The Citadel (30 page)

Occasionally Gill came to lunch with them. Hope’s phrase for Gill was characteristic: a good little egg. Though veneered by his thirty years in the Civil Service – he had worked his way from boy clerk to principal – Gill was human underneath. In the office he functioned like a well oiled, easy-moving little machine. He arrived from Sunbury by the same train every morning, returned, unless he was ‘detained’, by the same train every night. He had in Sunbury a wife and three daughters and a small garden where he grew roses. He was superficially so true to type he might have stood as a perfect pattern of smug suburbia. Yet there existed, beneath, a real Gill who loved Yarmouth in winter and always spent his holiday there in December, who had a queer Bible, which he knew almost by heart, in a book named
Hadji Baba
, who – for fifteen years a fellow of the Society – was quite fatuously devoted to the penguins in the Zoo.

Upon the occasion Christine made a fourth at this table. Gill surpassed himself in upholding the civility of the Service. Even Hope behaved with admirable gentility. He confided to Andrew that he was a less likely candidate for the strait jacket since meeting Mrs Manson.

The days slipped past. While Andrew waited for the meeting of the Board, Christine and he discovered London. They took the steamboat trip to Richmond. They chanced upon a theatre named the Old Vic. They came to know the windy flutter of Hampstead Heath, the fascination of a coffee-stall at midnight. They walked in the Row and rowed on the Serpentine. They solved the delusion of Soho. When they no longer had occasion to study the Underground maps before entrusting themselves to the Tube they began to feel that they were Londoners.

The afternoon of the 18th of September brought the MFB council together, and to Andrew, at last. Sitting beside Gill and Hope, conscious of the latter’s flippant glances upon him, Andrew watched the members roll into the long gilt-corniced Boardroom: Whinney, Doctor Lancelot Dodd-Canterbury, Challis, Sir Robert Abbey, Gadsby and finally Billy Buttons Dewar himself.

Before Dewar’s entry Abbey and Challis had spoken to Andrew – Abbey a quiet word, the professor an airy gush of graciousness – congratulating him upon his appointment. And whenever Dewar came in he veered upon Gill, exclaiming in his peculiar high-pitched voice:

‘Where is our new Medical Officer, Mr Gill? Where is Doctor Manson?’

Andrew stood up, confounded at Dewar’s appearance, which transcended even Hope’s description. Billy was short, bowed and hairy. He wore old clothes, his waistcoat much dropped upon, his greenish overcoat bulging with papers, pamphlets and the memoranda of a dozen different societies. There was no excuse for Billy for he had much money and daughters, one of them married to a millionaire peer, but he looked now, and he always looked, like a neglected old baboon.

‘There was a Manson at Queens with me in eighteen-eighty,’ he squeaked benevolently by way of greeting.

‘This is he, sir,’ murmured Hope, to whom the temptation was irresistible.

Billy heard him. ‘ How would
you
know, Doctor Hope?’ He squinted urbanely over the steel-rimmed pince-nez on the end of his nose. ‘You weren’t even in swaddling clothes then. Hee! Hee! Hee! Hee!’

He flapped away, chuckling, to his place at the head of the table. None of his colleagues, who were already seated, took any notice of him. Part of the technique of this Board was a proud unawareness of one’s neighbours. But this did not dismay Billy. Pulling a wad of papers from his pocket he took a drink of water from the carafe, picked up the little hammer in front of him and hit the table a resounding thwack.

‘Gentlemen, gentlemen! Mr Gill will now read the minutes.’

Gill, who acted as secretary to the Board, rapidly intoned the minutes of the last meeting, while Billy, giving to this chanting no attention whatsoever, alternately pawed amongst his papers and let his eye twinkle benevolently down the board towards Andrew whom he still vaguely associated with the Manson of Queens, 1880.

At last Gill finished. Billy immediately wielded the hammer.

‘Gentlemen! We are particularly happy to have our new Medical Officer with us today. I remember, as recently as nineteen hundred and four, I emphasised the need of a permanent clinician who should be attached to the Board as a solid adjuvant to the pathologists whom we occasionally
filch
, gentlemen – hee! hee! – whom we occasionally filch from the Backhouse Research. And I say this with all respect of our young friend Hope on whose charity – hee! hee! – on whose charity we have been so largely dependent. Now I well remember as recently as eighteen-eighty-nine …’

Sir Robert Abbey interposed:

‘I’m sure, sir, the other members of the Board wish to join you wholeheartedly in congratulating Doctor Manson on his silicosis paper. If I may say so, I felt this to be a particularly patient and original piece of clinical research and one which, as the Board well knows, may have the most far-reaching effects upon our industrial legislation.’

‘Hear, hear,’ boomed Challis, supporting his protégé.

‘That is what I was about to say, Robert,’ said Billy peevishly. To him Abbey was still a young man, a student almost, whose interruptions demanded mild reproof. ‘When we decided at our last meeting that the investigation must be pursued Doctor Manson’s name immediately suggested itself to me. He has opened up this question and must be given every opportunity to pursue it. We wish him, gentlemen,’ this being for Andrew’s benefit he twinkled at him bushily along the table, ‘ to visit all the anthracite mines in the country, and possibly later we may extend this to all the coal mines. Also we wish him to have every opportunity for clinical examination of the miners in the industry. We will afford him every facility – including the skilled bacteriological services of our young friend Doctor Hope. In short, gentlemen, there is nothing we will
not
do to ensure that our new Medical Officer presses this all-important matter of dust inhalation to its ultimate scientific and administrative conclusion.’

Andrew drew one quick and furtive breath. It was splendid, splendid – better than he had ever hoped. They were going to give him a free hand, back him up with their immense authority, turn him loose on clinical research. They were angels, all of them, and Billy was Gabriel himself.

‘But, gentlemen,’ Billy suddenly piped, shuffling himself a new deal from his coat pockets. ‘
Before
Doctor Manson goes on with this problem, before we can feel ourselves at liberty to allow him to concentrate his efforts upon it, there is another and more pressing matter which I feel he ought to take up.’

A pause. Andrew felt his heart contract and began slowly to sink as Billy continued:

‘Doctor Bigsby of the Board of Trade has been pointing out to me the alarming discrepancy in the specifications of industrial first-aid equipments. There is, of course, a definition under the existing Act, but it is elastic and unsatisfactory. There are no precise standards, for example, as to the size and weave of bandages, the length, material and type of splints. Now, gentlemen, this is an important matter and one which directly concerns this Board. I feel very strongly that our medical officer should conduct a thorough investigation and submit a report upon it before he begins upon the problem of inhalation.’

Silence. Andrew glanced desperately round the table. Dodd-Canterbury, with his legs outstretched, had his eyes on the ceiling. Gadsby was drawing diagrams upon his blotter, Whinney frowning, Challis inflating his chest for speech. But it was Abbey who said:

‘Surely, Sir William, this is matter either for the Board of Trade or the Mines Department.’

‘We are at the disposal of each of these bodies,’ squeaked Billy. ‘We are – hee! hee! – the orphan child of both.’

‘Yes, I know. But after all, this – this bandage question is comparatively trivial and Doctor Manson …’

‘I assure you, Robert, it is far from trivial. There will be a question in the House presently. I had that from Lord Ungar only yesterday.’

‘Ah!’ Gadsby said, lifting his ears. ‘ If Ungar is keen we have no choice.’ Gadsby could toady with deceptive brusqueness, and Ungar was a man he wished particularly to please.

Andrew felt driven to intervene.

‘Excuse me, Sir William,’ he stumbled. ‘I – I understood I was going to do clinical work here. For a month I have been kicking about in my office and now if I’m to …’

He broke off, looking round at them. It was Abbey who helped him.

‘Doctor Manson’s point is very just. For four years he’s been working patiently at his own subject and now, having offered him every facility to expand it, we propose sending him out to count bandages.’

‘If Doctor Manson has been patient for four years, Robert,’ Billy squeaked, ‘he can be patient a little longer. Hee! Hee!’

‘True, true,’ boomed Challis. ‘ He’ll be free for silicosis eventually.’

Whinney cleared his throat. ‘Now,’ Hope muttered to Andrew, ‘the Nag is about to neigh.’

‘Gentlemen,’ Whinney said. ‘For a long time I have been asking this Board to investigate the question of muscular fatigue in relation to steam heat – a subject which, as you know, interests me deeply, and which, I venture to say, you have hitherto not given the consideration it so richly merits. Now it appears to me, that if Doctor Manson is going to be diverted from the question of inhalation it would be an admirable opportunity to pursue this all-important question of muscular fatigue …’

Gadsby looked at his watch. ‘ I have an appointment in Harley Street in exactly thirty-five minutes.’

Whinney turned angrily to Gadsby. Co-professor Challis supported him with a gusty:

‘Intolerable impertinence.’

Tumult seemed about to break.

But Billy’s urbane yellow face peered from behind its whiskers at the meeting. He was not disturbed. He had handled such meetings for forty years. He knew they detested him and wanted him to go. But he was not going – he was never going. His vast cranium was filled with problems, data, agenda, obscure formulae, equations, with physiology and chemistry, with facts and figments of research, a vaulted incalculable sepulchre, haunted by phantoms of decerebrated cats, illumined by polarised light and all rosy hued by the great remembrance that, when he was a boy, Lister had patted him upon the head. He declared guilelessly:

‘I must tell you, gentlemen, I have already as good as promised Lord Ungar and Doctor Bigsby that we shall assist them in their difficulty. Six months ought to suffice, Doctor Manson. Perhaps a little longer. It will not be uninteresting. It will bring you into contact with people and things, young man. You remember Lavoisier’s remark concerning the drop of water! Hee! Hee! And now, touching Doctor Hope’s pathological examination of the specimen from Wendover Colliery in July last …’

At four o’clock, when it was all over, Andrew threshed the matter out with Gill and Hope in Gill’s room. The effect of this Board, and perhaps of his increasing years, was to implant in him the beginnings of restraint. He neither raved nor furiously split his infinitives but contented himself merely with stabbing a neat pattern with a government pen upon a government desk.

‘It won’t be so bad,’ Gill consoled. ‘It means travelling all over the country, I know – but that can be rather pleasant. You might even take Mrs Manson with you. There’s Buxton now – that’s a centre for all the Derbyshire coalfields. And at the end of six months you can begin your anthracite work.’

‘He’ll never get the chance,’ Hope grinned. ‘He’s a bandage-counter – for life!’

Andrew picked up his hat. ‘The trouble with you, Hope, is – you’re too
young.
’

He went home to Christine. And the following Monday, since she resolutely refused to miss a gay adventure, they bought a second-hand Morris for sixty pounds and started out together upon the Great First Aid Investigation. It is to be admitted they were happy as the car sped up the highway to the North, and Andrew, having given a simian impersonation of Billy Buttons steering the car with his feet, remarked:

‘Anyway! Never mind what Lavoisier said to the drop of water in eighteen-thirty-two. We’re together, Chris!’

The work was imbecile. It consisted in the inspection of the first-aid materials kept at different collieries throughout the country: splints, bandages, cotton wool, antiseptics, tourniquets and the rest. At the good collieries the equipment was good; and at poor collieries the equipment was poor. Underground inspection was no novelty to Andrew. He made hundreds of underground inspections, crawling miles along haulage ways to the coal face to view a box of bandages carefully planted there half an hour beforehand. At small pits in hardy Yorkshire he overheard under-managers whisper aside:

‘Run down, Geordie, and tell Alex to go to the chemist’s …’ then, ‘Have a chair, doctor, we’ll be ready for ye in a minute!’ In Nottingham he comforted temperance ambulance men by telling them cold tea was a superior stimulant to brandy. Elsewhere, he swore by whisky. But mostly he did the work with alarming conscientiousness. He and Christine found rooms in a convenient centre. Thereafter he combed the district in the car. While he inspected, Christine sat and knitted at a distance. They had adventures, usually with landladies. They made friends, chiefly among the mining inspectors. Andrew was not surprised that his mission provoked these hard-headed, hard-fisted citizens to senseless laughter. It is to be regretted that he laughed with them.

And then in March they returned to London, resold the car for only ten pounds less than they had paid for it, and Andrew set about writing his report. He had made up his mind to give the Board value for its money, to offer them statistics by the tubful, pages of tables, charts and divisional graphs showing how the bandage curve rose as the splint curve fell. He was determined, he told Christine, to show them how well he had done the work and how excellently they had all wasted their time.

At the end of the month when he had rushed a rough draft through to Gill, he was surprised to receive a summons from Doctor Bigsby of the Board of Trade.

‘He’s delighted with your report,’ Gill fluttered, as he escorted Andrew along Whitehall. ‘I shouldn’t have let the cat out. But there it is! It’s a lucky start for you, my dear fellow. You’ve no idea how important Bigsby is. He’s got the whole factory administration in his pocket!’