Dr Finlay's Casebook

by AJ Cronin

  Late that afternoon as he walked down Church Street towards his surgery he was waylaid by Jessie Grant. She had plainly enough been awaiting him, for there was a fiery gleam of determination in her eye. Straight outright she declared—

  ‘Ye don’t need to come any more to my Duncan. I’ve finished with you and your do-nothing treatment. I’m taking him to Dr Lestrange tonight.’

  Caught completely unawares, Finlay could only stare at her, but at last he exclaimed – ‘You wouldn’t be so foolish!’

  ‘Foolish, indeed!’ she bit out. ‘I’m sick of all your hummin’ and hawin’ and orderin’ about, wi’ not a thing to show for it.’

  ‘But I explained it would be a long job,’ protested Finlay. ‘Duncan’ll be well in another couple of months. For heaven’s sake be patient!’

  ‘Ye’ve kept on biddin’ me be patient long enough,’ she cried fiercely.

  ‘But this Lestrange isn’t a doctor at all,’ protested Finlay indignantly.

  ‘So you say!’ flashed Jessie with a short, hard laugh. ‘But the folk say different. I’m taking Duncan to him as sure as my name is Jessie Grant.’

  And before he could say another word she darted a glance of final malevolence at him, and walked off down the street.

  For a moment Finlay thought of hurrying after her, but he realised quickly the uselessness of further protest. With a shake of his head he resumed his way.

  He knew Lestrange to be an impostor who could not possibly cure Duncan, and as such he left it, reflecting that nothing could result from the man’s intervention but disillusionment and humiliation for Jessie Grant.

  But here Finlay slightly miscalculated the methods and personality of the bold Lestrange. The so-called doctor had traded so long in human credulity he had become a past master in the art of roguery and deception. In his appearance, too, he was magnificently fitted for the part, tall and upright, with a patriarchal mane of hair, and a flashing eye which magnetised the beholder.

  Matching his own arresting figure was his chief assistant, a beautiful young woman by the name of Marietta, silent, dark, and liquid-eyed, whom he claimed to be the daughter of an Indian chief. Small wonder, indeed, that the unwary were beguiled by such high-sounding effrontery.

  That night, before a packed audience in the Burgh Hall, surrounded by Leyden jars, electric apparatus, and a weird instrument known as the Cage of Regeneration, Lestrange and Marietta worked their way steadily through their performance towards the climax of the evening, which was, of course, the demonstration of miraculous healing.

  Then, with a spectacular flourish, Lestrange called for the halt and the lame to be brought to him.

  The first case of all was that of Duncan Grant. Thrust relentlessly into the limelight of the stage by his mother, the little chap stood pale and trembling, while every eye in the crowded hall was turned upon him.

  Lestrange advanced dramatically and laid a protective arm on Duncan’s shoulders.

  With assumed benevolence, he placed the boy upon an elaborate couch, and, in full view of the audience, made what was apparently the most profound examination.

  Although his mask-like features revealed nothing as his hands slipped over Duncan’s leg, Lestrange was inwardly delighted.

  Although entirely without professional skill, long experience had acquainted him with those cases most adapted to his own ends. Duncan’s was exactly such a case, for the leg, under Finlay’s patient and persevering treatment, had responded finely. The swelling had subsided and the bone had healed; the ankle, in fact, was almost well.

  Straightening himself theatrically from the couch, Lestrange raised his hand as though to compel the attention of a multitude.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he began in his sharp-pitched nasal voice. ‘I will now proceed to demonstrate my powers!’

  Continuing, hypnotising the audience with high-sounding jargon, he condemned the old-fashioned bungling which had crippled the lad with a loathesome iron, then, in ranting terms he declared that he proposed to cure him.

  Beckoning Marietta, who came forward with a winsome tenderness never seen on the face of any trained nurse, he raised Duncan from the couch, and, assisted by his beautiful partner, led the boy to the Cage of Regeneration.

  Donning a long white garment, and drawing on rubber gloves, Lestrange took Duncan with him inside the cage. In a deathly silence various impressive rods and wires were adjusted; then in a stillness which was almost painful, the man’s rasping command rang out.

  Marietta threw over a lever, and the current passed in a quick crackle. Blue sparks ringed the cage with a screen of flame. Then the lever went back, the flame died, and the stillness was intense.

  Spellbound, the audience watched Lestrange stoop to remove Duncan’s leg-iron and cast it out of the cage across the stage with a gesture of triumphant insolence.

  Then, as Duncan came shakily out of the cage, walked a little, and, at the man’s hissed command, finally ran across the stage, a great sigh rose in the hall and swelled into a crescendo of sound.

  Cheer after cheer rang out from the wildly-excited crowd as Duncan came down the steps and rejoined his mother, while Lestrange, with one hand outstretched and the other placed on his heart, bowed to the acknowledgement of his mastery.

  It was a great moment – oh! a thrilling moment – for all within that tense, excited hall.

  On the very next morning, when Lestrange and his associates, a tidy sum of takings to the good, had placed thirty miles between themselves and Levenford, Jessie Grant burst into Finlay’s surgery with the light of baleful triumph in her eye.

  So vindictive was she and so triumphant that the words broke from her lips with the rush of a burn in spate—

  ‘You wanted me not to take the laddie to Dr Lestrange! You wanted to keep him crippled for life, nae doot! Well, in case you haven’t heard, I’d have ye know I did take him. And he’s cured – cured, do ye hear me? He started back in the yard this morning; he’s fit to do it in spite of all your bungling. That’s what a real doctor has done for him, and not a fushionless, know-nothing like yourself.’

  Finlay stared at the enraged Jessie, unmoved by her vituperation, but strangely perturbed at the unexpected turn of events.

  ‘Didn’t I tell you?’ he said slowly. ‘This man’s a rank impostor.’

  ‘He made the laddie walk without irons,’ she cried shrilly. ‘That’s a heap sight more nor you could do!’

  ‘But don’t you see,’ answered Finlay quickly, holding his temper in rein, ‘Duncan could have walked in any case. The trouble is that by putting away the irons too soon the good of all these weeks of treatment is undone.’

  ‘Nonsense!’ she shouted. ‘A pack of lying nonsense! I know ye. Ye’re only trying to save your face.’

  Finlay’s expression became a trifle strained.

  ‘Mrs Grant,’ he declared with firm gravity, ‘say what you like about me. I’m not thinking about myself; I’m thinking about Duncan. I beg of you to let him wear the iron for another two months. Just let me go on that little bit longer then . . .’

  ‘No, no,’ she interrupted in a passion of violence. ‘I’m done and finished with ye. The boy’s cured in spite of ye. So don’t ever dare to darken my door again.’

  And with a laugh of triumph and contempt, she turned and banged out of the surgery.

  Too late Finlay’s anger flared. He was furious.

  With a hot flush of indignation he cursed himself for having borne with Jessie for so long. She was beyond words. And he swore there and then to let her go her own intolerable way. He had warned her sufficiently; now she could run towards disaster and take the consequences.

  But, as the days passed and turned into weeks, Finlay’s resentment passed also, and instead he began to feel a deep concern for Duncan. It was his own strong professional sense allied to a profound instinct of humanity.

  And then, one Saturday in June, almost a month later, as he walked along Church Street, past the Public Library,
he came across Duncan, and all his suppressed feeling rose with sudden intensity.

  The boy, emerging from the library, where he had been spending his few free hours amongst his beloved books, was limping abominably, hardly daring to place any weight on his right leg.

  A pained frown formed on Finlay’s brow. He remained in the middle of the pavement directly in Duncan’s path, and despite the frown his voice was kind.

  ‘How are you, Duncan, lad?’ he asked quietly.

  Startled, Duncan raised his eyes from the ground, where they had been fixed, and at the sight of the doctor his pale cheeks flooded with colour.

  ‘I’m not so bad, thank you, doctor.’ He paused awkwardly. ‘At least . . .’

  ‘At least what?’

  ‘Well, I get about,’ muttered Duncan miserably. ‘I go to work. But, oh, I don’t know . . .’

  Finlay did know, however. As he watched Duncan go hirpling down the road he went home and raged to Cameron.

  ‘It’s iniquitous,’ he threw out in conclusion, pacing furiously up and down the room. ‘We’ve got to stop her. We can’t stand by and let her do this thing. The situation is impossible.’

  ‘Yes, it’s impossible,’ Cameron agreed slowly. ‘Impossible for us to interfere.’

  ‘But we must!’ Finlay cried violently.

  ‘We can’t!’ Cameron answered with a shake of his head. ‘You know we can’t. She’s his mother. We can’t enforce our treatment. I know that she’s hard and bitter on him – that she doesn’t care a hang for his welfare besides her own black pride. But makes no difference. You cannot get between mother and son.’

  There was a long silence. Then Finlay ground out from between his teeth—

  ‘She’s a bonny mother. She doesn’t care a pin for the boy. It’s an insult to the name to call Jessie Grant a mother.’ And, with a gesture of supreme contumely, Finlay walked out of the room and into the surgery, where he took a long drink of cold water, as though to cleanse a vileness from his mouth.

  The days passed, and Finlay, although occasionally referring to the subject when Cameron and he were together in the evenings, began gradually to become absorbed by other cases. He saw nothing of Duncan, heard no news of him, and eventually – such was the press of work upon him – fell out of touch with the boy altogether.

  And then one evening in the autumn Alex Rankin, a small and ragged urchin who often ran errands about the town, came to the surgery with an undreamed-of message for Finlay. It was a summons from Jessie Grant.

  Finlay’s first reaction was stupefaction. Then, flooded by the resentful remembrance of all Jessie’s bitterness and injustice, he told himself hotly that he would not go. But finally came the thought of Duncan, softening him, making him resolve to bury his own sense of personal injury and answer the call at once.

  It was a dark and squally night, without one single star showing through the heavy clouds which banked the sky.

  As Finlay rounded the corner and came into Scroggie’s Loan, the wind took him and almost bowled him from his feet. Jessie’s shop was shut, but a faint light was visible through the small, square-paned window.

  He pulled loudly at the bell, which jangled into the dim interior of the little shop, and was at once admitted.

  Inside, he did not speak, but stared across at Jessie, who stood, a silent, beshawled figure, her hands folded in front of her, her eyes fixed impenetrably on his, her face harsh and formidable. She muttered at last:

  ‘I want ye to look at Duncan.’

  ‘So I thought.’

  His tone was curt and hostile, and it seemed to him that in some vague fashion she winced. But her voice continued stern and indomitable.

  ‘He keeps girnin’ about the pain in his leg.’ A pause, then, as though the words were dragged from her – ‘And he doesna seem eager to walk, like.’

  At this something broke loose inside Finlay. He could have slain her for her inhumanity.

  ‘And what do you expect!’ he cried furiously. ‘Didn’t I warn you weeks and months ago that this would happen? I knew it was madness, I told you it was madness the way you were behaving, but you wouldn’t listen to me. You’re a bitter woman and a bad mother. You haven’t a spark of love or kindness in your whole body. You care nothing about your boy. It’s a crying scandal the way you’ve treated him all his life; you ought to think shame, once and for all, black, burning shame of yourself.’

  Again that faint tremor passed over her rigid body. But she did not answer his outburst except to say coldly—

  ‘Ye’ll see him now ye’re here.’

  ‘Yes,’ he shouted, stung beyond endurance by her icy indifference. ‘But not for you. For his own sake, because I’m fond of him, because I want to try to get him out of your clutches.’

  And without waiting for her reply, he turned away and walked into the back where Duncan lay.

  Jessie remained quite motionless, as he had left her, her expression still drawn and curiously remote. He was a long time, a very long time, but still she did not move. Indeed, as the minutes passed, slowly recorded by the moving hands of the old wag-at-the-wa’ clock behind her, she seemed to become more rigid, to contract, almost, into a statuesque immobility. Her features, pale against the dark shadows of the kitchen, were set and hard as granite.

  At last Finlay returned. He came slowly, in a manner quite different to his tempestuous exit from the room. He busied himself for a moment quickly adjusting the contents of his bag, then straightening himself, not looking at her, he said gravely—

  ‘We’ve finished with words now. It’s time to act – or it may be too late. The leg is in a shocking state. There is only one thing to do, and mark my words, it must be done quickly.’

  Silence. Her body, frozen and rigid, was convulsed by a violent inward spasm, yet her voice did not lose its stony note.

  ‘What is’t ye mean?’

  Again silence; he looked at her at last. His tone was quiet, studiously even.

  ‘I mean that your boy is seriously ill. The condition has entended. We must get him into hospital immediately, I think we’ll have to operate. Amputation!’ He paused, then spoke slowly, letting every word sink in. ‘Your motherly behaviour may have cost the boy his leg.’

  For a moment nothing was heard but the battering of the wind in the outer darkness; then, as though in the darkness of her soul there rose an echo of that fierce wind, she muttered harshly—

  ‘Ye mean – he’s like to lose his leg?’

  He nodded in silence, and, picking up his bag, went out into the blackness of the night.

  Duncan was taken to the Cottage Hospital in the ambulance which Finlay summoned, and within the hour made comfortable in bed. He was given a draught, and fell asleep at once. Then came the next morning, which broke fine and clear, and brought Finlay early to the hospital, torn by anxiety as to the fateful decision he must shortly make.

  In the clean and polished ward, bending over Duncan’s white bed, he made his re-examination, aided by the better light and the less fretful condition of the patient – testing, considering, balancing in his mind the case for operation and against.

  Finally, he seemed to reach a positive conclusion, and with a tightening of his lips he turned to the matron who stood beside him. But before he could speak, a young nurse approached.

  ‘His mother wants to see you, doctor. She’s been waiting since six o’clock this morning. She says she must see you, and simply won’t take No.’

  Finlay made to brush the request away, then suddenly checked himself. On sudden impulse he went into the visitor’s room where Duncan’s mother awaited him.

  And there, on the threshold, he paused. Jessie Grant was in the room sure enough – yes, it was she, though in the ordinary way never would Finlay have known her. She had a shrunken, shilpit look, as if she had fallen into herself, and in the space of that one short night her hair had turned to the colour of driven snow. Rocking herself back and forward, she was like a woman demented, wringing her hand
s like she was wrestling with something. And all the time moaning out Duncan’s name. Then she lifted her head and saw Finlay. Instantly she came forward, her face revealing an emotion that was incredible.

  ‘Doctor,’ she grasped his arm, her speech broken and distraught. ‘Tell me about him. Ye can’t do it – ye won’t take off his leg?’

  He stared at her changed and ravaged features, bewildered, doubting the evidence of his senses. At last he said slowly—

  ‘You’re a bit late, surely, with your concern.’

  But she only clutched his arm the more, her voice desperate.

  ‘Don’t ye understand, doctor?’ Her whole body shuddered as with pain. ‘I never kenned I loved the boy. But I do, doctor. I do. I’ve brought him up hard. I was feared he would turn out like his father, weak and soft, and a wastrel. I’ve used him sore and ill, but in my heart, doctor, I ken now that I love him.’

  Finlay continued to gaze at her, profoundly troubled, half-doubting, half-believing this agonised revelation. She rushed on frantically—

  ‘I’ve done wrong, doctor. I admit it freely. But I’ll make up for it. Oh, I’ll do anything you say. But for the love of the Almighty, spare my boy his leg.’

  Now there was no mistaking the frenzied pleading in her tone. His eyes fell before the agony that lay open and naked in her face. There was a long silence. Then in a low voice he said—

  ‘I’ve already made up my mind not to operate. I think, after all, we can save the leg. It’ll mean months and months of treatment in plaster lying up here in the hospital.’

  ‘Oh, doctor,’ she breathed, as though it were a prayer, ‘Never mind that if you’ll just get him right.’

  He did not answer. But, rooted to the ground at a strange and moving sound, he stood in pity and in wonder. It was the fearsome sound of Jessie’s sobbing.

  The tobacconist’s shop in Scroggie’s Loan has changed hands now, and Jessie Grant is seen in it no more. But there is a little white-haired woman, very gentle and quiet, who keeps house for Duncan Grant, the young classical master at Levenford Academy, in a small, neat villa out by the Garslake Road.