She was working up the nerve to knock. Dr. Sebastian and the other man had left. That meant she could go in. There were sounds, but she didn’t think she could say what they were. Coughing. Was he shouting down the telephone? On the count of three … the count of ten … when the hand on the clock reached the blue square … But the door was opening and he was there, her yes-no-sorry boy, the heat of him, face red and wet, handkerchief in one fist, spectacles in the other. He looked at her like an enemy, and the electrics went wrong. There across the room, his back to them both, Uncle John stood at the grate, a likeness of her father, decanter in one hand, glass in the other, the way it always smelled when things turned real.
She stood in the doorway, weeping. The other gone.
—Darling, what’s the matter?
He went and drew her into the room. Wherever he put her, tears streamed down her face. Should he offer her something against the shock?
—Now, now, it isn’t too late to ring the hospital. We’ll do it straightaway. Sit here.
She wouldn’t sit. She had a splinter, she said. He asked to see it, held her hand under the lamp. It was deep in her palm, and she’d dug until it bled. Kardleigh would have to get it out.
He put his arms around her as he always did, but she stood ramrod, hand held out before her alien and rigid. Wouldn’t she sit down? Here in his chair. They’d ring this moment if she’d dry her eyes. He’d speak to whoever answered. He’d insist they fetch her mother even if she’d gone to sleep. And then, once they spoke to her, and she really must dry her eyes, once they’d seen everything was fine as wine, then they’d see about the splinter.
She jerked away as he bent to kiss the top of her head. She didn’t want to ring now. Better, she said, to ring in the morning.
If that’s what she wanted, of course they could ring in the waking up, but about the splinter—
Mrs. Firth said she’d help. She wanted Mrs. Firth. He wasn’t to touch it.
She was overtired. It was no surprise. She’d had a long journey and a long drink of worry. Tomorrow in the daytime he’d make her feel at home.
She wanted to go to bed. She wanted to go. She turned and rushed from him, wrenching the door open despite the splinter. The back of his mouth throbbed. The brandy was better than he’d realized. Mrs. Firth got it in. She knew things, things to get, and got them. It was touching the back of his mouth and doing something inside the flesh of him and to the bell in his head or the hall. The shaking all over was starting to slow. Another dose—there was the piece of twine! Caught in the latch of the windows. He tore it off and swung them open and stepped onto the bricks and then the grass, where the water rushed in his shoes as he dashed across the field. Under the goalposts, a knife in his side, but he didn’t want to bring everything up because it was good and if he brought it up he’d need more and Mrs. Firth would know he needed things sooner than he should. A bell was ringing into his head, to kneel, to sink, ice-mud-trench, if only the shells would fall.
Under no circumstances would she let that person speak to her mother. Forget her own feelings. She was used to words said strangely, to breath you could set alight, to talking as if she were six. She knew what to do with people possessed of spirits.
Mrs. Firth she found bustling down the stairs. She couldn’t help just now, telephone or splinter. She should go to the Tower. Like a prisoner, self-arresting? She should like any boy go across the quadrangle and in those doors, they looked closed but weren’t, and climb the staircase all the way to the top. Dr. Kardleigh could help her. He’d see to the splinter. He had a telephone.
Boys didn’t wear ankle socks or a hem that ended at the knees. They crossed gravel like men, looking as though they used their fists every day. Anyone who used his fists at her school was sent home. Ditto fingernails or even cruel words. The staircase was stone and dark, smooth from prisoners, princes at the top?
The doctor looked aghast when she came into his room, but when she explained, he had her sit beside the lamp. Alcohol stung, and he told her to look away. He asked about her mother and the hospital where she was. It smarted and throbbed and ached deep inside, but he wrapped it in a bandage and told her to keep it dry. Then he jangled the telephone and made them ring the hospital, where he knew someone, he thought. He made them fetch her mother even though it was after hours, and while they went to look, he made her tell him the story of her parents, her mother a child of Saffron Walden, the town that lived on crocuses, a town of Friends, that meant Quakers, she met him at Cambridge, he’d come to speak on the Irish Question, and she’d heard him and loved him and he’d loved her. There had been a price when he’d asked her father for her hand, but he had not blinked. He’d taken her to the maze, there was one in the center of the village green, no not hedges, just grass paths, of course you could cheat but who would?, he took her there and got down on his knee. If I must give up Rome to have you, Margaret Drayton, then so be it, let me quake.
—Darling?
Her feeling-ill voice, but brighter than she’d left it. Oh, better, much better, everyone so kind, skies cleared just this afternoon and she knew what a difference that could make. Eating? Doctors pleased, right as rain soon. She got her to laugh by describing St. Stephen’s food and the dull things they said at the masters’ table. Uncle John, oh, yes, excellent, boys kept him running like a rabbit, oh, yes, like one caught with clover in its mouth, springing here, spronging there, yes, boing!, she hadn’t gone in the chapel but it looked ever so stern, of course Paris was just what he needed before he turned Puritan hare. They’d drink French coffee and eat pastries but she wouldn’t eat frog legs no matter what they said, oh, yes, it would be beautiful and gay, she would ring again tomorrow, all right the day after, but she must work hard at her resting so she’d be ready when they came next week. Why, that man had been the school physician, name of Dr. Kardleigh, why, yes, he was handsome, nearly as tall as Uncle John and dark as well, with an army moustache, was it an army moustache? He said it was to cover the scar on his lip, yes, he was here, right beside her, of course—
He was so pleased to hear she’d improved, her daughter was delightful, no, she hadn’t bothered the boys, so far as he was aware!, certainly he’d keep an eye, he advised her to rest, to put all worries from her mind, wrap her troubles in dreams, dream her troubles away, hey … He put down the telephone laughing.
—Your mother is charming.
—Yes.
—And you were brave about that splinter.
—Not really.