‘Not exactly, Christopher. Rather like being in a sleeper on the old Lehigh Valley–’
During the night I had had reveries about blaming him, about letting all the fright and anger loose. Yet I found myself replying in his own aseptic fashion.
He said, professionally cheerfuclass="underline" ‘Sorry about that. We thought you might sleep through it.’
‘If they’d have let me alone for one single damned hour, perhaps I could–’
‘That was just a precaution.’ Mansel told me what they had been doing. ‘We wanted to see that everything was working. Which it is.’
‘I suppose that’s some consolation.’ Nevertheless, while he was talking I felt safe.
‘I think it should be, sir. Now let’s have a look at the eye.’ The clever fingers took off the pads, and I blinked into the bright, solid, consoling room. Outside the window, the sky was black, before dawn on a winter morning. If I could stay in the light, perhaps the night would be behind me.
Mansel’s face, smelling of shaving-soap, was only inches away. His eye, magnified by the lens, was searching into mine. After a minute or so, he said: ‘It’s early days yet, of course. I don’t want to raise false hopes, but it may have gone better than last time.’
‘That’s a somewhat minor bonus in the circumstances, don’t you think?’
‘Not at all,’ Mansel answered. ‘We’ve had a bit of unexpected trouble, of course we have. That’s all the more reason why we want to get the eye right at the end of it.’
Quickly, carefully, he put me back into the dark. I wished to say that his professional concern was not shared by me. I had meant to tell him – I had composed the speeches at one stage of the night – that, if I could get out of this hospital alive, it didn’t matter a curse what happened to the eye. We never ought to have risked the operation. A tiny gain if all went well. If all didn’t go well – that I could tell them about as I lay there that night, side strapped up under my heart, nurses keeping watch. I had been against this operation from the first, and he had overruled me. Anger got mixed up with fright, was better than fright, I had meant to project the anger on to Mansel. Yet I did nothing of the sort. The principal of complementarity seemed to work whenever I had an audience, and I behaved like a decent patient. Though once again in the dark, respite over, the night’s thoughts came flooding back.
Mansel’s voice was amiably exhorting me to have a cup of tea and some breakfast. I said, making the most of a minuscule complaint, that it was nearly impossible to eat lying rigid. Mansel was attentive: I was blinded, but perhaps my face still told him something. ‘We may be able to make things easier for you soon,’ he said. Meanwhile people would be coming in shortly to perform another test. In a couple of hours Mansel himself would return, together with a colleague.
What did that mean? I was as suspicious as in the afternoon before. If only they would tell me all the facts – that was what all sophisticated people cried out in their medical crises. Later, I wondered how much one could really take. How much should I have been encouraged if they had let me know each blood-pressure reading all through the night?
Once again apparatus was being fixed to my chest, the chill of glass, the whirr of a machine. Then, for some time, I could hear no one in the room. Out of a kind of bravado, I called out.
‘Yes, sir,’ came a chirping, quiet voice, a nurse’s that I hadn’t heard before. ‘Do you want anything?’
‘No, as a matter of fact, I don’t,’ I had to say.
I couldn’t talk to her: I remained with suspiciousness keeping me just one side of the edge of sleep. It took Mansel’s greeting to startle me full awake.
‘Here we are again, sir!’
I could distinguish other footsteps besides his.
‘I want to introduce a friend of mine–’ Mansel again – ‘Dr Bradbury. Actually he was here last night, but you were slightly too full of dope to talk to him. He’s a heart specialist, as a matter of fact. That’s because it’s easier than coping with eyes, isn’t it, Maxim?’
As soon as I heard Maxim reply, I recognised the voice. It had been present among the commotion – all mixed up by the shock disentanglable now – of the night before. It was very deep (they were exchanging gibes about which line brought in the easy money), as deep as my brother’s or Charles’, but without the bite that lurked at the back of theirs. This was just deep and warm.
A hand gripped mine, and a chair scraped on the floor beside the bed.
‘The news is good.’ Slow, gentle, warm, emphatic. ‘The first thing is, I want you to believe me. The news is good.’
I felt excessively grateful, so grateful that my reply was gruff.
‘Well, what is it?’
‘Your heart is as sound today as it was yesterday morning. We’ve looked at it as thoroughly as we know how, and we shouldn’t be able to detect that anything had happened. I couldn’t tell you this unless I was sure.’
Mansel (quietly): ‘I can guarantee that.’
‘I need hardly say’, I remarked, ‘that I hope you’re right.’
‘We are right, you know.’ Deep, gentle voice. ‘I expect you want to ask, then why did it happen? The honest answer is, we haven’t the slightest idea. It was simply a freak.’
‘A freak which might have been mildly conclusive,’ I said.
‘Yes, it might. I have to tell you again, we haven’t the slightest idea why it happened. All we know is that it did. After you’d been on the operating table for an hour and a half. I’m not sure whether Christopher has told you–’
Manseclass="underline" ‘No, not much.’
‘Well, I think you ought to know. Christopher tried to start the heart again by external massage. That didn’t work. Then he decided – and he was perfectly right – that he hadn’t much time to spare, so he did it from inside. Fortunately, although he’s an eye-man, he’s quite a competent surgeon.’
Undergraduate teasing, in the midst of all the energy he was spending upon me.
‘I’ve got a certain amount of faith in him,’ I caught the same tone.
Mansel cachinnated.
‘So you should have.’ This was Maxim. ‘Now I want you to listen to something else. This has been an unusual experience, and that’s rather an understatement, isn’t it? It’s an experience which could do harm to a good many people. You have to be pretty robust to take it in your stride. Robust psychologically – we can look after you physically, you’re absolutely all right there. I should guess you’re a tough specimen all the way round, and Christopher gives you an excellent report. But this is going to call for as much toughness as you can find. You’ve got to put it behind you. Straightaway. Today.’
It was a long time since anyone had spoken to me as paternally as this. I hadn’t yet seen his face, and, as it happened, I never did see it. He might very well be young enough, as Mansel was, to be my son. Yet I felt, not only gratitude so strong as to be uncomfortable, but also acquiescence, or even something like obedience.
‘You’ve got to forget it.’ The voice was even warmer, even more urgent. ‘That’s what I’m really telling you. The only danger is that you’ll let it stay with you. You’ve got to forget it.’
Curiously enough, that was what another strong-natured patient man had told us, at the end of the murder trial eighteen months before. But, after we had listened, my brother had said that that meant living in illusion: it might have been more comfortable, but it would have been wrong. You’ve got to forget it. This time, if I could obey, it presumably would do no harm to anyone, it wouldn’t mean false hope, it wouldn’t be wrong. And yet, as I thanked Maxim, I added that I wasn’t much good at forgetting things.
‘Well, you’ve got to train yourself. This was just an incident. Don’t let it make life dark for you. I’m going to tell you again, you’ve got to forget it.’