The Hollow

But on the other hand the last patient had gone, John would be up in a moment, if she sent it back there would be delay—John was so impatient. ‘But surely you knew I was just coming…’ There would be that tone of suppressed exasperation in his voice that she knew and dreaded. Besides, it would get over-cooked, dried up—John hated over-cooked meat.

But on the other hand he disliked cold food very much indeed.

At any rate the dish was nice and hot.

Her mind oscillated to and fro, and her sense of misery and anxiety deepened.

The whole world had shrunk to a leg of mutton getting cold on a dish.

On the other side of the table her son Terence, aged twelve, said:

‘Boracic salts burn with a green flame, sodium salts are yellow.’

Gerda looked distractedly across the table at his square, freckled face. She had no idea what he was talking about.

‘Did you know that, Mother?’

‘Know what, dear?’

‘About salts.’

Gerda’s eye flew distractedly to the salt-cellar. Yes, salt and pepper were on the table. That was all right. Last week Lewis had forgotten them and that had annoyed John. There was always something…

‘It’s one of the chemical tests,’ said Terence in a dreamy voice. ‘Jolly interesting. I think.’

Zena, aged nine, with a pretty, vacuous face, whimpered:

‘I want my dinner. Can’t we start, Mother?’

‘In a minute, dear, we must wait for Father.’

‘We could start,’ said Terence. ‘Father wouldn’t mind. You know how fast he eats.’

Gerda shook her head.

Carve the mutton? But she never could remember which was the right side to plunge the knife in. Of course, perhaps Lewis had put it the right way on the dish—but sometimes she didn’t—and John was always annoyed if it was done the wrong way. And, Gerda reflected desperately, it always was the wrong way when she did it. Oh, dear, how cold the gravy was getting—a skin was forming on the top of it—she must send it back—but then if John were just coming—and surely he would be coming now.

Her mind went round and round unhappily…like a trapped animal.

*

Sitting back in his consulting-room chair, tapping with one hand on the table in front of him, conscious that upstairs lunch must be ready, John Christow was nevertheless unable to force himself to get up.

San Miguel…blue sea…smell of mimosa…a scarlet tritoma upright against green leaves…the hot sun…the dust…that desperation of love and suffering…

He thought: ‘Oh, God, not that. Never that again! That’s over…’

He wished suddenly that he had never known Veronica, never married Gerda, never met Henrietta…

Mrs Crabtree, he thought, was worth the lot of them. That had been a bad afternoon last week. He’d been so pleased with the reactions. She could stand .005 by now. And then had come that alarming rise in toxicity and the DL reaction had been negative instead of positive.

The old bean had lain there, blue, gasping for breath—peering up at him with malicious, indomitable eyes.

‘Making a bit of a guinea pig out of me, ain’t you, dearie? Experimenting—that kinder thing.’

‘We want to get you well,’ he had said, smiling down at her.

‘Up to your tricks, yer mean!’ She had grinned suddenly. ‘I don’t mind, bless yer. You carry on, Doctor! Someone’s got to be first, that’s it, ain’t it? ’Ad me ’air permed, I did, when I was a kid. It wasn’t ’alf a difficult business then. Couldn’t get a comb through it. But there—I enjoyed the fun. You can ’ave yer fun with me. I can stand it.’

‘Feel pretty bad, don’t you?’ His hand was on her pulse. Vitality passed from him to the panting old woman on the bed.

‘Orful, I feel. You’re about right! ’Asn’t gone according to plan—that’s it, isn’t it? Never you mind. Don’t you lose ’eart. I can stand a lot, I can!’

John Christow said appreciatively:

‘You’re fine. I wish all my patients were like you.’

‘I wanter get well—that’s why! I wanter get well. Mum, she lived to be eighty-eight—and old Grandma was ninety when she popped off. We’re long-livers in our family, we are.’

He had come away miserable, racked with doubt and uncertainty. He’d been so sure he was on the right track. Where had he gone wrong? How diminish the toxicity and keep up the hormone content and at the same time neutralize the pantratin?…

He’d been too cocksure—he’d taken it for granted that he’d circumvented all the snags.

And it was then, on the steps of St Christopher’s, that a sudden desperate weariness had overcome him—a hatred of all this long, slow, wearisome clinical work, and he’d thought of Henrietta, thought of her suddenly not as herself, but of her beauty and her freshness, her health and her radiant vitality—and the faint smell of primroses that clung about her hair.

And he had gone to Henrietta straight away, sending a curt telephone message home about being called away. He had strode into the studio and taken Henrietta in his arms, holding her to him with a fierceness that was new in their relationship.

There had been a quick, startled wonder in her eyes. She had freed herself from his arms and had made him coffee. And as she moved about the studio she had thrown out desultory questions. Had he come, she asked, straight from the hospital?

He didn’t want to talk about the hospital. He wanted to make love to Henrietta and forget that the hospital and Mrs Crabtree and Ridgeway’s Disease and all the rest of the caboodle existed.

But, at first unwillingly, then more fluently, he answered her questions. And presently he was striding up and down, pouring out a spate of technical explanations and surmises. Once or twice he paused, trying to simplify—to explain:

‘You see, you have to get a reaction—’

Henrietta said quickly:

‘Yes, yes, the DL reaction has to be positive. I understand that. Go on.’

He said sharply, ‘How do you know about the DL reaction?’

‘I got a book—’

‘What book? Whose?’

She motioned towards the small book table. He snorted.

‘Scobell? Scobell’s no good. He’s fundamentally unsound. Look here, if you want to read—don’t—’