Long Acre

by Claire Rayner

  ‘So be it, sir,’ the voice came dolefully from the back of the gallery, and a faint ripple of laughter moved through the ranks of the young men, and for one brief moment Amy felt and shared in their camaraderie and wondered what it must be like to be one of such a band of students, to learn and observe and become a surgeon. And then almost smiled at her own absurdity, for who had ever heard of a woman being a surgeon? And returned her attention to Caspar, still lecturing below.

  ‘The muscles will be repaired with Lister’s own suture material, an absorbable organic substance he calls catgut, and which is prepared for use by prolonged soaking in carbolic. These sutures, once placed, need no removal nor are they extruded through sinuses of the sort with which we are all too familiar. Finally, the wound will be packed with a lac plaster also containing carbolic and the whole area will be enclosed in a firm splint, to allow the bone to heal. If we find signs of putrefaction appearing in spite of our use of carbolic, then we will know that the system is not all that Lister claims for it, and we will have to amputate the limb with great expedition. However, I shall be exceedingly surprised if that should be needful. I found Mr Lister and his work most impressive — ah, here is our patient —’

  And now Amy could not, would not, look. She leaned back against Mr Foster and he, nothing loath, set his arm about her shoulders and held on, while several of his student friends made expressive faces at him. But he ignored them; they too in their time had been known to smuggle their friends in to watch operations, for it was considered a most fashionable (if somewhat fast) form of entertainment in some sections of young London society. And his lady friend had every right to be here, for after all, was not the patient her own and only brother? And was she not alone and frightened in a strange country, far from friends and relations to care for her? But now she had him, and his arm tightened about her, and his fair round face glowed, for there was little doubt that Miss Amy Lucas was quite the prettiest and most captivating illicit guest the students’ gallery at Nellie’s had ever harboured.

  The scent of carbolic, pungent and acrid yet pleasantly fresh to the nostrils, came drifting up and she lifted her head and made herself look down again at the scene below. At first she could see little but the bent heads of the men clustered about the table but then one of them moved and she could see Fenton lying there, a sheet across his upper body, and his eyes closed above a pad of white gauze that was held to his nose and mouth by one of the young assistants. Even as she looked, the young man picked up a dark green bottle and with great care dripped some of its contents on to the gauze pad, and she jumped as Fenton began to cough and writhe.

  ‘Do not worry, Miss Lucas,’ Graham Foster whispered. ‘That is the chloroform, you know. It is to ensure that he feels no pain, and he will be quite insensible throughout the operation. There, you see? He is quite still, and quite out of pain —’

  She looked and saw two of the other assistants carefully unwrapping the dressings on Fenton’s leg, and moving it quite freely, but he made not a sound, apart from a faint snoring as he breathed, which noise she found comforting. So she sat up a little more and watched, her mouth half open and her eyes opaque with concentration.

  Somehow it was not Fenton down there now. He was asleep, quite free of pain and just was not there. So, she could watch with interest and no hint of guilt or fear at all, just as she had been used to watch with fascination when old Lewis at home had killed a chicken for the table and the cook had pulled its feathers and drawn its guts before cooking it. She had never found that caused any squeamishness in her — much to Cook’s disapproval — and now she felt just the same; quite entranced with all the newness of it, and the strange beauty of the exposed flesh.

  As one of the assistants pumped vigorously, sending a fine but quite visible spray of carbolic from the brass egg all over the table and Fenton, Caspar set about treating the wound.

  Using forceps and a long-handled tortoise-shell knife that he took from the table beside him, he rearranged the torn muscles, cutting away at the tattered edges of the wound to leave a clean line. It was as matter of fact and as ordinary as though he were a butcher cutting meat for a rich man’s table; the flesh beneath his implements looked as red, as fibrous and as commonplace as steak. To Amy it was so impossible a sight that all thoughts of Fenton, teasing, selfish, sometimes remorseful, usually thoughtless, but always lovable Fenton, were quite banished. The work being done in the bright circle of light below her had nothing to do with him at all. She could watch it all and feel no hint of anxiety or distress of any kind.

  Caspar threw the knife and forceps onto the table behind him, so that they clattered against a dish and made Amy jump and he picked up and threaded a curved needle with a length of greyish-coloured material he took from a glass dish, and Amy wanted to giggle. He looked so womanish and yet so heavily male that the contrast was comical. But then he turned back to the table and the exposed wound and her laughter vanished. Now he was all man again, even though he was sewing with stitches set with great delicacy. Amy watched, her eyes wide and unblinking as first one and then another of the torn edges were brought together and carefully sewn into place.

  Slowly, the hideous bloody mess that had been Fenton’s leg began to take a new form, began to be more shapely as, without one false move and with great dispatch, Caspar’s needlework went on.

  An assistant cleaned away any blood that dared to appear — and it really seemed to Amy in her gallery that Mr Caspar was so much in control of all that was happening that even blood obeyed him — until at last the muscles were all back in position, and all that remained to be set in place were the edges of the skin.

  ‘You will have observed, gentlemen,’ Mr Caspar said, breaking his silence at last, ‘that I have performed a cleansing and debridement of the wound, and removed all visible traces of foreign bodies. Some pieces of gravel that were there have now been taken out. Now, we wash the wound once more with carbolic — I am using it in a dilution of one part to twenty parts of water, for it is a powerful antiseptic. Lister has found that in its concentrated form it can cause damage to the skin that delays healing, but it is effective against putrefaction in this dilution — and now I shall suture the skin. I make the stitches as fine as I may, for this young man is, I am told, an actor, and as such one who cares much for the appearance of his body. It would be tragic, would it not, to sew his leg so awkwardly that he did not present a pretty picture when in tights.’

  The students above laughed at this sally, and looked sideways at Amy, but she stared on, not one whit put out by Mr Caspar’s jest; as far as she could see he had spoken no more than the truth, for it was indeed important that Fenton’s beauty, even of a part of his body usually undisplayed, should be preserved.

  ‘So, small stitches. When I started my career, gentlemen, we could not enjoy the luxury of seeking to confer a handsome result with our sutures, for the use of chloroform came when I was but a student, and we had already been taught to operate with great speed for fear of the patient’s pain. Indeed, medicine and surgery have made such remarkable progress in these past few years that I find myself wondering what is left to conquer! Just as the city we live in is being changed beyond recognition by all the building and reconstruction that is going on, so is our profession undergoing extraordinary changes. Ah well, I wax philosophical — there we are! As neat a bit of sewing as ever my wife performed, I am sure you will agree! Now, the splint — you two, set yourselves to the ankle, I will take this side, so, and Jennings, lie upon the hip — aye, that is the way. Now, have you the splint ready? Excellent, excellent! So, Jennings, hold tight, and you two — pull. Come now, harder than that — pull! You’re like schoolroom misses, you are so feeble! That’s better — pull — good lads! I think — yes, the fracture seems reduced. Let me see the other leg — uncover it! Aye that’s it. Hold it straight — yes, there is no shortening I believe — so, the splint — splendid — hold it close — aye, now the bandages — firmly, mind — splendid, splend
id! We will, I am sure, get a good union there, as long as Mr Lister’s pump has not let us down! You may stop your efforts now, young man — the stuff is making my face and hands feel quite numb —’

  It was all over. Amy sat and stared down at Fenton, now snoring in good earnest, his legs lying neatly side by side, one splinted, and one bare and elegant in the gaslight. As she watched, two burly men came forward with a stretcher and lifted him on to it, and throwing a blanket over him, bore him away, and suddenly, it seemed to Amy, the world had gone silent. As soon as the splint was in position the other students in the gallery had gone clattering boisterously away, leaving Foster and herself in sole possession, and now that Fenton was gone, so were the assistants and Mr Caspar from the theatre below. There remained only one of the nurses desultorily cleaning up the bloody towels.

  She opened her mouth to speak, and then closed it again, and tried to stand up, and felt her knees buckle beneath her, and Foster gasped and once more put his arm about her and caught her as she sagged helplessly against him, her head thrown back and her eyes open but quite blank.

  ‘Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear, oh dear — ’ he gabbled, and looked about him desperately for help, but still she lay against his arm, a dead weight, and there was no one to help at all. So, tenderly, and as carefully as he could, he laid her down on the bench upon which they had been sitting and began to chafe her hands and fan her face, still muttering, ‘Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear,’ beneath his breath. However effective a man of action he might be when faced with a traffic accident in the Strand, when faced with a faint in a lady for whom he had developed the most tender of feelings he was as helpless as an errand boy.

  She moaned softly and opened her eyes, to his intense relief, and he looked at her anxiously and said, ‘I am so sorry, Miss Lucas! I should never have let you — it is something that happens often, I am afraid, fainting in the operating theatre. Many of the students do — I knew I should have never let you come, but you were so set upon it that you would — would — oh, dear, I am so sorry — let me take you home, at once. Your brother will not be fit for conversation for some hours, indeed not until tomorrow, and I am sure you need your rest. I will take you home and then return here and remain with your brother constantly to be sure he is in good care and —’

  She shook her head dolefully against the hard wood of the bench, and tears pushed themselves out of each eye and overflowed onto her cheeks.

  ‘I have nowhere to go, Mr Foster,’ she said piteously. ‘The hotel — the place where we are staying I cannot return to, for we have used all our money and owe them so much for our account, and I — oh, Mr Foster, I am so hungry and so tired and I have nowhere to go at all! Can I not stay here? You seem to be a most important man here, and I am sure you can arrange it for me! Please, Mr Foster, will you? I cannot leave Fenton, for he is my own dear brother, but even if I could, where could I go? Until he is well I must stay here, I am afraid — there is nothing else I can do —’

  And now she wept in earnest, and Mr Foster, his young face creased with anxiety, took his handkerchief from his pocket and did all he could to dry her tears and comfort her.

  It took Amy more than half an hour to persuade him that to arrange for her somehow to remain in Queen Eleanor’s would not only be permissible but possible. Half an hour of tears — most of them quite genuine, for she was indeed exhausted, and frightened for Fenton, as well as exceedingly hungry — and tremulous smiles and sweet words, but at last he agreed, though unwillingly, to do what he could.

  ‘You must understand that it will be very difficult, Miss Lucas! I can see to it that you receive food — I live at home with my Mamma, you see, and I daresay I can bring victuals from our kitchen, and no one at home will know — I mean, that will be better than the food they give here. It is not bad, you must understand, but not very agreeable either, and anyway, Nellie’s is always worrying about money, and the rations for the patients are very carefully doled out. It is somewhere for you to sleep that is the problem and — well, there is that small cubbyhole that lies beside the ward where I know your brother is to be lain to recover. It used to be the office of the bursar, before the ward was made out of the offices there — oh dear, you are making me babble like a goat! I am so put about — but, well — we shall see — come along, Miss Lucas. Please to lean on may arm, so — yes — there now! We will go slowly and you will be very well — ’

  The ward, when they reached it, was busy, with several of the medical students bustling about as well as two or three of the calicoaproned nurses. Amy wanted to stop, to see Fenton, but Foster was adamant; he would still be under the effect of his chloroform, and Caspar would be most put out were she to arrive at his patient’s bedside at such a time. ‘Indeed,’ he assured her earnestly, ‘we must pass through very quickly, or we will be stopped and then there is no hope of doing as you wish.’ And unwillingly, Amy had to agree to move swiftly but with self-assured nonchalance across the expanse of wooden floor between the beds and through into the corridor that ran from one corner. At the end of the corridor was another door, and he opened it, turning a key that lay in the lock, and pushed it open.

  Once inside, she looked about her and smiled, still holding very firmly onto Foster’s arm, for her legs still felt very shaky, and she was far from her usual buoyant self.

  ‘Oh, you are so clever, Mr Foster, to think of this! Look — there is even a pile of mattresses I can sleep upon — are you sure they will not seek me here?’

  ‘I hope not, indeed,’ Foster said gloomily. ‘But there is this key to the door, you see? And if you make sure you slip in here when none can see you, and lock yourself in, you should do well enough. It is all wrong, you know, quite improper —’

  ‘I know,’ she said, and smiled at him sweetly. ‘Of course it is, dear Graham — may I call you Graham? But what can I do, alone and bereft in London as I am? I have no home, and no money — ’

  ‘You could stay at my house, perhaps,’ Mr Foster said, a thought which clearly cast him down from the heights to which her use of his given name had lifted him. He thought of his formidable widowed mother, and paled as he imagined bringing this beautiful and captivating but undoubtedly far from elegantly dressed young American to her, and asking for shelter. He could imagine her response and her basilisk eye all too easily.

  ‘I would not hear of it!’ Amy said stoutly, and much to his relief, ‘for I must remain close to my Fenton. You, I am persuaded, will understand? Have you a brother, dear Graham?’

  ‘Only — only a sister, Miss Lucas,’ Foster stammered, his face once more scarlet with pleasure.

  ‘Is she at all of my sort of size, Graham? And if she is do you think she would loan me a gown?’ Amy asked artlessly. ‘For you see how bedraggled I am, and there is no opportunity for me to obtain my luggage until Fenton is well, and we have the money to pay the hotel. They will insist on holding our possessions as a surety till then, I know. It is all very difficult —’

  ‘Yes — yes, of course. She is a little larger than you, perhaps, but — yes — of course.’ The infatuated Foster beamed at her, and then with one final grip of her wrist said, ‘I must go and leave you here now. I regret it very much, but I must see to my patients, for it is getting very late. I will bring you some food and — and a gown if I can as soon as may be, but it cannot be until after seven, when the nurses of the daytime leave the wards. At night there is but one nurse between two wards, and it will be easier to come and see you then, and settle matters — I will scratch on the door, so do not unlock it for any sound but this — listen — ’ and he ran his nails down the panels of the small door.

  She nodded and smiled at him again, and he smiled back, and then suddenly, with an awkward bob of his head, said breathlessly, ‘Miss Lucas, this morning I did not know of your existence. Now, I believe — I believe you to be the most remarkable as well as the most beautiful person in — in all the world. I — I am privileged to know you — ’

  And then, his fac
e flaming red, he bobbed his head again, and slid out through the door and closed it softly behind him and she stood in the middle of the dusty little room, looking about at the stack of old chairs that stood in one corner, the battered table with one leg missing that leaned drunkenly against another, and the pile of old, but apparently clean, mattresses that stood against one wall.

  She looked down at her dress, which had started the day looking so sprightly and fresh with its lemon sprigged ruffles and its darker yellow trimming but now sadly crushed and muddied, and grimaced and yawned and almost fell onto the mattresses.

  She was dreadfully tired and felt absurdly weak, but of one thing she was sure. Dreadful as Fenton’s accident had been and painful though his recovery would be, she knew he was going to get well, and still be able to use his leg. That man, Mr Caspar, had been so careful, so neat, and so concerned that it had to be, and when Fenton woke up from his chloroformed sleep, she would go out into the ward and tell him so, so that he need not worry any more. That, she told herself sleepily, is what I shall do. I shall go and tell him as soon as he wakes up —

  And she fell asleep herself with the suddenness of an exhausted baby, curled up on her pile of mattresses with her hair tumbling its rough curls round her sleeping face and her gown rumpled about her. Had Mr Foster been able to see her at that moment there is little doubt his already stricken heart would have broken completely in two.