He rang off before Mr. Biddle could thank him. Mr. Biddle was rather surprised. He was not to know that the R.M.O. was one of the worst sorts of Mariners in the whole Order—a Mariner so bad that he was one of those who did not even wear the emblem of the order on his watch-chain; “blind” Mariners the Order called them.
Mr. Biddle had Mr. Sneyd on his mind for most of the day. And that evening he went round specially to see if Gerald had any late news.
“Seen your Dad?” he asked.
Gerald nodded.
“He’s pretty dicky,” he said.
Mr. Biddle shook his head.
“That’s bad,” he said. “He wants cheering up. He’s lonely.”
“I’m going in again to-morrow,” Gerald told him.
“Don’t worry,” said Mr. Biddle firmly. “I’ve got the whole thing in hand. One or two of us are going down on our own. You can have the evening off. Take Allus to the pictures.”
Gerald thanked him. He knew that his father would like a man of his own age to talk to. And it gave him particular pleasure that Mr. Biddle should go to so much trouble. He insisted that he should listen to the new radio before he left. Gerald turned the knob and the set magically lit itself.
“How do you like it?” he asked when they had finally chosen a station.
“It’s louder than most sets,” Mr. Biddle replied.
“But it’s the tone that counts,” Gerald told him. “This set’s got Balanced Frequency.”
“Has it?” said Mr. Biddle.
He did not know what Balanced Frequency was; and he suspected that Gerald did not know either. But he was glad all the same that Alice should have a set that had it whatever it was.
When he got up to go he managed to get in a few words with Alice in private. He was rather worried about her because she looked so pale and drawn. And Gerald, too, seemed unnaturally silent.
“My little Allus all right?” he asked.
“Just a bit tired,” she said.
“No worries?”
She seemed surprised.
“No, why?”
“Oh, nothing, nothing. I just wondered.”
He kissed her noisily on the cheek and left. It was evidently nothing, he told himself. No doubt they had had a quarrel or something. The idea rather amused him; it seemed so young and silly.
Mr. Biddle was the first to arrive at the hospital. He left Finchley at five-thirty carrying his small parcel and toiled down to the Angel by tram. The farther into town he went the more sorry he became for Mr. Sneyd; it must be dreadful, he reflected, to be lying there alone in that long, bleak ward in the midst of this smoking wilderness of chimneys. The anticipation of Mr. Sneyd’s joy at seeing them cheered him up however. Being the Good Samaritan, he had long since discovered, had a pleasure all its own.
He sat down on a bench in the hall and waited. It was an impressive hall with a bronze memorial plaque to dead St. Martin’s men and a closed-in desk for the porter like a small sedan chair. Mr. Biddle sat down patiently and almost dozed.
Then Mr. Vestry arrived. He was wearing a black coat and striped trousers himself and was carrying an attaché-case. The porter took him for a specialist and saluted. He soon saw his mistake, however, when Mr. Ankerson joined them. For Mr. Ankerson had the flushed untidy look of a man who has been hurrying because he is late, but has still managed to slip in a drink on the way. His bowler hat was on the back of his head and the collar of his coat had brushed his hair up the wrong way. He looked more like a man going to the Cup Tie than a hospital visitor.
It was left to Mr. Hill to restore the balance. He brought with him an atmosphere of antiseptic compassion. His clothes and tie were black; at first glance he looked like a man in permanent semi-mourning.
Then Mr. Biddle took charge.
“Dr. Seton-Gordon said we might go up,” he explained, and they began to mount the broad winding staircase.
When they arrived on the third floor, the Sister seemed surprised to see them.
“It’s after visiting time, you know,” she said briskly. Mr. Biddle explained that they had Dr. Seton-Gordon’s permission and the Sister seemed momentarily to be defeated. But only momentarily.
“Not more than three visitors at once,” she said. “One of you will have to remain outside.”
In the ordinary way it would have been hard to find a milder and less bellicose man than Mr. Biddle. In his own affairs he was often little better than weak. But when acting on behalf of others he was a different being; he was invincible.
“Oh, no, Sister,” he said. “One of us won’t have to remain outside. Dr. Seton-Gordon told us that we could all go in.”
He was determined that Mr. Sneyd’s happiness should not be diminished by even one absentee.
“I shall ask Matron,” she said, and left them.
Mr. Biddle watched her go down the corridor and into a room at the end.
“Come on,” he said … .
They found Mr. Sneyd asleep when they got there. He was lying on his back propped up against a kind of frame. Asleep, he looked younger; the lines across his forehead and beside his mouth had been miraculously smoothed out. The bedclothes rose and fell to the regular faint clockwork of his breathing.
Mr. Biddle stood over him and contemplated the sleeping face.
“He’s having a nap,” he said.
“I can see that,” said Mr. Vestry.
“It seems a great pity to wake him,” Mr. Hill remarked despondently.
“If you take my advice you’ll leave him as he is,” Mr. Ankerson advised. “He’s having a good dose of Dr. Shut-Eye.” He humorously blew the unconscious man a kiss and caught the leg of the bed a heavy, jolt as he turned away.
“Sshh,” he said hurriedly. “Sshh.”
But the shock had roused Mr. Sneyd. He sat up on his elbow and stared blankly in front of him. For a moment, his brain did not seem to register. He looked as surprised as if he had found himself in the National Gallery. And now that he was awake the lines on his face returned. They etched themselves in before their eyes; he was soon a wretchedly sick old man again.
“Just brought a few of the Order along to see you,” said Mr. Biddle encouragingly.
“I want my wife,” said Mr. Sneyd weakly.
“She isn’t here,” Mr. Biddle explained. “We’re from East Finchley. We’ve dropped in to cheer you up.”
Mr. Sneyd regarded them without conviction. “I want them to send for my wife,” he said. “That’s what I want … .” He was looking at Mr. Biddle as he spoke. Then, quite suddenly the light of recognition came into his eyes. “Hallo, Brother,” he said.
Now that the ice was broken Mr. Biddle introduced them all in turn. “I’ve brought you some fruit,” he said and deposited the brown paper parcel on the small table beside the bed.
“That’s very good of you, Brother,” Mr. Sneyd answered. “But Sister’s very strict about outside presents. She doesn’t allow anything, not even grapes.”
Mr. Biddle was disappointed, but he did not show it.
“Never mind,” he said. “We’ll leave it here. I expect it’ll come in useful.”
The others had not so far spoken. But Mr. Hill was not to be mulcted of his opportunity for sympathy. He came up to the head of the bed and inclined his bare, pallid skull towards the sufferer.
“How is the pain, Brother?” he asked.
Mr. Sneyd looked up with understanding eyes.
“It’s better,” he said. “Thank you. They give me something in my arm. I had one this afternoon.”
“Keep smiling,” said Mr. Ankerson. He was leaning against a chair rubbing his foot where he had stubbed it. “Never say die.”
“Anything I can do for you?” Mr. Biddle asked.
Mr. Sneyd nodded. It was a meaning, purposeful nod. Obviously there was something pretty heavy on his mind.
“I want you to say a word to Gerald,” he whispered; his voice so low that Mr. Biddle had to bend almost double to catch the words.
“It’s about Flo.”
“What do you want me to say to him?” he asked.
But he never knew the answer. For at that moment the Sister came back. With her was a squat barrel of a woman. From the different head-dress, below which a single strand of iron-grey hair escaped, Mr. Biddle guessed that she was the Matron. It was not, however, at her head-dress so much as at her face that he was looking. It was of a scorching brick colour. Only after he had stared as it for some time did it occur to him that it might be anger that was giving her that complexion.
“Leave this ward at once, please,” she said.
“But Dr. Seton-Gordon said … ”
“This patient isn’t to be disturbed.”
“But Nurse,” Mr. Biddle searched frantically for the right word, “Dr. Seton-Gordon said … ”
The Matron was, however, ignoring him. She had turned to the Sister beside her.
“Send down for one of the porters,” she said.
Mr. Vestry laid his hand on Mr. Biddle’s arm.
“We’d better be going,” he advised.
The four men turned sheepishly and began to move towards the door. Only Mr. Biddle thought of stopping to say good-bye to Mr. Sneyd. He hung behind and reached out his hand comfortingly.
“Good-bye, old man,” he said. “We’ll see you some other time.”
But Mr. Sneyd would not let him go. He gripped Mr. Biddle’s hand, pulling himself up in bed as he did so.
“I haven’t told you about Gerald,” he said pathetically. “I haven’t had time.”
The Sister came back and disengaged his arm. “You lie down,” she said gently, as though she were talking to a child. “You’re tiring yourself out.”
“I want to say something private to Mr. Biddle,” Mr. Sneyd persisted.
“Some other time when you’re not so tired,” she said. “You’re making yourself ill again.”
“But I want to say it now,” Mr. Sneyd complained.
He passed his hand wearily across his forehead and lay back.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said weakly. “It’s probably too late.”
Then he closed his eyes and seemed suddenly to be sleeping.
Mr. Biddle turned towards the Matron. He wanted to make it quite clear that he was not the sort of man to cause any difficulties and that the whole thing was the result of a misunderstanding.
“I’m very sorry,” he said. “You see Dr. Seton-Gordon said——”
“It’s enough to kill a man in his condition,” the Matron answered.
“Oh, I hope not,” said Mr. Biddle.
“Coming into the ward and making all this disturbance. It’s disgraceful.”
Now the Matron mentioned it, Mr. Biddle could not help noticing the disturbance. The occupants of all the other beds were sitting up on their elbows watching: the ward was lined with curious, unhealthy faces. To them, it had been an unprecedented scene. It was almost as though, out of visiting hours, four plain clothes men had paid a visit to Number Six and were now being ejected themselves. Altogether, it was the most stimulating thing that had happened for weeks.
“How do you think he’s getting on?” Mr. Biddle asked, jerking his head backwards in the direction of Mr. Sneyd as he spoke.
The Matron pursed her lips and said nothing.
But Mr. Biddle was not to be put off.
“He’ll be all right, won’t he?” he asked. “You don’t think——”
They had reached the door by now and he was not given time to finish his sentence. The other three men were already standing there in an awkward, self-conscious group. They felt that Mr. Biddle had deceived them.
“Good night,” said Mr. Hill.
Mr. Biddle made one last effort to present his credentials. “Dr. Seton-Gordon——” he began.
“Good night,” said the Matron.
It was not until they reached the lobby that Mr. Vestry said anything.
“I thought you said you’d got it all arranged,” he remarked bitterly.
“So I had,” Mr. Biddle told him. “Dr. Seton-Gordon said… ”
Mr. Vestry gave a little laugh, a dry hard little laugh.
“Dr. Seton-Gordon isn’t the boss here,” he said. “That woman is.”
It was clear and fine outside. Even Pentonville looked bright. The sun, which was still shining somewhere over Regent’s Park, caught the chimney-pots one by one and lit them up in a band of crimson along the skyline. All four men stood at the top of the steps and took a deep breath at the sudden peacefulness of the scene.
“Do you think old Sneyd’s all right?” Mr. Biddle asked.
“I don’t know,” said Vestry firmly, “and I’m not going back to find out.”
It was Mr. Ankerson who proposed that they should all have a spot of dinner together before they went back. He knew a capital little Italian place, he said, at King’s Cross where you got a first-class fritto misto for one and nine. Mr. Hill approved the suggestion. Living above his shop he sometimes did not dine out for months on end and he always enjoyed restaurant food when he had it. Anything brought to him in a dish and served over his shoulder on to a hot-plate tasted wonderful to him.
But Mr. Vestry refused to be a partner to King’s Cross.
“Better come into town and get something decent,” he said. “ Doesn’t cost any more in the long run.”
And, like the born leader he was, Mr. Vestry took everything in hand.
“Casino Royal,” he said to the taxi driver.
“Where’s that?” asked Mr. Hill.
“Back of Leicester Square,” Mr. Vestry told him. “Put on a floor show afterwards. Best dancing in London.”
Mr. Biddle had heard of the Casino Royal. It was one of London’s brighter spots. He only wished that Mr. Sneyd had been well enough to come with them; it might have cheered him up a bit. And Mr. Biddle, sitting up on the hard, little occasional seat beside Mr. Hill—the other two had taken the back seats—with his basket of rejected fruit on his knees, thought of the irony that sends four healthy men out to do themselves well and condemns a wretched invalid to lie down and not see anyone.
The Casino Royal was a plastered mass of ridiculous old-fashioned stucco, brilliantly lit with an animated design in Neon. Over the entrance the ten-foot outline of a dancing girl kicked out her right leg and waved her hands from dusk till one a.m. At one a.m. the caretaker pulled the switch and the façade relapsed for the rest of the twenty-four hours into a cherished example of Edwardian baroque. But when the Neon was blazing it was as though the whole street was on fire; to go in through the chromium revolving doors was like passing through a rainbow.
The inside of course had been modernised. It was now mostly steel and glass and zebra-striped cushions. Even the carpet was zebra-striped. Soft as moss, it engulfed the ankles in a zig-zag pattern of crazy lines. Mr. Biddle stood where he was just inside the revolving doors and stared, but Mr. Vestry seemed perfectly at home. He gave in his hat through the triangular orifice cut in the wall and led them into the amber glow of the main restaurant.
There was no denying that it was good value. For ten shillings and sixpence the diner got six courses of disguised, unnameable food, a communistic share in a dance floor forty feet by thirty and a cabaret of a dozen Casino Lovelies. The communism extended even to the attentions of a group of wandering dance hostesses. These indefatigable and perpetually bright-looking young ladies were in somebody else’s arms all the evening. For those who could not afford that kind of women for their own, here was life and sensation and a new horizon at the rate of two and six for about six minutes. To Mr. Hill who sat there rigid and unamused, there was evidently a strong suggestion of the cities of the plain.
The waiter gave them a table in the corner. He had instructions to put white ties in the two front rows, black ties between the gangway and the wall, and ordinary dress in the corners. Mr. Biddle sat in his little alcove and looked out on to a sea of bare backs and uniform, fashionable faces.
Mr. Ves
try insisted that they should have champagne. It was not Mr. Biddle’s drink and he sipped the stuff suspiciously. But it did its work. By the time the bottle was empty, he had begun to relax a little. It now seemed a thoroughly salutary and beneficial thing that people should have a place like the Casino Royal to come to when they wanted a little relaxation. And somehow Mr. Sneyd and St. Martin’s Hospital and the gorgon Matron had passed into the twilight of things. He now saw life in its true proportion again. He decided that he would drop Dr. Seton-Gordon a line to apologise for any inconvenience that had been caused and would look in himself at the proper time to find out what the message was that Mr. Sneyd had wanted conveyed to his son. As the evening wore on and the images of things became less clearly cut in Mr. Biddle’s mind he even thought of asking Gerald himself what it was—but that was a good deal later in the evening after Mr. Vestry had ordered whisky as well.
There was dancing first; Mr. Vestry suggested it. He said that it was good for the figure and that he had read somewhere that ninety per cent of the men who died under sixty were non-dancers. He led the way himself with a girl in a black dress and a halo of expensive looking, red-gold hair. When he came back to the table he was perspiring freely and breathing in little gasps. He looked like an elderly man who has run too fast for a bus. But the girl, he reported, was perfect; she danced like a bird.
Mr. Ankerson was the next one to dance. He did not cut a good figure. As he slopped round the floor, he lounged against the girl as if she were a bar counter. He returned, however, thirsting for more: it needed only practice, he said, to get back into it again.
Mr. Hill meanwhile looked on in silent, sober austerity. He had said that he would come with them and there he was; beyond that he clearly was not going.
“Why don’t you shake a foot, Biddle?” Mr. Ankerson asked. “Do you a world of good.”
“Oh, no,” said Mr. Biddle decidedly. “Not in my line at all.”
“That’s what you think,” Mr. Vestry replied. “Just you wait and see.”
One of the indefatigable young ladies was passing at that moment and Mr. Vestry called her over.
“Doreen,” he said.
“My name’s Chloe.”
Love in Our Time Page 9