Dr Finlay's Casebook (22 page)

It cost her a frightful effort to complete the massage. Long before she had finished a sweat of weakness broke over her whole body. But at last he grunted:

‘That’ll do, that’ll do. Though little good it’s done me. Now bring in my shaving water, and see that it’s boiling.’

He got up, shaved, dressed carefully. A ring came to the door bell.

‘It’s Bailie Paxton,’ she announced. ‘Come with his gig to drive you to the match.’

A slow smile of appreciation stole over Ned’s face.

‘All right,’ he said. ‘Tell him I’ll be down.’

As he took his cap from the peg she watched him, supporting herself against the mantelpiece of the room. Sadness was in her face, and a queer wistfulness.

‘I hope ye play well, Ned,’ she murmured. How many times had she said these words, and in how many places? But never, never as she said them now!

He nodded briefly and went out.

The match began at half-past two, and long before the hour the park was packed to suffocation. Hundreds were refused admission, and hundreds more broke through the barrier and sat upon the
touch-line.

The town band blared in the centre of the pitch, the flag snapped merrily in the breeze, the crowd was seething with suppressed excitement.

Then the Rovers took the field, very natty in their bright blue jerseys.

A roar went up, for two train loads of supporters had followed them from Glasgow. But nothing to the roar that split the air when Ned led his men from the pavilion. It was heard, they said, at
Overton, a good two miles away.

The coin was spun; Ned won the toss.

Another roar; then dead silence as the Rovers kicked off. It was on at last – the great, the glorious game.

Right from the start the Rovers attacked.

They were clever, clever, playing a class of football which chilled the home supporters’ hearts. They were fast, they worked the ball, they swung it with deadly accuracy from wing to
wing.

And, as if that were not enough, Levenford were nervous and scrappy, playing far below their best, shoving the ball anywhere in a flurry. All but Ned!

Oh, Ned was superb! His position was centre-half, but today he was everywhere, the mainstay, the very backbone of the team.

Ned was not fast, he never had been fast, but his anticipation quite made up for that – and more.

Time after time he saved the situation, relieving the pressure on the Levenford goal by some astute movement, a side step, a short pass, or a hefty kick over the halfway line.

Ned was the best man on the field, a grand, a born footballer. He towered – this bald-headed gladiator in shorts – over the other twenty-one.

It had to come, of course – one man alone could not stem that devilish attack.

Before the half-time whistle blew, the Rovers scored. Not Ned’s fault. A slip by the Levenford right-back, and quick as thought the Rovers’ outside-left pounced on the spinning ball
and steered it into the net.

Gloom fell upon the Levenford supporters. Had the score-sheet remained blank their team might have entered on the second half with some much-needed confidence. But now, alas, a goal down, and
the wind against them – even the optimists admitted the outlook to be poor.

There was only one chance, one hope – Ned – and the memory of his emphatic words: ‘If the Rovers win it’ll be over my dead body.’

The second half began; and with it the precious moments started to run out. Levenford were more together, they gained two corners in quick succession; when attacked they rallied, and rushed the
ball forward in the teeth of the wind. But the Rovers held them tight.

True, they lost a little of their aggression. Playing on a small pitch away from home, they faded somewhat as the game went on, and it almost seemed as if they were content to hold their
one-goal lead.

Quick to sense this attitude of defence, the crowd roared encouragement to their favourites.

A fine frenzy filled the air, and spread from the spectators to the Levenford players. They hurled themselves into the game. They pressed furiously, swarming round the Rovers’ goal. But
still they could not score.

Another corner, and Ned, taking the ball beautifully, headed against the crossbar. A groan went up of mingled ecstasy and despair.

The light was fading now, the time going fast, twenty, ten, only five minutes to go.

Upon the yelling crowd a bitter misery was hovering, settling slowly. Defeat was in the air, the hopeless wretchedness of defeat.

And then, on the halfway line, Ned Sutherland got the ball. He held it, made ground, weaving his way with indescribable dexterity through a mass of players.

‘Pass, Ned, pass!’ shouted the crowd, hoping to see him make an opening for the wings.

But Ned did not pass. With the ball at his feet and his head down, he bored on, like a charging bull.

Then the crowd really roared – they saw that Ned was going in on his own.

The Rovers’ left-back saw it too. With Ned inside the penalty area and ready to shoot, he flung himself at Ned in a flying tackle. Down went Ned with a sickening thud, and from ten
thousand throats rose the frantic yell:

‘Penalty! Penalty! Penalty!’

Without hesitation the referee pointed to the spot.

Despite the protestations of the Rovers’ player, he was giving it – he was giving Levenford a penalty!

Ned got up. He was not hurt. That perfect simulation of frightful injury was part and parcel of his art. And now he was going to take the penalty himself.

A deathly stillness fell upon the multitude as Ned placed the ball upon the spot. He did it coolly, impersonally, as though he knew nothing of the agony of suspense around him. Not a person
breathed as he tapped the toe of his boot against the ground, took a long look at the goal, and ran three quick steps forward.

Then bang! The ball was in the net.

‘Goal!’ shouted the crowd in ecstasy, and at the same instant the whistle blew for time.

Levenford had drawn. Ned had saved the match.

Pandemonium broke loose. Hats, sticks, umbrellas were tossed wildly into the air. Yelling, roaring, shrieking deliriously, the crowd rushed upon the field.

Ned was swept from his feet, lifted shoulder high and borne in triumph to the pavilion.

At that moment Mrs Sutherland was sitting in the kitchen of the silent house. She had wanted badly to go to the park for Ned; but the mere effort of putting on her coat had shown how useless it
was for her to try.

With her cheek on her hand, she stared away into the distance. Surely Ned would come straight home today, surely he must have seen something of the mortal sadness in her face.

She longed desperately to ease the burden in her breast by telling him. She had sworn to herself not to tell him until after the match. But she must tell him now.

It was a thing too terrible to bear alone!

She knew she was dying; even the few days that had passed since her visit to Finlay had produced a rapid failure in her strength – her side hurt her, and her sight was worse.

An hour passed, and there was no sign of Ned. She stirred herself, got up, and put the two youngest children to bed. She sat down again. Still he did not come. The other children came in from
playing, and from them she learned the result of the match.

Eight o’clock came and nine. Now even the eldest boy was in bed. She felt terribly ill; she thought, in fact, that she was dying.

The supper which she had prepared for him was wasted, the fire was out for lack of coal. In desperation she got up and dragged herself to bed.

It was nearly twelve when he came in.

She was not asleep – the pain in her side was too bad for that – and she heard the slow, erratic steps, followed by the loud bang of the door.

He was drunk, as usual; no, it was worse than usual, for tonight, treated to the limit, he had reached a point far beyond his usual intoxication.

He came into the bedroom and turned up the gas.

Flushed with whisky, praise, triumph, and the sense of his own ineffable skill, he gazed at her as she lay upon the bed; then, still watching her, he leant against the wall, took off his boots,
and flung them upon the floor.

He wanted to tell her how wonderful he was, how marvellous was the goal he had scored.

He wanted to repeat the noble, the historic phrase he had coined – that the Rovers would only win over his dead body.

He tried sottishly to articulate the words. But, of course, he got it mixed. What he said was:

‘I’m going – I’m going – to win – over your dead body.’

Then he laughed hilariously.

The Resolution that Went Wrong

Though poets have assured us that man is the master of his fate, and novelists presented us with heroes who, having once set their teeth, grimly pursue their purpose to the
bitter end – in reality things don’t happen that way.

Life makes sport even of those gentlemen who so splendidly clench their molars; and, in spite of the poet’s assertion to the contrary, the bloody head is almost always bowed.

It would be pleasant to exhibit Finlay in the best Victorian tradition – a strong and silent youth whose glittering pledges were never unfulfilled. But Finlay was human. Finlay had as much
to put up with as you or I. And, often as not, circumstances played spillikins with his most fervent resolutions.

One afternoon, some months after he had come to Levenford, he was sitting in the surgery doing nothing. He was, in fact, quite glad to be doing nothing, for his morning round had been arduous,
his lunch heavy and late.

With his hands in his pockets and his legs stretched out, he reclined in his chair feeling the soporific quality of Janet’s suet dumplings steal pleasantly upon his senses.

His eyes had just closed, his head nodded twice, when the surgery bell jangled violently and Charlie Bell barged into the room. Standing on no ceremony, Charlie exclaimed:

‘I’m wanting my mother’s bottle!’

Charlie didn’t say it like that; what he did say was, in the roughest dialect of Levenford, was— ‘Am wan’in ma mither’s bo-all.’

But Charlie’s phonetics defy polite comprehension and must, with infinite regret, be sacrificed to more normal speech.

Finlay started in annoyance, partly at being disturbed, partly because he felt sure he had bolted the side door of the surgery, but most of all because of the rudeness of Charlie Bell.

He answered curtly:

‘The surgery’s shut at this hour.’

‘Then, what way do you leave the door open?’ Charlie retorted irritatingly.

‘Never mind about the door. I’m telling you the surgery’s closed. Call back again this evening.’

‘Call back! Me!’ Charlie jibed contemptuously. ‘I’ll call back twice for nobody.’

Finlay glared at Charlie – a thickset, burly youth of about twenty-five, with terrific shoulders, a pale, hard face, small, derisive eyes, and a close-cropped, brick-red head.

Well back on this bullet sailed a cap – known locally as a hooker – which he had not troubled to remove, and round his short neck a flamboyant red muffler was knotted carelessly.

Charlie’s air was altogether careless; from his earliest days he had never given a damn – not for anyone, had Charlie. As a boy he had played truant, been flogged, and played truant
cheerfully once again.

He had rung bells, broken windows, and led a juvenile gang, had frequently been drowned – almost – by bathing out of his depth in the River Leven.

If ever a stranger appeared in the High Street of Levenford, you may be sure Charlie’s voice was the first to raise the ribald yell – ‘Haw! Luk at his hat!’ – or
his boots, or his face – as the case might be.

He excelled at every game from football, played with a tin can in the gutter, to fighting – oh! fighting best of all.

Expulsion from school, when it inevitably arrived, was sheer delight. Then Charlie became a rivet-boy in the yard, where he heated rivets and tossed them to the holders-on aloft, not forgetting
occasionally to drop one into the jacket of a colleague – a blazing pocket made glorious sport!

That was years ago, of course. Now Charlie was a riveter himself, acknowledged leader of the crowd who hung about Quay Corner, the owner of a whippet bitch called Nellie, a regular lad, known to
his intimates as Cha, tougher, harder than the rivets that he battered into the iron hulls of ships.

And now, warming under Finlay’s stare, Cha thrust his head forward pugnaciously.

‘Luk at me! Go on and luk at me! But do ye hear what I’m saying? I’m askin’ ye to make up my mother’s bottle.’

‘It’s made up,’ said Finlay in a hard voice, and made a movement over his shoulder towards the shelf. ‘But you can’t have it now. It’s against our rules. You
must call at the proper time.’

‘Is that a fact?’ declared Cha, breathing hard.

‘Yes,’ said Finlay heatedly. ‘It’s a fact. And when you do come again, perhaps you’d mend your manners just a trifle. You might remove your cap, for
example—’

‘Holy gee!’ Cha laughed insolently. ‘An’ supposin’ I don’t?’

Finlay got up slowly. He was flaming.

Taking his time, he approached Cha.

‘In that case we might teach you to do it,’ he answered in a voice that trembled with anger.

‘Aw. Shut yer face,’ Cha answered flatly.

He stopped laughing to arrange his blunt features in a belligerent sneer.

‘Do ye think
you
could teach me anything?’

‘Yes,’ shouted Finlay.

Clenching his fists he rushed in at Cha.

By all the ethics of fiction there should have been a great fight – a magnificent combat in which Finlay, the hero, finally knocked Cha, the villain, for a boundary and six runs.

What actually happened was quite different. One blow was struck – one sad, solitary punch.

Then, two minutes later, Finlay woke up in a sitting position with his back against the wall, dazed and slightly sick, with blood trickling stupidly from the corner of his mouth.

By this time Cha, with his mother’s medicine in his pocket, and his cap more insolently atilt on his ginger head, was striding down the middle of Church Street, whistling a lively air.