‘Let me go,’ I protested. ‘ You’re absolutely dead-beat.’
‘Dead-beat or no,’ said Cameron, ‘I’m going. Neil will never be satisfied unless I show face myself.’
‘I’ll send round for Jamie and the gig,’ exclaimed Janet practically. ‘It’ll not take more nor five minutes to get him back.’
‘No,’ growled Cameron. ‘Jamie’s worn out, and the beast’s half foundered. It isn’t more nor a mile to Langloan. I’ll just step there myself. I’ll be there and back in no time.’
In spite of my attempts to dissuade him, he had his way. Neil Currie was one of his oldest friends, a member of the Anglers’ Club, a prominent man in the village, and at present laid low by a bad attack of jaundice. Turning up his coat collar, he braced himself to the bitter wind and left the house.
Somehow, hearing the whistling of the wind outside, I was not easy in my mind. And, indeed, when, an hour later, Cameron returned it seemed as though my anxiety were justified. The old man was blue to the ears and completely exhausted. Nevertheless, he wheezed triumphantly:
‘I think I’ve smoothed out that affair. I explained to Neil how it happened. For heaven’s sake, don’t let me forget to see him in the morning.’
As he stood by the fire he coughed sharply, and abruptly, a moment later, remarked:
‘I think I’ll get upstairs.’
But when halfway to the door he pressed his hand to his side and took a quick breath.
‘Dod!’ he exclaimed. ‘It catches me here right enough.’
I rushed to his assistance, blaming myself now in grim reality. Ignoring his protests, I got Cameron upstairs to his bedroom, helped him out of his clothes and into bed. Once there, he seemed better and thrust aside my offer to examine him. But he did not mind when I dosed him with hot toddy and quinine. I waited in the bedroom until he fell into a restless sleep. I hoped that he would be fit again by morning.
But next morning Cameron was far from well. When I went in at six o’clock I found him flushed, fevered, breathing rapidly, and tormented by a short, suppressed cough. This time I was not to be put off. I carefully sounded his chest. There was no doubt about it. Cameron had pneumonia, lobar pneumonia, and he himself was aware of the fact, for, gazing at me with distressed yet quizzical eyes, he gasped:
‘The right lung, isn’t it?’ And at my silence: ‘Well, it seems I’m in for it this time, sure enough.’
Confronted by this emergency, I marshalled all my forces to meet it. Without hesitation, I telephoned Linklater’s, the wholesale chemists in Glasgow, who also conducted a local medical agency. Through them I obtained a locum tenens – a raw Inverness youth named Frazer, who arrived early that same afternoon.
Keyed to a high tension, I put the fear of God in Frazer, deputed to him the surgeries and the outlying work. Then, rushing through my own cases with all possible speed, I devoted the remainder of my time entirely to Cameron.
I realised only too well that there could be no immediate and spontaneous cure. In that era we knew nothing of the wonder drugs, of sulphanilamide, penicillin, and the other antibiotics which, as by a miracle, can cut short the worst pneumonic lesion, which have reduced the mortality rate of that once dreaded disease by 85 per cent. Then, for nine to ten days, lobar pneumonia ‘ran its course’, each day showing a steady deterioration in the patient’s condition, until the crisis came, bringing liquefaction to the solidified lung, benign though belated relief.
Thus the task before me, and one to which I gave myself with passionate intensity, was to pull Cameron through these fateful days. I felt I would succeed, too, for Cameron, despite his pain and discomfort, was alert and cheerful.
‘Don’t look so annoyed wi’ me, man,’ he declared, with an attempt at humour. ‘It’s a grand opportunity ye’re havin’ to observe how sickness makes the most impatient man behave.’
I smiled an acquiescence I was far from feeling as I punched up the old doctor’s pillows, then measured out his medicine. I looked round: the fire was burning cheerfully in the grate, the draught screen in position, the windows open at the top, the room ordered, and fresh and airy. The nurse from Knoxhill stood by the foot of the bed, trim and competent, ready to anticipate Cameron’s every want. Everything was being done, and everything would be done, I thought grimly. I must get Cameron through – I must, I must!
In this fashion for the first three days all went smoothly, and the condition ran a normal course. But on the fourth day, with alarming unexpectedness, my patient took a sudden turn for the worse. As I read the sick man’s temperature and felt his running pulse, I steeled myself to betray no anxiety; but underneath, my heart throbbed with a sudden fear. I redoubled my attentions. All that night and the following night I sat up with Cameron, making every effort to stem the ominous advancing tide.
But on the sixth day Cameron was definitely worse; he coughed up a quantity of dark prune-juice mucus, and tossed through long, sleepless hours that night. Accordingly, on the seventh day, with a heavy heart, telephoned Dr Greer in Glasgow, and asked him to meet me in consultation. Greer, one of the best-known medical specialists in the west of Scotland, was an authority on pulmonary diseases. He arrived that afternoon with due precision and, in his unhurried, methodical way, which even in this extremity I could not but admire, probed every aspect of the case. Afterwards, he was kind in what he said to me, agreeing with my diagnosis and treatment, but alas, far from reassuring. When pressed for an opinion he shook his head.
Cameron, he said, pursing his rather full lips, was over sixty years of age, and worn down by years of arduous exertions. Under the toxins of the pneumonococci his strength had failed considerably, and more than that, he seemed now to offer little resistance to the malady. There was a definite breaking down of the blood cells and also involvement of the left lung – double pneumonia. He could no more than urge me to continue the measures I was taking: to press the injections of strychnine, to resort to oxygen when necessary, to try to stimulate the patient’s powers to fight back against the deadly march of the disease.
When Professor Greer had gone, I stood for a moment alone in the sitting-room, realising the truth of what the specialist had said – that Cameron was failing utterly to maintain his earlier aggressive stamina. At the thought I pressed my hand to my brow, overcome by an insupportable feeling of wretchedness, recollecting at the same time all that I owed him. The memory of his kindness, affection, and goodness rushed over me in a kind of agony.
The eighth day came without a shadow of improvement. Though I doubled the efforts at stimulation, using strychnine, brandy, oxygen, even ether; though I battled frantically to arrest the growing weakness of the sick man, it was useless. The old fighting quality, which had been so characteristic of Cameron, was finally extinguished. He lay passive on his pillow, with half-shut eyes, breathing jerkily into the glass funnel through which the pure oxygen gas bubbled from its metal cylinder. He could not rouse himself to take nourishment. He had ceased to respond to his medicine, and my murmured words of exhortation and encouragement fell on deaf ears.
By this time it had become generally known throughout the village how dangerously ill was their old doctor. All day long messages and tokens of sympathy kept pouring into the house from the town and the surrounding district. There came also every conceivable form of country delicacy, accompanied by expressions of the sincerest good will. Straw covered the road in front of the house. And Janet moved about on tiptoe in her felt slippers, with desolation on her drawn face.
Then came the ninth day, pregnant with fatality. All afternoon I sat by the sinking man, watching Cameron’s strength ebb away under my very eyes. Never shall I forget that still cold winter twilight. Evening came, and with the falling dusk it seemed as if the mantle of death descended and hung above the enfeebled figure in the bed. Cameron was perfectly conscious now, and almost placid. Weakly he turned his head, an indication that he wished to speak.
‘No use, lad,’ he whispered; ‘it’s all up with
me this time.’
Unable to reply, I clenched my hands until the nails bit into my palms. Violently I shook my head. But Cameron’s eyes were already closed … It was the end.
How long I sat there, in that silent room, I cannot tell. Janet came and went. There was the glimmer of a candle. Then, from without, through the still and frigid air, came the slow tolling of the steeple bell.
Three days later the old doctor was buried in the village church-yard. I had never heard him speak of his relatives, but now there appeared at the funeral, from a remote northern town, two nephews and their wives. They descended in apparent grief, in reality like wolves upon the fold.
Nothing was sacred to them in their avaricious possessiveness, from the dead man’s bankbook to the clothing hanging in his bedroom cupboard. They fingered and ferreted, poked their way into every corner of the house, interfered with Janet, with the patients, even hinted that I was pocketing the fees. But they were, of course, his legal heirs. Within the month the practice had been sold and the incoming man had taken over.
I was pressed by many people to remain, to set up in opposition to the new doctor, with Janet as my housekeeper, but, with Cameron gone, the appeal of Tannochbrae was finally extinguished.
I left silently, one winter morning, from the Junction station, the windswept platform desolate as on the day of my arrival, yet no more desolate than was my heart. Indeed, such desolation as now possessed me induced a mood of utter recklessness, linked to a crying need of tenderness. Gone now were all practical considerations. I sought out Mary who, having passed her last examination, was living with her parents in a pleasant country villa some twenty miles from Glasgow. Abruptly, I took both her hands in mine.
‘Mary,’ I said, ‘ I have no position, no prospects, and no money; in fact I’m thirty pounds in debt. I can’t even offer you the barest pretence of a home. As you know, I’m a Catholic – a damn bad one, I’m sorry to say – and you are a fairly strict Protestant. Also I’m quite sure your family consider me an irresponsible blackguard – and perhaps with reason. It all sounds hopeless, but we love each other, I know we can get along together, and I’m sure I can get some sort of job straight away. So will you marry me, quickly, without fuss, one day next-week … and take what looks like a very long chance?’
She did not speak, not a single word, but I read her answer in the swift tightening of her grasp, in the quivering brightness of her dear and steadfast eyes.
Part Two
Chapter Fifteen
Late that January afternoon, an ordinary young man in a new store suit and a pretty young woman wearing a dove-grey dress sat tightly holding hands and gazing with fixed intensity through the window of a dingy third-class compartment in the almost empty train labouring up the Rhondda Valley from Cardiff. All day long, after our wedding, my wife and I had travelled from Scotland, changing at Carlisle and Shrewsbury, and the final stage of our long journey to South Wales found us strung to a state of increasing tension at the prospects of beginning our life together in this strange, disfigured country.
Outside, a grey mist was swirling down between the black mountains which rose on either side, scarred by ore workings, blemished by great heaps of slag on which a few mangy sheep wandered in vain hope of pasture. No bush, no blade of grass was visible. The trees, seen in the fading light, were gaunt and stunted spectres. At a curve of the line the red glare of a foundry flashed into sight, illuminating a score of workmen stripped to the waist, their torsos straining, arms upraised to strike. Then the searing vision was swiftly lost behind the huddled top gear of a mine.
Darkness had fallen, emphasising the strangeness and remoteness of the scene when, some minutes later, the engine panted into Tregenny, the end township of the valley and the terminus of the line. We had arrived at last. Gripping our suitcase, I leaped from the train and helped my bride to alight.
At the station exit we paused, disappointed in our expectation that one of the colliery officials would meet us, depressed by the blurred and huddled aspect of the town, made up of ugly rows of miners’ dwellings, interspersed with tin chapels and taverns, set between high dumps of pit refuse, beneath a pall of fog and smoke. What a prospect, I thought, with sinking heart. Where, oh where, now, were the fresh green glens and heather-clad moors of Tannochbrae?
As we stood there, not knowing our way, a loud hooter sounded and squads of miners began to come off shift from the pithead. Dark, sallow fellows they were, grimed with sweat and coal dust, each with a tiny oil lamp fixed to the peak of his cap. Approaching one of them, I asked to be directed to the doctor’s house. He stared at me, then broke into a wild torrent of Welsh, not a word of which was intelligible to me. Another responded in similar fashion. But at last we found a lad who understood our inquiry and who kindly led us to our lodging, which, to our consternation, we discovered to be no more than two sparsely furnished rooms in an ordinary collier’s cottage. As we arrived we were greeted by a stream of dirty water sluiced from a tin bath through an adjoining side door.
The woman of the house was middle-aged, with regular features and black hair. While perfectly civil, her welcome was not effusive. She introduced herself as Mrs Morgan, showed my wife the bedroom upstairs and the few amenities provided by the kitchen, indicated that water came only from the outside well and that such toilet facilities as existed were confined to the backyard. Then she left us to ourselves.
‘Well,’ I remarked, with false brightness, ‘it’s not too bad.’
‘No, dear.’
‘And we’ll be together.’
‘Yes, dear.’
‘And at least we get decent pay.’
The advertisement in the Lancet, inserted by the Tregenny Coal Company, which had brought us at short notice to this outlandish spot, had guaranteed the incoming medical officer five hundred pounds per annum.
Yet facing each other across the worn stretch of linoleum, chilled by the rickety furniture upholstered in wax cloth, by the thin frayed curtains, the burst armchair, the sickly fern on its mottled bamboo stand, by this pinchbeck atmosphere of a fourth-rate boarding house, all so different from the picture painted by our glowing fancy – which, indeed, had envisaged Wales as a land of fruitful pastures and cosy cottages, in short, a perfect paradise for two – we exchanged a wan and tremulous smile. Then, observing a door which I felt might lead to an additional apartment, I tugged it open. Immediately, with a frightful clatter, there fell from a cupboard, not a skeleton, which might have proved diverting, but a score of empty whisky bottles left there by my predecessor, who, we learned afterward, had drunk himself into delirium tremens. This final shock proved too much for my poor wife. Her nerve gave way completely; she sat down on her suitcase and burst into tears.
In such an emergency there was only one remedy – food. We had eaten nothing but a few sandwiches all day, so, as nothing seemed likely to emerge from the kitchen – the silence in the back regions was abysmal – I took my wife’s arm and led her out.
There were no restaurants in Truepenny, only an idiot would have sought for them, but on our passage from the station I had perceived a vulgar caravanserai of a type which, in my impecunious student days, I had frequented with pleasure and profit: in brief, a fish and chip shop.
In this establishment, which was warm and steamy, filled with the rich odours of frying fat, of fish fresh from the pan and patrons still black from the pit, we found a table. Our supper, served on the bare boards, was, as I had fully expected, hot, savoury, and satisfying – experience had taught me that where working men eat the food is usually good – and when we had consumed it, life seemed less complex, definitely rosier.
‘I wonder should I go down to the company’s office and report.’
‘You’ll do no such thing. We’ve had a long, tiring journey. You’re going straight back to bed.’
Sudden realisation of the implications of these words, uttered purely in a spirit of maternal protectiveness, caused my wife to blush, but she added, bravely
, in a practical manner:
‘At least it’s a good hair mattress. And I saw that the sheets were freshly laundered.’
‘Darling,’ I murmured romantically, ignoring the fat Welsh cook, who between fries was watching us from behind her counter and picking her teeth with a hairpin, ‘ you are without question the sweetest, bravest girl in all the world. Just think of it. You could have married someone who would have given you all the comfort and luxury you’re accustomed to … a honeymoon at Monte Carlo, the Italian lakes, Florence, Capri. But no, out of the goodness of your heart, and against your parents’ wishes, you marry me, a pauper, let me tear you from the bosom of your family, from your lovely home, from the life you had planned for yourself, practically under false pretences, for this … this goddamn dump. Forgive me, dear, I know I promised not to swear. But just wait, darling, I’ll make it up to you. I’ll be a success for your sake … No, don’t take your hand away, I don’t care if the waitress is listening … I’ll be rich, famous, the top specialist in Harley Street. And although we can’t be in France or Italy tonight, I promise my love and adoration will make up for it. Ah, dearest, tonight…’
‘Hey, mon, be you the new doctor?’
My rhapsody, so lyrical, so inane, was cut short by the abrupt appearance through the swing door of a sturdy, broken-nosed little man with a face which seemed tattooed, so seamed and pitted was it with tiny bluish scars. He wore a leather skullcap on his round, cropped head and carried a safety lantern in his hand.
‘Sorry-like to fetch you, Doctor, batch,’ he went on when I had answered in the affirmative, ‘but they do want you at t’pit.’
It was annoying to be disturbed, yet I drew at least some slight comfort from this official recognition of our arrival. I escorted my wife across the street to our lodging, told her I would be back in half an hour, then set off with my new friend.
His name, he told me, was Rhys Jones, and for thirty years he had worked underground, beginning as a pony boy and rising gradually to his present position of shot-firer. When I asked him why I had been summoned, he replied, in the tone of one long accustomed to hardship and disaster, that a man had been injured underground, that we must go down to aid him.