed about the hospital by a couple of women. We had ruined all his chances of promotion. The shame, the shame. I pressed my hand to my mouth and kept my eyes tight-shut to blot out the anguish.

Then, as we ground to yet another halt amidst the traffic on the Clapham Road, Rosa said: “I think the truth is that your Henry does not want women in his hospital. And I can see why. He wouldn’t know how to behave with women in that male domain. It would make everything different.”

Outside the carriage a couple of dogs engaged in a fierce fight and were soon joined by their owners. The carriage shifted as the horse grew nervous.

“Well?” she said. “What do you think, Mariella? Will your Henry be persuaded? I mean, if I can’t make any headway with someone I know, what are my chances of breaking into the world of medicine at all? I can’t afford to wait too long, I’m already twenty-four. Perhaps I should consider working in Barbara’s school, if she’ll have me. But then on the other hand is teaching what I want to be doing, really?”

At last I said quietly: “Surely it would be foolish to begin something you can’t finish. Presumably you will be going home soon.”

“Home? What do you mean? I have no home apart from with you. I couldn’t bear to go back to Stukeley. Besides, I’m quite sure Horatio has no intention of accommodating us there. He’d rather hide us away in a cottage and leave us to starve.”

I wondered how I could endure another half-hour in the carriage with her. Surely she could see beyond her own ambition to my pain? Still we didn’t move and the sun scorched down on the roof. In the end I said: “I can’t bear this. I’m going to walk home.”

“I agree. I’ll come with you.”

“No. Alone. Please.” I fumbled with the latch but she held me back.

“Mariella.”

“No.” I threw her hand off my arm.

“Mariella.”

“Please, I beg you, don’t speak to me.”

“I don’t understand. This isn’t like you. Why are you angry? ”

At that moment the carriage jolted forward and I fell back against the seat. I was so full of rage and grief that I couldn’t find any more words, so we drove the rest of the way in total silence, and once there, Rosa went immediately up to her own room—the one originally intended for her—and shut the door.

I refused lunch but asked Ruth to fetch hot water for a bath while I removed my clothes. My gloves, I told her, should be burnt, my skirts cleaned, my boots treated with carbolic, including the soles, and my petticoats and under-garments boiled and bleached. Never mind if they were shrunk or discolored as a result, it was a risk I would have to take. I then stepped into the bath and scrubbed myself violently from head to toe though the touch of my own body repelled me. I thought of myself as a bundle of messy organs liable to become diseased at any moment. The smell of the hospital was still in my nostrils and I imagined it spreading like an inkblot inside me until it had penetrated every last cell.

I kept my eyes tight-shut. My thighs were heavy with the recollection of the boy’s exposed groin. He and the patients in the ward had reminded me rather of the carcasses of pigs hung up outside butchers’ shops than human beings.

Then I thought of the formality of Henry’s touch as he helped us into the carriage. He had been a different man from the one who kissed my lips. So remote, so cold. I wound my wet hair into a tight knot and put on a light muslin dress, all the time avoiding the sight of my scrubbed face in the mirror. This is how I will live the rest of my life, I thought, untouched, untouchable.