by A. J. Cronin
Immediately above Glydar Place they reached the main manhole of the sewer, a rusty iron cover set in rotten concrete, and there they set to work. The gangrenous cover had not been disturbed for years but, after a struggle, they prised it up. Then Andrew shone the torch discreetly into the odorous depths, where on the crumbled stonework a dirty stream flowed slimily.
‘Pretty, isn’t it,’ Denny rasped. ‘Take a look at the cracks in that pointing. Take a last look, Manson.’
No more was said. Inexplicably, Andrew’s mood had changed and he was conscious now of a wild upswing of elation, a determination equal to Denny’s own. People were dying of this festering abomination and petty officialdom had done nothing. It was not the moment for the bedside manner and a niggling bottle of physic!
They began to deal swiftly with the cocoa tins, slipping a stick of dynamite in each. Fuses of graduated lengths were cut and attached. A match flared in the darkness, startling in its hard illumination of Denny’s pale hard face, his own shaking hands. Then the first fuse spluttered. One by one the live cocoa tins were floated down the sluggish currents, those with the longest fuses going first. Andrew could not see clearly. His heart was thudding with excitement. It might not be orthodox medicine but it was the best moment he had ever known. As the last tin went in with its short fuse fizzing, Hawkins took it into his head to hunt a rat. There was a breathless interlude, filled with the yapping of the dog and the fearful possibilities of an explosion beneath their feet, while they chased and captured him. Then the manhole cover was flung back and they raced frantically thirty yards up the street.
They had barely reached the corner of Radnor Place and stopped to look round when bang! the first can went off.
‘By God!’ Andrew gasped, exultantly. ‘We’ve done it, Denny!’ He had a sense of comradeship with the other man, he wanted to grip him by the hand, to shout aloud.
Then swiftly, beautifully, the muffled explosions followed, two, three, four, five and the last a glorious detonation that must have been at least a quarter of a mile down the valley.
‘There!’ said Denny in a suppressed voice, as though all the secret bitterness of his life escaped into that single word. ‘That’s the end of one bit of rottenness!’
He had barely spoken before the commotion broke. Doors and windows were flung open, shedding light upon the darkened roadway. People ran out of their houses. In a minute the street was thronged. At first the cry went up that it was an explosion at the mine. But this was quickly contradicted – the sounds had come from down the valley. Arguments arose and shouted speculations. A party of men set out with lanterns to explore. The hubbub and confusion made the night ring. Under cover of the darkness and the noise, Denny and Manson started to dodge home by the back ways. There was a singing triumph in Andrew’s blood.
Before eight o’clock next morning Doctor Griffiths arrived upon the scene by car, fat, veal faced and verging upon panic, summoned from his warm bed with much blasphemy by Councillor Glyn Morgan. Griffiths might refuse to answer the calls of the local doctors but there was no denying the angry command of Glyn Morgan. And, indeed, Glyn Morgan had cause for anger. The Councillor’s new villa half a mile down the valley had, overnight, become surrounded by a moat of more than mediaeval squalor. For half an hour the Councillor, supported by his adherents, Hamar Davies and Deawn Roberts, told their medical officer, in voices audible to many, exactly what they thought of him.
At the end of it, wiping his forehead, Griffiths tottered over to Denny who, with Manson, stood amongst the interested and edified crowd. Andrew had a sudden qualm at the approach of the health officer. A troubled night had left him less elated. In the cold light of morning, abashed by the havoc of the torn-up road, he was again uncomfortable, nervously perturbed. But Griffiths was in no condition to be suspicious.
‘Man, man,’ he quavered to Philip. ‘We’ll have to get that new sewer for you straight off now.’
Denny’s face remained expressionless.
‘I warned you about that months ago,’ he said frigidly. ‘Don’t you remember?’
‘Yes, yes, indeed! But how was I to guess the wretched thing would blow up this way. It’s a mystery to me how it all happened.’
Denny looked at him coolly.
‘Where’s your knowledge of public health, doctor? Don’t you know these sewer gases are highly inflammable.’
The construction of the new sewer was begun on the following Monday.
Chapter Five
It was three months later and a fine March afternoon. The promise of spring scented the soft breeze blowing across the mountains where vague streaks of green defied the dominating heaped and quarried ugliness. Under the crisp blue sky even Drineffy was beautiful.
As he went out to pay a call, which had just come in, at 3 Riskin Street, Andrew felt his heart quicken to the day. Gradually he was becoming acclimatised to this strange town, primitive and isolated, entombed by the mountains, and no places of amusement, not even a cinema, nothing but its grim mine, its quarries and ore-works, its string of chapels and bleak rows of houses, a queer and silently contained community.
And the people, they also were strange, yet Andrew, though he saw them so alien to himself, could not but feel stirrings of affection towards them. With the exception of the tradesfolk, the preachers and a few professional people, they were all directly in employment to the Company. At the end and beginning of each shift the quiet streets would suddenly awake, re-echoing to steel-shod footfalls, unexpectedly alive with an army of marching figures. The clothing, boots, hands, even the faces of those from the hematite mine bore bright red powdering of ore dust. The quarry-men wore moleskins with pads and gartered knees. The puddlers were conspicuous in their trousers of blue twill.
They spoke little and much of what they said was in the Welsh tongue. They had the air in their self-contained aloofness of being a race apart. Yet they were a kindly people. Their enjoyments were simple, and were found usually in their own homes, in the chapel halls, on the foreshortened rugby football ground at the top of the town. Their prevailing passion was, perhaps, a love of music – not the cheap melodies of the moment, but stern, classical music. It was not uncommon for Andrew, walking at night along the rows, to hear the sound of a piano coming from one of these poor homes, a Beethoven sonata or a Chopin prelude, beautifully played, floating through the still air, rising to these inscrutable mountains and beyond.
The position in regard to Doctor Page’s practice was now clear to Andrew. Edward Page would never see another patient. But the men did not like to ‘go off’ Page who had served them faithfully for over thirty years. And the devoted Blodwen, bringing her forces to bear upon Watkins, the mine manager, through whom the workmen’s medical contributions were paid, had succeeded in keeping her brother on the Company’s list, and was in consequence receiving a good income, perhaps one sixth of which she paid out to Manson, who did all the work.
Andrew was profoundly sorry for Edward Page. Edward, a gentle, simple soul, who had never had much enjoyment in his lonely bachelor life. He had literally worked himself out in the unswerving pursuit of duty in this harsh valley. Now, broken and bedridden, he was a man without interest. True, he was fond of Blodwen, and she, in a secret intense fashion, was fond of Edward. He, Doctor Page, was her dear brother. Coming into the room while Andrew sat with the sick man she would advance, smiling apparently, yet with a queer jealous sense of exclusion, exclaiming:
‘Hey! What are you two talkin’ about!’
It was impossible not to love Edward Page, he had so manifestly the spiritual qualities of sacrifice and unselfishness. He would lie there, helpless in bed, a worn out man, submissive to all the attentions of his sister, thanking her merely by a movement of his eyes, a wry contraction of his brows.
There was no need for him to remain in Drineffy and he had occasionally vague desires to get away to a warmer, kindlier place. Once, when Andrew asked: ‘Is there anything you’d like, sir,’ he had sighed: ‘I�
�d like to get out of here, my boy. I’ve been reading about that island – Capri – they’re going to make a bird sanctuary there.’ Then he had turned his face sideways on the pillow. The longing in his voice was very sad.
He never spoke of the practice except to say occasionally in a spent voice: ‘I daresay I didn’t know a great deal. Yet I did my best.’ But he would spend hours lying absolutely still, watching his window-sill, where Annie every morning devotedly placed crumbs, bacon rind and grated coconut. On Sunday forenoons an old miner, Enoch Davies, came in, very stiff in his rusty black suit and celluloid dicky, to sit with Page. The two men watched the birds in silence. On one occasion Andrew met Enoch stamping excitedly downstairs. ‘Man alive,’ burst out the old miner, ‘we’ve had a rare fine mornin’. Two bluetits playin’ pretty as you please on the sill for the best part of an hour.’ Enoch was Page’s only friend. He had great influence with the miners. He swore staunchly that not a man would come off the doctor’s list so long as he drew breath. He little knew how great a disservice his loyalty was to poor Edward Page.
Another frequent visitor to the house was the manager of the Western Counties Bank, Aneurin Rees, a long dry bald-headed man whom Andrew at first sight distrusted. Rees was a highly respected townsman who never by any chance met anyone’s eye. He came to spend a perfunctory five minutes with Doctor Page and was then closeted for an hour at a time with Miss Page. These interviews were perfectly moral. The question under discussion was money. Andrew judged that Blodwen had a good deal of it invested in sound stocks and that under the admirable direction of Aneurin Rees she was from time to time shrewdly increasing their holdings. Money, at this period, held no significance for Andrew. It was enough that he was regularly paying off his obligation to the Endowment. He had a few shillings in his pocket for cigarettes. Beyond that he had his work.
Now, more than ever, he appreciated how much his clinical work meant to him. It existed, the knowledge, as a warm ever-present inner consciousness which was like a fire at which he warmed himself when he was tired, depressed, perplexed. Lately, indeed, even stranger perplexities had formed and were moving more strongly than before with him. Medically, he had begun to think for himself. Perhaps Denny, with his radical destructive outlook, was mainly responsible for this. Denny’s codex was literally the opposite of everything which Manson had been taught. Condensed and framed, it might well have hung, text-like, above his bed: ‘I do not believe.’
Turned out to pattern by his medical school, Manson had faced the future with a well-bound text-book confidence. He had acquired a smattering of physics, chemistry and biology – at least he had slit up and studied the earthworm. Thereafter he had been dogmatically fed upon the accepted doctrines. He knew all the diseases, with their tabulated symptoms, and the remedies thereof. Take gout, for instance. You could cure it with colchicum. He could still see Professor Lamplough blandly purring to his class, ‘Vinum Colchici, gentlemen, twenty to thirty minim doses, an absolute specific in gout.’ But was it? – that was the question he now asked himself. A month ago he had tried colchicum, pushing it to the limit in a genuine case of ‘poor man’s’ gout – a severe and painful case. The result had been dismal failure.
And what about half, three-quarters of the other ‘remedies’ in the pharmacopoeia? This time he heard the voice of Doctor Eliot, lecturer on Materia Medica. ‘And now, gentlemen, we pass to elemi – a concrete resinous exudation, the botanical source of which is undetermined, but is probably Canarium commune, chiefly imported from Manilla, employed in ointment form, one in five, an admirable stimulant and disinfectant to sores and issues.’
Rubbish! Yes, absolute rubbish. He knew that now. Had Eliot ever tried unguentum elemi? He was convinced that Eliot had not. All of that erudite information came out of a book and that, in its turn, came out of another book and so on, right back, probably to the Middle Ages. The word ‘issues,’ now dead as mutton, confirmed this view.
Denny had sneered at him, that first night, for naïvely compounding a bottle of medicine: Denny always sneered at the medicine compounders, the medicine swillers, Denny held that only half a dozen drugs were any use, the rest he cynically classed as ‘muck’. It was something, that view of Denny’s, to wrestle with in the night, a shattering thought, the ramifications of which Andrew could as yet only vaguely comprehend.
At this point in his reflections he arrived at Riskin Street and entered No 3. Here he found the patient to be a small boy of nine years of age, named Joey Howells, who was exhibiting a mild, seasonal attack of measles. The case was of little consequence, yet because of the circumstances of the household, which was a poor one, it promised inconvenience to Joey’s mother. Howells himself, a day labourer at the quarries, had been laid up three months with pleurisy, for which no compensation was payable, and now Mrs Howells, a delicate woman, already run off her feet attending to one invalid, in addition to her work of cleaning Bethesda Chapel, was called upon to make provision for another.
At the end of his visit as Andrew stood talking to her at the door of her house, he remarked with regret:
‘You have your hands full. It’s a pity you must keep Idris home from school.’ Idris was Joey’s younger brother.
Mrs Howells raised her head quickly, a resigned little woman with shiny red hands and work swollen finger knuckles.
‘But Miss Barlow said I needn’t have him back.’
In spite of his sympathy Andrew felt a throb of annoyance.
‘Oh?’ he inquired. ‘And who is Miss Barlow?’
‘She’s the teacher at Bank Street School,’ said the unsuspecting Mrs Howells. ‘She come round to see me this morning. And seein’ how hard put I was, she’s let little Idris stop on in her class. Goodness only knows what I’d have done if I’d had him fallin’ over me as well!’
Andrew had a sharp impulse to tell her that she must obey his instructions and not those of a meddling schoolmistress. However, he saw well enough that Mrs Howells was not to blame. For the moment he made no comment, but as he took his leave and came down Riskin Street his face wore a resentful frown. He hated interference, especially with his work, and beyond everything he hated interfering women. The more he thought of it the angrier he became. It was distinct contravention of the regulations to keep Idris at school when Joey, his brother, was suffering from measles. He decided suddenly to call upon this officious Miss Barlow and have the matter out with her.
Five minutes later he ascended the incline of Bank Street, walked into the school and, having inquired his way of the janitor, he found himself outside the classroom of Standard 1. He knocked at the door, entered.
It was a large detached room, well ventilated, with a fire burning at one end. All the children were under seven and, as it was the afternoon break when he entered, each was having a glass of milk – part of an assistance scheme introduced by the local branch of the MWU. His eyes fell upon the mistress at once. She was busy writing out sums upon the blackboard, her back towards him, and she did not immediately observe him. But suddenly she turned round.
She was so different from the intrusive female of his indignant fancy that he hesitated. Or perhaps it was the surprise in her brown eyes which made him immediately ill at ease. He flushed and said:
‘Are you Miss Barlow?’
‘Yes.’ She was a slight figure in a brown tweed skirt, woollen stockings and small stout shoes. His own age, he guessed, no, younger – about twenty-two. She inspected him, a little doubtful, faintly smiling, as though, weary of infantile arithmetic, she welcomed distraction on this fine spring day. ‘Aren’t you Doctor Page’s new assistant?’
‘That’s hardly the point,’ he answered stiffly, ‘though, as a matter of fact, I am Doctor Manson. I believe you have a contact here. Idris Howells. You know his brother has measles.’
There was a pause. Her eyes, though questioning now, were persistently friendly. Brushing back untidy hair she answered:
‘Yes, I know.’
Her failure to take
his visit seriously was sending his temper up again.
‘Don’t you realise it’s quite against the rules to have him here?’
At his tone her colour rose and she lost her air of comradeship. He could not help thinking how clear and fresh her skin was, with a tiny brown mole, exactly the colour of her eyes, high on her right cheek. She was very fragile in her white blouse, and ridiculously young. Now she was breathing rather quickly, yet she spoke slowly:
‘Mrs Howells was at her wit’s end. Most of the children here have had measles. Those that haven’t are sure to get it sooner or later. If Idris had stopped off he’d have missed his milk which is doing him such a lot of good.’
‘It isn’t a question of his milk,’ he snapped. ‘He ought to be isolated.’
She answered stubbornly. ‘I have got him isolated – in a kind of way. If you don’t believe me look for yourself.’
He followed her glance. Idris, aged five, at a little desk all by himself near the fire, was looking extraordinarily pleased with life. His pale blue eyes goggled contentedly over the rim of his milk mug.
The sight infuriated Andrew. He laughed contemptuously, offensively.
‘That may be your idea of isolation. I’m afraid it isn’t mine. You must send that child home at once.’
Tiny points of light glinted in her eyes.
‘Doesn’t it occur to you that I’m the mistress of this class? You may be able to order people about in more exalted spheres. But here it’s my word that counts.’