Illyrian Spring

by Ann Bridge

  She gave him two aspirins, and a hot bottle to put on his stomach – it was all she could think of for the minute. Then she set about what she had longed to do from the first moment she entered the room – unpacked and removed his suitcases, tidied everything up, arranged the small table by his bed. She borrowed a clean basin out of Dr Halther’s room for him to wash his face and hands. Nicholas protested at all this – he could get up and do it himself, she needn’t bother really. Grace dealt with this attitude at once, firmly; it would have to be dealt with sooner or later, and it was better to do it now and get it over.

  ‘Listen, Nicholas – while you’re ill you’ve got to do exactly what I say, as if I was a trained nurse; I shall do what needs doing for you, just as a nurse would, and you mustn’t fuss about it. Do you see? I nursed scores of soldiers during the war; it’s nothing new to me. So be a good child and don’t worry about it.’

  ‘Am I ill?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t think very, but you’ve got a bit of a temperature, too much to go wandering about with.’

  ‘You’ll get tired out, and it’s all so beastly for you,’ he said, looking at her with a sort of weary concern.

  ‘No I shan’t – I’m going to bring up a good chair from the veranda to sit in.’

  She did so, but Nicholas was sick again before she got back. Then the tea basket came, brought by her ‘porter’ from the Tete Mare; she made him a cup of weak tea, but that too he brought up in a few minutes. Grace got more and more alarmed – after each bout of sickness and retching he was more exhausted, and she began to look most impatiently for Dr Halther’s return. She got brandy from Maria and gave him some, weak, in boiled water – this seemed to soothe him a little, and while he lay quiet she slipped down to the kitchen and showed Maria how to make barley water.

  ‘Where were you?’ he asked when she came back. It was like a sick child’s complaint. She told him.

  ‘I’m sure it was that filthy cheese,’ he said presently. ‘I told you we should be poisoned in that place.’

  Grace thought this only too likely, though she did not say so. As the hours passed, and the sickness continued unchecked, she became convinced that it must be a case of poisoning – she remembered, not so much the cheese as the filthy crock from which Nicholas had drunk milk in the izba on the plateau. Food poisoning – people died of it sometimes. But what did one do for it? If only she knew – if only Dr Halther would come back and bring a doctor! Her sense of helplessness and ignorance grew on her – perhaps everything she was doing was wrong, and there was some quite simple thing which, if only she knew what it was, would stop this appalling sickness. But Dr Halther didn’t come back – the chauffeur returned on the bus, bringing the things ordered from the chemist and a scribbled line from his master. There was a French doctor at the Imperial, but he had gone out for the day, it was believed to the Mestrović Mausoleum at Cavtat, and he, Halther, was going after him in the car. With that rather vague hope she had to be content.

  All through the afternoon Nicholas got worse. His temperature rose no higher, indeed presently it began to fall, but the sickness went on and on. Grace Kilmichael, clinging blindly, in what was rapidly becoming something like terror, to her theory of giving him something to be sick with, plied him with barley water, albumen water, weak brandy and water, weak Benger; but he kept nothing down for more than a few minutes, except occasionally the brandy. The pain became more severe, and with Maria’s help she put on hot fomentations; these relieved it, if only temporarily. His pulse was now rapid and weak; his face was greyish-white; the dark circles seemed to cover half of it, and out of them his eyes stared, enormous, following her wherever she went with that curious anxiety which is, though she did not know it, a feature of such illnesses. Although she was constantly occupied, heating things, mixing things, emptying things, washing things up, the hours dragged interminably; Nicholas’s eyes, clinging to her like a drowning man’s hands for help and relief in this strange world of pain and weakness, seemed like a weight which she dragged after her whenever she moved.

  Once, when she had put on a fomentation and came back and sat by the bed, he said – ‘I do feel ill, Lady K.’

  ‘You poor child, I am so sorry. I wish I could do something to make you feel better.’ She smoothed the sheet, mechanically, as if that would do some good. He put out his hand and took hold of hers. His hold was weak, but there was a sort of desperation in it nevertheless – as with his eyes, Grace had the sense of being clung to by a drowning man. This increased her panic, but she fought it down, and put her other hand over his in a firm clasp. That seemed to soothe him. And for the rest of the day, whenever he wasn’t being sick and she was not fetching or making something, he held her hand; each time when she came back to the bed after one of those endless trips to the bathroom, his hand was lying on the quilt, waiting, like a mute pensioner, for hers.

  Dr Halther got back about six, bringing with him a Doctor Roget. This gentleman had gone on an expedition, not to Cavtat, but to Cannosa, and had actually passed through Komolac twice that day, had they but known it. But Dr Halther had not known it, and had spent six or seven fruitless and exhausting hours, combing out every resort and restaurant down the coast for one isolated visitor among the spring crowds, returning about five to the Imperial, only to find his quarry quietly sitting there, having returned from his expedition sometime before.

  Dr Roget was a small round bearded man with a snappish manner. He stepped rapidly up to the bed and took one glance at Nicholas, who now lay with his eyes closed, his face so fallen away that it was all features, his hair clinging dankly to his forehead. Dr Roget found his pulse, slipped a hand under the bedclothes and felt his abdomen. He shot out questions – when had this begun? How often was he sick? Had he eaten any doubtful food? Grace told him of their meal in the izba on the plateau, and the dirty crock from which Nicholas had drunk.

  ‘Mais que voulez-vous, Madame?’ the Doctor snapped, and led her outside. It was an acute gastroenteritis, he said, from food poisoning. What had she given him since? Anxiously she mentioned all the things she had tried; Dr Roget summed each one up: the albumen water was perfectly right, the brandy and water not wrong, the barley water wrong, but not seriously, the Bengers Food a crime. ‘Mais c’est de la folie, cela!’ he snapped, tapping his pince-nez against his forefinger, and looking at her accusingly.

  ‘I am sorry – I did not know what to do,’ said Lady Kilmichael. She leant against the wall; the thought of her mistake and the sharp scolding suddenly made her realise that she was very tired. ‘But if you will tell me what to do now, I will do it,’ she said.

  One must endeavour to combat the prostration, Dr Roget said – that was now the danger. Had they any glucose? Of course they had not. Did the patient still vomit the brandy? If so, try champagne. ‘Et chauffez-le bien’; blankets and hot bottles. Grace went to fetch these, while Dr Halther opened some champagne – she muffled Nicholas up and gave him the wine in little sips, while the two men talked in low tones outside the room. Presently Dr Roget called her out and asked her a question about the administration of the glucose, for which the chauffeur had gone to telephone. ‘If he still vomits, it is the only means to maintain life.’ Grace had to admit that she knew nothing about it – ‘But give me exact directions and I will do it,’ she said again.

  He looked her up and down. ‘When have you last eaten, Madame?’ he asked suddenly.

  ‘I had some soup at twelve,’ said Grace. She had been too busy and too anxious to think of a proper meal, and had only had a cup of soup, brought up to the bedroom by Maria.

  ‘You must eat and drink,’ he said, less sharply, ‘or you will be fit for nothing. Anxiety fatigues.’ And he announced his intention of sitting with the patient while she had some food.

  Dr Halther took her downstairs. He made her drink some champagne while Maria was bringing soup and an omelette. Grace sat at first in a sort of stupor of weariness, but as the food took effect she began to pay more a
ttention to her surroundings; she was struck then by Dr Halther’s look of anxiety and distress.

  ‘Does Dr Roget think it dangerous?’ she asked.

  ‘He says it is grave. There is great prostration. It is now so long. If only this verfluchte Portier at the Imperial had not misinformed me about Roget!’ He sighed heavily. ‘Poor boy! I like him so much,’ he said, more simply than she had ever heard him speak; there was real affection in his tone, but the context made her heart sink.

  ‘There’s Roberto!’ she said, springing up, as the chauffeur passed the window. ‘Doctor Halther, he ought to fetch the glucose at once now. Shall I tell Dr Roget? I suppose he’s going back with the car?’

  But Dr Roget did not go back then. When the tall Englishwoman with the tired face came in again with paper and pencil to write down before he left precise directions about this task of which she had no experience, something – perhaps her evident fatigue, perhaps the controlled distress of her manner – moved him to remain. ‘I shall stay, and show you at least what to do,’ he said, and sent her down again to finish her meal.

  Gastroenteritis is not a picturesque illness; few illnesses are really picturesque. Dr Roget, with skilled competence, brought into play those ingenious but ignominious devices of modern science by which the organism can be nourished even when the reluctant stomach rejects whatever it is offered. At last he was driven off to Ragusa, promising to come back early the next morning, and leaving Lady Kilmichael considerably fortified by the precise knowledge of what to do and when to do it, and the certainty of his return. It was all very different from her ignorant and despairing experiments of the afternoon. The vomiting was now rather less frequent; sometimes Nicholas kept the champagne down for as much as half an hour, and his pulse was certainly no feebler; on the other hand his exhaustion seemed greater than ever, he hardly opened his eyes, and his hand lay damp and utterly relaxed on the sheet. All the same, when Dr Halther peeped in about eleven-thirty and suggested that she should go and lie down for an hour while he sat with Nicholas, she felt justified in doing so, and dropped at once into the leaden sleep of exhaustion.

  She woke with that unpleasant sense of having the soul dragged up by the roots out of the body which a sudden awakening from deep and insufficient sleep gives. Dr Halther was bending over her.

  ‘He wants you,’ he said.

  ‘Is he worse?’

  ‘I do not think so – but he asks for you, and it is in any case almost the hour.’

  ‘All right – I’ll come at once.’

  Nicholas was lying with his eyes open. ‘You’ve been away so long,’ he said, in the sort of whispering half-tone that was all his voice now. ‘I’m cold.’

  She filled fresh bottles, put on another blanket, gave him brandy. Then she put out the hand-lamp on the table, pulled a spare rug over her knees and sat quietly by the bed. It was just after one; ‘the turn of the night,’ her old nurse used to call it – and said that Nature turned in her sleep then, and souls escaped that were ‘on a loose chain.’ Grace shivered a little – certainly it was the time when human strength and vitality were at their lowest ebb. Outside the voice of one distant nightingale, in undimmed ecstasy, was like a light pulse in the heart of the night; she could see the irrational shape of the monkey tree, close outside the window, black and straggling against the grey starlight. Something made her look towards the bed – a gleam of white showed her that Nicholas’s eyes were open. She switched on the light again. ‘Do you want anything?’ she asked.

  She had to lean near to hear his answer. ‘No, it’s all right when you’re here.’

  ‘I shall stay here now,’ she said.

  ‘Are you very tired?’

  ‘No, hardly at all.’

  He shut his eyes, but his fingers just moved; she knew he was looking for her hand, and closed hers over his.

  ‘Try to go to sleep,’ she said.

  ‘When you’re out of the room, I do miss you so,’ he said in that fluttering half-whisper. ‘You are so —’ Was it ‘heavenly’ that he said? She couldn’t be sure. It didn’t matter – she really knew. In his extremity he had become the sick child, uttering what was in his heart. Under a mixed impulse of love and terror she bent down and kissed his forehead. ‘I am here – go to sleep, my darling boy,’ she whispered.

  But just then Nicholas was sick again.

  NINETEEN

  Dr Roget was rather more reassuring about Nicholas when the car brought him out next morning. There had only been two bouts of sickness in the last three hours, the pulse was stronger, the colour less ashen. He said that when four consecutive hours had passed without sickness they might try giving him glucose to drink, as well as brandy and champagne. But it was only when he came again in the evening that he said the words for which Grace had been waiting all day – ‘There is no longer any danger.’ He flipped his pince-nez – ‘It is short, this gastro-entérite, whichever way it goes,’ he said practically. ‘Tomorrow night, Madame, I hope you may get some repose. But for tonight let him sip the glucose constantly unless he sleeps. And only if he vomits, do as you have done before.’

  Grace went upstairs again slowly. So it was all right – he wasn’t going to die. She leaned against the wall for a moment before going into the bedroom. Soldiers after a battle must feel as she was feeling, she thought – almost light-headed with fatigue, but vaguely content with victory. Presently she would be able to realise how glad she was, but not now – she was too deadened. If only she could sleep for twenty-four hours! She had slept that afternoon, while Nicholas had a long nap – but she wanted to sleep for weeks and weeks.

  ‘What did he say?’ Nicholas asked when she went in. There was a little more tone in his voice.

  ‘That you were much better.’

  ‘I feel better. Can I leave off those beastly things now?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Thank goodness. I do hate them so.’

  ‘I know. Do you want your pillows flopped? They look rather flat.’

  ‘Yes, please.’

  She raised him on one arm, shook and turned his pillows and lowered him expertly again.

  While she was fetching the brandy he asked suddenly:

  ‘Are you dead?’

  ‘No, not a bit. I had a sleep this afternoon.’

  ‘I do hate your having to do all these appalling chores for me.’

  ‘It’s only for a little while. You’ll be better very soon.’

  He did look much better, she thought, as she gave him his brandy and settled him for the night. When it was all done and she sat down he took her hand again, and held it till he fell asleep.

  He slept quite a lot that night, and next day Dr Roget, rubbing his hands, decreed Benger made with water, and said that Lady Kilmichael was to lie down from ten till three, and might try to get some sleep during the night. The Signora and Roberto between them had transferred her more necessary effects from the Tete Mare, and Maria had made her up a bed in the room across the landing from Nicholas. Dr Roget also observed that as soon as the patient was fit to be moved, he had better be taken back to the Imperial at Ragusa. The Frenchman had gone sniffing round the villa kitchen, and flatly pronounced Maria’s methods to be more than dubious. ‘You must be full of antibodies!’ he said to Halther. But Dr Halther only laughed, and said that he had eaten Maria’s food for fourteen years without ill effects.

  That sleep of five hours made Lady Kilmichael feel a different woman. This was just as well, for she found Nicholas rather miserable and fretful when she went back – his bed was tumbled, his face and hands sticky with perspiration, his nerves on edge. She tidied him up, in spite of his protests – crossness was a sign of convalescence, she hoped.

  ‘I say, that’s my eye.’

  ‘Would you rather dry your face yourself?’

  But he was too weak to do that. When she was wiping his hands he felt one of hers. ‘It’s all rough,’ he said, examining it.

  ‘I know – it’s only the disinfectant in
the water.’

  He dropped her hand and turned away, hunching his shoulders under the bedclothes. She busied herself making Benger, but when she went to give it to him she saw that he had been crying. She made no remark, but held the feeding cup for him.

  ‘I can’t even help being cross to you,’ he said weakly, pushing it aside.

  ‘Never mind – take this, there’s a good boy, now while it’s warm.’

  He was a difficult patient. His sensitiveness tormented him at intervals about her fatigue, her roughened hands, and all the drudgery of a sickroom undertaken on his behalf; but his concern emerged chiefly in irritability or distress, which merely added to her burdens. He was at first too weak to read, or even to listen for any length of time – he just lay passively watching her as she moved about, but whenever she sat down he wanted her hand to hold. This whim of his, natural and simple as it was, imposed a curious and painful discipline on Grace Kilmichael. During the acute stage of his illness pity and terror had exercised their usual powers, purging her of all thoughts and feelings but the one passionate desire to conquer the illness, to win; her whole being was concentrated to a spear-point of effort in that struggle. But when the worst was over, in the leisure of a victorious peace other emotions found their way back into the realm of her recognition. She realised now how much she cared for Nicholas – the quality of her terror had shown her that. It was a curious emotion, so gentle, so much compounded with feelings exactly like those she had for Teddy or Nigel, that a few weeks ago she might have managed to deceive herself as to its nature. But she was losing her inclination for self-deception. And this particular circumstance forced her to a clearer understanding. Sitting beside Nicholas, unable to read, or work, or do anything to distract her thoughts, while he played idly with her hand, folding the fingers up and straightening them out again, or tracing the lines on her palm, with the passionless simplicity of a sick child, his touch brought back the recollection of her strange disturbance that evening in the garden, when he sat beside her on the seat; it compelled her, unwillingly, to be aware of feelings which she would rather have kept at bay, made her, so to speak, their prisoner. She was ashamed of having them at all at a time like this, and when he clearly did not; for him now, as for a child, past and future alike were blotted out, and he rested, weak and acquiescent, in the passing moment. It was a relief when any small task took her from the bedside, but she would not invent excuses or tasks – he should not go short of this simple comfort because of what she innocently regarded as her baseness. And gradually something rather important emerged for her out of this – the practical truth of Dr Halther’s words on the promontory, when he said that to accept one’s character and circumstances, without fear or distaste, was to find freedom. By submitting quietly to this thraldom to sensations of which she was ashamed, she learned that it was possible, even when most imprisoned, to reach a measure of freedom from the most insistent feelings of all, those which the body imposes on us whether we will or no.