IT was an unspeakable, unforgettable Christmas, the worst of my life. I don’t know how I’d have got through it at all without Henry. It wasn’t so much what he did; he did very little, other than sit in the living-room keeping the fire going and steadily reading his way through all the previous Sunday’s papers. It was his calm words of reassurance, which he had the patience to repeat every time I reappeared downstairs on my way to the washing-machine with a new bundle of soiled clothes—as often as not, my own, for David was sick on me every time I fed him or picked him up, and the insertion of the thermometer inevitably produced an even fouler jet which frightened me so much that I stopped taking his temperature and just guessed at it from feeling him.
‘Don’t worry. It’s always like this the first day. How many times is that? Only four? That’s nothing. Amanda was sick four times in an hour on her first day. The weight simply fell off her, until the old cynto-mitsetin got cracking on her. They put it all back amazingly quickly when they get the bug out of their systems.’
Dottie drifted about, half being a great help and half getting in the way. I had been overtaken by the most violent attack of possessiveness about David, probably as a reaction to my guilt-feelings; I didn’t want to depute even the meanest tasks to Dottie or anyone else, and even resented it when she wanted to help me change the bed-linen. In the end she kept her distance, looking hurt—almost dazed somehow—but clearly trying to understand, and contented herself with doing the cooking and tea-brewing.
As for Toby … What can I say about the way I behaved to him? There was nothing he could have done, yet I perversely found the fact that he found nothing to do extremely irritating, and held it against him. It was so unfair, yet I couldn’t help it. Henry’s sitting downstairs like a tweedy Buddha, far from exasperating me, had a most soothing and comforting effect; he knew what this was all about, everything he said was consoling, his very casualness reassured me. Also, his presence, relaxed as it was, was purposeful—he was my means of getting David to hospital if he had to go. But when Toby dared to sink into a chair for a few minutes and reach tentatively for a paper, it was as much as I could do not to shout at him: ‘How can you sit there and read? Don’t you know what David’s going through, what I’m going through?’ I didn’t say it, but I looked it, and he dropped the paper and got uneasily to his feet, asking for the fifteenth time if there was anything he could do. There was nothing—except somehow share in my anguish of mind, as only a father and a husband could have done, instead of merely standing there, limp and depressed, as helpless and empty-hearted as any casual by-stander.
By evening the tension I was generating had exhausted us all. The doctor returned, examined David very carefully, with particular attention to the skin on his stomach. Henry had already explained that there was nothing to be really worried about until the skin there began to lose its elasticity from dryness. In my eyes David looked terrible, as if he really might be going to die; but it was, I suppose, only because he looked different from his normal smiling active self. Anyway the doctor said he wasn’t any worse, that the first day was always a trial, tomorrow might be very little better but not to worry because the third day would show an improvement. I privately thought another day like the one just past would be the finish of both of us, but after the doctor had gone, Henry ambled upstairs and said, ‘What did I tell you? Now come down and have a strong drink, you need it. Dorothy, make some coffee, she’ll want to stay awake with him most of the night to give him a drink every time he wakes up.’ He took me by the hand like a brother and led me downstairs; leaving Toby to keep watch by the cot. I had the prescribed drinks—whisky followed by coffee—and they both did me good in their respective ways; sitting by the cot did Toby good, and making the coffee did Dottie good. I became more and more sure that Henry was one of the most wonderful men I had ever had the luck to meet.
A little later we were all sitting in the kitchen for a few minutes. Henry was talking in his flat, matter-of-fact, faintly off-voice about the rate at which Amanda had put her lost pounds back on again, still holding my hand in an unemotional, almost medicinal grip, when I interrupted him to say suddenly: ‘Henry, I’ve ruined your Christmas—I’m so sorry—’ and burst into tears. Henry rather awkwardly put his arm round me and said, ‘There you go, have a bellow, it won’t hurt …’ Dottie stood up abruptly and left the room. Toby stood up too, his face a queer mixture of feelings frozen into a sort of angry mask. The sight of it made me stop crying very quickly and sit there staring at him. Henry took his arm from my shoulders with a little cough. I felt a most peculiar atmosphere in the room, of which Dottie’s absence was a component; but I was too wrought-up to even attempt to unravel it.
Both the men left that evening. Henry was going to his people, and Toby asked, in a cold crisp voice I didn’t recognise, if he could have a lift as far as the nearest large town from which to get a train back to London. I watched the two of them off the premises and was appalled—even frightened—to find myself saying goodbye to Toby quite coolly while having to restrain myself forcibly from kissing Henry and thanking him with the utmost effusion of warmth for the simple fact of his presence during the past twelve hours. Dottie was not around for the leave-takings, but called a remote goodbye from the kitchen. Henry seemed inclined to hang around a bit, as if expecting her to appear, but quite soon he and Toby were both climbing into his car and driving away. I had the distinct impression, as I looked at their two heads side by side in the front seat, both facing forward, that despite their cordiality with each other the previous evening they would not find two words to exchange on the journey.
What had happened?
David had been taken ill—that was all that had happened as far as I was concerned. But as Dottie and I sat down to a scratch meal on trays at the top of the stairs, just outside David’s room, both just as gravelled for words as I had imagined the men being, it was borne in upon me that a lot had been going on for other people which had passed me by. I had assumed, for instance, that the extraordinary difference I had noticed in Dottie’s appearance early in the morning when she’d woken me, had been solely due to her concern for David. Now as I looked at her, her head bent over her tray, picking desultorily at her supper and avoiding me as completely as if she had left with the others, I realised I’d been wrong.
I tried to make conversation: I’m afraid I’ve been awful today—I hope you understood—you see, he’s never been ill before, and—I wasn’t there when it started—’ But it petered out for lack of a reaction. Dottie stopped eating, stood up with her tray and started downstairs without so much as a word. I got the clear impression she was crying, or trying not to. I looked in on David and, finding him safely asleep, hurried down after her. I felt an unspecific renewal of guilt. Was my touchy manner all day really responsible for this withdrawal?
Dottie was in the kitchen putting dishes in the sink, but almost ran past me into the living-room as I came in. She looked quite strange—white and wretched. I knew she didn’t want me, but I couldn’t stop myself following her.
She stood with her back to me, both hands gripping the mantelpiece. As I came into the room she said in a high-pitched nervy tone, ‘My God! I hate living in other people’s houses! There’s no escape!’ Her voice squeaked and scraped on the edge of tears.
‘Dottie, what is it? What’s the matter?’
‘Nothing!’
‘Is it something I’ve done?’
‘No, for God’s sake, no!’ She sounded so distraught I was taken completely aback. It couldn’t be my fault, I really hadn’t done or said anything which justified this. I tried once more:
‘Can’t I do something to help?’
‘No you can’t,’ she said shrilly. ‘Except go back up to David and leave me alone for five minutes.’
Alarmed, hurt and disconcerted, I obeyed. I had never seen Dottie like this in all the years we’d known each other. I could hear her right through the floor-boards, sobbing her eyes out.
I sat up most of the night with David. Every time he stirred, I put a bottle to his lips, and usually he drank a little, mostly in his sleep. He wasn’t sick again until he woke up in the morning. I heard Dottie coming slowly upstairs, in the middle of the night, and going quietly into the spare room. The next I heard from her was when she brought me a cup of coffee early the next morning. I had dozed off and hadn’t heard her going downstairs again. She looked about as haggard and worn-out as I felt, and avoided my eyes, but she had brought two cups and sat down to drink hers with me, which seemed a good sign.
‘How was he in the night?’ she asked. She sounded very subdued, as if she’d cried herself empty—I knew that feeling.
‘All right—fine really.’ At that moment he opened his eyes, lifting his head and was sick right through the bars of the cot. We both jumped up and this time I had no objection to Dottie’s helping. We cleaned up in silence and then sat down to finish our cold coffee. The light coming into the room was cold and grey. I saw Dottie shiver in her elegant, but now sick-stained, house-coat. I put my hand out very tentatively and touched hers. Her cup rattled in her hand as she put it down and turned to me. ‘What on earth can I say? I’ve got to say something and say it quickly, but I’m damned if I know what.’
Her eyes were really so exhausted and pathetic that I simply hugged her. ‘Don’t say a word—you idiot—it’s all right—’
‘But I’m so ashamed—’
‘Oh, nonsense, love, don’t be ridiculous. Please forget it.’
‘I can’t even explain. No. Don’t ask me anything. I’ll tell you sometime, perhaps. I can’t now. Let’s—if you could just pretend—this whole ghastly Christmas—didn’t happen. Help me to pretend it didn’t happen!’ She began to cry again, weakly and desperately, leaning against me—suave, poised, self-controlled Dottie. I marvelled, and at the same time I burned, let me be honest, with an almost intolerable curiosity. It must have something to do with Henry. What? But friendship demanded, not the patient willing ear, but deafness and denial of my own powerful desire to know.