by A. J. Cronin
But I was not to be put off, and in the end she allowed herself, with a rather bad grace, to be persuaded. She gave some sharp orders. Two men went back with me and carried Tam up to the farm.
‘Here!’ exclaimed Elizabeth, viewing Tam’s dilapidated state with manifest disfavour. ‘Bring him upstairs! and be careful not to make a midden of my stair carpet!’
From his horizontal position, Tam gazed at her like a scolded schoolboy.
‘I’m sorry.’ He shivered. ‘ I’ll go back to my boat tomorrow.’
‘Humph!’ muttered Elizabeth, under her breath. ‘And a real good riddance of right bad rubbish. Here! Along the passage. Watch my clean wallpaper!’
And she acidly indicated the way to a good room where a new-lit fire smoked and crackled. Having made up her mind, under sufferance, to be charitable, she had decided apparently to do it in in style. With the two farm hands I got Tam undressed and into bed. Then I made a more extensive examination. Finally I went downstairs to where Elizabeth waited for me in the parlour.
‘It’s a localised pleurisy,’ I announced cheerfully. ‘That, and exposure! Not quite so bad as I thought. He’s coming round now. He ought to be off your hands in a few days. He’s got a wonderful constitution, you know.’
She compressed her lips with native irony.
‘In the meantime I’m to drop all my work – and the Almighty knows I have plenty – in order to nurse him.’
‘It won’t be for long,’ I assured her, smiling. ‘The minute Tam’s better he’ll be off like a shot. He’s a shy fish. If he had his way, he wouldn’t stay under a house roof for love nor money.’
‘Indeed!’ she said with due asperity. And as that seemed to be all, I went away.
Next afternoon I called at Saughend again. Elizabeth met me at the door.
‘You and your exposure,’ she said in a tone of remonstrance. ‘Did you know that the poor man was starving? Not one bite of food had passed his lips for four days, and him with a heavy chill on him.’
I made a deprecating gesture.
‘Well! It’s the way he lives, you see …’
She cut me short.
‘A crying scandal,’ she declared vigorously, ‘for anyone to live that way. And I’d no idea. Not the slightest. And him living almost at my doorstep. I’ve never taken any notice of the man, or I’d soon have set him right. His clothes – why, I burnt them the minute I set eyes on them! They’re not fit for a human being. And, mind ye, he is a human being – ay, and a gey decent human being, if I’m a judge.’
She broke off, eyeing me warily. It appeared as if she might have said a great deal more, but, with an effort, she recollected herself and led the way upstairs.
At first I didn’t recognise Tam, for on entering the room I had the shock of my life. Tam was washed, shaved, and dressed in a fine flannel nightshirt. For all his pleurisy, he looked marvellous.
‘Why, Tam’ – I managed to find my tongue at last – ‘you seem better today.’
‘I am better,’ said Tam in his ample style. ‘She’s looked after me a treat. But I think I’ll get back to the boat the morn.’
‘You’ll do no such thing,’ said Elizabeth Robb severely from the doorway. ‘You’re far from better yet, you foolish fellow, and well you know it.’
Tam was indeed not yet quite right – his temperature was above 100°, and there was still a faint crackle in his side.
Downstairs again, I said casually:
‘By the bye, I’ll not be at Marklea tomorrow, Mistress Robb, so I’ll not bother to look in here till the day after.’
‘I beg your pardon,’ she said, folding her hands firmly beneath her bosom, ‘but you seem to forget ye’re dealing with a sick man. You’ll oblige me, Marklea or no Marklea, by calling at this house tomorrow without fail. I suppose, because the poor man hasna’ the siller to pay you, you think you can neglect him. But I’ll pay you your fee, and there’s an end o’t.’
Next day I called again. Tam, with a large bowl of beef tea at his elbow, was well on the way to recovery.
‘She’s unco kind, ye know, Doctor,’ he remarked mildly. ‘But I’d better get back to the boat the morn.’
Elizabeth Robb did not deign to answer. But in the front parlour afterward she addressed me quite determinedly.
‘He must not go back to that awful boat until he’s cured and better. He’s no trouble at all, at all. He’s a decent, simple chap.’ Here her voice turned almost dreamy. ‘A most remarkable man, in fact, with not a word of harm to say against anybody. And some of the things he does say – clever, you wouldn’t believe it. Do you know, Doctor, that he doesna’ smoke, and he doesna’ even know the taste of drink? To think that all these years he’s been living like that all by himself.’
A surge of indignation seemed to rise in her throat. But in a moment she went on:
‘As for looks – well, you wouldna’ call the Duke his master – a handsome, well-made, well-set-up man as I ever saw the like of.’
Here, catching my eye upon her, she blushed, and, suddenly conscious of that blush, virtuously compressed her lips.
‘You’ll call tomorrow, Doctor,’ she concluded formally, and showed me to the door.
So I made my visit the following morning, and the next morning, and the next. And every time I came there was some fresh eulogy on Tam:
‘Do you know, Doctor …’
The thaw set in, the snow melted, and the green of the country reappeared.
One day when I arrived Tam was up, dressed in a good broad-cloth suit, and looking solid, sensible, and well.
‘That’s a grand suit you’ve got, Tam,’ I declared.
‘Not bad,’ Tam answered with his gentle, guileless smile. ‘ It belonged to Mr Robb. The late Mr Robb, ye know.’ He smoothed the lapels approvingly. ‘It fits me gey well.’
‘Isn’t it about time, Tam?’ I demanded suddenly, inspecting Tam in his beautiful suit, fine laundered linen, sound boots, and air of high prosperity. ‘Isn’t it about time that you were getting back to your boat?’
Tam looked mild and absent-minded.
‘I haven’t thought so much about the boat lately,’ he murmured. ‘It’s pretty nice up here at the farm.’
At that moment Elizabeth came bustling in, looking pleased and blooming, happier than she had done for months. She gazed admiringly at Tam.
‘Doesn’t he look grand?’ she remarked with a proprietary air. ‘He’s promised to come out for a stroll with me this afternoon. I want to ask his opinion about the lower Saughend field. I’ve a rare notion he might make a farmer yet if he went the right way about it.’ She gave a little conscious laugh. ‘Will you be calling in again tomorrow, Doctor?’
‘No,’ I answered gravely. ‘There’s nothing more for me to do. I’ll not look back.’
But I did look back. Within the month, I was best man at their wedding.
Chapter Eleven
The Scots are in many ways a singular people. For centuries they fought their nearest neighbours, the English, and are still a trifle hostile towards them – at least they treasure the memory of Bruce and Bannockburn as their proudest heritage. Inhabiting a small impoverished country, ridged by bleak mountains and ringed by rocky coasts against which rough seas sweep and surge, they are admittedly hardy, frugal, thrifty, resolute, and addicted to their own ‘usquebaugh’ – a Gaelic word vilely corrupted by the Saxons to ‘whisky’.
Yet other peculiarities, not all of which are praiseworthy, have been attributed to them, and some of these are entirely without foundation in fact. Perhaps this injustice is self-inflicted – it has been said that one of Scotland’s minor industries is the export of stories pertaining to the oddity of her native sons. Be that as it may, there is one quality which is more often and more mistakenly applied to the northerner than any other: insensitivity. The general belief that the average Scotsman is a cold, phlegmatic, and unfeeling individual is a base aspersion upon the national character. During my sojourn in Tannochbrae,
brief though it was, I met with an incident which brought this point home to me in an especially striking way.
One March evening, Willie Craig rang the bell of Arden House with his usual calmness.
‘Good evening, Janet,’ he remarked in his slow, self-possessed voice. ‘Does the doctor happen to be at home by any chance?’
‘Which of them were ye wanting to see, Mr Craig?’
‘It doesn’t matter in the least, Janet. Any of the two of them’ll do me fine.’
‘It’s the assistant’s night for the surgery. But I’ll let Dr Cameron know you’re here if you specially want to see him.’
He shook his head – slightly, for all Willie’s movements were restrained and staid.
‘It’s all one to me, Janet, woman.’
She gazed at him approvingly. Janet dearly admired a man who never got excited, and she showed him into the dining-room – a special mark of favour – to wait.
Willie sat down and, putting his hands in his pockets, looked with mild interest at the fiddle hung above the mantelpiece.
He was a small, slight man of about thirty-seven, clean-shaven and rather pale about the face, dressed in a neat grey suit and a celluloid collar fitted with black, ‘made-up’ tie. By trade Willie was the village baker; he had his own tidy business in the High Street, where his wife served behind the counter while he worked in the bakehouse in the yard. Willie Craig’s mutton pies were noted, his currant cakes second to none in all the county. But though he was well thought of, with a name for good baking, fair measure, and sound dealing, Willie’s reputation in the town was hung upon a higher peg than these. Willie Craig was famous for his coolness.
‘Ay, ay, a cool customer, Willie Craig,’ was the town’s approving verdict.
When, for instance, he played the final of the Winton bowling championship on Knoxhill Green and won a deadly struggle by the margin of a single shot, folks cheered him, not so much because he won, but because of the manner of his winning. Pale-faced, unruffled, never turning a hair, while Gordon, his opponent, was nearly apoplectic with excitement. In the clubhouse afterward, Gordon, with a few drinks inside him, waxed indignant and a trifle garrulous on the subject.
‘He’s not human. He doesn’t feel things like other folks do. He’s like a fish lying on a block of ice. That’s the trouble with Willie Craig. He’s got no imagination!’
So Willie became known as the man with no imagination; and, indeed, he looked stolid enough sitting there in Arden House waiting to see me.
‘Will ye step this way, Mr Craig?’ remarked Janet, returning in the middle of Willie’s composed meditation.
He got up and followed her into the surgery.
‘Sit down,’ I said shortly. ‘What’s the trouble?’
I was overworked, rushed, and in a hurry, which made my manner more abrupt than usual. But Willie Craig didn’t seem to mind.
‘It’s my tongue, Doctor. There’s something on the edge o’t that bothers me a bit.’
‘You mean it pains you.’
‘Well … more or less.’
‘Let me have a look.’
I leaned across the desk and took a look at Willie’s tongue. I took a good long look. Then in rather a different tone I said:
‘How long have you had that?’
‘Oh, six weeks or thereabouts, as near as I can remember. It’s come on gradual-like. But lately it’s been getting worse.’
‘Do you smoke?’
‘Ay, I’m a pretty heavy smoker.’
‘A pipe?’
‘Ay, a pipe.’
There was a short pause. Then I rose and went over to the instrument cabinet.
I took a powerful magnifying glass, and, with the most scrupulous care, I examined Willie’s tongue once again. An angry red spot stood on the edge of the tongue. A spot which was hard to the touch and, to the trained eye, full of the most sinister implication.
I laid down the glass and sank into my chair by the desk.
There were two ways open, I knew, of dealing with the situation. The first, a specious pretence of optimism; the second, to tell the truth. Reflectively I gazed across at Willie, whose reputation for self-possession I well knew. Willie gazed back at me calmly. I decided that I must let him have the truth.
‘Willie,’ I said suddenly, ‘that little thing on your tongue may be something very serious. Or it may not.’
Willie remained unperturbed.
‘I suppose that’s why I’m here, Doctor. I wanted to find out what it was.’
‘And I want to find out, too. I’ll have to take a little snick out of your tongue and send it to the pathological department of the University for examination. It won’ hurt you, and it won’t take long. In a couple of days I’ll have the result. Then I shall know whether this is what I’m afraid of or not.’
‘And what are you afraid of, Doctor?’
A bar of silence fell in the consulting-room. I felt I must hedge. But gazing straight into Willie Craig’s cool, grey eyes, I changed my mind. In a low voice I said:
‘I’m afraid you may have cancer of the tongue.’
That bar of silence, scarcely dispelled by those few words, vibrated and again descended, lingering intolerably.
‘I see,’ Willie said. ‘That’s not so good. And what if it should be cancer?’
I made a diffident movement with my hands.
‘Operation.’
‘You mean I’d have to have my tongue out?’
I nodded my head.
‘More or less. But we won’t face our troubles till we come to them.’
For a long time Willie studied the toes of his neat, well-brushed boots, then he raised his head.
‘Right you are, then, Doctor. You’d better get on with what you’ve got to do.’
I rose, sterilised an instrument, sprayed Willie’s tongue with ethyl chloride, and snicked out a tiny fragment of the little crimson spot.
‘That was soon done,’ Willie said.
He washed out his mouth, then picked up his hat, preparing to go.
‘Let me see’ I considered. ‘It’s Monday tonight. Look round Thursday at the same time, and I’ll give you the result.’
‘I hope it’ll be good,’ Willie remarked stoically.
‘I hope so, too,’ I answered gravely.
‘Good night, then, Doctor.’
‘Good night.’
I stood watching him as he went down the drive and into the road, carefully closing the gate behind him. I could not but admire his calm, cold courage.
But was I correct in my appraisal? The cool customer, the man with no imagination, walked along the street, his head in the air, his chin well up, his lips set.
Outwardly calm, quite calm! But inside his brain a thousand hammers beat ferociously. And in his ears a thousand voices roared and thundered. One word repeated endlessly … cancer.
He felt himself trembling, felt his heart thudding tumultuously against his side. As he turned into Church Street a spasm of giddiness assailed him; he thought for a moment he was going to faint.
‘How do, Willie! Fine evening for the Green!’ Bailie Paxton, from outside his office, hailed him across the street.
Not one man, surely, but a row of them, all waving, grimacing, blurred, and grotesque.
‘A fine evening it is, Bailie.’
‘We’ll see ye on Saturday – down at the match.’
‘You will, indeed. I wouldn’t miss it for anything.’
How in the name of God had he managed to speak?
As he moved off, a cold sweat broke upon him. The muscles of his cheek began to twitch painfully. His whole being seemed dissolved and fluid, escaping his control, defying at last his constant vigilance.
All his life long he had fought like a demon against his nerves, those treacherous nerves which had so often threatened to betray him. He had found it difficult, always – even the little things. That time, for instance, when he had won the bowling championship – so sick inside with nerves
and apprehension that he could scarcely throw his final wood, yet managing to mask it with indifference – his nervous terror. But now, faced with this awful thing – oh, how could he face it? The voices blared that fearful word at him again.
He entered his house quietly, his house above the shop, which was now shut; he sat down in his chair, pulled on his battered carpet slippers.
‘Ye’re early back from the Green, Will,’ Bessie, his wife, remarked pleasantly, without looking up from the pages of the local paper.
At all events, with Bessie, he simply mustn’t show anything.
‘I didn’t bother about the Green tonight. I just took a stroll down the road.’
‘Uh-huh! These are awful nice hats Jenny McKechnie’s advertising. A new spring line. Feathers. And only five and eleven the piece. I’ve a good mind to treat myself to one.’
Staring into the fire, he made an unbelievable effort to master himself.
‘It’s high time ye were buying something for yourself.’
She flashed a warm smile at him, pleased by this tribute to her wifely economy.
‘Maybe I will, then. And maybe I’ll not. I never was one to squander money on finery. No, no. I believe in something put past for a rainy day. I’m not wanting us to be stuck here over the shop all our lives, Will. A nice bit semi-detached villa up Knoxhill way – what do you say to that – in a year or two?’
In a year or two! The simple words transfixed him, like a sword thrust savagely into his breast. A year or two! Where would he be then?
He closed his eyes, fighting back the smarting, pitiful tears that rose to them. Rustling her paper, Bessie laughed.
‘A lot of difference it makes to you! Ye hardened auld sinner. There’s nothing on earth would put you up or down.’
He went to bed early. In the ordinary way he went early enough, never later than ten, for he had to be in the bakehouse by four in the morning to see to the ovens for the first batch of bread. But tonight he turned in at nine o’clock. Yet he could not sleep. He was still awake when Bessie came to bed, although, in order that he might not have to speak, he pretended to be asleep. Lying there with tightly shut eyes, he listened in a dumb agony to all her simple, familiar movements: winding up the clock, stifling a yawn, dropping her hairpins into the tray upon the mantelpiece. Then quietly, for fear of disturbing him, she slipped into bed.