Dr Finlay's Casebook (17 page)

The tableau was perfect, as Finlay shouted at the pitch of his lungs. ‘Here we are, dear friends, the little team of three who have served you in the past and, I now assure you, will
continue to do so, with all the skill, energy and enterprise we possess. So now, on behalf of all three of us, I thank you for your continued loyalty and support. We have weathered the storm and
are now looking forward to the good days that lie ahead.’

The cheers were renewed. Someone started to sing ‘Happy days are here again!’ and soon the crowd picked up the refrain which swelled and echoed in the twilight of this memorable day.
Finlay then flung open the swing window behind and ushered his companions from the balcony, remaining only to open both arms wide in a gesture of embracing the cheering multitude.

Once inside the room Janet pressed her hands together in ecstasy. ‘Never in all my born days, I’ll never forget it, my dearest Finlay. Now come away, both of you, and get your
dinner. Some more of that lovely soup and a nice grilled steak wi’ roast taters and grilled ingins.’

When she had gone, Dr Cameron turned to Finlay: ‘You did well, lad, to show me to my fellow townsmen. My appearance stirred them to the depths o’ their hearts. I knew they would give
me their best and loudest cheer, and they did. Come lad, give me your arm. We might have just a wee nip o’ the “cratur”
to celebrate my greatest triumph
!’

Adventures of a Black Bag

Finlay’s Drastic Cure

Often, when Finlay felt himself in need of exercise after a long day’s driving in the gig, he would walk in the evening to the Lea Brae.

At this period, before successful burghers started dotting its summit with their bandbox villas, it was a favourite walk, approached from Levenford by a gentle incline and sweeping steeply
westwards to the Firth.

From the top the view was superb. On a still summer evening with the sun sinking behind Ardfillan hills, the wide water of the estuary below, and the faint haze of a steamer’s smoke
mellowing the far horizon, it was a place to stir the soul.

Yet for Finlay it was ruined by Sam Forrest and his wheeled chair.

Up Sam would come, red-faced, bulging with fat, lying back on the cushions like a lord, with poor Peter Lennie panting and pushing at the chair behind him.

Then at the top, while Peter gasped and wiped the sweat from his brow, Sam would majestically relinquish the little metal steering rod, pull a plug from his pocket, bite enormously, and,
mouthing his quid like a great big ox, would gaze solemnly, not at the view, but at the steep hill beneath, as though to say: ‘Here, my friends! Here was the place where the awful thing
happened!’

It all went back a matter of five long years.

Then Peter Lennie was a spry young fellow of twenty-seven, very modest and obliging, proprietor of the small general stores in College Street which – not without a certain daring timidity
– he had named Lennie’s Emporium.

In fiction the convention exists that meek little men have large, domineering wives, but in reality it is seldom so. And Retta Lennie was as small, slight, and unassertive as her husband.

In consequence, in business they were often ‘put upon’. But for all that, things went pretty well, the future was opening out nicely, and they lived comfortably with their two
children in a semi-detached house out Barloan way, which is a genteel quarter to which tradesmen in Levensford aspire.

Now, in Peter Lennie, the humble little counter-jumping tradesman, there lurked unsuspected longings for adventure. There were moments when, lying reflectively in bed with Retta of a Sunday
morning, he would stare frowningly at the ceiling and suddenly declare – while Retta looked at him admiringly:

‘India!’ (or it might be China). ‘There’s a place we ought to see some day!’

Perhaps it was this romantic boldness which led to the purchase of the tandem bicycle, for though at that moment the craze for ‘a bicycle built for two’ was at its height, in the
ordinary way Peter would never have done anything so rash.

But buy the tandem he did, a shining instrument of motion, a wicked pneumatic-tyred machine, which cost a mint of good money, and which, being uncrated, caused Retta to gasp incredulously:

‘Oh, Peter!’

‘Get about on it,’ he remarked, trying to speak nonchalantly. ‘See places. Easy!’

It was, however, not quite so easy. There was, for instance, the difficulty of Retta’s bloomers. She was a modest little woman was Retta, and it cost Peter a week of solid argument and
persuasion before he could coax his wife into the light of day in these fashionable but apparently improper garments.

Peter himself wore a Norfolk jacket, the belt rather gallantly unbuckled so that, even merely wheeling the tandem, it gave him a terribly professional air. Then, being competently clothed, Peter
and Retta set out to master the machine.

They practised shyly, towards dusk, in the quiet lanes around Barloan, and they fell off in an amusing way quite a lot.

Oh! It was great fun. Retta, in her bloomers, was extremely fetching; Peter liked to lift her up as, red-cheeked and giggling, she sprawled gracefully in the dust.

They had their courtship all over again. And when finally, defying all laws of gravitation, they spun round Barloan Toll without a single wobble, they agreed that never before had life been so
thrilling for them both.

Peter, significantly producing a newly-purchased road map, decided that on Sunday they would have their first real run.

It dawned fine that Sunday; the sky was open and the roads were dry. They set off, Peter bowed dauntlessly over the front handlebars, Retta manfully pedalling her weight behind. They bowled down
the High Street, conscious of admiring, yes, even of envious stares.

Ting-a-ling, ting-ting, went their little bell. A great moment. Ting-a-ling, ting-ting! They swung left – steady, Retta, steady – over the bridge; put their backs into the Knoxhill
ascent, then dipped over the crest of the Lea Brae.

Down the Brae they went, faster, faster. The wind whistled past them. Never had flight been swifter than this.

It was great, it was glorious, but, heavens! It was awful quick! Far, far quicker than either had bargained for.

From a momentary exaltation, Retta turned pale.

‘Brake, Peter, brake!’ she shrieked.

Nervously he jammed on the brakes, the tandem shuddered, and Retta nearly went over his head. At that he lost his wits completely, loosed the brake altogether, and tried to get his feet out of
the pedal clips.

The machine, from skidding broadside on, took the bit between its teeth and shot down the hill like a rocket gone mad.

At the foot of the brae was Sam Forrest.

Sam had been down looking for drift on the Lea Shore; that, indeed, was one of Sam’s two occupations, his other being to support with great industry the corner of the Fitter’s
Arms.

Actually, Sam was so seldom away from the Fitter’s Arms that it never was in any real danger of falling down.

The plain fact is that Sam was a loafer, a big, fat, boozy ne’er-do-well, with a wife who did washing and a houseful of clamorous children who did not.

Sam, with an air at once fascinated and bemused, observed the bicycle approach. It came so quick he wondered for a second if he were seeing right. Saturday, the night before, had been a heavy
night for Sam, and his brain was still slightly fuddled.

Down-down-down whizzed the tandem.

Peter, with a face frozen to horror, made a last effort to control the machine, collided with the kerb, shot across the road and crashed straight into Sam.

In point of fact, it hit him fair in the backside as he turned to run. There was a desperate roar from Sam, a loud clatter as the pieces of the machine dispersed themselves, followed by a long
silence.

Then Retta and Peter picked themselves out of the ditch. They looked at each other incredulously as if to say – It’s impossible; we’re not really alive.

Stupefied, Peter grinned feebly at Retta, and Retta, who felt like fainting, smiled weakly in return. But suddenly they recollected!

What about Sam? Ah, poor Sam lay groaning in the dust. They rushed over to him.

‘Are you hurt?’ cried Peter.

‘I’m dead,’ he moaned. ‘Ye’ve killed me, ye bloody murderers.’

Terrible silence, punctuated by Sam’s groans. Nervously Peter tried to raise the fallen man, who was quite double his weight.

‘Let me be! Let me be!’ Sam roared. ‘You’re tearin’ me to bits.’

Retta went whiter than ever.

‘Get up, Sam, do.’ she implored. She knew him well, having refused him credit the week before.

But Sam wouldn’t get up. The slightest attempt to raise him sent him into the most terrible convulsions, and his big beefy legs seemed now no more able to support him than watery
blancmange.

By this time Retta and Peter were at their wits’ end; they saw Sam a mutilated corpse and themselves standing palely in the dock while the Judge sternly assumed the black cap.

However, at this moment help arrived in the shape of Rafferty’s light lorry.

Rafferty, the butter and egg man, to whom Sunday – with early Mass over – was as good as any other day, had been down at Ardfillan collecting eggs. And with his help, Sam was hoisted
up amongst the eggs and driven to his house in the Vennel.

A few eggs were smashed in the process, but Peter and Retta didn’t mind; they would pay, they protested passionately. Oh, yes, they would pay; nothing mattered so long as Sam got safely
back.

At last Sam was home and in his bed surrounded by his curious progeny, sustained by the shrill lamentations of his wife.

‘The doctor,’ she whined, ‘we’ll need the doctor!’

‘Yes, yes,’ stammered Peter. ‘I’ll fetch the doctor!’

What had he been thinking of? Of course they must have the doctor! He tore down the dirty steps and ran for the nearest doctor like the wind.

At that time Dr Snoddy had not married the wealthy Mrs Innes, nor removed to the salubrious Knoxhill. His premises still stood, quite undistinguished, in the High Street adjacent to the Vennel.
And it was Snoddy who came to Sam.

Sam lay on his back with his mouth open and his eyes closed. No martyr suffered more than did Sam during the doctor’s examination.

Indeed, his groans drew a crowd round the house, in the belief that he was once again leathering his wife, though when the truth emerged the sympathy for Sam was enormous.

The doctor, while puzzled, was impressed by Sam’s condition – no bones broken, no internal injuries that he could find, but something seemingly wrong for all that, the
patient’s agony was so manifest.

Snoddy was a small, prosy, pompous man with a tremendous sense of his own dignity, and finally, with a great show of knowledge, he made the ominous pronouncement:

‘It’s the spine!’

Sam echoed the words with a hollow groan. And horror thrilled through to Peter’s marrow.

‘Ye understand,’ he whispered, ‘it was us to blame; we take full responsibility. He’s to have everything that’s needed. Nothing’s too good for him!
Nothing!’

That was the beginning. Nourishment was necessary for the invalid, good strong nourishment. Nourishment was provided. Stimulant – Peter saw that the brandy was the very best. A proper bed
– Retta sent round the bed herself. Towels, linen, saucepans, jellies, tea, nightshirts, sugar, they all flowed gently to the sick man’s home. Later – some tobacco – to
soothe the anguished nerves. And a little money too, since Mrs Forrest, tied to Sam’s bedside, could not do her washing as before.

‘Run round with this to Sam’s,’ became the order of the day.

Snoddy of course was calling regular as the clock.

And finally there came the day when, taking Peter aside, he articulated the fatal word ‘paralysis’. Sam’s life was saved, but Sam would never use his legs again.

‘Never!’ Peter faltered. ‘I don’t understand!’

Snoddy laughed his pompous little laugh.

‘Just watch the poor fellow try to walk – then ye’ll understand.’

It was a staggering blow for Peter and Retta. They talked it over late into the night – over and over and over. But there was no way out.

Retta wept a little, and Peter was not far off tears himself, but they had to make up their minds to it; they had done it, they alone must foot the bill, and Sam, of course, Sam, poor soul, his
lot was far far worse than theirs.

A bath-chair was bought – Peter sweated when he saw the price – and Sam and his chair assumed their place in Levenford society.

On the level his eldest son, aged fourteen, could wheel him easily enough and ‘down to the emporium’ became a favourite excursion of Sam’s. He would sit outside the shop,
basking in the sun, sending in for tobacco, or a pie, or dried prunes, of which he was particularly fond. Now, indeed, there was no talk of refusing him credit. Sam’s credit was unlimited,
and he had his weekly dole from Peter as well.

When the nine days’ wonder of the wheeled chair subsided, Levenford forgot. Hardly anyone noticed it when Peter and Retta relinquished the cosy little Barloan house, and moved into the
rooms above the shop, when the little girl gave up her music lessons, and the boy suddenly left the academy to earn a wage in Gillespie’s office.

The grey creeping into Peter’s hair and the worried frown deepening on Retta’s brow, evoked little interest and less sympathy.

As Sam himself put it with a pathetic shake of his head: ‘They have their legs, at any rate!’

This was indeed the very phrase which Sam employed to Finlay on that fateful evening on the first July.

It was a fine, bright evening, with the view looking its very best. Finlay stood on the brae, trying to find tranquillity in the sight.

Tonight his surgery had worried him, the day had been troublesome, and his mood, taken altogether, was cantankerous.

At length the soothing quiet of the scene sank into him; he lit his pipe, beginning to feel himself at peace. And then, over the crest of the brae, came Sam in the wheeled chair.

Finlay swore. The history of Sam and Peter had long been known to him, and the sight of the big, bloated fellow, fastened like a parasite on the lean and hungry Lennie, goaded him
immeasurably.