The Minutes of the Lazarus Club

by Tony Pollard

  I crawled under his desk and pulled out a heavy wooden trunk. It was all I could do to get up the stairs and drag it to my father’s bedside.

  ‘Well done,’ he sighed, lifting himself on to his elbows. ‘Behind the clock.’

  I reached behind the marble casing and pulled out a key.

  ‘Well, don’t just stand there, open the box.’

  After some twiddling the latch gave, the lid creaking on its hinges as I pushed it back. The musty aroma of leather and aged paper rose from the interior. My father shuffled to the edge of the bed and looked down into the open trunk. A much smaller wooden box, highly polished and with brass fittings, sat on top of a pile of documents and notebooks.

  ‘Memories,’ he said, reaching down a thin, vein-lined hand. ‘But first things first.’ Fearful that he would topple from the bed and guessing that he was making for the small box, I passed it up. He half twisted and placed the object on the bed behind him. ‘Now, somewhere in there are the deeds to the house, and…’ He went on with a touch of mischief in his voice, ‘… most importantly, my last will and testament.’

  ‘Shouldn’t you be doing this with your notary?’ I asked.

  ‘Don’t be so squeamish, boy,’ he retorted. ‘The house will be split between yourself and your sister, but there are a few other things that need to be tidied up. If you can pull the paperwork together I will get Maitland to come round and make sure everything is above board.’

  ‘Aren’t these your journals?’ I asked, picking up one of the thick leather-bound notebooks that filled the bottom half of the trunk like ballast in a ship. For as long as I could remember he had been in the habit of recording the day’s events in his journal. And just as he had passed on the desire to become a doctor so the habit of setting down on paper the daily events of a life had also rubbed off on me.

  ‘Oh, those old things,’ he said ruefully. ‘We will get to them, but first the papers. Try that envelope there.’

  I put down the book, picked out a thick packet of papers and, sitting on the end of the bed, went through its contents. Due to the poor light and my father’s failing eyesight it fell to me to read out the contents of every document, no matter how trivial. There were numerous receipts for medicines, pages torn from medical journals, old letters, and miscellaneous notes about patients – although most of his patient records were filed, however haphazardly, in his study. There was his medical degree from the University of Edinburgh, which some thirty years after his time there had become my own alma mater.

  The search was frequently stalled, as my father stopped the proceedings to reminisce over any piece of paper that took his fancy. ‘That is the receipt for my first set of dissection knives – you never forget the first time in the theatre, do you?’ and, ‘I remember the time so and so had me amputate his dog’s leg after it was crushed beneath a carriage wheel.’

  Failing to find the house deeds or the will, I pulled the next package from the trunk and, document by document, riffled through its contents. So we went on, late into the afternoon.

  The sound of the gate opening announced Lily’s return. My father’s eyes may have been failing but there was clearly nothing wrong with his hearing. Just as I was about to suggest we bring proceedings to a close for the day he said, ‘You had better go down and see how your sister is.’

  Before going downstairs I insisted on putting the papers already removed from the trunk in some sort of order. Lastly, I picked up the small wooden box, which this time piqued my inquisitiveness. ‘A surgical set?’ I mused as I weighed it in my hands, but before I could snap open the latch my father stopped me. ‘We’ll get to that later,’ he said, reaching across and taking it from me.

  I left him squinting at a musty old parchment, the blankets covering his lap by now having accumulated a small mountain of crumbled fragments of sealing wax.

  Lily was in the drawing room, sitting on a chair by the window. She was reading a book, I guessed by Jane Austen, who had always been her favourite. There was a time when she went all starry-eyed about a certain Mr Darcy, and it was only after some determined questioning from my father that we learned he was in fact a character in one of Miss Austen’s novels. The hem of her skirt was peppered with mud from the rain-moistened footpath. The dog lay in its basket in front of the hearth, content for once to doze quietly rather than dash around the house like a mad thing.

  Hearing me enter the room, Lily looked up and smiled, her eyes rimmed with the afterglow of tears. ‘How is he?’

  ‘I left him going through his trunk of papers. Goodness knows what he’s got hoarded in there.’

  ‘Best to get things sorted out now, I suppose.’

  As I had hoped, her walk appeared to have done the trick.

  12

  I checked on my father’s condition several times during the night. Unlike me, he slept soundly throughout. In the morning we resumed our clerical chores, delving deeper into the dark recesses of the trunk, which had come to feel more like a bottomless mineshaft. My father seemed greatly relieved when at last we untied the ribbon binding the deed to the house. ‘Well, at least the family pile is safe for future generations,’ he announced, waving the stiff old document before him.

  I should have guessed what was coming next: ‘What about future generations, my boy? What prospects are there for our modest little tribe to go marching on into the future?’

  I was in no mood to discuss the prickly subject of marriage and children, never mind that it was one of my father’s favourite subjects of interrogation. ‘Your sister,’ he continued, slapping the deed on the bed, ‘has shown absolutely no interest in providing me with grandchildren, and I fear she may have left it too late. What about you? Is there a lady in your life?’

  ‘I have hopes,’ I lied, ‘of attracting a certain young lady’s favour.’ What alternative did I have? I was certainly not going to admit to my dying father that the only women with whom I was intimate were those I paid for.

  ‘Well, I wish you all the best with her,’ he said, a little too knowingly for my liking.

  Keen to move on, I asked, ‘Now, what about the box?’

  ‘Well,’ he said with a grunt as he lifted the small mahogany case from the bedside table, ‘I was saving these for you as a wedding present. But as I’m unlikely to see that happy day I might as well hand them over now.’

  I pulled up the chair and watched as he fiddled with the latch on the box. The lid opened to reveal a pair of antique pistols, sitting in recesses lined with green baize, arranged one above the other, nestling barrel to butt. He pulled the upper pistol free and, holding it by the barrel, passed it to me. Even in my inexperienced hand the weapon felt well balanced. Growing up in the countryside, I had handled guns before, but other than a couple of half-hearted hunting excursions with an old fowling piece had only a passing acquaintance with them. ‘How long have you been hoarding them?’

  He picked the second pistol from the box. ‘Oh, a good few years. They have quite a history, you know.’

  Only then did I notice the inscription etched along the side of the barrel. I turned the pistol in my hands and, as the light cast them into relief, read the words: ‘Presented by the Duke of Wellington to his good friend Dr Bernard Phillips in appreciation of long service under fire.’

  Impressive as the inscription was it did not take me wholly by surprise. It was common knowledge within the family that in the years before he settled down my father had been a surgeon in Wellington’s army. It was however a part of his life about which he had never spoken, at least at any length. There was a rather grimy painting of the battle of Waterloo in the house, but it languished in obscurity on a wall in the back where few people ever saw it. He had been there, at the battle, but again I had never known him to reminisce about the experience.

  ‘War must be a terrible thing,’ I said, stating the obvious, but curious to see whether I could draw him out on the matter.

  ‘Civilians!’ he barked, sounding like a cantankerous ge
neral. ‘These are duelling pistols, my boy, not weapons of war. And what a story these have to tell.’

  ‘Forgive me if I don’t put the muzzle up to my ear to hear what it has to say!’

  The old man smiled. ‘Then I will have to speak for it.’

  I set the pistol across my lap and sat back to listen.

  ‘Well, let me see,’ he began, his voice now a little stronger than it had been earlier in the day. ‘It was some time after the war. I had served under Wellington in all his campaigns against the French – all the way from Salamanca to Waterloo. Then came peace. Old Boney was shipped off to St Helena and we came home. Wellington, I think somewhat to his surprise, became Prime Minister and I set up my first practice in London. This suited the Duke down to the ground. He hated doctors but had come to trust me, and so whenever he needed treatment would call on my services. He adopted me as his personal surgeon.’

  I wondered with some amusement whether my father’s appointment by Wellington may have inspired Sir Benjamin to ingratiate himself with the great and the good.

  ‘He suffered from terrible gout in his later years,’ Father continued. ‘Everyone’s heard of Napoleon’s piles – some even say he lost the battle of Waterloo because of them – but only I know about Wellington’s gout.

  ‘I settled into civilian life once again and your mother and I began to walk out. But that is most definitely another story.’

  The memory of those happy days caused him to drift off for a moment. But he quickly returned.

  ‘It was 1829 and the great general was by then Prime Minister. But did that soothe his warlike manner? No, he continued to be a prickly character and to say he didn’t suffer fools gladly would be something of an understatement. I’ve seen him reduce experienced staff officers almost to tears in the field, and that continued to be the state of affairs in Parliament.

  ‘Then he went and franchised the Catholics. Now, Wellington was no reformer, far from it, but he was canny enough to realize that accepting if not quite embracing change was sometimes the only way to head off real trouble – so he gave the Catholics the vote.’

  I snorted at this. The most civilized country in the world we may be but the Dark Ages are not so far behind us.

  Never one to take religion seriously, my father nodded. ‘Strange to think, isn’t it? Just thirty years ago and Catholics couldn’t vote. That’s what comes of losing the Civil War, I suppose. But it wasn’t a popular move. Some grumbled in quiet corners while others wisely held their own counsel. But not Lord Winchelsea. That buffoon made the Prime Minister look like a radical, and the fool made the grave mistake of openly criticizing him for propagating Popery. Do you know what the Iron Duke did?’

  I shrugged my shoulders.

  ‘He challenged him to a duel, that’s what.’

  I glanced down at the pistol in my lap. ‘That’s right, Wellington called him out. They tried to hush it up, of course. Duelling had been illegal for years, and for a Prime Minister to partake was unheard of. He had himself tried to ban it among his officers during the Peninsular campaign, but to no avail. A tetchy lot, your officer class.’

  Although fascinated, I interrupted. ‘And where exactly do you enter the story?’ I asked, keen to prevent him talking for too long.

  ‘According to the rules of the game, every duel had to be attended by a surgeon, to dress wounds or pronounce death. The old warhorse called on my services, and against my better judgement I agreed to attend – not that I had much choice in the matter: he was the Duke of Wellington, and the Prime Minister to boot, if you will allow a dying man the pun.’

  He laughed at his own joke and for a moment seemed like a younger man. I handed him a glass of water, from which he took a couple of sips before going on. ‘The appointed day and hour arrived and so it was that I found myself on Battersea Fields at a godforsakenly early hour of the morning. I joined the Duke, who was accompanied by his second and a third man who was introduced to me as the adjudicator. Together we waited for Winchelsea to arrive. A last-minute attempt by myself to dissuade the Duke from proceeding was met with a stiff rebuff: “You are here to provide medical assistance, Phillips, not to interfere with due process. Now kindly attend to your surgical tools.”

  ‘And so with Winchelsea’s arrival I was guided out of the way by the Duke’s second, who from his constant surveillance of the deserted common seemed more concerned with the affair being discovered than the outcome of the forthcoming combat. Then I watched as the pistols were taken from the box and loaded, a process witnessed and checked by both principals. The weapons were then handed over and after the exchange of a few words I could not hear the two men stood back to back. I guessed that the final chance for Winchelsea to offer an apology to his challenger had been rejected. A coin was tossed to decide who would fire first. I found it astonishing that these men were prepared to risk their lives on something as insignificant as the flip of a coin. They walked six paces apiece before turning to face one another over their carefully measured killing ground.

  ‘I had seen men kill one another in their thousands before, but that was in wartime; this was a Thursday morning in London. Absolute madness, I thought, and shivered at the prospect of the Prime Minister dying in something as self-indulgent as a duel. And if he were injured and I failed to save him, what then? To be known forever as the doctor who let the nation’s greatest hero die! It wasn’t a prospect I relished. But my misgivings were an irrelevance; the duel was going ahead and I was powerless to stop it.

  ‘Both men signalled their readiness to the adjudicator and so he gave the order for Wellington, who had won the toss, to fire at will. Accordingly, the Duke levelled his pistol at his opponent. There was a dreadful pause, but then he turned his pistol away and sent the ball well wide of his mark. In response Winchelsea lowered his pistol and buried his ball in the earth. And that was it: the duel had been fought; the honour of both men satisfied. I opened the bag at my feet and took a deep draught of the brandy I kept there for medicinal purposes.’

  Fatigue was now taking its toll and he sank back into his pillow. I felt guilty at allowing him to go on for so long, but had become so enthralled. As he took his ease I picked up the pistol and held it as Winchelsea must have done, the muzzle pointing down towards the floor.

  I should have let him rest but my movement roused him again. ‘Wellington presented me with the pistols three days later. He must have delivered them to the engravers on his way to Parliament that same morning. No harm had been done, but nonetheless word got out that the duel had taken place and there was a hell of a stink. The scandal was a nail in the coffin of his political career, of that I have no doubt. A Prime Minister risking his own life in a duel was carelessness of the first order. He was the most arrogant, self-determined fellow I ever knew, on and off the battlefield. But for all his pig-headedness you couldn’t help but admire him.’

  I returned the pistol to its box. My father had now completely exhausted himself and before I stood up from my chair had fallen into a deep sleep. It was fortunate that Lily was out of the house, for she would have chastised me for allowing him to talk for so long. Perhaps, though, it takes a doctor to know that not all medicine comes in a bottle. Tucking the box under my arm, I quietly left the room.

  Next morning, I took myself away from the house and spent a distracting hour or so blasting away at empty bottles with my latest acquisitions.

  Days passed into a week and before I knew it three weeks had gone by. My father’s condition showed little change and I began to give serious thought to returning to London, where my prolonged absence from the hospital must surely be making itself felt. To pass the time I began to see one or two of my father’s old patients from the village. As I had nothing better to do it seemed only right to save people the trouble of travelling to Lansdown to see Dr Billings. The work was unchallenging but my presence in the surgery seemed to be appreciated by the populace and, more importantly, pleased Lily no end. I am sure she hoped I would see the
light and choose to take over the practice permanently. Aside from a visit from Maitland, my father’s notary, and a regular house call by Dr Billings, with whom I spent a pleasant hour or so in conversation, the house remained quiet.

  It did not take long to fall into a comfortable routine, in the mornings opening the surgery, while the afternoons were divided between my father, who would insist on a full report on the morning’s proceedings, and the dog, who was by then ready for his daily constitutional. Two or three times a week Gilbert would join us for dinner and provide the welcome opportunity to share a glass or two of brandy. Every other night Lily returned to her own house to catch up on her domestic and matrimonial duties while I was left in sole charge of the patient. All in all it was a not unpleasant existence, and as time passed I felt my thoughts being drawn back to London less frequently than had at first been the case. Foremost in those troubled thoughts had been Inspector Tarlow. The policeman’s unwarranted attentions had made Sir Benjamin’s draconian management style seem quite benign.

  The fact that I did have another existence was brought home by the arrival of a letter. It was from Brunel, whose company I had last shared almost two months previously. It was written in his usual spidery hand, with the head of the paper embossed with his Duke Street address. I could only surmise that he had obtained my own address from Sir Benjamin.

  Dear Phillips,

  I hope that this short missive finds you well. Also, that the past weeks have seen an improvement in your father’s condition.

  You have missed very little by way of excitement in the city. Work on the ship progresses at a damnably slow pace but the engines at least are all but fully installed. In spite of Russell’s procrastinations I am sure she will be ready for sea trials in no more than six weeks.

  Despite the continued labours required of the ship I have found time for a new project, which though far more modest in scale is imbued with much greater ambition. There is still however much work to be done here and I suspect I will require further assistance from your good self with the matter.