Rotting Hill

by Lewis, Wyndham

  “I am afraid that is so,” the Catholic doctor agreed, his cheeks pushed up into a chilly jollity. It was perfectly obvious to him why his patient had started violently when he had warned him the rooms had no telephone: and he had been much amused by the corrected reaction which had so promptly replaced the first impulse of consternation.

  Miss Cosway entered. Her employer put on his wearier mask and prepared to communicate the big news, namely that the recluse had at last discovered a retreat where the world would be unable to molest him: a beautiful living grave. He passed his hand in an uncertain dithering arc over his lank hair, and, with an obvious effort, spoke.

  “Oh, Miss Cosway, Dr. McLachlan wishes to use the telephone. He has been able to secure a bed for me.”

  “Oh, I am glad, Dr. Eldred!”

  “It sounds too good to be true,” he went on, “but the room will be without telephone.”

  These last words suddenly changed the expression of Miss Cosway’s face. Its customary look was a genteel reflection of Eldred’s weariness. Suddenly it became one of indescribable panic.

  “It will only be for six or seven days,” Dr. McLachlan informed her, and her glance fluttered in his direction almost with indignation.

  Eldred all but allowed a belly-jeer to rumble out and the doctor showed his teeth frostily.

  “You will have to get Miss Ford around for a week to help you: and her sister perhaps, too, if she is disengaged.”

  “I am afraid I shall, Dr. Eldred,” she answered faintly.

  When Dr. McLachlan returned from the telephone he had imposed upon the piece of wood he had for a face an expression of almost boyish professional satisfaction. Lightly rubbing his hands he went towards his chair.

  “That is all arranged,” he said. “They will have the room ready at noon or just after. As soon as you have had lunch you will have the first penicillin injection.”

  “Where is it? In Rotting Hill?”

  The doctor coughed. “I am afraid not, but it is not so very far. Actually it is in Putney.”

  “You will inform O’Toole?”

  “I have done so. I did so just now.”

  “Capital.”

  “He will be there at one on Wednesday for the extractions. You will have two injections tomorrow, and another the following morning.”

  “That will take care of the sepsis.”

  “Oh, entirely. It is a reinforced penicillin. Those are terrible teeth, Dr. Eldred. You should have had them out twenty years ago. Both Vaughan-Shaw and myself believe they may be responsible for your condition.”

  Eldred threw himself back. They relaxed, Dr. McLachlan permitting himself a filter-tip cigarette.

  “What fools you doctors have been, handing yourself over unconditionally to those political monopolists.”

  “That is putting it mildly,” said the doctor.

  “They will have you tied hand and foot in a half-dozen years.”

  “Unless…”

  “I am afraid there is no unless. Someone (who?) opened the gate to the enemy. An army of G.P.s will have the status of druggists’ assistants.”

  McLachlan nodded, delicately puffing out a little smoke. “I should not be surprised,” he said, “if in the end doctor and druggist became one.”

  “True. Yes, that would be it.”

  “An abbreviated hospital training, a rather longer pharmaceutical training. That is the logical evolution. A National Health Service doctor with his four thousand patients, dealing perfunctorily with each, ultimately would be supplied with a rigidly standardized set of labelled bottles, printed instructions for the patient on each bottle. Instead of a prescription (as now) the patient would receive a bottle. And the druggist-cum-doctor would waste no time on diagnosis. ‘Pain bottom of the back? Here you are. Number 39. Next please.’”

  “Ghastly.” Eldred shook his head.

  “Not very different from today, except that now there is the complexity of the large and often luxurious chemists’ shops, to which the panel-patient takes a prescription. Also the doctor at present possesses a quite unnecessary amount of knowledge of the treatment of disease. The little state-clerk who diagnoses and dispenses in one movement will point to the instructions on the bottle if asked any questions. And people, of course, will wear spectacles from birth, and dental plates as soon as their teeth sprout up.”

  “You are giving a prognosis of the course the disease called socialism will take that is amazingly accurate.”

  “It does not require much skill to do so. At present they are splashing money around like water. I have just come from one of the big London hospitals. It is swarming with newly-appointed clerks.”

  “Jobs for the boys,” said Eldred.

  “I suppose so. In this hospital there used to be one clerk. All the bills went out to time, the patients’ reports were punctually completed. Today there are fifteen clerks, and the clerical work is always in arrears. What is worse, a ward has been closed to provide accommodation for these clerks. There is a waiting list of one thousand sick for this one hospital. And they close a ward.”

  Dr. McLachlan delivered his propaganda with a desiccated gaiety. He paused, and they both laughed bitterly.

  “So the vote is built up for the Party,” Eldred commented. “The ‘spoils system’ in the United States was recklessly inflated under Franklin Roosevelt. Millions of unnecessary jobs were created for his supporters, or for those who had not been his supporters but thenceforth would undoubtedly be so in order to keep the job. A standing army of voters was thus enlisted, ranged under the banner of the New Deal. Our socialist administration here has learned much from the New Deal—and of course works in the closest harmony with Truman’s ‘Fair Deal’. German national socialism made every smug little political monopolist’s mouth water and still serves as a model. The clerks you mention are the drones that the ruinous taxes pay for. It is the reckless bribery of the last days of parliamentary democracy.”

  The doctor listened with pleasure and respect. “Of course you as a historian, Dr. Eldred,” he observed, “are conversant with the anatomy of many political techniques. You have a deductive grasp of these matters. I merely observe what is under my nose.”

  “You are a remarkable observer.”

  So these two malcontents had the little talk in which they usually indulged after Eldred’s colon, his bladder or his insomnia had held their attention for a while. Several further illustrations of the iniquities of the administration of the National Health Act were furnished by the doctor. He was a tireless polemist against the Act, he had a big repertoire of atrocities. There was the case, for instance, of the wild-eyed young man who had come to the nuns, the day before, with tears in his eyes, and of course his prayers did not go unheeded, although the nuns themselves are short of beds and have to crowd extra people into their four small wards. The mother of this poor young man had suffered a paralytic stroke. She was helpless and among other things incontinent. He had appealed to every hospital in London but none would take her in. They did not regard themselves as places for the old to die in. And she was incontinent into the bargain. All the clinics were full as well. She now was recovering from her stroke in the care of the kind Sisters.

  Dr. Eldred’s indignation visibly waxed as he listened to this story.

  “How outrageous it is the way in which they discriminate against the old,” he exclaimed. “The majority of our Cabinet Ministers and Civil Service experts are old men, the most eminent hospital doctors likewise. But an old person will be turned away from a hospital as if he were a leper. It is to treat a man as if he were a machine. When a machine wears out you push it on to the scrap-heap. When a man’s body wears out there is still a man inside it. And as for us as Christians it is the man that is valuable, not the machine. It is a heathen generation.”

  Dr. McLachlan gravely assented, though very doubtful whether his patient’s sympathy for the old was anything but political.

  “For myself,” Eldred pursued, “I would
rather have Ranke old than a million young machines. Life is not an economic machine. But when the mechanistic millennium is consummated they will superannuate at forty-five at latest—except in the case of politicians—and kill shortly afterwards. They may kill outright, or they may prefer to starve and torture to death, as they are beginning to do now.”

  The doctor looked up with a touch of alarm at his patient. The latter had been going far beyond what politics dictated. Could it be that his high blood-pressure was exposing him to an invasion of humanitarian bacilli? Not Paul Eldred! he decided. The cause must be looked for elsewhere. The doctor now rose, like a scrawny bird levitating from its nest, as he left his chair vertically.

  “Well, I must be moving on,” he said. “There are two women with pneumonia I have to go to first. Tomorrow I shall see you at the nursing-home. You will find your room as warm as even you could wish.”

  II

  Dr. Eldred, his secretary, and a reporter stood on the miniature stoop outside the front door of 27, Rotting Gardens, the flowery tip of Rotting Hill. At the foot of the six spotless white steps stood the uniformed car-hire driver—the uniform shabby, the car none too clean. It was noon on the driver’s wrist and at the end of a gold chain in Eldred’s pocket.

  “No,” said Eldred to the reporter rather nastily, fixing him with his eye. “No. A few days, no more. Down in Gloucestershire.”

  Every opportunity for contact with the Press was eagerly seized upon by Eldred, but on this occasion the Press was actually de trop, and the Press sensed the abnormality of its reception.

  “Shall you be speaking while you are away, Dr. Eldred? May I know what are your subjects?” The reporter put great respect into his voice.

  “I am-not-speaking!” Eldred ground out, pausing between the words. “In Gloucestershire I shall remain absolutely silent.” At this point Eldred almost allowed a belly-jeer to escape him. It was able to mobilize down below before he nipped it in the bud. With professional inquisitiveness the reporter directed his eye immediately towards Eldred’s gastric centres.

  “You will be resting, Dr. Eldred?”

  “No,” Eldred droned ponderously. “No, I did not say I should be resting.”

  “I see, Dr. Eldred.”

  “I don’t know what you see,” Eldred scolded. “There is nothing to see.”

  The reporter laughed. A telegraph boy arrived at the foot of the steps.

  “Eldred?” he called up at them. “Eldred?”

  “Yes,” said the reporter. And the boy handed him the telegram.

  Paul Eldred had stepped hastily down and said to the driver “You know where to go?” at which the man rapped out (the reporter, behind Eldred, committing it to memory): “Nursing ’Ome. Fifty-five ’Astings Terrace, Putney ’Ill.” His interest now thoroughly aroused, the reporter this time took down on the back of an envelope the number of the car. “I wonder if it’s a prostate?” he asked himself. “He said he was going to be absolutely silent. What could that signify? Operation on the tongue? Malignant? Or just benign!” Secrecy of any sort being what most excites the pressman, this young fellow laid plans as he went down Rotting Hill on a bus.

  The mock-chauffeur, leaning into the hired car, attempted to drape the unclean rug over the knees of his two passengers, both of whom stoutly resisted, pushing it off each time till he desisted and closed the door, while Eldred muttered to his secretary: “Did that young reporter go off with my wire?” In eloquently smiling silence Miss Cosway held up the telegram.

  Having crossed the river they found themselves in that pleasantest of riverine districts, where the first of the Cecils was a publican, where the Oxford and Cambridge boat race starts, and where Swinburne was imprisoned by Watts Dunton—Putney. They found the nursing-home somewhat difficult to get into. After many summonses by knocks and bell a nun opened the door. She seemed willing enough that they should come in but unable to guess what might have brought them there and at first at a loss as to what to do with them. However she turned another older nun out of a small room, placed them there and closed the door. In the room they remained until perhaps ten minutes later a third nun appeared. She stopped, taken aback, she seemed about to leave them, but she changed her mind. She possessed much more administrative genius than the first nun. Having enquired if they were expected as patients she said, “You had better go to your room, I think.” This was evidently a rather revolutionary idea, but, it seemed, there was literally no alternative. All the rooms and the wards as well were upstairs. “Go upstairs,” she said, pointing the way. “Up?” asked Eldred, with great courtesy. She smiled brightly and nodded genially. Although dreamy and numbed with religion, as were most of the nuns downstairs, her smile and her nod were intact, even if her words were of the scantiest.

  When they reached the top of the stairs there was a brief blank corridor. The corridor was L-shaped, they turned at right-angles and were in a gloomy hall and saw a man’s back bent over a table. He was absorbed in something which turned out to be a temperature chart.

  A nurse carrying a tray came out of an open doorway. She said: “Are you Dr. Eldred?” and the man doubled up over the chart abruptly straightened himself, and it was Dr. McLachlan smiling a frosty welcome. “Ah, I did not hear you,” he said. “How curious.” “Not really,” said Eldred. “Miss Cosway and I are not a clamorous pair.” They all laughed genteelly. “Well, let us come to your room, Dr. Eldred. It is just here.” They moved down a fairly long windowless corridor. One door was open, from it came an authentically sepulchral groan, which increased Eldred’s respect for the home (it might be small but it groaned like a hospital), whereas it caused Dr. McLachlan to cough censoriously while stepping up their progress.

  Eldred’s room, however, was the next and the doctor led the way in jauntily, rigid but jocular. “Admittedly small but it is quite pleasant I think,” he remarked as he looked around. Eldred looked around as well. “A bright box for a toothless historian to lie in,” was his view. “And a hot box, too.” “Ah, but you asked for heat,” the doctor reminded. “I asked for heat”—in his usual way Eldred, for answer provided a deep significant echo—the same words his interlocutor had used, but loaded with a supposed meaning of almost limitless profundity. Half of Eldred’s conversation was made up of such reverberating echoes.

  “I will get into bed,” the patient abruptly announced. Miss Cosway moved towards the door quickly, casting an anxious backward glance over her shoulder.

  “Yes, do so,” agreed the doctor. “I will remain with Miss Cosway where you found me just now,” and Eldred was left alone. Evidently no room for visitors, he thought. You have to stand around in the space between the lavatory and kitchen and study the charts, or else leave the premises. Contact with the profane is reduced to a clinical minimum. He smiled in the midst of his shirt, which he was pulling over his head. As he stood in his undergarments the door opened and a nun of severe aspect entered. She looked at him absent-mindedly, turned loiteringly as if attempting to remember something, and left. Eldred gave a belly-jeer with much real gusto. “Am I of glass?” he asked the air. “Do people see through me—but do I make them remember something they had forgotten? Am I a transparent remembrancer?”

  Once in bed Eldred pressed the dangling bell-button and secured the return of his doctor and secretary. It was his wish to get rid of them quickly and to be alone with the nursing-home; away from everything with a lot of nuns—bathing in their remoteness from the vile and worthless world of the malignant commonplace, of vociferous nonentity, and to stop there until he had learned the secret of their apartness.

  After apologizing for the absence of the Matron, Dr. McLachlan offered to drive Miss Cosway back to Rotting Gardens. To a few last anxious, indeed desperate, appeals from his secretary, Eldred answered: “Tell them I am dead.”

  Miss Cosway accorded to this the hysterical laugh indicated. Recovered from the spasm she said: “I have sent the telegrams to New College and to Wilfred Bull. There was nothing tonight…�
��

  “Nothing tonight!” Eldred echoed angrily, glancing at his doctor.

  Apprehensively Miss Cosway glanced at the doctor, too, slightly flushing. “Well, you know what I mean, nothing really important, nothing that cannot be arranged. But tomorrow…”

  “Ah, tomorrow!” echoed Eldred significantly.

  “Jennifer Robinson was coming to tea, and she will be so dreadfully angry.”

  “She does allow her temper a bit too much rope. And she grows arrogant.”

  “Yes. She bullies me when I say you are engaged. She doesn’t think you are! It’s quite absurd.”

  “Absurd!” Eldred frowned.

  “I know,” said Miss Cosway, “but you know what she is! She will go away and describe you somewhere, in a gossip item, as ‘the greatest historian since Froude’!”

  Eldred was becoming increasingly uncomfortable, under the sceptical gaze of his doctor. No engagement tonight!—and merely a publicity interview with a gossip-writer tomorrow! “Am I not supposed to be dining with Sir Christopher Smith tomorrow?” he demanded.

  “No, Dr. Eldred. That is next month.”

  “Ah, next month. Next month it is!” growled Eldred, giving his secretary a rather nasty look.

  “But what can I do about the address you had agreed to give on Monday? The Charterhouse Literary Society.” She was wringing her hands over this unpaid talk to an obscure group. “And there is that Canadian historian.”

  “Canadian historian?”

  “Yes. The one you said had cribbed your last book. His name is Dr. Burnaby Harry. I think you said he had a Chair in the Arctic Circle.”

  Eldred stared fixedly at Miss Cosway, attempting to mesmerize her into silence. “Please do not allow these problems to worry you,” he said, spectacularly relaxing. “Tell everybody—and I mean everybody, to go to hell.”