by A. J. Cronin
When it was finished, Cha drew a stump of cigarette from behind his ear, lit up, and hardily regarded his bandaged arm. ‘You’ve made a bonny hash of it, right enough!’ he exclaimed critically. ‘But what else could we expect?’
Then, with the cigarette in his hand, he promptly fainted.
He came to, of course, but he was far from being right. That afternoon when Finlay called again he found him in the grip of a raging septicaemia. The infection had spread into the blood stream. Cha was delirious; his temperature 105, his pulse 140; he was dangerously ill. Mrs. Bell resolutely opposed his removal to hospital.
‘Cha wouldn’t have it! Cha wouldn’t have it!’ she kept on repeating, wringing her hands. ‘He’s a guid son to me for all his wildness. I winna go against him now he’s badly.’
So the whole responsibility of the case fell on Finlay.
For a whole week he battled for Cha’s life. He loathed Cha – yet he felt that he must save him. He came three times a day to the house in Quay Side, religiously dressing the arm himself; he sent specially to Stirrock’s in Glasgow for some new anti-toxin; he even went into Paxton’s in the High Street, and ordered the nourishment which kept Cha alive.
Not a labour of love, you may be sure; for lack of a better phrase you might call it a labour of hate.
At last, after a horrible week, Cha had his crisis on the eighth day. As he sat late into the night beside Cha’s bed, Finlay saw positively that Cha would recover. Indeed, towards midnight Cha stirred and opened his sunken eyes, which, out of his gaunt, unshaven face, fastened themselves on Finlay. He looked and looked, then, moving his pale lips, he sneered:
‘Ye see – I’m getting better in spite of ye.’
Then he went off to sleep. During his convalescence Cha was even worse. The stronger he got the more outrageous he became.
‘Thought ye’d take my arm off so ye’d have the beating of me!’ or ‘Ye’d have finished me, I suppose, if ye’d had the guts to do it!’
Not that Finlay stood it stoically. Oh dear no! With Cha out of danger, he dropped his professional dignity and thoroughly let himself go, Hammer and tongs they went at it, slanging each other unmercifully, the young riveter and the young doctor, until Mrs Bell would thrust her hands upon her ears and run in terror from the room.
Finally, when Cha was up and ready to depart for a month at the Ardbeg Home, Finlay took him pointedly aside:
‘Your treatment’s finished now. You’re better. You’re going down to get braced up at the seaside. Well, when you’re back again and thoroughly fit, come and see me at the surgery. I’m going to give you the hiding of your life.’
‘Right!’ Cha nodded defiantly. ‘That suits me down to the ground.’
The four weeks passed slowly. Indeed, they passed extremely slowly.
One by one Finlay counted the days. He hated Cha so much he missed him. Yes, he actually missed him.
Life was rather flat without Cha’s scornful grin and bold, satiric tongue. But eventually, on the last Saturday of the month, Cha returned and came bustling into the surgery, bronzed and fit, as strong, stocky and sardonic as he had ever been before.
Up he came to Finlay. They faced each other. There was a pause. But what happened next was terrible – so terrible it can hardly be set down.
Finlay looked at Cha. And Cha looked at Finlay.
They grinned at each other sheepishly. Then, with one accord, they delightedly shook hands.
Wee Robison’s Lost Memory
If that Friday evening had not been so fine and inviting for a walk, Finlay might easily have postponed his call on the Robertsons, of Barloan Toll, until the morning.
He suspected something trivial, for Sarah Robertson was such a fusser. A large, full-bosomed, heavy-footed woman with a plain, flat face and a heart of gold, she fussed over her big daughter, Margaret, and her small husband, Robert, until Robert at last could hardly call his soul his own.
She aired his flannels, knitted his socks, escorted him to church, selected his neckties at the sale, religiously superintended his diet – (‘No, no, Robert, you may like these curds, but you know they always bind you, dear. Tit, tit, take the dish away from your father, Margaret!’)
Among her bosom friends of the Toll she was rightly known as a paragon.
‘Ours is the happiest marriage that ever was!’ she would frequently exclaim with an indrawing of her lips and ecstatic upcasting of the whites of her eyes.
She was the best kind of devoted wife. Or the worst.
But, however much her proprietory fondness redounded to Sarah’s credit, the unkind of tongue in Levenford – and they were perhaps a few – found mild amusement in Robert’s submission to the wifely yoke.
‘He’s a hen-pecked little deevil,’ Gordon had once declared in the club, and Paxton had acquiesced with a snigger – ‘Ay, it’s her that wears the breeks all right.’
Although a master at the Academy, Robert did not belong to the club – it had been laid down kindly that smoking and drinking were ‘not the thing’ for him, at all, at all.
It was extraordinary, in fact, the number of things that were not the thing for Robert. He seemed to go to so few places; never to the football matches, or to the bowling green, or to Glasgow with the other masters to visit the theatre.
He was a small, mild, unassuming man of about forty-four, rather round-shouldered, with a habit of saying very little out of school. He had dog-like, rather harassed brown eyes, a fine tenor voice, and was known affectionately to his class as ‘wee Robison’.
His voice apparently was useful, for Sarah, the lady wife, always pressed him to sing when they had company, and through Sarah’s more influential pressing he secured year after year the single honour – for it could be nothing else – of preparing the children of the parish church for the cantatas, sacred or otherwise, which they regularly gave about Christmas.
Such was ‘wee Robison’, and all this passed through Finlay’s mind as he strolled towards the Toll through the balmy evening air, already sweet with the breath of early summer.
He rang the bell of Robertson’s house and he was not kept waiting long, for Mrs Robertson, in a flurry, pranced to the door and showed him in.
‘I do declare, doctor, I’m awful glad you’ve come,’ she cried in the parlour, where, supported by the big, gawky Margaret – nineteen years old and almost the image of her mother – she stood in devoted concern over Robertson.
He was wearing a discomfited look, and moved restlessly in his chair under the chandelier and the inquisition of their united stares.
‘Nothing serious, I hope, Mrs Robertson?’ said Finlay cheerily.
‘It’s nothing at all,’ protested Robertson uncomfortably. ‘Nothing, nothing! I don’t know what in all the world they fetched you out for.’
‘Now, you be quiet, Father,’ said Margaret warningly, ‘and let Mother speak.’
Robertson subsided, and Finley looked interrogatively at Mrs Robertson, who drew a long sibilant breath of wifely concern.
‘Well, it’s like this, Dr Finlay. I don’t say it’s serious, mind you, far from it, but still I’m worried about my Robert. He’s been fair overdoing it lately! Mr Douglas, the master of the class above his, has been away for some reason or another, and Robert’s been taking the two classes together. It’s an absolute put upon, if you ask me; he’s been working himself to death.
‘And, forbye, there’s the cantata. They’re going to give a special performance of “The Lady of the Lake” come Saturday week on account of the church jubilee. It’s just one thing after another that’s come on the poor man, and you know I’m the most devoted wife in the whole world, and—’
‘Yes, yes, but what’s all this got to do with fetching me out here?’ interposed Finlay, smiling.
‘Why, everything, doctor!’ expostulated Mrs Robertson with an air of supreme concern. ‘It’s got Robert into such a state of nerves that the man doesn’t know what he’s doing. I’ll swear he’s losing his mem
ory.’
‘For God’s sake, woman,’ muttered Robertson, ‘it’s nothing at all. You know I was aye absent-minded—’
‘Now, Father,’ cut in Margaret again, reprovingly.
‘It’s not just as if it was the once,’ went on Mrs Robertson, bending forward towards Finlay in another spasm of wifely anxiety.
‘He never knows where he puts a thing now. He forgot my wool I asked him to buy this afternoon. He forgot Margaret’s music yesterday. It’s one thing after another, forgetting this and forgetting that. He’s in such a state he’ll be forgetting where he lives next.
‘And so, doctor,’ continued Mrs Robertson, ‘will you take the poor man in hand, for goodness sake, and tell him not to work so hard and what to do and everything, for I am fair worried. I wouldn’t have him miss the cantata for worlds.’
Finlay could have laughed out loud at the terrible solicitude of Mrs Robertson. He felt it was wholly unjustified, and yet he did not know either.
Perhaps Robertson had been overworking. He was such a downtrodden little man he was likely to have everything shoved upon him, and besides, he did look oddly nervous, fidgeting with his hands, letting his eye roam about the room with a queer and rather restless look.
Finlay sat down and, in his own particular way, making himself at home, he talked to them. He reasoned with Robertson upon the dangers to the mind of overworking. He talked pleasantly and reassuringly on the subject, and then, before he rose to go, he warned him, referring to a case which had actually come within the bounds of his own experience.
‘You know,’ he said, ‘real overstrain does throw the memory out – aphasia we call it. And it happens quite suddenly. I remember when I was at the Royal I saw a case. It was a businessman. He had forgotten who he was, or rather, he thought himself somebody else. He had come all the way from Birmingham, and he had been living for a fortnight in Glasgow before his people got in touch with him.’
‘My goodness!’ exclaimed Robertson with an almost startled look in his eyes. He sat up in his chair. ‘Is that a fact, doctor?’
‘It’s a fact,’ Finlay reaffirmed.
‘So you see now,’ put in Margaret, ‘you’d better be careful, Father, and do as Mother says.’
‘I wouldn’t have believed it,’ gasped Robertson in that same queer tone, staring in front of him like a man distracted.
‘Well, maybe you will now,’ said Mrs Robertson in a pleased, justified voice.
As she showed Finlay to the door, she thanked him for having spoken so plainly.
Next morning Robert awoke early after a night which had been singularly troubled.
It was Saturday, a beautiful day. Through the open window the air blew sweetly down from the Winton Hills. He lay quietly in bed with his eyes fixed on the ceiling.
He was faced with the rehearsal of the cantata at the Rechabites’ Hall, where the fifty-odd children – big and small, wet- and dry-nosed, of all sexes, the same whom he taught wearily every day of the week – would be waiting for him to appear with his tuning fork and little pointer.
He rose, dressed, and had his breakfast. Sarah accompanied him to the door to give her parting instructions.
‘Now be careful, dear. You’ll come straight back, and you’ll sit in the garden with me this afternoon. Then we’ll both maybe take a bit walk together. There’s a hat in the window we might look at for Margaret.’
Robertson nodded in meek acquiescence, then turned and went down the road, across the Common and towards the Rechabites’ Hall.
But at the end of the Common a strange thing happened. All at once a change came over his face. He lifted his gaze from the ground where it habitually rested, and fixed it upon infinity, as if hypnotised. Instinctively his pace quickened, and, swinging round from the direction of the Rechabites’ Hall, he started off towards Church Street.
In Church Street, with the same queer hypnotic absorption, he entered the bank. Here he drew out the sum of thirty pounds.
When he came out of the bank he turned and walked straight off towards the station. Two people standing about, Dougal Todd, the sign painter, and old Lennox, the butcher, called out to him in greeting, but no recognition came upon his face.
He marched stiffly up the station steps on to the platform and without a trace of hesitation he entered a train which had just drawn up.
In an empty first-class compartment, surrounded by unusual luxury, he sat with impassive face. Presently he took off his hat, the dingy bowler hat which he had worn for some ten years, and laid it on the seat beside him.
He stared out of the window at the flashing panorama of green fields and woods and the opening estuary of the lovely Firth.
Half an hour later the train drew to a stop. It was Craigendoran Pier. He got out of the train and walked straight onto the pier as if he meant to walk right off the end of it. Fortunately, however, a steamer lay at the end of the pier. It was the Lord of the Glens, and with complete composure he walked aboard.
A moment later the ropes were cast off, the paddles flashed, and the boat put off. A band broke gaily into music. The breeze blew soft and fresh, the sun shone, and the prow of the steamer was set towards the Kyles of Bute.
Bare-headed, for he had left his hat in the train, the little man paced the deck with his hair blowing in the wind, and some time later he went downstairs and ate a large meal – soup, cold salmon and cucumber, roast beef, pudding, biscuits and cheese. Then he came up, faintly flushed, but still queerly automatic, and began to pace the deck again.
‘Tickets, please; tickets, please.’ The young purser appeared, and the little man put his hand to his head as though bewildered. He had no ticket.
‘Kirn, Dunoon, or Rothesay?’ asked the purser, pulling out a book of counterfoils.
‘Rothesay.’ Mechanically – like that!
The purser wrote out a slip. He looked up casually, then his expression changed—
‘Why, it’s Mr Robertson, isn’t it? I was in your class ten years ago—’
‘What,’ asked the bare-headed passenger, ‘in all the world are ye talkin’ about?’
The purser flushed in confusion.
‘Sorry,’ he said awkwardly. ‘My mistake.’
At Rothesay the little man stepped ashore briskly, mechanically, and opposite the pier his eyes took in a large boarding-house decorated with a gilded sign – Cowal Cliff. He went straight in.
‘I’d like a nice room,’ he said.
The manageress looked up cheerfully from behind the little window.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Have you booked?’
‘No, I’ve just come off the boat.’
‘Oh, I see. Your luggage will be along later?’
‘Yes.’
‘I can give you a nice front room. What name, sir?’ She offered him the pen.
He hesitated. Since he was not Robertson he must be somebody else. His face clouded, then cleared, as if remembering something.
‘Walter Scott,’ he said, almost to himself. And he wrote it down.
When he had been shown to his bedroom and had washed his face and hands, he went out and strolled along the front.
He went into a draper’s shop, where he bought himself a small portmanteau, nightshirt, various odds and ends, and finally a yachting cap.
Perching the yachting cap jauntily on his head, he ordered the other purchases to be sent up to the Cowal Cliff, and went into an adjoining tobacconist’s.
In the tobacconist’s, with a strange intentness in his eyes, he bought himself some cigars – large cigars, cigars each circled by a beautiful band.
With one of these smoking in the corner of his mouth, the yachting cap set rakishly on his head, and an expression at once blank and complacent, he strolled along the promenade, as though enjoying the sunshine and fresh air.
Although he seemed so curiously detached and hypnotised, it seemed that everything was an entertainment to him.
Towards the end of the promenade he passed a young lady with dar
k eyes and wind-blown hair tucked under a red tam-o’-shanter. She walked with her hands in the pockets of her short jacket, and there was something soft and roguish and solitary about her.
In the same absent-minded fashion, he swung round and began to stroll behind her. When she stopped to look at a sailing boat which lay close inshore in the bay, he stopped to look at it, too. In the same absent fashion he remarked—
‘A bonny boat, isn’t it?’
She agreed.
‘And it’s a bonny day,’ he said, his voice expressionless and innocent.
Again she agreed, smiling.
‘Where are you staying?’ he asked.
‘At the Cowal Cliff,’ she replied.
‘Fine!’ he said. ‘I’m there, too. Isn’t it time we were back for tea?’
She burst out laughing.
‘Don’t think I didn’t see you at the end of the promenade. You’re a wicked one, picking up decent girls. I saw there was a wicked look about you.’
‘Oh, no,’ he said, ‘not at all.’
‘Come on,’ she teased him, ‘I’m waiting for you to say we’ve met before.’
‘Maybe we have,’ he replied strangely. ‘I don’t remember.’
As they walked along towards the boarding-house, she told him about herself.
Her name was Nancy Begg, and she worked in a big store in Sauchiehall Street. She had drawn her holidays a little earlier than usual in the ballot, and she admitted that she had been very lonely since her arrival at the Cowal Cliff. She liked Rothesay better in August.
She seemed to him to be about twenty-seven, and was lively and self-possessed.
‘But you haven’t told me anything about yourself,’ she said, ‘What do you do?’ Envisaging the yachting cap, she remarked archly, ‘Something to do with the sea, I should think.’
‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘A purser on a ship.’
‘You can always tell,’ she agreed smiling again. ‘There’s something – I don’t know what. Something dashing, I think.’
At the high tea they sat next to each other, and he helped her to everything. After tea he said—
‘What are you doing this evening?’