Charles Snow - Last Things

‘No,’ I said. ‘Intellectually I suppose you are right. Let’s get it over with.’

I said it in bad grace and a bad temper, but Mansel didn’t mind about that. He had, as usual, got his way.

He and Margaret were talking about the timetable.

‘If it’s all right with you, sir,’ Mansel turned to me, ‘there’s everything to be said for going into hospital this morning.’

‘It’s all one to me.’

‘Well done,’ said Mansel, as though I were an industrious but not specially bright pupil. ‘Last time, you remember, you had an engagement you said you couldn’t break. That delayed us for three or four days. I thought it was rather overconscientious, you know.’

I wasn’t prepared to bring those episodes back to mind: any more than to recall a visit to my old father, purely superstitious, just to placate the fates before an operation. Which my father, with his remarkable gift for reducing any situation to bathos, somewhat spoiled by apparently believing that I was suffering from a rupture, the only physical calamity which he seemed to consider possible for a grown-up man.

I was too impatient to recall any of that. I was thinking of nothing but the days laid out in the post-operational dark. I had no time for my own superstitions or anyone else’s chit-chat: I was in a hurry to get back into the light.

Within an hour I was already lying on my back, with the blindfolds on. Margaret had driven with me to the hospital, while I gazed out at people walking busily along the dingy stretch of the City Road: not a glamorous sight unless anything visible was better than none. To me, those figures in the pallid November sunshine looked as though they were part of a mescalin dream.

In the hospital, I was given the private room I had occupied before. Someone – through a mysterious performance of the bush telegraph which I didn’t understand – had already sent flowers. As she said goodbye, Margaret remarked that last time (operations took place in the morning) I had been quite lucid by the early evening. She would come and talk to me just before or after dinner tomorrow.

After she had left, I assisted in the French sense in the hospital drill. In bed: eyes blacked out: I even assisted in the receipt of explanations which I had heard before. Some nurse, whom I could recognise only by voice, told me that both eyes had to be blinded in order to give the retina a chance to settle under gravity; if the good eye was working, the other couldn’t rest.

Helpless. Legs stretched like a knight’s on a tomb: not a crusader knight’s because I wasn’t supposed to cross them. Just as Sheila’s father’s used to stretch, when he was taking care of himself.

‘Mr Mansel is very liberal,’ said another nurse’s voice. With some surgeons, a few years before, I should have had sandbags on both sides of my head. So that it stayed dead still. For a fortnight.

Tests. Blood pressure – that I could recognise. Blood samples. Voices across me, as though I were a cadaver. Passive subject, lying there. How easy to lose one’s ego. Persons wondered why victims were passive in the concentration camps. Anyone who wondered that ought to be put into hospital, immobilised, blinded. Nothing more dramatic than that.

Once or twice I found my ego, or at least asserted it. The anaesthetist was in the room, and a couple of nurses. ‘I’ve been here before, you know,’ I said. ‘The other time, when I came round, I was as thirsty as hell.’

‘That’s a nuisance, isn’t it?’ said the anaesthetist.

‘I suppose you dehydrate one pretty thoroughly.’

‘As a matter of fact, we do.’ A genial chuckle.

‘Can anything be done about it? Tomorrow afternoon?’

‘I’m afraid you will be thirsty.’

‘Is it absolutely necessary to be intolerably thirsty for hours? They gave me drops of soda water. That’s about as useful as a couple of anchovies.’

‘I’ll see what can be done.’

‘That’s too vague,’ I said. ‘Look here, I don’t complain much–’

I wrung some sort of promise that I might have small quantities of lime juice instead of soda water. That gave me disproportionate satisfaction, as though it were a major victory.

In the evening, though when I didn’t know, for already I was losing count of time, Mansel called in. ‘All bright and cheerful, sir?’ came the light, clear, upper-class voice.

‘That would be going rather far, Christopher,’ I said. Mansel chortled as though I had touched the heights of repartee. He wanted to have one more look at my eye. So, for a couple of minutes, I could survey the lighted bedroom. As with the figures in the City Road, the chairs, the dressing table, the commode stood out, preternaturally clear-edged.

‘Thank you, sir,’ said Mansel, replacing the pads with fingers accurate as a billiards-player’s. ‘All correct. See you early tomorrow morning.’

How early, again I didn’t know, for they had given me sleeping pills, and I was only half-awake when people were talking in the bedroom. ‘No breakfast, Sir Lewis,’ said the nurse, in a firm and scolding tone. ‘Nothing to drink.’

Someone pricked my arm. That was the first instalment of the anaesthetics, and I wanted to ask what they used. I said something, not clearly, still wanting to be sentient with the rest of them. In time (it might have been any time) a voice was saying: ‘He’s nearly out.’ With the last residue of will, I wanted to say no. But, as through smoke whirling in a tunnel, I was carried, the darkness soughing round me, into oblivion.

IN the dark, a hand was pressing on mine. A voice. The dark was close, closer than consciousness. What was that hand?

A voice. ‘Darling.’

The sound came from far away, then suddenly, like a face in a dream, dived on me. How much did I understand?

‘All’s well.’ It might have been a long time after. Perhaps the words were being repeated. Until – consciousness lapping in like a tide, coming in, sucking back, leaving a patch still aware – I spoke as though recognising Margaret’s voice.

‘Why are you here?’

‘I just dropped in.’

‘Is it evening?’

‘No, no. It isn’t teatime yet.’

That was her voice. That was all I knew.

Was there a memory, something else to hold on to?

‘Didn’t you say you’d come in the evening?’

‘Never mind. I thought I’d like to see you earlier.’ Utterly soothed, like a jealous man getting total reassurance or a drunk hearing a grievance argued away. That was her hand, pressing down on mine. I began to say that I was thirsty. Other voices. Coolness of glass against my lips. A sip. No taste.

‘You were going to give me lime juice.’ I held on to another memory.

‘I’m sorry,’ that must be a nurse, ‘it isn’t here.’

‘Why isn’t it here?’

Unsoothed again, a tongue of consciousness lapping further in. Darkness. Suspicion.

I was aware – not gradually, it happened in an instant – of pain, or heavy discomfort, in my left side, as though they had put a plaster there.

‘What’s happening?’ I said to Margaret. I could hear my voice like someone else’s, thick, alarmed, angry.

Voices in the room. Too many voices in the room. My right ankle was hurting, with my other foot I could feel a bandage on it. Margaret was saying ‘Everything’s all right,’ but other voices were sounding all round, and I cried out: ‘This isn’t my room.’

‘The operation’s over.’ That was Mansel, cool and light. ‘It’s gone perfectly well.’

‘Where am I?’

Mansel again. ‘We’re just going to take you back.’

Once more I was soothed: it seemed reasonable, like the logic of a dream. I didn’t notice motion – ramps, lifts, corridors didn’t exist; I must have returned to somewhere near the conscious threshold. It might have been one of those drunken nights when one steps out of a party and finds oneself, without surprise, in one’s own bed miles away.