Chapter Twelve #5
‘You’ll be my best man, naturally,’ he said, not waiting for a reply.
‘Now sit back down, before you fall down. I’d better go and get washed and brushed.
Supping with Leonid Sokolov this evening – terrifying man.
Best behaviour and clean collars all round.
God help me if he finds out I’m harbouring a pinko-lefty.
’ He pulled a face. ‘But you must stay as long as you like, naturally. Has your position gone the way of your hovel?’
‘I don’t know. As soon as I’m fit, I’ll go and find out.’
‘I’ll ask about, just in case.’
‘No, thank you. If needs be, I’ll find the next thing myself. I can’t keep relying on you, Tom. You may not mind, but I do.’
‘Well. Just don’t brood about it, will you? Without doubt, the time will come when I shall need your help.’ He waited a beat. ‘Twenty pounds do it? Until you’re back on your feet?’
‘Tom—’
‘Not a word about it, old boy.’
At the beginning of May, as Ralph was polishing an article for the British Medical Journal about Mr Miller’s injury, operation and recovery, Theo went to visit her mother.
It was a duty, rather than a pleasure. Sitting back to back with strangers in a four-seater trap, she spotted familiar faces as they neared Hallewell.
A few of them greeted her more warmly than Diana did.
‘You look well.’ She kissed Theo’s cheek, but they did not embrace. ‘It’s nice to see you dressed properly for once.’
‘Ralph believes that tight lacing will help my insides.’
‘Well, it stands to reason. You must do as he says.’
They walked slowly along the terrace, which was bathed in sunshine.
‘And are you again . . . in a happy condition?’ Diana asked.
‘It’s only been a few months,’ Theo said.
‘It’s been six. That’s plenty.’
‘It will happen when it happens, I suppose.’
Diana sighed. ‘Please tell me you’re more animated than this at home? Poor Ralph. It can be exhausting, you know.’
‘What can?’
‘Your . . .’ She waved a hand. ‘Melancholia. Doldrums. Whatever you like to call it.’
‘I don’t call it anything. It’s only the way I am.’
‘There, now.’ Diana looped her arm through her daughter’s, a rare gesture of solidarity.
‘Buck up, my dear. You’re still only one and twenty – more babies will come, and you’ll forget all about this sad time.
You have a wonderful husband. Attentive, and brilliant.
A great many women would give their eye-teeth to be in your shoes. Does that not hearten you?’
‘I know it ought to,’ Theo said. ‘Ralph says I must try to be happy, and happiness will follow.’
‘There – you see. I’m sure I’ve said the very same thing to you, before now. Practice makes perfect.’
Theo would happily never hear those words again.
‘What news from the village?’ she said.
Diana cast a measuring glance at her daughter. ‘Well. Toby Meriwether nearly killed himself. That caused a bit of a stir.’
Theo flinched, turning her face away instinctively. ‘What?’
‘Yes. Drank himself silly at that ice-skating festival, then sat out in the snow until he was all but frozen. He was discovered purely by chance, and only just in time – it was quite the drama. He caught a fever and was laid up with his parents for several weeks. Word was he’d done it on purpose.’
‘What? Why?’
‘I don’t know.’ Shielding her eyes with one hand, Diana looked across the lawn and tutted. ‘Those wretched peonies have collapsed again, when I did say they were to be staked.’ She sighed. ‘I heard that he is no longer engaged to be married, so perhaps that had something to do with it.’
Theo didn’t reply while she absorbed the news. She clasped her hands to keep them still.
‘It was a long engagement, was it not,’ she said at length, in a small voice.
‘Indeed. Perhaps the girl got tired of waiting, and I can’t say I blame her.
Such a . . . a grim young man he turned out to be.
And terribly bad-mannered with it. When I think of that time I went—’ Diana stopped herself short.
‘Anyway, let’s go in. Lunch won’t be long, and I need to talk to Cook about dinner. ’
‘I’ll sit out here for a little while,’ Theo said.
With her mother gone, she shut her eyes.
The image of Toby lying helpless in the snow was horrific.
But he had recovered; he had gone back to London.
He was well. She did not dwell on the fact that he was neither married nor engaged.
It was too late – she was married, and could have no hopes in that direction any more.
But the thought that he might have wanted to die was like a slow knife twisting in her flesh.
Theo had thought about her own death many times, confronted by the loss of her children, and of her friends.
But she had never thought about Toby’s. She could not.
Toby must simply live, and be happy. That was all she wanted from him now.
She didn’t feel that she deserved or even needed to be happy, but if he was not then she could see no point in any of it.
Word was he’d done it on purpose. But he had not died.
Fear and relief competed for control of her.
Theo sat still until the news about Toby had run its course, like a sudden illness. Until she felt able to walk and talk again.
To Theo’s delight, Timothy Crudge wrote that he was travelling down to visit a dig at Shaftesbury Abbey.
She wrote back at once to invite him to stay with them.
She planned walks, scenic drives, a picnic; to be taken on a guided tour of the abbey.
But when she told Ralph over breakfast the next day he glared at her, with little white crescents appearing above his nostrils.
‘You should have consulted me, Theo. Write and tell him it will not be convenient after all.’
‘But . . . why should it not be convenient? We’ve no other plans, and they will understand if you have patients that call you away. I’m happy to entertain them myself—’
‘Them?’
‘He will have his new assistant with him. Mr Bourton – the slight fellow with the blond hair. I think you met him at the Yule Ball?’
Ralph’s expression darkened further. ‘I did not. In any case, it’s out of the question.’
‘But . . . what do you mean, Ralph? Why should it be out of the question? Mr Crudge is far more of a father to me than my real father ever was, and—’
‘But he is not your father, Theo. He is not any kind of relative, and he is not a moral man. I will not have him in this house – least of all with his latest consort. Do you understand?’
Theo was outraged at hearing Crudge spoken of that way.
‘You mustn’t say such things! Mr Crudge is very dear to me. It’s been so long since I saw him—’
‘And it will be longer still. Forever, if I have my way. You will write back and tell him not to come.’
‘I will not!’ she cried, her heart racing.
‘I say that man is not welcome here! Do you hear me, Theo?’
‘I hear you, but I do not understand!’
Ralph’s face reddened. ‘Then be guided by me, as a wife should, and do as I say.’
But Theo would not. ‘How can you say he is not moral, when he is simply the kindest of men, and entirely respectable?’
‘Entirely respectable?’ Ralph scoffed. ‘You’re a foolish, blinkered girl. You understand nothing. And you will rescind the invitation – immediately.’
‘But I—’
‘Enough!’
He thumped his fist down so hard that the teacups rattled and a piece of toast fell out of the rack. Theo was shocked into silence. Ralph reached for the newspaper, turned a few pages then slapped it down in front of her. He stood up and kicked his chair out of his way.
‘Read. Perhaps it will elucidate.’ His eyes were snapping. ‘And do as I have said, whether it elucidates or not.’
Once he’d gone, Theo tried to steady herself.
She looked at the paper. It was an account of the trial of the playwright Oscar Wilde, who’d been charged with gross indecency, and named as a sodomite by the Marquess of Queensberry.
Wilde’s eloquent defence of the innocence of his relationship with Lord Alfred Douglas, the son of the marquess – the platonic ideal of the affinity between an older man, full of intellect and experience, and a younger one full of hope and joy.
How the court booed, and hissed, and cheered.
Wilde had been convicted, and sentenced to two years of hard labour – the harshest term the judge was able to impose, though he lamented its inadequacy in what he called the worst case he had ever tried.
Theo sat with it for a long time. She’d seen Crudge’s affection for Arnaud LeRoy, and the pain their separation had caused.
Had it been the love that dare not speak its name?
And if so, did that make it a lesser kind of love?
She thought of Nicholas Bourton, the young man now employed as Uncle Crudge’s assistant.
He had soft, dreamy eyes, and deferred to Crudge with obvious devotion; and for his part Crudge had seemed brighter, and happier, than he had in some time.
The smile that she loved was big and horsey again.
The thought of labelling it unnatural – even criminal – was unsettling, but she quickly decided that even if Crudge had loved Arnaud, and now loved Mr Bourton, in some way that went beyond friendship, then it was an entirely private matter, and one that altered none of her affection for him.
Suddenly, all the times she’d arranged to see Crudge only to have to cancel because Ralph needed her for something, or was busy, or had decided she was not well enough, were thrown into a new light.
Her heart sank even further. And now that Ralph had finally named his aversion, she knew he wouldn’t change his mind.
Her uncle could not come to stay, and seeing him at all would surely be more difficult from then on.
Audrey found her crying, still at the breakfast table.
‘Hush now, miss. We’ll find a way,’ she said, as Theo gulped, and nodded, and picked up her pen to write to Crudge. To tell him not to come.
It was a long time before a reply came to her other letter, the one written in secret in the middle of the night. Audrey dutifully spirited it away, and gave it to Theo once Ralph had gone out.
3, Springfield Villas,
Church Lane,
Chobham,
Surrey
Wednesday, 3rd July, 1895
Dear Mrs Anscombe,
I trust this finds you in good health. I must admit that your letter came as something of a surprise, arriving as it did so long after our last correspondence, and being so perturbing in content.
I take no offence at either of those things.
However, it has taken me some time to decide how best to reply to you.
The questions you ask raise complicated points within the field of medical ethics; to answer succinctly will be a challenge.
Let me first confess that, though you have included no names, I believe I know the case to which you are alluding, since it occurred during our stay at Hallewell.
If I am correct, and it is the behaviour of your own husband you have cause to question, then I can only reiterate my surprise, and my discomfort.
However, I see no reason why I should not respond to you in general terms.
Firstly, the easiest to answer. I cannot say for sure, but my best guess at the meaning of M.E.
, in the context of the labelling of specimens, would be ‘Mortuus Est’, this being the Latin for ‘it died’; i.e.
, the subject did not survive the procedure.
Please understand that the impersonal, even callous, tone of such a notation will not be intended to slight the patient in question.
It is merely a way for the physician to maintain professional impersonality.
Person becomes object, and a distance is thereby created that is entirely necessary for calm and effective treatment to take place.
It is likely that a well-equipped hospital would have the facilities and substances required to prepare specimens of bone for preservation.
As you appear to be aware, the retention of such samples, i.e.
, the use of mortal remains for the purposes of medical advancement, can, in most cases, be done lawfully only with the express permission of the donor or their legal representative.
The dissection and retention of the cranium of a minor would be lawful only with the permission of their legal guardian.
A foetus would be treated as tissue taken from the body of its mother, rather than as a person in its own right.
Any adult may, in life, give permission for their remains to be donated to medical science.
Relatives may contest those wishes, and prevent the donation.
Under the terms of the Anatomy Act of 1832, the remains of those who die as paupers or without next of kin in either a hospital, workhouse or prison, may be sold to a medical professional for dissection.
So, in the case you describe, I suggest the most likely scenario to be that the proprietor of the charitable home where the girl was lodged gave permission, and probably received remuneration, for the donation of her body for dissection.
I understand the distress that can arise at the thought of a loved one being examined and dissected in this way.
It is for that reason that the Anatomy Act allows for relatives to prevent the action.
It does not, alas, allow the same right to a friend or acquaintance.
To my mind, the dead can suffer no indignity.
The person has ascended to a higher plane, and what remains is merely earthly matter, no different, in essence, to a rock or a tree.
The dissection is done neither ghoulishly nor voyeuristically, but sombrely, and with the sole purpose of improving medical practice.
No doctor may become a doctor without having studied, at first hand, the anatomy of the human body.
On a personal note, I should like to add that your letter saddened me.
Perhaps as a result of my wife’s affinity with you, I have liked to imagine you happy and well these days.
When I think of my dear Rosalind, I often find myself thinking of you by extension.
Two young women whose paths happened to cross.
That she should be taken and you spared causes me to reflect upon the arbitrary nature of human fate.
Your letter does not seem to me to have been written by a person who is happy or well.
If I may be so bold as to counsel you, let it be to say that a life spent dwelling on past grievances, and past losses, is a life blighted.
Do not poison yourself thus, Mrs Anscombe.
However, should you wish to discuss these matters further, I am at your service.
I remain,
Dr. Albert M. Mackie