Charles would not agree. His will was strong, and mine was weakened, after that November afternoon, by Sheila’s words. And also there were times just then when I wanted someone to lean on. So I gave way. Until the end of term I should keep up my bluff; but I was ready to be examined by any of his doctors during the Christmas vacation.
Charles organized it thoroughly. At the time, December 1930, he was, by a slight irony, a very junior medical student, for he had recently renounced the Bar and started what was to be his real career. He had not yet taken his first MB — but his father and uncle were governors of hospitals. It did not take long to present me to a chief physician. I was installed in a ward before Christmas. The hospital had orders to make a job of it: I became acquainted with a whole battery of clinical tests, not only those, such as barium meals, which might be relevant to my disease.
I loathed it all. It was hard to take one’s fate, with someone forcing a test-meal plunger down one’s throat. I could not sleep with others round me. I had lost my resignation. I spent the nights dreading the result.
On the first day of the new year, the chief physician talked to me.
‘You ought to be all right,’ he said. ‘It’s much more likely than not.’
He dropped his eyelids.
‘You’d better try to forget the last few months. Forget about this disease. I’m confident you’ve not got it. Forget what you were told,’ he said. ‘It must have been a shock. It wasn’t a good experience for you.’
‘I shall get over it,’ I said, in tumultuous relief.
‘I’ve known these things leave their mark.’
Having set me at rest, he went over the evidence. Whatever the past, there were now no signs of pernicious anaemia; no achlorhydria; nothing to support the diagnosis. I had had a moderately severe secondary anaemia, which should improve. That was the optimistic view. No one could be certain, but he would lay money on it. He talked to me much as Tom Devitt had once done — with more knowledge and authority but less percipience. Much of the history of my disease was mysterious, he said. I had to learn to look after myself. Eat more. Keep off spirits. Find yourself a good wife.
After I had thanked him, I said: ‘Can I get up and go?’
‘You’ll be weak.’
‘Not too weak to get out,’ I said; and, in fact, so strong was the suggestion of health, that as I walked out of the hospital, the pavement was firm beneath my feet, for the first time in six months.
The morning air was raw. In the city, people passed anonymously in the mist. I watched a bank messenger cross the road in his top hat and carrying a ledger. I was so light-hearted that I wanted to stop a stranger and tell him my escape. I was light-hearted, not only with relief but with a surge of recklessness. Miseries had passed; so would those to come. Somehow I survived. Sheila, my practice, the next years, danced through my thoughts. It was a time to act. She was at home for Christmas — but there was another thing to do. In that mood, reckless, calculating, and confident, I went to find Percy in order to have it out.
There was no one else in Chambers, but he was sitting in his little room, reading a sporting paper. He said ‘Good morning, Mr Eliot,’ without curiosity, though he must have been surprised to see me. I asked him to come out for a drink. He was not over-willing, but he had nothing to do. ‘In any case,’ I said, ‘I must talk to you, Percy. You may as well have a drink while you listen.’
We walked up to the Devereux, and there in the bar-room Percy and I sat by the window. The room was smoky and noisy, full of people shouting new-year greetings. Percy drank from his tankard, and impassively watched them.
I began curtly: ‘I’ve been lying to you.’
Instead of watching the crowd, he watched me, with no change of expression.
‘I’ve been seriously ill. Or at least they thought I was.’
‘I saw you weren’t up to the mark, Mr Eliot,’ he said.
‘Listen,’ I said. ‘I want us to understand each other. They thought that I might have a fatal disease. It was a mistake. I’m perfectly well. If you need any confirmation,’ I smiled at him, ‘I can produce evidence. From Sir—’ And I said that I had that morning come from the hospital, I told him the story without any palaver.
He asked: ‘Why didn’t you let any of us know?’
‘That’s a bloody silly question,’ I said, ‘How much change should I have got — if everyone heard I was a bad life?’
For once, his eyes flickered.
‘How much work would you have brought me?’ I asked.
He did not answer.
‘Come to that — how much work did you bring me last term?’
He did not prevaricate. He could have counted briefs which passed through his hands but which he had done nothing to gain. But he said, as brutally as I had spoken ‘Not a guinea’s worth. I thought you were fading out.’
‘I don’t grumble,’ I said. ‘It’s all in the game. I don’t want charity. I don’t need it now. But you ought to be careful not to make a fool of yourself.’
I went on. I was well now, I should be strong by the summer, the doctors had no doubt that I should stand the racket of the Bar. I had come through without my practice suffering much. I had my connexions, Henriques and the rest. It would be easy for me to move to other Chambers. A change from Getliffe, a change from Percy to a clerk who believed in me — I should double my income in a year.
Even at the time, I doubted whether that threat much affected him. But I had already achieved my end. He was a cross-grained man. He despised those who dripped sympathy and who expected a flow of similar honey in return. His native language, though he got no chance to use it, was one of force and violence and temper, and he thought better of me for speaking that morning in the language that he understood. He had never done so before, but he invited me to drink another pint of beer.
‘You needn’t worry, Mr Eliot,’ he said. ‘I don’t make promises, but I believe you’ll be all right.’
He stared at me, and took a long gulp.
‘I should like to wish you’, he said, ‘a happy and prosperous new year.’
It was still the first week in January, and I was walking along Worcester Street on my way to Sheila’s. She had returned the day before, and I was saving up for the luxury of telling her my news. I could have written, but I had saved it up for the glow of that afternoon. I was still light-hearted, light-hearted and lazy with relief. The road glistened in the drizzle, the basement lights were gleaming, here and there along the street one could gaze into lighted rooms — books, a table, a lamp-shade, a piano, a curtained bed. Why did those sights move one so, was it the hint of unknown lives? It was luxurious to see the lighted rooms, walking down the wet street on the way to Sheila.
I had no plan ready-made for that afternoon. I did not intend to propose immediately, now all was well. There was time enough now. Before the month was over I should speak, but it was luxurious to be lazy that day, and my thoughts flowed round her as they had flowed when I first fell in love. It was strange that she should be lodging in this street. She had always felt a nostalgia for the scruffy; perhaps she had liked me more, when we first met, because I was a shabby young man living in a garret.