‘See that, my good woman! Remember when I came running in with that first wretched three and a bender from the surgery. Bah! That’s what I say to it now – bah! This is real money, gen-u-ine fees, like a first rate MD, MRCP, ought to be earning. Twelve guineas for talking nicely to Winnie the Pooh, and innocuously inoculating her with Glickert’s Eptone.’
‘What’s that?’ she asked smiling; then suddenly she was doubtful. ‘Isn’t that the stuff I’ve heard you run down so much?’
His face altered, he frowned at her, completely at a loss. She had made the one remark he did not wish to hear. All at once he felt angry, not with himself, but with her.
‘Blast it, Chris! You’re never satisfied!’ He turned and banged out of the room. For the rest of that day he was in a sulky humour. But next day he cheered up. He went then to Rogers, in Conduit Street.
Chapter Five
He was self-conscious as a schoolboy when, a fortnight later, he came down in one of his two new suits. It was a dark, double-breasted grey, worn, on Rogers’ suggestion, with a wing collar and a dark bow-tie which picked up the shade of the grey. There was not the shadow of a doubt, the Conduit Street tailor knew his job, and the mention of Captain Sutton’s name had made him do it thoroughly.
This morning, as it fell out, Christine was not looking her best. She had a slight sore throat and had wound her old scarf protectively around her throat and head. She was pouring his coffee when the radiance of his presence burst upon her. For a moment she was too staggered to speak.
‘Why, Andrew!’ she gasped. ‘You look wonderful. Are you going anywhere?’
‘Going anywhere? I’m going on my rounds, my work of course!’ Being self-conscious made him almost snappy. ‘ Well! Do you like it?’
‘Yes,’ she said, not quickly enough to please him. ‘It’s – it’s frightfully smart – but’ – she smiled – ‘somehow it doesn’t quite seem you!’
‘You’d rather keep me looking like a tramp, I suppose.’
She was silent, her hand, raising her cup, suddenly contracted so that the knuckles showed white. Ah! he thought, I got her there. He finished breakfast and entered the consulting-room.
Five minutes later she followed him there, scarf still round her throat, her eyes hesitant, pleading.
‘Darling,’ she said, ‘please don’t misunderstand me! I’m delighted to see you in a new suit. I want you to have everything, everything that’s best for you. I’m sorry I said that a moment ago but you see – I’m accustomed to you – oh! it’s awfully hard to explain – but I’ve always identified you as – now please don’t misunderstand me – as someone who doesn’t give a hang about how he looks or how people think he looks. You remember that Epstein head we saw. That it wouldn’t have looked quite the same if – oh, if it had been trimmed and polished up.’
He answered abruptly.
‘I’m not an Epstein head.’
She made no reply. Lately, he had been difficult to reason with and, hurt at this misunderstanding, she did not know what to say. Still hesitating, she turned away.
Three weeks later when Miss Everett’s niece came to spend a few weeks in London he was rewarded for his wise observance of the elder lady’s hint. On a pretext Miss Everett summoned him to Park Gardens, where she scanned him with severe approval. He could almost see her passing him as a fit candidate for her recommendation. On the following day he received a call from Mrs Sutton, who, since the condition ran, apparently, in the family, wished the same hay-fever treatment as her aunt. This time he had no compunction about injecting the useless Eptone of the useful Messrs Glickert. He made an excellent impression upon Mrs Sutton. And before the end of that same month he was called to a friend of Miss Everett’s who also occupied a flat in Park Gardens.
Andrew was highly diverted with himself. He was winning, winning, winning. In his straining eagerness for success he forgot how contrary was his progress to all that he had hitherto believed. His vanity was touched. He felt alert and confident. He did not pause to reflect that this rolling snowball of his high-class practice had been started, in the first place, by a fat little German woman behind the counter of a ham and beef shop near that vulgar Mussleburgh Market. Indeed, almost before he had time to reflect at all the snowball took a further downhill roll – another and more exciting opportunity was offered to his grasp.
One afternoon in June, the zero hour between two o’clock and four, when nothing of consequence normally occurred, he was sitting in the consulting-room, totalling his receipts for the past month, when suddenly the phone rang. Three seconds and he was at the instrument.
‘Yes, yes! This is Doctor Manson speaking.’
A voice, anguished and palpitant, came back to him.
‘Oh, Doctor Manson! I’m relieved to find you in. This is Mr Winch! – Mr Winch of Laurier’s. We’ve had a slight mishap to one of our customers. Could you come? Could you come at once?’
‘I’ll be there in four minutes.’ Andrew clicked back the receiver and sprang for his hat. A 15 bus, hurtling outside, solidly sustained his impetuous leap. In four minutes and a half he was inside the revolving doors of Laurier’s, met by an anxious Miss Cramb, and escorted over swimming surfaces of green-piled carpet, past long gilt mirrors and satinwood panelling against which, as if by chance, there could be seen one small hat on its stand, a lacy scarf, an ermine evening wrap. As they hastened, with rapid earnestness, Miss Cramb explained:
‘It’s Miss le Roy, Doctor Manson. One of our customers. Not mine, thank goodness, she’s always giving trouble. But, Doctor Manson, you see I spoke to Mr Winch about you –’
‘Thanks!’ brusquely – he could still, on occasion, be brusque! ‘What’s happened?’
‘She seems – oh, Doctor Manson – she seems to have had a fit in the fit-fitting room!’
At the head of the broad staircase she surrendered him to Mr Winch, pinkly agitated, who fluttered:
‘This way, doctor – this way – I hope you can do something. It’s most dreadfully unfortunate –’
Into the fitting-room, warm, exquisitely carpeted in a lighter shade of green, with gilt and green panelled walls, a crowd of twittering girls, a gilt chair upturned, a towel thrown down, a spilled glass of water, pandemonium. And there, the centre of it all, Miss le Roy, the woman in the fit. She lay on the floor, rigid, with spasmodic clutching of her hands and sudden stiffenings of her feet. From time to time a straining, intimidating crowing broke from her tense throat.
As Andrew entered with Mr Winch one of the older assistants in the group burst into tears.
‘It wasn’t my fault,’ she sobbed. ‘I only pointed out to Miss le Roy it was the design she chose herself –’
‘Oh, dear. Oh, dear,’ muttered Mr Winch. ‘This is dreadful, dreadful. Shall I – shall I ring for the ambulance.’
‘No, not yet,’ Andrew said in a peculiar tone. He bent down beside Miss le Roy. She was very young, about twenty-four, with blue eyes and washed-out silky hair all tumbled under her askew hat. Her rigidity, her convulsive spasms were increasing. On the other side of her knelt another woman, with dark concerned eyes, apparently her friend. ‘Oh, Toppy, Toppy,’ she kept murmuring.
‘Please clear the room,’ said Andrew suddenly. ‘ I’d like everyone out but’ – his eye fell upon the dark young woman – ‘ but this lady here.’
The girls went, a trifle unwillingly – it had been pleasurable diversion assisting at Miss le Roy’s fit. Miss Cramb, even Mr Winch, removed themselves from the room. The moment they had gone the convulsions became terrifying.
‘This is an extremely serious case,’ Andrew said, speaking very distinctly. Miss le Roy’s eyeballs rolled towards him. ‘Get me a chair, please.’
The fallen chair was righted, in the centre of the room, by the other woman. Then slowly and with great sympathy, supporting her by the armpits, Andrew helped the convulsed Miss le Roy upright into the chair. He held her head erect.
‘There,’ he said with greater sympath
y. Then, taking the flat of his hand, he hit her a resounding smack upon the cheek. It was his most courageous action for many months and remained so – alas! – for many months to come.
Miss le Roy stopped crowing, the spasm ceased, her rolling eyeballs righted themselves. She gazed at him in pained, in infantile bewilderment. Before she could relapse he took his hand again and struck her on the other cheek. Smack! The anguish in Miss le Roy’s face was ludicrous. She dithered, seemed about to crow again and then began, gently, to cry. Turning to her friend she wept:
‘Darling, I want to go home.’
Andrew gazed apologetically at the dark young woman who now regarded him with restrained yet singular interest.
‘Sorry,’ he muttered. ‘It was the only way. Bad hysteria – carpopedal spasms. She might have harmed herself – I hadn’t an anaesthetic or anything. And anyway – it worked.’
‘Yes – it worked.’
‘Let her cry this out,’ Andrew said. ‘Good safety valve. She’ll be all right in a few minutes.’
‘Wait, though’ – quickly – ‘you must see her home.’
‘Very well,’ Andrew said, in his busiest professional tone.
In five minutes’ time Toppy le Roy was able to make good her face, a lengthy operation punctuated by a few desultory sobs.
‘I don’t look too foul, do I, darling,’ she inquired of her friend. Of Andrew she took no notice whatsoever.
They left the fitting-room thereafter, and their progress through the long showroom was sheer sensation. Wonder and relief left Mr Winch almost speechless. He did not know, he would never know, how this had come about, how the writhing paralytic had been made to walk. He followed, babbling deferential words. As Andrew passed through the main entrance behind the two women he wrung him fervently with a spongy hand.
The taxi took them along Bayswater Road in the direction of Marble Arch. There was not even pretence of speech. Miss le Roy was sulking now, like a spoiled child who had been punished and she was still jumpy – from time to time, her hands and the muscles of her face gave slight involuntary twitches. She was, now that she could be seen more normally, very thin and almost pretty in a scrawny little way. Her clothes were beautiful yet, despite them, she seemed to Andrew exactly like a young pulled chicken, through which traces of electric current periodically passed. He was himself nervous, conscious of the awkward situation, yet he was determined in his own interests to take advantage of it to the full.
The taxi rounded the Marble Arch, ran alongside Hyde Park, and, wheeling to the left they drew up before a house in Green Street. Then, almost immediately, they were inside. The house took Andrew’s breath away, he had never imagined anything so luxurious – the wide soft-pinewood hall, the cabinet gorgeous with jade, the strange single painting set in a costly panel, the reddish-gold lacquer chairs, the wide settees, the skin-thin faded rugs.
Toppy le Roy flung herself down on a satin-cushioned sofa, still ignoring Andrew, and tugged off her little hat which she flung on the floor.
‘Press the bell, darling, I must have a drink. Thank God, father isn’t home.’
Quickly, a manservant brought cocktails. When he had gone Toppy’s friend considered Andrew thoughtfully, almost, but not quite, smiling.
‘I think we ought to explain ourselves to you, doctor. It’s all been rather hurried. I’m Mrs Lawrence. Toppy here – Miss le Roy – had rather a row over a dress she’s having specially designed for the Arts Charity Ball and – well! she’s been doing too much lately, she’s a very nervy little person – and the long and the short of it is that although Toppy’s very cross with you we’re frightfully indebted to you for getting us back here. And I’m going to have another cocktail.’
‘Me too,’ said Toppy peevishly. ‘That bloody Laurier woman. I’ll tell father to ring up and get her sacked! Oh, no I won’t!’ As she tilted her second cocktail a smile of gratification slowly overspread her face. ‘I did give them something to think about, though, didn’t I, Frances? I simply went wild! That look on old Mamma Winch’s face was too, too funny.’ Her scraggy little frame shook with laughter. She met Andrew’s eyes without ill-will. ‘Go on, doctor. Laugh! It was priceless.’
‘No, I don’t think it was so amusing.’ He spoke quickly, anxious to explain himself, establish his position, convince her she was ill. ‘You really had a bad attack. I’m sorry I had to treat you as I did. If I’d had an anaesthetic I’d have given you that. Much less – less annoying for you. And please don’t imagine that I think you tried to bring on that attack. Hysteria – well, that’s what it was – is a definite syndrome. People oughtn’t to be unsympathetic about it. It’s a condition of the nervous system. You see, you’re extremely run down, Miss le Roy, all your reflexes are on edge, you’re in a very nervous state.’
‘That’s perfectly true,’ Frances Lawrence nodded. ‘ You’ve been doing far too much lately, Toppy.’
‘Would you really have given me chloroform?’ Toppy asked Andrew in childish wonder. ‘That would have been fun.’
‘But seriously, Toppy,’ Mrs Lawrence said, ‘I wish you’d take yourself up.’
‘You sound like father,’ Toppy said, losing her good humour.
There was a pause. Andrew had finished his cocktail. He put the glass down on the carved pine mantelpiece behind him. There seemed nothing more for him to do.
‘Well!’ he said effectively, ‘ I must get on with my work. Please take my advice, Miss le Roy. Have a light meal, go to bed, and – since I cannot be of any further service to you – call in your own doctor tomorrow. Good-bye.’
Mrs Lawrence accompanied him into the hall, her manner so unhurried that he was obliged to restrain the busy briskness of his exit. She was tall and slim, with rather high shoulders and a small elegant head. In her dark beautifully waved hair a few iron-grey strands gave her a curious distinction. Yet she was quite young, not more than twenty-seven, he was sure. Despite her height she had fine bones, her wrists especially were small and fine, indeed her whole figure seemed flexible, exquisitely tempered, like a fencer’s. She gave him her hand, her greenish hazel eyes fixed upon him in that faint, friendly, unhurried smile.
‘I only wished to tell you how I admired your new line of treatment.’ Her lips twitched. ‘ Don’t give it up on any account. I foresee you making it a crashing success.’
Walking down Green Street to pick up a bus he saw to his amazement that it was nearly five o’clock. He had spent three hours in the company of these two women. He ought to be able to charge a really big fee for that! And yet, despite this elevating thought – so symptomatic of his brave new outlook – he felt confused, strangely dissatisfied. Had he really made the most of his chance? Mrs Lawrence had seemed to like him. But you never could tell with people like that. What a marvellous house, too! Suddenly he gritted his teeth in angry exasperation. Not only had he omitted to leave his card, he had forgotten even to tell them who he was. As he took his seat in the crowded bus beside an old workman in soiled overalls he blamed himself bitterly for missing a golden opportunity.
Chapter Six
The following morning at a quarter past eleven, as he was on the point of taking his departure on a round of cheap visits centred about the Mussleburgh Market, the telephone rang. A manservant’s voice, gravely solicitous, purred at him.
‘Doctor Manson, sir! Ah! Miss le Roy wishes to know, sir, what time you will be calling on her today. Ah! Excuse me, sir, hold on – Mrs Lawrence will speak to you herself.’
Andrew hung on, with a quick throbbing excitement while Mrs Lawrence talked to him in friendly fashion, explaining that they were expecting him to call, without fail.
As he came away from the phone he told himself exultantly that he hadn’t missed the opportunity yesterday, he hadn’t, no, he hadn’t missed it after all.
He dropped all his other calls, urgent or otherwise, and went straight to the house in Green Street. And here, for the first time, he met Joseph le Roy. He found le Roy impatiently aw
aiting him in the jade-bedizened hall, a bald thick-set figure, downright and bejowled, who abused his cigar like a man who has no time to lose. In one second his eyes bored into Andrew, a swift surgical operation which ended to his satisfaction. He then spoke forcibly in a colonial tongue.
‘See here, doc, I’m in a hurry. Mrs Lawrence had a hell of a bother tracking you down this morning. I understand you’re a clever young fellow and you don’t stand any nonsense. You’re married too, aren’t you? That’s good. Now you take my girl in hand. Get her right, get her strong, get all this damn hysteria out of her system. Don’t spare anything, I can pay. Good-bye.’
Joseph le Roy was a New Zealander. And despite his money, his Green Street house, and his exotic little Toppy it was not difficult to believe the truth – that his great-grandfather was one Michael Cleary, an illiterate farm hand on the lands around Greymouth Harbour, who was known colloquially to his fellow ‘ scrubbies’ as Leary. Joseph le Roy had certainly faced up to life as Joe Leary, a boy whose first job was that of ‘milker’ on the great Greymouth farms. But Joe was born, as he said himself, to milk more than cows. And thirty years later, in the top-floor office of the first Auckland skyscraper, it was Joseph le Roy who put his signature to the deal unifying the Island dairy farms into a great dried milk combine.
It was a magic scheme – the Cremogen Combine. At this time dried milk goods were unknown, commercially unorganised. It was le Roy who saw their possibility, who led their attack on the world market, advertising them as God-given nourishment for infants and invalids. The cream of the achievement lay, not in Joe’s products, but in his own rich audacity. The surplus skim milk, which had been poured down the drain or given to the pigs in hundreds of New Zealand farms, was now sold in the cities of the world in Joe’s neat brightly papered tins as Cremogen, Cremax, and Cremafat at three times the price of pure fresh milk.
Co-director in the le Roy Combine, and manager of the English interests, was Jack Lawrence, who had been, illogically enough, a Guards officer before he went into business in the city. Yet it was more than the bare association of commerce which drew Mrs Lawrence and Toppy together. Frances, rich in her own right and far more at home in the smart society of London than Toppy – who occasionally betrayed her brushwood antecedents – had an amused affection for the enfant gâté. When Andrew went upstairs after his interview with le Roy she was waiting for him outside Toppy’s room.