The Consultation was acquired in 1840 by John Perceval, I would have continued. His ancestor, Richard Perceval, the founder of the Perceval dynasty of physicians, was renowned for the uncommon speed with which he removed kidney stones. The museum has no image of the expeditious Dr Perceval, but it does have an illustration of the procedure as it would have been conducted at the time. I indicated the print that shows a supine man, with legs splayed and feet hoisted by two burly men, stoically accepting the insertion of the rod.
Walking through town, one day before the end of shooting, Imogen apologised for talking too much. ‘But you’re a top-class listener,’ she said. ‘You’d have made a good doctor, in the eighteenth century.’ And she reminded me that, in the course of the tour, I had explained that a physician at that time would have been a listener above alclass="underline" the patient would relate the story of his or her illness, and on the basis of this story the doctor would pronounce his judgement. Diagnosis by letter was not unusual, I had told the group, pointing out the letter written to Cornelius Perceval by a grateful patient whom Perceval had never actually met. ‘See – I was paying attention,’ said Imogen; then the kiss.
I have not a single line of Imogen’s handwriting. Any day, at the museum, I can examine the letters of Adeline Hewitt and Charles Perceval; I can enjoy that residue of their intimacy. Every handwritten word is intimate: the ink is an immediate trace of the thinking mind, and of the writer’s body. Before long, pens will be employed solely for signatures, if at all.
My grandfather’s pen. ‘Moss-Agate’ the gorgeous mottled green and brown is called, and the material is celluloid, a lovely liquid word, so pleasing to pronounce, I thought as a child. It was from my grandfather that I first heard it, I believe. The beautiful instrument was the first plastic pen to be made by the Waterman company; the plastic feels and looks like a valuable substance. The Waterman name, cut into the barrel, has been blurred by my grandfather’s fingers. I remember seeing the pen in the room in which my grandfather had died. The pillows were still on the bed; the upper one was shaped like a bowl, as if cradling the head of his ghost. The marks of his teeth were on the mouthpiece of the pipe that lay on the dressing table.
An incident, after work. For a few seconds I did not recognise the man who crossed the street from North Parade, calling my name. The beard, profuse and ungroomed, was a disguise; then the features of William’s face became discernible. He ran through traffic to reach me, maintaining the smile throughout, as if this encounter were an extraordinary stroke of good luck.
‘Great to see you again,’ he said. The handshake was forceful.
‘How are you?’ I asked. I would estimate that he was around thirty pounds heavier than when I’d last seen him; an encouraging sign. And his sweatshirt, though not new, was clean, as were the jeans.
‘I’m back,’ said William, taking a step back and raising his hands like a man accepting applause. ‘Older. Wiser. Hairier.’
‘So where have you been?’ I asked.
‘Where haven’t I been?’ said William. The full answer lasted for ten minutes, with no pause long enough to permit anything other than an expression of continued interest. With the van-owning friend he had travelled slowly along the south coast as far as Hastings, where they’d stayed for a while, renting a couple of rooms for as long as the work held out, then they’d cut up through East Anglia, which was a dead loss, before heading west into the Midlands, where the companions had fallen out irretrievably, after many disagreements. William had stayed in Birmingham for a year, fitting tyres mostly, then moved northwards, through Sheffield and Leeds and across to Manchester and Liverpool, then back to Leeds and up as far as Newcastle. He’d been a removals man, a labourer, a warehouseman, a courier, a house painter, a street sweeper and God knows what else. He’d worked in recycling centres and in some of the nation’s nastiest fast-food outlets. ‘Nothing you’d want to make a career out of,’ as he said. At one point he’d had the idea that some sort of reconciliation with his mother might be possible. He lasted less than a fortnight in the spare room. Talking to his stepfather was like standing in front of a freezer with its door open.
Later, when he’d been shovelling asphalt with a lad whose father had recently died, he’d thought he might attempt to make contact with his real father. He had found him without too much difficulty. That too was a disaster. No details given. ‘A self-pitying slob,’ was William’s verdict. Things went ‘downhill a bit’ after William had walked out of the shambles that his father called home. He’d ended up on the streets. Standing on Hungerford Bridge at two in the morning, he had considered whether drowning might be the answer. Instead he asked himself: ‘Where have I been happiest?’ And the answer was that he had been happiest here, he told me. ‘So here I am,’ he said, ‘and here you are.’ Then he added, perhaps observing a reaction: ‘Don’t worry, I’m not going to camp on your doorstep.’ He asked me for the time; he had to meet someone who might need a hand with some houseclearing. Patting me on the arm, as if in encouragement, he apologised for having to leave. ‘See you around,’ he said, and away he hurried.
The first encounter with William; or what I can reconstruct of it. We were sitting outside, near the abbey; Imogen had come down for the weekend. She glanced over my shoulder several times: a young man, twentyish, was standing a few yards behind me, importuning the people at the adjacent table; it appeared that none of them had offered him any money; he was asking them to reconsider, to no effect. Though the hair was a mess, he was not the most plausible of desperate cases: he looked more like an odd-job man than someone who was sleeping rough. ‘OK,’ I heard him say, conceding failure. ‘You all have a nice afternoon.’
As he approached us, Imogen seemed to be thinking what I had been thinking – that this person might not be genuine. But she said to him: ‘Would you like a coffee?’
A sticking plaster was attached to his brow, touching the hairline; he pressed a thumb onto it, as if to focus his thinking.
‘Sit down,’ Imogen said, indicating the seat next to mine.
He gave me a permission-seeking half-smile. I pulled the chair out for him.
‘Are you hungry?’ Imogen asked, sliding the menu card across the table.
His expression was that of a man who suspects he does not fully understand the situation in which he finds himself. ‘No cash,’ he said, pressing the plaster again. When he lifted his finger, the disc of blood in the centre of the plaster had widened.
‘Have what you like,’ Imogen told him.
He would just have a coffee, he said.
‘If you’re hungry, choose something,’ said Imogen. ‘Are you hungry?’
He glanced at me, for guidance. ‘I recommend the chocolate cake,’ I said, pointing to my plate.
A waitress had arrived; her gaze registered the unkempt young man, then she smiled at Imogen; her smile was like a puppet’s. Imogen ordered another coffee for herself, and directed the waitress to our guest, who ordered a cake as well.