A Tender Victory

by Taylor Caldwell

  Miss Coogan was going to help in the evenings, though Johnny had protested. The Ladies’ Aid had, with grim determination of which Johnny knew nothing, literally impressed three elderly retired women teachers into service.

  Dr. McManus was again thinking of Johnny as he sipped his after-dinner brandy in the living room of MacDonald Summerfield’s home. He was also unusually irascible. “That confounded head-shrinker,” Dr. Somer Granger, the psychiatrist, was present, and he was indiscreetly, and with amused and superior laughter, relating tales of his patients, who were all known to his host and hostess. Dr. Granger called a spade a spade, but his frank mention of delicate places of the human anatomy did not offend Mrs. Summerfield, who smiled. Everything in a man or a woman’s life, Dr. Granger always insisted, was directly connected with these delicate areas, and he proved it in his stories.

  “Well, there’s been a short circuit, then, in your own life,” Dr. McManus often remarked sourly. Dr. Granger was a bachelor. Esther Summerfield, at this, would look casually amused. Though her husband and daughter, and most of her friends, considered her a harmless and not very bright faddist, Dr. McManus knew better. She’s the only one in the house who isn’t a fool, he would remark to himself. There was only one thing that he could not understand about Esther, and that was her affection for her husband.

  Dr. McManus, tonight, tried to get his mind off Johnny. He said, as he had said many times before, “Somer, one of these days I’m going to remember my medical ethics and report you to the AMA for revealing your patients’ names, and that’ll be one idiot less in the medical profession.” Dr. Granger laughed heartily at this; he was a close friend of Mr. Summerfield. “Can’t doctors talk about patients with each other?” he had asked. “Besides, we’re all friends here, and not gossips.”

  “Well, you are, you damned old maid,” said Dr. McManus, and shifted in his chair. It was not a Chinese chair. The Chinese motif had vanished suddenly from this large room. Now it was all Hindustani, which the doctor considered even worse. Esther Summerfield was swathed in a sari of a light pink, bordered with gold, with a headpiece, “like an infernal swami,” the doctor commented to himself. She had talked of yoga that night, with considerable animation. She was taking lessons, by mail, from some organization in Los Angeles. Her tilted dark eyes danced on Dr. McManus. “Imagine, Al. Later on I’ll be able to sit in absolute and motionless silence for hours, hardly breathing, if even that.”

  “Why don’t you teach it to Somer?” asked the doctor. The psychiatrist was jeeringly announcing that he expected one of his more distressed patients to commit suicide at any time. Dr. McManus said, “Maybe he’ll stop breathing forever.”

  Dr. Granger, hearing his name, said impatiently, “What? What?”

  “I’m wondering when I’ll have the pleasure of signing your death certificate,” said Dr. McManus. “We were talking about yoga, Esther and I. From what I hear, I think you should take it up, yourself.”

  Dr. Granger knew all about yoga. He was an authority on it, he said. He was an authority on everything. Pompously, he gave a brief lecture which embraced the mysteries of Hinduism. Mrs. Summerfield listened idly. Dr. McManus suddenly remembered, as Dr. Granger’s voice droned on, that someone had told him Granger “had something” on Summerfield. He stared at Mr. Summerfield intently. He had always thought of Mr. Summerfield as a wealthy man, who, perhaps for reasons of ennui or something slightly more sinister, was trying to play Machiavelli in Barryfield. But all at once the doctor thought that he discerned a change in his old acquaintance’s face and manner, a dimly distraught, confused, and faintly agonized change. Nonsense, he said to himself. He’s just the same as ever. Then he stared harder at Mr. Summerfield, and told himself, with wonder, that this was no change at all, but something which had always been there. Now I’m fanciful, said the old doctor irritably in his mind. Just gossip.

  “Now,” said Dr. Granger, “there is the Gita.”

  “Oh, shut up!” said Dr. McManus. “You don’t really know a damned thing about the whole subject. I do. I spent two years in India, trying to find out why in hell the poor devils who bathe in the filthy Ganges not only don’t pollute the water with their disease, but actually get cured of it. Never did find out; medical mystery to this day.”

  “Psychosomatic,” said Dr. Granger, unoffended. “They aren’t really ill, they—”

  “Never heard of a psychosomatic germ yet,” said Dr. McManus. “By the way, not to change this fascinating subject, what happened to Sloan Meredith, who went to you when I told him he ought to have his gall bladder out?”

  Dr. Granger waved a large and meaty hand in derision. “He stopped treatments, against my advice, about six weeks go. I was just getting deep into his subconscious, and his wife was reporting that he was having fewer of his alleged attacks at night. It seems that he and his mother—”

  The doctor’s eyes sparkled like hoarfrost. “Never mind about Sloan’s mother. I’m asking you about Sloan.”

  “I told you, Al. He suddenly stopped coming. His wife said that he was beginning to feel worse. That was because I was probing too deep for him.”

  “With what? A scalpel?”

  Dr. Granger paused. “What do you mean?”

  Dr. McManus moved in his uncomfortable teakwood chair, which was inlaid with ivory. “Well, it turned out that one big gallstone he couldn’t pass perforated last night. He died on the operating table this morning. I couldn’t save him.” With satisfaction, he watched the younger doctor pale. “It was gallstones all the time, not his subconscious.”

  Dr. Granger’s authoritative voice faltered. “But—but—he was very disturbed—”

  “Sure he was! Ever have a gallstone attack, Somer? No? Well, I’ll remember to ask for a few for you in my prayers. Nothing like a gallstone attack to make even a psychiatrist crawl all over his bed, whimpering and screaming like a wounded puppy. Give you an idea of what a psychosomatic stone can do to your nerves, and your subconscious!

  “Somer,” said the old doctor as he pulled his massive body upright, and shook his finger at the psychiatrist. “You knew damned well that I’m a conservative surgeon; never advise an operation unless it’s a matter of saving a man’s life. I don’t usually operate even to cure moderate discomfort; a man can get along with that, with a few aspirins now and then. And what’s discomfort? I’m not one of those money-hungry fellows who rush a patient to the hospital with an appendix which is acting up a little for the first time. So, when I heard Sloan’d gone to you, I called up and told you the whole story, and I sent you his X rays. A thing I never did, without being asked, any time before in my life. You’re a medical man, as well as a damned head-shrinker. You can read X rays. Yet, just because Sloan was making a lot of money in his foundry, you took him on, though you could see with half an eye what was really the matter with him.”

  The others listened avidly. Dr. Somer Granger swallowed visibly a few times. He was a big man in his early forties, athletic and swift of movement, with a long, rectangular face, narrow blue eyes, a bald head, and an absurd pug nose. Always fluent in speech, he could not speak now.

  “You killed him, Somer. Oh, you can’t be hanged for it. I know. They used to hang medical men in the healthier times of the Middle Ages when they were guilty of malpractice. Not now, unfortunately. Look, I’m not saying that psychiatry doesn’t have its place. It does, emphatically, but it should always be under the close jurisdiction of the family physician; it should only supplement general medicine, not replace it. And I’m dead sure, from my experience, that a priest or a minister or a rabbi could work better in that direction than you fellows. You’ve become the high priests of esotericism; you’ve got a yoga jargon of your own, and it’s dangerous—for fools. You should be forced to wear the peaked hat and the yellow zodiacal robes of the wizards of the Dark Ages. Just so people could recognize you for what you are.”

  In spite of his preoccupation, Mr. Summerfield suddenly looked amused. Esther laughed.


  Dr. Granger had not recovered his color, but only his bumptious aplomb, which rarely failed him. He said, “Now, Al, that’s going too far. You surgeons are all for surgery. Yes, I looked over Sloan’s X rays, and your report, very carefully. But I’ve known dozens of cases where gall-bladder trouble was psychosomatic in origin; in fact, I’m sure that practically all cases are such. Aggressive, hostile personalities, most of them, suspicious and usually obese, for they try to alleviate their tensions by overindulgence in rich foods. In many cases psychiatric treatment has completely cured their trouble. How was I to know that Sloan’s wouldn’t too? He was getting along all right; reduction in weight, less insomnia, general well-being. It wasn’t until I started probing about his mother—well, I’m sorry. I’ll go to see Molly first thing in the morning.”

  “I wouldn’t,” said Dr. McManus. “She was against you from the start. And she’s got three big brothers, who kind of liked Sloan. No sir, I wouldn’t go, if I was you.” He regarded the psychiatrist somberly.

  He said abruptly, “Do you believe in God, Somer?”

  “What? What?” Then the psychiatrist smirked indulgently.

  “I see you don’t. You know what I’d do if I had the power? I wouldn’t let a psychiatrist practice his art, if you can call it that, unless he was convinced of the existence of a God. Too many of you have contempt for your patients; you wouldn’t have, if you believed in the existence of God. You’re dangerous.”

  Mr. Summerfield said smoothly, with no expression on his face, “Al has gotten religion since he installed that troublemaking minister of his in his church. He’s gotten soft in the head, our old reactionary Al.” He gave Dr. McManus a long, pale-blue glance.

  “Keep away from my minister, Mac,” said the doctor, with cold anger.

  Mr. Summerfield laughed. “I told you that Al’s gotten religion! If it weren’t for him, that rabble-rousing minister would have been thrown out of this town by now.”

  “When did he ever rabble-rouse?” asked Dr. McManus with rage. “You helped send that mob to the parsonage!”

  No one answered him.

  “You stay away from my boy!” shouted Dr. McManus, turning purple.

  “Curious case,” said Dr. Granger. “Here’s a young man, not married, and apparently not showing any interest in getting married. In some way he acquires five children, from different backgrounds. He brings them to this country, sponsors them, gets ready to adopt them. I never met him, but he interests me, as a psychiatrist. I’ve talked with a lot of people who’ve met him. Very strange. I talked with old Judge Bridges and the head of the Children’s Aid Society, adoption division. They were uneasy about him.”

  “That’s a lie,” said Dr. McManus.

  Dr. Granger shook his head soberly. “No it isn’t, Al. Somebody, though, put pressure on them. Maybe we don’t have to look far to find out who it is. From what I’ve heard, the man isn’t quite normal. Normal men don’t get stoned, don’t incite mobs against them, don’t stir up people.”

  “Christ did,” said Dr. McManus.

  Dr. Granger waved his large hand indulgently. “Well, we psychiatrists have a theory about that too. Normal men are adjusted, well-balanced, integrated. This man isn’t, or he wouldn’t have aroused such controversy in Barryfield. He would have settled down here comfortably, set about the business of raising those children under average and peaceful circumstances, and no one would have heard about him at all. The children, I understand, are completely abnormal.”

  Dr. McManus sat utterly still, his eyes stiff and unwinking.

  “You see, Al,” said the psychiatrist smugly, “I’ve investigated. It comes from my training in normal and abnormal behavior. There was one of the children who got his throat cut by another child. Normal children don’t arouse that kind of hostility. I talked with some of the nurses in the hospital where one of the boys had had an operation—you operated, Al? They said he was completely out of his mind. Talked about his dead mother coming to see him every night, and jabbered in French when under sedatives, and sometimes screamed about soldiers coming to kill him. Delusions. He definitely had a persecution complex; I’d say he was suffering from schizophrenia. He sometimes blabbered to the nurses about his mother having been kicked to death, or something equally absurd. Definitely suffering from delusions.”

  Dr. McManus stood up, his squat and powerful body shaking. “Who told you to investigate an obscure and poverty-stricken minister and his children, Somer?”

  Dr. Granger paused. His eyes flickered.

  “What made you, a rich-as-hell Philadelphia psychiatrist, take an interest in him?”

  “Now, Al. Everybody’s talking about him. So I took on the investigation, naturally.”

  “You’re a liar,” said Dr. McManus brutally.

  He drew a long and trembling breath. He turned to Mr. Summerfield. He said in his low and squealing voice, and he spoke with slow emphasis, “Mac, I warn you. Keep your hands off Johnny. You hear? Keep your hands off Johnny from this time henceforth. For, Mac,” and he took a step closer to the other man, “if you don’t, you’re going to suffer for it.”

  “Al, are you threatening me?” asked Mr. Summerfield, with genuine concern. “Come now. We’re old friends, though we don’t see eye to eye about some things.”

  “I’m not threatening you, Mac. I’m just telling you. One of these days you’ll know something about Johnny. I’m not ready to use it against you, just yet. But when you do know, it’s going to break your heart, Mac. It’s going to make you grovel, Mac.”

  Mr. Summerfield regarded him with narrowed eyes. “Look, Al, I don’t like your protégé. But I sympathize with him. You think I’ll sympathize with him more, when I know about him?”

  “No,” said Dr. McManus, and now his tiny eyes warmed with pity. “You’ll sympathize with yourself, I think. Or others will feel sorry for you.”

  He turned and stumped out of the room. They were accustomed to his abrupt departures, and only Esther Summerfield followed him and took his arm. “Let’s go down to the breakfast room, Al,” she said, and her usually idle voice was urgent. He went with her, and they sat down together in the only normal room in the house, in the doctor’s opinion, for it was all warm chintz and golden plain furniture. Esther, swathed in her diaphanous draperies, was incongruous there. She looked at her old friend gravely.

  “You don’t know what it means to me, dear, to be able to meet Lorry at your house when she runs into town for a weekend now and then. I think I never really knew Lorry before. No, Mac doesn’t suspect that she is ever here. He writes to her in care of Barry, in New York, but she replies only to me.” Esther turned her head aside sadly. “You know how I’ve tried to talk to Lorry about her father, but each editorial he publishes, sneering about Mr. Fletcher, or even some small quip, hardens her even more against him. A stony emotionalism, I suppose you’d call it. In a way,” and now Esther smiled fondly, thinking of her daughter, “I can see her point, considering how much Mr. Fletcher has done for her. Who’d ever have believed it of Lorry, who only a few months ago jeered at pity and mercy and concern for others as weak sentimentality?”

  The doctor chuckled. “Well, she wouldn’t be showing it now if she hadn’t had it in her to begin with. She was always one of those idealists; that’s how the trouble started between her and her father years ago. Y’know, I begin to think about her and my boy, the parson, and then I wonder if there isn’t what he’d call a pattern in human affairs after all. He’s stood this town on its ear, right out of his own innocence, and partly because he honestly believes most people are decent, and will go the decent way, if they’re shown. I don’t agree to that, but I’m watching!”

  Esther looked thoughtfully at her long dark hands. “Al, about Lorry and Mr. Fletcher. I know she comes here to get personal reports about him from you. Do you think—?”

  “Romance?” The doctor grinned. “It’s already there, but they’re both too stupid to realize it. Oh, you’re thinking of Mac. And Mac a
nd Lorry, and the way they’re wound up together. I don’t know, Esther.” He paused. “Is it my imagination, or something, or is Mac changing? He was always kind of remote and aloof, all his life, and never swooped down to reality even once that I can remember. Lorry’s too much like him—all seething emotion under smooth white—what did you call it?—stone. But she’s got common sense, too. Now, Mac—he’s farther away from reality now then he ever was, seems to me. Abstracted. Looking at you, sometimes, as if he was both blind and deaf, and confused. Jumps, if you call him by name. Am I imagining things?”

  Esther looked at the wall, and her face became taut with distress. “It isn’t your imagination. Do you remember the first time MacDonald met Somer Granger? He met him, you know, in Philadelphia, and three years later induced him to open an office in Barryfield for one day a week. I—I never did think the association healthy. There’s morbidity in such men as Somer, and he brought out morbidity in MacDonald, a thing I didn’t realize he had. It was then that the trouble started between Lorry and her father; I hold Somer responsible for that. It’s something that doesn’t quite come out in the open; I can’t put a finger on it, but it’s there.”

  The doctor frowned, then nodded. “You know, most doctors who’ve been practicing long enough to get an insight into human nature, and how it works through the body, mistrust psychiatrists. Doctors have known all about psychosomatic medicine since Hippocrates, and even before him, and have taken it into all their calculations. Then along come the head-shrinkers, thinking they have a bright new idea, and only the young medical graduates or doctors who don’t have confidence in themselves go for it. I often listen to the jargon. Worst of all, it’s getting into the vocabulary of fools, and doing all kinds of mischief. When it reaches into politics, then God help us all!

  “I never knew a psychiatrist who didn’t have something mentally or emotionally wrong with him. It could be one or two of a million things; healthy people have quirks too, but they take ’em in stride. Psychiatrists can’t handle them; they get patients, and they ‘project,’ as they call it, their own secret terrors and guilts and suffering on their patients. Or, even worse, they find themselves most congenial with patients who are enduring their own horrors. Then it’s just an exchange between them, like ping-pong, or each one burrowing into the other’s psyche for relief. Of course, occasionally one or both of them go mad.”