Seven Dials

by Claire Rayner

  ‘No!’ he shouted aloud and turned away from the window to look round the big room, at the familiar old furniture, massive in its Victorian rightness, the thick carpet, dusty in the corners now where old Jenny couldn’t deal with it as the only servant left to care for the vast old house, at the huge dull mirror over the mantelpiece and the portraits of his mother and Johanna on her wedding day and the faded photograph of Tim, taken the day before he went off to France and -

  ‘This is real, this is real, this is real.’ He whispered it aloud the way he had taught himself to do. Somewhere deep inside himself he had known when he had come home that not until he could stop seeing everything around him as a wraith, not until he could reinvest the world with the solidity that he knew was still in it if he could only find it, not until then could he eradicate the visions that accompanied him all day as well as all night, the memories of Belsen at Celle in Germany and the months he had spent there in the last year of the War. And eradicate them he must, because if he didn’t he would go completely and utterly mad instead of hovering on the brink as he now was.

  ‘This is real,’ he said again, and this time it seemed to work for a moment. The furniture in the room became more solid, stopped looking almost translucent so that the visions of the parade of shuffling figures that accompanied him all the time faded and almost vanished behind the glow of dusty polished mahogany and silver and crystal ornaments. ‘This is real -’

  So real that the door opened and creaked as it did so, and there was Jenny peering round it, pugnacious in her fear of alarming him, as she always was these days, never knowing how he would be or how he would react to her.

  ‘Mr Peter?’ she quavered, and he peered at her, almost startled, and said, ‘Jenny?’ as though he wasn’t sure he recognized her, and her mouth drooped at that; she who had been a young nursery maid in this house when he had been born, who had known him all his life, to be greeted so!

  But she made no comment, and just gave a little jerk of the head to indicate that there was someone behind her.

  ‘Here’s Miss Letty and Mrs Lee to see you,’ she said, her old voice sharp and shrill. ‘So you mind your manners and talk to them proper and I’ll go and make them a nice cup of tea. Come away in, now, my dears, and I’ll see if I can’t find a bit of shortcake or something of that. I’ve been saving up Sir Lewis’s butter ration this three weeks to make it, but I don’t suppose he’d grudge it you, good soul that he is -’ And she went creaking away, her back bent and her head poking forwards, as Lee and Letty came into the drawing-room together.

  Lee stood and stared at him and felt tears prick her eyelids and she said nothing, not trusting herself to speak. But Letty stood there, her old Burberry coat tied firmly round her middle and her rain hat pulled down ferociously over her eyes, staring at him with her chin up challengingly and then she said, her voice loud in the dim and over-furnished room. ‘Peter? Ye gods, man, but you look ghastly! What have you been doing with yourself? Whatever it is, it’s high time you bloody well stopped!’

  8

  ‘Well, you’re tenacious enough, I’ll give you that,’ he said, and shot a sharp glance at her from behind the heavy rims of his owlish spectacles and then grinned. ‘Clearly a lady who prefers not to take no for an answer - I should have realized you weren’t English, but American. No Englishwoman would push at me this way. And I should know. I worked in the States. I was at the Mayo Clinic.’

  Her face lit up. ‘Really? I was born in Rochester, but the family went to live in Baltimore. I used to think of going to Rochester to train at the Mayo and then decided to go to our own Johns Hopkins. And then in the end I came here and trained at Nellie’s, after all. It’s odd how things work out, sometimes -’

  ‘You’re damned right it’s odd. I was born in Dunedin in New Zealand and here I am working in a tuppeny ha’penny country hospital in Sussex.’

  ‘Not so tuppenny ha’penny,’ she said, almost shocked, and he laughed and nodded, pleased with himself.

  ‘Of course it isn’t. It was, but it isn’t now. Famous all over the world, now, they tell me. And it’ll be even more famous. Just you wait and see.’

  ‘I’ve no doubt of it,’ she said and looked consideringly at him as he sat there on the other side of his desk, his heavy squared-off fingers playing with a paperknife, and marvelled a little. He was such a heavy stocky sort of man, with his bullet head with its cap of smooth greying hair, neatly parted in the middle and slicked down with some sort of brilliantine, and his air of self-satisfaction. She had more sense than to expect surgeons to conform to any kind of physical pattern; the idea they were all thin and ascetic with long sensitive fingers and suffering eyes was a figment of romantic imagination, and she had always lacked that, but all the same he was rather unexpected.

  ‘And that’s why I can’t take your chap,’ he said. ‘Because fame brings its problems, as you’ll find out when your time comes.’

  ‘I don’t think that’s very likely. -’ she murmured and he shook his head, jovial and more self-satisfied than ever.

  ‘If you never try, then of course you won’t. But if you want to be good then believe me, you can do well. Most people, especially in this country, are so damned lazy and so unambitious you really have to be very wet not to overtake ’em. But be that as it may - I’m overwhelmed with work. Or very nearly. And I’m not taking any but the sort of cases that other chaps can’t handle properly. I studied the photographs you sent me of your patient, and his injury isn’t one that needs me. Find another plastic surgeon to look after him. There are plenty of people who could do a good enough job. It’s not so bad a scar -’

  ‘But they wouldn’t do as good a job as you can,’ she said and lifted her chin at him challengingly.

  He accepted the compliment comfortably as though it were no more than his due. ‘No, that’s true. But they’ll do it well enough. It’s a simple enough operation, after all.’

  ‘He’s an actor. His face is too precious to allow for someone who’ll only do it well enough. It’s got to be done superbly well. And that means you.’

  ‘And I’ve told you. I’ve got too much pressure on my ward to take such a patient. My guinea-pigs need every bed there is available. They’re airmen, every one of them - or bloody nearly. If I brought in a civilian and that blocked a bed for one of these chaps, my name’d be mud. They’d have my guts for garters -’

  She lifted her brows at that, and he laughed again. ‘Don’t look surprised. We run the place on very democratic lines, you know. None of your usual hospital spit and polish. These boys of mine - they have to face the prospect of a lot of surgery. Thirty, forty, fifty operations, some of ’em. And then I’m still having to tidy ’em up from time to time. You can’t treat chaps like that as so much bed fodder. They’re people who have lives to live while we try to give ’em back some sort of semblance of faces and hands. So, we run the place in a way you’d find a bit odd. Come and see.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘I said, come and see. You’re obviously a stubborn girl, not going to take no for an answer easily - and I like that. Can’t be doing with namby-pambies who grizzle and whine and don’t stand up for what they want - but you can’t get your own way this time. I’ll show you why. When can you come and see?’

  ‘To East Grinstead?’

  ‘To East Grinstead. I’ll be down there later today. Take a train from Victoria - they’re pretty good these days - and anyone’ll direct you to the Queen Victoria. It’s the most important place in the town now - put it on the map, after all. Get there around four and I’ll show you round, introduce you to my guinea-pigs -’

  ‘You said that before - are they all being used for research, these patients?’

  ‘None of ’em and all of ’em,’ he said and got to his feet. ‘Every patient I operate on is a one-off. I learn something for the next fella for each one I put a knife to. But I’m not one of these wallahs who are panting to get their names in print in the Lancet or the BMJ.
None of that so-called research-paper writing for me, thank you very much. I’ve got far more important things to do. No, I didn’t label them guinea-pigs. They did that themselves. Got a club - I’m the president - and a pretty good one it is. Good drinking, good yarning and good care taken of each other. You’ll see. Four o’clock this afternoon. And now you’ve got to be on your way. I’ve got others waiting to see me -’ And he stood up and nodded at her and she had perforce to get to her own feet.

  ‘You still see some private patients here in Harley Street?’

  He frowned sharply.

  ‘Some. But I still wouldn’t take your young man, even as a private patient. I saw the pictures, and I just don’t think his is a case for me. I can send you to other reasonable chaps, as I’ve already told you -’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘No, he wants you. So do I. I just thought, if it was a matter of money for a private case - that wouldn’t be a problem.’

  ‘It isn’t a problem with me either,’ he said, and now his voice was a good deal sharper. ‘I’m just not taking him. Now, four o’clock at East Grinstead? Or shall we leave it at that?’

  ‘I’ll be there,’ she said hastily. ‘Four o’clock sharp. Thank you, Mr McIndoe. Goodbye till this afternoon.’ And she went hurrying down the thickly carpeted stairs into the lavishly appointed hall with its oil paintings and flowers in big bowls and out into the October bluster of Harley Street to stand on the kerb for a while, thinking.

  She had been so sure it would work the way she had wanted it to. It had been silly to be so certain, perhaps; his letter in response to her first approach to him, when she had sent him Brin’s photographs, had been uncompromising enough in its refusal, but for all that, she had been sure that if she went to see him herself she’d be able to convince him.

  And at first she’d been really hopeful as she’d sat in front of him and gone through Brin’s history, explaining, showing even more photographs, pleading for her patient. But though he’d listened courteously enough, he still had said no. Brin wasn’t a patient for him -

  But then she cheered as at last she turned and set out to walk towards Cavendish Square in search of a little lunch before making her way to Victoria Station and a train that would take her south east out of London to the heart of Sussex. He may have refused so far, but he hadn’t slammed the door entirely. To be invited to look at his ward at East Grinstead was a considerable step in the right direction; and to go there was as good a way as any she could think of to spend her solitary day off. So her step was jaunty as she made her way along the august pavements of the most famous medical street in the world. She’d get her patient treated by this man, somehow, she was absolutely sure of it. Because it was what she wanted more than anything in the whole world.

  But by the time she was back on the train in the darkness of the early evening, chugging her tedious way back to Victoria, her spirits were a great deal less elevated. She sat in the corner seat of her compartment, staring out at the blackness that slid past the windows, seeing not the absence of light nor the faint reflection of her own face that gleamed on the dirty windows, but the faces of the men she had seen that afternoon in Ward Three at the Queen Victoria Hospital.

  At first it had promised to be a cheerful afternoon. She had managed to find a taxi at East Grinstead station to take her to the hospital and had stood in the road with her back to the trees that fringed it with their amber and golden leaves, and the cheerful substantial houses warm with red brick and white paintwork and gardens alive with the vivid colours of Michaelmas daisies and late dahlias, staring at the place and liking what she was looking at. A handsome building, with lots of glass and a big central tower, it stood as a living memorial to the hopeful building boom of the 1930s when there was, in spite of the depression, money and time for the building of local hospitals like this. The fringe of temporary buildings and Nissen huts which had sprung up around it didn’t detract from its self-assurance and it stood there, benign and calm in the afternoon glow of a sun that had at last managed to break through the overcast of the cloud, and seemed to promise the fulfilment of her hopes for Brin. McIndoe would never have brought her here if he hadn’t meant to relent and accept him as a patient, she told herself as she made her way up the drive towards the main entrance. He couldn’t be so unkind as to drag her so far for no purpose.

  He hadn’t; but it had been for his own purpose and staring out of the train window now she felt herself fill with a moment of fury at the way he had manipulated her. But there was admiration in her too; he had the sort of determined driving pushiness she had always found rather engaging, and whatever he did to get his own way, it was clear to her, even after so short an acquaintance, that there was no malice in him.

  ‘Ah, Miss Lucas,’ he had said, giving her that owlish stare through the heavy glasses as she was shown into his small cluttered office by a starched rustling nurse. ‘Come to see my Ward Three, hmm? I can’t show you myself - got a couple of cases to get to the theatres this afternoon, but one of Blackie’s people will take you round. Good chap, Blackie -’ And he had nodded at her and gone pushing past her on his way out of the office, clearly dismissing her from his mind, and she had remained standing there, uncertain what to do and with a slow tide of anger rising in her, when a head was put round the door. It had a round amiable face adorned with a broad smile.

  ‘Miss Lucas?’ it said and as she nodded and the face came further into the room and showed itself to be attached to a body as round as itself, and which was wrapped in a white coat. ‘I’m Davey. One of the people who help Blackie - he’d come himself but he’s tied up this afternoon and the Boss said that you’re to be shown round Ward Three. So I’m here to show you.’ He had grinned then at the look of doubt on her face. ‘I know I’m just an orderly, and you can see that and you’re asking yourself what does an orderly know to be showing me, a lady doctor and all, round the ward? Well, I’ll tell you, Miss Lucas, I know better than most. Not as much as the Boss or Blackie, I grant you, or Sister, but a lot. Been on Ward Three I have since it all started, back in ’41 - five years hard I’ll have done -’ And he laughed cheerfully, and beamed at her and she couldn’t help but smile back.

  He had led her along wide clear corridors, talking all the time, pointing out to her with great pride various features of the hospital as they passed, and she went on smiling because his enthusiasm was infectious; and she nodded with all due expressions of admiration as he showed her where the pathological labs were, and where the theatres were and the corridor which led to the pharmacy and the other wards as though Nellie’s weren’t pretty much the same, albeit in a much older building and with less Vita glass about.

  ‘And here we are,’ he said with great pride as he led her out of the main building and through a covered walkway to a large hut. ‘Ward Three, in all its gory -’ And laughing delightedly at his own joke, he had pushed open the door.

  She had stood and looked down the ward; a long room with tall windows on each side, and with beds ranked under them in the usual way, rather closer together than they were at Nellie’s, but otherwise much the same. A good deal of dark green paint, enlivened in places with cream, and a ceiling that was a tracery of metal girders, bolted together. There was a coke stove with chairs set round it and there were a few trolleys and screens about, none of which was surprising. But still, it didn’t feel like an ordinary hospital ward and she looked closer and saw the battered grand piano in the corner and the long table with what looked remarkably like a barrel of beer on it, with tankards alongside, and explicit pin-up pictures of the sort that she knew were commonplace in barrack rooms but which would have caused an uproar if they had appeared in Nellie’s chaste wards, and blinked at the sight.

  The patients too seemed to be very different. None of the neatly arranged bodies in beds that were so marked a feature of Spruce where she spent so much of her working days. Here they sprawled on their beds in postures which would have made Sister Spruce go white with horror and then s
carlet with fury. They sat in groups playing cards or board games and in one corner someone was clearly working hard on a project that involved the use of cane and board and glue in great quantities and had spread it around lavishly. Some men were playing darts with a board pinned upon a screen, and another was tapping at a typewriter at a central table. There was a radio playing ‘Music While You Work’ very loudly, competing with a lot of laughter coming from a group who were clearly gambling - a totally forbidden activity in any hospital she had ever worked in - and altogether the place looked rather more like a private club room than the sort of hospital ward she knew. She turned to look at Davey and opened her mouth to say as much, and then closed it as she saw the great beam of delight that illuminated his face.

  ‘Every doctor that comes here from outside starts off looking like you do right now,’ he said with vast satisfaction. ‘Dead dumbfounded, that’s what. Really easy-going here, isn’t it? None of your usual sit-up-and-do-as-you’re-told stuff for our chaps, eh? But there, look at them - you wouldn’t expect it, would you? Not with what they’ve got to put up with, and the time they have to spend here. Not that they’re here all the time, of course. Pop out into the town, they do, when they want to, go on the occasional bender - though if they get too boozed up the Boss gives ’em the rough side of his tongue, I can tell you!’

  ‘I imagine he does,’ Charlie said weakly and turned back to look at the ward. ‘I - can you tell me about these patients? About their treatment, that is?’