Kate Hannigan Read online

  ‘I’m here, Doctor!’ cried a voice, ‘an’ I can’t come up them stairs.’ Mrs Clarke pushed Sarah Hannigan to one side, and stood glaring up at him. ‘Something’s happened to me knee with that fall I had down the bl-down the stairs. I’m beside me self with the pain of it. I don’t know if I’ll be able to get back home through this snow, the drifts are chin high.’

  ‘Mrs Clarke, I’ve got to have help! You’ll come up here if I have to carry you up!’

  ‘Begod, an’ I will not! Look at that!’ she cried.

  He bounded down the stairs towards her. She had pulled up her skirt and was disclosing her knee, already laid bare for inspection.

  He looked at it…Well, that settles that. The damned woman, you would think she had done it on purpose…He thought a moment…‘Nurse Snell, that’s it! She’ll come. How can I get…?’

  ‘It’s no use. She’s in the heart of Jarrow this very minute after a case; I saw her go only a couple of hours ago.’ Mrs Clarke was triumphant. ‘It’s nobody you’ll get this night. Now, Doctor Kelly used to—’

  ‘Be quiet, woman!’ He glared at her, the point of his beard thrust out.

  Begod, if she could only strike him down dead! Him to speak to her like that, and to call her - woman!…She that was looked up to and respected for her knowledge all round these black buildings, all fifteen streets of them. They had even sent for her from Shields and Jarrow to deliver, before today, and Doctor Kelly had said she was every bit as good as himself. Yet this young snot…with his big, newfangled motor-car and his fine clothes, and his voice like a foreigner…would tell her to shut up! Even Tim Hannigan there, who put the fear of God into everybody in the fifteen streets with his swearing and bashing, when the mood was on him, even he had never dared to tell her…Dorrie Clarke…to shut up. Her blood boiled. She fastened the top of her stocking into a knot and rolled it down her leg to make it secure; she pulled her coat tighter about her and limped to the kitchen door, before turning to him. ‘You may be a doctor…yet that’s got to be proved…but yer no gentleman. You can strike me off your club; and I wouldn’t work on a case where you are to save me the workhouse; I’m a particular woman. And take my word for it, you won’t reign long!’ The snow whirled into the kitchen as she pulled open the door.

  ‘Keep that leg up for a few days,’ he called after her.

  ‘You go to Hell’s flames!’ was the rejoinder.

  A fleeting shadow, that could have been amusement, passed over Tim Hannigan’s face. Throughout the conversation he had sat immobile in the straight-backed wooden arm-chair dead in front of the fire, staring at the glowing slack which the good draught of the big chimney kept bright.

  Sarah Hannigan stood near the bare kitchen table in the centre of the room, picking at her bass bag and her shawl alternately, and her pale, weary eyes never left the doctor’s face. She watched him think a minute after Dorrie Clarke had banged the door, then swiftly wrote something on a piece of paper which he took from a notebook.

  ‘I’m sending for Doctor Davidson, Mrs Hannigan,’ he said, as he wrote. ‘Perhaps your husband will get this note to him as soon as possible?’

  ‘I’ll take it, Doctor,’ said Sarah, breathlessly.

  ‘No, you have your shopping to do, and you must get something to keep that room warm. Your husband can take it.’

  She looked helplessly from the back of her husband’s head to the bearded face of this strange doctor…He didn’t know, he was so cool and remote; from another world altogether; didn’t the sovereign prove that? If it got round he threw his money about he’d have no peace. And him speaking to Dorrie Clarke like that, and now asking Tim to go a message…Oh, Holy Mary!…

  ‘I’ll go on me way, Doctor…’

  ‘Certainly not! Mr Hannigan,’ he addressed the back of Tim’s head, still immobile, ‘will you kindly get this message to Doctor Davidson at once? Your daughter is a very sick woman.’

  Only Tim Hannigan’s head turned; his pale eyes, under their overhanging, grizzly eyebrows, seemed to work behind a thin film. They moved slowly over the doctor and came to rest, derisively, on his black, pointed beard. ‘Hell’s cure to her!’ he said slowly. His upper lip rested inside his lower one and his eyes flashed a quick glint at his wife before he turned his head to the fire again.

  ‘Sir, do you know that your daughter might die?’

  Tim’s head came back with a jerk as if he was silently laughing.

  ‘Doctor, please…let me. Oh, please! I’ll get there in no time.’

  Sarah grabbed the folded note from his hand, and he let her go without a word. The back door banged again, and he still stood staring at the back of Tim Hannigan’s head. He felt more angry than ever he had done in his life before…These people! What were they? Animals? That frightful, fat, gin-smelling woman, and this man, callous beyond even the wildest stretches of imagination. He would like to punch that beastly mouth, close up those snake eyes…Oh, why get worked up? He’d need all his energy…He turned and went back up the stairs, groping at the walls in the dark…As Frank had said, it was a waste of sympathy; for what little he would achieve he would not assist their crawling out of the mire one jot, ninety per cent of them still being in the animal stage…Not that he took much notice of anything his brother might say; but he had upset his family and dragged Stella to this frightful place…for what? To express some obscure feeling that came to the surface and acted as a spoke whenever he was bent on following a sensible course…at least sensible to his people’s way of thinking. Had he followed the course laid out he would now have his London surgery and a definite footing in one of the larger hospitals, and at this minute he would have been at Rookhurst; likely just going in to dinner with the family. Oh, what a fool he was! He couldn’t pretend to an ideal urging him on, or love for these frightful people. Obstinacy, his father called it; a form of snobbery was his mother’s verdict; cussedness and the desire to be different, Frank said, with a sneer. Only his grandfather had said nothing, neither of approbation nor of condemnation; he had just listened. But there was a peculiar expression in his eyes when he looked at Rodney, which might have been mistaken for envy.

  This room was freezing. If this girl didn’t die of childbirth she would of exposure. Bending over Kate, he felt her pulse. Davidson should be here within half an hour, if he were at home; the sooner they got this job over the better, for it promised to be an awkward job…He must try to do something with that fire.

  Kneeling down to the small clippy mat, he blew on the pale embers. This resulted in his face and hair being covered with coaldust…Damnation!…He stood up and shook himself. Temporarily blinded, he stumbled towards the half-circle of marble, supported on a three-legged frame, standing in the corner and poured some water out of the enamel jug standing in the tin dish. He washed his face, and the yellow soap stung his eyes more than the coal dust had done…What a night! And likely his car was half buried by now; it had been snowing for hours…In the ordinary course he would have left his patient earlier, to return later. But this fresh fall of snow, on top of twelve inches already frozen hard, had warned him that this would have been easier said than done, and the condition of this girl made it imperative that he should be on the spot…Pulling the cream paper window blind to one side, he looked out, but he couldn’t see down the street, the window being a thick, frosted mass of snowflakes. He turned towards the bed and sat down on the chair again.

  Kate was lying inert, breathing heavily. He looked around the room, ten by eight at the most; the three-quarter-size iron bed, adorned with brass knobs, the marble-topped wash-hand stand, and a large wooden box, end up, with a curtain in front and a mirror on top, was all the room held in the way of furniture; pegs on the door supported an odd assortment of clothes, and a patchwork quilt and two thin biscuit-coloured blankets covered Kate; the floor was as white as frequent scrubbing could make it, and the whole was lit up by a single gas jet.

  Rodney Prince looked at this gas jet flickering on the turned-up end
of a piece of lead piping. Its power was, he thought, about one-hundredth that of the chandelier above the dining-table at home…Home, to his mind, was Rookhurst, not the place he shared with Stella; that was ‘the house’. He had a sudden nostalgia for all the things he had known and had taken for granted for so many years, but most of all, at this moment, for the dining-room at Rookhurst, for its dim, worn red and golds, for its long, wide windows, forming a frame for the sweeping downs beyond, and for the old furniture polished by time and handling to a delight for the eye. And there was a strange longing for his people; for his greying and stately, slightly cynical mother, whom, temperamentally, he resembled too much to be on good terms with, for the easy tolerance of his father, even for the jealousy of Frank.

  It was Christmas Eve, and, in spite of all their differences, Christmas Eve had always been a gay day at home. But from ten o’clock this morning he had been trudging in and out of tiny houses, some clean, some smelly, but all seeming to be filled with the same type of people, coarse-voiced and wary. Then there was Stella. The row they had had last night might have been patched up tonight had he been able to take her to the Richards. As much as he knew she despised them, their flattery would have helped to smooth the plumage that he had so brusquely ruffled, and perhaps put her into a tender frame of mind. But wasn’t she always tender? Dreamy and tender, that was Stella. Then how could she be the cold, outraged beauty? How could she make a man feel like a wild beast? Last night she had snuggled, and nestled, and purred like a contented kitten, while he fondled her hair, murmuring into it, telling her of the magic she cast about him. He had kissed her eyes and her ears, and had stroked her arms, and she had lain, docile and beautifully sweet, as if awaiting final consummation. And his mind had cried, ‘Ah, now!’ And then, as always, like a snowflake on a hot log, she had melted away from him.

  ‘Stella,’ he had cried to her…actually cried to her!…‘Don’t! You are torturing me.’ He had crushed her body under his, but she was far withdrawn. He had been furious that this should be happening again, and had renewed his efforts to solicit her affections.

  Her voice had come as a whisper, which might easily have been a hiss, when she had said, ‘Why must you always want the same thing? Why are you so beastly? We have had all this out before. I’m just not going to put up with it, night after night.’

  ‘But, darling, it’s nearly…it’s so long…’ he had stammered, in his pain.

  ‘Oh, don’t be so coarse! You talk like…well, like one of these dockers.’

  At that he had let her go, her long, white limbs in their crumpled chiffon whirling out of the bed and into the dressing-room. It was only when he had heard the key turn in the lock, and he knew that she meant to spend the night on the couch, that the torturing desire in his blood seemed to gather itself into one hard knot in his head, which beat with sudden hate of her. He was banging on the dressingroom door and hissing words he would never have believed possible. She made no answering sound…When he dropped into bed, shaking and limp, he had to bite into the pillow to stifle the tearing emotion that racked him.

  Stella could reduce him to that because he loved her, because he could not stop loving her. She had the power to change in a flash his six feet of virility into a shamed, trembling heap. He knew the course he should have adopted long ago; but he could never see himself touching anyone but Stella. He had loved her from the age of five, when she had walked between Frank and him and had been the cause of their first serious quarrel.

  This morning they had met at breakfast; Stella, a little white, but smiling and talking of the snow and the Christmas doings, in front of the servants…Stella was very well bred; she would keep up appearances in hell, he thought…He knew he had looked ghastly, the blackness of his beard accentuated the pallor of his face. He had scarcely spoken and had eaten nothing, and, on the plea of outstanding calls, he had hurriedly excused himself after drinking three cups of coffee. Without looking at her he knew that her whole bearing was one of sad and gentle reproach.

  What the servants had heard last night from their distant rooms didn’t trouble him; he was used to servants knowing as much about his life and that of his family as they did themselves. He forgot to take into account that the servants of thirty and forty years’ standing, who were like one’s own friends, were a different proposition from chance maids of three months.

  The knocker of the front door banged twice. It brought back Kate from far-away regions. She opened her eyes wide. ‘Who’s that?’ she asked. Then, grabbing his hand, ‘You’re not having me sent to the workhouse?’ She looked around wildly. ‘Where’s Mrs Clarke? Oh, don’t send me! Please don’t send me. I can easily pay you when I’m up.’

  ‘What on earth are you talking about? Don’t be silly, Kate! What put such an idea into your head? That is likely Doctor Davidson; Mrs Clarke can’t help me, she’s hurt her knee. There, now, lie down.’ He pressed her gently back into the pillow.

  The knocker banged again, quicker and louder this time. Rodney went to the stair-head. Surely that brute wasn’t still sitting there and making no attempt to open the door! He heard the poker rattle against the bars of the fire. By God, he was! Of all the swine!

  He ran down the stairs. ‘Are you deaf, sir?’ he shouted at Tim Hannigan’s back, as he hurried through the kitchen and into the front-room, from where the front door led into the street. The knocker banged once more as he pulled open the door, letting in a whirl of snow.

  ‘I thought you were all dead.’ The big muffled figure was kicking his feet against the wall. ‘Phew! What a night!’ He stepped into the room, and Rodney closed the door without a word and led the way through into the comparative brightness of the kitchen.

  ‘Oh, hello, Tim! you deaf?’ The easy familiarity of Doctor Davidson surprised Rodney. He gave the big, bony man a quick glance; no annoyance showed on his face at being kept waiting; there was about it that lingering half smile that had so baffled Rodney on the few previous occasions when they had met…He had felt at first that Davidson was laughing at him; laughing gently, but nevertheless laughing. And he had thought, how dare he! He had soon learnt all about Davidson, who was the son of a Jarrow grocer. The grocer had made money, and had spent it on his son. And the son, instead of taking himself and his career to a far distant place, as far away as possible from Jarrow, had returned, bought a practice in the worst quarter, near the ferry, and married a Jarrow girl. They lived in an ugly house overlooking the muddy Don, where it poured its chemical-discoloured water into the Jarrow slacks and so into the Tyne. But all this had not wiped that quaint smile off Peter Davidson’s face. And, through time, Rodney had found that the smile was not for him alone; Davidson seemed to handle life gently and with that half smile; he never seemed to hurry, nor to be impatient. Rodney wondered what he was really like. He had felt Davidson would be worth knowing, but at the same time knew it was impossible; they met seldom in the course of their rounds and the only other way would be through social visiting. For himself, he wouldn’t mind in the least, but Stella! Well, he couldn’t imagine her and the Jarrow girl, somehow.

  They were in the bedroom before Rodney spoke. ‘I’m sorry, Davidson, I’ve had to ask you to turn out on a night like this; Christmas Eve, too.’

  ‘Oh, don’t let that worry you, it’s all in the game. Hello, Kate!’ he said, bending over the bed, with his hands on his knees. ‘You’re going to have a Christmas baby, eh?’

  Again that tone of familiarity. Rodney watched Kate’s face; she smiled as one would at a friend. Rodney felt a little stir of professional jealousy; she hadn’t smiled at him like that; nor would any of his patients, he thought, treat him as they did Davidson. He had tried for three months to get below their wary surface; he had tried, indeed he had, to put them at their ease, little guessing that his voice alone put him in the category of ‘The Class’ and that, in their fierce independence, they resented the necessity for what they unwordingly thought his condescension.

  With great relucta
nce he took off his coat and rolled up his sleeves; the chill of the room seeped through his fine wool shirt and vest. As he opened his case and picked out what he required, voices from below the window came to him like words spoken through a thick towel:

  ‘Hello there, Joe! Merry Christmas.’

  ‘Same to you, Jimmy. Same to you.’

  ‘Coming for a wet?’

  ‘Ee, lad, no; ah haven’t been yem yet. The missis’ll likely bash me over the heed when ah puts me nose in the door!’

  Muffled laughter, then the thick silence from the street again.

  Davidson was still talking to Kate, and a feeling of utter and absolute loneliness suddenly flooded through Rodney. He seemed divorced from every human contact and feeling; everyone he knew, his family, and Stella, all stood aloof and condemning…sending out their displeasure through the bleak stares of their eyes. He saw them all as a hillside covered with sturdy oaks, and himself a little stream at their feet, bent on winding his own way past them. They were so powerful, but helpless to stop his meandering. And he had wound his way into the valley where there were these people…those men in the street, this girl on the bed, this big, burly doctor who held life steadily by the reins; they were all one. He was in their midst, but he couldn’t get near them either; and, oh, he wanted the touch of some friendly hand. He was lost in that vast, unknown and terrible continent of loneliness; it stretched on and on, very white and hopeless, and quite bare.

  Good heavens! he thought, this won’t do. I’m light-headed. No breakfast, no dinner; must have something as soon as this is over…He looked across at Davidson who was still talking to Kate. ‘Well, there it is,’ he was saying. ‘If you want the place it’s yours. Their own girl won’t be leaving for a month, and it’s five shillings a week. So there you are, Kate; you’re all set up and nothing to worry about.’