The Good Doctor Read online

  “That, my friends,” he says, “is the sum of the pictures I have to show you tonight. Blame the railway company for mislaying the rest.” A ripple of unforced laughter stirs the audience. The doctor is amazed at how remarkably easy it is for a famous man to elicit the required response. The worry that nagged him before, the sense of a malign, watching presence, has died away.

  As Florence leaves the projector and takes her seat by his side, he’s as confident as he can be the rest of the evening will go smoothly.

  “I have touched upon the dreadful hardships of those who trap inland upon the Labrador during the winter, and pursue the fishery in summer.” A lone electric light buzzes over the lectern, sending a ghostly blue pallor over the faces in the front row. “I’ve talked of the diseases of malnourishment, the children who are stillborn who might have been saved. But one question remains and it’s a central one, a question that corresponds to one debt I intent to pay, and that I never tire of paying.”

  The silence is impressive. He senses they are turning upon his hook, open-mouthed and helpless. “When did it all start for me, a lowly, humble intern learning his skills in London’s East End?” A barely audible murmur sweeps through the audience. No one has asked this question, but this is the crux of the story.

  “It was nearly thirty years ago, late, very late at night. It was early fall and I was trudging through the normally blackened East End streets. Tired and worn down by the sights and smells of poverty, haunted by the knowledge I had just delivered a new babe to a family with no means of support in the smallest and dingiest corner of a city slum. In an open space between the slums, I noticed a tent rising improbably beneath the autumn moon, its canvas yellow with burning lamps, Arabesque with spires and dune-like dips.”

  Someone suppresses a cough, and the doctor again hears the laboured breathing, the early signs of emphysema. Now the sound is not so much spectral forewarning as the most touching kind of faith. The poor man, who should be at home, has come to be inspired. He thinks of the boy with consumption, his hopeful eyes, and the worry etched on the thankful face of his father. My mission, he reminds himself. Most of his supplies, most of his mortgage, are paid for these days by the lectures. Some weeks more than two-thirds of his patients are non-paying.

  “Despite my tiredness, the idle curiosity of youth drew me toward the entrance. Once inside I instantly breathed the pure, fresh air of faith.” He pauses, remembering the moment, feeling again the communal breaths, the startling cries of “Praise the Lord” from Moody’s congregation, the honest, naked desperation, the need of these people for their lives to mean something. “Although hundreds of eyes fixed on him,” the doctor continues, “the man on the podium commanded my attention like an osprey catching the shimmer of a tail fin far below. He gave a nod of recognition, a special kind of challenge glistened in his eyes. What did he say that night to claim my energies for the unsentimental service of good?”

  The lectern light flickers for a moment and buzzes louder, as though about to blow. The doctor feels his legs shift and wonders if his concentration might fail, but as the filament dims and then brightens again, he realizes the wavering light has merely focused the audience’s attention even more, as occurs in hypnosis. “In truth,” he continues, “I hardly remember. But the energy and the sincerity emanating from the man I would later come to know as D. L. Moody, the great evangelist, was palpable. And his message was timeless. It was simply this: come follow me. Forget the pomp and sham of religion, the hollow ceremonials. Come to the poorest and hungriest places on earth, and once there lend your talents to the service of humanity.”

  Save for the soft buzz of the light and a mouse-like scratching from someone apparently taking notes at the far end of the front row, the silence hangs like a pall. The intensity of the man’s writing—his pencil now scurrying across the paper as though the mouse senses food—gives the doctor a momentary pang of fear, which dies away as he reminds himself that he and Florence will soon be on the train, clunking through the night.

  “My friends,” he says, “I will conclude here. You will notice that my secretary has at her feet a donation box.” Florence nods and tightens the grasp of the fingers upon her lap. “Please do not feel compelled. The hotel generously donated space so we do not need to cover our costs. The box is for cash which goes straight to work in our mission. We do not accept cheques because we respect the anonymity of our donors. Please be governed merely by yourselves.” He gives a slight cough and feels heat under his moustache as he nods, a modest shadow of a bow to let them know it’s over. “Meanwhile, I would be delighted to mingle and answer any questions you might have individually.”

  It’s rather a scruffy ending, and he notes that this part of the presentation needs more work. But it’s about to come right. A single clap, loud and obliging, announces a tumult of applause ready to break.

  “One question, sir,” says the wheezing man. He stands up but with some difficulty. His eyes are large under pebble glasses, his face thin, perhaps through consumption. The coming applause is suspended.

  “Of course,” the doctor replies. He hasn’t yet sensed catastrophe but does wonder why he’s addressed as “sir” rather than “Doctor.”

  “You say you accept only cash?”

  The sense of danger returns—the malignant, watching presence as the audience hushes. The doctor’s eyes dart toward the high, narrow windows, the long poles and brass hooks intended to open them, and in an instant he knows it’s all over.

  — Chapter Eighteen —

  1940: Springfield, Massachusetts

  ***

  Florence fingers the edges of the leather-bound scrapbook before turning the cover. Lodged upright among recipe books in the bottom shelf of the kitchen dresser, the object had seemed innocuous, and she’d had to call her husband in to find it for her. The doctor had crouched and pulled it quite suddenly from its nest. Together they had finished the story, Florence seated, husband standing at her side. They’d completed each other’s sentences, gazing into the same far reaches of time. But the scrapbook had remained unopened, as if the contents together with their spoken memories would be too potent a mix.

  Only when the doctor left did Florence’s hands come down upon the leather. Now the first page opens to a yellowed newspaper extract under plastic. Judy cranes her neck to view the gothic masthead of the Gloucester Times. Below in a plain, chunky headline, she reads, “Dr. Grenfell Delights Gloucester Audience With Tales From the North.”

  “Hardly a snappy headline by today’s standards, Miss Agar?”

  She slides the cups and saucers aside and turns the scrapbook so Judy can read it. Indomitable a few moments ago, the older woman now seems a delicate creature of small bones and angles. The two married people are an odd inversion of each other. When the doctor came into the kitchen to find the scrapbook and help complete Florence’s narrative, he was a bloated, bear-like presence, with low vibrations in his voice and mysterious scents, perhaps aftershave mingled with liquor. When he departed, he left his animal imprint in the atmosphere.

  Florence gestures to the page. The photograph below the text reveals two men. Judy recognizes the face of one, the upturned moustache, puffy eyes—similar photographs and drawings have been passed around the office for weeks. The other man appears to be a dignitary with a top hat and cane held uncomfortably in both hands. He leans slightly toward his famous companion, as though humbled by the association. Judy tries to calculate the quality of a photographic copy in the event the image could be taken to the office—hardly right for the clear glossy pictures and illustrations favoured by Polar Adventures readers.

  “It’s your husband.” It’s a statement, not a question. She wonders now how many of those faded photographs in the Polar Adventures file are really of Grenfell.

  “You can’t tell?”

  Judy shrugs in defeat. Florence smiles.

&nb
sp; “How many times did your husband pretend to be a missionary?”

  “He didn’t.”

  “He didn’t?”

  “I take exception to the word ‘pretend,’ Miss Agar. The true missionary does not need to travel. Hardship and struggle are right on the doorstep no matter where you live—St. Anthony, London, Maine, or Massachusetts.”

  Judy steals a glance over Florence’s shoulder, scans the fine collection of porcelain and china on the dresser. Florence notices this, and her eyes narrow.

  “Patients who had money paid with money. We bartered with some. It wasn’t charity. They paid, too, but with something else, something they could afford. But we never turned anyone away, and there were bad months when very little came in, hence the lectures.”

  “So why did your husband pretend to be Grenfell? Why not simply tell the truth in his lectures?”

  A genuine smile—the first she’d seen—creases Florence’s face; irony and humour dissolve into the sparkle of hazel eyes. “The people we served, Miss Agar, were not only proud; they were Americans. They believed in the value of independence. We couldn’t tour in their name, projecting photographic slides of the hovels of their neighbours, asking for help. We would have been run out of the country.”

  Judy scribbles on her pad, frowning.

  “Turn the page.”

  The covering gives a pat as Judy does so. The sunlight, golden now in the late afternoon, catches the loose plastic film, and Judy has to tip the page from the window. The document beneath, browned on the edges, deeply creased but pressed, announces itself as a museum artifact—fragile, prized. The faint ink of the handwriting loops and circles in commendable straight lines like rows of performing dolphins in a zoo.

  Judy reads:

  September 23, 1883

  Memoranda — Moody’s Method — Aspects to Reuse

  A moment of spiritual revelation — the more commonplace and modern the setting, e.g. Moody’s shoe store, the better. . . . Most importantly everything must be different from that moment onwards.

  Heart quickening, Judy looks up at the doctor’s wife.

  “We found it again a few years ago in the bottom of a trunk with some old financial records.”

  Judy’s mind accelerates once more through the known story of Grenfell, the one he has told so many times himself in book, article, and lecture, wondering how much this changes things. She goes back to the page.

  Establish I was once a skeptic, especially when it comes to religion, its rituals etc—an effective way of diffusing cynicism.

  Falling under the influence of a “Great Man” if only for a short time. Advantages: absolves one from suspicion of boasting, the greatness of the moment belongs to another. One can accept one’s one part in the story with modesty and awe.

  Humble beginnings, e.g. Moody’s story about preaching in an abandoned railroad car, then a deserted saloon. Note: I can already use the East End.

  Being among and seeking the company of those who are low in status, being like Jesus without actually saying so.

  Travelling vast distances. Advantages: mystique, exotic stories, no verification possible or necessary.

  Preach not in your own country. A prophet is never etc, etc.

  Make sure the organization I establish bears my own name. Note: might take some time.

  Exaggerate hardships, both my own and those I work among—be “among the lepers.”

  Tell the same stories so many times I start to believe them.

  Find a devoted and compliant wife like the poor creature sitting so patiently next to Moody (not English—English women far too assertive e.g. Nurse Mills)

  It’s all there, she thinks, the calculation and the deceit, but something else, too, a caution licking like a flame at the edges of the memorandum. Not so fast, it tells her. The sun goes behind a cloud and Judy feels a chill under her blouse.

  “But he was very young,” she says.

  “Does that make a difference?” asks Florence, her bird-like head tilting, eyes narrow.

  “Of course it does.” Judy looks at the faint blue handwriting, spider-ghosts from a distant past. “It’s merely the scribble of a young man.”

  “He didn’t change, Miss Agar. The note proves it.”

  “It proves nothing beyond a moment of vanity, a moment of playing the politician. What can I or you really know about him? Then or now?”

  Judy lifts her gaze from the spidery hand, expects to see hurt on the old woman’s face—a woman scorned; the phrase dances through her, only it’s not her love that has been scorned now, it’s her right to judge a man she once loved. She senses that might be worse. But there’s only a mild frustration in the old woman’s face.

  “You believe Dr. Grenfell could really have changed his spirit while keeping so close to his plan?”

  “Why not? Young people cloak their desires in cynicism. It doesn’t mean the desires aren’t real. This could be just a pose.” She glances down at the paper once more. “Why . . .” she begins, stops, and then looks directly at the old woman’s eyes. Florence tilts her head slightly, beckoning the question. “Why do you want so much to discredit Grenfell now? Is it just to make your husband seem better?”

  The refrigerator hums, taking up the silence.

  “It is partly for my husband,” she says quietly, “partly for Grenfell, too.”

  “How so?”

  Florence takes a breath. “I understand him even after all these years. You think I judge him and I do, but not as unkindly as you think. He isn’t a happy man, you see. He suffers more than any of us.”

  “Why?”

  Florence struggles with the question, her face darkening. “Because there is so much need in him.”

  The words hang heavy between them.

  Judy waits through a couple of ticks. “But how could you really know that about him?”

  Florence leans back, folds her veined hands in front of her, fingertips inches from the scrapbook. “We thought we were in love once, you know. Both of us, I think. It didn’t last long, just a matter of days. But so much is communicated in that time, Miss Agar, so much.” The last word is merely a breath. Then she sighs. “You know he went back to St. Anthony last year.”

  “Yes,” says Judy.

  “You know why?”

  “Of course.”

  “To scatter his late wife’s ashes.”

  “We wrote a short article about it.”

  “Exactly.” Florence pauses for a moment. “And did she love that place where he scattered her last remains, Miss Agar?”

  Judy shakes her head. It was well-known that Lady Grenfell did not like St. Anthony. “Perhaps she wished it,” she says. “Perhaps it was in her will.”

  Florence smiled again, but this time in a kind of defeat. “Perhaps, Miss Agar, perhaps. What we know for sure, however, is that your magazine wrote about it. So did many others.”

  “So you think this was just another ploy to perpetuate his fame?”

  “I think, Miss Agar, that hunger for fame is a terrible burden. And it’s part of the whole story, a hard story from which no one emerges like a shimmering knight.”

  Florence slides her hands from the table.

  “You can take the scrapbook, Miss Agar. It’s yours.”

  Judy closes the book slowly, feels a downward twitch of her mouth. “It isn’t that simple,” she says.

  Florence fixes her, her pupils small, ready for something unwelcome.

  “I imagine you know about the great explorer Robert Peary.”

  Florence nods.

  “Every anniversary we publish an article extolling his virtues and celebrating his historic conquest of the North Pole in 1909. The piece is always about courage, honour, and integrity.”

  Florenc
e’s eyelids flicker as though she recognizes something.

  “There is more than enough evidence now that Robert Peary could not possibly have reached the Pole as he claimed. The times and distances are all wrong. And if he didn’t reach the Pole, he must have known perfectly well he didn’t reach it, in which case he lied.”

  The clock ticks through the silence.

  “Do you think our readers want to know that?”

  Florence breathes in slowly. A bitter smile of recognition plays on her lips.

  “Our readers don’t want shades and nuances. They want heroes.”

  She lets the implication sink. Florence’s husband could never be that hero, no matter how hard the work, or how real the compassion beneath all the subterfuge. There was simply too much ground to make up. And the reading public had its man: they had Grenfell.

  “I see,” Florence says. “The whole story will be lost.”

  “Well, it would be a challenge to get it past the editor. And then the editor would have to deal with the publisher, and the publisher would have to deal with the public.”

  “And what of the people of Labrador, the proud people European, Eskimo, and Indian who never asked for charity? Will their story be told?”

  “What of the hospitals and clinics?” counters Judy. “That’s what the readers understand. As to his motivations, who knows, really? And Grenfell did help people in a real and material way. Surely he deserves some credit for that.”

  “He has credit, Miss Agar,” Florence says tiredly. She leans back. “I’m not going to try to persuade you, Miss. Agar. I have merely told you my story, and only then because you asked me for it. Perhaps your publication should ask Dr. Grenfell a few searching questions.”

  “We can’t,” Judy says, laying her hands on the scrapbook. “He isn’t well enough.”

  “But you told my husband—”

  “Yes, I know. We tried, but the interview won’t happen.” The leather binding adheres to her perspiring fingers. She knows she can’t use this material, yet she is loath to let go.