The Citadel

by A. J. Cronin

  Again Andrew was struck by the paradox of this clever man, using Drineffy as a bolt-hole from convention. As a surgeon Philip was exceptionally gifted. Andrew, administering the anaesthetic, had seen him perform a resection of the gall-bladder on the kitchen table of a miner’s house, the sweat dripping from his red face and hairy forearms, a model of swiftness and accuracy. It was possible to make allowances for a man who did such work.

  Nevertheless, when Andrew reached home he still smarted from his impact with Philip’s coldness. And so, as he came through the front door and hung his hat on the stand, he was scarcely in the mood to hear Miss Page’s voice exclaiming:

  ‘Is that you, doctor? Doctor Manson! I want you!’

  Andrew ignored her call. Turning, he prepared to go upstairs to his own room. But as he placed his hand on the banister Blodwen’s voice came again, sharper, louder.

  ‘Doctor! Doctor Manson! I want you.’

  Andrew swung round to see Miss Page sail out of the sitting-room, her face unusually pale, her blue eyes sparkling with some violent emotion. She came up to him.

  ‘Are you deaf? Didn’t you hear me say I wanted you!’

  ‘What is it, Miss Page?’ he said irritably.

  ‘What is it, indeed.’ She could scarcely breathe. ‘ I like that. You askin’ me? It’s me that wants to ask you somethin’, my fine Doctor Manson!’

  ‘What, then?’ Andrew snapped.

  The shortness of his manner seemed to excite her beyond endurance.

  ‘It’s this. Yes! My smart young gentleman! Maybe you’ll be kind enough to explain this.’ From behind her back she produced a slip of paper and without relinquishing it, fluttered it menacingly before his eyes. He saw it was Joe Morgan’s cheque. Then, raising his head, he saw Rees behind Blodwen, standing in the doorway of the sitting-room.

  ‘Ay, you may well look!’ Blodwen went on. ‘I see you recognise it. But you better tell us quick how you come to bank that money for yourself when it’s Doctor Page’s money and you know it.’

  Andrew felt the blood rise behind his ears in quick surging waves.

  ‘It’s mine. Joe Morgan made me a present of it.’

  ‘A present! Indeed! I like that. He’s not here now to deny it.’

  He answered between his shut teeth.

  ‘You can write to him if you doubt my word.’

  ‘I’ve more to do than write letters all over the place.’ In a still louder tone she exclaimed, ‘ I do doubt your word. You think you’re a wise one. Huh! Comin’ down here and thinkin’ you can get the practice into your own hands when you should be workin’ for Doctor Page. But this shows what you are, all right. You have no one’s interest at heart but your own.’

  She flung the words at him, half-turning for support to Rees who, in the doorway, was making sounds of expostulation in his throat, his face sallower than usual. Andrew indeed, saw Rees as the instigator of the whole affair, dallying a few days in indecision, then scurrying to Blodwen with the story. His hands clenched fiercely. He came down the two bottom steps and advanced towards them, his eyes fixed on Rees’s thin bloodless mouth with threatening intensity. He was livid with rage and thirsting for battle.

  ‘Miss Page,’ he said, in a laboured tone. ‘ You’ve made a charge against me. Unless you take it back and apologise within two minutes I’ll sue you for damages for defamation of character. The source of your information will come out in court. I’ve no doubt Mr Rees’s board of governors will be interested to hear how he discloses his official business.’

  ‘I – I only did my duty,’ stammered the bank manager, his complexion turning muddier than before.

  ‘I’m waiting, Miss Page.’ The words came with a rush, choking him. ‘And if you don’t hurry up I’ll give your bank manager the worst hiding he’s ever had in his life.’

  She saw she had gone too far, said more, far more than she had intended. His threat, his ominous attitude, sobered her. It was almost possible to follow her swift reflection: Damages! Heavy damages! Oh, Lord, they might take a lot of money off her! She choked, swallowed, stammered:

  ‘I – I take it back. I apologise.’

  It was almost comic, the gaunt angry woman, so suddenly and unexpectedly subdued. But Andrew found it singularly humourless. He realised, all at once with a great flood of bitterness, that he had reached the limit of his endurance. He could not put up with this impossible situation any longer. He took a quick deep breath.

  ‘Miss Page, there is just one thing I want to tell you. It may interest you to know that last week a deputation of the men approached the manager, who invited me to put my name on the Company’s list. It may further interest you to know that on ethical grounds – which you couldn’t possibly know anything about – I definitely refused. And now, Miss Page, I’m so absolutely sick of you, I couldn’t stay on. You’re a good woman, I have no doubt. But to my mind you’re a misguided one. And if we spent a thousand years together we should never agree. I give you a month’s notice here and now.’

  She gaped at him, her eyes nearly bursting from her head. Then suddenly she said:

  ‘No, you don’t. No, you don’t. It’s all lies. You couldn’t get near the Company’s list. And you’re sacked, that’s what you are. No assistant has ever given me notice in his life. The idea, the impudence, the insolence, talking to me like that. I said it first. You’re sacked, you are, that’s what you are, sacked, sacked, sacked –’

  The outburst was loud and penetrating, and at the height of it there was an interruption. Upstairs, the door of Edward’s room swung slowly open and, a moment later, Edward himself appeared, a strange, bleak figure, his wasted shanks showing beneath his nightshirt. So strange and unexpected was this apparition Miss Page stopped dead in the middle of a word. From the hall she gazed upwards, as also did Rees and Andrew, while the sick man, dragging his paralysed leg behind him came slowly, painfully, to the topmost stair.

  ‘Can’t I have a little peace.’ His voice, though agitated, was stern. ‘What’s the matter?’

  Blodwen took another gulp, launched into a tearful diatribe against Manson. She concluded, ‘And so – and so I gave him his notice.’

  Manson did not contradict her version of the case.

  ‘You mean he’s going?’ Edward asked, trembling all over with agitation and the exertion of keeping himself upright.

  ‘Yes, Edward.’ She sniffed. ‘I did it for your sake. And, anyhow, you’ll soon be back.’

  There was a silence. Edward abandoned all that he wished to say. His eyes dwelt blankly upon Andrew, moved to Rees, passed quickly on to Blodwen, then came to rest sorrowfully on nothing at all. A look of hopelessness yet of dignity formed upon his stiff face.

  ‘No,’ he said at last. ‘I’ll never be back. You know that – all of you.’

  He said nothing more. Turning slowly, holding on to the wall, he dragged his way back into his room. The door closed without sound.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Remembering the joy, the pure elation which the Morgan case had given him and which, in a few words, his quarrel with Miss Page had turned to something sordid, Andrew brooded angrily, wondering if he should not take the matter further, write to Joe Morgan, demand something more than a mere apology. But he dismissed the idea as both unworthy and mercenary. In the end he picked out the most useless charity in the district and, in a mood of determined bitterness, posted five guineas to the secretary and asked him to send the receipt to Aneurin Rees. After that he felt better. But he wished he might have seen Rees reading that receipt.

  And now, realising that his work must terminate here at the end of the month, he began immediately to look for another position, combing the back pages of the Lancet, applying for everything which seemed suitable. There were numerous advertisements inserted in the ‘assistants wanted’ column. He sent in good applications, copies of his testimonials and even, as was frequently requested, photographs of himself. But at the end of the first week and again, at the conclusion of the se
cond, he had received not a single answer to his applications. He was disappointed and astounded. Then Denny offered him the explanation in one terse phrase: ‘You’ve been in Drineffy.’

  It dawned upon Andrew, with a pang of dismay, that the fact of his having been in practice in this remote Welsh mining town condemned him. No one wanted assistants from ‘the valleys’, they had a reputation. When a fortnight of his notice had expired Andrew really began to worry. What on earth was he to do? He still owed over £50 to the Glen Endowment. They would allow him to suspend payments, of course. But apart from that if he could not find another job how was he to live? He had two or three pounds in ready cash, no more. He had no equipment, no reserves. He had not even bought himself a new suit since coming to Drineffy and his present garments had been shabby enough when he arrived. He had moments of sheer terror when he saw himself sinking to destitution.

  Surrounded by difficulties and uncertainty he longed for Christine. Letters were no use; he had no talent for expressing himself on paper; anything he could write would undoubtedly convey a wrong impression. Yet she was not returning to Drineffy until the first week in September. He turned a fretful, hungry eye upon the calendar, counting the days that intervened. There were still twelve of them to run. He felt, with growing despondency, that they might as well be past, for all the prospect which they held for him.

  On the evening of the 30th of August, three weeks after he had given Miss Page his notice and he had begun, from stark necessity, to entertain the idea of trying for a dispenser’s post, he was walking dispiritedly along Chapel Street when he met Denny. They had remained on terms of highly strained civility during the past few weeks and Andrew was surprised when the other man stopped him.

  Knocking out his pipe on the heel of his boot Philip inspected it as though it demanded all his attention.

  ‘I’m rather sorry you’re going, Manson. It’s made quite a difference your being here.’ He hesitated. ‘I heard this afternoon that the Aberalaw Medical Aid Society are looking for a new assistant. Aberalaw – that’s just thirty miles across the valleys. It’s quite a decent Society, as these things go. I believe the head doctor – Llewellyn – is a useful man. And as it’s a valley town they can’t very well object to a valley man. Why don’t you try?’

  Andrew gazed at him doubtfully. His expectations had recently been raised so high and dashed so hopelessly that he had lost all faith in his ability to succeed.

  ‘Well, yes,’ he agreed slowly. ‘ If that’s the case, I may as well try.’

  A few minutes later he walked home, through the now heavy rain, to apply for the post.

  On the 6th of September there took place a full meeting of the Committee of the Aberalaw Medical Aid Society for the purpose of selecting a successor to Doctor Leslie who had recently resigned in order to take up an appointment on a Malay rubber plantation. Seven candidates had been asked to attend.

  It was a perfect summer afternoon and the time, by the big Co-operative Stores clock, was close on four o’clock. Prowling up and down on the pavement outside the Medical Aid offices in Aberalaw Square, darting nervous glances at the six other candidates, Andrew nervously awaited the first stroke of the hour. Now that his foreboding had proved incorrect and he was here actually being considered for the post, he longed with all his heart to be successful.

  From what he had seen of it he liked Aberalaw. Standing at the extreme end of the Gethly valley the town was less in the valley than on top of it. High, bracing, considerably larger than Drineffy – nearly 20,000 inhabitants was his guess – with good streets and shops, two cinemas, and a sense of spaciousness conveyed by green fields on its outskirts, Aberalaw appeared to Andrew, after the sweltering confines of the Penelly ravine, a perfect paradise.

  ‘But I’ll never get it,’ he fretted as he paced up and down – ‘never, never, never.’ No, he couldn’t be so lucky! All the other candidates looked far more likely to be successful than himself, better turned out, more confident. Doctor Edwards, especially, radiated confidence. Andrew found himself hating Edwards, a stoutish, prosperous middle-aged man who had freely intimated, in the general conversation a moment ago in the office doorway, that he had just sold his own practice down the valley in order to ‘apply’ for this position. Damn him, grated Andrew inwardly, he wouldn’t have sold out of a safe berth if he hadn’t been sure of this one!

  Up and down, up and down, head bent, hands thrust in his pockets. What would Christine think of him if he failed? She was returning to Drineffy either today or tomorrow – in her letter she had not been quite sure. Bank Street School reopened on the following Monday. Though he had written her no word of his application here, failure would mean his meeting her gloomily, or worse, with a fictitious brightness, at that very moment when he wished, above everything in the world, to stand well with her, to win her quiet, intimate, exciting smile.

  Four o’clock at last. As he turned towards the entrance a fine saloon motor-car swept silently into the Square and drew up at the offices. From the back seat a short, dapper man emerged, smiling briskly, affably, yet with a sort of careless assurance, at the candidates. Before mounting the stairs he recognised Edwards, nodding casually.

  ‘How do, Edwards.’ Then aside: ‘It’ll be all right, I fancy.’

  ‘Thank you, thank you ever so, Doctor Llewellyn,’ breathed Edwards with tremendous deference.

  ‘Finish!’ said Andrew to himself bitterly.

  Upstairs, the waiting-room was small, bare, and sour smelling, situated at the end of a short passage leading to the committee-room. Andrew was the third to go in for interview. He entered the big committee-room with nervous doggedness. If the post was already promised he was not going to cringe for it. He took the seat offered him with a blank expression.

  About thirty miners filled the room, seated, and all of them smoking, gazing at him, with blunt, but not unfriendly curiosity. At the small side-table was a pale quiet man with a sensitive, intelligent face who looked, from his blue pitted features, as if he had once been a miner. He was Owen, the secretary. Lounging on the edge of the table, smiling good naturedly at Andrew, was Doctor Llewellyn.

  The interview began. Owen, in a quiet voice, explained the conditions of the post.

  ‘It’s like this you see, doctor. Under our scheme, the workers in Aberalaw – there are two anthracite mines here, a steel works and one coal mine in the district – pay over a certain amount to the Society out of their wages every week. Out of this the Society administers the necessary medical services, provides a nice little hospital, surgeries, medicines, splints, etcetera. In addition the Society engages doctors, Doctor Llewellyn, the head physician and surgeon, and four assistants, together with a surgeon dentist, and pays them a capitation fee – so much per head according to the number on their list. I believe Doctor Leslie was making something like five hundred pounds a year when he left us.’ He paused. ‘Altogether we find it a good scheme.’ There was a mutter of approval from the thirty committee men. Owen raised his head and faced them. ‘And now, gentlemen, have you any questions to ask?’

  They began to fire questions at Andrew. He tried to answer calmly, without exaggeration, truly. Once he made a point.

  ‘Do you speak Welsh, doctor?’ This from a persistent, youngish miner by the name of Chenkin.

  ‘No,’ said Andrew, ‘ I was brought up on the Gaelic.’

  ‘A lot o’ good that would be ’ere!’

  ‘I’ve always found it useful for swearing at my patients,’ said Andrew coolly, and a laugh went up against Chenkin.

  It was over at last. ‘Thank you very much, Doctor Manson,’ Owen said. And Andrew was out again in the sour little waiting-room, feeling as if he had been buffeted by heavy seas, watching the rest of the candidates go in.

  Edwards, the last man called, was absent a long, a very long time. He came out smiling broadly, his look plainly saying, ‘Sorry for you fellows. This is my pocket.’

  Then followed an interminable wait. But at l
ast the door of the committee-room opened and out of the smoke swirling depths came Owen, the secretary, a paper in his hand. His eyes searching, rested finally with real friendliness upon Andrew.

  ‘Would you come in a minute, Doctor Manson! The committee would like to see you again.’

  Pale-lipped, his heart pounding in his side, Andrew followed the secretary back into the committee-room. It couldn’t be, no, no, it couldn’t be that they were interested in him.

  Back in the prisoner’s chair again he found smiles and encouraging nods thrown in his direction. Doctor Llewellyn, however, was not looking at him. Owen, spokesman of the meeting, commenced:

  ‘Doctor Manson, we may as well be frank with you. The committee is in some doubt. The committee, in fact, on Doctor Llewellyn’s advice, had a strong bias in favour of another candidate, who has considerable knowledge of practice in the Gethly valley.’

  ‘’E’s too bloody fat, that Edwards,’ came an interruption from a grizzled member at the back. ‘I’d like to see ’ im climb to the houses on Mardy Hill.’

  Andrew was too tense to smile. Breathlessly, he waited on Owen’s words.

  ‘But today,’ the secretary went on, ‘I must say that the committee have been very taken with you. The committee – as Tom Kettles poetically expressed it a minute ago – want young active men!’

  Laughter, with cries of “Ear! ‘Ear!’ and ‘Good old Tom!’

  ‘Moreover, Doctor Manson,’ continued Owen, ‘I must tell you that the committee have been exceedingly struck by two testimonials, I might even say testimonials unsolicited by yourself, which makes them of more value in the eyes of the committee and which reached us by post only this mornin’. These are from two practitioners in your own town, I mean Drineffy. One is a Doctor Denny, who has the MS, a very high degree as Doctor Llewellyn, who should know, admits. The other, enclosed with Doctor Denny’s, is signed by Doctor Page, whose assistant I believe you now are. Well, Doctor Manson, the committee has experience of testimonials and these two refer to your good self in such genuine terms that the committee has been much impressed.’