Last Things (19 page)

While making conversation to Margaret, he was without fuss disconnecting a reading lamp, fixing a bulb of his own. The drawing-room was just as good as anywhere else, he said to her with impersonal cheerfulness. He had brought a case with him, packed with White Knight equipment invented by himself: but, searching into the back of my eyes, he had never used anything more subtle than an ordinary lens. As he did now, lamp shining on the eye, Mansel asking me to look behind my head, to the left, down, all the drill which I knew by heart.

He didn’t waste time. Within half a minute he was saying:

‘There’s no doubt, I’m afraid. Bad luck.’

Not quite in the same place as before, he remarked. Then, with some irritation, he said that there hadn’t been any indication or warning, the last time he examined me, only a month before. If we were cleverer at spotting these things in advance, he went into a short professional soliloquy. It would have been easy enough to use photolysis: why couldn’t we get a better warning system?

‘No use jobbing back,’ he said, as though reproaching me. ‘Well, we shall have to try and make a better go of it this time.’

I glanced at Margaret: that was according to plan.

‘Look, Christopher,’ I said, ‘is it really worthwhile?’

His antennae were quick.

‘I know it’s an awful bore, sir, I wish we could have saved you that–’

‘What do I get in return? It’s only vestigial sight at the best. After all that.’

Mansel gazed at each of us in turn, collected, strong-willed.

‘All I can give you is medical advice. But anyone in my place would have to tell you the same. I’m afraid you ought to have another operation.’

‘It can’t give him much sight, though, can it?’ Margaret wanted to be on my side.

‘This sounds callous, but you both know it as well as I do,’ said Mansel. ‘A little sight is better than no sight. There is a finite chance that the other eye might go. We’re taking every precaution, but it might. Myopic eyes are slightly more liable to this condition than normal eyes. Any medical advice is bound to tell you, you ought to insure against the worst. If the worst did come to the worst, and you’d only got left what you had yesterday in the bad eye – well, you could get around, you wouldn’t be cut off.’

‘I couldn’t read.’

‘I’m not pretending it would be pleasant. But you could see people, you could even look at TV. I assure you, sir, that if you’d seen patients who would give a lot even for that amount of sight–’

Margaret came and sat by me. ‘I’m afraid he’s right,’ she said quietly.

‘Would you like to discuss it together?’ Mansel asked with firm politeness.

‘No,’ I said. ‘Intellectually I suppose you are right. Let’s get it over with.’

I said it in bad grace and a bad temper, but Mansel didn’t mind about that. He had, as usual, got his way.

He and Margaret were talking about the timetable.

‘If it’s all right with you, sir,’ Mansel turned to me, ‘there’s everything to be said for going into hospital this morning.’

‘It’s all one to me.’

‘Well done,’ said Mansel, as though I were an industrious but not specially bright pupil. ‘Last time, you remember, you had an engagement you said you couldn’t break. That delayed us for three or four days. I thought it was rather overconscientious, you know.’

I wasn’t prepared to bring those episodes back to mind: any more than to recall a visit to my old father, purely superstitious, just to placate the fates before an operation. Which my father, with his remarkable gift for reducing any situation to bathos, somewhat spoiled by apparently believing that I was suffering from a rupture, the only physical calamity which he seemed to consider possible for a grown-up man.

I was too impatient to recall any of that. I was thinking of nothing but the days laid out in the post-operational dark. I had no time for my own superstitions or anyone else’s chit-chat: I was in a hurry to get back into the light.

Within an hour I was already lying on my back, with the blindfolds on. Margaret had driven with me to the hospital, while I gazed out at people walking busily along the dingy stretch of the City Road: not a glamorous sight unless anything visible was better than none. To me, those figures in the pallid November sunshine looked as though they were part of a mescalin dream.

In the hospital, I was given the private room I had occupied before. Someone – through a mysterious performance of the bush telegraph which I didn’t understand – had already sent flowers. As she said goodbye, Margaret remarked that last time (operations took place in the morning) I had been quite lucid by the early evening. She would come and talk to me just before or after dinner tomorrow.

After she had left, I assisted in the French sense in the hospital drill. In bed: eyes blacked out: I even assisted in the receipt of explanations which I had heard before. Some nurse, whom I could recognise only by voice, told me that both eyes had to be blinded in order to give the retina a chance to settle under gravity; if the good eye was working, the other couldn’t rest.

Helpless. Legs stretched like a knight’s on a tomb: not a crusader knight’s because I wasn’t supposed to cross them. Just as Sheila’s father’s used to stretch, when he was taking care of himself.

‘Mr Mansel is very liberal,’ said another nurse’s voice. With some surgeons, a few years before, I should have had sandbags on both sides of my head. So that it stayed dead still. For a fortnight.

Tests. Blood pressure – that I could recognise. Blood samples. Voices across me, as though I were a cadaver. Passive subject, lying there. How easy to lose one’s ego. Persons wondered why victims were passive in the concentration camps. Anyone who wondered that ought to be put into hospital, immobilised, blinded. Nothing more dramatic than that.

Once or twice I found my ego, or at least asserted it. The anaesthetist was in the room, and a couple of nurses. ‘I’ve been here before, you know,’ I said. ‘The other time, when I came round, I was as thirsty as hell.’

‘That’s a nuisance, isn’t it?’ said the anaesthetist.

‘I suppose you dehydrate one pretty thoroughly.’

‘As a matter of fact, we do.’ A genial chuckle.

‘Can anything be done about it? Tomorrow afternoon?’

‘I’m afraid you will be thirsty.’

‘Is it absolutely necessary to be intolerably thirsty for hours? They gave me drops of soda water. That’s about as useful as a couple of anchovies.’

‘I’ll see what can be done.’

‘That’s too vague,’ I said. ‘Look here, I don’t complain much–’

I wrung some sort of promise that I might have small quantities of lime juice instead of soda water. That gave me disproportionate satisfaction, as though it were a major victory.

In the evening, though when I didn’t know, for already I was losing count of time, Mansel called in. ‘All bright and cheerful, sir?’ came the light, clear, upper-class voice.

‘That would be going rather far, Christopher,’ I said. Mansel chortled as though I had touched the heights of repartee. He wanted to have one more look at my eye. So, for a couple of minutes, I could survey the lighted bedroom. As with the figures in the City Road, the chairs, the dressing table, the commode stood out, preternaturally clear-edged.

‘Thank you, sir,’ said Mansel, replacing the pads with fingers accurate as a billiards-player’s. ‘All correct. See you early tomorrow morning.’

How early, again I didn’t know, for they had given me sleeping pills, and I was only half-awake when people were talking in the bedroom. ‘No breakfast, Sir Lewis,’ said the nurse, in a firm and scolding tone. ‘Nothing to drink.’

Someone pricked my arm. That was the first instalment of the anaesthetics, and I wanted to ask what they used. I said something, not clearly, still wanting to be sentient with the rest of them. In time (it might have been any time) a voice was saying: ‘He’s nearly out.’ With the last residue of will, I wanted to say no. But, as through smoke whirling in a tunnel, I was carried, the darkness soughing round me, into oblivion.

Arrest of life, Last but one

IN the dark, a hand was pressing on mine. A voice. The dark was close, closer than consciousness. What was that hand?

A voice. ‘Darling.’

The sound came from far away, then suddenly, like a face in a dream, dived on me. How much did I understand?

‘All’s well.’ It might have been a long time after. Perhaps the words were being repeated. Until – consciousness lapping in like a tide, coming in, sucking back, leaving a patch still aware – I spoke as though recognising Margaret’s voice.

‘Why are you here?’

‘I just dropped in.’

‘Is it evening?’

‘No, no. It isn’t teatime yet.’

That was her voice. That was all I knew.

Was there a memory, something else to hold on to?

‘Didn’t you say you’d come in the evening?’

‘Never mind. I thought I’d like to see you earlier.’ Utterly soothed, like a jealous man getting total reassurance or a drunk hearing a grievance argued away. That was her hand, pressing down on mine. I began to say that I was thirsty. Other voices. Coolness of glass against my lips. A sip. No taste.

‘You were going to give me lime juice.’ I held on to another memory.

‘I’m sorry,’ that must be a nurse, ‘it isn’t here.’

‘Why isn’t it here?’

Unsoothed again, a tongue of consciousness lapping further in. Darkness. Suspicion.

I was aware – not gradually, it happened in an instant – of pain, or heavy discomfort, in my left side, as though they had put a plaster there.

‘What’s happening?’ I said to Margaret. I could hear my voice like someone else’s, thick, alarmed, angry.

Voices in the room. Too many voices in the room. My right ankle was hurting, with my other foot I could feel a bandage on it. Margaret was saying ‘Everything’s all right,’ but other voices were sounding all round, and I cried out: ‘This isn’t my room.’

‘The operation’s over.’ That was Mansel, cool and light. ‘It’s gone perfectly well.’

‘Where am I?’

Mansel again. ‘We’re just going to take you back.’

Once more I was soothed: it seemed reasonable, like the logic of a dream. I didn’t notice motion – ramps, lifts, corridors didn’t exist; I must have returned to somewhere near the conscious threshold. It might have been one of those drunken nights when one steps out of a party and finds oneself, without surprise, in one’s own bed miles away.

I had been in a big room: I was back in one where the voices were close to me, which soothed me because, with what senses I had left, it was familiar: I didn’t ask, I knew I had slept there the night before.

I was awake enough, tranquil enough, to recognise that I was parched with thirst. I asked for a drink, finding it necessary to explain to Margaret (was she still on my right?) that I was intolerably dry. The feel of liquid on a furred clumsy tongue. Then the taste came through. This was lime juice. Delectable. As though I were tasting for the first time. All in order: lime juice present according to plan: reassurance: back where I ought to be.

Someone was lifting my left arm, cloth tightening against the muscle.

‘What are you doing?’ I shouted, reassurance destroyed at a touch, suspicion flaring up.

‘Only a little test.’ A nurse’s voice.

‘What are you testing for?’

Whispers near me. Was one of them Margaret’s?

Mansel: ‘I want to know your blood pressure. Standard form.’

‘Why do you want to know?’

‘Routine.’

In the darkness, one suspicion soothed, faded out, left a nothingness, another suspicion filled it. Did they expect me to have a stroke? What were they doing? Ignorant suspicions, mind not coping, more like a qualm of the body, the helpless body.

‘Everything is all right,’ Margaret was saying quietly.

‘Everything is not all right.’

A patch of silence. They were leaving me alone. Neither Margaret nor Mansel was talking. For an instant, feeling safer, I asked for another drink.

Time was playing tricks, my attention had its lulls, it might have been minutes before a hand was pulling my jacket aside, something cold, glass, metal against the skin.

‘What are you doing now?’ I broke out again.

‘Another test, that’s all.’ Mansel’s voice didn’t alter.

‘I’ve got to know. I’m not going on like this.’

Fingers were fixing apparatus on my chest.

‘What’s gone wrong?’ Again, that didn’t sound like my own voice. ‘I’ve got to know what’s wrong.’

Clicks and whirrs from some machine. My hearing had become preternaturally acute and I could hear Mansel and Margaret whispering together.

‘Shall I tell him?’ Mansel was asking.

‘You’d better. He’s noticed everything–’

There was movement by the side of my bed, and Mansel, instead of Margaret, was speaking clearly into my ear.

‘There’s nothing to worry about now. But your heart stopped.’ The words were spaced out, distinct. They didn’t carry much meaning. I said dully ‘Oh.’

I gathered, whether Mansel told me then or not I was never sure, that it had happened in the middle of the operation.

I asked: ‘How long for?’

‘Between three and a half and three and three-quarter minutes.’ I thought later, not then, that when Mansel told one the truth, he told the truth.

‘We got it going again,’ Mansel’s voice was cheerful. ‘There’s a bit of a cut under your ribs. You’re fine now.’

He was at pains to assure me that the eye operation had been completed. It was time, he said, for him to let my wife talk to me.

Replacing Mansel’s voice was Margaret’s, steady and warm.

‘Now you know.’

I said, ‘Yes, I know.’ I added: ‘I bring you back no news from the other world.’

Margaret went on talking, making plans for a fortnight ahead (‘You’ll be out of here by then, you understand, don’t you?’), saying there would be plenty of time to argue about theology. She sounded calm, ready to laugh: she was concealing from me that she was in a state of shock.

Just as my remark might have concealed my state from her. In fact, it had been quite automatic. It could have seemed – perhaps it did to Margaret – as carefully debonair, as much prepared for, as her father’s greeting to me after his messed-up attempt at suicide. You see God’s own fool. I might have been imitating him. Yet I hadn’t enough control for that. Anything I said slipped out at random, as though Margaret had put sixpence in a juke box and we both had to listen with surprise to what came out.