Doctor serocold

Front matter

i t

BOOKS BY HELEN ASHTON

DOCTOR SEROCOLD A BACKGROUND FOR CAROLINE FAR ENOUGH

II

HE DID not think it very interesting, to himself or to anyone else; but he read it slowly and carefully, giving time for serious people, like Mrs. Matcham, to take down his figures if they were so disposed, and for himself to think, between sentences. “‘I don’t suppose any of them care particularly how many legitimate and illegitimate births there were between January and June... though Collins has had a bit to do with that in the past .. . or how many deaths either. Of course, February always is the time when the birth rate’s highest. The population of this town isn’t increasing very rapidly nowadays. ... Queer, that little diphtheria epidemic in March: we’ve never got to the bottom of it. I thought I’d traced it to the boy who washed the milk cans at Jones’s dairy, but there must have been some other source. He certainly was a carrier, but the thing went on after he was isolated. Lucky there weren’t more cases; at one time I didn’t like the look of it. But we only had the one death. Archibald will cut up rusty about the inoculations; he’s cracked on the point. Still, he’s easily settled. . . . Funny, how the type of scarlet fever has changed in my lifetime. When I began to practise the kids all died of it, or got complications, pretty nearly; but in those days we thought nothing of measles. Now they get through scarlet fever without turning a hair, the few cases I have to report, and make heavy weather over measles. Seem to get broncho-pneumonia just when they ought to be recovering.

It’s very difficult to get the parents to take enough precautions. ... This tuberculosis scheme is rotten. No end of money spent, and very little to show for it. Wish it would come to an end. . . . Hope Collins is listening to the bit I’ve put in about that house of his we condemned. Serve him right! It wasn’t fit for a pig to live in. I suppose he and Archibald will get up in a minute and start patting each other on the back about the new water supply for those houses down beyond the railway station. They were the two who stuck out against it longest, so they’re sure to try and get the credit. I will say for Jenkins he took a strong line over the business. But he’s a very publicspirited fellow, if he is cantankerous. .. . Refuse— food inspection—workshops—welfare centre—and the schools: that’s that lot and I hope they like it. They all get in my way as much as ever they can; but I suppose they don’t mean it. It’s just their way of doing business. I’ve been at the game for more than twenty years, and Gaunt was at it before me, and I don’t know that the place is much improved. Still, if it isn’t, that’s my fault: I’ve had my chance. And he turned over the last leaf, made two polite remarks in his usual sardonic fashion, and sat down with relief, thinking, “I’ve never been much use at reports. Always turn them in late and grudge doing them. I wish these people would be content with the yearly one that goes up to the county council, instead of making me produce an interim report as well for this committee. I’ve no sooner finished one than I have to start another. And I get sick of explaining what I’ve been doing. The truth is, ’m not really any good at working with other people. I’ve almost as little tact as Mary Matcham, and I’m more cantankerous than Jenkins. I like to get through my work in my own way and be left alone to do it. But that’s too much to hope for in this world. You must let the non-combatants have their fun.”

And he made his usual resolution to be patient

-and keep his temper and explain everything that he was asked to explain. He had made it every year but so far he had always failed to keep it. “And I don’t get any more amiable as I get older,”’ he said to himself, with his sour smile for his own failings. “Well, now for a little time-wasting.”’

The members of the committee each wasted a little of it in their turn, apparently thinking that so they justified their existence. Old Archibald began it with his invariable speech about the improvement of sanitary conditions in the town since he was a boy. He liked to trot out a number of recollections of his youth, and this time he spared the council none of them. Doctor Serocold, absently watching three drowsy autumn flies revolving under the ceiling, ticked off his stories one by one: the pump in the Beastmarket, from which the housewives of Leather Lane used to fill their buckets; the skeleton found at the bottom of the well in the grammar school yard when it came to be filled in; the last burial in Saint Luke’s churchyard, and the typhoid epidemic of 1865. He had heard of them all so often that he could foretell the exact stages by which Archibald would work round to his annual anti-vaccination protest. Nobody expected by this time that the old man world either change his mind on the subject or fail to express it. A general impatience appeared, however, when it became evident that on this occasion he was going beyond his usual time limit to argue about the prophylactic value of diphtheria anti-toxin. He was quite confused on the subject, protested against what he called the infection of healthy children, and was evidently incapable of distinguishing between precautionary measures and treatment. He went rambling on in his harsh and booming voice, working his eyebrows up and down in a way that Doctor Serocold had always found annoying. “I’m not going to explain my methods to that damned old fool,” he said to himself, already forgetting his pious resolutions.

Sir Richard was murmuring soothingly. “I understand the practice is quite usual nowadays—mere routine. They tell me it lessens the risk of infection. I believe I am right in saying that none of the seven children you mention did develop diphtheria.” Doctor Serocold caught his humorous, appealing glance, and immediately stuck his hands in his pockets, put his head back, and stared at the flies more obstinately than ever.

Little Jenkins jumped to his feet on the other side of the table and rapped out, “Why only seven, then? Why not the whole lot, I should like to know?”

His red moustache bristled with excitement. “Why didn’t all the kids have the proper thing done... if it is the proper thing nowadays to go sticking germs into them, which, mind you, I don’t say I approve of?”? He dropped down again with the satisfied air of one who has made a good point.

Doctor Serocold thought, “Oh, Lord! Have I got to go into all that, at this time of day?” He had, however, more respect for little Jenkins than he had for Archibald; and he did unbend so far as to explain, grumpily, still staring at the ceiling, “Only do the susceptible cases. Schick’s test is the dodge— picks out the dangerous ones. Take too long to explain it.”

Jenkins squinted at him sideways, only halfsatisfied, and resenting the doctor’s native and ungracious impatience of lay opinion. Archibald grumbled under his breath, “I don’t follow all that. I only know there was a lot of arm-scratehing going on, and I want to understand why.”

The doctor turned right round on him in a childish rage. “Do you think I’ve nothing else to do but sit here all day long telling you about my professional methods? As long as I’m medical officer of those schools I’m going to do what I think proper to keep down infection. I’m not going to have the whole town involved in an epidemic because people like you want to interfere in what isn’t your He stopped himself, with an enormous effort, almost at the same moment that Sir Richard and Mrs. Matcham chimed in together with vaguely soothing interruptions—and a good half-minute before the town clerk disentangled himself from his papers to protest against the four of them. “There I go, losing my temper as usual,” reflected the doctor gloomily. “I'd only got to spend two or three minutes smoothing the old fool down, and we should have been finished with him for another six months. Now I suppose I’ve hung up the whole business, and serve me right! One of these days I shall be asked to resign, because somebody thinks I’m past my work: and that insinuating young rascal, Jevons, will step into my shoes. Well, I shall only have myself to blame.”

His outburst, however, seemed to have cleared the air a little. True, the mayor was blinking and swallowing over a protest which he had but vaguely understood, and Jenkins was still simmering with temper, but old Archibald had already begun to hedge, muttering apologetically that he had not intended any criticism ... had merely asked for information... was glad to hear that the epidemic had passed over so rapidly. “In my young days I remember there was a great deal more of this sort of sickness than there is now. I think we may all congratulate ourselves on the improvement in the health of the town.” He seemed to have gone round the circle to his starting point and, becoming aware of this, he let himself down again into his chair and puffed himself into silence, while the doctor tapped on the table with his pen and reminded himself that he had been even more foolishly irritable than usual. “If I could get~a decent night’s sleep to-night I believe I should be in a better temper to-morrow,” he thought. “But someone’s sure to call me up.”

After this Mrs. Matcham, pushing her hat off her forehead, had the floor for her own two favourite topics, the schools and the nursing association. She was always inclined to assume a proprietary interest in any question affecting women or children and to resent the expression of anyone else’s views on the subject; and Doctor Serocold used to feel annoyed with her when she explained to him with careful kindness how important such matters were. “After all, we did have schools, and a district nurse too, for that matter, before she came to live here,” he told himself resentfully. But he listened to her financial complaints with sympathy; it was certainly not easy for the nursing association to pay its way. “I find it more and more difficult to get in my subscriptions,” declared Mrs. Matcham in her loud, resentful voice, which always betrayed her astonishment at the confusion of this ill-regulated world. “People don’t seem to realize the importance of the work. I feel that a town of this size ought to support two nurses at least. The maternity work alone makes that imperative. .. .”’ Doctor Serocold entirely agreed with her. “But you can’t raise the cash,”’ he reminded himself. “If I could have a special maternity nurse for the district, what a difference it would make! But there’s no earthly chance of paying for these little luxuries.”

Little Jenkins spoke in support of the idea, but without much confidence. “He knows the funds won’t run to it,” perceived the doctor, as the mayor came down heavily on the discussion. “And Collins is sulky about that property of his. I shall have to put off speaking to him about Meek for to-day.” “Difficult enough to keep the Cottage Hospital going as it is,” the big man was grumbling, heaving himself about in his chair. ‘‘There’s a big debt there to be considered. All this charitable stuff costs a lot of money. What I say is, pay your way before you start going in for frills. We’ve had a pretty expensive year over those new water mains down beyond the railway.” (“I wondered how soon he’d get round to that,” thought the doctor.) “And there’s been a lot of fuss about them. We shall have to go slow for a bit.” He peered round the table with his sulky little eyes and caught the aggressive look of Jenkins, who burst out, “‘I suppose you expected the people there to go on drinking out of Roman Brook for another twelvemonth, and lapping up the Camp Hill sewage. You’d have had another epidemic if you had, and it wouldn’t have been diphtheria, either.”

The mayor considered him with lowered head for a moment, blew out his lips and seemed about to reopen a discussion which had been smouldering for some months through the meetings of the town council; but his unwieldy hesitation in debate gave Sir Richard time to slip in with one of his deft, insinuating little speeches about nothing in particular while moving the adoption of the report. Doctor Serocold sat back and watched him smiling patiently to himself as he talked the council round to good humour again, in a fashion of which he alone seemed to hold the secret; and wondered, not for the first time, what was going on behind that soothingly attentive expression of interest in the matter in hand.

“He can’t really care a damn what goes on in this one-horse place, after all he’s done and seen,” thought the doctor. “But he’s very deceptive. You’d think he never had an idea beyond the town wall. What a clever fellow he is! He can turn us all round his little finger in five minutes, in any direction he likes. Look at Jenkins and Collins, grinning already. In a minute or two he’ll have me purring myself. And his generosity is extraordinary. Nothing good is ever done in this place without his having a hand in it. He was at the back of the hospital, and the welfare centre, and a dozen other things I’d dreamt about for years and couldn’t manage. It’s not in the least what he gives, though that’s astonishing when you realize how little he’s got outside his pension. It’s the trouble he takes that I value. Nothing’s too much bother. He’ll cheerfully put in half a day anytime, chasing after some fool or other ... persuading the fellow to do his job properly, or making sure that what’s been started gets finished. Look at the hours he spends keeping these people up to their work and making them think that they do it all themselves. They’d never get through it at all if it wasn’t for him. Yet he just sits back and smiles when all the votes of thanks are going round, as if butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth; and isn’t even thought of. He’s such a mild little man that none of them realize just how much of his own way he’s getting. If they only knew it, he’s the man who really runs this town. . . . What’s that he’s saying?”

For Sir Richard was finishing his little speech with a determination habitual to him when he had decided that it was time for the committee to adjourn. At these moments his voice had a finality which seemed to settle every problem and make further discussion. impossible. It was a trick which Doctor Serocold had often envied him. “The business which we have just concluded,” said Sir Richard, in a tone which buried it for ever, ““may not have seemed very important; to some of us it may not have seemed very interesting. But that is an illusion which we all have from time to time about our daily, necessary work. I have no doubt that even Doctor Serocold has suffered from it himself. His work is often monotonous, sometimes it may be unpopular, and always it is easy to criticize; I imagine that often he must be heartily sick of it. But I hope—and I am sure you all hope—that the time has not yet come for him to threaten us with his resignation. For I am certain that the town could never have a better doctor.”

He was smiling inscrutably at the doctor with his kindly, clever brown eyes. The doctor looked back at him, stiffening his face lest any answering smile should escape him, and thought, “‘ Yes, damned clever! For two pins I’d chuck the whole wearisome business, and he knows it; and none of them would be sorry. But he’s smoothing us down in his own cunning way, getting them all on my side before they realize that they’re dissatisfied with me, putting me back where I was for another year, in spite of my own bad temper. He can do just what he likes with the lot of us.”’ But he felt a little pleased colour warming his cheeks in spite of himself.

The committee had also been disarmed by Sir Richard’s cunning; the doctor could not help seeing that as he glanced sheepishly from one to the other. Mrs. Matcham looked triumphant, of course; there was nothing in that, or in the way that old Archibald was nodding his head portentously up and down. He always did that to show that he agreed with the last speaker. But little Jenkins, whose opinion was worth both of theirs together, was applauding vigorously, and the clerk’s dry wrinkles had warmed into a smile, and even fat Collins was looking pleasant for once. Doctor Serocold found that he could not face the lot of them. He looked down and muttered, “Like the job,” and fidgeted in his place; and then he glanced desperately at the grandfather clock in the corner, and burst out, ‘“‘I must be at the hospital by a quarter to two. It’s my operating afternoon.”

Mercifully they took the hint, the report was seconded by Jenkins without comment, and the meeting broke up. Doctor Serocold found himself descending the stairs with Sir Richard, who gave him one of his malicious looks and inquired, “ How did you Itke my bit of butter?”

‘*All damned nonsense,” the doctor exploded ungratefully.

Sir Richard sighed and smiled and shook his head. “Tt was the best butter, you know,’” he quoted, with regret.

“T didn’t believe a word of it,” protested the doctor. “‘And they didn’t, and you didn’t either.” He was feeling grumpy.

Sir Richard took him by the arm and said, ‘My dear fellow, I shouldn’t have said it if I hadn’t meant it. Now I’m going to drive you up to the surgery in my car, if you haven’t got your own. It’s all on my way and I know you’re late.”

III

T HE midday post was in, but there was nothing for the doctor from the London specialist. He lunched sparingly and hastily off bread and cheese, a habit of his when he was pressed for time; and by half-past one had got himself into his battered old car, with the chipped paint, torn side curtains and buckled mudguards, which he would certainly have to replace by something more reliable if he intended to continue in his practice, and started for the Cottage Hospital. The road was downhill, past Doctor Gaunt’s house with its drawn blinds, across the river and up Camp Hill. He had to think of his driving, for the road was already obstructed by droves of stumbling, sore-footed bullocks and frightened sheep, coughing in the dust on the way to Duck Fair. However, the doctor had time to observe Timmy Gaunt, loafing by himself in the garden and no doubt regretting the double isolation of measles and mourning; and just before the bridge corner he had to slow down to avoid his goddaughter, Margery Sinclair, who had been Margery Unwin. She was wheeling the perambulator, with her new baby inside it, up and down in the sun outside the wire cages and brown gravel of the County tennis club; and she called to him as he stopped just beyond her, “Come in after dinner to-night and play bridge?”

He said, “‘No, I can’t. People would talk if I went out amusing myself to-night, with Gaunt just dead. Besides, I’m not in the mood.” But Margery, rocking the pram and looking disappointed, begged him, “Oh, come on! It’s not a party: nobody will hear about it. I’ve only got Mother coming.”

“T’m just going up there,” said the doctor, hesitating, for he was, and always had been, very fond of Margery and her mother.

Margery’s brow cleared, and she said, “Oh, well then, let her persuade you. About nine.”

He started the car again, without saying yes or no: but he thought it probable that Emily Unwin would persuade him. She had always been able to make him do whatever she chose. He lifted his hand for a moment from the steering wheel to signal to Margery; and then, as he changed gears to take the sharp slope up to the Dodder bridge, he thought, “Tt doesn’t seem anything like a year and a half since she was playing in that last tournament with Bill Sinclair, and dancing all over the court in that little pink hat of hers. I wonder how she likes being tied down to wheeling a pram up and down the road outside instead. I expect it seems a bit hard to settle down. However, these young people don’t do much settling nowadays. She told me she’d rather keep a car than a nurse, and I must say she manages that baby uncommonly well. It’s one of the best specimens for its age that I’ve seen about here for a long time. I suppose it'll spend most of its days being motored about the country in some sort of basket, but I dare say it won’t be any the worse for that. . . . She’s a good manager, too. They can’t have much to spare, with nothing to live upon except what Sinclair makes tearing about the country, selling second-hand cars. But that bandbox full of wedding presents that they live in is always in applepie order; and she hasn’t even lost her looks or her figure over the business. Most young mothers subside into a draggle-tailed, sloppy stage. But you’d think, to look at her, that she kept three maids and a nurse and was wheeling the baby about for fun. She always knew how to make a good show on nothing. She learned that from her mother.”

And he wondered, far more soberly, what was really the matter with Mrs. Unwin, as he went out by Castle Lane, where lovers used to carve their hearts and names on the smooth stems of the beeches.

He turned down past the frothing water of the mill pool, where he was accustomed to fish for trout in the warm summer evenings, and where the lemoncoloured willows were now trailing their branches in a swollen stream, and set the car to climb the hill that used to be called Gallows Down. Mrs. Unwin had quite put her daughter out of his head before he had passed the villas at the edge of the golf course and old Archibald putting by himself on the eighteenth green in front of the clubhouse, and had taken the open chalk road that led to the camp. The town lay behind him in the golden haze of an October afternoon, with all its chimneys smoking together lazily; but as soon as he had turned the corner by the gorse cover, where the hounds always met first when the season opened, there was nothing before him but the rubbed fawn velvet slope of the parched downs, the milky hollow of a quarry, the clipped ring of thorns round the farm in the valley that was called World’s End, the blue circle of the dew pond on Highover Hill, and the single dip in the majestic skyline ahead of him that had once been the ditch and wall of a Roman camp. The noise of his engine roared through the warm silence until it was answered by another roar, and over the slope of the hill came an aéroplane. It passed so low that its shadow made him blink; and he thought, “I should like to do that if I were a young man now.”

The camp was half a mile farther: he saw its dreary lines of wooden huts as he went by, and recollected, with his grim look, that this was no doubt the road along which Miss Purefoy’s little Welsh girl had so much enjoyed bicycling. The hospital was a mile beyond, in the dry and draughty shade of a plantation of young larches. It was a haphazard collection of wooden buildings, with wide verandas, roofs of pink imitation tiling, a great deal of barbed-wire fencing, a chicken run at the back, and a general air of having been left over, as indeed it had, from some stage of the war. It did, however, centre upon a more permanent nucleus, a gray stucco villa now converted into quarters for the nursing staff, and into an operating theatre which was passably well equipped, though not particularly up-to-date and lacking much that was desirable. Doctor Serocold had often peevishly thought, as he did now, driving in at the illkept gravel approach, overgrown with weeds, ‘‘This place does the town very little credit. People were keen enough at first when the thing was started: they liked the idea of putting up their own Cottage Hospital as a war memorial; and not having to be driven ten miles into zhe County Infirmary whenever they wanted an X-ray or a minor operation. But they had no idea what they were letting themselves in for. They thought they could set the whole place up for about half what was really wanted, and thought me very mean for suggesting that we might use up these huts that were already standing. And bricks and mortar was all they thought about. If they’d been let alone, they’d have stuck up a charming empty building,-without any beds or stores or instruments, and then wondered how it was to be kept going. They’re sick of paying for the running expenses already. Something will have to be done about a subscription scheme and paying beds, or we shall go to smash.” And he parked his car behind the same offensive silver sports model belonging to his rival Doctor Jevons, which he had already seen once that morning outside the Jolly Highwayman Hotel. It was occupying the very small area of shade provided by the clump of dying laurels opposite the front door, and Doctor Serocold was obliged to leave his battered roadster in the sun. “‘Of course, the fellow would get here on time, just because I’m a bit late for once,” he grumbled unjustly. “I had counted on five minutes to look at my own case before we went into the anzsthetic room. But now I suppose I shall have to do without it.”’ And he went into the hospital, feeling hot and out of temper.

He heard the other doctor talking to the matron in one of the airy, empty hut wards. At this healthy time of year only two of the beds in it were occupied; the rest stood neatly above their own reflections in the polished flooring, their red blankets and white sheets folded to an inch, their castors turned in, the boards on their iron footrails vacant of case sheets, their curtains blowing a little in the wind that came from the open downs. The place smelt of floor polish and faintly of drugs; its clean colours, light surfaces, and gleaining pallor made an innocent, even pleasing background for the two figures who turned toward Doctor Serocold as he entered. The matron was a tall, serious, and amiable person, but formal as her starched apron and blue uniform; she had recently replaced the very unsatisfactory person who had first undertaken the post. Doctor Serocold had not yet made much of her: he found her efficient but unsympathetic, and he did not know what she thought of him or of her employment. She seemed to have an equally polite but uninterested smile for him and for Doctor Jevons, who came forward with the loud laugh and the noisy affability which did not conceal the wary suspicion of his bulging brown eyes. He was a big, well-fed, muscular man in his late thirties, coarse, hard, and cheerful: he obviously ate and slept well, he liked the broad jokes that offended Doctor Serocold’s fastidious taste, and appeared good-natured enough on the surface. He had glanced at the clock, however, as the older man came in; and after his first, suspiciously eager, denial of Doctor Serocold’s gruff, “I’m late,” he tacitly underlined it by pulling a long face and remarking, ““You must be pretty busy to-day, with your partner dropping off suddenly like that. Poor old chap, a lot of people will miss him!”

It was the manner, rather than the words, which offended Doctor Serocold unreasonably. He nodded, and reflected, “‘I dare say it’s all my prejudice; but I don’t believe you’re as friendly as you’d like me to think you. All very well, your talking about Gaunt like that. You may pretend to be sorry he’s dead, but you’re pleased enough to have him out of your way. You’ve been going about for long'enough telling people that he} was past his work. You think I don’t know that, but there were plenty of people ready enough to pass it on. I dare say you'll start saying the same thing about me now, if you haven’t done it already.” And he replied stiffly that he was much obliged to Doctor Jevons for his condolences.

‘Puts you in an awkward hole, with no one but that gitl to help you,” continued Jevons with annoying patronage. “‘I suppose you'll have to get someone else down. Mind you, let me know if there’s anything I can do for you while you’re short-handed.” And he looked out of the corner of his eye to see how Doctor Serocold would take what had somehow sounded less like a friendly offer than an insult.