by A. J. Cronin
‘That’s it. The rest of the roof.’
The journey out-bye took close upon an hour. They had to edge the stretcher sideways at the bad places. Andrew could not tell how long they had been under. But at length they came to the shaft bottom.
Up, up they shot, out of the depths. The keen bite of the wind met them, as they stepped out of the cage. With a kind of ecstasy Andrew drew a long breath.
He stood at the foot of the steps holding on to the guard rail. It was still dark, but in the mine yard they had hung a big naphtha flare which hissed and leaped with many tongues. Around the flare he saw a small crowd of waiting figures. There were women amongst them, with shawls about their heads.
Suddenly, as the stretcher moved slowly past him, Andrew heard his name called wildly and the next instant Christine’s arms were about his neck. Sobbing hysterically she clung to him. Bareheaded, with only a coat above her nightdress, her bare feet thrust into leather shoes, she was a waif-like figure in the gusty darkness.
‘What’s wrong?’ he asked, startled, trying to disengage her arms so that he might see her face.
But she would not let him go. Clinging to him frantically like a drowning woman she said brokenly:
‘They told us the roof was down – that you wouldn’t wouldn’t come out.’
Her skin was blue, her teeth chattering with cold. He carried her into the fire of the rescue room, ashamed, yet deeply touched. There was hot cocoa in the rescue room. They drank from the same scalding cup. It was a long time before either of them remembered about his grand new degree.
Chapter Twelve
The rescue of Sam Bevan was commonplace to a town which had known, in the past, the agony and horror of major mine disasters. Yet in his own district it did Andrew a vast amount of good. Had he returned with the bare success of London behind him he would have earned merely an extra sneer for ‘more new-fangled nonsense.’ As it was, he received nods and even smiles from people who had never seemed to look at him before. The real extent of a doctor’s popularity in Aberalaw could be gauged by his passage down the Rows. And, where Andrew had hitherto been met by a line of tight shut doors, now he found them open, the off-shift men smoking in their shirt-sleeves ready for a word with him, the women ready to ‘call him in’ as he went by, the children greeting him smilingly by name.
Old Gus Parry, head driller in No 2 and doyen of the West district, summed up the new current of opinion for his mates as he gazed after Andrew’s retreating figure.
‘Eh, lads! ’E’s a bookish chap no doubt. But he can do the real stuff, like, when it’s wanted.’
Cards began to come back to Andrew, gradually at first and, when it was seen that he did not abuse his returned renegades, with a sudden rush. Owen was pleased at the increase in Andrew’s list. Meeting Andrew in the Square one day he smiled:
‘Didn’t I tell you, now?’
Llewellyn had affected great delight at the result of the examination. He congratulated Andrew effusively upon the phone then blandly raked him in for double duty at the theatre.
‘By the way,’ he remarked, beaming, at the end of the long and ether-ridden session, ‘did you tell the examiners you were an assistant in a medical aid scheme?’
‘I mentioned your name to them, Doctor Llewellyn,’ Andrew answered sweetly. ‘And that made it quite all right.’
Oxborrow and Medley of the East Surgery took no notice of Andrew’s success. But Urquhart was genuinely glad, though his comment took the form of vituperative explosion.
‘Dammit to hell, Manson! What d’you think you’re doin’? Trying to put my eye out!’
By way of complimenting his distinguished colleague he asked him in consultation to a case of pneumonia he was then attending and demanded to know the prognosis.
‘She’ll recover,’ Andrew said and he gave scientific reasons.
Urquhart shook his old head dubiously. He said:
‘I never heard tell of your polyvalent sera or your antibodies or your international units. But she was a Powell before her marriage and when the Powells get a swollen belly with their pneumonias they die the eighth day. I know that family backwards. She’s got a swollen belly; hasn’t she?’
The old man went about with an air of sombre triumph over the scientific method when his patient died on the seventh day.
Denny, now abroad, knew nothing of the new degree. But a final and somewhat unexpected congratulation came in a long letter from Freddie Hamson. Freddie had seen the results in the Lancet, chided Andrew on his success, invited him to London, and then detailed his own exciting triumphs in Queen Anne Street where, as he had predicted that night at Cardiff, his neat brass plate now shone.
‘It’s a shame the way we’ve lost touch with Freddie,’ Manson declared. ‘I must write to him oftener. I’ve a feeling we shall run into him again. Nice letter, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, very nice,’ Christine answered drily. ‘But most of it seems to be about himself.’
With the approach of Christmas the weather turned colder – crisp frosty days and still, starry nights. The iron hard roads rang under Andrew’s feet. The clear air was like an exhilarating wine. Already shaping in his mind was the next step which he would take in his great assault on the problem of dust inhalation. His findings amongst his own patients had raised his hopes high, and now he had obtained permission from Vaughan to extend the field of his investigation by making a systematic examination of all the workers in the three anthracite sinkings – a marvellous opportunity. He planned to use the pit workers and surfacemen as controls. He would begin at the start of the New Year.
On Christmas Eve he returned from the surgery to Vale View with an extraordinary sense of spiritual anticipation and physical well-being. As he walked up the road it was impossible to escape the signs of the impending festival. The miners made much of Christmas here. For the past week the front room in each house had been locked against the children, festooned with paper streamers, toys hidden in the drawers of the chest and a steady accumulation of good things to eat, cake, oranges, sweet sugar biscuits, all bought with the club money paid out at this time of year, laid upon the table.
Christine had made her own decorations of holly and mistletoe in gay expectation. But tonight as he came into the house he saw at once an extra excitement upon her face.
‘Don’t say a word,’ she said quickly holding out her hand. ‘Not a single word! Just shut your eyes and come with me!’
He allowed her to lead him into the kitchen. There, on the table lay a number of parcels, clumsily made up, some merely wrapped in newspaper, but each with a little note attached. In a flash he realised that they were presents from his patients. Some of the gifts were not wrapped up at all.
‘Look, Andrew!’ Christine cried. ‘A goose! And two ducks! And a lovely iced cake! And a bottle of elderberry wine! Isn’t it kind of them! Isn’t it wonderful they should want to give them to you.’
He simply could not speak. It overwhelmed him, this kindly evidence that the people of his district had at last begun to appreciate, to like him. With Christine at his shoulder he read the notes, the handwriting laboured and illiterate, some scrawled in pencil upon old envelopes turned inside out. ‘Your grateful patient at 3 Cefan Row.’ ‘With thanks from Mrs Williams.’ One lopsided gem from Sam Bevan, ‘ Thanks for gettin’ me out for Christmas, doctor, bach’ – so they went on.
‘We must keep these, darling,’ Christine said in a low voice. ‘I’ll put them away upstairs.’
When he had recovered his normal loquacity – a glass of home-made elderberry assisted him – he paced up and down the kitchen while Christine stuffed the goose. He raved beautifully:
‘That’s how fees should be paid, Chris. No money, no damned bills, no capitation fee, no guinea-grabbing. Payment in kind. You understand me, don’t you, darling? You get your patient right, he sends you something that he has made, produced. Coal if you like, a sack of potatoes from his garden, eggs maybe if he keeps hens – see my poi
nt. Then you’d have an ethical ideal! By the way, that Mrs Williams who sent us the ducks – Leslie had her guzzling pills and physic for five stricken years before I cured her gastric ulcer with five weeks’ diet. Where was I? Oh, yes! Don’t you see. If every doctor was to eliminate the question of gain the whole system would be purer –’
‘Yes, dear. Would you mind handing me the currants. Top shelf in the cupboard!’
‘Damn it all, woman, why don’t you listen. Gosh! That stuffing’s going to taste good.’
Next morning, Christmas Day, came fine and clear. Tallyn Beacons in the blue distance were pearly, with a white icing of snow. After a few morning consultations, with the pleasant prospect of no surgery in the evening, Andrew went on his round. He had a short list. Dinners were cooking in all the little houses and his own was cooking at home. He did not tire of the Christmas greetings he gave and received all along the Rows. He could not help contrasting this present cheerfulness with his bleak passage up those same streets only a year ago.
Perhaps it was this thought which made him draw up, with an odd hesitation in his eyes, outside No 18 Cefan Row. Of all his patients, apart from Chenkin, whom he did not want, the only one who had not come back to him was Tom Evans. Today when he was so unusually stirred, perhaps unduly exalted by a sense of the brotherhood of man, he had a sudden impulse to approach Evans and wish him a merry Christmas.
Knocking once, he opened the front door and walked through to the back kitchen. Here he paused, quite taken aback. The kitchen was very bare, almost empty, and in the grate there burned only a spark of fire. Seated before this on a broken-backed wooden chair, with his crooked arm bent out like a wing, was Tom Evans. The droop of his shoulders was dispirited, hopeless. On his knee sat his little girl, four years of age. They were gazing, both of them, in silent contemplation, at a branch of fir planted in an old bucket. Upon this diminutive Christmas tree which Evans had walked two miles over the mountains to procure, were three tiny tallow candles, as yet unlighted. And beneath it lay the family’s Christmas treat – three small oranges.
Suddenly Evans turned and caught sight of Andrew. He started and a slow flush of shame and resentment spread over his face. Andrew sensed that it was agony for him to be found out of work, half his furniture pawned, crippled, by the doctor whose advice he had rejected. He had known, of course, that Evans was down on his luck but he had not suspected anything so pitiful as this. He felt upset and uncomfortable, he wanted to turn and go away. At that moment Mrs Evans came into the kitchen through the back door with a paper bag under her arm. She was so startled at the sight of Andrew that she dropped her paper bag, which fell to the stone floor and burst open revealing two beef faggots, the cheapest meat that Aberalaw provided. The child, glancing at her mother’s face, began suddenly to cry.
‘What’s like the matter, sir,’ Mrs Evans ventured at last, her hand pressed against her side. ‘ He hasn’t done anything?’
Andrew gritted his teeth together. He was so moved and surprised by this scene he had stumbled upon, only one course would satisfy him.
‘Mrs Evans!’ He kept his eyes stiffly upon the floor. ‘ I know there was a bit of a misunderstanding between your Tom and me. But it’s Christmas – and – oh! well I want,’ he broke down lamely, ‘I mean, I’d be awfully pleased if the three of you would come round and help us eat our Christmas dinner.’
‘But, doctor –’ she wavered.
‘You be quiet, lass,’ Evans interrupted her fiercely. ‘We’re not goin’ out to no dinner. If faggots is all we can have it’s all we will have. We don’t want any bloody charity from nobody.’
‘What are you talking about!’ Andrew exclaimed in dismay. ‘I’m asking you as a friend.’
‘Ah! You’re all the same!’ Evans answered wretchedly. ‘ Once you get a man down all you can do is fling some grub in his face. Keep your bloody dinner. We don’t want it.’
‘Now, Tom –’ Mrs Evans protested weakly.
Andrew turned towards her, distressed, yet still determined to carry out his intention.
‘You persuade him, Mrs Evans. I’ll be really upset now, if you don’t come. Half past one. We’ll expect you.’
Before any of them could say another word he swung round and left the house.
Christine made no comment when he blurted out what he had done. The Vaughans would probably have come to them today, but for the fact that they had gone to Switzerland for the skiing. And now he had asked an unemployed miner and his family! These were his thoughts as he stood with his back to the fire watching her lay the extra places.
‘You’re cross, Chris?’ he said at last.
‘I thought I married Doctor Manson,’ she answered a trifle brusquely. ‘Not Doctor Barnardo. Really, darling, you’re an incorrigible sentimentalist!’
The Evanses arrived exactly upon time, washed and brushed, desperately ill at ease, proud and frightened. Andrew, striving nervously to generate hospitality, had a dreadful premonition that Christine was right, that the entertainment would be a dismal failure. Evans, with a queer look at Andrew, proved to be clumsy at the table because of his bad arm. His wife was obliged to break and to butter his roll for him. And then by good fortune, as Andrew was using the cruet, the top fell off the pepper caster and the entire half ounce of white pepper shot into his soup. There was a hollow silence, then Agnes, the little girl, gave a sudden delighted giggle. Panic stricken, the mother bent to rebuke her, when the sight of Andrew’s face restrained her. The next minute they were all laughing.
Free of his dread of being patronised, Evans revealed himself a human being, a staunch rugby football supporter and a great music lover. He had gone to Cardigan three years before to sing at the Eisteddfod there. Proud to show his knowledge he discussed with Christine the oratorios of Elgar, while Agnes pulled crackers with Andrew.
Later, Christine drew Mrs Evans and the little girl into the other room. Left alone, a strange silence fell between Andrew and Evans. A common thought was uppermost in the mind of each yet neither knew how to broach it. Finally with a kind of desperation Andrew said:
‘I’m sorry about that arm of yours, Tom. I know you’ve lost your work underground over the head of it. Don’t think I’m trying to crow over you or anything like that. I’m just damned sorry.’
‘You’re not any sorrier than I am,’ Evans said.
There was a pause, then Andrew resumed:
‘I wonder if you’d let me speak to Mr Vaughan about you. Shut me up if you think I’m interfering – but I’ve got a little bit of influence with him and I feel sure I could get you a job on the surface – timekeeper – or something –’
He broke off, not daring to look at Evans. This time the silence was prolonged. At length Andrew raised his eyes only to lower them again immediately. Tears were running down Evans’s cheek, his entire body was shaking with his effort not to give way. But it was no use. He laid his good arm on the table, buried his head in it.
Andrew got up and crossed to the window where he remained for a few minutes. At the end of that time Evans had collected himself. He said nothing, absolutely nothing, and his eyes avoided Andrew’s with a dumb reticence more significant than speech.
At half past three the Evans family departed in a mood contrasting cheerfully with the constraint of their arrival. Christine and Andrew went into the sitting-room.
‘You know, Chris,’ Andrew philosophised, ‘all that poor fellow’s trouble – his stiff elbow I mean – isn’t his fault. He distrusted me because I was new. He couldn’t be expected to know about that damn carron oil. But friend Oxborrow – who accepted his card – he should have known. Ignorance, ignorance, pure damned ignorance. There ought to be a law to make doctors keep up to date. It’s all the fault of our rotten system. There ought to be compulsory post-graduate classes – to be taken every five years –’
‘Darling!’ protested Christine smiling at him from the sofa. ‘ I’ve put up with your philanthropy all day. I’ve watched your wings
sprouting like an archangel’s. Don’t give me the Harveian Oration on top of it! Come and sit by me, I had a really important reason for wanting us to be alone today.’
‘Yes?’ Doubtfully; then, indignantly, ‘ You’re not complaining, I hope. I thought I had behaved pretty decently. After all – Christmas Day –’
She laughed silently.
‘Oh, my dear, you’re just too lovely. Another minute there’ll be a snowstorm and you’ll take out the St Bernards – muffled to the throat – to bring in somebody off the mountain – late, late at night.’
‘I know somebody who came down to Number Three Sinking – late, late at night,’ he grunted in retaliation, ‘and she wasn’t muffled either.’
‘Sit here.’ She stretched out her arms. ‘I want to tell you something.’
He went over to seat himself beside her when suddenly there came the loud braying of a Klaxon from outside.
‘Krr-krr-krr-ki-ki-ki-krr.’
‘Damn!’ said Christine concisely. Only one motor horn in Aberalaw could sound like that. It belonged to Con Boland.
‘Don’t you want them?’ Andrew asked in some surprise. ‘Con half said they’d be round for tea.’
‘Oh, well!’ Christine said, rising and accompanying him to the door.
They advanced to meet the Bolands who sat, opposite the front gate, in the reconstructed motor-car, Con upright at the wheel in a bowler hat and enormous new gauntlets with Mary and Terence beside him, the three other children tucked around Mrs Boland, who bore the infant in her arms, in the rear, all packed, despite the elongation of the vehicle, like herrings in a tin.
Suddenly the horn began again: ‘Krr-krr-krr-krr –’ Con had inadvertently pushed the button in switching off and now it was jammed. The Klaxon would not stop. ‘Krr-krr-krr –’ it went while Con fumbled and swore, and windows went up in the Row opposite and Mrs Boland sat with a remote expression on her face, unperturbed, holding the baby dreamily.
