by A. J. Cronin
Because he felt so deeply, he had learned to impose upon himself a rigid self-control that enabled him to sustain misfortune with at least an outward calmness. Bruised by adversity, whipped so often by mockery, he had striven to achieve such liberty of spirit as to care nothing for what was said, or done to him. Yet there were moments when he felt completely lost, when a kind of dread came down upon him and life seemed so unreal, so frightening, he felt he could not face it. He realised, too, that he had lost something he greatly prized, the sense of anonymity, of being unnoticed and unknown in the common flow of humanity. However he might conceal it, the strain told upon him, and even when the hubbub began to slacken, left him physically worn down and with an unusual feeling of foreboding.
He had taken to staying late in the shack on Tapley’s jetty. Here he would sit, with bent brows, gazing out at the black river, a sharp breeze ruffling the tide, a tug coming through the bridge with a tail of barges making red and green eyes in the night. The lapping of the waters, the beauty, the invisible essence of the night, softened him, but he forbade himself pity, thinking only of the work he had done that day and would resume tomorrow. Then in the darkness, he would walk home, holding to the shadows, as if striving to remain unseen, to Cable Street.
One Saturday, towards the end of the month, he was later than usual. When he got home at six o’clock he felt thoroughly done up and his throat, which had troubled him off and on all day, was peculiarly numb. Jenny had his supper ready, cottage pie, kept hot in the oven, and while he ate the comforting meal she sat at the table opposite him, watching in silence. She saw that he did not wish to talk. His look of exhaustion worried her, but she was too wise to mention it.
When he had done he took his usual chair by the kitchen hearth and, with his sketch-book on his knee, stared into the fire as though evoking from its red glow noble and heroic forms. She washed the dishes, removed her apron and picked up her knitting. After a few minutes he raised his head and became aware of her. It was the hour when they usually talked together, avoiding the painful issue of the moment, often of nothing more important than domestic matters, yet with an intimacy which he knew she enjoyed. Tonight he felt near to her. Sometimes in her, a simple quality of womanhood, of homely warmth, drew him. He began to relate the events of his day. But he had not gone far before his voice cracked unexpectedly and, instead of speaking, in his usual tones, he found his words coming in a husky whisper. The experience was no novelty to him, but in this instance came so suddenly that his wife’s eyes lifted sharply from her work. He saw her face change, then compose herself. After a momentary pause, articulating with difficulty, he said:
‘There it is again. All day I’ve felt I was going to lose my voice. And now I have.’
‘You’ve caught cold.’ She spoke logically and with the mild accusation of one who continually reproved him for neglecting himself, yet this was no more than a screen for the anxiety that gripped her.
He shook his head.
‘My throat isn’t really sore.’
‘Doesn’t it hurt when you swallow?’
‘No.’
‘Let me have a look.’
He submitted while, with a spoon from the table drawer, she depressed his tongue, and from various angles inspected the back of his throat.
‘I can’t see anything wrong. It’s not swollen or inflamed.’
‘It’s nothing.’
‘Maybe not,’ she answered firmly. ‘But you’re not going out on that river tomorrow. Not if I know it. That’s where you’ve had the chill. I shall tell the Cap’n tonight.’
‘Well … I have enough to go on with in the studio.’
‘Only if you’re better. And now you ought to have a good hot drink.’
She made him, with boiling water, a mixture of rum and her own black-currant preserve which she knew to be a panacea for afflictions of the throat – a scalding tumberful that brought him out in a grateful sweat. Then she persuaded him to go to bed.
Next morning, his voice had returned and he worked at his Thames all the forenoon. But after lunch he had another attack of hoarseness, and when he came out of the studio at four o’clock he had to admit, with a self-conscious gesture, that the trouble, whatever it might be, had completely silenced him.
‘That settles it,’ said Jenny with determination. ‘We must have advice.’
Handicapped as he was, he did his best to protest, but she was firm.
‘No,’ she reasoned. ‘We must know where we are. It’s different with something we understand, but this we don’t, so I shall just go round to Dr Perkins now.’
Her growing concern made her seize this opportunity to have him examined by the local panel practitioner, something she had wanted for a long time and which he had always put off. Resolutely, therefore, she slipped on her raincoat, went out, and in a remarkably short time was back with the information that Dr Perkins had gone off on a brief vacation. However, his housekeeper had promised that the locum would call as soon as he returned from his afternoon round of visits.
No sooner had she concluded than, without warning, he was again able to speak in a perfectly normal manner.
‘You see,’ he said, really put out, ‘you’ve made a fuss about nothing. It’s just a simple chill, or nerves, or something equally futile.’
Distressed, she gazed after him doubtfully as he again went to the studio to work, wondering if indeed she had not been too precipitate in her action. In this uncertain frame of mind she began to cut up some vegetables for the soup she was preparing for supper. An hour passed and still the doctor had not arrived. The attendance at Dr Perkin’s surgery on Saturday night was always large, and she began to wonder if he would come at all. However, just at that point the doorbell rang and, answering it, she found on the threshold a young man who immediately and without ceremony stepped into the hall.
‘I’m Dr Gray. Where is the patient?’
Jenny took him into the kitchen and, having called Stephen, left them together. The doctor put down his bag, removed his hat but not his overcoat, with the air of one sorely pressed for time. He was less youthful than had at first sight appeared, about thirty perhaps, and his blunt though not unpleasant features wore the harrassed and irritable expression of one thoroughly overworked in an environment supremely distasteful to him.
‘So it’s you,’ he said, in a marked Northern accent. ‘ What seems to be the trouble?’
‘Something quite absurd and trivial. But it has rather worried my wife. I keep losing my voice.’
‘You mean there are periods when you can’t speak at all?’
‘Yes, at least when I can’t make myself heard.’
‘Is your voice normal between these times?’
‘I think so. Perhaps a little hoarse.’
‘Have you any pain?’
‘None at all.’
‘No other symptoms?’
‘No. I have been conscious of a slight numbness in my throat. Imagination, no doubt.’
Dr Gray made an impatient sound with his tongue. Always imagination, another damned neurosis, he suspected, probably hysterical aphonia. Yet this man didn’t look like an hysteric, and the fact that he minimised his symptoms supported that view.
‘Let’s have a look at you.’ Then, as Stephen bared his throat, he added brusquely: ‘ No, no. That’s no good. Strip to the waist and sit down.’
With a heightened colour, Stephen did as he was bid. Meanwhile, the doctor had taken from his bag a round mirror which he now adjusted upon his forehead, and directing a beam of light upon the reflecting surface of a laryngoscope held at the back of the patient’s throat, he made a considered inspection. Then, without a word, he put on his stethoscope and examined Stephen’s chest. Finally, he evinced a certain interest in the ends of Stephen’s fingers. The entire investigation, although it was thorough, took not more than fifteen minutes.
‘You may dress now.’ The doctor returned his instruments to the bag, snapped it shut. ‘ How long have you had
a cough?’
‘A cough? Well … I’ve been bothered with bronchitis off and on for quite a number of years.’
‘Bronchitis, eh?’
‘Yes. I always had a weak chest.’
‘Always? Can’t you remember the first time you had a particularly bad cold, with a pain in your side, that kept on for a while, and just wouldn’t clear up?’
In sudden recollection Stephen’s thoughts went back to the drenching day of the Channel crossing and the weeks at Netiers that had followed it.
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘ about fifteen years ago.’
‘Ever had any bleeding subsequently?’
‘Yes.’
‘How often?’
‘Twice,’ he answered, suppressing the attack he had suffered in Spain.
‘How many years ago was the first? Could one say around fourteen?’
Again, a vivid picture of the past came to Stephen’s mind – Dom Arthaud bending over him in the bare, whitewashed monastic room.
‘Yes.’
‘I see.’ The doctor, having rinsed his hands at the kitchen sink, was drying them on a dish-towel. ‘You’ve had chest trouble all that time and a couple of haemorrhages? And you mean to tell me that you never bothered to find out what was causing it?’
‘I never regarded it as serious. And I was always too busy.’
‘Doing what?’
‘Painting.’
‘You’re an artist?’
‘Yes.’
‘Ah!’ Dr Gray, from solid industrial Manchester, compressed into that exclamation a wealth of ironic comprehension.
Suddenly a thought struck him.
‘Good God, you’re not the fellow that’s been in the papers?’
‘Does it make any difference?’
A pause.
‘No … no … of course not.’
He gazed at Stephen curiously, and despite his profesional insensibility, not altogether without feeling. What chain of circumstances, what careless, unheeding, persistent self-neglect had brought this queer-looking chap, obviously a gentleman, to such a pass without his knowing it? What was one to make of such a case? Worse still, what could one say of it?
The doctor, who was both skilful and ambitious, had undertaken this East End locum simply to raise enough money to enable him to sit for one of the higher medical degrees. He had no interest in this type of practice and conducted himself in it with almost brutal frankness. At present he could not forget that ahead of him was a steamy waiting-room, choked to suffocation with panel patients. Also, he had eaten nothing since one o’clock. Yet, in this instance, something restrained his habitual asperity. He sat down on the arm of a chair.
‘You know,’ he remarked, ‘ I have to tell you that you’re a pretty sick man.’
‘What is wrong with me?’
There was a short pause.
‘Advanced pulmonary tuberculosis.’
‘Are you serious?’
‘I wish I were not. You have an old-standing lesion in the right lung. And now the left is acutely infected. Your larynx has become involved … and extension …’
Stephen had turned pale. He steadied himself against the table.
‘But, I don’t understand. I’ve always been able to get about … I’ve felt all right …’
‘That’s the curse of this cursed thing.’ Gray shook his head in a kind of gloomy rancour. ‘ Insidious. The toxins even induce a sense of well-being. Spes phthisica, we call it. Can be quiescent, too, then suddenly goes on the rampage. That’s what has happened with you.’
‘I see. What is to be done about it?’
The doctor fixed his gaze upon the ceiling.
‘You ought to get a way to a suitable environment.’
‘Where exactly?’
‘To be precise, a sanatorium.’
‘I couldn’t possibly afford it.’
‘There are ways of fixing up these things … it might be arranged … through one of the hospitals …’ There was a forced note of encouragement in the doctor’s voice.
‘How long should I be away?’
‘At least a year, probably longer.’
‘A year! Should I be allowed to paint?’
Abruptly Dr Gray shook his head.
‘Far from it. You’d be in bed, my dear sir, flat on your back, in the open air.’
Stephen was silent, staring straight ahead.
‘No,’ he said, ‘ I couldn’t.’
‘For your own good …’
‘No, Doctor. I must paint. If I can’t go on with my work it’ll kill me.’
‘I’m afraid, if you do go on.…’ He broke off, shrugging slightly, and with a serious expression looked directly at Stephen.
Again there was a pause. Stephen moistened his lips.
‘Tell me the truth. If I stay here and go on working, what is the outlook?’
Dr Gray started to reply, then stopped. It was not his nature to equivocate, compromise was not in him. Yet something prevented him from bluntly communicating the truth. He said:
‘One can never tell. With luck you may go on for quite a bit.’
A silence followed. With a start the doctor seemed to recollect himself. He pulled a prescription pad from his overcoat pocket, wrote briskly, tore off the slip and handed it to Stephen.
‘Get this made up. A tonic, and a creosote spray for your throat which should effect a local improvement. Take care of yourself, drink as much milk as you can, and push down a tablespoonful of cod-liver oil three times a day. By the way, you’re married, aren’t you? – ask your wife to come in and see me at the surgery in the morning. The fee is three and six.’
When Stephen had paid him, he nodded, picked up his bag, put on his hat and, remarking that he would let himself out, left the room. The front door closed behind him, his footsteps could be heard on the pavement outside. Afterwards a strange stillness fell. Stephen stood quite motionless. Then, as Jenny came in from the scullery he turned his head.
She entered slowly, and from her expression, fixed and frightened, her desperate striving for control, he knew that she had overheard everything. They looked at each other.
‘You will go away, won’t you, Stephen?’
‘Never.’
‘You must.’
‘No, I hate hospitals, I won’t leave you, and I can’t give up my work.’
She came close to him. She could not think clearly, the suddenness of the blow had stunned her. Yet had she not all along had an obscure premonition of this calamity? Fiercely she blamed herself for accepting with such docility his casual glossing over of symptoms now revealed as the manifestation of a serious malady. Holding back her tears because she knew how much he hated them, she begged him to be sensible. But to all her appeals he shook his head.
‘If I’ve got this thing there’s not much they can do about it. But these doctors don’t know everything. Perhaps I’m not half as bad as he makes out. In any case, he says it’s only fresh air I need.’
As he said these words he lifted his head as at a sudden inspiration. Margate! It had always done him good. There he could get wonderful air, and all he wanted of it. Indeed, when he was so ill before, had it not completely cured him? He liked the place, had the happiest memories of it – and he could go on working there, in a quiet way. All at once, that optimism so characteristic of his condition caused his spirits to rebound. While she looked at him, rent by the deepest anxiety, wondering what he was about to say, he gave her the shadow of a smile.
‘I’ll tell you what, we’ll pack up here, let Miss Pratt and Tapley fend for themselves for a few weeks. And if Florrie’ll have us, we’ll go to Margate.’
Chapter Six
In the late afternoon, in the little back kitchen above the fish-shop, under a green-shaded lamp already lit against the autumn twilight, Florrie sat warming herself at the stove with the cat upon her knee, gazing towards Jenny, who occupied a seat by the table, with passive yet penetrating inquiry. A pot of tea and a plate of cut bread
and butter stood on a tray between the two women. Except for the slow tick of the clock, the room was strangely still. At last, as with an effort, Jenny roused herself.
‘Puss is shedding,’ she said.
‘Always does this time of year.’ Florrie stroked the quiescent animal, then flicked the soft yellow fluff from her fingers. ‘She’s a lovely coat.’
‘How long now, Flo, since we’ve been with you? Near seven weeks, isn’t it?’
‘Near enough, I suppose. Time does fly.’
‘You are good about it. It’s an imposition really. Only, the air does seem to help him.’ Jenny paused. ‘ Do you see an improvement, Flo?’
‘I see a change … and a big one.’ Florrie took a slow sip of tea, then put down her cup. ‘And the sooner you face up to it, the better for you, my girl.’
‘His voice is better. It don’t fail so often.’
‘That’s the least of it.’
Jenny lowered her head, compressing her lower lip with her teeth – she had fought hard in these past weeks and would go on fighting harder. Yet as she remembered all the ineffectual remedies she had tried, all the care she had lavished so unsparingly and with so little result, it was difficult to keep an overwhelming discouragement from settling upon her. What anguish she had endured, night after night, listening in silence to his deep, hollow cough – she would not take another bed, nothing could shake her splendid health, she only wished she could give some of it to him.
Courageously, she tried to shake off her depression.
