‘Quos deus perdere, prius dementat.’
The sharp contrast from besotted ranting, the manner in which the lines were spoken took me aback. I looked at Murray more closely, trying to pierce beneath the beard and grime. He did not look old, not more than thirty-five. His hair was still thick and dark, his brow remained unlined, his features were not yet blurred or spoiled. Yet there lay upon him an air of ageless experience that was sad as death itself.
I waited until he fell into a troubled sleep, tidied up the room as best I could I picked up a book: it was the Aeneid. Another: Paolo and Francesca. I sighed. Then I squashed a last bug under my heel, shook myself free of fleas, listened for a moment to Murray’s breathing, then stepped out of the room.
In the hallway I questioned the woman, who was waiting there. I could get nothing out of her. However, I had other sources of information and, as I was determined to learn something of my patient, I made a detour on my way home and called upon my good friend Alexander Blair.
‘So you’ve seen Murray.’ The police sergeant laid his pen on the charge desk. ‘Well, there’s a story there, all right. But it’s a short one. Damned short. Drink.’ A pause. ‘ Poor devil, to look at him now you wouldn’t believe he’d been to Harrow and Oxford – yes, one of the best scholars that ever came out of Balliol. All sorts of things were prophesied for him – from a professorship at Oxford right up to a seat on the Woolsack. And what is he now? We’ve known him for about five years here, and though we had to run him in once or twice, we’ve done our best to give him a hand. We got him on the Clarion as a reporter. He did a first-class job, charmed them all for three months, then came out on his neck in the space of twenty-four hours. Faugh! It doesn’t bear thinking on! Take my advice, doctor, and leave well alone.’
Nevertheless, next morning I went to see Murray again, and on several subsequent mornings. I am no altruist – visits for which I would never see my fee did not as a rule entice me. Yet something drew me to David Murray – perhaps at first his helplessness; then, later, the rare pathetic charm of the man himself.
There was no doubt of Murray’s charm. Scholarly, sensitive, persuasive, witty, he was the most delightful company. As I sat listening to him I forgot the squalid room and the poverty which dwelt there – he captivated me completely.
And so it happened, one afternoon, when Murray was almost recovered from the attack and able to stagger shakily to his legs, that I braced myself and said:
‘Why don’t you keep off the stuff? For good, I mean. I’ll do everything I can to help you.’
He stared at me sideways, then, with the first touch of bitterness he had displayed, he gave a short laugh.
‘The friendship treatment, eh? You drop something in my tea when I’m not looking. Tasteless. Odourless. And I’m cured next morning. God! It’s a marvellous suggestion, if only for its novelty.’
I coloured.
‘I was just thinking …’
‘It’s no good thinking, Doctor,’ interposed Murray in a milder voice, ‘ and it’s no good doing, either. Don’t you think I’ve tried before? I’ve had a dozen doctors – in Liverpool, London, in. Berlin, too. I’ve been in sanatoria till I’m sick of them. I’m the uncrowned king of inebriate homes. I’ve tried everything. But it’s no use. The thing’s ingrained in me. It is me. I’m rotten with the rotten thing. I am the rotten thing. Rotten, I tell you.’ His voice rose as he went on. ‘I’m a drunkard, a habitual, confirmed drunkard. The minute I’m able to leave this house I’ll go round to Marney’s pub. I’ve got my corner there. They know me. I entertain the boys. When I’m half tight I tell them bawdy stories from the French. When I’m whole tight I convulse them with Greek epigrams. They think it’s Chinese – but what’s the odds, they like me there. When I’m drunk, you understand. At any rate, that’s where I’ll go … and sponge on my friends. With luck I’ll last six months till I get another go of d.t.’s. When the d.t.’s arrive I’m laid up for a month. My rest cure, you see. It sets me right for the next six months’ drinking.’
I averted my eyes.
‘If that’s the way of it, then, I suppose there’s nothing more to be done.’
He was silent, then a sudden impulse seemed to swing him to an opposite decision. He offered me his hand.
‘Since you’re so good, Doctor,’ he declared, ‘let’s have a shot at it, for luck.’
His manner, slightly ironic, was not altogether convincing, but I could not draw back now. That same day I sent him one of my older suits, some shirts, socks, and ties, a pair of shoes and a small advance, enough to enable him to spruce himself up. Then I set about trying to find him suitable employment. It was not easy; none of the large department stores where I had hoped to place him would take him a salesman. But finally I had a great stroke of luck.
One of my wealthier patients, Jacob Harrison, manager of the Camden Insurance Company, had a son who was preparing to take the difficult, competitive examination for entry to the Foreign Office. The boy was weak in classics and wanted someone to give him an intensive cramming for the next three months. When I mentioned that I knew of an excellent tutor, the father jumped at my suggestion. I sent David Murray along; he was interviewed and engaged.
I could not, at the outset, discern in Murray any great enthusiasm for his new position. He liked his pupil well enough and promised to pump into him an adequate amount of Euripides and Virgil, and yet there was a lack of enthusiasm, an evasiveness about him which disappointed me, made me suspect that he was not keeping his side of our pact.
But one afternoon he appeared unexpectedly at my house, burst into the consulting-room.
‘Doctor,’ he exclaimed, pale and breathless, ‘ I’m going to do it. For good this time.’
‘But I thought… we’d agreed…’
‘I’ve been deceiving you. I haven’t really been cutting it out. But now I actually mean it’
As I gazed at him, he continued, with unmistakable determination.
‘Why shouldn’t I? I can do it if I want to. I’ve never wanted to before. But now I do. I do. Will you help me, as you said?’
‘Yes,’ I answered slowly, ‘I’ll help you.’
If there had been doubts of Murray before, now there was none – in the weeks which followed, while I stood by him, helping him as a doctor, as a friend, by every means in my power, I saw him drain the cup of suffering to the bitter dregs. In the mornings the light hurt his eyes, he felt intolerably ill, dying for a drink. He knew the agony of maddening, sleepless nights. When the craving had him by the throat he would weep from very impotence. But he held grimly on. It looked, indeed, as though he would win through at last.
Oddly enough, it had never entered my head to seek a deeper motive in Murray’s struggle for redemption. But one May evening, as I stood at a window of my house, I glimpsed a situation I had not even dreamed of. Across the street, walking together, were Murray, his pupil, and a girl of nineteen whom I recognised at once as young Harrison’s sister Ada, lately returned from a convent finishing school in France. There was nothing especially disturbing in the sight of these three, laughing and talking together; it was the look on Murray’s face as he gazed at Ada, a look which shook me to the core.
When next I met him I mentioned, casually, the name of Ada Harrison. Immediately his face was lit by animation.
‘Isn’t she lovely?’ he exclaimed. ‘Lovelier than a rose.’ And as though to himself, he murmured the line: ‘Hither all dewy from her convent cell…’ He broke off with a smile. ‘ You know, Doctor, it’s quite incredible. She really likes me. We walked in the park yesterday, I made her laugh at my nonsense. I could see she was enjoying herself. The first time I met her I hardly dared look at her. But now it’s different. I’m beginning to find my feet again.’
It was as I had feared. He was in love. She was sweet, innocent, beautiful, and nineteen, the darling of a wealthy father. He was thirty-four, a penniless outcast, his constitution damaged beyond repair. What could one say to him? N
othing … nothing that would not break his heart.
Time went on. Young Harrison sat his examination and a few days later I met him in the street, in the highest spirits – he had passed well up on the list.
‘We’re terribly grateful to you for recommending Mr Murray.’ He beamed. ‘Father wants him to take me for a vacation in France, all expenses paid. Sort of reward, you know.’
‘I’m very glad for Murray’s sake.’
‘Oh, and by the by, Doctor, we thought, as he’s almost a friend of the family now … we thought we’d invite him to the wedding.’
‘What wedding?’
‘Ada’s. It’s fixed for next month.’ He mentioned the name of the man she was marrying, a junior partner in his father’s firm, and then added, ‘Your own invitation will be along quite soon.’
The invitation duly arrived. And the same evening, after my surgery, I walked slowly to Murray’s lodging. I felt he might have need of my comfort and support. He was not in.
“Where can I find him?’
The woman of the house gave me her bold, scornful glance, which held now a glint of triumph.
‘You might try Marney’s Bar.’
Oh, no, surely not that, I thought as I hastened down the street and through the swing doors of the corner tavern. Yet it was so.
There was Murray, back in his old corner, surrounded by his coterie, swinging on his seat, blind drunk. With fumbling declamatory gestures he was quoting Homer to them: ‘Gods, the old oracle returns.’ And while they still sat agape, he set them guffawing with a new version of Uncle Toby and the clock. Suddenly, through the smoke, amidst the racket, his gaze caught mine. He broke off, turned clay-white, and into his eyes came the dreadful look of a soul tormented in the forsaken depths of hell.
‘Curse it,’ he groaned, ‘why am I not dead?’
But laughter drowned the words, his glass was filled up, someone started a song. And there I had to come away and leave him.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
It is a cliché to say that time flies when one is fully occupied, yet clichés have a way of being true. We had now been five years in Bayswater, our two boys were attending kindergarten, our lives moved so regularly and smoothly that my dear wife had the delusion we were permanently settled, that nothing would now arise to ruffle the even course of her life.
Only an inverted modesty, the worst kind of affectation, could make me pretend that we had not succeeded, amazingly, in our assault upon London, which had once intimidated us and seemed so difficult to conquer. The nucleus which I had taken over from Dr Tanner had grown tenfold, and the practice now extended in scope and character far beyond its original limits. I had come to know many of the leading physicians and surgeons of the day, and called in consultation men like Lord Horder, Sir Arbuthnot Lane, and Sir Morley Fletcher. Recently I had been appointed medical officer to that great department store, Whiteley’s.
Yet I was not satisfied: for some time past I had been specialising more and more in eye work, attending several ophthalmic clinics and hospitals. Already I had begun to establish myself in that field, and it was my intention to move, presently, to Harley Street.
One morning, however, my ambition was shaken by an unusually severe attack of indigestion, a condition which I had endured periodically since my student days and which, since doctors are constitutionally indifferent to their own complaints, I had merely staved off with increasing doses of bicarbonate of soda. On this occasion, however, I felt that I might profitably seek a more suitable prescription, and that afternoon, as I was passing his consulting-room in Wimpole Street, I stopped in to see my good friend, Dr Izod Bennett, a physician whose knowledge of the maladies of the human organs of digestion had made him nationally famous.
I expected a bottle of bismuth and an invitation to play golf. Instead I received the shock of my life. He did not treat my symptoms lightly, and after several tests, X-ray examinations, and a barium meal, Bennett told me, seriously, that I had a chronic duodenal ulcer, which would certainly perforate if I did not take myself in hand. With feeble jocularity I protested that it was a breach of medical etiquette to endow a fellow doctor with so unpleasant a complaint, but he was not amused and his sentence, in the traditional manner, was immutable – low diet and, without question, as soon as I could arrange it, six months’ complete rest in the country. Shaken, I rose from the couch in his consulting-room … How could I possibly leave a practice so completely individual as mine for such a period? With my impatient temperament I had never been able to endure an assistant. A locum tenens – how well I knew the breed – would ruin my years of careful work within six weeks. Then, as I began to put on my shirt, a strange, irrational thought – call it madness, if you wish – suddenly transfixed me. I stood for a moment, with distant eyes and, doubtless, a foolish expression upon my face, looking back towards the longings of my youth. Then, like a Chinese mandarin, I nodded, slowly and solemnly, to myself. It was the most important gesture of my life.
For two weeks I said nothing of my interview with Bennett; then, one spring afternoon, I came in, sat down, gazed at the ceiling, and out of the blue, in that dreamy voice which betokens my most irrational decisions, remarked:
‘It’s high time we cleared out of here.’
My wife stared at me.
‘What on earth do you mean?’
‘Precisely what I say, my dear.’
A strained pause. The sun was streaming into our dining-room, pleasantly touching the mauve hyacinths she had planted and the new curtains she had hung only the week before. Outside, the air was warm, the pavements dry, the familiar street filled with agreeable bustle. Bayswater and our home had never looked more attractive. The blood rushed to her head.
‘You don’t know when you’re well off. We’re happy here, absolutely settled, with the children and everything. You’ve always had that bee in your bonnet, never content, wanting to dash off at a minute’s notice. You’ve dragged me around so much since we got married you ought to have bought me a caravan. But I’ve had enough of it. I won’t stand any more.’ She had to pause for breath. ‘In any case, you’re much too young to think of Harley Street’
‘I’m not thinking of Harley Street,’
Then what in heaven’s name are you thinking of?’
‘Selling the practice.’
‘You never could sell the practice here.’ She brought out the argument triumphantly. ‘ It’s much too large and personal.’
‘My dear … please don’t get mad … I’m afraid I have sold it.’
She turned white. She couldn’t believe it. Then she saw that it was true. She was beyond words. She bad been reading fairy stories to the children the night before, and now, ridiculously, she thought of Aladdin’s wonderful lamp, which had brought its possessor everything he wanted, and which, unappreciated, had been so foolishly, so stupidly flung away.
She whispered palely:
‘What are you going to do?’
I was silent with, for once, a shamefaced air.
‘As a matter of fact … I’m going … to try to write.’
‘Oh God,’ she gasped, bursting into tears. ‘You have gone crazy.’
At this point I felt I had better establish my sanity. I explained, trying not to alarm her, what Izod Bennett had told me. Then I went on, in a low voice, apologetic yet firm:
‘I’ve always had this queer urge to be a writer … ever since I was a youngster. But naturally if I’d told them that back home in Scotland, they’d have thought I was wrong in the head. I had to do something sensible, instead. That’s why I went in for medicine. It was safe and practical. Oh, I admit I liked it all right. I like it quite well now, I might even go so far as to say that I’m good at it. But all the time I’ve felt this other thing at the back of my mind. When I’ve been attending my patients, seeing people as they really are – yes, even as far back as the Rhondda days, when we came up against life in the raw – I kept thinking what stories I could make out of them. I want
ed to describe the characters I was meeting, get something down on paper. Of course, I hadn’t the time; you need quiet and detachment for that sort of thing, and we were always tearing so hard to get on. Well, now we have got on. I can take six months, even a year, to give myself a chance to write. At least I’ll get the bug out of my system. It’s a million to one I’m no good. And if I’m not, I can always come back to the treadmill.’
There was a long silence. She could not deny that, through the years, she had suspected in me this desire for self-expression. But she had never taken it seriously. When, after dinner and a hard day’s work, I had vaguely mentioned my longing to do a book, she smiled at me kindly over her knitting and led me on to talk about my golf handicap. But this was different. This wild project, this disruption, once again, of our pleasant domesticity, seemed to her sheer lunacy.
And it was all fixed, settled, and arranged. What a man! Had he no thought of the children or of his wife? She boiled with anger and dismay.
‘Remember that chap Gauguin,’ I reminded her diffidently. ‘The Paris stockbroker who, without warning, suddenly threw up his humdrum life and walked off without warning to paint: pictures –and good ones – in Tahiti.’
‘Tahiti,’ she moaned, ‘and after that I suppose it will be Timbuktu. For heaven’s sake, be sensible. What did Dr Bennett say was wrong with you?’
‘Oh, just a gastric condition. But I must have a rest.’
‘Yes … yes …’ she murmured unsteadily. ‘ You haven’t really been well lately …’
Torn by conflicting emotions, she gazed at me glassily, smiled wanly, then – as upon a previous historic occasion – resolved the crisis by laying her head upon my shoulder and again dissolving into tears.