Chapter Eight 1891 #2
‘It’s only . . . To be the last one remaining. It’s . . . how I imagine it might feel to be marooned, on a barren island, watching your ship disappear out of sight.’
Crudge squeezed her hand. ‘Courage, dear one,’ he said. ‘This too shall pass.’
Theo didn’t want to spoil things, so she sipped her champagne and drummed up a smile.
‘You’ll never guess what Mama has given me for my birthday.’
‘No?’
‘A servant. A lady’s maid, all to myself.’
Crudge’s woolly eyebrows shot up.
‘Oh yes,’ Theo said. ‘We went down to St Agnes’s this morning to pick her out. Like a hat in a shop window.’
‘Really, Theo!’ Crudge chuckled.
‘It’s true! Her name is Audrey Wagstaff. She’s very small, and quiet, but I liked her better than the rest of them.’ She thought about it for a moment. ‘Perhaps Mama plans to make the girl her spy?’
‘I’m sure that can’t be it.’
‘But she watches me all the time. As though I might suddenly do something terrible – and by terrible, I mean anything to discomfit the guests.’
Crudge looked thoughtful. ‘Yes. I have often reflected upon the misfortune of your being raised in an hotel. You’re simply not suited to it. The constant company of strangers must be wearing indeed.’
‘You know me very well.’ Theo paused. ‘But – tush! For shame, Uncle! We are not an hotel.’
The day after Theo’s birthday, Dr Anscombe paid a visit.
Diana had invited him so many times during the two years since Kit’s death that it sometimes wasn’t clear whether he’d come to examine Theo, or simply on a social call.
Theo was always pleased to see him, and they walked around the gardens, along the damp paths beneath the weeping birches, past the ornamental pond where the goldfish hung stationary near the bottom.
‘And how have you been, really?’ he asked.
Theo glanced at him, then away. The same strange blurring of his role was in their conversations as well. An uncertainty as to whether he was her physician or her friend. Whichever he was, she found it easier to speak to him than to anyone other than Crudge. It felt like he was on her side.
‘Has my mother said something?’ she asked.
‘She mentioned that you reacted badly, yesterday, visiting the Friendless Girls’ home.’
‘It . . . brought back a memory, that was all.’
‘Of Melissa?’
Theo nodded. They stopped at the furthest point from the house, where they were nevertheless still visible to Diana, out on the terrace with a number of the guests. Dr Anscombe reached for a tall, dried stalk of verbena flowers, snapped it off and began to shred it with restless fingers.
‘You really oughtn’t,’ Theo told him. ‘Mama likes the stems to remain through the autumn, for their height.’
‘Oh!’
He dropped it at once, embarrassed, and brushed his fingers on his waistcoat. His eyes were extra blue against the colourless sky that day.
‘You felt afraid to go back there?’ he said.
‘Not afraid, exactly . . .’ Theo found it hard to explain. ‘It is more like . . . an aversion. It’s quite . . . physical. And there need be no rational cause for it whatsoever.’
Dr Anscombe studied her closely. ‘I see.’
‘I’m fine, now,’ Theo said uncomfortably.
‘It’s good that you’re able to identify the reaction you are having, and to some degree separate the feeling from any source of real, physical danger. That’s an important step, Miss Hallewell.’
‘Oh? Am I cured?’
‘Of your melancholia? I think not. But you are improving.’
‘Well, please tell that to my mother. She doesn’t help. Constant scrutiny might put anybody on edge.’
The doctor, who frequently heard but never endorsed Theo’s criticism of Diana, remained silent.
‘Does she still think I should be consigned to the lunatic asylum?’ Theo asked.
She tried to say it lightly, but the idea caused a flash of the exact feeling of danger the doctor had just described.
The Laverstock Sanatorium for Hysterical Women and Girls.
It was just outside Salisbury, and Diana had first mentioned it early in 1890, when she’d intercepted a letter before it was sent, and discovered that Theo had been writing to Toby all the while.
The storm had blown for days. Dear God, Theo, have you lost your mind?
All it would take was Dr Anscombe’s prescription and her mother’s consent, and she could be sent away for an indefinite spell of treatment.
‘I have told you, I will not let that happen,’ the doctor said with quiet emphasis.
‘There have been tremendous advances in the treatment of acute melancholia; also with hysteria and the like. Cold-water therapies, and some using electricity that appear most promising. But you are not an hysteric. And your melancholia is lifting.’
‘Is it?’
‘A little more each time I visit. You may not feel it yet . . . not altogether. But I see it.’
‘Oh,’ Theo said, surprised that hearing him say so made her feel a touch better.
‘Sometimes, time is the best medicine of all,’ he murmured, still gazing down at her. ‘You experienced a significant trauma, and it shocked you badly. But you are young, and you are mending. And . . . you will always have me to talk to, should you need to.’
It didn’t sound the sort of thing a doctor would say. Theo looked away, suddenly shy.
‘We’d better go in, I suppose,’ she said. ‘No doubt Mama will want to hear all about your latest surgeries.’
‘For such an elegant lady, she does show a remarkable interest in the more visceral side of my work.’
‘Well, we hear precious little of the sensational here in Hallewell,’ Theo said. ‘Though I’m sure it has more to do with the visiting ladies liking very much to converse with a handsome doctor than with any particular interest in medicine.’
He looked down, and Theo saw a smile playing on his lips. With sudden mortification, she realised she’d accidentally called him handsome. To her, it was merely a fact; something everybody said, rather than something she thought personally.
He stayed for dinner, in the end, and a youngish widow named Mrs Birch, travelling with a spinster aunt for company, made sure to sit beside him, and leaned towards him every time she spoke as though he were hard of hearing. Letting their sleeves and shoulders brush.
‘Dr Anscombe only recently saved the life of a neighbour of ours,’ Diana declared, to their end of the table.
She was almost proprietorial, Theo noticed. As though the doctor were a favourite possession of hers that she liked to show off.
‘Poor Mrs Cox had suffered terribly for years, and no physician had been prepared to treat her. For the longest time, the poor thing thought that the swelling was a child, growing slowly because of her advanced years.’
The other women murmured in sympathy. Diana tipped her glass towards the doctor.
‘But Dr Anscombe identified the problem in an instant, and Mrs Cox is quite recovered.’
Theo, watching without particular interest, caught her mother dipping her eyelashes at the doctor, the exact same way Missy had. She saw him pretend not to notice.
‘It was a large cyst, in fact,’ he said. ‘Growing upon her right ovary.’
There was a slight collective wince. Diana’s expression turned wary.
‘The abdomen is a straightforward enough place to operate,’ he went on.
‘If the correct aseptic measures are followed, there need be little expectation of difficulty, in most cases. It is really in the fields of heart and cerebral disease where we must improve – the latter being where I hope to make advances.’
‘I understand that your father, too, was a noted physician?’ said Mrs Birch.
‘A physician, yes; but not a surgeon. He did important and pioneering work into the treatment of diseases of the kidneys and liver.’
Diana smiled graciously. ‘So it would seem that excellence runs in the family.’
‘I simply cannot imagine anything more terrifying,’ Mrs Birch confided, leaning in close again, ‘than performing a surgical operation.’
‘It is no small thing,’ the doctor agreed.
‘And there is still much to be learned. But we mustn’t let the fear of failure stay our hands.
It is by pushing against the edges of our knowledge that we will succeed in treating ever more serious diseases.
While we remain so very ignorant about the particular structures and diseases of the human brain, people will continue to die.
We must be bold enough to seek solutions, where at present we have only theories. ’
Theo dropped her knife and fork with more of a clatter than she’d meant to. A shiver ran down her spine. Those sitting nearest to her turned to look, and she stared at her plate, wishing she could disappear.
‘Forgive me,’ Dr Anscombe murmured.
Theo glanced up, and saw the stricken look on his face.
‘Forgive me,’ he said again. ‘Such things ought not to be discussed at the dinner table.’
‘Well, I think it’s extraordinary,’ Mrs Birch declared, dismissing Theo with a sideways glance. ‘Heroic, in fact.’
She laid her fingers on the doctor’s sleeve. He reached for his glass.
‘I only do what I can,’ he said. ‘“As far as power and discernment may be mine”, to quote the oath.’
‘I wonder that you don’t go up to London and work in one of the large medical institutions there. Surely you might find greater opportunity, and better facilities?’
‘Well.’ Anscombe smiled modestly. ‘There have been offers, but I have always been of the opinion that all patients deserve the very best surgical care, whether they happen to live in London or the provinces.’
Theo remembered the doctor’s distress when he’d told her about Missy.
How intensely he had felt his own failure.
He’d made it his life’s work to alleviate suffering and save the lives of others.
She couldn’t imagine being possessed of such learning, or dedication.
For a moment she was awestruck, and felt herself a lesser species than he.