by Ruskin Bond
‘You know, Henry,’ said Mrs Brownrigg suddenly, ‘I don’t feel ill. Those things you’re giving me are doing me good, I’m sure, I don’t feel nearly so tired at the end of the day now. Can’t you treat me yourself.’
The man in the bed stiffened. Any compunction he may have felt vanished and he became wary.
‘Of course they’re doing you good,’ he said with the satisfaction of knowing that he was telling the truth up to a point, or at least of knowing that he was doing nothing reprehensible—yet.
‘I don’t believe in patent medicines as a rule, but Fender’s pills are good. They’re a well known formula, and they certainly do pick one up. But I just want to make sure that you’re organically sound. I don’t like you getting breathless when you hurry, and the colour of your lips isn’t good, you know.’
Plump, foolish Millie looked in the mirror and nervously ran her forefinger over her mouth.
Like many women of her age she had lost much of her colour, and there certainly was a faint, very faint, blue streak round the edge of her lips.
The chemist was heavily reassuring.
‘Nothing to worry about, I’m sure, but I think we’ll go down and see Crupiner this evening,’ he said, and added adroitly, ‘we want to be on the safe side, don’t we?’
Millie nodded, her mouth trembling.
‘Yes, dear,’ she said, and paused, adding afterwards in that insufferable way of hers, ‘I suppose so.’
When she had gone downstairs to attend to breakfast Henry Brownrigg rose with his own last phrase still on his lips. He repeated it thoughtfully.
‘The safe side.’ That was right. The safe side. No ghastly hash of it for Henry Brownrigg.
Only fools made a hash of things. Only fools got caught. This was almost too easy. Millie was so simple-minded, so utterly unsuspecting.
By the end of the day Mr Brownrigg was nervy. The boy Perry had reported innocently enough that he had seen young Hill in his new car going down Acacia Road at something over sixty, and had added casually that he had had the Bell girl with him. The youngest one. Phyllis. Did Mr Brownrigg remember her? She was rather pretty.
For a moment Henry Brownrigg was in terror lest the boy had discovered his secret and was wounding him maliciously. But, having convinced himself that this was not so, the fact and the sting remained.
Young Hill was handsome and a bachelor. Phyllis was young and impressionable. The chemist imagined them pulling up in some shady copse outside the town, holding hands, perhaps even kissing, and the heart which could remain steady while Millie’s stupid eyes met his anxiously as she spoke of her illness turned over painfully in Henry Brownrigg’s side at the thought of that embrace.
‘Hurry.’ The word formed itself again in the back of his mind. Hurry ... hurry.
Millie was breathless when they arrived at Doctor Crupiner’s old-fashioned house. Henry had been self-absorbed and had walked very fast.
Doctor Crupiner saw them immediately. He was a vast, dusty old man. Privately Millie thought she would like to take a good stiff broom to him, and the picture the idea conjured in her mind was so ridiculous that she giggled nervously and Henry had to shake his head at her warningly.
She flushed painfully, and the old, stupid expression settled down over her face again.
Henry explained her symptoms to the doctor and Millie looked surprised and gratified at the anxiety he betrayed. Henry had evidently noticed her little wearinesses much more often than she had supposed.
When he had finished his recital of her small ills, none of them alarming in themselves but piling up in total to a rather terrifying sum of evidence, Doctor Crupiner turned his eyes, which were small and greasy, with red veins in their whites, on to Millie, and his old lips, which were mottled like Henry’s ledger, moved for a fraction of a second before his voice came, wheezy and sepulchral.
‘Well, madam,’ he said, ‘your husband here seems worried about you. Let’s have a look at you.’
Millie trembled. She was getting breathless again from sheer apprehension. Once or twice lately it had occurred to her that the Fender’s pills made her feel breathless, even while they bucked her up in other ways, but she had not liked to mention this to Henry.
Doctor Crupiner came close to her, breathing heavily through his nose in an effort of concentration. He thrust a stubby, unsteady finger into her eye socket, dragging down the skin so that he could peer short-sightedly at her eyeball. He thumped her half-heartedly on the back and felt the palms of her hands.
Mr Brownrigg, who watched all this somewhat meaningless ritual, his round eyes thoughtful and uneasy, suddenly took the doctor on one side, and the two men had a muttered conversation at the far end of the long room.
Millie could not help overhearing some of it, because Doctor Crupiner was deaf these days and Henry was anxious to make himself understood.
‘Twenty years ago,’ she heard. ‘Very sudden.’ And then, after a pause, the awful word ‘hereditary’.
Millie’s trembling fit increased in intensity and her broad, stupid face looked frightened. They were talking about her poor papa. He had died very suddenly of heart disease.
Her own heart jumped painfully. So that was why Henry seemed so anxious.
Doctor Crupiner came back to her. She had to undo her dress and Doctor Crupiner listened to her heart with an ancient stethoscope. Millie, already trembling, began to breathe with difficulty as her alarm became unbearable.
At last the old man finished with her. He stared at her unwinkingly for some seconds and finally turned to Henry, and together they went back to the far end of the room.
Millie strained her ears and heard the old man’s rumbling voice.
‘A certain irregularity. Nothing very alarming. Bring her to see me again.’
Then there was a question from Henry which she could not catch, but afterwards, as the doctor seemed to be fumbling in his mind for a reply, the chemist remarked in an ordinary tone: ‘I’ve been giving her Fender’s pills.’
‘Fender’s pills?’ Doctor Crupiner echoed the words with relief ‘Excellent. Excellent. You chemists like patent medicines, I know, and I don’t want to encourage you, but that’s a well-known formula and will save you mixing up my prescription. Carry on with those for a while. Very good things; I often recommend them. Take them in moderation, of course.’
‘Oh, of course,’ said Henry. ‘But do you think I’m doing right, Doctor?’
Millie looked pleased and startled at the earnestness of Henry’s tone.
‘Oh, without doubt, Mr Brownrigg, without doubt,’ Doctor Crupiner repeated the words again as he came back to Millie. ‘There, Mrs Brownrigg,’ he said with spurious jollity, ‘you take care of yourself and do what your husband says. Come to see me again in a week or so and you’ll be as right as ninepence. Off you go. Oh, but Mrs Brownrigg, no shocks, mind. No excitements. No little upsets. And don’t over-tire yourself.’
He shook hands perfunctorily, and, while Henry was helping Millie to collect her things with a solicitude quite unusual in him, the old man took down a large, dusty book from the shelves.
Just before they left he peered at Henry over his spectacles.
‘Those Fender’s pills are quite a good idea,’ he remarked in a tone quite different from his professional rumble. ‘Just the things. They contain a small percentage of digitalin.’
One of Mr Brownrigg’s least attractive habits was his method of spending Saturday nights.
At half-past seven the patient but silently disapproving Millie would clear away the remains of the final meal of the day and place one glass and an unopened bottle of whisky and a siphon of soda on the green serge tablecloth.
This done, she would retire to the kitchen, wash up, and complete the week’s ironing. She usually left this job until then, because it was a longish business, with frequent pauses for minor repairs to Henry’s shirts and her own underclothing, and she knew she had plenty of undisturbed time on her hands.
She had, in fact, until midnight. When the kitchen clock wheezed twelve Millie folded her ironing board and turned up the irons on the stove to cool.
The she went into the living-room and took away the glass and the empty bottle, so that the daily help should not see them in the morning. She also picked up the papers and straightened the room.
Finally, when the gas fire had been extinguished, she attended to Henry.
A fortnight and three days after her first visit to Doctor Crupiner—the doctor, at Henry’s suggestion, had increased her dose of Fender’s pills from three to five a day—she went through her Saturday ritual as usual.
For a man engaged in Mr Brownrigg’s particular programme to get hopelessly and incapably drunk once, much less once a week, might well have been suicidal lunacy.
One small glass of whisky reduced him to taciturnity. Twelve large glasses of whisky, or one bottle, made of him a limp, silent sack of humanity, incapable of movement or speech, but, quite remarkably, not a senseless creature.
It might well have occurred to Millie to wonder why her husband should chose to transform himself into a Therese Raquin paralytic once every week in his life, but in spite of her awful stupidity she was a tolerant woman and honestly believed that men were odd, privileged creatures who took delight in strange perversions. So she humoured him and kept his weakness secret even from her mother.
Oddly enough, Henry Brownrigg enjoyed his periodical orgy. He did not drink during the week, and his Saturday experience was at once an adventure and a habit. At the outset of his present project he had thought of foregoing it until his plan was completed, but he realised the absolute necessity of adhering rigidly to his normal course of life, so that there could be no hook, however small, on which the garment of suspicion could catch and take hold.
On this particular evening Millie quite exhausted herself getting him upstairs and into bed. She was so tired when it was all over that she sat on the edge of her couch and breathed hard, quite unable to pull herself together sufficiently to undress.
So exhausted was she that she forgot to take the two Fender’s pills that Henry had left on the dressing-table for her, and once in bed she could not persuade herself to get out again for them.
In the morning Henry found them still in the little box. He listened to her startled explanations in silence and then, as she added apology to apology, suddenly became himself again.
‘Dear Millie,’ he said in the old exasperated tone she knew so well, ‘isn’t it enough for me to do all I can to get you well without you hampering me at every turn?’
Millie bent low over the stove and, as if he felt she might be hiding sudden tears, his manner became more conciliatory.
“Don’t you like them?’ he inquired softly. ‘Don’t you like the taste of them? Perhaps they’re too big? Look here, old dear, I’ll put them up in an easier form. You shall have them in jelly cases. Leave it to me. There, there, don’t worry. But you must take your medicine, you know.’
He patted her plump shoulder awkwardly and hurried upstairs to dress.
Millie became thoughtful. Henry was clearly very worried about her indeed, or he would never be so nice about her silly mistake.
Young Bill Perry, Brownrigg’s errand boy assistant, was at the awkward stage, if indeed he would ever grow out of it.
He was scrawny, red headed, with a tendency to acne, and great raw, scarlet wrists. Mr Brownrigg he loathed as only the young can loathe the possessor of a sarcastic tongue, but Millie he liked, and his pale, sandy-fringed eyes twinkled kindly when she spoke to him.
Young Perry did not think Millie was half so daft as the Old Man made out.
If only because she was kind to him, young Perry was interested in the state of Millie’s health.
On the Monday night young Perry saw Mr Brownrigg putting up the contents of the Fender’s pills in jelly cases and he inquired about them.
Mr Brownrigg was unusually communicative. He told young Perry in strict confidence that Mrs Brownrigg was far from well and that Doctor Crupiner was worried about her.
Mr Brownrigg also intimated that he and Doctor Crupiner were, as professional men, agreed that if complete freedom from care and Fender’s pills could not save Mrs Brownrigg, nothing could.
‘Do you means she might die?’ said young Perry, aghast. ‘Suddenly, I mean, sir?’
He was sorry as soon as he had spoken, because Mr Brownrigg’s hand trembled so much that he dropped one of the jelly cases and young Perry realised that the Old Man was really wild about the Old Girl after all, and that his bullyragging her was all a sham to hide his feelings.
At that moment young Perry’s sentimental, impressionable heart went out to Mr Brownrigg, and he generously forgave him for his observation that young Perry was patently cut out for the diplomatic service, since his tact and delicacy were so great.
The stores arrived. Bill Perry unpacked the two big cases; the smaller case he opened, but left the unpacking to his employer.
Mr Brownrigg finished his pill making, although he was keeping the boy waiting, rinsed his hands and got down to work with his usual deliberation.
There were not a great many packages in the case and young Perry, who had taken a peep at the mottled ledger some time before, thought he knew why. The Old Man was riding close to the edge. Bills and receipts had to be juggled very carefully these days.
The boy read the invoice from the wholesaler’s, and Mr Brownrigg put the drugs away.
‘Sodii Bicarbonas, Magnesia Levis,’ he read, stumbling over the difficult words. ‘Iodine, Quininæ Hydrochloridum, Tincture Digitalin ... that must be it, Mr Brownrigg. There, in the biggish packet.’
Bill Perry knew he read badly and was only trying to be helpful when he indicated the parcel, but Mr Brownrigg shot a truly terrifying glance in his direction as he literally snatched up the package and carried it off to the drug cabinet.
Young Perry was dismayed. He was late and he wanted to go. In his panic he floundered on, making matters worse.
‘I’m sorry, sir,’ he said. ‘I was only trying to help. I thought you might be—er—thinking of something else and got a bit muddled.’
‘Oh,’ said Mr Brownrigg slowly, fixing him with those hot, round eyes in a way which was oddly disturbing. ‘And of what should I be thinking when I am doing my work, boy?’
‘Of—of Mrs Brownrigg, sir,’ stammered the wretched Perry helplessly.
Henry Brownrigg froze. The blood congealed in his face and his eyes seemed to sink into his head.
Young Perry, who realised he had said the wrong thing, and who had a natural delicacy which revolted at prying into another’s sorrow, mistook his employer’s symptoms for acute embarrassment.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said again. ‘I was really trying to help. I’m a bit—er—windy myself, sir. Mrs Brownrigg’s been very kind to me. I’m sorry she’s so ill.’
A great sigh escaped Henry Brownrigg.
‘That’s all right, my boy,’ he said, with a gentleness his assistant had never before heard in his tone. ‘I’m a bit rattled myself, too. You can go now. I’ll see to these few things.’
Young Perry sped off, happy to be free on such a sunny evening, but also a little awe-stricken by the revelation of this tragedy of married love.
Phylis hurried down Coe’s Lane, which was a short cut between her own road and Priory Avenue. It was a narrow, paper-baggy little thoroughfare, with a dusty hedge on one side and high tarred fence on the other.
On this occasion Coe’s Lane appeared to be deserted, but when Phyllis reached the stunted may tree half-way down the hedge a figure stepped out and came to meet her.
The girl stopped abruptly in the middle of the path. Her cheeks were patched with pink and white and she caught her breath sharply as though afraid of herself.
Henry Brownrigg himself was unprepared for the savagery of the sudden pain in his breast when he saw her, and the writhing, vicious, mindless passion which checked his breathing and made his
eyelids feel sticky and his mouth dry, frightened him a little also.
They were alone in the lane and he kissed her, putting into his hunched shoulders and greedy lips all the insufferable, senseless longing of the past eighteen days.
When he released her she was crying. The big, bright tears which filled her eyes brimmed over on to her cheeks and made her mouth look hot and wet and feverish.
‘Go away,’ she said and her tone was husky and imploring. ‘Oh, go away—please, please!’
After the kiss Henry Brownrigg was human again and no longer the fiend-possessed soul in torment he had been while waiting in the lane. Now he could behave normally, for a time at least.
‘All right,’ he said, and added so lightly that she was deceived, ‘going out with Peter Hill again this afternoon?’
The girl’s lips trembled and her eyes were pleading.
‘I’m trying to get free,’ she said. ‘Don’t you see I’m trying to get free from you? It’s not easy.’
Henry Brownrigg stared at her inquisitively for a full minute. Then he laughed shortly and explosively and strode away back down the lane at a great pace.
Henry Brownrigg went home. He walked very fast, his round eyes introspective but his step light and purposeful. His thoughts were pleasant. So Phyllis was there when he wanted her, there for the taking when the obstacle was once removed. That had been his only doubt. Now he was certain of it. The practical part of his project alone remained.
Small, relatively unimportant things like the new story the mottled ledger would have to tell when the insurance money was in the bank and Millie’s small income was realised and reinvested crowded into his mind, but he brushed them aside impatiently. This afternoon he must be grimly practical. There was delicate work to do.
When he reached home Millie had gone over to her mother’s.
It was also early-closing day and young Perry was far away, bowling wides for the St. Anne’s parish cricket club.