Archibald Cronin - The Stars Look Down

“I’m sorry, Hilda,” she breathed. “I had no idea. I thought you were alone.”

Hilda rose. She had been sitting in silence, and she seemed not entirely pleased to see Aunt Carrie. But she said:

“Come in, Aunt Carrie. You know David Fenwick.”

In a greater flutter than ever Aunt Carrie shook hands with David. She was aware that Hilda and David were friends. But the sight of him in the flesh, her nice young man who had once tutored Arthur and who now made such terribly inflammatory speeches in Parliament, almost overcame her. She subsided in a chair by the window.

David glanced at his watch.

“I’m afraid I must be going,” he said to Hilda, “if I’m to be at the hospital this afternoon.”

“Oh, don’t let me drive you away,” Aunt Carrie cried hastily. She thought him pale and worn. His eyes were worried, too, dreadfully worried; they had a look of pained expectancy.

“It’s a beautiful day outside,” she went on quickly. “I thought it might rain, but it hasn’t.”

“I don’t think it’ll rain,” Hilda said after an awkward pause.

Aunt Carrie said:

“Indeed, I hope not.”

Another pause.

“I came across the Gardens,” Aunt Carrie persisted. “They’re very beautiful just now.”

“Are they?” Hilda said. “Yes, I suppose they are just now.”

“There was the dearest little mite by the Round Pond,” Aunt Carrie continued, smiling. “In a tiny red coat. I do wish you could have seen him. He was sweet .”

Despite her good intentions Aunt Carrie had the confused feeling that Hilda was not really attending to her. Vaguely taken aback she gazed at David, who stood silent and preoccupied by the window.

Aunt Carrie smelled trouble in the air — she had a nose for trouble like a fox for a hunting morning. Curiosity rose within her. But David looked at his watch again, then glanced towards Hilda.

“Now I really must go,” he said. “I’ll see you again at three.” He shook hands with Aunt Carrie and went out. Pricking up her ears, Aunt Carrie could hear him talking to Hilda in the hall, but to her disappointment could not make out what he said. For once curiosity mastered timidity. When Hilda returned she exclaimed:

“What’s the matter, Hilda dear? He seemed so upset. And what did he mean by hospital?”

For a moment Hilda gave no appearance of having heard. Then her answer came unwillingly as if once and for all she wished to cut short Aunt Carrie’s curiosity.

“It’s his wife. She’s in hospital. Being operated on this afternoon.”

“Oh dear, oh dear!” gasped Aunt Carrie, and her eyes went wide in a spasm of satisfied sensation. “But—”

“There aren’t any buts,” Hilda cut in shortly. “I’m doing the operation and I prefer not to discuss it.”

Aunt Carrie’s eyes went wider than ever. There was a silence, then she murmured, humbly:

“Shall you make her better, Hilda dear?”

“What do you expect?” Hilda retorted rudely.

Aunt Carrie’s face fell. Oh dear, oh dear, Hilda could still be very abrupt when she chose. She wanted terribly to ask Hilda what was wrong with David’s wife, but Hilda’s expression forbade it. Crestfallen and subdued she sighed deeply and was again silent for a minute. Then, remembering suddenly, her face lit up. She smiled:

“Oh, by the way, Hilda, I’ve brought you the sweetest little present. At least”—modestly—“I think it’s rather sweet.” And, beaming towards the sombre Hilda, she gaily produced the letter opener.

At half-past one that afternoon David set out for St. Elizabeth’s Hospital — where, following a satisfactory blood-test, Jenny had now been transferred. He was aware that he was much too early, but he could not bear to sit still in his rooms thinking of Jenny under the operation. Jenny, his wife, being operated on to-day!

Often during these months of treatment which had been necessary to fit her for the operation he had asked himself about his feeling for Jenny. It was not love. No, it could not be love, that was dead a long time ago. But it was a great and overwhelming feeling nevertheless. And it was something more than pity.

Her story was quite clear to him now; she had told him snatches here and there, lying occasionally and embroidering always, but failing pitifully to make fiction out of fact. When she first came to London she took a post at one of the big department stores. But the work was hard, much harder than at Slattery’s, and the pay small, much smaller than her optimism had allowed her to imagine. Soon Jenny had a friend. Then she had another friend. Jenny’s friends had all been perfect gentlemen at the start and had shown themselves in the end to be perfect beasts. The lady-companion story was of course a myth — she had never been out of England. He found it strange that Jenny should have so little sense of her own position. She had still the same childish facility for excusing herself, the same childish capacity for tearful self-compassion. She was hurt and she was down, but it was not she who was to blame. “Men, David,” she wept. “You wouldn’t believe. I never want to see another man, not as long as I live.”

Still the same Jenny. When he brought her flowers she was deeply gratified, not because she cared much for flowers, but because it would show sister she was “a cut above” the others in the ward. He suspected Jenny had elaborated a little tale for her sister, no doubt a polite, romantic tale. It was the same when, on her transference to St. Elizabeth’s, he had arranged for her to have a side-room — it indicated to the new sister how highly he “thought of her.” Even in hospital she was romantic. It was incredible, but it was true. When she had condemned the bestiality of man she asked him please to hand her the tube of lipstick from her bag which she had smuggled into the locker beside her bed. She kept a tiny mirror hidden under her bedside table so that she might arrange herself before his visits. The mirror was forbidden, but Jenny kept it; she wanted to be nice for him, she said.

David sighed as he turned from the Embankment towards the hospital. He hoped things would all turn out right in the end — he hoped this with all his soul.

He looked at the clock above the hospital archway. He was still too early, but he felt he must go into the hospital. He could not wait outside, hang about in the street, he must go inside. He went past the porter’s box and walked upstairs. He came to the second floor where Jenny was and he stood in the cool, high vestibule.

A great many doors opened off the vestibule — the door of Hilda’s room, sister’s room, the waiting-room. But one pair of glass doors drew his eyes, the doors of the operating theatre. He stared at the doors of the operating theatre, two white-frosted glass doors, and it hurt him to think what was going on behind these doors.

The sister in charge, Sister Clegg, came out of the ward. She was not the theatre sister. She looked at him with a mild reproof. She said:

“You’re much too early. They have only just begun.”

“Yes, I know,” he answered. “But I had to come.”

She walked away without asking him to go into the waiting-room. She simply left him there, and there he stood, with his back against the wall, making himself unobtrusive so that he might not be asked to go away, watching the white-frosted doors of the operating theatre.

As he watched the doors they became transparent and he could see what was taking place inside. He had often assisted at operations in the base hospital, he saw it all clearly and exactly as though he were in the theatre himself.

Exactly in the centre of the theatre there was a metal table which was less like a table than a shining machine with shining levers and wheels to enable it to be contorted into strange and wonderful positions. No! it was not like a machine either. It was like a flower, a great shining metallic flower which grew on a shining stem from the floor of the theatre. And yet it was neither machine nor flower, but a table on which something was laid. Hilda was on one side of this shining table, and Hilda’s assistant upon the other, and round about, clustered closely as though they were pressing in upon the table and trying to see what was laid upon the table, were a number of nurses. They were all in white with white caps, and white masks, but they all had black and shiny hands. Their hands were dripping and rubbery and smooth.