In the surgery, my first concern was to put on a stoical front. Alone in my room, I stared out at the summer sky. The doctor had been vague, he was sending me to a specialist. How serious was it? I was enraged that no one should know, that the disaster should be so nebulous, that instead of having mastered the future I could no longer think a month ahead. Sometimes, for moments together, I could not believe it — just as, after Sheila’s first cruel act, I walked across the park and could not credit that it had happened. Then I was chilled with dread. How gravely was I ill? I was afraid to die.
Already that afternoon, however, and all the time I was visiting the specialist, there was one direction in which my judgement was clear. No one must know. It would destroy my practice if the truth were known. No one would persevere with a sick young man. That might not matter, I thought grimly. But it was necessary to act as though I should recover. So no one must know, not even my intimates.
I kept that resolve throughout the doctors’ tests, Fortunately, it was the Long Vacation, and Getliffe was away; his inquisitive eyes might have noticed too much. Fortunately also, although I was very pale, I did not look particularly ill; in fact, having had more money and so eating better, I had put on some weight in the past year. I forced myself to crawl tiredly to Chambers, sit there for some hours, make an effort to work upon a brief. I thought that Percy had his suspicions, and I tried to deceive him about my spirits and my energy. I mentioned casually that I felt jaded after a hard year and that I might go away for a holiday and miss the first few days of next term.
‘Don’t be away too long, sir,’ said Percy impassively. ‘It’s easy to get yourself forgotten. It’s easy to do that.’
From the beginning the doctors guessed that I had pernicious anaemia. They stuck to the diagnosis even when as I afterwards realised — they should have been more sceptical. There was some evidence for it. There was no doubt about the anaemia; my blood counts were low and getting lower; but that could have happened (as Tom Devitt had said years ago) through strain and conflict. But also some of the red cells were pear-shaped instead of round, and some otherwise misshapen; and since the doctors were ready to believe in a pernicious anaemia, that convinced them.
But the reason why they originally guessed so puzzled me for a long time. For they were sound, cautious doctors of good reputation. It was much later that Charles March, after he had changed his profession and taken to medicine, told me that my physical type was common among pernicious anaemia cases — grey or blue eyes set wide apart, smooth tough skin, thick chest, and ectomorphic limbs. Then at last their diagnosis became easy to understand.
They were soon certain of it, assured me that it ought to be controllable, and fed me on hog’s stomach. But my blood did not respond: the count went down; and then they did not know what to do. All they could suggest was that I should go abroad and rest, and continue, for want of any other treatment, to eat another protein extract.
This was at the beginning of August. I could leave, as though it were an ordinary holiday. I still kept my secret, although there were times when my nerve nearly broke, or when I was beyond caring. For my resistance was weakening now. Charles March, who knew that I was ill, but not what the doctor had told me, bought my tickets, and booked me a room at Mentone: I was tired out, and glad to go.
I had not seen Sheila since I went to be examined. Now I wrote to her. I was not well, I said, and was being sent abroad for a rest. I was travelling the day after she would receive this letter. I was anxious to see her before I left.
It was my last afternoon in England, and I waited in my room. I knew her trains by heart, That afternoon I did not have long to wait. Within ten minutes of the time that she could theoretically arrive, I heard her step on the stairs.
She came and kissed me. Then she stood back and studied my face.
‘You don’t look so bad,’ she said.
‘That’s just as well,’ I said.
‘Why is it?’
I told her it was necessary to go on being hearty in Chambers. It was the kind of sarcastic joke that she usually enjoyed, but now her eyes were strained.
‘It’s not funny,’ she said harshly.
She was restless. Her movements were stiff and awkward. She sat down, pulled out a cigarette, then put it back in her case. Timidly she laid a hand on mine.
‘I’d no idea there was anything wrong,’ she said.
I looked at her.
‘It must have been going on for some time,’ she said.
‘I think it has.’
‘I’m usually fairly perceptive,’ she said in a tone aggrieved, conceited, and remorseful. ‘But I didn’t notice a thing.’
‘I expect you were busy,’ I said.
She lost her temper. ‘That’s the most unpleasant thing you’ve ever told me.’
She was white with anger, right at the flashpoint of one of her outbursts of acid rage. Then, with an effort, she calmed herself.
‘I’m sorry,’ she cried. ‘I don’t know—’
In the lull we talked for a few minutes, neutrally, of where we should dine that night.
Sheila broke away from the conversation, and asked: ‘Are you ill?’
I did not reply.
‘You must be, or you wouldn’t let them send you away. That’s true, isn’t it?’
‘I suppose it is,’ I said.
‘How badly are you ill?’ she asked.
‘I don’t know. The doctors don’t know either.’
‘It may be serious?’
‘Yes, it may be.’
She was staring full at me.
‘I don’t think you’ll die in obscurity,’ she said in a high, level voice, with a curious prophetic certainty. She went on: ‘You wouldn’t like that, would you?’
‘No,’ I said.
Somehow, in her bleak insistence, she made it easier for me. Her eyes were really like searchlights, I thought, picking out things that no one else saw, then swinging past and leaving a gulf of darkness.
She tried to talk of the future. She broke away again: ‘You’re frightened, aren’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘I think you’re more frightened than I should be.’ She considered. ‘Yet you can put on a show to fool your lawyer friends. There are times when you make me feel a child.’
The day went on. Once she said, without any preliminary: ‘Darling, I wish I were a different woman.’
She knew that I was begging her for comfort.
‘Why didn’t you love someone else? No decent woman could let you go like this.’
I had said not a word, I had not embraced her that day. She knew that I was begging for the only comfort strong enough to drive out fear. She knew that I craved for the solace of the flesh. She had to let me go without.
At Mentone I sat on the terrace by the sea, happy in the first few days as though I were well again, as though I were sure of Sheila. I had never been abroad before, and I was exhilarated by the sight of the warm sea, the quickening of all the senses which I felt by that shore. Some of my symptoms dropped away overnight, as I basked in the sun. The sea was so calm that it lost its colour. Instead it stretched like a mirror with a soft and luminous sheen to the edge of the horizon, where it darkened to a stratum of grey silk. It stretched like a mirror without colour, except where, in the wake of each boat that was painted on the surface, there was pencilled, heightening the calm, a dark unbroken line.
And when the Mediterranean summer broke into storms, I still had a pleasure, a reassurance of physical well-being, as I stood by the bedroom window at night and, through the rain and wind, smelt the bougainvillea and the arbutus. Turning back to see my bed in the light of the reading lamp, I was ready to forget my fears and sleep.