Barbara Vine - The Blood Doctor

The first thing I do when I get home is look up that letter Henry wrote in the spring of 1882. Not to Couch but to Lewis Fetter. But my memory wasn’t otherwise much at fault. Tenna isn’t mentioned by name but Versam is and the fact that it must have been Tenna is confirmed by Henry’s almost quoting Hoessli word for word when he writes, ‘Sunshine and a dry atmosphere render it a healthy place…’ The letter is headed, Safiental, Graubünden.

Paul is twenty today. We sent him a card with a cheque inside. Anything we might buy him would be wrong. Inevitably, I spend a while staring out of the window, the Henry papers in a muddle on the table and thinking about when he was born and the months preceding his birth. It’s a bit embarrassing now in retrospect to remember Sally and me telling people we were ‘making a baby’. Especially, perhaps, as we weren’t, but about to produce the result of an accident. Jude and I are making a baby now, that’s an accurate way of putting it, for no baby was ever more deliberately and calculatingly manufactured. The deed has been re-done. And, of course, the second time is never so bad as the first. I hope I’m not going to have to talk about third and fourth times. They’ve implanted four embryos – our sperm and eggs never have a problem uniting – and now once more we wait and see.

The Government Chief Whip has just phoned and asked me to have lunch with him after the Whitsun break. As someone says in The Taming of the Shrew , I wonder what it bodes? It may be that he’s been told I’m researching Henry’s life and he has something relevant to tell me. Ubiquitous Henry. I’ve been re-reading the diaries, asking myself if he had any further comments to make on Tenna, though it seems not.

It’s not clear how many of these walking tours he went on. Amelia Nanther kept all the letters her son wrote home from holiday and all appear to be extant. All, as far as I know, are on the table in front of me. I say ‘as far as I know’ but the only evidence for this is contained in a letter she wrote to her sister in which she says so. ‘Henry writes such beautiful letters from these distant parts that I carefully keep every one of them.’ In some he is precise as to his whereabouts. For instance, from Lake Thun he even specifies the name of the pension at which he is staying, and from ‘Safiental, Graubünden’ that he is at the home of people called Schiele. In others he merely gives the name of the Canton. But, in almost all cases, the letters are full of descriptions of named villages, mountains and lakes. Perhaps he thought this would be of particular interest to his mother, perhaps she liked to study geography. By the time she is dead and so is Hamilton (they died, of course, on the same day within four hours of each other) Henry has only Couch and Fetter to write to and the single letter he wrote to Fetter in 1882 from abroad, or the single surviving letter, seems positively cryptic compared to those he wrote home to Godby Hall.

Why doesn’t he name the village? Perhaps because he knows Fetter will recognize it. Perhaps because Fetter expects him to go there . I don’t know but, looking at the letter, I see something I didn’t see before. After sunshine and a dry atmosphere render it a healthy place , he goes on, except, according to V and G, as you know, in one respect . When I first read it I thought V might be Dr Vickersley. I now see that V and G are Vieli and Grandidier, the medical men who first documented haemophilia in the district.

I feel a little disappointed. What was I hoping for? Something dramatic, I suppose. Of course, Henry in his position, would have read Vieli and Grandidier as well as Hoessli, for their work had appeared in 1855. There is no mystery, unless mystery is contained in Henry’s secretive manner, using initials instead of names and omitting a precise address. But this was his way, his nature. It would have been odder if he hadn’t been to Tenna, considering its importance in his particular field and the fact that he visited Switzerland many times.

I’m more inclined to ask, why didn’t he go there before? Why wait till 1882? But maybe he didn’t wait. Maybe he was only re-visiting Graubünden that year. He could have been there in the 1870s and simply not mentioned the name of the village to his mother, a woman who would have known nothing of haemophilia and cared less. Or he could even have been there while a student at the University of Vienna. Though he doesn’t say so, he could have made a trip to south-eastern Switzerland with his friend, the Romansch speaker. This being left out of letters home is easily explained by the unwillingness of a son whose father is supporting him to let his parents know that not all the money which has come his way is being spent on studies. The more I think of it the less likely it seems that Henry would have neglected a visit to so significant a place.

The post comes very late but brings something worth waiting for. A letter from, of all people, my second cousin Caroline. It’s handwritten. She includes her phone number, signs it ‘Caroline’ and there’s no mention in it of whether she’s still called Agnew, whether she’s married or has children. It’s not clear what Jennifer has told her, though she knows I’m writing our great-grandfather’s life. There’s something clipped and abrupt in her style, something ungracious. For instance, Jennifer’s told her Lucy and I had lunch and she says she’d like to make it plain she doesn’t want anything like that. She hates ‘that sort of thing’. She doesn’t know if the family knowledge she has is any use to me but she’s willing to pass it on, only she’ll come to me at home or I can go to her. Her home in Reading is only half an hour away on the train. She doesn’t want this taken as a sign she’d like to meet other family members, so no one else present, please.

I don’t want to go to Reading, but of course I will if there’s no help for it. Re-reading the letter, I have the feeling inviting her for a meal or even a cup of tea would be a mistake, and it’s with some trepidation that I pick up the phone. I expect an answering machine because I’ve made up my mind without the least evidence that she’s single, living alone and with a full-time job. It’s a small shock when she answers.

Her voice is low and rather harsh. I must be a snob, though I try not to be, but I notice at once her ‘estuary English’. She speaks very differently from other members of my family. I must try hard not to let it grate on me, it’s not good behaviour for someone who once nearly took the Labour whip. ‘I’ll come and see you if you want,’ she says. ‘Thursday about three?’

I’m not to be given a choice and I’ve a feeling if I don’t agree I’ll be told to take it or leave it. This Thursday is the last one in May and the last before the House of Lords gets up for Whitsun, but that doesn’t affect me any more. I tell her it will be fine and how is she going to get here?

‘I don’t have a car,’ she says. ‘I’ll come on the train to Paddington.’

How is it that I know instinctively taxis are not for her? I tell her to take the tube, Bakerloo Line to Baker Street and Jubilee to St John’s Wood, and that I’m very grateful and look forward to seeing her. For some reason I expect more. I expect her to tell me why she’s ‘coming up to town’ on this particular Thursday, for she evidently is. But all she says is, ‘That’s all right then,’ and puts the phone down.

Fowler says we shouldn’t use ‘intrigue’ in the sense of ‘mystify, fascinate, interest’ but choose one of those words instead, but none of them will quite do for me. I am intrigued by my cousin Caroline. I want to discover what makes her tick. Is she married? Has she ever been married? Her mother died a long time ago but what has become of her father? Of course it may be that no answers to these questions will be given me.