Lanark: a life in 4 books (45 page)

“The bloody lock’s stuck.”

“I won’t need a case in hospital.”

“Of course you won’t. This is to take away your clothes.”

The frosted glass window was slightly open at the top and he watched the streets of Blackhill through the slit. The sun shone and children shouted. He said, “That was quick.”

“Yes,” said his father, putting the case down. “I can’t help feeling relieved. When Ruth and I are climbing in Zermatt we’ll know you’re being better cared for than you could be at home.”

“I don’t suppose I’ll be in long.”

“If I were you, Duncan, I wouldn’t be too anxious to get out. It might be wise to tell the doctor in charge that there’s nobody to look after you outside. Give them time to discover the fundamental root cause of the trouble.”

“It doesn’t have a fundamental root cause.”

“Don’t make up your mind about that. Modern hospitals have all kinds of resources, and Stobhill is the biggest in Britain. I was in it myself in 1918: a shrapnel wound in the abdomen.

Don’t worry, I’ll make sure you’ve plenty of books. I read a lot in Stobhill, authors I couldnae face now, Carlyle, Darwin, Marx…. Of course I was on my back for five months.” Mr. Thaw looked out of the window a while, then said, “There’s a railway cutting in the grounds which goes to a kind of underground station below the clock tower. The army sent us there in trains. Would you like me to bring you Lenin’s
Introduction
to Dialectical Materialism?
”

“No.”

“That’s shortsighted of you, Duncan. Half the world is governed by that philosophy.”

The ward was so long that the professor and his company took over an hour to inspect the beds on one side and come down the other to where Thaw lay, near the door. The professor was robust and bald. He stood with folded arms and tilted head as if studying a corner of the ceiling. His quiet speech reached patient, staff doctor, sister, staff nurse and medical students equally, though a bright glance at one of them sometimes underlined a remark or question.

“Here we have a pronounced bronchial infection based on a chronic weakness which may be hereditary, since the father’s sister died of it….
You
won’t die of it. Nobody dies of asthma unless they’ve a weak heart, and your ticker should keep you running another half century, with ordinary care. There may be a psychological factor—the illness first appeared at the age of six, when the family was split by war.”

“My mother was with us,” said Thaw defensively.

“But the father wasn’t. Note the eczema on scrotum and behind knee and elbow joints. Typical.”

“Has he had skin tests?” asked a student.

“Yes. He reacts violently to all pollens, all hair, fur, feather, meat, fish, milk and every kind of dust. So these can only be irritations. If they were causes he’d have spent his whole life in bed and he frequently gets by without asthma…. Don’t you?”

“Yes,” said Thaw.

“As to treatment: penicillin to reduce the infection, a course of aminophylline suppositories for long-term relief and isoprenaline for temporary relief. Physiotherapy to encourage breath control, that’s quite important if they’re young, and later a course of de-allergizing injections to cope with the irritation. Coal tar for the skin. It’s messy, it’s old-fashioned, but the best we can do till we get our hands on this new American cortisone cream. And a sedative to help him relax…. Are you a nervous type?”

“I don’t know,” said Thaw.

“Do you lose yourself in daydreams, then jump violently at ordinary noises?”

“Sometimes.”

The professor lifted a drawing of a winged woman from Thaw’s locker. “Artistic, too. Would you mind chatting to a psychiatrist?”

“No.”

“Good. I know you’re not bonkers, but a few talks about family, sex, money and so on can cut down feelings which might interfere with the more straightforward treatments. Your teeth need attention too. You don’t brush them often enough, do you?”

“No,” said Thaw.

The ward was murmurous with conversations which coalesced, once or twice a week, into political arguments in which lumps of language were hurled backward and forward across great distances. Sometimes in the morning a distant clanking drew near and a huge man toiled past, bowing low over a tiny complicated crutch. His face was shrunk to a bright animal eye, a lump of nose and a mouth twisted over toothless gums. He kept muttering, “God knows how I got this way.” “I’ve been a hard worker all my life.” “I’ve earned every penny I owned” and “I do
nut
like hospitals.”

The men in the beds on each side were more self-absorbed. On the left Mr. Clark frowned thoughtfully, moving his hands in slow descriptive gestures or lifting and letting fall the bedclothes in different folds. In the afternoon he made croaking sounds which the nurses interpreted as requests for a urine bottle, bedpan or cigarette; he was allowed to smoke if someone was there to see he didn’t burn himself. His face and neck were leathery and corded like a turtle’s, his nose high-bridged and imperious. Propped up by pillows he sometimes dozed, his head dithering in space a fraction away from them, then lurched awake with a faint cry of “Agnes!” Nobody visited him. Mr. McDade on Thaw’s left was a small man whose chest bulged like a fat stomach against his chin. He had wiry red hair and a severe face made clerkly by steel spectacles without lenses. These held up each nostril a rubber tube from an oxygen cylinder behind the bed. He removed them to sleep, and sometimes at night rose up in bed on all fours like a dog, making an orchestral noise as if forcing breath through hundreds of tiny flutes and whistles. The nurses would turn him over and restore the spectacles for a while. A small brisk wife and some very tall sons came to see him regularly and before visiting hour he was given an injection which let him talk knowledgeably about grandchildren and prizefighting in a low, clogged ably about grandchildren and prizefighting in a low, clogged voice. He and Thaw often exchanged a slight, negative heads-hake, and one day when his relatives were late he said, “Some business this, eh?”

“Aye.”

“A bad bugger, thon.”

“Who?”

“Clark.”

Thaw glanced the other way and saw Mr. Clark holding up the top edge of his sheet and studying it like a newspaper. Mr. McDade muttered, “Have you noticed? When the nurses have tucked him in he untucks himself and croaks for a bottle. Outside he’d get six months for it. Outside they call that indecent exposure.”

“He’s old.”

“Aye, he’s old. When old men reach that state there’s a place for them.”

Twice a week Thaw put on slippers and dressing gown and was pushed in a wheelchair to the psychiatric block, or walked there if he was well enough. The psychiatrist was a well-dressed man of about forty with no special characteristics. He said, “During our conversations you may experience several unexpected emotions toward me. Please don’t be ashamed to mention them, however bizarre they seem. I won’t be at all offended. They’ll be part of the treatment.”

Thaw talked about parents, childhood, work, sexual fantasies and Marjory. The words poured from him, and once or twice he burst into tears. The psychiatrist said, “In spite of your blinding resentment of women I suspect you are basically heterosexual,” and, later, “The truth, you know, isn’t black
or
white, it’s black
and
white. I keep a ceramic zebra on my mantelpiece to remind me of that,” but usually he said “Why?” or “Tell me more about that,” and Thaw felt no emotions toward him at all. He enjoyed the visits but returned to the ward feeling slightly anxious and flat, like an actor whose performance has been neither applauded nor booed. When able to walk he prolonged his return through the hospital grounds. The long low red-brick wards lay on the slopes of an airy hill. Seagulls were always circling overhead or perched on gables, perhaps because of stale bread flung out by the kitchens. There was a high red clock tower with a tinny chime, and all was gardened around with shrubberies, gravel paths and beds of bee-humming, dazzling, blue and scarlet flowers. It was a summer of extraordinary heat. Patients in dressing gowns walked carefully on the lawns or brooded on benches. Most of them were aging and solitary, and when white-clad nurses passed briskly in chattering couples and threes; Thaw was startled by the mercy of these bright young women caring for so many made lonely, feeble and repulsive by disease.

Each week his breathing improved for a few days, then worsened. Mr. Clark stopped smoking and calling for Agnes and lay perfectly still. The deep lines cut by experience were fading from his face; each day he was more like a young man though his eyes looked different ways and one side of his mouth opened in a grin while the other was firmly shut. Mr. McDade in the right-hand bed was aging. The hollows between the cords of his cheeks and neck grew deeper. He stared at passing doctors and nurses with unusually wide red-rimmed eyes. He spoke less to his wife and sons but often glanced toward Thaw, muttering, “Some … business … this …
eh?
”

He plainly wanted companionship in pain, but Thaw muttered “Aye” without looking up from scribbling. The notebook had become a neutral surface between the pain of the ward and the pain of breathing. He hated leaving it to feed or to sleep. At night, when a lamp shone on the nurses table far down the ward, enough gloaming filtered in from the summer sky to make a pale tablet of his page, and his hand continued shading enigmatic female heads, and grotesque male ones, and monsters that were part bird, part machinery, and huge cities mingling every style and century of architecture. After midnight he put the books aside and sat erect, clinging so tightly to consciousness that for many nights he thought himself sleepless. Then he noticed that though he heard the remote melancholy
ding
-
dong
of the clock tower sounding the quarters, they never seemed to sound the hour, and once he saw the two night nurses whispering near a corner bed, and then, without crossing the floor, one was reading a book at the central table and the other sat crocheting nearby. All night he was dipping in and out of sleep, but at such a shallow angle he never noticed. Sometimes he slept soundly and then waking was difficult, for it was hard at first to recognize the shapes and sounds of the ward and breathing was a vile science to be relearned by a lot of choking.

Late one night the nurse in charge led round a sister he had never seen before. They stopped at Mr. McDade’s bed. He was sleeping in the oxygen spectacles, his mouth continually gulping air and a sound like distant bagpipes coming from his chest. Below her stiff, white, sphinx-like cap the sister’s face looked keen and fiftyish. She said, “Poor McDade! God help him!” on a low note of such stern pity that warmth gushed in Thaw’s chest and he gazed at her lovingly. She moved to his bed-foot, smiled and said, “And how are you tonight, Duncan?”

He whispered, “Fine, thanks.”

“Would you like a cup of cocoa?”

“Very much, thanks.”

“You’ll see to it, nurse?”

They moved on and later the nurse brought sweet warm cocoa and two pink pills on a teaspoon.

He awoke in sunlight breathing easily amid the bright clangour of washbasins being passed round. For the first time since entering hospital he felt well enough to shave, but after fondling the shrub of hair on his chin he merely freshened his face and hands and lay basking in the kind light and air. Mr. Clark looked much better. His face was old and thoughtful again and he appeared to be conducting a tiny orchestra with his right forefinger. Mr. McDade’s bed was empty and stripped down to the wire mattress. Thaw imagined the small pigeon-chested body being carried away by the quiet, black-suited young man who replaced the oxygen cylinders but he was too happy to feel anything but relief. He wanted to talk to people and make them laugh. When the nurse brought breakfast he tasted and said, “Nurse! I refuse to eat this porridge without proper anesthetic!”

He said it again, louder. Nobody noticed, so he wrote it down to tell Drummond or McAlpin and went on eating.

CHAPTER 27.

Genesis

Slanting sunshine lit a cut-glass vase of cowslips and canterbury bells on Mr. Clark’s table. Thaw sat in an armchair admiring the butter-yellow cowslips with pale green drooping stems, the dark spear-leaved stalks with transparent blue-purple bells. He whispered, “Purple, purple,” and the word felt as purple to his lips as the colour to his eyes. A nurse making Mr. McDade’s old bed said, “You’ll have to be on your best behaviour today, Duncan. You’re getting a new neighbour. A minister.”

“I hope he isn’t talkative.”

“Oh, he’ll be talkative. Ministers are paid to be talkative.” She placed screens round the bed and someone with a suitcase went behind them. The screens were removed and a small grey-haired man in pyjamas sat against his pillow receiving elderly lady visitors. These talked in quick, low, consoling voices while the minister smiled and nodded absentmindedly. When they left he put on spectacles with lenses like half-moons and read a library book.

After dinner that day Thaw sat in bed sketching when a voice said, “Excuse me, but are you an artist?”

“No. An art student.”

“I’m sorry. I was misled by your beard. Would you mind showing me that drawing? I’m fond of flowers.”

Thaw handed over the notebook, saying, “It’s not very good. I’d need more time and materials to make it good.”

The minister held up the book before his face and after nodding once or twice began turning the earlier pages. Thaw felt worried but not annoyed. The minister had the quality of a mildly shining, useful, grey, neglected metal; his accent was the one Thaw liked best, the accent of shopkeepers, schoolteachers, and working men with an interest in politics and religion. He said, “Your flowers are beautiful, really beautiful, but—I hope you’re not offended—the earlier drawings confuse me a little. Of course I can see they’re very clever and modern.”

“They’re doodles, not drawings. I haven’t been fit enough to draw properly.”