Time of Hope (30 page)

I was taken to his private sitting-room. It overlooked the garden, from which, in the April sunshine, patients were being wheeled. Devitt looked at me with a sharp, open, apprehensive stare. He greeted me with a question in his voice. I was sure that he expected some dramatic news of Sheila.

‘I’m here under false pretences,’ I had to say. ‘I’m presuming on your good nature – because we met once. I’m not well, and I wondered if you’d look me over.’

Devitt’s expression showed disappointment, relief, a little anger.

‘You ought to have arranged an appointment,’ he said irritably. But he was a kind man, and he could no more forget my name than I could his.

‘I’m supposed to be off duty,’ he said. ‘Oh well, You’d better sit down and tell me about yourself.’

We had met just the once. Now I saw him again, either my first impression had been gilded, or else he had aged and softened in between. He was very bald, his cheeks were flabby and his neck thickening. His eyes wore the kind of fixed, lost look that I had noticed in men who, designed for a happy, relaxed, comfortable life, had run into ill luck and given up the game. I should not have been surprised to hear that Devitt could not bear an hour alone, and went each night for comfort to his club.

There was also a certain grumbling quality which overlaid his kindness. He was much more a tired, querulous, professional man than I had imagined him. But he was, I felt, genuinely kind. In addition, he was businesslike and competent, and, as I discovered when I finished telling him my medical history, had an edge to his tongue.

‘Well,’ said Tom Devitt, ‘how many diseases do you think you’ve got?’

I smiled. I had not expected such a sharp question.

‘I expect you must have diagnosed TB for yourself. It’s a romantic disease of the young, isn’t it–’

He sounded my lungs, said: ‘Nothing there. They can X-ray you to make sure, but I should be surprised.’ Then he set to work. He listened to my heart, took a sample of blood, went through a whole clinical routine. I was sent into the hospital to be photographed. When I came back to his room Devitt gave me a cigarette. He seemed to be choosing his words before he began to speak.

‘Well, old chap,’ he said, ‘I don’t think there’s anything organically wrong with you. You’ve got a very slight mitral murmur–’ He explained what it was, said that he had one himself and that it meant he had to pay an extra percentage on his insurance premium. ‘You needn’t get alarmed about that. You’ve got a certain degree of anaemia. That’s all I can find. I shall be very annoyed if the X-rays tell us anything more. So the general picture isn’t too bad, you know.’

I felt great comfort.

‘But still,’ went on Tom Devitt, ‘it doesn’t seem to account for the fact that you’re obviously pretty shaky. You are extremely run down, of course. I’m not sure that I oughtn’t to tell you that you’re dangerously run down.’ He looked at me, simply and directly: ‘I suppose you’ve been having a great deal of worry?’

‘A great deal,’ I said.

‘You ought to get rid of it, you know. You need at least six months doing absolutely nothing, and feeding as well as you can – you’re definitely undernourished – and without a worry in your head.’

‘Instead of which,’ I said, ‘in a month’s time I take the most important examination of my career.’

‘I should advise you not to.’

At that point I had to take him into my confidence. I was not ready to discuss Sheila, even though he desired it and gave me an opening. ‘Some men can have their health break down – through something like a broken engagement,’ said Tom Devitt naïvely.

‘I can believe that,’ I said, and left it there. But I was quite open about my circumstances, how I was placed for money, what this examination meant. For every reason I had to take it this year. If my health let me down, I had lost.

‘Yes,’ said Devitt. ‘Yes. I see.’ He seemed taken aback, discomfited.

‘Well,’ he added, ‘it’s a pity, but I don’t think there’s a way out. I agree, you must try to keep going. Good luck to you, that’s all I can say. Perhaps we can help you just a bit. I should think the most important thing is to see that you manage to sleep.’

I smiled to myself; on our only other meeting, he had been concerned whether I got enough sleep. He gave me a couple of prescriptions, and then, before I went, a lecture.

He told me, in an uncomfortable, grumbling fashion, that I was taking risks with my health; I was probably not unhealthy, but I was liable to over-respond; I was sympathetotonic; I might live to be eighty if I took care of myself. ‘It’s no use telling you to take care of yourself,’ said Tom Devitt. ‘I know that. You’ll be lucky if you have a comfortable life physically, old chap.’

I thanked him. I was feeling both grateful and relieved, and I wanted him to have a drink with me. He hesitated. ‘No. Not now,’ he said. Then he clapped me on the shoulder. ‘I’m very glad you came. I hope you pull it off. It would be nice to have been some good to you.’

I rejoiced that thought, and, though I had another bout of giddiness next day, I felt much better. Perhaps because of Devitt’s reassurance, the bouts themselves seemed to become less frequent. I read and wrote with the most complete attention that I could screw out of myself. I was confident now that I should last the course.

On the Saturday I travelled out to the farm later than the rest, because I could not spare the afternoon. I had not said much to George about my health. To the little I told him, he was formally sympathetic; but in his heart he thought it all inexplicable and somewhat effeminate.

I was so much heartened that I needed to tell someone the truth, and as soon as I saw Marion among the group I took her aside and asked her to come for a walk. We struck across the fields – in defiance. I headed in the direction of the vicarage – and I remarked that I had kept my promise and gone to a doctor. Then I confessed about my symptoms, and what Devitt had said.

‘I’m very much relieved, I really am,’ cried Marion, ‘Now you must show some sense.’

‘I shall arrive at this examination,’ I said. ‘That’s the main thing.’

‘That’s one thing. But you mustn’t think you can get away with it for ever.’ She nagged me as no one else would have done: I was too wilful, I tried to ride over my illnesses, I was incorrigibly careless of myself.

‘Anyone else would have gone to a doctor months ago,’ she said. ‘That would have spared you a lot of worry – and some of your friends too, I may say. I’m very glad I made you go?’

I could hear those I’s, a little stressed, assertive in the middle of her yearning to heal and soothe and cherish. In all tenderness such as hers, there was the grasp of an ego beneath the balm. I had never romanticised Marion. People said she was good, full of loving-kindness, so free from sentimentality in her unselfish actions that one took from her what one could not from another. Much of that was true. Some of us had generous impulses, but she carried hers out. She never paraded her virtues, nor sacrificed herself unduly. If she enjoyed acting, then she spent her time at it, took and revelled in the applause. She was no hypocrite, and of all of us she did most practical good. And so Jack Cotery and the rest admired her more than any of our friends.

I was very fond of her, and flattered because she was fond of me. Yet I knew that in a sense she was vainer than Sheila, more grasping than myself. I think I liked her more because she needed applause for her tender actions. In my eyes, she was warm, tenacious, tough in her appetite for life, and deep down surprisingly self-centred. It was her lively, self-centred strength that I drew most refreshment from; that and her feeling for me. There was no war inside her, her body and soul were fused and would in the end find fulfilment and happiness. As a result, her company often brought me peace.

She brought me peace that evening (in the lanes I had once walked wet through) in a cool twilight when, behind the lacework of the trees, the sky shone a translucent apple-green. There I confided to her, far more than I had to anyone, of what had happened between me and Sheila. I was too secretive to reveal the depth of my ecstasy, torments, and hope; some of it I wrapped up in mockery and sarcasm; but I gave her a history which, so far as it went, was true. She received it with an interest that was affectionate, greedy, and matter-of-fact. Perversely, so it seemed to me, she did not regard Sheila’s behaviour as particularly out of the ordinary. She domesticated it with a curious, quasi-physical freemasonry, as though she or any other woman might have done the same. She did not consider Sheila either excessively beautiful or strange, just a young woman who was ‘not quite certain what she wanted’. Marion’s concern was directly for me, ‘Yes, it was a pity you ran across her,’ she said. ‘Mind you, I expect you puzzled her as much as she did you – that is, if I know anything about you.’

I was wondering.

‘Still, it’s better for you that it’s over. I’m glad.’

We had turned towards home. The green of the sky was darkening to purple.

‘So you sent her away?’ she said.

‘Yes, I sent her away.’

‘I don’t expect she liked that. But I believe it was right for you.’

In the half-dark I put my arm round her waist. She leaned back, warm and solid, against me. Then, with a recoil of energy, she sprang away.

‘No, my lad. Not yet. Not yet.’ She was laughing.

I protested.

‘Oh no,’ said Marion. ‘I’ve got something to say first. Are you free of Sheila?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’ve told you. I’ve parted from her.’

‘That’s not the same,’ said Marion. ‘My dear, I’m serious. You ought to know I’m not a capricious girl. And’, she said, firmly, confidently, reproachfully, ‘you must think of me for once. I’ve given you no reason to treat me badly.’

‘Less than anyone,’ I said.

‘So I want you to be honest. Answer my question again. Are you free of Sheila?’

The first stars were coming out. I saw Marion’s eyes, bright, not sad but vigilant.

I wanted to know her love. But she forced me not to lie. I thought of how I had gone, as though hypnotized, to Tom Devitt, because his life was linked to Sheila’s; I thought of my memories, and of waking at nights from dreams that taunted me. I said ‘Perhaps not quite. But I shall be soon.’

‘That’s honest, anyway,’ Marion said, with anger in her voice. Then she laughed again. ‘Don’t be too long. Then take me out. I’m not risking you on the rebound.’

Decorously, she slipped an arm through mine.

‘We’re going to be late for supper, my lad. Let’s move. We’ll talk of something sensible – like your exam.’

In the late spring, in April and early May, even the harsh red brick of the town seemed softened, The chestnuts flowered along the road to Eden’s house, the lilacs in the gardens outside Martineau’s. I was near the end of my reading, George’s calculations had not been fallible, and I had only two more authorities to master. In the mild spring days I used to take my books to the park, and work there.

But there were times when, sitting on a bench with my notebook, I was distracted. On the breeze, the odour of the blossoms reached me; I ached with longing; I was full of restlessness, of an unnamed hope. Those were the days when I went into the town in the afternoon; I looked into shop windows, stood in bookshops, went up and down the streets, searched among the faces in the crowd; I never visited our usual café, for she did not go there alone, but I had tea in turn in all those where I had known her meet her mother. I did not see her, neither there, nor at the station (I remembered her trains as I did my last page of notes). Was it just chance? Was she deliberately staying at home? Was she helping me to see her no more? I told myself that it was better. In the spring sunshine, I told myself that it was better.

On the day before I left for London and the examination, George, to whom formal occasions were sacred, had insisted that there must be a drinking party to wish me success. I had to go, it would have wounded George not to; but I, more superstitious and less formal, did not like celebrations before an event. So I was grateful when Marion gave me an excuse to cut the party short.

‘I’ll cook you a meal first,’ she said. ‘I’d like to be certain that you have one square meal before your first paper.’

I ate supper in her lodgings before I joined George at our public house. Marion was an excellent cook in the hearty English country style, the style of the small farmers and poor-to-middling yeomen stock from which she came. She gave me roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, an apple pie with cheese, a great Welsh rarebit. Eating as I did in snacks and pieces, being at my landlady’s mercy for breakfast, and having to count the pennies even for my snacks, I had not tasted such a meal for long enough.

‘Lewis,’ said Marion, ‘you’re hungry.’ She added: ‘I’m glad I thought of it. Cooking’s a bore, whatever anyone tells you, so I nearly didn’t. Shall I tell you why I decided to feed you?’

Comfortably, I nodded my head.

‘It’s just laying a bait for large returns to come. When you’re getting rich and successful, I shall come to London and expect the best dinners that money can buy.’

‘You shall have them.’ I was touched: this meal had been her method of encouraging me, practical, energetic, half-humorous.

‘You see, Lewis, I think you’re a pretty good bet.’ Soon after, she said: ‘You’ve not told me. Have you seen Sheila again?’

‘No.’

‘How much have you thought about her?’

I wished that she would not disturb the well-being in the room. Again I had to force myself to answer truly.

I said: ‘Now and then – I see ghosts.’

She frowned and laughed.

‘You are tiresome, aren’t you? No, I mustn’t be cross with you. I asked for it.’ Her eyes were flashing. ‘Go and polish off this exam. Then you must have a holiday. And then – ghosts don’t live for ever.’

She smiled luxuriously, as though the smile spread over her whole skin.

‘I’m afraid’, she said, ‘that I was meant to be moist and jealous and adoring.’

I smiled back. It was not an invitation at that moment. We sat and smoked in silence, in a thunderous comfort, until it was time for my parting drink with George.