Chapter Eleven 1895 #3
‘So pale!’ She smiled guardedly. ‘But you look well in spite of it. How are you?’
‘I am quite recovered, thank you.’
‘Are you?’ Hermione leaned towards her, searching, and Theo couldn’t hide it.
‘Of course not. But perhaps . . . in time . . .’
‘You poor thing. I have thought of you constantly; it’s been torture not to see you, when I knew how heartsore you would be.’
‘Well.’ Theo took a quick breath. ‘Life must go on, as my husband says. I must not let myself become overwhelmed.’
Hermione studied her for a while. ‘Do you know,’ she said, ‘the moment our babies were born, Frederick was besotted? Oh, yes – they were never a nuisance to him, not even when they mewled and puked.’ She smiled briefly.
‘But whilst I was carrying them . . . it was as though they weren’t entirely real.
Naturally, he understood that they were coming, but in the meantime he treated me as though perhaps I had a slight cold, or some sort of dropsy that caused me to swell up. ’
She reached for Theo’s hand. ‘We become mothers at the moment of conception,’ she said. ‘But I don’t think a man becomes a father until the child is in his arms. It’s not their fault. Only a question of perception, I suppose.’
‘He calls them “foetuses”, and won’t let me call them by name,’ Theo said. ‘He wouldn’t let me . . . see them. And I can’t seem to forgive him.’
‘I understand. But do try to; you’ll both be happier if you succeed. Nobody can be forced to feel something they do not feel. It’s difficult, of course; I expect you have felt very alone.’
‘It has created a . . . distance . . . between us.’
‘You will see – when the baby is here, when Ralph can see it and smell it and weigh it in his hands, he will love it every bit as much as you love the two you’ve already carried.’
‘Hermione, I . . . I don’t think I can do it. I don’t think I can go through this again. I can hardly bear for him to touch me, in case . . .’
Her friend’s face creased with concern. ‘Just let a little more time pass.’
‘The first time, with Amelia, Ralph—’ Theo hesitated. ‘There was a traumatic event in my past, and I lost Amelia on the anniversary of it. Ralph noticed, though I had not. He suggested . . . he thought perhaps my fear of that memory was the cause.’
‘He said that?’ Hermione frowned.
‘Do you think he could be right?’
‘No. I do not.’
‘And now, this time . . . He brought a doctor to see me, a specialist, but I detested the man and wouldn’t see him. Ralph thinks I should have done.’ She took a shaky breath. ‘He blames me, Hermione.’
‘I’m sure it was only sorrow and disappointment that made him say such things.’
But Hermione didn’t look sure at all.
‘He blames me, and I . . . think he’s right to. So, how can I try to have another?’
‘Oh, my dear,’ Hermione said sadly. ‘How can you not?’
Theo told Ralph about Hermione’s visit as he was reading the newest copy of The Lancet.
‘She and the Charitable Ladies’ Society are organising a skating gala at the end of the month, to raise money for those put out of work by this terrible weather.’
‘Hm, indeed,’ Ralph said.
‘I would very much like us to go. It’s been years since I skated.’
He looked over at her. ‘A skating gala? I’m not sure that’s wise, my dear.’
‘I won’t fall. I’m rather good at it.’
He smiled. ‘Are you indeed?’
‘It would cheer me no end, Ralph.’
‘Then we shall go,’ he said, distracted. ‘We will do whatever will cheer you.’
‘What is it, Ralph? What are you reading?’
‘Oh, nothing . . . Well, in truth, something.’
He threw the magazine down and got up, crossing to the fireplace to jab pointlessly at the coals.
‘A great breakthrough, in fact.’ He gave a tight little smile.
‘A man named William Arbuthnot Lane has successfully repaired a section of a patient’s cranium with a steel plate.
The area of skull had fragmented, and natural regrowth was impossible. ’
‘That’s . . . remarkable,’ Theo said. ‘How did the patient come by such a terrible injury?’
‘That’s scarcely the point.’ Ralph took a breath before continuing. ‘It is a technique I have tried myself – only once with the skull, but with other fractured bones. I have tried without success.’
‘Oh.’
‘There is always some rejection of the plate, leading to infection and weakening of the bone at the anchoring points . . . But I feel certain I would have perfected the technique, if I’d only had more chances to attempt it.’
‘But now this Dr Lane has managed it you may use his method, and—’
‘The discovery ought to have been mine, Theo! Don’t you see? Every time I am close to something . . . Every time I dare to think my time has come, I am pipped at the post.’
Theo didn’t know what to say, but Ralph had turned to her expectantly.
‘You have saved so many lives, Ralph—’ She floundered. ‘And . . . your treatment of Mr Oadby . . .’
Ralph silenced her with a flick of his hand.
‘A jawbone. What is a jawbone? One could tinker at it for months. But the skull . . . The name of William Arbuthnot Lane will go down in history, don’t you see?
To achieve an historic first in one’s field is everything, Theo!
I don’t expect you to understand. How can you, when there is nothing you have ever worked towards?
But the constant endeavour . . . Trying and failing and trying again differently.
And having to wait passively for cases to come along in order to be able to work, when I am so close! ’
He dragged in a breath and sighed it out.
‘It’s exhausting. Sometimes, I think . . . I fear I will never succeed. I will never break new ground, or make my mark.’
Theo didn’t know how to console him. He was right – she didn’t understand.
She had never had ambitions, only unfulfilled desires.
But that was not what silenced her. It was the way Ralph had spoken about his patients, and his work.
As though the relief of their suffering were secondary to the advance of medicine as a whole, and to his own place in that advance.
As though those two aims were somehow disconnected, when she felt certain they ought not to be.
‘Still,’ Ralph said, almost to himself. ‘It is early days for Lane’s cranial patient; it has been but two months since the operation, he writes. There is still time for porosis to develop, or resorption of the fracture points to destabilise the anchors.’
He thought for a moment, brightening. ‘Necrosis is a possibility, as is reduced cortical perfusion. Yes, it is early days. The patient may yet succumb.’
Toby scraped his thumb down the window and watched the frost build up under his nail. It quickly melted to a sliver of water. Cold radiated from the glass, in spite of the rags he’d stuffed around the frame; he could see his breath in the frigid air.
He hated to think how cold the poorest must be, in this spell of brutal weather.
That morning he’d had to break a film of ice on his water jug in order to shave, but he knew he should count his blessings.
He had a room of his own, a roof over his head, and he had eaten that day.
He went back to the fireplace, where a few coals softened the chill, pulled his chair nearer and propped his feet up, as close as he dared.
Wedging his hands into his armpits, he looked across at the little table where his breakfast sat wrapped in a cloth.
He was sorely tempted to wolf it down. With a sigh, he reached instead for the brandy on the mantelpiece and poured himself a tot.
The heat of it sank through his gut and into his bones.
He poured another; then a third. It was rough stuff – inexpensive – but he’d got used to it.
He’d been planning to write but hadn’t the energy, and his fingers were too cold to hold a pen.
It was too early to go to bed. Instead, he took out his notebook and read over a case he’d been following through the courts, which had reached its inevitable conclusion today.
He’d seen the court’s decision coming, and had already drafted his comment.
It was another ‘Cain and Abel’ case – as the papers insisted on calling any crime involving brothers.
This was a family of bakers called Hibbert, living in Spitalfields.
The younger brother, George, had killed the elder, William.
They’d been in love with the same girl for years, a ragged orphan who’d been taken in from the streets at the age of eleven.
The boys had been twelve and thirteen at that point, so had never felt her to be their sister.
William had proposed to her, but her feelings had always been stronger for George.
The brothers loved one another, and neither was a violent man; their feud had been one of hurt and silent frustration.
But then one day a scuffle, and a single punch thrown so unexpectedly, and being so out of character, that William hadn’t seen it coming.
He’d fallen back, landed awkwardly, and died.
Today, they had heard that George would hang. He had wept. The girl had wept. Their parents had wept. The public gallery had erupted, mostly in outrage.
It was no mystery to Toby that cases like this took hold of him and wouldn’t let go.
This case in particular: he had got into fights at Durham, he’d thrown impulsive punches.
Any one of them might have accidentally killed the recipient in the exact same way, and sent him to the gallows in Kit’s footsteps.
They might both have ended up hanged for inadvertently causing a death.
There was a narrow window of time in which the court’s decision might be overturned, or George’s sentence commuted, and there was an outside chance that Toby might make a difference by writing about it. He sketched a first draft in his head: