by Pirie, David
‘Tell me,’ I said, ‘do you work for Dr Bell?’
The man shook his head, as he put his finger over the bullet wound and produced an instrument of some kind to measure its diameter.
‘Then I can speak freely. Should I bother to take his class? I am aware he has a reputation, but to my cost I have begun to find that means little here.’
The lab man studied the wound. ‘Little to show,’ he mused. ‘But I want to try another angle …’ Then he seemed to register my question. ‘The standard is rather low, I agree. So you are not impressed?’
I was quite glad of a chance to unburden myself. ‘I hoped I would be enlightened,’ I said. ‘And I am being bored to death. To tell you the truth, sir, I am on the point of giving up. I have nothing else to follow and it will cause a lot of grief to my people, but if I am truly honest, why I never dreamed there could be such … imbeciles.’
I normally reserved such harsh comments about our teachers for my friends, but I had a feeling they would not trouble my new acquaintance and I was right.
‘Medicine attracts them, I find,’ he replied, as he shook out some bullets to prepare his revolver for another round. ‘It is one of the problems of the profession.’
‘Yes,’ I said, warming to him now. ‘And this Dr Bell seems quite as ridiculous as the rest. I am only here because I paid my fees and cannot get them back. Have you read his twaddle? I saw one article where the man claims to be able to distinguish personality and occupation by someone’s fingernails and boots! What a charlatan! I’d like to set him down in a third-class carriage and make him try to list the trades of his fellow travellers.’
‘Perhaps you should suggest it,’ he said with just the hint of a twinkle. ‘He’s probably arrogant enough to accept.’
I laughed. I was beginning to enjoy this strange new acquaintance, but before I could continue berating my teachers, something that I did frequently enough, he seemed to lose interest and cut me short. ‘Well, let me show you where to go to enrol. If you paid, it would be folly not to see at least one of his lectures now you are here, even if it is only for the fun of it.’
And he marched off with a long stride that left me running to catch up. Once out of the place, he pointed down the corridor to a door at the end and then disappeared back into the room with the merest nod of goodbye.
A few minutes later I was conversing with a lugubrious clerk, who confirmed my fees were strictly non-returnable but he was quite happy to enrol me. As usual, his tone made it perfectly clear that neither he nor anyone else cared a jot whether I actually attended.
And so, after a few minutes, I walked gloomily back to Surgeon’s Square, reflecting that the lab man was the first person in the whole university, other than a few fellow students, who had shown the slightest interest in what I felt.
Twenty minutes later I sat high up in the Cairns lecture hall, amidst a growing throng of chattering students, feeling slightly cheated. I had intended to make a grand gesture and now, here I was, awaiting yet another dull lecture.
My friends Colin Stark and James Cullingworth were on either side of me, both equally oblivious of the fact that I had come to say goodbye to them. Stark was a solid, twinkling character from Dundee who managed to enjoy himself despite everything and was always generous-spirited. Cullingworth, the tall and wiry son of a Borders doctor, possessed a very high intelligence and an even higher opinion of himself. While we were talking Neill, a dark good-looking man from the colonies, sat down behind us. He was in some ways my closest companion for we shared a love of stories, especially Poe.
‘It is all fixed,’ Cullingworth was announcing with his usual sweep of the arms. ‘We are going to dress a tailor’s dummy tomorrow and wheel it out before Dr Peterson. The man’s half blind, Croom is taking bets on the diagnosis.’
‘Arthritis,’ said Neill from behind. ‘Two years ago they put a waxwork into the class of the oldest surgeon here. He described it as having an arthritic condition.’
‘Then perhaps a corpse would be better if we dressed it,’ said Cullingworth, vexed. The hubbub began to fade and he turned to me. ‘Your first time? Well, prepare yourself. He’s quite a performer.’
I looked down as a solemn man of nearly sixty with a monocle, entered carrying a medical bag. The sight made me groan aloud, though I will admit some of my mood had lifted. I felt more cheerful. I turned to my friends. ‘He looks like just another pompous ass.’
‘No, that’s Dr Carmichael,’ said Cullingworth. ‘Bell has quite a retinue. Here.’
Now there was a real hush. A majestic figure swept forward through the doorway on to the platform and turned to face the audience. I can recall my shock at the sight of him to this day.
For there, in front of my eyes, transformed and resplendent in a dark suit and tie, every inch of him exuding authority, was my lab man.
Having been so caught up in my own thoughts, I had failed to see what should have been obvious. No assistant would ever have been granted such liberties. I shrank back in my seat. Indeed, I would have bolted for the door if I could. But no such action was possible. I was pinned in the middle of a row and Bell was now scanning every one of these rows like an eagle.
Soon enough he had seen me. He took a step forward. ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘Mr Doyle. I am glad you have condescended to come and say good morning to us.’ My friends turned in amazement. ‘Gentlemen,’ he continued, ‘Mr Doyle here is a little concerned he may be in the presence of yet another Edinburgh charlatan.’
He spoke the last two words with soft relish. There was a great roar of laughter. Faces were turned eagerly in my direction. ‘But I have something rather serious to tell you, Mr Doyle.’ He paused. A ripple ran through the audience. Was I to be ejected, solving my problem at one stroke?
‘Be careful. From the astrologer came the astronomer. From the alchemist, the chemist. From the mesmerist, the psychologist. The charlatan is always the pioneer. The quack of yesterday is the professor of tomorrow. Who knows what strangeness the future brings? And now …’
A cadaver was being wheeled behind him and one of his retinue pulled back the sheet to reveal the corpse of a woman. ‘The knife …’ Bell grinned at his audience as he raised his gleaming scalpel, preparing to begin his dissection. ‘Or … is it a wand?’ And with the same agility I had witnessed earlier, he plunged the blade home.
When the lecture was over there was much mockery from my fellow students, yet I had changed my mind about leaving. It was not that I was impressed by Bell or his teaching. He struck me as just another plausible but bogus egotist with a fancy line in oratory. That kind of spiel might well impress elderly Morningside ladies and naive students, but I was not about to be fooled.
No, I felt as if a challenge had been made to me. Who, exactly, was this man to tell me what a wonder he was? And to mock all my misgivings, when in private he had virtually agreed with them? I would see his course through, since I had paid for it, and find out if it amounted to more than claptrap. I had my doubts on the subject.
THE FAERIES OF DEATH
As I look back, I must admit (for I am trying to be as honest I can) that even now after all these years a part of me wonders, perhaps even with a small tug of regret, whether I was right to stay. Suppose I had followed up my original resolution and gone out to work? Perhaps I might even have pursued my own boyhood dreams and enlisted, for I was brought up to heroic tales of my mother’s great-uncle who led the Scottish brigade at Waterloo. I would have missed the greatest experiences of my life, but equally the worst. And I would never have faced all that now compels me to write this down.
Yet even to think this is to do Elsbeth and myself no honour. All of us have battles that must be fought. For me to wish I had not gone is like my illustrious ancestor abandoning the great fight against Napoleon and retiring to his farm in Perthshire. Despite all that happened, I have to thank God for my many blessings including the fact that I knew her.
I never breathed a word to my mother that I h
ad intended to leave the varsity. I continued with Bell’s lectures, though my opinion of him hardly improved. At home we struggled, as ever, to keep our miserable secret, for my mother would have died rather than let anyone know what we endured.
But it was becoming increasingly difficult. And I knew we were beyond hope the night I heard another sound from that corridor. Not a scream this time, more like the crash of something falling. I went down there. But this time no one appeared to stop me. I walked down the corridor and entered the room at the end.
How easy it is to write that, how difficult to do and how hard to face the memory of what happened next. For this is something I have never wished to describe. I remember that for a moment, as I entered, the room seemed empty. I glimpsed only his chair and the embers of the fire, and an open desk and the broad couch with rugs and a fur where he slept. Drawings, as always, were everywhere, the one nearest the door showing a frog with a pixie in its mouth.
Yet his chair was empty and for a wild moment of hope, I thought perhaps he had gone downstairs to talk and have a bowl of soup like some ordinary father. But of course I knew he was there. For I smelt him. And soon I saw him. He was on the floor not far from the fireplace. Crawling on all fours.
At first I thought he was crawling into the fire itself. But then his head turned towards me, peering. I saw his matted black hair and straggly beard, and his flushed, mottled skin. His face, once good-looking, was almost contorted by excess. He tried to make a sound. At first I could hear only rasping breath. And then there were words. ‘I wish you would take the ashes out of my mouth,’ he whispered.
‘They hurt my teeth.’ I moved forward to him. ‘And see what I have found down here,’ he went on. ‘There was a nest of them in the pot.’
He half rose up, clutching something.
I came forward to look. My mother always tried to keep new flowers in his room; it was as if she were determined to have something fresh and living in there. And now he was holding a bunch of scarlet rose petals. I opened my mouth to say as much but he threw them in my face, crying out, ‘The faeries of death.’ Then he dissolved into tears.
I do not know if the reader has ever seen a loved father drunk and humiliated and on his knees. I was, I suppose, comparatively familiar with the spectacle. But at that moment I felt such a sense of his anguish that my eyes filled with tears. I swear on my last breath these were not, or not only, tears of self-pity. This man had so much to give; his drawings had once electrified me. Yet here he was, caught every day and every night in this morass of nightmares.
Would I have taken him in my arms in that moment? Or is it just the fact he has been dead for six years, and shut away for a decade before that, which makes me think so? No. The anguish I felt for him then was genuine and I believe I would have acted on it. But here, as always, the cursed constraint of our household arrangements meant I never made the gesture I longed to make. For we were interrupted by the opening of the door.
We both turned and our lodger Charles Waller’s smooth, good-looking features stared down at us. His dress and coiffure were, as always, immaculate: the dark jacket and silk tie; the exquisitely combed hair. I felt my father noticeably snap to attention in a way that almost made me jealous for he never did so with me. Here, even to a drunken madman, was Authority.
Waller, who was no ordinary lodger, ignored him completely and addressed me in his soft, cultured voice: ‘He has been drinking all day. I tried to examine him and he flew into a rage. I will try again if you will leave us.’
There was surely a hint of superciliousness in the little smile he gave me and I hesitated. The ritual of Waller’s nightly ‘examination’ of my father was, for me at that time, one of the most brutal and degrading aspects of our whole household. Indeed, I suspected it was little more than an excuse for Waller to exercise his power and perhaps even indulge in calculated cruelty. So, as he stood there before me, the truth is I would have liked nothing more than to plunge my fist into his soft face. Waller was a powerful man, but his power was all in his mind and little in his body. So that often when I boxed or swam or rowed, I delighted only in the thought: Waller could never do this, never.
But now I saw my mother behind Waller and I quickly put a hand on my father’s shoulder. For once, here was a gesture of support that really came from the heart! Then I left him.
A few moments later I was pouring out my indignation to my mother in the small drawing room downstairs. ‘But why should he examine him? He is only our lodger!’
‘He is also a doctor, as you well know.’
She was right. For it was Waller over the past three years who had kept us out of penury and the workhouse, and paid many of the bills we could not pay, including more often than not our entire rent. The man was in more gainful employment than any other member of the household. But I hated this arrangement almost as much as I hated my father’s drunken madness and I was in no mood to accept it. Indeed, in those days I could never understand quite how my mother tolerated the man, or how we had ever allowed ourselves to get into this situation. ‘Just because he pays our rent,’ I said, ‘is he to be given rights over everyone here?’
My mother effectively ignored this, for they were old arguments. ‘That is not fair,’ she said, ‘but we will not go back over it now. I have something I want you to see.’
She had gone to her bureau and opened a drawer, which I know she reserved for its most precious treasures. Out of it she took an object that had been wrapped very elaborately in oilskin. She unwound the cloth with great care and took out something that gleamed in the light of the lamp on the desk.
I stared at it. It was a beautiful pocket watch of an old and grand style. I had not seen it for years but it had a particular poignancy for me; indeed, it even had a childhood name, which was Ibo. For when he was younger and happier and I was small, my father would often sit me on his knee and ask me to breathe on Ibo and bring it back to life. As I blew he would release the catch and the lid would fly open to reveal the watch face. Of course, I thought it was great magic and I would laugh with joy and he would laugh too, and the memories of Ibo were among the happiest I had of him.
My mother saw my reaction and it seemed to please her. ‘I want you to have this,’ she said, holding it out. ‘It is the most valuable thing your father owns and when he was well he always said it was for you, so you must take it now and keep it safely. Otherwise he will pawn it or even break it. Last week, in one of his moods, he almost smashed it against the wall and I brought it here. But he comes to this desk, looking for things to sell.’
I stared at it, unsure whether I wanted the responsibility. It held such happy memories and now it was another focus of our pain. But at last I took it and pressed the catch: the lid sprang open just as it had when my father took me on his knee. It was a pretty enough sight but it only made me mourn for my lost power to breathe life into things.
Dr Joseph Bell stood bolt upright at the podium in his black fourbutton frock coat and white silk shirt, his eyes fixed on the serried ranks of students before him. Two assistants were busily escorting a well-dressed woman patient to a chair. From her fixed stare and groping arms we could see that she was quite blind.
By now I had attended enough of Bell’s classes to confirm all my prejudices against the man. No doubt a part of me still smarted from my earlier mistake, but I had been disgusted to observe how easily and shamelessly he transformed the teaching of medicine into a theatrical spectacle. And now, as he stood there in front of the woman, enjoying the hushed expectancy of his packed audience, I could tell we were to be treated to some new piece of drama.
Bell turned back to the patient. ‘Mrs Harrison, you have recently suffered sudden blindness in both eyes, is that correct?’
Yes,’ she replied. ‘It has been three days now.’
He stared down at her. ‘And you can see nothing?’
‘Nothing whatsoever.’
After a moment he picked up a lamp and moved it in front of her eye
s; his gaze fixed carefully on her. At last he put it down, turning back to us with a hushed admonition that we should watch closely. Then he reached round for something. It was hard, at first, to see what he was doing, yet I could see his hands holding what looked like a long, glinting stick.
There was a sudden cry of horror from his audience as quite abruptly and with all his strength he swung the object, which we now saw was his heavy silver-topped cane, right at the woman’s head.
She screamed and jerked away to one side, while the cane itself missed her by inches. Bell’s hand was strong and his judgement keen, but even so there was something so reckless in the action that some of the audience jumped to their feet.
Quick as a flash he had dropped the cane and his hands were on the patient’s shoulder, comforting her. ‘Do not fear. You are ill but you are not blind.’ He turned to face us. ‘Gentlemen, I do not doubt Mrs Harrison’s honesty or her suffering. She endures what she thinks is blindness. But once again close observation, in this case of the eye’s reflexes, tells us that, although genuinely ill, her condition is of the mind and not the body.’
It was, as ever, a very pretty display. He had enlisted his audience’s emotions to great effect and in a way that underlined his diagnosis. Such tricks amused and pleased the undergraduates, and greatly boosted the numbers who attended these lectures. But in my view this was hardly a justification for them. Why should medicine and its logic be turned into a kind of theatrical show? We were supposed, surely, to be seekers of truth not vaudeville entertainers?
As the blind woman was led away, I could not contain my derision and turned to Stark, scribbling some notes beside me. ‘The man is just a show-off. They should offer him a tent on the common and let us get on with the practice of medicine.’
Meanwhile another patient – a big bald man with a limp wearing an olive-green jacket – was being escorted to Bell, who greeted him and turned in our direction. ‘Now, before I address the next patient, may I ask you to look at him carefully, remembering the methods I have taught you. How every tiny detail, every button, every gesture, every hair, is of use and value to us. I would like you to tell me what you can observe from his appearance.’ His eye flicked across our row and came to rest on my companion. ‘Mr Stark?’