by A. J. Cronin
One morning before breakfast as I was dressing, Mrs Morgan came rushing to the bedroom, in a state of agitation contrasting strangely with her usual composure.
‘Mr Lewis wants to see you, Doctor … It’s Nurse Davies.’
The colliery manager was downstairs. He looked at me from beneath drawn brows.
‘You haven’t heard?’
I shook my head, gripped by sudden alarm.
‘She was biking to a case last night … out Blanethly way.’ He spoke with compressed lips. ‘A pylon had blown across the road. She ran smack into it in the dark. Lay all night in the wind and pouring rain before the men coming on day shift found her.’ A long moment of silence, then he added: ‘I think her back is broken.’
Horrified, I snatched up my hat and coat, set off with him at once. As we hastened up the street together his profile was fixed and rigid.
‘You didn’t know, Doctor,’ he broke out suddenly, gazing straight ahead, ‘ that years ago I asked her to marry me. But she wouldn’t have me. Too bound up in her work.’ He paused. ‘Ay, devoted, devoted to her work.’
At her lodging, whither they had taken her, I made a prolonged examination. Two of the lower spinal vertebrae were fractured, there was neither sensation nor power of movement in the lower limbs – a total paralysis. Serious, too, was the intense occipital headache of which she complained. A lumbar puncture produced some alleviation of this, pain; then we carried her to the station, where she was placed on a double mattress in the guard’s van of the forenoon train for Cardiff. Lewis and I went with her, and three hours later she was in the city infirmary.
Back in Tregenny we waited for news. At first it was doubtful that she would survive. Then came word of a series of operations, long and complex – nothing is more protracted than surgery of the spine – and for hours she was upon the operating table. Afterwards, weeks in plaster of paris, massage, electrical therapy. Finally, the devastating verdict – it had all been in vain, she would never walk again.
The weeks went past. We had a new nurse now, a young probationer, who worked well enough on the district. But there her activities ceased – the clinic, which had been Nurse Davies’s special charge, was not reopened. And here more than anywhere was the old nurse missed.
One afternoon, as I passed the disused room in Chapel Street I drew up short. Was it fancy, or merely an illusion springing from momentary recollection, a sudden memory of the past? I had, thought I heard her voice. Instinctively I threw open the door. Then I saw something which made my heart turn in my breast.
There, in a wheel chair, her hair turned completely grey, bent a little, much thinner, her paralysed legs covered by a rug, but still in her uniform, was the old district nurse. Surrounded by her patients, children mostly, she steered herself skilfully about the room, whirling the spokes of her mobile chair with a practised touch. Motionless, I stood in the shadow. When the last patient left the room she had barely time to spin round before I went forward and clasped her hands – those worn, capable hands that had served the needs of others for so long.
‘Nurse Davies … Olwen! You’re all right.’
She gave me her rare smile.
‘Why not? Can’t you see …? I’m back at work’ – her smile deepened – ‘and still on wheels!’
Chapter Seventeen
A wet and dark December night. The wind howled down the narrow valley among the scattered rows of houses, driving the rain against the window panes and scouring the deserted streets in hissing gusts. The shops were long since shut, and only a bleary gleam came through the blinds of the Tregenny Arms.
When I had finished my last round I came in, soaked to the skin, tired as a beaten dog, utterly dispirited. It was one of those days when I cursed the fate that had brought me to Tregenny. I was, I told myself bitterly, no selfless altruist, no saint, like poor Olwen Davies, no fond and fervent martyr in the cause of suffering humanity. And after eleven months in this dismal place, lost amidst the black Carmarthen mountains, doing my own dispensing in the ramshackle surgery, walking interminable distances since I could not afford a gig, I was beginning to feel that I had the worst end of the bargain. The place itself, less from drab ugliness than from its queer and unearthly detachment, was utterly foreign to me. There seemed indeed, in the very air of this remote village a queer sense of unreality and superstition which grew upon one like a ghostly fantasy. Many of the people were friendly now, yet beneath the surface strange currents ran, and depths existed that. I could not plumb. They were secretive, fiercely religious. On Sundays hymns came sounding from the chapels, Zion, Bethel, Ebenezer, and Bethesda, so loud and passionate the very mountains appeared to take the chanting up and echo it to heaven.
At such moments, the air vibrating with atonement, redemption, and salvation, cynicism was no armour; one felt, almost with a thrill of fear, the presence of the supernatural.
I had little heart that night for supper, although my good wife, seeing me depressed, urged me to it. After a mug of hot cocoa and a mouthful of-bread and cheese, I flung myself into bed, bone-weary, praying that I would not be disturbed. I fell into a heavy sleep.
The faint whirring of a bell half awakened me. On and on it went, so damnably insistent it would not let me be. Still dazed with sleep, I fumbled in the darkness and took up the telephone receiver beside my bed. A woman’s voice spoke instantly, but from a far way off.
‘Come at once, Doctor. Come to Evan Evans’s house by Ystfad.’
I groaned.
‘I can’t possibly get up to Ystfad tonight.’
‘But you must come tonight, Doctor, bach …’
‘Who are you?’
‘I am Evan Evans’s wife. And my daughter is very ill.’
‘I’ll come in the morning, I tell you.’
‘Oh, no indeed, you must come now. For God’s sake, Doctor, you must come now.’
I could have sworn aloud – of all the miseries which afflict the weary and overworked doctor, a night call is the worst. But against my own inclination, the pleading, the pitiful urgency of the voice persuaded me. I dropped the receiver, lay for a moment collecting my scattered wits, then I rose, tumbled into my damp clothes, and picked up my bag.
Outside the rain had ceased, but the wind was high and bitter cold, driving dark scuds of cloud across an icy moon. The mountains rose in wild and haggard majesty upon a scene so starkly desolate that instinctively I shivered and drew my scarf about me. I knew – at least, I thought I knew – what lay before me: a five-mile walk to Ystfad, which stood halfway up the ridge of Pen-pentre, the highest peak in that rugged chain. And as I stumbled along the broken mountain road, with time for reflection, I began to recollect a vague story of this man, Evan Evans, whose wife had called me out.
It was little enough I had heard, and in this uncommunicative spot might well have been less. Evans had lived, at one time, in Tregenny itself, where he had been an outstanding member of the small community. He was not a highly educated man, yet he was respected and prosperous, the owner of the snug little ‘outcrop’ pit known as Tregenny No. 1. But one day, by some unhappy chance, a dispute had arisen between himself and the main Tregenny Coal Company concerning the matter of a way leave underground. The question was negligible, even trivial, but Evans was a violent man, especially when what he termed ‘his rights’ were questioned. The dispute became a quarrel and then a lawsuit. Evans lost his suit. Immediately he took it to appeal. He lost his appeal. Burning with resentment, he took it to a higher court. Again he lost. And so the process was continued until finally, beaten and despoiled, his money dissipated, his colliery sold above his head, he had retired, a warped and ruined man, to a forsaken house on the mountainside by Ystfad, which had long lain empty and desolate. There he had remained for years hating and avoiding his fellow men, perhaps a little crazy from his misfortunes, until he had become an almost legendary figure. He guarded his seclusion jealously, but in the autumn evenings he might be seen, a dim, gaunt figure, shooting the wild sni
pe on the ridges, and sometimes at night he would gallop his pony along the moonlit summit, wildly, as though he rode against the world.
This was Evans, then, so far as scanty rumour had brought him to my notice and after a journey which seemed unending I reached his lonely house at last. Large and rambling, adjoined by a huddle of outbuildings, it was, whatever its history in better times, now a gloomy and dilapidated barracks. Not a glimmer of light was visible as I trudged up the narrow path, and no sound broke the universal stillness but the remote hooting of an owl. I pulled the bell. There was no answer. I stood for a moment listening, and hearing nothing but that distant, mocking owl, then with a sudden rush of impatience I battered my fist against the heavy door.
Immediately there arose a furious barking of dogs, and after a long delay the door was opened by an oldish woman in a dingy black dress and shawl. While she peered at me with a frightened, hooded face that seemed as heavy, and as pale – by the lantern she held – as a bladder of lard, two hounds skulked about her heels, showing their teeth and growling at me. Annoyed by this reception, I pushed past her through the hall and into a large stone-flagged room, barely furnished and badly lit, that seemed half kitchen and half parlour. Here my eyes fell at once upon a young girl who lay, unconscious, wrapped in blankets, upon a horsehair sofa beside the fire. Beside her, bowed in an attitude of heavy watchfulness, sat a gaunt and powerful man. His physique was, in fact, tremendous – six foot six he must have stood when his great, wasted frame was raised erect. He was in his shirt sleeves, wore grey knickerbockers and no shoes, and his air of general disorder was heightened almost to the uncouth by a mane of iron-grey hair which fell in tangles about his head. He might have been fifty-five years of age. He was Evan Evans without a doubt.
So intent was his scrutiny of the sick girl, he did not hear me enter, but as I heaved my bag upon the table he swung round with alarming suddenness, his eyes glittering in his dark face with such wildness that I was fairly taken aback.
‘What do you want?’
He spoke thickly, with a husky intonation, and I thought at first he was drunk. I answered with as much moderation as I could muster:
‘I’m the doctor. If you step a side I’ll have a look at the patient. She looks pretty bad.’
‘Doctor!’ He repeated the word with a kind of brooding wonder. Then the blood flooded his brow. Though he did not raise his voice, an indescribable menace filled it. ‘I won’t have any doctors here. I won’t have anybody here. Get out. D’you hear me? Get out.’
His manner was formidable in the extreme, yet a sense of real indignation sustained me. I thought of my trouble in answering this call, my weary walk through the darkness, and this boorish treatment at the end of it. I said hotly:
‘You’re crazy to talk like that. Your daughter is seriously ill. You’ve only got to look at her to see it. Don’t you want me to try to help her?’
He winced when I said that and darted towards the sofa a furtive glance in which there was a sudden and almost piteous fear.
‘I don’t trust doctors,’ he muttered sullenly. ‘Not for my daughter, I don’t trust anyone.’
Silence in that strange and barren room. What was there to be done? I glanced towards the woman, who stood in mortal terror by the doorway, her hands clasped weakly upon her breast. I presumed that she had shot her bolt in summoning me against her lord and master’s will. No further help could be expected there. Only one course seemed likely to succeed. With a set face I moved to the table and picked up my bag in the pretence of leaving.
‘Very well. If your daughter dies you know who is responsible.’
For a moment he remained motionless, clenching and unclenching his fingers, his cheek twitching indecisively, his gaze filled with the conflict between his hatred and his fear. Then when my hand was almost on the door, with a sobbing breath that seemed torn from his great chest, he cried:
‘Don’t go. If she’s bad like you say, you better look at her.’
I came back slowly and, advancing to the sofa, knelt down and examined the patient. She was older than I had imagined, about eighteen years, and despite the coma which held her, there was in her slender immaturity a strange, uncared-for beauty. A sudden pity seized me. She was so helpless here in such surroundings, thrown on the mercy of such incompetent parents. She moaned when I moved her gently. Her skin was burning to the touch, but showed no signs of rash. Her lungs were clear; her heart gave no evidence of murmurs or friction. I was puzzled as to the cause of the infection. And than I saw the faint but dusky swelling behind her left ear – acute suppurative mastoiditis. When I had made quite sure I turned to Evans.
‘You ought to have sent for me days ago.’
‘It is only a blast,’ he muttered, using the local idiom for inflammation. ‘We have used goose grease and bran poultice. I am after fetching leeches tomorrow from the lake by Penpeoch. She will be better then.’
‘She will be dead then.’
His jaw dropped and his gaunt cheeks turned bone-white. He stood before me like a man paralysed. The woman, glancing from my face to his, wrung her hands together and set up a wild wailing in Welsh.
‘Look here, Evans’ – I spoke vehemently in my effort to convince him – ‘you must understand me. The whole of this mastoid bone is filled with pus. Unless it is opened up and drained it will break through the skull into the brain. You know what that means. If we don’t do something at once, your daughter has about six hours to live.’
He reached out to the wall as if for support. His great frame seemed to shrink into itself. His eyes never left my face. At last he moistened his lips.
‘Is that the truth?’
‘What earthly reason have I for lying?’
A short silence. I saw his jaw clenched with a sudden and painful spasm.
‘Do it then’ – he paused – ‘she must get better.’
He said no more, yet the glitter in his eyes, which remained fastened on me, was unmistakable. I saw his delusion – that the hand of every man was turned against him. He was trusting me against his will because necessity and fear compelled him. And, at a sudden thought, a thrill of apprehension shot through me. I had persuaded him to let me operate. What would happen if I failed?
But there was no time to dwell on this reflection, not a second to lose. I opened my bag, laid out my instruments and dressings, prepared two basins of carbolic solution, then between us we lifted the patient, a slight burden, on to the bare wooden table. The pungent odour of the anaesthetic rose into the smoky air.
The light, a glaring oil lamp, held by Evans, was atrocious, the conditions unimaginably bad. As my first incision slit up the puffy skin behind the ear I realised that I had to make only one slip, one single error of judgement, and I would penetrate, fatally, the lateral sinus of the brain. I worked by a kind of instinct, and through it all painfully conscious that the wild eyes of Evan Evans were bent upon me. I was down to the bone now, the delicate bone of the skull. With a small gouge I cut into the antrum. The tissue offered more resistance than I had expected from necrotic bone, and there was no trace of pus. Was there no pus after all? Slowly, I went deeper and deeper still. And then, when I felt I must surely pierce the dura into the very cerebrum itself, a heavy bead of pus welled up through the spongy cells.
Hurriedly, I took a spoon and cleared out the pent-up matter, then carefully scraped the cavity, washed it with antiseptic, packed it with iodoform gauze. Quickly, quickly, I finished the work. Five more minutes and the patient was back upon her improvised bed, breathing quietly and deeply, as if asleep. Her pulse was stronger and a better colour tinged her skin. I was convinced that, free of the morbid centre of infection, with her healthy young constitution, she would recover.
As I packed my bag, filled with that sense of achievement which comes on rare occasions to the long-suffering general practitioner, the feeling of having justified oneself, of having succeeded against long odds, I threw a look at Evans. He stood by the table where, during
the past hour, he had remained immobile and inarticulate, watching me. I noted that the sullenness was gone from his dark face, which now wore a singular embarrassment. I said briefly and with grim triumph:
‘She’ll do now.’
He did not answer for a minute; then he muttered:
‘Yes, indeed; she does look better.’
I could see that he was rent by a new emotion – gratitude. And somehow at the sight of him there, with his great dangling hands and his troubled brow, my anger died. He was so deeply affected by the prospect of his daughter’s recovery. And in a milder manner, nodding towards the woman of the house, who had at that moment taken a chair by the bed, I said:
‘One thing you mustn’t forget. You owe it to your wife for asking me to come.’
His sombre eyes followed mine in complete bewilderment.
‘I do not understand. That is Gwynneth, our servant.’ He added, ‘She can’t speak English – only Welsh.’
I stared at him.
‘But, man alive,’ I expostulated, ‘don’t you know that’s how I got the call? She telephoned me to come here.’
He gazed at me wonderingly.
‘There is no telephone here. Not for miles by here.’
One glance convinced me that he spoke the truth. My head reeled. I faced him dizzily.
‘Good God, don’t you realise that your wife begged me to make this call? She spoke to me this very night. Do you hear me? I asked her who she was. She told me plainly that she was your wife.’
He flushed darkly and, towering above me, raised his clenched fist. I thought he was about to fell me to the ground. Then with a great effort he mastered himself.
‘You don’t know about my wife.’ He broke off, his injected eye searching my startled face, then with a sobbing cry: ‘Haven’t they told you it happened … because I wouldn’t have a doctor …? She died in this room five years ago.’