Jane Gardam - The Man in the Wooden Hat

Edward said, clearing his throat in his embarrassed and famous roar, “Are you suggesting this might be cancer?”

“It’s possible. I’ll leave you to talk it over. Oh, dear — oh, hold on. .”

Edward was gripping the edge of the doctor’s desk and sliding to the floor.

“For heaven’s sake!” Betty was holding him up in her arms and glaring at the doctor. “Open the wine,” she said. “Have you a corkscrew? Then you shouldn’t have told us to bring it. Water, please.”

Amy was breastfeeding the newest child when Elisabeth arrived, the previous baby now crawling about and heaving itself up on supporting objects such as Mrs. Baxter’s difficult leg. Mrs. Baxter was deep in a missal.

“Don’t worry about her,” said Amy. “She’s not listening. Let me think.”

Elisabeth took the child on her lap. “All I need to decide,” she said, “is whether to get it done here or in London.”

“Oh, London,” said Amy. “No question. You’d be O.K. here but they’re better with Chinese than European cancers. There are different treatments. Look — go home at once, have it done, and let Edward fly back to see you when the thing adjourns. When is it? Within a month?”

“Yes. He’s in a bit of a state. He doesn’t speak.”

“Well, he’ll be in a worse state if you go into hospital here. He’ll have to be coming to see you every day from the other side of Kowloon. Maybe for two or three weeks. He’ll concentrate better if you’re far away.”

“D’you think so? Edward can always concentrate.”

“Yes, I do think so. And we’ll all look after him.”

“You mean I just buy myself an air ticket and turn up in the Westminster Hospital all by myself?”

“Certainly. Why ever not? The bloke here will send them your medical records. What would you do if you weren’t married? You’d get on with it by yourself.”

“Yes, indeed,” said Mrs. Baxter, waking up. “You must now be the Bride of Christ.”

“I always think that sounds blasphemous. And silly,” said Elisabeth.

“Well, Christ would say get on with it. Trust me,” said Amy. “Think of the woman with the issue of blood for twelve years. Trust. You’ll be rewarded.”

“Reward?” said Mrs. Baxter. “Is there any reward? I’m beginning to doubt it.”

“Oh, Mrs. Baxter, do shut up.”

“ I am lonely and bored ,” intoned Mrs. Baxter. “ Reassure me, Good Lord .”

“Mrs. Baxter!”

“ And inform me about it. Is there any reward? I’m beginning to doubt it . Poor child, poor child,” she said. “And scarcely left the altar.”

Elisabeth and Amy began to laugh. “Wherever did you get that awful verse? This isn’t a tragedy.”

“Not yet,” said Mrs. Baxter.

It was from the moment of laughing that Elisabeth knew that she would recover. The knowledge that she would never have children lay deeper and she did not, presently, disturb it. Taking one thing at a time.

The haemorrhaging that had been heavy but monthly had become fortnightly and then almost continuous so that she travelled to London first class. She spent many of the fourteen hours’ flight in the aircraft toilet to the distress of other passengers.

On landing, things let up for a while. The car that Edward had ordered was waiting for her and she was back in the embrace of the little house in Ebury Street within two hours of landing. Flowers had been sent by Edward and arranged on the black table by Delilah, with trailing leaves and swatches of blood-red roses falling like a ballerina’s bouquet. There was food in the fridge, a bottle of wine, the bed made up. She rang the hospital, which expected her the day after tomorrow. “You need to settle after the journey,” said the Almoner. “And well done.”

The phone rang and it was Edward. The familiar lovely voice, the familiar understatements. Case going well. Missing her. Desmond and Tony taking him out to dinner. Very civil of them. Amy had rung. He had forgotten to ask Betty if she had enough money.

“Yes. And I have forgotten to remind you that before long, I shall be thirty and come into my inheritance.”

He was not interested and only said several times how much he felt he should be with her. But his voice did not convince.

The haemorrhaging came and went. She had begun to get used to it. She’d be glad to be rid of the whole beastly business. Blood, blood. Women and blood. The “blood line.” Lady Macbeth. The phone rang again and it was Delilah next door. Should she come round? “No. Sleep’s what I want,” said Elisabeth lying down on the bed.

But sleep is no part of jet lag, and blood and sleep are not good bedfellows. “Oh, dear God,” she prayed in the beautiful plain bedroom with its lime-washed walls. “Maybe I’d better ask them if I can go in now.” Tears came. “Dear God — oh, it sounds like a letter — dear God, I can’t suffer any more. No child will come out of this. I’m suffering more than if it was labour, and nothing at the end of it.”

The phone by the bedside rang and it was Veneering, in Hong Kong. “You went Home then. Someone said so. Thank God. Look — Elisabeth, there is a very bad thing.”

“What? Edward? Not Edward, oh, God, no. No, we just spoke.”

“It’s Harry. My son, Harry,” and the line fell silent. At last, when it revived, Veneering was in mid-sentence: “. . operate tonight.”

“I missed that. The phone cracked up. What’s happening?”

“Harry is very seriously ill. They’ve just had the X-ray of his leg. His femur. He’s been limping. .” The voice faded again.

“Yes? Terry?”

“The school had him to the local hospital and the X-rays show. .” Emptiness again. Then “show a hole in the femur the size of a hen’s egg. The leg is on a thread. It’s about to break. They want to operate tonight.”

“Tonight! Tonight? Where?”

“In south-west London. It’s not far from you. It’s a small hospital and there’ll be a bed for you there. In Harry’s room. It’s the hospital this man likes — he’s said to be the best surgeon in the world: but they always say that — it’s where he likes to operate. I’ll give you the number. The Housemaster’s taking Harry in now and he’ll stay until you come. He said he’d stay all the time, but was there somebody closer? I can’t get there until tomorrow. I’m taking the first plane out. Will you go? Just be there during the operation?”

“Yes.”

“It’s a miracle you’re back in London. It was just the slightest hope. I had to ring. Yet I was sure you were in Hong Kong.”

“Tell me exactly where and when. I’ll phone the school now.”

“He loves you, Betty.”

“And Elsie—?”

“Oh, she’s coming over, too. The day after me.”

“I’ll go at once. I’ll try to be there ahead of him.”

“I love you, Betty.”

Ordering the taxi, scrabbling in her still-packed luggage for night things — medication, sanitary towels, sponge bag — she found that the haemorrhaging had stopped and she no longer felt ill. She thought of the woman in the Gospel whose issue of blood of twelve years had stopped as she touched Christ’s garment so that he felt faint with the love she had drained from Him. Christ understood women. He romanticised nothing.

She arrived at the little hospital near Barnes Common ahead of Harry, and was told to wait in the room they were to share until he went down to theatre. Someone came in and asked her to go to see the surgeon who was standing in his consulting room examining X-rays, slotting them up on a wall against lights.

“Ah, come in and look at these, Mrs. Veneering. Good afternoon.”