The Heart Specialist (33 page)

I took off my glasses to wipe them but also to blur his face. “Please, Jakob.”

“Howlett isn’t the only man to have lost a son, nor will he be the last. The entire Western world is grieving, Agnes. It’s like the last act of
Hamlet
,” he said, jerking his chin in the direction of my specimen. “Corpses everywhere.”

“For God’s sake, Jakob,” I pleaded.

He said nothing more. He rose to his feet and stood over me, shifting his weight from one boot to the other. The awful smile he wore to hide his feelings was gone. “You didn’t know Howlett was ill?” he asked. “You’ve not been corresponding?”

Jakob’s eyes glistened. “You’re still stuck on him.” He was staring at me hard. “After all these years you’re still stuck.”

He turned to go but I restrained him, asked him not to leave so soon after so long an absence. His face now wore a dangerous expression and his mouth remained clamped shut, but he stayed. I talked about my life in Montreal since the spring of 1915. I spoke of the deserted campus and city streets. I told him about knitting socks and my lectures in Boston and New York. I talked about Dugald Rivers and how his letters had been my only steady link to friends and colleagues overseas.

At length Jakob relaxed enough to tell me he had seen Dugald Rivers recently. He was in London and not doing well. This much I knew for he still wrote almost weekly, a habit begun at the start of the war, when they were all at Dannes-Camiers. “I envied you when you first went to Picardy,” I confessed. I mentioned the bicycle he had bought.

Jakob laughed. His laugh was real this time, unlike his first attempt. “What a time we had,” he said. “Revere used to take me cycling. I’d never done that before, you know. I’d never learned as a kid. We’d ride into the countryside. He was a fine young man. Better than his father,” he added unnecessarily. “The old man came to visit us at Dannes-Camiers. Did Rivers tell you that?”

I nodded. It had been September of 1915, when civilian travel across the Channel had still been possible.

“He came in sort of like the king, which I personally didn’t care for, but it seemed to rally everyone else,” Jakob said. “He did rounds in the morning with the entire McGill group trailing on his heels, lapping up his every word. Rivers led the pack, as you can imagine. Rivers has no idea how he diminishes himself. Not that Howlett notices as long as he gets his daily dose of reverence.”

I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t afford to given Jakob’s volatile humour and the fact that I wanted to hear more. Because he’d befriended Revere Jakob had apparently been invited to accompany father and son on a tour of the front lines. At first he had refused. He had thought it too dangerous. The towns near the front were under fire. Why seek out trouble in the middle of a war? Sir William explained they would do it safely. He arranged for a Red Cross car, which the Germans left alone, to carry them along secondary roads.

Jakob went along. It was harvest time. When they crossed to the Belgian side peasants were in the fields in great numbers, working between the trenches. The landscape was also full of graves — rows of crosses in country graveyards, standing in testament to the young men who had fallen. They doubled back to France to sleep that night, which Jakob could not understand as it took them out of their way. But Sir William had reasons. The inn at which they stopped in the town of Montreuil was where Laurence Sterne had slept on the first night of his
Sentimental Journey
. The next morning they resumed what Jakob had since come to realize was Howlett’s own sentimental journey, and drove north to Calais.

“And here, Dr. White,” Jakob said, “the expedition took a sentimental turn not just for William Howlett, but for you.”

It turned out that Sir William knew someone living in Calais, a man he had befriended years ago while a student. The group went to an inn not far from the town’s ramparts to meet him. “The world is small, Dr. White,” Jakob said. “Can you guess who the man was?” He paused, but I could not guess. “Honoré Bourret.”

My father, living in Calais. The bearer of this news, for which I had waited my whole life, was the unlikely Jakob Hertzlich.

“I spoke of you,” Jakob said. “I told him about the heart you had found and also about your article — the one giving him credit for the heart’s discovery.”

As the initial shock passed I realized something was wrong with Jakob’s account. Sir William knew where my father was. He had sat in Calais in the autumn of 1915 with Honoré Bourret and hadn’t written a word to me. There had to be an explanation. “Are you sure it was the same Honoré Bourret?”

Jakob smiled unpleasantly. “How many can there be? Especially Honoré Bourrets who are doctors and who once taught in Montreal.”

I took a deep breath, not wishing to give myself away. “Did he confirm who he was, Jakob? Did he remember the heart?”

Jakob thought for a second then shook his head. “The meeting was bizarre. He skirted the issue of the heart. He never came right out and said who he was. At the time I thought it was modesty, or perhaps embarrassment, because I recalled a scandal you said had ended his Montreal career. Howlett must have sensed his discomfort. He steered us away from further talk about hearts. Bourret had been his mentor. You’d think they’d have wanted to talk about past glories, but it wasn’t the case at all. It was actually the first time I’d seen Howlett at a loss. He panicked, if you want my opinion.”

Jakob’s prickliness had given way to curiosity, but I didn’t have the energy to think about him. In my imagination I was already sailing over the Atlantic to find my father. First I would visit England and demand an explanation from Sir William. Then I’d cross the Channel. “I have to see him,” I muttered, ignoring Jakob.

“You mean Bourret?” he asked, trying to catch my eye.

“Not Bourret.” My tone was impatient. So much history was involved I wouldn’t have known where to start.

“Howlett?”

I nodded. Sir William — the man I had trusted as I would a father.

Jakob Hertzlich’s eyes emptied of expression. He rose, said nothing more, and before I could stop him was out the door.

25

NOVEMBER 1918

The cold had come overnight to St. Andrews East, along with a first fine powdering of snow. I was sitting in my sister’s rocking chair in the Priory, watching the pink light of dusk pooling on a horizon of barren fields. Through the autumn I had managed to shut my eyes to the signs of winter until November, when I was jolted awake. The air outside was cold now, my lungs seized when I inhaled. I had forgotten what this was like — the pure shock of it and the body’s instinctive contraction. The house contracted too. Timber cracked, pipes banged in protest.

On the bed my sister had kicked free of her covers. It was cold enough in her bedroom that I had put on double socks and wrapped myself in a duvet, but Laure was flushed with heat. She had run a fever all week. For the last two days she’d been alternately delirious and unconscious. Her lips were cracked from dehydration. Her eyes, when she opened them, had a frightening, glassy look.

She was still alive, I told myself. Others had been cut down so quickly they had not had a chance to call a doctor. This disease progressed with frightening speed. Within hours of feeling unwell many lost the ability to walk. Their faces turned blue. They bled from the nose or ears and coughed up blood as if consumptive. Laure had been spared these horrors. In her the illness had progressed relatively slowly, and this fact gave me hope. She had survived the flu itself and was now suffering from a secondary bacterial pneumonia.

People were calling it the Spanish Flu, although it was unlike any influenza I had ever seen. The symptoms reminded me more of cholera or typhoid, and the rate of death seemed to be ten to twenty percent higher than that of ordinary flu strains. Mysteriously it tended to spare the old and the very young. Its most virulent attacks were reserved for those in the prime of life.

The clock in the hall chimed five. In an hour George Skerry would take over. We had divided the watch into six-hour shifts. At the moment George was downstairs preparing supper. I could smell onions frying. She placed a lot of faith in the healing properties of food and kept offering me pungent broths she swore would keep me well. Despite having been cloistered here throughout Laure’s illness she was still healthy, so perhaps there was something to it.

More surprising was my own continuing health. It was exactly a month since the mayor of Montreal had declared a state of emergency. For thirty days all my waking hours, which included much of every night, had been spent tending to the sick. Because most patients were being quarantined at home I made house calls, trudging through Montreal’s frozen, deserted streets with my black bag. Not that there was any magic pill or cure I could give people. I explained the principles of hand washing and hygiene to the mothers, sisters and aunts tending to ill family members and handed out face masks. I advised people to take cod-liver oil, to avoid crowds, to keep their homes clean and to stay inside. I held their hands. I offered solace. There was no way to prevent the Spanish Flu, nor was there a cure.

By the time I left for St. Andrews East, Montreal was a ghost town. The first cases of the disease had surfaced in late September; by October it was rampant. Schools shut down. Theatres went next, then churches. Shops had stayed open for a while but people began hoarding staples and soon the shelves were bare. Any house with an influenza victim was forced, on pain of a fine, to post a warning on the door. Within days notices were hanging at every address.

On the other side of the Atlantic the Spanish Flu was killing soldiers faster than German guns and gas had done. In London Dugald Rivers had succumbed. I received a wire from Dr. Mastro, who was overseas and had attended the funeral. I wired back but that was all I managed. I did not cry; there was no time. For weeks after I received the news Dugald’s death remained abstract. I had been corresponding with him for three years. The face I held in memory was of a man much younger and more innocent than Dugald had been when he died. It was a face, I suspected, bearing little relation to his features in those final days.

Closer to home, Dr. Clarke was now ill. He had braved the front and returned home unhurt only to contract pneumonia. His wife had telephoned McGill to seek my assistance, but by then I had already left for St. Andrews East to tend to Laure. The day before I had received a wire from Jakob Hertzlich, informing me that Clarke would not survive the week and that if I wished to pay my last respects I should come at once. Clarke’s wife must have begged him for aid when I’d been unavailable. I wired back that I could not travel. My own sister was dying.

As if she could feel my attention returning to her, Laure opened her eyes. Their colour, even in the fading light, was bright blue like Grandmother’s had been, like the forget-me-nots Laure and I used to pick as girls on the banks of the North River. I said her name and she looked at me, then opened her mouth to speak. I dipped a cloth in water to moisten her lips. I helped her sit up and squeezed a few more drops into her. She took it down so well that I was actually able to offer a glass, holding it while she drank.

With each swallow my spirits lifted. It was a miracle, a reward for the days I’d spent waiting at this bedside, watching over her, wrestling with my sense of growing despair. She couldn’t speak. Her lungs would not allow it, but she was lucid, remarkably alert. The time had come. I needed to unburden myself.

Years ago I had stepped into the role of Laure’s protector, assuming responsibility for most aspects of her life. Because of her mental state and the natural docility of her spirit I soon lost the habit of consulting her. Laure did not seem able to discuss or plan or make decisions of any kind, so I felt entitled to proceed on my own. I discussed her needs with George Skerry, or simply forged ahead, doing whatever seemed in her best interests. For weeks now I had been in possession of information that was important to me and my sister. Whatever the result it would be unjust not to communicate it to her.

“I have found Father,” I said, kneeling by the bed.

Laure’s face showed no emotion. The blue eyes stared indifferently into mine.

“He is in France.”

She blinked then shifted her glance.

When Jakob Hertzlich first imparted this news to me the world had stopped turning on its axis. I had been filled with such euphoria, such hope, I had barely been able to contain it.

“I am going to meet him.”

A fit of coughing overtook my sister and she sank out of my grasp beneath the sheets. I tried to sit her up again but she kept sliding down like a sleepy child. Although she was still conscious her eyes refused to open.

“Laure,” I whispered, holding her in my arms. She was impossibly light, her bones weightless as a bird’s. She lived for three more days, but in that time not once did she open her eyes again or make any other gesture.