1932 was not a good year for Kit. He hurt his back wrenching rocks in a garden where the owner complained the renovations were not happening fast enough. First, he wanted a rock garden, then decided it must be shifted to a different spot. When Kit failed to keep an appointment, due to excruciating pain in his sacrum, the owner dismissed him and began to badmouth him as a lazy slacker. It was time to move on, but with little money in reserve, his comfortable lifestyle was over and it was back to hand-to-mouth menial work when he could find it. As the months turned into years, he fell back onto sketching houses to pay for his living.
The pain was so bad he began to drink spirits to ease the spasms and he found himself drifting westwards again, homeless and almost destitute. He dossed down wherever he could find shelter, with a bottle for sustenance. He ate little and no longer had the desire to paint or sketch to support himself. Then, to make matters worse, he got an infection in his chest that made him so breathless, he could hardly walk.
When he passed out on the outskirts of Béziers, people took him for a drunk and left him prostrate on a bench. It was only the kindness of an old widow woman that saved him. She took pity on him, gave him water, felt his head and sent for the local doctor.
They laid him out on the grass in the shade. By then he was delirious, tossing and turning, singing ‘By yon bonnie banks and by yon bonnie braes’ over and over again.
‘What language is this?’ said a passer-by suspiciously to the old woman. ‘Allemand?’
‘Mais non,’ said the doctor. ‘I’d know that anywhere, madame. He’s in a bad way. Let’s see if there are papers in his knapsack.’ The doctor rummaged in it. ‘What a state he’s in!’ They found his identity. ‘He’s anglais, English… Christophe Carstairs. What on earth brings him down here? I have no English but I know a médicin who can help us. Don’t let him move. I’ll be back.’
A crowd was gathering, curious. ‘Another tramp on the road to hell, by the look of him,’ said a sour-faced man in black, crossing himself.
‘He’s English,’ the old woman replied.
‘Les anglais… what did they do for us in the war?’
The man made to pull him up. ‘We don’t want the likes of him spreading disease. Look at him, what use is he to us? Redheads have the devil in them.’
Madame stayed firm. ‘The doctor’s coming, leave him alone. He is at the door of death.’ She put a blanket over him.
*
It was hours before the doctor returned with a tall man. Kit was barely conscious, but he heard a voice that rang in his ears like a gong.
‘What the blazes…? Is that you, Carlyle? Jesus, Mary and Joseph…’ The doctor sounded his chest, felt his pulse. ‘He’s barely alive or sober and stinks to high heaven. Kit… Padre… it is you.’
It was then that Kit opened his eyes to see a man with bushy eyebrows and dark Celtic looks bending over him. Through the fog of fever, he recognised the face of his old comrade Sam O’Keeffe, and thought he was dreaming. But the voice continued to bawl in his ear. ‘What the hell are you doing here? You are supposed to be dead!’