A Song of Sixpence (10 page)

‘Don't worry, my boy. St Mary's is only a stopgap. Things are going to turn up trumps for you pretty soon.'

He was in excellent spirits these days. The change of air undoubtedly suited him. He enjoyed the express, luxurious train service between Winton and Ardfillan for which he had a first-class season ticket. He was rising in the world, an unmistakable promise of prosperity was implied in his words, his manner, his elegant, well-groomed person. He seemed quite recovered from his strange mishap on the Ardencaple shore and did not fail to remind us that his own efforts were mainly responsible for this happy result. When we left Ardencaple Dr Duthie had given him a note of introduction to a colleague in Ardfillan. This was Dr Ewen, a thin, stooping, soft-stepping, elderly little man with hollow cheeks and a tuft of grey beard always carefully trimmed to a point. With his silent approach, almost on tiptoe, his manner maintained a gravity unvaryingly professional, and he was known to be clever.

At first sight Father disliked him. ‘He has a graveyard face,' he reported to Mother and thereafter, although periodic examinations had been advised, he reduced his visits to the doctor's house to a minimum, and had recently allowed them to lapse altogether. Mother half suspected that some sort of disagreement had occurred, that Father had, as she put it, ‘fallen out' with Dr Ewen. On the other hand, on principle, he had never liked doctors; his amused and sceptical distrust of the profession had long been a feature of our household. ‘Burnt sugar and water,' he would scoff with a shake of his head, indulgent towards our gullibility, as he watched Mother—who had a steady belief in tonics and administered them to me regularly—measuring out a tablespoonful of my Parrish's Chemical Food.

He believed in nature and in the natural restorative powers of the body. Thus while conforming to the rules of hygiene imposed by Dr Duthie—whose strong words, which had probably shaken him when they were delivered, still retained some force—he followed confidently a health régime of his own. He had evolved an elaborate system of breathing exercises, and a diet rich in butter and cream supported—though he was always a temperate drinker—by Guiness's stout. He slept between blankets with the window open, wore woollen underwear next the skin, and red rubber soles to his shoes.

So all was going well with Father, and with us. Yet gradually it dawned on me that Mother was not altogether satisfied with Father's interpretation of his own condition. How was this made evident? Perhaps in her extra solicitude towards him, yet more probably by those moments of abstraction when she would pause suddenly in her work as though a sudden anxiety had dispossessed her happiness, and a play of shadows and reflections would flit across her face, imperceptible almost yet revealing to one who translated everything, even her most obscure expressions, with complete and intuitive fidelity.

One evening, as I sat at the table doing my homework, Mother, who was knitting by the fire, said reflectively and with a casual air, that did not deceive me:

‘Conor, dear, isn't it about time you were looking in on Dr Ewen again?'

Father, reading his
Evening Times
in the easy chair, did not appear to have heard. Then slowly he lowered the paper, looked fixedly at Mother over the top edge.

‘I beg your pardon?'

Nerving herself now, Mother repeated her remark, which undoubtedly Father had heard. He studied her.

‘Is there any apparent reason why I should go to see your Dr Ewen?'

‘No, Conor. Still, you were advised to have an examination once in a while. And you haven't been to see him for ages.'

‘True,' said Father, in his most sententious tones. ‘However, as I can't stand the man and always felt worse after I'd been to him than before I went, I decided, reasonably and sensibly, to stay away. In plainer language, I have no faith in him.'

‘That's rather odd. He's very highly regarded in the town and has a first-class practice.'

‘Yes, he caters for the idle rich and panders to them accordingly. He may have a practice but he's not
practical.
'

‘How can you say such a thing?'

‘Because I found him so.' Father spoke heatedly. ‘If you can believe it, he actually wanted me to knock off work for three months and take a long sea voyage to Madeira. Sea voyage indeed! That may be all right for the old ladies he looks after but it's no use to me.'

He broke off, looking as though he had said too much, and attempted to resume his paper. But Mother forestalled him.

‘Yes,' she said equably, still knitting and revealing nothing of the shock she had received, ‘I admit Ewen is fussy. Still, there are other doctors. And I do think you ought to find one you can like.'

‘But why?'

‘Well … to find out how you're getting on. After all, you haven't quite got rid of your cough.'

Father was frowning at her uneasily.

‘It's nothing, I've told you a dozen times I've always had that tendency.'

‘Still …' Persuasively, Mother lowered her knitting and leaned forward. ‘ Isn't there a doctor you know of in Winton who could occasionally look you over?'

There was a silence. I waited, my eyes on my book, expectant of an indignant outburst, or at least a dignified and magniloquent refusal. Instead, Father yielded, though half grudgingly:

‘Well, lass, if it pleases you … there's a chap near my office. Medical Officer for the Caledonia Insurance Company. I run into him occasionally. Since you're so insistent. I might drop in one day and see him for you.'

Ignoring the onus Father had skilfully put on her, Mother gave a soft sigh of relief which, though suppressed, was still audible.

‘Then go, Conor. Why not go tomorrow?'

Father, having resumed his paper, apparently took no notice.

On the following evening when he returned Mother met him at the door in the usual way. As they came in together I noticed nothing wrong in Father's expression except that he seemed tired. But often, when he had been unusually busy, he looked tired. During dinner, which was nicer than usual, with the beef stew Father liked, he ate with a good appetite. No reference was made to the conversation of the day before. When I had finished I moved to my seat by the window with a book. Only then did I hear Mother say, in a low voice:

‘Well?'

Father did not immediately answer. When he did, his voice was calm, rather thoughtful.

‘Yes, I went. Dr Macmillan. A very decent sort. It appears that you were right, Grace. Apparently one of my lungs is slightly affected.'

‘Affected? But with what?'

‘With … well …' Father did not want to say it, but he had to. ‘A bit of a touch of T.B.'

‘Oh, Con … is it serious?'

‘Now don't get alarmed. After all, it's nothing unusual. A common complaint. Lots of people get it. And they get over it.'

I heard Mother's breath go out in a long troubled sigh. Then she reached slowly across the table and pressed Father's hand.

‘At least now we know where we stand. You'll give up now and really get well. Go to a sanatorium or take a sea voyage, like Dr Ewen advised.'

‘Yes, I'll go. It's to be sanatorium apparently. I'll go like a shot. I promise you. But not quite yet'

‘Conor! You must go at once.'

‘No.'

‘You must.'

‘It's impossible, Grace. Simply can't be done. Every penny we've got is in the yeast. I've even borrowed from the bank. And all my plans are just coming to a head.'

‘What does money matter at a time like this?'

‘It's not the money. I'm doing well. But the business is young, you know it's a one man affair, and there's something extra special come up with the U.D. L. that I
have
to be there for, I simply can't leave, with the next few months going to be so critical.'

‘Oh, Con … Con … I don't know what you're talking about with your U.D.L. It's you, and your health, that come first.'

‘Now, Grace, we must be sensible. For your sake and the boy's, as well as my own. U.D.L. is United Distillers Limited, one of the biggest companies in the country, and they're definitely, yes positively interested in my yeast. I'm sure I can bring off an amalgamation in a matter of three, perhaps only two months. Such a short time, lass. After that I'll be free to take a six, even nine months' rest to get well. In the meantime, I can work shorter hours, take an extra day off once in a while. I'll be careful, extra careful in every way. I've thought it all over in the train coming home. I'll do everything you say except throw away all I've worked and sweated and hoped for. It would be madness just when I'm in sight of the chance of a lifetime.'

In their intensity of feeling they had both forgotten me. I stole a fearful glance at Mother. Tears were beginning to bud beneath her eyes. I knew that she was beaten and that Father would have his way.

Yet for once my sympathies were with him. At that moment, and all through the period that followed, I never for a moment doubted my father. My confidence in his astuteness, judgement, and general aplomb, confirmed by scores of instances in which I had seen him carry off a difficult situation without turning a hair, remained absolute and unshakable. Even in his few failures, he had somehow managed to remove the implication of defeat by a final attitude of amused or careless indifference. His two phrases ‘ leave it to me'and ‘I know what I'm doing', uttered calmly and confidently, had become for me the touchstones of triumphant achievement.

Mother no longer sang as she went about her work. I failed to understand her constant air of stress. In her worried state she had been driven to confide in Miss Greville and to seek relief in our neighbour's sympathetic response. Yet as the days slipped past, all was going according to plan. Father certainly did not look ill. His colour, always ruddy, remained good, his eye was bright and he had suffered no loss of appetite. As he had promised, while never affecting the attitudes of invalidism, he was taking care of himself, avoiding the worst of the weather, and taking things easy during long week-ends. If he still coughed, expectorating surreptitiously into the little flask he now carried for that purpose, then in only a short time, a matter of weeks, he would go away—Switzerland, suggested by Miss Greville, was now definitely agreed upon—and be quickly cured. Meanwhile he was persisting with his own herbal remedies, periodically he called upon Mother to massage his chest with olive oil and one evening he came back from the city with a strange appliance, which he introduced to us confidently as a medicated inhaler. This consisted of a metal canister with a spirit lamp beneath and a length of rubber tubing fitted with a mouthpiece above. Water and a special mixture of herbs, supplied with the apparatus, went into the canister, the lamp was lit and when the hot medicated steam hissed out Father faithfully breathed in. And all this, and the rest, was carried out with a sanguine assurance of recovery that would have been comic if, in the light of what followed, it had not proved to be so tragic.

In later years, when I came to analyse this obstinate folly, the reasons were not far to seek. Father was an ambitious man who constantly took risks. He knew the danger of delaying his cure but, since his business had reached a crucial stage, which if successfully passed would elevate him to a position of real importance, associated, as was later revealed, with his mention of the U.D.L.—letters which, to my youthful mind, assumed a cabalistic significance—he was prepared, in his own phrase, ‘to chance it,' for all our sakes. There was courage here, yet beyond this natural hardihood the superabundant optimism of his Irish temperament betrayed him into the belief that his gamble must come off. But above all, his conduct could most truly be explained by a strange and characteristic manifestation of the actual malady itself and which, years later, I came to recognize as the
spes phthisica
, a false and persistent hope, engendered in the nervous system by the toxins of the disease, the false illusion of ultimate cure and complete recovery.

Father had this to a marked extent and, inevitably, communicated it in varying degree to Mother and me. We were quite unprepared for the calamity that followed.

The month was March, as far as I remember the second week, and it must have been towards two o'clock in the morning that I awakened. Through persistent mists of sleep I had the dim and unreasoning sensation that Mother was calling me. Suddenly, as I was about to turn over, I heard her voice, very loud, and charged with such a fearful urgency that I immediately sat up.

‘Laurence! Laurence! Come here!'

I got out of bed. My room was dark but when I opened the door the lights in the hall were on. The door of Father's bedroom was half open and from within Mother called again. The dread of some terrible disaster held me back, but I went forward and into the room. It is a moment I have never forgotten.

Father lay on his side with his head over the edge of the bed. He was coughing, coughing and coughing, as though he would never stop, and from his lips a bubbling scarlet stream gushed out. His face was the colour of clay. Mother knelt by the side of the bed. One hand held Father's head, the other with difficulty supported the big white basin from the washstand. The basin was half full of that scarlet froth which, all at once, sick with horror, I knew to be blood. There was blood everywhere, on the sheets of the disordered bed, spattered on Mother's nightdress, even on her hands and face. Without changing her position or taking her eyes from Father, Mother spoke to me, in that same strained note of anguished command.

‘Laurie! Run for Dr Ewen. Go now. Immediately. Hurry, for pity's sake.'

I turned and ran, ran from sheer shock. Without stopping to put on my jersey and trousers, a sensible act that would have delayed me not more than half a minute, I ran straight out of the house into the street in nothing but my nightshirt. Barefooted I scudded along the pavement of the Terrace, my heart already beating against my ribs. The darkness made my speed seem beyond all human speed. I knew that never before had I run so fast. At the end of Prince Albert Road I swung into Colquhoun Crescent, then downhill to Victoria Street where, ahead of me, halfway to the Esplanade, I saw the red lamp outside Dr Ewen's house. A square, ornamental lamp embossed with the town arms—he had once been Provost of Ardfillan. Not a soul was in sight. The empty silence was broken only by my gasping breaths as I ran and ran, into the doctor's driveway at last, not caring for the hurt of the gravel on my feet, and up the steps of his front porch. I pressed the night bell long and hard, heard it buzz loudly within the house. For some painful moments of suspense nothing stirred, then as I pressed again a light went on upstairs. Presently the door was unlocked. The doctor stood there in his dressing-gown.