The Cunning Man

by Robertson Davies

  The clinic pleases me; the architect has been sympathetic in turning a grand stable into my professional premises. Lots of space and a really good waiting-room; I have always hated those wretched cubbyholes, furnished with steel-tube chairs and a table for the old magazines, frequently without any daylight, that pass as waiting-rooms in buildings given over to—what careful writer would say, designed for?—the medical profession. My waiting-room is like a drawing-room, and even if that is now a little old-fashioned, it creates the atmosphere I want. I have my own consulting-room, which has one of the old stable fireplaces in it, and looks like a library and not like the ante-room of a hospital ward, as so many doctors’ offices do. Off it there is a good examination-room, where I can come to grips with people who have to be stripped and gone over with every diagnostic device and trick I can command. Outside the waiting-room, and commanded by it, is the reception room, where my invaluable secretary-nurse-masseuse-hydropathologist and general healer-of-all-work, Fru Inge Christofferson, keeps an eye on everything and everybody, types letters, and issues impeccable statements of indebtedness. Off her room is the consulting-room of my junior, Dr. Harry Hutchins, who looks after anything I tell him to and is glad to get the job because he wants to do the sort of work I do, when he has had enough experience. A genial fellow and reassuring to patients who might find the place a mite forbidding.

  My personal quarters are upstairs. A really good living-room with plenty of light, and from which a short spiral stair leads up to the tower, where my writing-desk is, and where, in fact, I am making these notes. A decent bedroom. A small but well-equipped kitchen for, although I am no cook, I can get my own breakfast and make a lunchtime sandwich. A bathroom of what McWearie calls Pompeian luxury, and certainly bigger than is usual in that most cramped of all domestic necessities in most of the houses where I go.

  I go to a lot of houses. I make house calls, or what the grander physicians of an earlier day called “Domiciliary Attendance.” I want to see where my patients live. I want to see their bedrooms, which tell much about the quality of life they experience. I always poke into their bathrooms, pretending that I want to wash my hands; are they houses of shame, privies and jakes bespeaking a disgust of bodily excretion? Is the bathtub worn down by the Toronto water so that an ugly stain extends itself from under the taps? What is in the medicine cupboard—what mess of half-consumed remedies, patent nostrums, salves and balms, mixed with razor-blades too rusty to use but too good to throw away? A whole world of habit, cast of thought, approach to health, and approach to sex can be read in a bathroom, by my sweeping eye.

  What is the light in the house? Is it darkened with “drapes” and “lace curtains” so that the furniture will not be faded? Has the sofa, God forgive us all, been protected against the abrasive rumps of family and guests with a piece of plastic? Are there books, and if so, what are they, and are they stowed as if they were respected and loved, or are they disposed on shelves which seem chiefly used for the display of trumpery, bits of china and glass? Are there any books at the bedside, and is there any light by which they might be read?

  If there is a dining-room it is usually possible to get a peep at it. Is the table left ready set for the next meal with the condiments bunched in the middle, next to the little cluster of artificial flowers? Does it look like a room used only when “company” comes, or is it the feasting-hall of a happy family? What is the light, for the light in a dining-room is a great indicator of what the family thinks about food, and thus about a vital element in life and a principal source of pleasure.

  What is the patient wearing in bed? Obviously fresh pyjamas, to greet the doctor? His undershirt? Lots of people sleep in their underwear. If the patient is a woman, does she wear pyjamas or a nightdress, and if the latter is it designed to flatter or is it of white cotton? Has she combed her hair, put on make-up—for these things tell how she regards me, and herself. Is she uncaring when I want to listen to her breathing, or does she shield her breasts? A patient’s notion of modesty can be revealing, whatever meaning you choose to attach to that word.

  How does the house smell? My nose is one of my principal diagnostic instruments. I can smell disease, very often. I can smell domestic disquiet. I can smell unhappiness.

  Of course not all of my house calls are made in places that fit the descriptions above. Many of my patients are well-off and a few are rich. The houses of the rich are a different study. Whose notion of luxury has been responsible for what I see? Wife’s or husband’s? Have they risen from humbler circumstances and if so what have they learned on that very North American journey? Is the pulpy, damp hand of the interior decorator from the big shop laid too heavily over any personal taste? Is there a piano, and if so does anybody play it? I can casually strike a chord or two, while admiring the instrument, and discover if the foggy, catarrhal note of an unused instrument tells the tale of pretension, of keeping up with the Joneses. Nowadays many houses have elaborate high-fidelity reproducing machines; they cost a lot of money, but the tapes that lie around, and the compact discs tell how hi the owners fi. Is it honest sentimental stuff, dance music, rock, punk, or whatever, or is it perhaps a collection of what I think of as “real” music—the sort of thing that opens the doors of the underworld? Or is it Gems from the Met, or Pavarotti showing how loud he can bawl? All these details are to me elements in a diagnosis, and the only way I can uncover them is by domiciliary attendance; the doctor who refuses to make house calls cannot hope for my sort of medical awareness.

  Here, in my stable, I think it all over and reach my conclusions. And when night falls, and I have come back from the hotel where I get my dinner—Toronto did not for many years have much in the way of restaurants—I settle down in my living-room to read, to listen to music, but always beneath the surface occupation to think about my patients and my work, and I am wrapped in my own sort of happiness, when nothing hurts.

  (5)

  Glebe House

  Cockcroft Street

  Toronto, Ontario

  Canada

  How goes it, me old Cock-Linnet?

  Remember that song—“My old man said, Follow the van, and don’t dilly-dally on the way. Away went the van with me few sticks in it, I followed after with me old cock-linnet …” and so on. Oh Barbara you wouldn’t believe how we long for a little of that kind of easy jollity in this sober country! But mustn’t grumble, as old Lucy used to say. Things haven’t been too bad.

  I’ve told you our tenant has moved in. We were simply raving to see what he had done but no invitation came for weeks and weeks! I suppose he was fussing. These bachelors are dreadful fussers. For weeks vans had been coming to the door—they always came to us first because it never occurred to them that anything should be delivered to the stables—with all sorts of stuff, and we knew great things must be in preparation. A fearful sort of dragon-woman turned up, bossing a lot of the work. I gather she is the doctor’s nurse, or something; name of Christofferson1 and a real tartar. Or Valkyrie. About seven feet tall, handsome in a grenadier kind of way, and with a deep voice. I ventured a few polite remarks—hoping to see what was in some of the packages—and got a look that has left an X-ray burn. But at last we have got through the door.

  My dear, you can’t imagine what money must have been spent! All traces of stables quite gone except for the dear little fireplaces in some of the rooms, where I suppose grooms rubbed up harness and told dirty stories. Quite a bit of wood panelling, not too dark, and handsome wallpapers that must have come from the States. And furniture! A room that I couldn’t believe was the waiting-room—for patients, mind you!—with marvellous leather chairs and a really good rug on the hardwood floor and positively books on shelves and pictures on the walls. And what pictures! First-class prints, but the choice! Rembrandt’s Anatomy Lesson which I would think would scare the liver and lights out of a patient, and an old Dutch one of a doctor squinting at what looks like a flask of pee, and in the consulting-room one that really knocked me back!, it
was one of those Death and the Lady pictures; a naked female simpleton stands face to face with a skeleton, at whom she is making goo-goo eyes—and he is making rather a calculating appraisal of her pink charms.2 What on earth does Dr. Jonathan Hullah think his patients are going to make of that, I’d like to know?

  I put it to him. He only laughed. “Don’t worry,” he said; “the people who come to me will very soon accommodate to these reminiscences of an earlier and franker idea of medicine. I demand that they come to terms with several sorts of reality.” He talks like that. A very queer duck indeed, but handsome in a grisly sort of way, dresses grandly—expensive cloth—and scents his hanky with Hungary water. Not Harley Street grandeur. That would never do in Toronto. But rather grand, all the same. I wished I had put on my better frock.

  But the real surprise was the room off the consulting-room which was just a bit too much like a hospital; big steel table that looked as if people might be expected to lie on it and at one end a platform at the back of which was a huge sheet of frosted glass. When he tripped a switch it lighted up from behind, and on the glass were all sorts of measurements and symbols in big black lettering. “When people stand in front of that,” sez he, “you’d be surprised what it is possible to discover about them. Look,” sez he, picking a transparency about eighteen inches square out of a filing cabinet. It was a photograph of some poor naked wretch taken in front of that screen, probably by the dragon; the face was blacked out so I couldn’t have told who it was, even if I’d had any idea. My dear, you wouldn’t believe how pitiful that creature looked! It was a woman, hair hanging down her back, stooped, breasts sagging and belly sagging almost as badly, awful veins in her legs. He put in another film, a sideways pose. Then another, from the back, spine obviously twisted. Yet she wasn’t too bad a specimen. I’ve seen worse on the model stand in the studio at the old Royal Coll.3 But this was clinical. “Any time you feel like having your portrait done, do come in,” sez he, and it would have been nasty if he hadn’t smiled so nicely. They say he is a top-notch diagnostician.

  Then the dragon brought us some tea. Very decent tea, too, which surprised me for some reason. Over tea we got quite chatty. We told him about how we met in the Military Transport Corps, at 39 Graham Terrace and what a scream that was. All those fashionable ladies in uniforms they had made by Hartnell, driving colonels and Cabinet Ministers all over the place, and poor Dear One being put on the job of driving wages for a Government Department to Basingstoke, where it had been settled for the duration. I drove an ambulance, you remember. More like a death-cart sometimes, because of the rule that you had to take the dead to the police before you took the injured to the hospital. And the talk! Endless tales of adultery in high life. And what a gang! Some Canadians, the first of the breed I ever met and very decent kids, but the high-flyers made fun of them because they always asked for leave to spend with their husbands! The idea of spending time with a husband was too much for our commander.4 I kept my eye on her, because she took rather a shine to Dear One and seemed anxious to marry her off. “Of course, there are only twenty-seven really eligible men in the whole of England, but you never can tell what you might pick up,” sez she. But even then the parents were trying to get her off with Gussie Gryll.5 Did you ever meet Gussie? My dear, what a type! How it brought back those days! We don’t speak of them very often. But as I was going to bed, brushing my teeth actually, I found myself humming into the toothpaste the song we used to sing in the MTC, when some of the great ladies were a little squiffed—

  Hitler—

  Has only got one ball;

  Goering—

  Has two but very small;

  Himmler—

  Has something sim’lar;

  But poor old Goebbels

  Has no balls at all!

  Goes to the tune of Colonel Bogey. Happy days! The risk of being killed in a raid was like the Tabasco in a sauce. Were they really happy days? For me it was a time when to be young and alive was enough.

  Until next time, love from us

  CHIPS

  VIGNETTES

  1. My nurse, Inge Christofferson, drawn by an artist who plainly hates her on sight.

  2. An impression of Death and the Lady. Is it by chance or foreboding that the Lady looks woundily like Emily Raven-Hart?

  3. Three lightning impressions of an unloved woman’s body.

  4. The Commander is one of those upper-class Englishwomen who looks like a beautiful horse.

  5. If ever a caricature spoke of jealousy and hatred, this is it!

  (6)

  I remember that tea-party very well. I didn’t want to ask them in, but they were so eager—at least Pansy Freake Todhunter was—that it became inevitable. McWearie said, “The Ladies are honing to see your place, and you’d better invite them, if you have any hope of being asked to their Sundays.” I was not at all sure I cared about their Sundays, whatever those might be, but there are some social obligations that can’t be avoided.

  I knew they wanted to talk about the bell, and that Charlie had put them up to it. If he wanted me to silence the bell, why didn’t he ask me himself? I suppose it had been many years since the stable bell had struck the hours, but when I put the place in order I had the clock mended, and when it struck each hour I was delighted; just the thing to warn patients that their appointment had run its course. It was a good bell, and I can’t imagine that it would keep anybody awake when it struck during the night. But Charlie wanted my bell silenced, because it sometimes rivalled the bell on St. Aidan’s, which he assumed, reasonably enough, should have first consideration. It might give out its melodious tenor note when Charlie was conducting a service—might indeed ring at the same time as his jangling sacring-bell. If he had spoken to me himself, I might have done something about my bell, but as he put The Ladies up to it, I smiled and said that the stable was now a Temple of Hygeia and as such was surely entitled to a bell, and they had no answer ready for that. I suppose they reported to Charlie that I was pig-headed, and if they did I do not care. Probably they attributed this porcinity of head to the Secret Sorrow that made me look like a horse. Quite a farmyard I must have seemed to them.

  They were miffed that I did not invite them upstairs to my private quarters, but as the pictures in my professional rooms bothered them it was certainly just as well. In my sitting-room I had only two pictures, at that time, both good prints (because I would rather have a great picture in reproduction than some “hand-painted” daub of the Canadian landscape); one was Dürer’s self-portrait, in which he plainly wants to look like Christ, and the other—over my mantel—was Boucher’s entrancing portrait of Nelly O’Morphy, naked poppet lying face downward on what is surely the softest sofa ever painted. Nelly’s pink rump has reminded me of the goodness of God after many a day dealing with such neglected carcasses as the one The Ladies had seen on the screen in my examination room.

  As I sit by my fire, do I ever look around the hearth and wish that Nuala sat there, reading or knitting or day-dreaming? I refuse to give a definite answer to that question even here in the secrecy of my Case Book. Of course I long for her, but in honesty I must say that I would rather long for her than have her continually present. Travel agents assure us that “getting there is half the fun”; I might say with at least equal truth that longing is some of the best of loving. I am lonely, but do I not savour my loneliness? Nuala has become a mother; her son is a large, red infant named Conor, after her family. Do I wish that Nuala were in my little kitchen brewing up the stuff Conor eats so messily, and that Conor lay in a bassinet in my bedroom, howling his head off for some unattainable satisfaction that only a baby could want? This speculation is complicated by the knowledge that Conor may be my own son. When people are as intimate and as accustomed in their loving as Nuala and I, the precautions that mean so much to prudent people may sometimes be forgotten. Proclaim no shame, when the compulsive ardour gives the charge, and do not wait to rummage in the drawer of the bedside table to see if a prophyla
ctic can be found.

  Anyhow, as I write now, so long after these events, it is all water-over-the-dam, or condoms-down-the-loo. Conor has been a grown man for some time; sufficiently grown to have risen in his profession to be Entertainment Editor of the Colonial Advocate. Conor is married to Esme, who is plaguing me for revelations about the past of Toronto which cannot be divorced from revelations about my own past, and it does not matter much who his father was. I know him. I like him and I know he likes me, but I feel no impulse to fold him in my arms and declare him to be my son. I do not even discuss that possibility with Nuala. Sometimes I am ashamed of how little family feeling I have, but I soon get over it.

  Far clearer in my memory is the great Battle of the Bell, which went on during my first three years in my clinic behind Glebe House and adjacent to St. Aidan’s. It would seem trivial if it were not that it completed the break between myself and Father Charles Iredale, my old school friend and as I had thought, friend for life. It is astonishing how such links that one supposed to be strong, can be broken by what is comparatively a trifle.

  Charlie got nowhere, putting The Ladies onto the job of asking me to silence my bell. That merely made me determined to let it have its voice, every hour on the hour. Did Charlie come to me and ask me himself to silence my bell, as friend to friend? No, he resorted to a bit of priestcraft; he went among his parishioners and invited them to sign a petition he had prepared (but which he did not sign himself) asking that the police should take action against me as the perpetrator of a nuisance. The police took their time, but eventually they sent me a letter saying that they had had complaints, and would I desist. Taking my own time, I replied asking the nature of the complaints? The police, after an interval, sent me a copy of the petition, with all the names attached.