The Hollow (3 page)

Passing into unconsciousness now, into a happy beatitude.

And then some sharp discomfort, some haunting sense of guilt pulling her back. Something she ought to have done. Something that she had shirked.

Nausicaa?

Slowly, unwillingly, Henrietta got out of bed. She switched on the lights, went across to the stand and unwrapped the cloths.

She took a deep breath.

Not Nausicaa—Doris Saunders!

A pang went through Henrietta. She was pleading with herself: “I can get it right—I can get it right….”

“Stupid,” she said to herself. “You know quite well what you've got to do.”

Because if she didn't do it now, at once—tomorrow she wouldn't have the courage. It was like destroying your flesh and blood. It hurt—yes, it hurt.

Perhaps, thought Henrietta, cats feel like this when one of their kittens has something wrong with it and they kill it.

She took a quick, sharp breath, then she seized the clay, twisting it off the armature, carrying it, a large heavy lump, to dump it in the clay bin.

She stood there breathing deeply, looking down at her clay-smeared hands, still feeling the wrench to her physical and mental self. She cleaned the clay off her hands slowly.

She went back to bed feeling a curious emptiness, yet a sense of peace.

Nausicaa, she thought sadly, would not come again. She had been born, had been contaminated and had died.

“Queer,” thought Henrietta, “how things can seep into you without your knowing it.”

She hadn't been listening—not really listening—and yet knowledge of Doris's cheap, spiteful little mind had seeped into her mind and had, unconsciously, influenced her hands.

And now the thing that had been Nausicaa—Doris—was only clay—just the raw material that would, soon, be fashioned into something else.

Henrietta thought dreamily: “Is that, then, what
death
is? Is what we call personality just the shaping of it—the impress of somebody's thought? Whose thought? God's?”

That was the idea, wasn't it, of Peer Gynt? Back into the Button Moulder's ladle.

Did John feel like that? He had been so tired the other night—so disheartened. Ridgeway's Disease…Not one of those books told you who Ridgeway was! Stupid, she thought, she would like to know…Ridgeway's Disease.

J
ohn Christow sat in his consulting room, seeing his last patient but one for that morning. His eyes, sympathetic and encouraging, watched her as she described—explained—went into details. Now and then he nodded his head, understandingly. He asked questions, gave directions. A gentle glow pervaded the sufferer. Dr. Christow was really wonderful! He was so interested—so truly concerned. Even talking to him made one feel stronger.

John Christow drew a sheet of paper towards him and began to write. Better give her a laxative, he supposed. That new American proprietary—nicely put up in cellophane and attractively coated in an unusual shade of salmon pink. Very expensive, too, and difficult to get—not every chemist stocked it. She'd probably have to go to that little place in Wardour Street. That would be all to the good—probably buck her up no end for a month or two, then he'd have to think of something else. There was nothing he could do for
her. Poor physique and nothing to be done about it! Nothing to get your teeth into. Not like old mother Crabtree….

A boring morning. Profitable financially—but nothing else. God, he was tired! Tired of sickly women and their ailments. Palliation, alleviation—nothing to it but that. Sometimes he wondered if it was worth it. But always then he remembered St. Christopher's, and the long row of beds in the Margaret Russell Ward, and Mrs. Crabtree grinning up at him with her toothless smile.

He and she understood each other! She was a fighter, not like that limp slug of a woman in the next bed. She was on his side, she wanted to live—though God knew why, considering the slum she lived in, with a husband who drank and a brood of unruly children, and she herself obliged to work day in day out, scrubbing endless floors of endless offices. Hard unremitting drudgery and few pleasures! But she wanted to live—she enjoyed life—just as he, John Christow, enjoyed life! It wasn't the circumstances of life they enjoyed, it was life itself—the zest of existence. Curious—a thing one couldn't explain. He thought to himself that he must talk to Henrietta about that.

He got up to accompany his patient to the door. His hand took hers in a warm clasp, friendly, encouraging. His voice was encouraging too, full of interest and sympathy. She went away revived, almost happy. Dr. Christow took such an interest!

As the door closed behind her, John Christow forgot her, he had really been hardly aware of her existence even when she had been there. He had just done his stuff. It was all automatic. Yet, though it had hardly ruffled the surface of his mind, he had given
out strength. His had been the automatic response of the healer and he felt the sag of depleted energy.

“God,” he thought again, “I'm tired.”

Only one more patient to see and then the clear space of the weekend. His mind dwelt on it gratefully. Golden leaves tinged with red and brown, the soft moist smell of autumn—the road down through the woods—the wood fires, Lucy,
most
unique and delightful of creatures—with her curious, elusive will-o'-the-wisp mind. He'd rather have Henry and Lucy than any host and hostess in England. And The Hollow was the most delightful house he knew. On Sunday he'd walk through the woods with Henrietta—up on to the crest of the hill and along the ridge. Walking with Henrietta he'd forget that there were any sick people in the world. Thank goodness, he thought, there's never anything the matter with Henrietta.

And then with a sudden, quick twist of humour:

“She'd never let on to me if there were!”

One more patient to see. He must press the bell on his desk. Yet, unaccountably, he delayed. Already he was late. Lunch would be ready upstairs in the dining room. Gerda and the children would be waiting. He must get on.

Yet he sat there motionless. He was so tired—so very tired.

It had been growing on him lately, this tiredness. It was at the root of the constantly increasing irritability which he was aware of but could not check. Poor Gerda, he thought, she has a lot to put up with. If only she was not so submissive—so ready to admit herself in the wrong when, half the time, it was
he
who was to blame! There were days when everything that Gerda said or did conspired to irritate him, and mainly, he thought ruefully, it was her virtues
that irritated him. It was her patience, her unselfishness, her subordination of her wishes to his, that aroused his ill-humour. And she never resented his quick bursts of temper, never stuck to her own opinion in preference to his, never attempted to strike out a line of her own.

(Well, he thought, that's why you married her, isn't it? What are you complaining about? After that summer at San Miguel…)

Curious, when you came to think of it, that the very qualities that irritated him in Gerda were the qualities he wanted so badly to find in Henrietta. What irritated him in Henrietta (no, that was the wrong word—it was anger, not irritation, that she inspired)—what angered him there was Henrietta's unswerving rectitude where he was concerned. It was so at variance to her attitude to the world in general. He had said to her once:

“I think you are the greatest liar I know.”

“Perhaps.”

“You are always willing to say anything to people if only it pleases them.”

“That always seems to me more important.”

“More important than speaking the truth?”

“Much more.”

“Then why in God's name can't you lie a little more to
me?
”

“Do you want me to?”

“Yes.”

“I'm sorry, John, but I can't.”

“You must know so often what I want you to say.”

Come now, he mustn't start thinking of Henrietta. He'd be seeing her this very afternoon. The thing to do now was to get on with things! Ring the bell and see this last damned woman. An
other sickly creature! One-tenth genuine ailment and nine-tenths hypochondria! Well, why shouldn't she enjoy ill health if she cared to pay for it? It balanced the Mrs. Crabtrees of this world.

But still he sat there motionless.

He was tired—he was so very tired. It seemed to him that he had been tired for a very long time. There was something he wanted—wanted badly.

And there shot into his mind the thought:
“I want to go home.”

It astonished him. Where had that thought come from? And what did it mean? Home? He had never had a home. His parents had been Anglo-Indians, he had been brought up, bandied about from aunt to uncle, one set of holidays with each. The first permanent home he had had, he supposed, was this house in Harley Street.

Did he think of this house as home? He shook his head. He knew that he didn't.

But his medical curiosity was aroused. What had he meant by that phrase that had flashed out suddenly in his mind?

I want to go home.

There must be something—some image.

He half-closed his eyes—there must be some
background.

And very clearly, before his mind's eye, he saw the deep blue of the Mediterranean Sea, the palms, the cactus and the prickly pear; he smelt the hot summer dust, and remembered the cool feeling of the water after lying on the beach in the sun.
San Miguel!

He was startled—a little disturbed. He hadn't thought of San Miguel for years. He certainly didn't want to go back there. All that belonged to a past chapter in his life.

That was twelve—fourteen—fifteen years ago. And he'd done
the right thing! His judgment had been absolutely right! He'd been madly in love with Veronica but it wouldn't have done. Veronica would have swallowed him body and soul. She was the complete egoist and she had made no bones about admitting it! Veronica had grabbed most things that she wanted, but she hadn't been able to grab him! He'd escaped. He had, he supposed, treated her badly from the conventional point of view. In plain words, he had jilted her! But the truth was that he intended to live his own life, and that was a thing that Veronica would not have allowed him to do. She intended to live
her
life and carry John along as an extra.

She had been astonished when he had refused to come with her to Hollywood.

She had said disdainfully:

“If you really want to be a doctor you can take a degree over there, I suppose, but it's quite unnecessary. You've got enough to live on, and
I
shall be making heaps of money.”

And he had replied vehemently:

“But I'm
keen
on my profession. I'm going to work with
Radley.
”

His voice—a young enthusiastic voice—was quite awed.

Veronica sniffed.

“That funny snuffy old man?”

“That funny snuffy old man,” John had said angrily, “has done some of the most valuable research work on Pratt's Disease—”

She had interrupted: Who cared for Pratt's Disease? California, she said, was an enchanting climate. And it was fun to see the world. She added: “I shall hate it without you. I want you, John—I
need
you.”

And then he had put forward the, to Veronica, amazing sug
gestion that she should turn down the Hollywood offer and marry him and settle down in London.

She was amused and quite firm. She was going to Hollywood, and she loved John, and John must marry her and come too. She had had no doubts of her beauty and of her power.

He had seen that there was only one thing to be done and he had done it. He had written to her breaking off the engagement.

He had suffered a good deal, but he had had no doubts as to the wisdom of the course he had taken. He'd come back to London and started work with Radley, and a year later he had married Gerda, who was as unlike Veronica in every way as it was possible to be….

The door opened and his secretary, Beryl Collins, came in.

“You've still got Mrs. Forrester to see.”

He said shortly: “I know.”

“I thought you might have forgotten.”

She crossed the room and went out at the farther door. Christow's eyes followed her calm withdrawal. A plain girl, Beryl, but damned efficient. He'd had her six years. She never made a mistake, she was never flurried or worried or hurried. She had black hair and a muddy complexion and a determined chin. Through strong glasses, her clear grey eyes surveyed him and the rest of the universe with the same dispassionate attention.

He had wanted a plain secretary with no nonsense about her, and he had got a plain secretary with no nonsense about her, but sometimes, illogically, John Christow felt aggrieved! By all the rules of stage and fiction, Beryl should have been hopelessly devoted to her employer. But he had always known that he cut no ice with Beryl. There was no devotion, no self-abnegation—Beryl
regarded him as a definitely fallible human being. She remained unimpressed by his personality, uninfluenced by his charm. He doubted sometimes whether she even
liked
him.

He had heard her once speaking to a friend on the telephone.

“No,” she had been saying, “I don't really think he is
much
more selfish than he was. Perhaps rather more thoughtless and inconsiderate.”

He had known that she was speaking of him, and for quite twenty-four hours he had been annoyed about it.

Although Gerda's indiscriminate enthusiasm irritated him, Beryl's cool appraisal irritated him too. In fact, he thought, nearly everything irritates me….

Something wrong there. Overwork? Perhaps. No, that was the excuse. This growing impatience, this irritable tiredness, it had some deeper significance. He thought: “This won't do. I can't go on this way. What's the matter with me? If I could get
away
….”

There it was again—the blind idea rushing up to meet the formulated idea of escape.

I want to go home….

Damn it all, 404 Harley Street
was
his home!

And Mrs. Forrester was sitting in the waiting room. A tiresome woman, a woman with too much money and too much spare time to think about her ailments.

Someone had once said to him: “You must get very tired of these rich patients always fancying themselves ill. It must be so satisfactory to get to the poor, who only come when there is something
really
the matter with them!” He had grinned. Funny the things people believed about the Poor with a capital P. They should have seen old Mrs. Pearstock, on five different clinics, up every
week, taking away bottles of medicine, liniments for her back, linctus for her cough, aperients, digestive mixtures. “Fourteen years I've 'ad the brown medicine, Doctor, and it's the only thing does me any good. That young doctor last week writes me down a
white
medicine. No good at all! It stands to reason, doesn't it, Doctor? I mean, I've 'ad me brown medicine for fourteen years, and if I don't 'ave me liquid paraffin and them brown pills….”

He could hear the whining voice now—excellent physique, sound as a bell—even all the physic she took couldn't really do her any harm!

They were the same, sisters under the skin, Mrs. Pearstock from Tottenham and Mrs. Forrester of Park Lane Court. You listened and you wrote scratches with your pen on a piece of stiff expensive notepaper, or on a hospital card as the case might be….

God, he was tired of the whole business….

Blue sea, the faint sweet smell of mimosa, hot dust….

Fifteen years ago. All that was over and done with—yes, done with, thank heaven. He'd had the courage to break off the whole business.

Courage? said a little imp somewhere. Is
that
what you call it?

Well, he'd done the sensible thing, hadn't he? It had been a wrench. Damn it all, it had hurt like hell! But he'd gone through with it, cut loose, come home, and married Gerda.

He'd got a plain secretary and he'd married a plain wife. That was what he wanted, wasn't it? He'd had enough of beauty, hadn't he? He'd seen what someone like Veronica could do with her beauty—seen the effect it had on every male within range. After Veronica, he'd wanted safety. Safety and peace and devotion and the quiet, enduring things of life. He'd wanted, in fact, Gerda! He'd wanted someone who'd take her ideas of life from him, who
would accept his decisions and who wouldn't have, for one moment, any ideas of her own….