He closed the consulting room door and sat down at his desk. The next few minutes would be a simple waiting game whilst Lisa paced nervously back and forth across the floor. At length, she grabbed a chair, pulled it as close to his desk as possible and started drumming her fingers on its surface. Still he waited, knowing that, in her own time, she would tell him why she had come. His experience of Lisa over the past year or so taught him that if he attempted to speed the process along, then she was just as likely to jump up and leave without a word said on her part.
Finally, she looked towards him in a wild, unfocused manner and tried to explain her problem.
‘It’s here.’ She indicated her abdomen. ‘Right here. It burns.’ Her face contorted with concern. ‘I haven’t got cancer, have I?’
Although she had been clean of drugs for the past six months, her brain had suffered more than its fair share of abuse. As a result, she spoke in short, disjointed sentences, struggling to find the appropriate words. James had become accustomed to her tendency to resort to expletives as substitutes for verbs, nouns, and adjectives. It made the whole process of listening to her an experience as colourful as her clothing. As for the task of extracting the details of her problem, that was best described as challenging.
James smiled in an attempt to calm her. ‘I very much doubt it, Lisa. Perhaps you could tell me when it started?’
Despite her rather florid history, he now considered Lisa a success story. Until a year ago, her lifestyle was close to prematurely killing her. She had been unable to care for herself, let alone her young daughter. As a result, her daughter was taken into care by the social services and Lisa spent long periods on the local psychiatric ward. However, modern medicine did not ultimately cure her of her addictions. It was Christianity. Finding a deep faith finally gave her a focus within her life. She had needed help to escape from the black hole in which she had been psychologically dwelling and religion helped her do that.
As James teased out the details of her burning pain, his mind played over the small part he had played in her recovery. The start of her new journey in life had first come to his attention one morning towards the end of 1990. He had just finished at a village surgery and was packing away his instruments before returning to Bishopsworth, when Lisa arrived without an appointment. Not wishing to turn her away, he had shown her in and retrieved his notebook, stethoscope and prescription pad from his case.
However, it had soon become apparent that she was not there for medical advice. She brought with her a brochure for a drug rehabilitation centre run by a Christian group near to the Welsh borders and wanted James’ opinion. Not, as he had initially thought, in respect to the medical therapies employed by the centre, but in relation to whether the Christian faith would help her. Apparently, she had never previously had any contact with the Church or Christian groups. As such, she did not feel able to approach the local vicar. Apart from her doctor, there was nobody else she felt able to talk to about such matters. Coming from Lisa, such sentiment had been a surprise for James, as he had never previously had any form of conversation with her about spiritual matters. However, he was on record as often stating his belief that the role of the modern GP entailed being part physician, part social worker, and part priest. An approach such as Lisa’s simply added weight to that perception.
Additionally, she needed him to recommend something to read, as the centre stated in their joining instructions that each resident should bring at least one book that would help them through their process of rehabilitation. After some thought, he had suggested The Cross and the Switchblade by David Wilkerson. It is the true story of how a priest entered the streets of New York and started to work with the young, drug-addicted, knife-wielding gang-fighters. Many of them found salvation through accepting Christ into their lives and James reasoned that Lisa, as someone who would not normally read books, might find a sense of kindred spirit with some of the characters within Wilkerson’s book.
Perhaps somewhat surprisingly, taking into account the failed therapies in the past, the rehabilitation was successful and the start of a new life for Lisa. Subsequently, she had been able to obtain a lease on a small house in the village and the social services had agreed to return her daughter to her care.
For Lisa, Christianity became central to her life, a fact prominently advertised by the large cross hanging from her neck. No consultation went by without her referring to how God was her support in life.
Having made sense of the history of her present problem and with his examination serving to confirm his diagnosis, he waited for her to finish dressing before speaking again.
‘I am sure that this is nothing more than indigestion, Lisa. It is called gastritis, which is when the stomach is inflamed from the acid it produces.’
‘I haven’t got cancer then?’
‘No. I am as certain as I can be that you haven’t got cancer.’ He wrote a prescription for Tagamet and Gaviscon and handed it to her. ‘If you take the tablets twice a day and the liquid medicine after meals and before you go to bed, the symptoms will settle very quickly. Come back and tell me if they do not.’
Clearly relieved by the news, Lisa accepted the prescription and rose from her chair.
‘Thanks, Doc.’
‘Think nothing of it, Lisa. I am always here to try and help you.’
‘Thanks again.’ She paused at the consulting room door and glanced back at James. ‘God bless you.’
‘God bless you too, Lisa,’ he responded quietly to her now retreating figure. He gathered an armful of notes, picked up a Dictaphone and wandered through the now deserted waiting room. In reception, the morning’s staff were about to leave and were handing over to Anna and a new woman whose name he was yet to memorise. He walked across to the window. From there he could see on to the street. Lisa Jones was standing on the pavement opposite, speaking to another young woman who had two pre-school children tugging at her hands. He watched them for a few moments before turning away.
‘You were miles away then, James. A penny for your thoughts?’ Charles Hawkins appeared alongside and threw some notes into a box marked ‘Filing’.
‘I have been wished God’s blessing twice today and I was just pondering on how a deep-seated faith is so important to the lives of two very different people.’ James folded his arms and leant against the work desk in front of the window. ‘Earlier this morning I had old Ernest Prendergast in to see me.’
Charles nodded. ‘I know who you mean. I can never understand a word he says.’
‘Then, last of all, I saw Lisa Jones. She’s the one with the dreadlocks standing across the road there.’ He indicated with a backward nod of his head and Charles looked to see to whom he was referring.
‘Never had any dealings with her. She looks a bit wild.’
‘She certainly has been. Mr Prendergast, in all of his eighty plus years, would not have even touched upon the type of life Lisa Jones has led in her twenty-seven years to date. Meeting in the street, they would not even give each other a second glance.’
‘So what’s the connection between the two?’
‘Religion is presently central to both their lives. So much so that there is the very real possibility that, one Sunday morning, the tweed-suited Mr Prendergast might turn in his pew in church and find himself offering the sign of peace to that wild, hippy-dressed, dreadlocked Lisa Jones. It was that rather magical thought that I was just conjuring up. There you have two different generations, leading very different lives, but ultimately united by a shared belief.’
‘Hmm.’ Charles seemed lost for a reply.
‘Have you heard of Péguy?’
‘No. Is he one of mine?’
James laughed. ‘He isn’t a patient. Péguy was a French poet and essayist who lived in the late 19th century. He died around the beginning of the First World War.’
‘No. Never heard of him. Should I have done so?’
‘Not particularly. He once said, “The sinner is at the hear
t of Christianity… No one is as competent as the sinner in matters of Christianity. No one, except a saint.” I just think that Lisa Jones and Ernest Prendergast are very good examples of the “sinner and the saint”.’
‘Is that all part of the sociology nonsense they teach you at medical school these days?’ Charles was discomfited by conversations with James. He found that they usually led in directions where his own knowledge abandoned him completely.
‘Of course not.’
‘So, how come you know that sort of thing?’
‘I read it in a book. A non-medical book, that is. There is more to life than medicine, Charles.’
‘I am sure that there is. However, I would prefer to stick to matters I understand.’ He again glanced across to the pavement opposite and watched Lisa Jones for a few moments. ‘Although, I take your point about her and Prendergast. A fascinating thought really.’
James smiled and watched his partner pick up his visit notes before walking out of the reception.
‘I think you lost him there for a while, James.’
He turned to see Anna standing a few feet away.
‘A bit too deep for him, I would say,’ she continued. ‘What else have you read in those books?’
James grinned again. ‘More than I could ever relate standing here.’ He paused, rubbed his eyes and pressed his fingers into his temples. ‘I don’t suppose you know of a good cure for hangovers? I think I must be allergic to Rioja.’
It was Anna’s turn to laugh. ‘I have no sympathy. You clearly need more practice.’
‘What I need now are two paracetamol and some sleep.’
‘The paracetamol are a possibility. However, the sleep is going to have to wait until you have visited Albert Fielding and replaced his catheter. His wife just telephoned to say that he has pulled it out again.’ She passed him a set of notes.
James groaned. ‘Just what I don’t need. He lives in a farm whose driveway must be all of a mile in length. The ruts will play havoc with my brain.
‘However, the fresh air will do you good.’
‘Thanks for all your sympathy. I’ll go now and then I shall be back at my flat if I’m needed before surgery this evening.’ James waved the notes and moved towards the door.
‘Oh, and James…’
He paused and turned back to Anna.
‘Has anyone told you about the Christmas party yet?’ She pointed to an A4 sheet of paper pinned to the noticeboard above the telephones.
‘No, why?’ He walked across and read the notice.
‘Only that you ought to know that you are going.’
He glanced down the list of scribbled names of those who had signed up. His own name was already there, sandwiched between those of Christine and Anna.
‘It would seem that my mind has already been made up for me.’
‘Like I said, you need the practice.’
‘I may already be busy that evening.’
‘Except that you left your diary on your desk yesterday, so I know that you are not doing anything else.’ She smiled at the look of bewilderment on his face.
‘I’d better write it down then, hadn’t I?’ He reached into his jacket pocket and retrieved the diary. ‘Or have you already done that for me as well?’
‘Only in pencil, so that you can rub it out and enter it in your own writing.’
He let the diary fall back into the pocket and looked inquisitively towards Anna. She remained inscrutable, the only change in her expression being a slight narrowing of her eyes.
‘You’d better go and get that fresh air,’ she said finally, before turning away to speak to a patient standing at the enquiries desk.
18
November
Standing at the living room window of his flat, James was experiencing an overwhelming sense of heaviness. Perhaps it was the effect of the slow strains of Mahler’s fourth symphony emanating from the radio or maybe it was that outside depicted the depressingly familiar scene of Bishopsworth preparing for the forthcoming festivities. For many, the seasonal ritual was a time of delight. For James, the garishness and conspicuous consumption represented nothing more than coarse consumerism. Where is the beauty of it all? he asked himself.
‘Milton, thou shouldst be living at this hour, England hath need of thee.’ He spoke the words of Wordsworth aloud and from memory, finding strength, as he often did, in the words of the great poets and writers at times when his soul was in need of propping up.
‘We are selfish men,
Oh raise us up – return to us again
And give us manners, virtue, freedom, power!
Thy soul was like a star and dwelt apart:
Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea
(Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free),
So didst thou travel on life’s common way
In cheerful godliness – and yet thy heart
The lowliest duties on itself did lay.’
He paused, as though to allow the words to sink deep within and start to work their magic. Melancholia was a comforting retreat when all else was wrong in the world. It was where he spent a lot of his time alone these days. Cocooned and insulated, by the beauty of music and poetry, from the commonness and harshness of the world he inhabited by circumstance of birth.
Had the world ever been different or was it always thus? What about Milton and Wordsworth, Shakespeare and Byron, Keats and Shelley? Had they the good fortune to live at a time when things were different? Alternatively, had they experienced the same pangs of doubt and wistful longings that so frequently pierced the armour plating behind which he, James Armstrong, often unsuccessfully, tried to shield his fragile core? Maybe there was no dissimilarity? Perhaps the same forces, which drove those great minds so many years ago, were still at work in the world today. If so, how does one harness them and make them work to alter the lives of the aimless masses in the streets below?
He stood, gazing at the scene, yet not seeing the detail. His mind was elsewhere, lost in the vortex of time. He often tortured himself with those and similar questions. Yet, no answers ever returned, no matter how long he dwelt on the subject.
The telephone rang and returned his thoughts to the present with a jolt.
He hated the shrill sound telephones made. During six years of hospital medical practice, telephones and bleeps had summoned him this way and that, regardless of the time of day or whether he had eaten or slept, and oblivious to the fact that he may have been on duty for the past seventy-two hours or more. He now saw them as instruments of torture; their ringing nothing more than the barbs of acoustic arrows sent to pierce his peace and tranquillity.
He took a mouthful of gin and tonic, set his glass down on a table and picked up the receiver.
‘Dr Armstrong.’
‘Good evening, Dr Armstrong. How very nice to be able to speak to the man himself instead of that dreadful answer machine you insist on using.’
‘It serves as a useful barrier against those determined to deprive me of any form of life of my own when I am not on duty.’
‘So, do I take it that you are on duty today?’
‘No. I just forgot to switch the telephone over.’
‘Then I assume that I now rank as one of the plebeian masses determined to spoil your sanity?’
‘No, of course not.’
‘Good. I am sooo glad. It comes as a great relief to know that the great Dr Armstrong still has time to talk to his little brother.’
‘Jules, you are impossible! To what do I owe this honour anyway? You only ring me when you want something.’
‘Tush! A more shameful sleight on a fellow kinsman I have never known.’
James laughed. ‘It’s the truth, Jules, and you know it is.’
‘Well, my dear brother, on this occasion I am going to prove you wrong. But before I do, what are you doing at the flat alone?’
‘How do you know I am alone?’
‘I rang your home number and Janice answered.
She said you were at the flat. Which raises the question as to why you are there and not on duty, whilst your darling wife is all alone in an empty marital home? Is all not well in Chez Armstrong? Or am I being too inquisitive?’
‘No, just very perceptive, as always, Jules. Janice is not quite the “darling” wife at present. I’ll tell you all about it one day, but not right now.’
‘Then, perhaps my little proposition will assist in that process.’
‘Go on; I’m listening.’
‘What are you doing the weekend after next?’
‘From memory, I think it is free. I know I am not on duty, but I would have to check my diary to be sure there is nothing else.’
‘Forever the cautious one. James Armstrong’s Rule Number Two: never admit to having your diary near to hand, in case you have to commit yourself to something.’
‘Jules, you really are terrible to me!’
‘I just know you too well, brother. You forget that I lived with you for your first twenty years – well, eighteen to be precise.’
‘Seventeen years and eight months, if you really wish to be precise,’ replied James, referring to the exact difference between their two birthdays. ‘Anyway, what is supposed to be my “rule number one”?’
‘Never answer the telephone unless compelled to do so, of course.’
‘Ok, you win; I’m free that weekend. Now, why do you want to know?’
‘I’m inviting us to Christmas lunch with our parents.’
‘But Christmas is still another five weeks away!’
Lamplight in the Shadows Page 16