The Good Doctor Page 5

  Grenfell is due to have his day on the wards of the Chelsea Infirmary, distant enough to ensure he cannot meet Nurse Mills prior to seven. The young doctor alone is to assist Dr. Bleaker in the clinic, with Nurse Mills in attendance just like the old days. Getting this missive to her will be easy. The clinic has a communal pigeonhole for mail. The young doctor has seen her check this on numerous occasions, retrieving letters she slips into her cloth bag, which, in turn, is pushed into one of the high lockers. None of these have locks—personal effects are acceptable, provided they are not too personal and there is no sense of privacy around them.

  Last night’s transformation came from an incomplete darkness. Always the young doctor has had some sense that the light of providence flickered close to his shoulder. This, he realizes, must be the reason he never gives up even when a cause seems lost. Like a gas jet in a windy alleyway, the flame of hope ducks, disappearing for stretches of time, only to reappear when the breeze calms. His life so far has been dotted with such signs.

  And providence shows in other ways, too. He has certain talents, the uses of which unfold only when they are most needed. He can, for instance, hold the shape of another’s handwriting in his eye and replicate the loop of a j and the cross of an x so well that even the writer himself might have trouble distinguishing the hand of an imposter from his own. He refined these skills at school. When, at half- and full-term breaks, he beheld the tweed-clad mothers with picnic baskets and outstretched arms; when he saw the complacent fathers ruffling the hair of his classmates and talking airily about the navy or foreign office “possibilities”—and there was usually a cousin or an in-law who would be only too glad to “help”—he knew he would have to claw his way through the world with more determination than his peers. Seldom did he see his own uncle and knew his guardian’s sense of obligation would cease once his foot touched the bottom rung of whatever profession he chose.

  So he nurtured his inner calligrapher and learned how to pick locks—at first the simple padlocks used on school lockers, but in time the more challenging keyholes that guarded storerooms and larders. The task before him now—the unseen delivery of a forged missive—is very low on the scheme of illegal acts for which he is qualified, more of a prank than crime if brought before the eyes of a judge. But it terrifies, as well as excites, him.

  As physically brave men are said to fear ghosts, the young doctor trembles at the scene that dwells beyond his imagination. What will Nurse Mills make of such behaviour? Try as he might, he cannot arrange her features into a likely approximation of horror and disbelief. And yet the thing will surely happen—such new and dangerous ground!

  He takes the paper and folds it into the envelope, already addressed. He itches to glance one more time at the fateful handwriting but resists, lest the stroke of an apostrophe should seem too bold for Grenfell’s hand, a comma too lax, or full stop too cowering. He guards against anything that may ebb his resolve.

  Slipping the letter inside his jacket pocket, he finishes dressing and leaves for the clinic.

  ***

  The letter has been delivered. It tilts at an angle in the pigeonhole so as to be easily noticeable to anyone—including Nurse Mills—who walks through the clinic’s anteroom. The young doctor’s ears burn at each noise that might signal her arrival. Dr. Bleaker comes in first, whistling tunelessly as usual.

  “You’re here early!” says Dr. Bleaker with a good deal of surprise. “And relabelling the test tube rack.”

  “The words were becoming smudged, Doctor. I knew you were concerned about it.”

  “Good man,” he says in a tone that seems to better fit the words “good grief!”

  Soon after, he hears a shuffling, followed by a silence, followed by a sound of rustling paper. He hears a bag being slid into a locker, then the swift staccato beat of Nurse Mills’s shoes on the tiled floor. When he dares to turn, he sees a slight frown on her face.

  “Good morning, Dr. Bleaker,” she says.

  “Good morning,” he mumbles, peering into a microscope.

  She sways in the young doctor’s direction, gives a sardonic smile, and raises her eyebrows.

  “Good morning, Nurse Mills,” the young doctor says. “I hope you enjoyed your Sunday.” He is suddenly confident, carefree even, because he realizes the thing he has set into motion is some hours away. This rare and diminishing allotment of time is his last chance to be “ordinary” with Nurse Mills. After seven o’clock, she will view him as a creature quite separate from the rest of humanity.

  “I did indeed. I trust you enjoyed your Sunday, also.”

  This is much more than she usually says to him. Her sudden generosity gives him a pang of regret. If only he could remain content with such modest parcels, he might keep that small vestige of the habitual respect a good woman feels for those around her. With just the two of them here day after day and week after week, this would have been the safe course. But Grenfell has changed everything.

  ***

  All morning they work happily enough. Trepidation grows toward lunchtime; rushing on her part might signal an intention to contrive a meeting with Grenfell, after all. His scheme would be in ruins. But Nurse Mills seems slow and content to bide her time, slipping out only to visit a friend on the wards. In the afternoon, while wrapping a bandage for a child with an ulcerated sore, he catches her looking at him with some seriousness—dare he even call it respect?—over the gauze.

  “Hold this, Nurse,” he says, giving her the handle end of the scissors.

  “Certainly, Doctor,” she answers.

  He struggles to keep his breathing steady. Nurse Mills has never called him “doctor” in the clinic. She rarely speaks more than a word to him at a time. Why has she chosen now to go so much further than he could have hoped? Not even “yes, Doctor,” but “certainly, Doctor.”

  With a slight tremble of the hands, he ties the two ends of the bandage together and opens his palm to receive the scissors once more. When the metal touches his skin, it’s still warm from her touch. She gazes at him again, and then shakes her head slightly as though to wake herself. As he trims the bandage edge, he steals another glance and notices that she has coloured.

  An unwelcome thought nudges itself into his brain: she had, for the moment, merely forgotten he was not Grenfell.

  ***

  The twisting lane isn’t as deserted as he hoped. Black-gowned lawyers, some in pairs, some in larger clumps, sweep through the shortcut in both directions. Small parties of tourists or theatregoers make their way through with maps or programs in hand. Some glance in his direction and seem to stare hard. Only when he takes a backwards glance does he realize he is blocking Dr. Johnson’s silver plaque from view.

  He underestimated how desperately exposed he would feel. His imagination projected a meeting in deepest shadow, an unwitnessed exchange—anger on her part, pleading on his, undiscovered love unfurling from both, a sudden violent kiss out of nowhere—or some mysterious combination of all these things. Last night’s faint gaslight and eerie silence was in his mind when he forged the letter. Now in the daylight, with a trickle of curious passersby, the whole thing seems unthinkable, terrifying.

  He glances at his watch—one minute to the hour. His feet tingle and he has a sudden urge to escape. A nanny in black and two red-uniformed schoolboys shuffle by.

  “I don’t want to, Nanny,” says the younger of the two, perhaps five years old. “Can’t we go back?”

  “Your mater says we must go, Geoffrey,” coos the old lady. They move off, and the street is silent.

  Sensing movement, he glances up to see a pigeon eyeing him suspiciously from Dr. Johnson’s windowsill. He wonders if it could be the same bird which loosened pebbles onto his hair last night. Heart thumping, he turns to the wall and stares at the plaque. He takes in nothing of the few words etched in cold silver. The sound of footst
eps—feminine, he thinks, and alone, and the soft rustle of a skirt—come closer. A hand touches his elbow, and then she speaks.

  “Willy?” the voice is edged with hesitation.

  The black-eyed pigeon holds his gaze for a moment. He turns.

  Her hand now hovers in the air between them. Her mouth is open, trying to form words.

  “Hello, Nurse Mills,” he says. He doesn’t mean to feign surprise, but this is what his vocal chords contrive.

  “You,” she says, lips twitching into an uncertain smile, “. . . again?” The smile disappears into unnatural paleness. Hazel eyes narrow.

  No point delaying. No point bluffing. He takes a backwards step. “Yes, Nurse Mills. Me again.”

  “How?” she says. With a two-way flick of the head, she searches the walls around them. For once, the place is empty. “Why are you here?” She pulls her bag close, perhaps wondering if he somehow filched Grenfell’s missive.

  “I wrote the letter,” he says. There was more composure than he expected to hear in his voice, perhaps even a hint of pride.

  Nurse Mills’s lips stretch pale over her teeth, and star clusters form in her eyes. Her face seems to hold all the ingredients of a smile, but they are misarranged. She inches backwards without stepping.

  “Let me explain,” he says.

  “Explain?” the word on her lips has a lost quality, quite beyond mocking or anger.

  “I had to meet you.”

  As an opening line of an explanation, he thinks, this isn’t too bad. He will remember this part later, how the words are carried along on the surface of the rushing in his ears, how they promise, somewhat improbably, an accounting that might make some sense. And for a moment, at least, she seems ready to take it in, her head tilting, her eyes narrowing in attempted understanding. The only trouble, and he knows this immediately, is that this is really all the explanation he can offer. His sole excuse—that burning within him is a love too fierce to be contained within the bounds of propriety or decent behaviour—is unsayable. The setting is too prosaic, the light too unforgiving, and in any case such sentiments cannot be expressed while the object of that love will likely be cowering soon in obvious horror.

  His whole plan, he realizes, missed one vital point: reciprocation is everything. Mutual love forgives any misdemeanour, any lapse of taste, any ploy. But the plan he has constructed works backwards from an assumption. It presumes a fact he knows to be untrue: that she loves him, also.

  Now as he watches her back away from him, pink blotches of outrage appearing on her face, he wonders how he will ever re-enter the clinic, how he will work alongside Nurse Mills, whether, in fact, she will tell Dr. Bleaker, producing the letter as evidence, perhaps, whether—horror of all horrors—she will tell Grenfell.

  “You spied on us,” she whispers.

  He glances at the wall he hid behind last night, not in admission, but looking for some other explanation: I was on the spot anyway and accidentally overheard your conversation; Grenfell himself told me all about your evening together and is in on the joke.

  But he becomes aware he is gulping huge breaths, his lungs stretching almost to capacity. “Not exactly,” he says, ducking his head. He raises a hand and scratches his temple.

  Looking up, he catches the filmy eyes of a bewigged and robed lawyer prancing along with a ribbon-tied brief. His stare has the kind of insolent penetration which doesn’t seek to hide interest. But when staring would require him to slow his pace or turn his head, he gazes beyond them both and clops off towards Lincoln’s Inn Fields. How sordid yet insignificant the young doctor’s crime seems now.

  “Do you want me to call a policeman?” she says, gazing after the lawyer.

  “I haven’t broken the law.”

  This makes her hesitate. She even shrinks into herself as though he has trumped her.

  “What kind of man are you?” she asks with a surprising kind of warmth. Gone is the scorn of yesterday, the disparagement under the Cathedral dome. Fear lurks in her now, a searching kind of fear that hones close upon his features for a clue as to his intent. Even in the midst of his panic he feels relieved by this change. Fear possesses something grander than contempt. Fear at least needs to know its adversary; it is laced with a kind of respect. And it allows for options, too. It gives a man time to think.

  “The kind of man who acts upon his desires.” The statement comes out almost casually, and with a shrug.

  “What could you desire from me?” she hisses, giving a furtive glance toward a woman and young child dawdling by a tree. The child is in a white frock and the woman wears the bonnet, the long navy skirts, and high tunic of the Salvation Army.

  “Mercy,” he says. The word is little more than a cough, but it marries a lunging appeal for understanding with the plain, simple truth. It’s received by Nurse Mills with a kind of shocked recognition. “You said it yourself, Nurse Mills. You came to nursing to help those who have been brought low.”

  She cringes now, head wanting to shake the words away, but unable, frozen.

  “You’ll never find someone more in need than me. You must know that. How desperate does a man have to be, Nurse Mills, how desperate?”

  She finds the mobility in her neck to move her head from side to side, but it’s an uneasy, stalling action, and one hand is raised against him in a calming gesture.

  “I’m reduced to following like a spy, reduced to forgery. What brings a man so low but a thirst that must be quenched?”

  “You must learn to control those feelings.”

  “I can’t. I’m sure your Dr. Grenfell can. I’m sure he doesn’t need of anything. I can tell.”

  “Don’t bring him into it!” she commands, fingering the weave of her bag, pulling it close again.

  “I do have needs, the most profound needs known to man and God.”

  “That is not my responsibility,” she says, avoiding his eyes, staring down at the concrete by her feet. “You can see people about it. Go to church.”

  “I’m seeing the only person who can help. I’m seeing you.”

  “I’m not the one who can help you.”

  “Are you not your brother’s keeper?”

  She looks up suddenly, meeting his gaze now; her eyes are rimmed with red.

  In truth, scripture has never been the young doctor’s strong subject, and he can’t even place the exact source of the quote he has just paraphrased. Something about it just seemed right. The white-frocked minister who used to come to his school’s chapel bellowed some such question from the pulpit while staring at the sea of bored-looking faces below. To priests, teachers, and students the content of the sermon hardly mattered; there was one simple unifying message to everything taught in classroom and chapel: watch your step. The full awareness that something more potent lurks within the phrase he has just chosen dawns only when he sees its effect upon Nurse Mills.

  “Please,” she says, and from the tightness of her features he can see that tears are close. “Please let me alone, at least for now.”

  She half turns, shoulders hunched together like the wings of a rook in a storm. The look she throws him before she scuttles away is beyond hurt; her eyes seem to flash a kind of apology.

  He can’t understand what has just happened, but as he stares after her his heart tugs upwards like a helium balloon. Something has undoubtedly changed, and for the better. Despite the humiliation and the embarrassment, despite the pleas, the defeat after defeat, a dim but undeniable instinct tells him an unexpected jewel is nosing toward the surface. Bible phrases gallop around his head once more. Is there not a verse somewhere about losing every battle and winning the war? The lamp of providence seems to brighten as the breeze sweeps through the laneway. He’s not defeated yet.

  ***

  Moody’s high canvas hangs over him again. Tonight he has t
hrown himself into the service, the songs, the spontaneous yells, and the blessed helplessness of it all. Standing in the midst of the huddled crowd, he sinks once more into the oblivion of trust. The mystifying currents of hope tug at the seams of his imagination, loosening the shingle of half-forgotten griefs and joys, and he finds himself calling out his praises with the rest. Tears flow, and again he is ecstatic to be part of an infinite whole. He has been saved, it is true. He has ventured into dangers and has, apparently, come through hardly scathed. And there is an unexpected bonus; somehow he really has managed to affect the woman he loves.

  Still held in a cloud of sublime acceptance, he shuffles out of the tent with all the rest. The hands of his fellow men come down warm upon his shoulder and he—once proud—accepts the proffered comfort, takes in the gentle but often careworn faces of his companions, and reciprocates in kind, and a murmur of comfort passes through the crowd. Just as he reaches the tent’s opening, crisp night air reaching his lungs, he feels one touch firmer than the rest. It strengthens its grip upon his upper arm and he turns, ready to respond, but confronts instead the hooded eyes and the self-satisfied smirk of Grenfell.

  “You have something to confess, my brother?”

  His arm pulls from the hold, and even in his shock he’s ashamed of the jaggedness in his movements, begins searching for some means to bring this exchange into line with the grace and harmony of the service. But words escape him, and Grenfell remains perfectly motionless and endlessly confident.

  “I thought I would repay the compliment and let you know how it feels to have a shadow.”

  In the presence of the crowd still milling around him, the young doctor still feels some ambient sense of comfort, and some safety, also, but he knows they will soon thin out and disperse. He thinks briefly of ducking in among their number while there is still time, but knows this would require a swift and violent act quite out of place in this setting. His heart picks up its pace, readying itself for a larger and more drawn-out confrontation.