by Nevil Shute
‘Hell of a pain,’ gasped Warren. ‘In my guts. Be a good sort. Get me to a doctor.’
The driver paused, irresolute. ‘Don’t know about a doctor — I’m a stranger in these parts.’ And then he said, ‘Buck up, chum. I’ll see you right.’
Two cars, following each other close, had drawn up at the lorry blocking the road; one of them was full of men. In a minute there was a little crowd around. ‘Bloke taken sick,’ said the lorry driver. ‘Give us a hand with him, an’ put him up in the back. I’ll take him somewhere.’
The lorry was half full of sacks of cattle food, with a strange, sweet smell. There was a bustling about, letting down the tail board, and adjusting sacks; somebody bent over Warren and removed his collar, which was cutting deep into his neck. Then there were many hands about him and he was lifted shoulder-high in a wild blur of pain, passed into the hands of other men standing in the lorry, and deposited on the sacks. The lorry driver made him as comfortable as possible.
‘Won’t be long now,’ he said. ‘I’ll see you right. That all comfy now?’
‘That’s all right,’ said Warren feebly. ‘I’ll be all right here. Get me to a doctor.’
‘Won’t be two jiffys now, chum,’ said the driver. He got down from the lorry and put up the tail-board; then with a jerk the vehicle moved on.
Warren lay wedged between the sacks, dazed and in great pain. He had lost his collar and his shirt was open at the neck, for which he felt relief; presently an emptiness about his clothes made him feel his breast pocket, to discover that his wallet was gone. The fact impressed itself upon his consciousness but did not worry him; he was in too much pain for that.
Presently the lorry came to a standstill and he heard the driver speaking from the cab. ‘Got a bloke in the back what’s taken bad. Picked him up on the road, three, four miles back. Sick in the stomach, I reckon. Says he wants to be taken to a doctor. What’ll I do?’
‘Sick in the stomach? Let’s ‘ave a look at him.’
The tail board was let down, and a constable climbed in on to the sacks. He knelt beside Warren. ‘What’s all this?’ he asked. ‘Where’s the pain?’
‘In my guts,’ said Warren. ‘It’s serious. Is there a doctor here?’
‘No doctor here,’ said the constable. ‘Did it come on sudden-like? ‘Ave you ever had it before?’
‘I had spasm of it about three days ago,’ said Warren. ‘And then I had another yesterday. Just short ones, they were. Nothing like this.’ And then he said suddenly, ‘I’m going to be sick.’ Which he was.
They watched with interest. ‘Well,’ said the constable at last, ‘we can’t do nothing for him here. Where you heading for?’
‘Burnton,’ said the driver. ‘I got to dump this load an’ get back to Newcastle tonight.’
‘Going by Sharples?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Better drop him off at the hospital. You know where that is?’
‘Round the back of Palmer Street, ain’t it?’
‘Aye,’ said the constable, ‘that’s right. You drop him off there, and I’ll telephone to say he’s coming.’ He produced his notebook, and walked round to the back of the lorry. He took the number carefully, took a few particulars, and the lorry drove on.
Warren lay jolting on the sacks in a stupor of pain for many miles. Presently he knew that they were entering a town. They drove on for a time, seemingly on cobbled streets. Then the lorry drew up to a standstill, and he heard the driver get down.
And presently he heard the driver’s voice again. ‘You’ll want to get a stretcher to him, mate. Sick in the stomach, he is.’
A porter got into the lorry. ‘Come, lad,’ he said. ‘Let’s get ye oot o’ this.’ Warren found himself assisted from the lorry and handled competently into the hospital. They took him down an echoing corridor and put him in the casualty room, and laid him on an examination couch.
He wanted to see the lorry driver to thank him, but the man had disappeared. He had no time to lose.
A very young house surgeon came with a sister; together they examined him, and asked a few questions. His abdomen was rigid as a board. ‘Peritonitis,’ said the young man to the sister. ‘And yet — I don’t know. Not quite like that, to me.’
He straightened up. ‘All right, get him along to the ward and get him ready. I’ll ring up Dr Miller.’
The sister said, ‘I’d better get the theatre ready. I suppose he’ll want to do it at once.’
‘I should think so. You’d better give him a shot — quarter grain of the hydrochloride.’
He turned to Warren. ‘You’ve got to have an operation,’ he said. ‘You’ve never had one before, have you? Well, it’s nothing to worry about. But we’ll have to do it at once.’
‘All right,’ said Warren. He had known for the last hour that this was coming.
The sister came with a hypodermic, wiped his arm deftly, and gave him the injection. Then he was wheeled in a chair down a long corridor and into a ward, and to a bed surrounded by a screen. There he was undressed and washed, and put to bed in a clean shirt.
The morphia began to take firm hold of him; the pain was eased, and he became at rest. A nurse came with a notebook.
‘Name?’ she asked.
‘Henry Warren.’
‘Married?’
‘Yes. I don’t know. She left me — went off with another chap. A black man.’
‘Do ye know her address?’
Warren shook his head. ‘I don’t think she’s in England. She wouldn’t care, anyway.’
‘Next of kin? Have ye got a father, or a mither, any brothers or sisters?’
Warren smiled. ‘There’s nobody like that. If I peg out, let Mr Morgan know. Hundred and forty-three, Lisle Court, London, E.C.3.’
‘Is he a relation?’
‘No. Chap I know in an office.’
‘Nobody else?’
‘No,’ said Warren wearily.
The nurse went away, and he lay quietly for some minutes, in a doze. At the foot of the bed the sister and a maid were sorting out his discarded clothes, and turning out his pockets. He listened quietly to their low commentary.
‘That’s funny — where’s his cards? There ought to be some cards. Funny. What’s in the coat pockets? Oh, that’s bread — throw it away. He won’t want that. Here’s his money in the trousers. Eleven and fourpence — no more, is there? All right, write it down, and I’ll sign for it. There’s his cigarettes and his matches — he’ll want those presently. But I can’t make out about his cards.’
‘Shall I ask him?’
‘No, let him be now.’
‘What is he, do you think? A clerk?’
The sister turned over the clothes. ‘Aye, that’ll be it. A clerk, walking down south. They say there’s work in the south, but I don’t know, I’m sure. Many that’s on the road will be glad to be home again, if you ask me.’ She was examining the coat. ‘They’ve been good clothes — he’s come down from a good position in his time.’ She examined the tailor’s tab. ‘New York! He didn’t speak like he was American. I know what he is. He’ll have been over in America and been shipped over here when he fell out of work. To Glasgow, like as not, and then be walking south. They do that, I was reading.’
‘That’s why there wouldn’t be any cards,’ said the maid.
‘Aye, that’s it.’
They folded the clothes together and put them in a locker by his bed. Warren lay listening to them in drugged indifference. Their ready acceptance of him as an out-of-work clerk amused him faintly, but he had no intention of refuting their idea at the moment. That would need too much energy; for the next few days his best course was to take the line of least resistance. He did not wonder at the mistake. With three days of stubble on his chin, his soiled and dirty clothes, pockets full of bread, and no wallet he was a very different man from the Henry Warren of Lisle Court off Cornhill. It did not matter. In a few hours he might be dead, for all he knew.
The doctor came back with the sister, bringing with him an older man, grey-haired and thin, and competent. Warren gathered that this was Dr Miller, the surgeon. He made a careful examination, asked a few questions, prodded the rigid abdomen with searching fingers.
‘Acute obstruction,’ he said to the young man. ‘Look at it for yourself. I don’t think there’s any doubt about it.’
‘What’s that?’ asked Warren, interested. They disregarded his question altogether, and he subsided again into his rôle of patient.
The older man got up. ‘I’ll do it right away,’ he said to the sister. ‘You can get him in there soon as you like.’ He turned to Warren. ‘Soon have you right,’ he said confidently. ‘I don’t suppose you’ll be sorry to get rid of the pain, either.’
‘I could do without it,’ said Warren.
The surgeon and the doctor went away, and shortly after that two porters came with a stretcher, and took Warren to the theatre.
In Godalming, at the same time, Morgan, the confidential secretary, was sitting with old Mortimer, seventy-eight years old and growing feeble in his pleasant house.
‘So that’s all I know, sir,’ he was saying. ‘He’s been away for three days now. I thought you ought to know.’
The old man considered for a moment. ‘You say he told you he might be away for a few days?’
‘Yes, sir. But it’s quite unlike him not to have let me know when he would be going, or where I could get hold of him.’
‘None of the servants knew where he was going to — except the chauffeur?’
‘No, sir. And he died.’
‘H’m.’
There was a silence for a time. Then Morgan said:
‘He’s almost certainly somewhere in this country, probably in the north of England or Scotland. If you thought it wise, sir, I could broadcast for him on the B.B.C.’
‘Certainly not,’ said the old man sharply. There was another pause, and then he said:
‘Never do anything to destroy confidence. Always remember, confidence is your chief trading asset. Don’t squander it.’ He paused again.
‘I don’t see any reason for extreme measures,’ he said. ‘Leave him alone, and he’ll come home, like the sheep. And bring his tail behind him — you know.’ Morgan smiled politely. ‘You say there’s nothing very urgent. If there is, bring the papers down to me. Tell everyone he’s gone off on a holiday. Tell them the truth — that that damned woman of his has run away with a black man, and he’s too busy sorting out the mess to attend to business for a week or two. And keep in touch with me upon the telephone.’
‘Yes, sir.’
The old man stared into the distance. ‘He’ll come back all right,’ he said. ‘But I am afraid he may be very different. It makes a great change in a man’s life, a thing like this.’
CHAPTER FOUR
FOR THREE DAYS after his operation Warren took little notice of his surroundings. In those three days, without conscious process of thought, he decided upon a policy in regard to his identity. He was in a ward of working-class people, labourers and artisans, in some northern town, he was not quite sure which. He would have to stay there for some weeks, perhaps; he had no desire to be different from the rest, and an object of curiosity. They had assumed, a little curiously, he thought, that he was an out-of-work clerk, and the sister had provided of her own accord a credible story. He was content to accept that story and to maintain it; it was good enough for him. He had no desire to be a merchant banker in a ward of labourers.
On the morning of the third day he asked the sister, as she washed him, ‘What place is this?’ She looked at him blankly. ‘I mean, what’s the name of this town?’
‘Sharples,’ she said. ‘Didn’t you know?’
‘No. I was taken ill on the road a good way from here, I think.’
‘Aye, a lorry brought you in. Where did you come from?’
‘Glasgow,’ he said readily. ‘I wanted to get to Hull. I used to work in Hull. I thought maybe they could fix me up with a job.’
She made no comment upon that, and Warren lay digesting what he had heard. Presently he said:
‘They build ships here, don’t they?’
‘Used to, you mean. Barlows shut down five years ago, and the plate mills, and the joineries. There’s been no ship built here since then.’
Warren nodded slowly. He knew now where he was. The Barlow proposition had been before him a few years before, not once, but many times. It had been hawked round the City in its later stages like a vacuum cleaner.
He said, ‘Used to build a lot of ships here, didn’t they?’
‘Oh aye — one time. The Heather Line Boats, and the Myers’ boats — they all came from Barlows. And then there was a great many foreigners, and floating docks, and that. There was the Admiralty work, too. There were seven Barlow destroyers at the battle of Jutland — did you know that?’ She paused, and then she said, ‘It’s different here now to what it was in them days.’
She left him, and Warren lay considering what he had learned.
The ward he lay in was a light and airy room, lit with windows down each side. Each bed was neat and tidy, with a red blanket folded methodically at the foot, and a standard locker by the side. Two of the beds had screens around them. For a time Warren lay and studied his surroundings. The ward was neat and clean, and yet there was something wrong about it that he could not place.
It was half an hour before it struck him what was wrong. The ward was overcrowded. There were six windows down each side and one at the end; it was clear that the architect had designed for six beds to a side, one between each window. But now the ward held nineteen beds, nine down each side and one across the bottom of the ward where no bed should have been. And all the beds were full.
He studied the occupants of the beds for a time. They lay inert, a gaunt and listless crew. One or two were reading newspapers and tattered books; most of them were lying still, staring at the ceiling, as though they were already dead. For all his weakness and his discomfort, Warren felt himself to be the only virile man in the whole ward.
He turned his head, and met the eyes of the man in the next bed. A tall, gaunt man of fifty years or so with a grey face; he lay quite motionless.
Warren saw that he was watched. ‘Morning,’ he said.
There was silence for a moment, and then the man said:
‘What’s your name?’
‘Warren. What’s yours?’
‘Petersen. Jock Petersen, they call me. Ye’re no from these parts?’
‘I’m from America,’ said Warren. ‘I had a job in Philadelphia.’
The grey face showed a flicker of animation. ‘Is things good in America? Would a man as was a charge-hand riveter get work oot there?’
‘I don’t think so. It’s pretty bad.’
‘Not even holding up?’
‘I shouldn’t say so. There’s over ten million out of a job already over there.’
The animation died from the thin face. Listlessly the next question came.
‘What brought ye back to England?’
‘I was in a bank,’ said Warren. ‘I got laid off with fifteen others, last September. Then I bummed around and spent my money, looking for a job. And then they picked me up, and put me on a boat for Glasgow. That’s what they do, unless you’ve taken out your papers.’
‘Ye came by Glasgie?’ said Petersen. ‘Eh, I’d like fine to be in Glasgie again.’
There was a pause, and presently the riveter said:
‘What ails ye?’
‘A twisted gut,’ said Warren. ‘They cut out a bit and joined it up again. They say I’ll be as good as ever when it’s healed, but I wouldn’t trust to that.’
‘Aye, I wouldna say that’s no a fact. Ye’ve made a fine recovery.’
‘What’s the matter with you?’
‘I had the colic awfu’ bad. They took me in for obsairvation, as they say.’
‘Have you had it long?’
‘Twa thre
e months. It took me sair after eating or drinking. I couldna sleep nights for the colicky pain of it. I come to out-patients, and the wee doctor laddie he said to me to drink three pints o’ milk each day — the domned fool. Did ye ever hear o’ sich daft talk, with milk threepence a pint! And that wasn’t the end to it. There was baby’s food and all sorts I was to take — oot o’ thirty-one an’ six a week for the four of us, an’ nine an’ three gaeing for rent. I got nae better, so they took me in for obsairvation.’
‘You’ll be getting the milk now?’ said Warren.
‘Aye. An’ weary stuff it is.’
On the other side of Warren was a younger man, a dock labourer by the name of Thompson, making a slow recovery from appendicitis. He was largely inarticulate, and apparently had little interest beyond the football pools. He did, however, give one sound piece of advice.
‘See here, chum,’ he said hoarsely, ‘you want to watch that Miss MacMahon. She’ll try an’ make you pay for what they done to you, but don’t you do it. If you got any o’ the dibs, don’t let on, see? You got a right to be here, same as anyone.’
Warren gathered that Miss MacMahon must be the Almoner.
The bed beyond Thompson was the corner bed; there was a screen around it and an intermittent babble of incoherent talk. From the screen, the delirium, and the movements of the nurses Warren gathered that the case was serious; he asked the ward nurse when she came to him with a drink.
‘He’s a young man called Tinsley,’ she said. ‘I think he’s a carpenter when he’s in work. He ruptured himself lifting some weight or other, and came in for the operation. The wound healed nicely and we thought he was all right, but then it broke out septic. He’s very ill.’
Warren wrinkled his brows in perplexity. ‘What made it go like that?’
‘I don’t know, I’m sure. He had terribly neglected teeth. Doctor Miller thinks it might have been from that.’
She went away, and Warren lay puzzling what she had said until he fell asleep. It didn’t make sense to him. Bad teeth could not infect a healed wound, unless you turned and bit it. There must be something else wrong with the man; he could not have had an ordinary constitution. But then, were any of these listless people ordinary?