Chapter Ten 1893 #3
She felt the same gentle awe as whenever he was called to an emergency; a startled pride that this man, who had such skill and knowledge, had chosen her. A tantalising glimpse of what it might be like to eventually fall in love with him.
‘I’ll be back tomorrow, or the day after. As soon as he is stable. And I’ll send Audrey down to you . . .’
‘There’s no need. I’ll be perfectly all right.’
‘If you’re sure?’
He was already halfway out of the door.
A kick in the head, Theo thought, as she went down to dinner alone.
A percussive injury to the skull. Just like Missy’s.
Though, surely, Kit’s stone had had nothing of the power of a horse’s hoof.
He hadn’t thrown it with any great force – it had been more of a fling than a shot.
He hadn’t taken aim, or wound back his arm.
The memory sent a shock up her spine. She wondered if this man would undergo the same operation as Missy; if he would emerge safely from the chloroform.
Thus distracted, she spoke little at dinner, and afterwards declined an invitation to play canasta with a couple celebrating their golden wedding anniversary.
Ralph did not return the next day, so Theo walked along the shore and out on to the Cobb.
It had been a long time since she’d done anything by herself, and she loved it.
She bought a small, polished fossil of a long-dead sea snail for Audrey, and a postcard, which she wrote to Crudge in a café.
Here I am on my honeymoon, all by myself, she wrote, and explained about the patient.
The sea is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.
Even as she wrote it, she thought of Toby’s smile.
One of the sudden, rare smiles that transformed his face.
She missed a breath, realising she’d never see that smile again.
Poor Ralph, she wrote. We were having a lovely time, and he was so disappointed to leave.
A telegram came in the morning to say that Ralph would stay on at the hospital, so Theo travelled back alone.
She wasn’t upset about it. When she got home she was surprised to find Ralph already there, slouched at the desk in his study with a bottle of wine beside him.
He looked so utterly dejected that her heart went out to him.
She crouched beside him. ‘Ralph? What is it?’
‘Mr Jackson died.’ He peered foggily at the clock on the mantelpiece. ‘At about the same time as you were leaving Yeovil Junction.’
‘Oh, Ralph . . . I’m so sorry to hear it.’
‘I failed him. The operation . . . did not go well. I thought it had, but . . . He did wake, and was able to say a few words, though weakly. It lasted only an hour, and then . . .’
He shook his head.
‘But you tried,’ Theo said. ‘His injury must have been very bad indeed.’
‘It was severe, but . . . the operation should have released the pressure of the clot. It should have worked!’
‘Ralph, you mustn’t—’
‘What’s the use of my trying, Theo?’ He stared down at her, wide-eyed. ‘What’s the use, if I am to fail, over and over again?’
‘The use?’ She searched for the right response. ‘The use is that you give them a chance! That you endeavour to save them, when otherwise they would surely die. And you do not fail, over and over. Far more often, you succeed.’
‘But I should have been able to save him! Don’t you see? When everything was performed correctly this time.’
Theo flinched as his voice rose; as it abandoned sorrow for frustration.
‘Ralph, you have said to me before – you have said about me – that the human brain is not a Swiss timepiece, where each part fits neatly into its place, and may be replaced if fault is found.’
‘No.’ Ralph slumped back, frowning. ‘No, it is a maze that I cannot map. Time, though . . . now that you mention it, perhaps that is the key. Perhaps I simply did not get to him in time. Perhaps the bleeding had already caused damage that relieving the pressure could not undo.’
Theo tried again. ‘What you do is astonishing. You must not blame yourself! You might not have saved this life, but you have saved many others – and you will save many more, I know it.’
The look he gave her hardened, and she faltered.
‘Platitudes do not interest me, Theo.’
He pushed back his chair, got unsteadily to his feet. ‘Time – yes. If I had got to him sooner . . . If I had been here when he was first brought in, rather than off . . .’ – he waved one hand – ‘. . . taking the sea air . . .’
He left her there, crouching by his desk, stung by the possibility that he blamed her, somehow, for the fact that they’d been on their honeymoon when Mr Jackson was kicked by his horse.
Late in the night, when she awoke in their bed to find herself alone – Ralph’s pillow rumpled but cool – it was something else that struck her. Something that Ralph had said: When everything was performed correctly this time.
The loss of his patient affected Ralph badly.
His self-recrimination manifested as long silences – conversation floundered, whatever subject Theo attempted to launch into.
He was not cold towards her, nor angry, only absent.
After a fortnight it got heavier, like something unwieldy she was forced to drag around behind her, and after three weeks she was ready to scream just to break the silence.
It was worse than a four-hour dinner with reticent guests; worse than squirming beneath her mother’s stony gaze when she had caused offence.
The tension knotted her guts, and made her feel sick.
‘You are such a good man, to feel for your patients the way that you do,’ she tried, at dinner one evening. ‘Such a . . . kind-hearted man . . .’
Her voice dried up.
‘Kindness will not save lives,’ he murmured. ‘Only skill and knowledge will do.’
They got up in silence once the food was finished, and Ralph stopped her, touching his fingers to the gold butterfly at her throat. Rosalind Mackie’s pendant, which was still her favourite.
‘You wear this so often,’ he said. ‘Rather than either of the necklaces I have given you.’
A silver locket for her nineteenth birthday, engraved with a bird with a tiny sapphire eye, and the pearl choker that had been her wedding present.
‘Well . . . those you have given me are far more precious. I would fear to wear them every day, and risk them.’
His mouth twisted unhappily. ‘So, it is not simply that you do not care for them?’
‘How could I not care for them? They’re beautiful.’
‘Well. Scant point in my buying them if you never wear them.’
The following day Theo wore the silver locket, but Ralph didn’t seem to notice. Only after dark, in bed, did she have the courage to beg him to relent.
‘Help me to understand it, Ralph.’
‘But how can you?’ he said. ‘How can you possibly grasp the anguish of failure, when you have not the burden of responsibility, and never will?’
‘But I . . . I felt responsible for Missy, and for Kit. I remember full well the pain of my failure towards them. So, I do know it is terribly hard.’
‘That was different. You were not responsible for them; your role in it was entirely passive. And the trauma quite undid you, as I recall.’
Theo didn’t press the point.
It was pure luck that, a few days later, nature provided a solution.
Theo had never been one to count the days, or the weeks, and usually relied on Audrey to remind her when the time of the month was coming.
So, it was Audrey who brought a supply of clean towels, and found the previous ones untouched.
‘Miss . . .’
She pointed to the wads of white muslin still neat and tidy in the drawer. Theo didn’t follow her at first.
Audrey spelled it out. ‘And it ought to have come on this month, if it was going to.’
‘Oh,’ Theo said, the realisation emptying her head completely for a moment.
‘“Oh” indeed.’ Audrey gave a grin. ‘That ought to buck him up,’ she added, almost to herself.
She was right. Theo told Ralph the news at breakfast, and he stared at her quite as emptily as she had stared at Audrey before delight dawned on his face like a sunrise.
‘Are you quite sure?’
‘As sure as I can be. All of the signs . . .’
The nausea she had put down to anxiety; the tiredness she’d thought was due to Ralph’s mood.
‘On our honeymoon?’ he said.
‘Before that, I think. Perhaps eight weeks, though . . . it is difficult to tell.’
He hugged her tight, then held her at arm’s length. ‘And you didn’t tell me?’
‘I didn’t know! Audrey has guessed it, else I still wouldn’t have.’
‘But this is wonderful . . . My clever, clever girl!’
Ralph dropped to his knees in front of her and stared at a point between her hip bones.
‘Hello,’ he said, and Theo laughed.
‘Ralph, what are you doing?’
‘It is only polite.’ He pressed his ear to her skirt. ‘It’s a boy!’
‘Ah, I’m told men always want boys.’
‘I want girls, too, but nothing is better for a girl than an older brother.’
He stood up and hugged her again, smoothing back her hair.
‘You have made me very happy,’ he said.
‘I’m happy, too.’
It was true. Whatever doubts she’d had, and however startling the news, she was happy.
It seemed utterly bizarre, and entirely miraculous, that a child had simply .
. . appeared inside her, conjured into existence from pieces of her, pieces of Ralph.
It felt like a magic spell had been cast; something far older and wiser than she would ever be.
A tingle of that old feeling from childhood, of the world being full of wonder and mystery and journeys to take.
A journey, she suddenly understood, did not have to mean travelling to a different place.
The space in her heart that had so worried her was already filling up.
Within days of finding out about the baby, it had vanished altogether.