The Good Doctor

by Paul Butler

  “My dear friend,” the stranger echoes with obvious, brazen sarcasm. “I have met Dr. Grenfell, and I would like to inform all those trusting people gathered here that he doesn’t stand like you, talk like you, or even very much look like you.”

  A small series of gasps makes its way through the audience. The lectern light buzzes again and dims. It’s no longer a hypnotic means of focus, more an urgent twitch of horror. Only the challenger’s pebble glasses shine with resolution.

  “I am Grenfell,” the doctor says.

  He will afterwards find it difficult to understand how this simple claim—so natural if it had only been the truth—manages to meet the air with such a cringing sense of guilt. With input from Florence, he will eventually decide that the more plausible reaction from an innocent man would have been confusion, a shake of the head, and something more along the lines of, “This is absurd, my good man.” The immediate and literal claim that he is who he pretends to be is in itself suspicious. It suggests that he has been expecting the charge.

  The murmur among those present swiftly turns hostile. The doctor’s shoulders have become hunched, and he looks toward the auditorium’s high windows and the long brass-hooked poles, which served to adjust the open-closed angle—improbable odds for an escape, he thinks, but tempting.

  “Okay, we can settle this,” calls the reporter, suddenly flushed with excitement, and holding his pencil point up in front of his face. “What are the names of the dogs you killed on the ice off St. Anthony?”

  “Moody, Watch, and Spy,” the doctor replies. There’s another murmur from the crowd. For a moment he can’t tell whether it is because he has proved his claim or because the sudden willingness to play-act the stage magician digs him more fatally into the hole of the imposter. A couple of jeers in his direction give him the answer.

  “Anyone could know that just by reading Dr. Grenfell’s book,” says a portly man in evening dress. The newspaperman just smiles. This is more than he could possibly have hoped for. Suddenly the room seems more arena than auditorium.

  “Gentlemen, ladies, please.” Florence’s voice calms the doctor. Standing, she throws a different kind of hush—almost a kind of awe—upon the gathering. Even the newspaperman looks up at her with a kind of respect. Like a watermark in bonded paper, secretaries give a sense of institutional verity to a lecture. They are not expected to make any sound, and if they do it denotes a real crisis. “This is not a circus. Dr. Grenfell has come to you to discuss serious matters.”

  The doctor becomes aware that with fingers smoothing his moustache, covering the twitch of his lips, he might indeed now seem like a picture of baffled innocence. Though ashamed Florence has intervened, he knows she might have saved him, at least for as long as it will take him to escape the building.

  And so it proves. She picks up the collection box in one hand and takes the doctor’s arm with another. Audibly enough for those in the front row, she says, “Come, Doctor, you are looking pale and there is a car outside that will take you to your hotel.”

  The audience, now upon its feet and spilling the aisles, parts to their approach like a reluctant sea. Miraculously enough, no one follows them into the corridor. They move together through the empty hallway like museum statues come to life and trying not to be noticed. Only as the elevator cage opens to them does the doctor sense movement from behind.

  The bellhop closes the cage. The floor drops suddenly, and the doctor blinks from the belated flash of the reporter’s camera. The bellhop, a spotted youth with ginger hair poking out from beneath his cap, chews gum and stares, aware in some animal way that the middle-aged couple is no longer important enough to merit attention. Once the elevator compartment jolts to a stop, he hauls back the cage and the empty foyer opens to them. The reception clerk scribbles in his book, not looking up. Florence and the doctor make their way through to the revolving door, and in a moment they are outside breathing the crisp, salty air.

  — Chapter One —

  1940: Springfield, Massachusetts

  The hiss of late summer encircles Judy as she steps from the car. Shiny leaves on the overhanging boughs struggle against the breeze, gaining brief succour from one another’s touch.

  Letting the cigarette butt drop from her fingers, she skewers it into the gravel with the point of her shoe. The windows of the doctor’s house, a reflection of dark foliate movement, grow suddenly austere. Judy hopes she isn’t being watched. The metal gate pings open to her touch, and she hugs her satchel closer to her chest as though for protection. Trotting toward the black door, she picks up the cool brass knocker, wraps twice, and then steps back. Some late roses, their blooms darkening, climb up the trellis by the side of the front door. A falling petal touches the fur of her collar and lands by her feet with a pat. A young woman opens the door. She wears no uniform, but something in the way she stands aside and gestures Judy through—distraction in the eyes, tightness in the lips—labels her a maid, not a relative. Halfway down the hallway she catches up and overtakes Judy.

  “Here,” she says, coming to a recess. She stoops and knocks at the door.

  A voice answers, but Judy does not hear the speaker’s word. The young woman opens the door halfway and peers in.

  “Miss Agar is here.”

  Judy hears the flap of paper. The maid steps from the doorway.

  “You should go in.”

  Judy enters.

  The man in the chair seems spryer than Judy imagined. She heard he wasn’t well. He takes off his glasses, folds over the newspaper on his lap—she catches the headline: Air Raids on London—lays glasses and newspaper on the coffee table. Despite her protests, he stands. The hand she takes is pink, warm, and padded. Something alive dances behind his eyes, but she can’t decide on the phrasing. Is it a twinkle or a glint; the warmth of flame or the sparkle of ice? Later, she tells herself, plenty of time for purple prose. Secure the interview first.

  “Thank you so much for agreeing to speak to me.” She folds herself into the proffered chair. As he returns to his seat, she’s struck both by the view through the Georgian windows—impressive undulating garden, some elms and a huge copper beech nodding slightly in the wind—and by the fact that the seating arrangement has given her sole possession of it. The doctor faces the rather dim inward corner of the room where shade-loving plants spread their spindly leaves. It seems incongruous somehow that he has chosen to look away from the sun; the lines around his eyes are reptilian, suggesting a history of quick and nervous movements, and of energy drawn from sunlight. Laying her satchel at her side, she fingers the buckle, waiting out the formalities. Her eyes lock for a moment on a silver tray, a half-full decanter, and a trio of glasses on the table. This seems out of place too.

  “I’m flattered to be asked,” he says, crossing his legs, and sliding his hand over the tweed of his trousers—an old flirt, she thinks. It makes sense, somehow. “And surprised. It’s not often an obscure MD like myself is the subject of newspaper speculation.”

  Surprised. Does he mean it? Or is he playing with her? She smiles. “Periodical speculation.”

  “Ah.” He claps his hand on his thigh. “A world of difference, I’m sure.”

  “Well, we’re not into sensationalism, so . . .” So what? The end of her sentence dangles. To hide her embarrassment she reaches once more for the satchel, opens the buckle, and slides out her notebook. She was hoping that the distinction between newspaper and magazine, especially one with a reputation as toothless and benign as Polar Adventures, would make less threatening the area into which she must soon trespass. But the hanging clock on the wall next to the barometer might already be ticking through layers of misunderstanding. What if he just isn’t the man? There was always that chance her sources were mistaken.

  “And this is a special subject . . .” she falters.

  “The age of adventure!”

 
; She looks up to see the doctor’s eyes wide with dramatic irony.

  “Quite,” she echoes, “the age of adventure.”

  “Polar Adventures of Boston. How large is your distribution?”

  “We have subscribers all over North America.”

  He nods sagely to show he’s impressed. She suspects subterfuge. “All those people interested in polar exploration?”

  “The title Polar Adventures is misleading. We don’t only cover adventures on or near the poles, but also adventures anywhere between the poles, which of course means pretty much anywhere.”

  “Ah, that explains it!”

  “In this case, we are delving into the era of adventure and missionary zeal,” she says, trying to press on now. “That’s the subject of the main article.”

  “The ‘main article’?” he asks. She wonders if she sees a smile playing in the corners of his lips.

  “Yes, this is in the nature of a sidebar.”

  His face remains questioning. Her pencil hovers over the blank sheet before her.

  “You lived through the period of time . . . personally knew the kinds of men who travelled and returned to the lecture circuit, and there was that one occasion—”

  “Tell me, Miss Agar,” he breaks in, sliding his fingers into a steeple on his chest. She’s surprised at the force of the interruption; it wasn’t rude, and, in truth, she’s relieved, but he’s stopped her dead. “Are you, yourself, the author of this main article?”

  “No. The editor himself plans on doing the piece.”

  “Ah,” he said. “Then both you and I are but minor characters.”

  She returns his conspiratorial smile, tries to give him a hint of sympathy and fellow feeling. He’s very close, it seems, to admitting he is the man. “Yes, indeed. We’re interested in the allure of the lecture tour, bringing colour, stories of good works, into the lives of Americans—”

  “Who is the subject of the main article?” The interruption once more has the weight of such calm authority, it demands a straight and immediate answer.

  “Sir Wilfred Grenfell,” she says, her shoulders sinking guiltily.

  “And you say your editor plans on doing the piece. Has he secured an interview with the good doctor?”

  “He is hoping, but Sir Wilfred is not in the best of health.”

  “So I hear.”

  “You keep in touch with Sir Wilfred?”

  The smile again, dry and ironic. “No,” he says.

  “And yet you have, in many ways, lived parallel lives.” A tingle goes through her and she jockeys forward in her chair. “You trained together in London, and you have retired practically next door.”

  “Next door?” he asks, whimsy coming into his eyes.

  “Vermont and Massachusetts are adjacent states.”

  “Ha, Americans and their sense of distance!”

  “And between that time and now . . .”

  “Yes?” An innocent tilt of the head.

  “In between, there was . . . that incident in Portland.”

  “The incident, yes.”

  At last, a clear admission.

  “A practical joke, perhaps?”

  Her pencil aches to start writing, but she holds off. It’s forbidden to record an interviewee’s mere echo of a question. He smiles slowly and she has a sudden sense that he knows this rule and is way ahead of her. “Was it a joke?” she asks. Yes or no would be something.

  “Tell me,” he says reaching to the coffee table and taking up his spectacles. His free hand dips into his trouser pocket, pulling out a white handkerchief. He begins to polish up the lenses. “From the photographs you have seen, do you think I look like Grenfell?”

  “A little, yes.”

  “So a random audience assembling in a hotel in Portland, Maine, might easily let themselves be deceived.”

  He breathes hard on the lenses and continues rubbing.

  “But someone gave you away.”

  “Yes.”

  “Bad luck for you,” she ventures.

  He slides his glasses back on.

  “So it wasn’t just a joke, then?”

  He gives the merest shrug and leans forward, reaching for the decanter. “You don’t mind if I indulge, do you?”

  She tries to keep her eyes from glancing at the clock. It’s 10:40 a.m. He catches her eye and smiles as the pale liquid sloshes into a glass. “Will you have one?”

  “It’s—”

  “A little early I know, and it’s whisky, not sherry.” He lays down the decanter. “Grenfell had his pipe. I never smoked. Although, of course, I had to learn so I could convince people I was him.”

  Picking up the glass, he sinks back slowly into the leather.

  The tingle returns. She’s on the verge of something bigger than she had hoped for. For one mute moment her lips mouth the air. Finally the question forces itself into words.

  “You mean it wasn’t the first time?”

  The old doctor gives a sudden laugh and holds up his glass as though for a toast. “Well now, you’re the first person who has ever asked.” His smile turns rueful. “It was the last, though. We couldn’t risk it again.” He takes a sip and sighs, pleasure mingling with sadness. “Let me tell you how it all came about.”

  — Chapter Two —

  1883: London

  In a moment, the faintest of smiles will bring the young doctor’s world to an end. He has been pounding down the dim hospital corridor, lab coat flapping, stars of bright daylight still dazzling his eyes. Although he is late and frightened of reproof, he is excited, too, intoxicated by the certainty that Nurse Mills’s pale hands will soon be creating that odd, silent ballet with his own, taking his scissors, handing him gauze. He can smell her starched apron already and can see the sunlight playing upon that white armour. He can hear the quiet phrases they will soon exchange—here, thank you, hold this, Nurse—words both commonplace and necessary but spoken, as their respective vocations demand, in hushed tones which imply a kind of intimacy.

  He pauses at the clinic entrance, leans on the door frame, slows his breathing, then he enters. Bars of yellow sunlight stripe the clinic walls. The high blinds always make the place feel like a cage when it’s sunny outside. He is only three or four minutes late, no more, but Dr. Bleaker, the supervising physician, is in his own quiet way an intimidating man. Hunched over the workbench sitting on the stool, Dr. Bleaker has betrayed no sign as yet that he has noticed his arrival. Only when the young doctor moves toward the supervisor, preparing his excuses, does he think to sneak a glance at Nurse Mills. Then he catches sight of them together—Nurse Mills, his Nurse Mills, and the vigorous young intern from the north who arrived only yesterday. The young doctor had forgotten about Grenfell.

  Even though a bleary-eyed sailor with tattoos and a greying beard sits between Grenfell and Nurse Mills, there is something in the slow, synchronized movements of intern and nurse—she passing him the scissors, he accepting—that sends his heart plummeting. And he sees the smile. Oblivious of the patient, Nurse Mills leans toward Grenfell. Her posture suggests that the wonders buried deep beneath the white armour of her apron might be a heavily parcelled offering. Not for the young doctor, though; an offering only for Grenfell.

  Breathless and aching, the young doctor watches as with hooded, narrow eyes his rival cuts the fabric, and then, tongue upon lip, settles the gauze upon the sailor’s yellow-fringed gash, wrapping it around the thick, hairy forearm. Nurse Mills’s smile is little more than a flicker of eyelash, a touch of light upon the surface of her irises, but there is warmth and trust and something else he hardly dares to name.

  For three weeks Nurse Mills and the young doctor have been engaged together in similar tasks, and he has been happy to assume that the stench of surgical spirit, the clink of m
etal on dish, and the murmur of “hold this, Nurse, please,” had incorporated the constituent ingredients of love. Nature would take its course, he thought. He was the doctor-in-training—the only one in this clinic until yesterday. Her role was to assist him. Anyone who has ever been close to a hospital knows where such arrangements lead. What did he have to do other than wait?

  But now as he fastens the final button of his lab coat and steadies himself against the workbench corner, he knows he is on the outside looking in, as alien to the world of lovers as the aquarium visitor is to the delight and beauty on the other side of the glass.

  He takes another step and Dr. Bleaker, still hunched on a workbench stool, tips his head like a dog hearing a faraway bark. Slipping the watch chain from his lab coat’s inner pocket, he looks at the face and frowns. “You’d better help me with some preparations this morning. Grenfell and Nurse Mills can handle the patients.”

  The rest of the morning speeds by like a train. Lost in a daze, he pretends to study ingredients and measurements listed in Dr. Bleaker’s cramped, untidy handwriting. Opening and closing heavy glass stoppers, he pours liquids into jars, grinds salts with pestle and mortar, makes—he will later imagine—a hundred mistakes, some without serious consequence, others potentially fatal, all the while listening to the efficient scuttle of Nurse Mills’s heels upon the tile floor, all the while trying to gauge how close she stood to Grenfell, how often their eyes met over bandage and stitch. Those few times he turns to catch her eye she makes no sign at all that she is even aware of his presence. With a slow, aching realization he comes to see he has no reason at all to be surprised by this. Nothing has ever passed between them in sign, look, or word, which has not been made necessary by the immediate requirements of work. Now that he is witnessing first-hand what attraction should look like, he fears that the warmth he used to sense between Nurse Mills and himself was a delusion, that the physical pulsations he thought he sensed from Nurse Mills were merely echoes, beginning and ending with his own desires.