by A. J. Cronin
The women of the North Wing approached a minute later, wearing their Sunday black, some of them recognizable as the waitresses and chambermaids of the Place. They fell into the same category as the men.
Next upon the scene were the gentlemen of the Place, accompanied by Scammon who, in the full finery of his best uniform, set the tone of sartorial perfection. At least a dozen of the party sported morning coats and top hats. Here, if you like, was the “ upper crust” of Eastershaws.
A moment’s pause when the gentlemen had crossed the sacred acre.… Inside the church an organ voluntary had begun; then, as though aware that they brought the final touch, the ladies of West Wing made their appearance, not in a solid troop like those of lesser consequence, but singly and in pairs, chaperoned by Sister Shadd. They came leisurely, in all their finery, careful that their skirts did not touch the dust. In the very centre of the group, surrounded by her own adulatory coterie, a lady advanced with great dignity towards the porch. Small, grey-haired and slight, with a drawn little beak and bright darting eyes in a parchment face, she was attired in lavender silk, with lace at her bosom and a large hat with an ostrich plume upon her head.
They were all in now, the bells ceased and, stepping briskly up the path, in a plain everyday suit, came Goodall, to conduct the service. When he had vanished into the church I turned from the window with a bitter frown, clipped on my key and went downstairs.
This was the third Sunday of the month, I was on official duty all day, at least until six; but I went first to the laboratory, which I had left only six hours before, to check upon the collodion sac I was using as a dialysing membrane. Yes, it was functioning perfectly. That was the way of it now. In my work everything went well. I took the rack of twenty sterile paraffined tubes, and ran into each 1 c.c. of the dialysed fluid, corked the test tubes carefully, numbered them, and put them in the incubator.
I stood a moment, heavy and brooding, feeling at the back of my head that hard pain which comes from overwork. I wanted my coffee, but could scarcely gather myself to go for it. Yes, this time there was no mistake. I was not far from isolating the nucleo-protein which should prove far more effective than the primary vaccine. Then I should have finished. Everything. My nerves bunched together at the thought. But I felt no real excitement. Only a kind of sullen, bitter satisfaction.
In the breakfast-room at Men’s North I ate a slice of toast and drank three cups of black coffee. It was good to be alone—not that I minded Palfrey much, he was an amiable inoffensive creature. The rhyme Nurse Stanway had made suited him:
“I like little Palfrey, his coat is so warm,
And if you don’t hurt him, he’ll do you no harm.”
I lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply as though to dull down that perpetual ache in my side. It was over, yet there came always an unguarded moment when Jean was close to me, when, with a wincing spasm, I must thrust her savagely away. At first, in sadness, I had pitied myself. Now a slow, burning resentment had mingled with the pain, and tempered it like steel. There raged in me a deep, corroding anger against life.
I rose and went down to the dispensary, where I began to make up the stock bromide and chloral solutions for the galleries. The dispensary was quiet and dim, panelled in dark mahogany, with an aromatic smell of drugs, old wood, and sealing wax which vaguely soothed my warring senses. Lately, the place had grown upon me. My earlier uneasiness was gone. I accepted, without a second thought, the key, the warm rococo galleries, the social structure of this cut-off little world.
Footsteps sounded in the passage and, an instant later, the hatch went up, framing Nurse Stanway’s head and shoulders.
“Ready?” she asked.
I answered briefly.
“In a minute.”
She stood watching while I filled the last of the West Side list.
“You didn’t go to church?”
“No,” I said. “ Did you?”
“It’s much too nice a day. Besides, it isn’t in my line.”
I looked at her. She met my gaze without any discernible change in her expressionless face. Her bang of glossy hair had a bluish glint and showed square on her white forehead under her uniform cap. I knew now that during the war she had married a flying officer who had later divorced her. She did not appear to care. One never knew what she was feeling, it seemed that nothing could break her casual air, her complete indifference, as though life were something worthless, to be spent carelessly, or simply thrown away.
“You haven’t come to our sitting-room yet.” She spoke deliberately, almost with the slowness of mockery. “ Sister Shadd’s very cut up about it.”
“I haven’t had time.”
I made the excuse abruptly.
“Why don’t you look in to-night? You might find it amusing. One never knows.”
There was a faintly malicious challenge in her tone which sent a stark impulse along my worn nerves. I gazed at her with moody attention. Her rather full eyes still were mocking, yet they held a glint of meaning.
“All right,” I said, suddenly. “I’ll come.”
She smiled slightly and, still looking at me, gathered up the medicines I had placed on the ledge of the hatch. Then, without a word, she turned away. Her slow movements had a physical casualness, a sensual grace.
For the rest of the day I was unsettled, ill at ease. After lunch I wrote up the case-book for Men’s East, and at three o’clock went to deliver it at Dr. Goodall’s house, set in the façade of the main building.
An elderly maidservant answered the bell and, having gone within to inquire, returned a moment later to say that the Superintendent was resting, but would see me. I followed her to the study, a large, untidy room, panelled in nondescript brown wood and sparsely lit by a yellowish leaded Gothic window with a stained-glass coat of arms inset. Stretched upon a sofa by the wide fireplace, covered by a plaid rug, was Goodall.
“You must excuse me, Dr. Shannon. The fact is, after church I did not feel well, and took a stiff dose of morphine.” He proclaimed the fact simply, his eyes heavy in the griped and sallow face. “ Wasn’t it Montaigne who compared biliary colic to the tortures of the damned? I am a sufferer too.”
He laid down the book I handed him and fixed his lined and heavy-lidded gaze upon me.
“You seem to be settling down very nicely. I am glad. I don’t like changes in my staff. We have a great opportunity here, Dr. Shannon … in this little planet of ours.” He paused, with a musing, strangely distant air. “Has it never struck you that we are a race apart, with our own laws and customs, virtues and vices, our social and intellectual strata, our reactions to the stress of living? People of the other world do not understand us, laugh at us, perhaps fear us. But we are citizens of the universe, nevertheless, a symbol of Man’s indestructibility under the forces of Nature and of Fate.”
My heart missed a beat as, leaning towards me, he went on with that remote gleam in his dark, pin-point irises.
“My task, Dr. Shannon, my life’s endeavour is to create a new society, out of an order that is diseased and decadent. Difficult … ah, yes, but not impossible. And what a chance, Doctor! … When you have finished your present research I can open up for you a scientific field of unimaginable scope. We are only upon the threshold of understanding those maladies which affect our people. The brain, Dr. Shannon, the human brain, in all its mystery and majesty, pink and translucent, shining like a lovely fruit within its delicate membranes, its cranial sheath … What a subject for investigation … what a fascinating enigma to be solved!”
There was exaltation in his voice. For a moment I thought he was about to soar to dizzier heights but, as with an effort, he recollected himself. He threw me a quick glance and, after a moment of silence, dismissed me with his dark yet winning smile.
“Don’t work too hard, Doctor. One must occasionally pay tribute to the senses.”
I came away from his house in an even greater tumult of my feelings, attracted, yet excited and confused. He alwa
ys had that effect upon me. But this evening it was worse than ever.
I simply could not rest. A surging ferment overcharged my veins, ready to burst forth. One must occasionally pay tribute to the senses, he had said.
Although, several times, I had told myself I would not go, towards eight o’clock I knocked on the door of the sisters’ sitting-room and opened it. I must find a way of escape from these fevered and tormenting thoughts.
Seated at the end of the long table, which gave evidence that most of the staff had already supped and left the room, were Shadd, in uniform, Miss Paton, the dietician, and Nurse Stanway, dressed for “ off duty” in a blue skirt and white silk blouse. The three were talking in intimate voices and it was Shadd, perking up like a pouter pigeon, who saw me first.
“Why, Mahomet has come to the mountain.” She brought out the “saying” in a pleased voice. “We’re highly honoured, I’m sure.”
As I entered, Miss Paton, a middle-aged woman with a ruddy face, gave me a nod of greeting. Nurse Stanway’s expression was calm and indifferent. It was the first time I had seen her out of uniform. Her bang of glossy hair fell more conspicuously over her forehead, and the soft, shiny stuff of her blouse was loose over her flat chest and breasts.
“Haven’t you finished?” I asked.
“As a matter of fact, we haven’t begun.” Shadd met my inquiring gaze with a robust laugh. “ We may as well tell you … since you’re one of us now. Sometimes we get tired of our menu. It wouldn’t be good discipline, for the others, to complain. So we just wait and go down for supper, we three, to the kitchens.”
“Ah, I see!”
At my tone, a faint blush penetrated Shadd’s dermal toughness. She rose.
“If you breathe a word of it, I’ll never speak to you again.”
The kitchens, reached by the subway, were entirely underground, but lofty, cool and softly lit by clusters of frosted ceiling globes. Against one white tiled wall stood an array of old-fashioned ranges, on another hung a copper batterie de cuisine, while along a third ran a series of insulated white doors leading to the cold-rooms. Three mixing troughs, a bread-cutter and a ham-slicing machine with a heavy steel wheel stood at the far end beside a scrubbed deal table on which a great pan of oatmeal was already soaking for the next morning’s porridge. A gentle whirring from the ventilation system filled the air of the immaculate vault.
Miss Paton had acquired a new briskness in her own domain. She advanced to the refrigerator marked Ladies’ West, and with a turn of her wrist on the nickel handle threw open the heavy door, disclosing an assortment of cold meats, tongue, ham, sardines in a glass container, blanc mange, jellies, and preserved fruits.
Sister Shadd smacked her lips.
“I’m hungry,” she said.
When plates and forks had been passed round, we began to eat in picnic fashion. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Stanway perch herself on the wooden table with a detachment and assurance which swelled the dark forces of exasperation within me. Her legs were crossed, so that one swung loose, stressing the silken slimness of the limb. Her posture, slightly inclined backwards, emphasized the line of her thigh, waist, and breasts.
A harsh tightness rose in my throat. The desire to subdue her, to break through the barriers which restrained me, to destroy and desecrate, dominated me like a fever. I took no notice of her, remaining beside Sister Shadd, replenishing her plate from time to time, bearing with her stupid conversation. Yet while I pretended to listen, I could still see Stanway, balancing a plate of salad, her eyes charged with a sly and secret irony.
At last, having finished her dessert, Shadd heaved a regretful sigh.
“Well! All good things come to an end. I must go now and check my wretched linen-room. Be a sport, Paton, and come with me. It’ll only take me half an hour if you help me.”
On our way back through the underground the two older women took the West incline. I continued with Nurse Stanway towards the North Wing vestibule. We stood there.
“What next?”
“I think I’ll take a walk,” Stanway said, carelessly.
“I’ll come with you.”
She indicated her indifference with a slight shrug, an instinct of cruelty, yet flattered, in a feline way, by my attention.
Outside, the night was dark, a few stars showing, but moonless. Once she was free of the buildings Stanway halted to light a cigarette. The cupped flame haloed for an instant her pale unconcerned face, with its high cheek-bones and flattened nose. Why, I asked myself, am I doing this? I knew practically nothing about her and cared less. An accommodating stranger who would help me to roll in the gutter, to escape. A greater hardness took hold of me. In a controlled voice I said:
“Which way?”
“Down to the farm …” She seemed to smile. “And back.”
“Just as you like.”
Setting off along the West drive, suiting my step to hers, I kept a distance between us, looking straight in front. But, in the darkness, her own sense of space was less exact, and from time to time she brushed against me. The soft collision of her hip-bone as it made contact with mine increased the tortured hardness of my thoughts.
“Why don’t you talk?” she asked with a light laugh. She was like a cat, in that the night seemed to excite and strengthen her.
“What about?”
“Anything. I don’t care. What star is that ahead of us?”
“The Pole star. Look for it when you get lost in the woods.”
Again she laughed, less scornfully than usual.
“Are we likely to get lost? You don’t see Venus, by any chance?”
“Not just yet.”
“Well …” She was still laughing. “There’s still hope.”
I did not say anything. I felt myself harder and more uncaring now, despising myself and her. That laugh, keyed too high, shorn of assurance, had given her away, revealed her pretence of indifference as a sham, a secret invitation, from the beginning.
At the turn of the road under the farm elms there was a five-barred gate, held by two high turf walls. I stopped.
“This is as far as you want to go?”
She stubbed out her cigarette against the gate. I took her by the shoulders. I said:
“I’d like to break your neck.”
“Why don’t you try?”
Pressed back against the turf wall her face was dead-white, the stretched skin under her eyes bluer than ever. Her nostrils were slightly dilated. Her smile was fixed, almost a grimace. A wave of repugnance went over me, but the desire for oblivion had gone too far to be dispelled.
Her lips were dry and slightly bitter from the cigarette. They opened in an experienced manner. I could feel a shred of tobacco on her tongue. Her breath came quicker than mine.
There was an instant while Jean’s face floated up before me, then the moon went behind a cloud and it was dark beneath the elms, where nothing remained but disillusion and despair.
Chapter Six
August passed in a wave of stifling heat. Although the watering cart went round each morning, clouds of dust rose from the driveways of the Place, and the leaves hung limply on the trees. The sun, streaming through the window-panes, upon which a fly buzzed quietly, gave to the dim galleries a mellow and nostalgic charm.
On the last evening of that torrid month it was so close I left the door of the laboratory half open. As I bent over the Duboscq colorimeter, with my shirt-sleeves rolled up and sweat rolling down under my unloosened collar, I heard a step behind me.
“Good evening, Shannon.” To my surprise, it was Maitland’s voice. “No; don’t let me disturb you.”
She had never visited me here before. Judging by the wool-stuffed workbag upon her arm, she was returning from one of her long, close sessions with Miss Indre, wherein the two women, knitting together, confidentially reviewed the current problems of the Place. Now, pulling forward a stool, she seated herself near me.
“How is it going?”
I laid
down my pen, and rubbed my strained and slightly bloodshot eyes. I could feel the twitching of my left supraorbital nerve. I said shortly:
“In a few hours I’ll have finished.”
“I’m so glad. I guessed you were near the end.”
She had taken no offence at my abruptness. I did not dislike Maitland, but it was annoying to have her in the way at this particular moment. I could see her better now, her mottled face had a serious expression, as she gazed at me steadily through her violet lenses, studying me, and at the same time nerving herself to speak.
“I’m not an interfering person, Shannon … under my shell of bravado, I am rather a weak and pitiful creature. And I am wondering if I dare offer you some advice.”
I stared at her in complete surprise. With a formal gravity which increased my irritation, she resumed:
“It’s terribly important to find one’s proper place in life, Shannon. Take my own case, for instance—dull though it is. I’m Irish, as you know, but actually my family is English, settled in Wexford on a demesne granted them by Cromwell. For over three hundred years we Maitlands have lived there, isolated, alien, separated from the people by blood and tears, burned out twice in five generations, suffering an insidious decay, a blight, soft and relentless as a sea fog, which rots the soul.”
There was a pause. I looked at her coldly.
“You seem to have escaped that unhappy fate.”
“Yes, Shannon. I escaped. But only by running away.”
Her gaze was charged with such significance I moved impatiently.
“Frankly, I don’t know what you mean.”
“Don’t you recall Freud’s definition of a psychosis? A flight away from life into the realm of disease.”