The Good Doctor

by Paul Butler

  But there are other differences. Willy was never a showman. He seemed proud then, too proud to perform for a crowd. As a youth there had been an almost brittle haughtiness about him. There is something undignified, even perverse, in the more obvious aspects of his play-acting now, though the impressive hush of the audience suggests no one else can see through it.

  “It was a September night twenty-five years ago,” Grenfell says quietly. “I trudged through the blackened East End streets after a maternity case, feeling tired and worn down by the sights and smells of poverty, haunted by the knowledge I had just delivered a new babe to a family with no means of support in the smallest and dingiest corner of a city slum. In an open wasteland that lay between the sooty, crumbling houses, I noticed a tent rising, shimmering beneath the autumn moon, its canvas yellow with burning lamps, Arabesque with spires and dune-like dips.”

  Florence feels something blunt yet intrusive moving through her, like a travelling knife wrapped tight in cotton. She has read this account before in some of the periodicals and she knows Grenfell doesn’t intend to touch upon her story, or that of her husband. She knows they will not even figure in the background of his tale. But like a composer who knows his tune has been lifted by another, she feels the invasion. Inverted, altered, played backwards and out of sequence though it is, this melody belongs to her and her husband. She feels its power like a dimly remembered nursery rhyme, and heat rises in her at the sound of it on Grenfell’s lips.

  “Despite my tiredness, the idle curiosity of youth drew me toward the entrance. Once inside I instantly breathed the pure, fresh air of faith. Although hundreds of eyes fixed on him, the man on the podium commanded my attention like an osprey catching the shimmer of a tail fin far below. He gave a nod of recognition, a special kind of challenge glistened in his eyes. What did he say that night to claim my energies for the unsentimental service of my fellow man?”

  Again he leans forward at the hip, placing one hand behind his back in the manner of a conjurer about to produce a bunch of paper flowers. “In truth,” he continues, “I hardly remember. But the energy and the sincerity emanating from the man I would later come to know as D. L. Moody, the great evangelist, was palpable. It was a fresh and sober energy, delivered not with a murmur and not from a dilapidated, sherry-soaked priest but in a fine, strong voice and from a man whose physical power and presence matched his words. And his message was timeless. It was simply this: come follow me.”

  He pauses, and a movement, almost a gasp, ripples through the auditorium. The young man with the greased hair moves shyly from behind the desk and tiptoes down the stairs to a projector, which stands in the main aisle. Grenfell nods at him and moves to the side. Florence notices properly for the first time that behind Grenfell is a white canvas screen.

  “Forget about the pomp and sham of religion,” Grenfell continues. “Forget the hollow ceremonials. Come to the poorest and hungriest places on earth and once there lend your talents to the service of humanity.”

  The stage light disappears and casts the room in blackness, but a bright square appears in the centre of the canvas. By the time the audience has exclaimed at the sudden loss of illumination, the collective attention has been claimed by the image before them. A profound silence falls.

  A small rickety structure, like the kind of hideout used by partridge hunters in England, nestles among tall pines. But the state of neglect suggests long disuse. Standing by, in a little clearing, is a dark-skinned man dressed in a tunic which bulges at the buttons and seems too small. He has hollow cheeks and he meets the camera with a vacant, half-smiling gaze.

  “Imagine a far and windswept land,” says Grenfell, “peopled in part by descendants of hardy English fishermen isolated for two centuries or more. Imagine they are living among the primitive Eskimo, and Eskimo half-breeds. Imagine all these people of varied heritage clinging for survival to the hostile coasts in summer and to the even wilder and more unforgiving interior land in winter.” Pockets of sound—mumbles and gasps—rise and fall in the darkness; avoiding direct comment about the subject of the slide only hauls the collective attention more completely into the image. “This,” says Grenfell with a backward tilt of the head, “is man reduced to his essentials, the poor, bare, forked animal who has never known the luxury of a featherbed, a modern stove, a bath, a book—indeed, he has never learned to read—or a nutritious meal. He toils through the summer in the fishery and usually ends up in debt to the merchant. He has no choice but to eke out a meagre existence through the winter bringing his starving family to the traplines. When he sells his furs, he will have no choice but to accept the price quoted to him by the sole buyer in the town.”

  A yell—violent and unexpected—bursts from a dark corner to Florence’s right. The women and men in front of Florence and to either side crane their necks to see, but nothing is obvious and for a moment there is a sense that the noise was nothing, the yelp of buckling wood from some unseen beam below the carpet. Then it comes again.

  “Lies,” says the voice. “This is a lie!” Florence sees him now, the man with the unkempt beard and the wounded eyes, the man she had seen in the foyer.

  People hush him, but the sound merely accentuates the disturbance in the same way a rush of white foam draws attention to the bow slicing through water. A hand tugs the hem of his jacket, but he persists.

  “Trappers do not bring their families to the line.” His eyes glisten blue in the dim reflected light of the projector. He gesticulates wildly with one hand, and something in the movement strikes Florence as sad and helpless, like an appeal he knows already to be hopeless. “Nobody lives in that hut. It was given up years before.”

  Grenfell, at the front, shakes his head regretfully, hands now on his hips. Already doormen make their way seat by seat toward the protester, audience members obliging them by standing and narrowing the space between the chairs.

  “Grenfell is a liar,” the man calls rather weakly as white-gloved hands come upon him, one around his elbow, and another under his arm. He does not resist but goes stiff like a mannequin as the doormen manoeuvre his body over and around the seats to the aisle behind the last row, then march him swiftly toward the exit. His shoes scuff along the carpet, either because he is trying to obstruct progress or because the doormen are walking too fast for him to get his footing.

  The door is hauled open, then swings closed after them, scattering orange light briefly over the faces of the audience—a bemused smile here, a frown there. In that lost instant, Florence searched expressions for a reflection of the pain inside her, the empathy she feels for the disgraced man. But already hope is fading. Laughter follows, not the embarrassed, nervous laughter that follows acute awkwardness, but easy, mirthful, mocking laughter.

  She thinks of her poor husband, alone in their hotel room, nursing the only medicine that works for him. For a second time tonight, a great sadness moves within her, as tangible as a boulder in her chest, and her pity spreads to the stranger just ejected. Anger flares as she realizes that pity is an unjust emotion for him. He was merely pointing out a fact already known to her, that Grenfell is a liar. The man doesn’t need pity; he needs respect and support.

  The attention descends once more upon Grenfell, this time intensified by a murmur of apology for him, for the rudeness of the interruption, for the indecorousness of it all. “Such pride, my friends, is always understandable. I am not the kind of missionary who complains about the mouth that bites its helper. This is his world, after all, his family, his reality.” He gestures toward the image on the canvas once more. “But relief from such hunger is our subject tonight, relief that will prevent such hardship and render outbursts of misdirected pride quite unnecessary.”

  He waits for a moment, and the image of the hut slides from the canvas to the wall and disappears. Another takes its place, that of a handsome reindeer with antlers reaching high. Beside the beast stands a smil
ing man in an exotic-looking double-flapped hat. His head comes only to the animal’s shoulders. “At this very moment, ladies and gentlemen, a herd of reindeer is making its way to northern Newfoundland, accompanied by several Lapp families who will nurture them. This is my long-term plan to ensure a steady year-long diet high in protein, a source of milk and of cheese. Like Alaska, which is now awash with herds of reindeer, we will make the Great Northern Peninsula of Newfoundland and southern Labrador a place of bounty. My hope is to eradicate the settlers’ complete and utter reliance on both the merchant and the trapping lines, and in time for this benefit to extend to both the Eskimos and the roving Indians of the interior.”

  Excitement travels in a wave through the auditorium. Florence hears a single clap, feels a speeding in her own chest of some new convergence of emotions, undefined yet frightening in its violence. She wonders if the place is about to burst into spontaneous applause, but Grenfell stops them in time with a gesture, his hand stretched and calming. “Together with this new food source we will continue each year to add to our small farms in St. Anthony. Our vegetables, rich in vitamins, together with the meat, will combat the diseases of malnutrition and help bring the local population out of reliance and poverty. It is to this end that I ask for your help this evening. The donations you so generously provide will go to those parts of our mission which promote good nutrition, self-reliance, and sobriety.” He glances down to the reddish-faced older man. “I will turn the chair back to Dr. Gains of the Polar Society and thank him for his great generosity in organizing this event, and for your kindness and attentiveness as an audience. Dr. Gains.”

  Grenfell sits, and the applause clatters down like hailstones, seats and armrests thunderous with vibrations. The noise envelops and transports Florence, but as a rock might be carried by molten lava, with a spitting force of rebellion and anger.

  With all the examples of flawed yet honest efforts at its disposal, she thinks, this is what the world chooses to celebrate: showmanship, mendacity, and theft. Grenfell has stolen her husband’s experience, most likely misled this silken, furred crowd about the lives of those he claims to help, trampling upon their dignity while elevating his own status. But it’s a willing enough seduction, she suspects. Even if she could produce the note Grenfell wrote that night under Moody’s tent—and she believes it may still be somewhere in her husband’s effects—the clear evidence of his plan to deceive, she wonders if these people would even want to know. She sees herself dragged from the room, shoes thudding along the carpet to the tut-tuts of the audience, and the rainstorm of laughter that would follow.

  Dr. Gains rises to his feet, still applauding. “As always, Dr. Grenfell, wherever you speak, you inspire.” He coughs self-consciously and the audience gives them both a fresh round of applause. “Now you will not object, Dr. Grenfell, if we open the floor to questions?”

  Grenfell gives a modest nod. A fresh wave of unrest stirs up in Florence’s chest; she finds it difficult to breathe. A hand darts up straightaway. Dr. Gains points and nods, and the man, who is in the front row, begins a timid, long-winded question which is barely audible from where Florence sits.

  Fragments of old Bible texts spin in Florence’s head, exhortations to not bear false witness. They mingle with the stern river of her father’s philosophy, which still flows through her—his serious, active, and sometimes uncompromising view. It is not enough, he would say, to not do harm, and to stand aside and watch it being done to others. One must act as a positive force of goodness and truth.

  She doesn’t need to ask her father’s ghost. The knowledge of what she must do already burns within her. Already she is annoyed with herself for being in the back row, where so many craning heads and curious glances are bound to meet any attempt of hers to question Grenfell. She has no doubt she was brought here for a reason. Every aspect of her presence in this place seems like a conspiracy of providence: There was no decision on her part, yet she was carried upon a human tide to witness a presentation that only she and the lone protester would know for sure to be full of half-truth and deception. And that poor man has already done his part, with only her to be outraged by his treatment. Without her presence, his humiliation would have gone entirely unwitnessed, with no chance of redress. And she does have both the will and the knowledge to redress it. Her father’s voice descends again. This time the message is simpler. God does not expect it to be easy. He does not lay before you tasks that are quick and comfortable. Yet He expects you to act.

  — Chapter Fifteen —

  Florence’s ears grow muffled. Her heart rolls. The man in the front has finished speaking. Dr. Gains goes through it again for the benefit of the audience—the question concerns the unusually high-protein diet preferred particularly by breeds in coastal Labrador, and whether this is because of scarcity of fruit and vegetables, or rather due to an actual physiological difference.

  Grenfell begins an answer with a reference to the Eskimo ability to live entirely upon seal meat with a caution that most of the people under his care are not purebred Eskimo. He quickly leaves the question behind and trails off into a tribute of all the people of Labrador and northern Newfoundland, their hardiness, their simple Christian faith and largely Anglo-Saxon blood, as well as the general kindness and goodwill of the Eskimo and Eskimo breeds, and the many difficulties each race is forced to endure. Like an evangelist, his speech goes in circles, repeating the same construction each time with greater emphasis until it reaches a climax that demands another round of applause.

  Aching at the elbow, feeling the vibrations of the applause upon either side, Florence raises her hand so that it might already be visible when the clapping dies down.

  Dr. Gains sees her straightaway, and his forefinger hovers uncertainly between the brightly lit platform and the darkness over the seats.

  “We have a lady in the back row, Dr. Grenfell, who wishes to ask a question. Yes, please, madam.”

  Grenfell tilts his face pleasantly into the darkness; Florence knows that for the moment she must be beyond recognizing.

  The beginning of many questions form like snakes’ tails in her mind, slithering beyond her reach into a mass of patterned coils. Only one point of entry hangs before her, a swift allusion to that night long ago when Grenfell claims to have been chosen by his vocation.

  “Dr. Grenfell,” she says, her voice surprisingly calm and clear. Someone flaps a leaflet a row in front, then becomes still. The audience is quiet, attentive. “You say you were converted to God’s work under the tent of Moody, the evangelist.”

  Grenfell’s head still tilts into the darkness, but the pleasant smile may have slipped into something more mask-like. It’s difficult to be sure from this distance. Only a muted cough or two disturbs the attentive atmosphere.

  “My husband had almost exactly the same experience at the same time.” Now agitation creeps into her voice, and she feels a tickling in the back of her throat. Her panic floats her away from herself. She seems to hover somewhere in the fuzzy darkness above her own shoulder. “He is a doctor, also, although he practises here in the United States, among the poor farming communities of Maine.”

  The audience is still motionless, still silent, but she can feel a communal twitch of discomfort like the stirring of a moth’s wing in the seats beneath her. She’s amazed she did not work out precisely what she was going to say before she put up her hand. This is something her husband would have done, something he did once do, in fact, to trick himself into acting when timidity would otherwise have kept him silent. The note, and the meeting outside Dr. Johnson’s house; these are the acts of a man who forces himself to jump. The similarity between herself and her husband feels like a comforting kind of solidarity. It’s exhilarating, too. She’s glad, at last, that she can share the burden of standard-bearer, that for once it’s she who’ll be riding into battle first.

  “I wonder, Dr. Grenfell,” she says more boldly
, returning to herself and anchoring there, “how your audience would react to photographic slides of dire poverty and starvation among farmers in the New England states? Would it seem, perhaps, less glamorous, more threatening, and closer to home?”

  Now the place comes alive with murmurs and shuffling. A man two rows ahead turns and glares, the dim blue of the auditorium catching in his eyes, giving his stare enough steel to let Florence know it will not leave her until she is quiet.

  Grenfell gives a forced smile and sits back, with his hands locked over his chest as though considering.

  Dr. Gains colours deeply and coughs. “So your question to Dr. Grenfell is about grades of hardship, about whether the conditions and homes of the white fishermen and native trappers in Labrador are worse than those of our own American farmer in the New England states?”

  Florence suspects he does not mean this ironically, but the comparison draws guffaws and from certain areas of the auditorium. Then a more general laughter spreads as though it were an accepted fact that Dr. Gains has made a joke.

  “My question,” Florence says, “or, rather, comment, is that hardship and hunger exist right here in the affluent heart of eastern America and that Dr. Grenfell did not need to go to the frozen north, where some of the people seem to feel misrepresented by his work.”

  A circle of groans rises around her like an overflowing moat. The gloved woman flaps her Polar Society pamphlet at Florence to sit down.

  “Let’s have something else!” bellows a man’s voice closer to the stage. More voices rise and the sound buoys her at the elbows, making her feet light upon the ground.

  There’s the feeling, if not the physical reality, of a scuffle. In the darkness and confusion, Florence can’t be quite sure, but she feels herself either moving or being moved from the space directly in front of her seat toward the aisle two places away. Knees and hands graze against her, perhaps nudge her along. In a moment she is in the openness of the aisle, unsure as to whether she has been forced there or not.