The Millstone (17 page)

About twenty-four hours after I had made up my mind
that I really ought to go, I consulted Lydia who at first was as perplexed by the problem as I was. She suggested that I should ring up the doctor and ask him to come and see me, instead of going to him; I had never even thought of doing this, which shows how little I had come to terms with the facts of my new life, and immediately thought how very nice it would be if only I dare.

"Of course you dare," said Lydia. "That's what doctors are there for. You can't take the child out in weather like this, in that condition."

"There's probably nothing wrong with her at all," I said miserably. "They never give babies anything for colds, anyway."

"I know what," said Lydia with a sudden illumination. "Why don't you take her temperature?"

I stared at her in amazement, for truly the thought of doing such a thing had never even crossed my mind; looking back, after months with the thermometer as necessary as a knife or a saucepan, I can hardly believe this to be possible, but so it was. To do myself justice, I recognized at once the brilliance of her suggestion, and would have acted on it at once had I had a thermometer. Neither of us, however, possessed one and as it was after closing time, I had to go all the way to John Bell and Croydon's all-night department to buy one, and when I got back Octavia had gone to sleep for the night and it didn't seem worth waking her. In the morning, however, I managed to take it and found that it was high, though not very high for a baby, but nevertheless high enough to justify ringing the doctor. To my surprise, the secretary girl did not sound at all put out when I asked if he could call, but seemed to take such a request for granted: I think I had half expected a lecture on my idleness and pretensions.

He arrived in the middle of the morning, and looked at her, and took her pulse, and took her temperature, and told me that it was nothing serious, in fact nothing at all.
and then said if I didn't mind he ought to have a listen to her chest, so I pulled up her vest, and she smiled and wriggled with delight as he put the stethoscope on her fat ribs. He listened to her for a long time and I, who was beginning to think that perhaps I ought not to have bothered him after all, though it didn't seem to matter either way, sat there somewhat absently thinking how sweet she looked and that her vest could do with a wash. Had I known, I would have enjoyed that moment more, or perhaps I mean that I did enjoy that moment, and none since. For when he had finished listening to her, he stood up and took a deep breath and said, "Well, I don't think there's anything very much to worry about there."

"Oh, good," I said, already faint, for I could see he had not finished, and did not mean what he had said.

"Just the same," he said, "perhaps I ought to book you an appointment to take her along to the hospital."

"Oh," I said. This time I did not dare to ask, thinking of bad things like bronchial pneumonia, but of nothing bad enough, it seemed, which perhaps shows that even I am not naturally quick to accept ill news.

He was silent for a moment, expecting me to question him, I suppose, but I sat there with the child on my knee and said nothing. So after a while he said, no longer even pretending that there was nothing very much to worry about.

"It may well mean nothing at all, nothing at all. Where was she born? St. Andrew's, wasn't it? I can't believe they can have overlooked it. Perhaps the best thing would be for me to make you an appointment to go back there and see Protheroe, he's the man who would deal with this kind of thing."

"What is it?" I said at last. "What is it? Is it her chest? Is it pneumonia?"

"Oh, no," he said, "oh, no, nothing like that, nothing to do with this cold at all, the cold is nothing at all, every
child in the neighbourhood's got that cold. It's just that I happened to hear something else while I was listening for it, that's all. It probably means nothing at all, nothing at all."

I suppose that most people would have asked him what he meant, but I was too frightened. I think that the truth was the last thing I wanted to hear, and I cannot even now think back to it. I wanted him to go on and on telling me that it was nothing, nothing at all. That was all that I wanted to hear, as though on my own deathbed. I did not even want him to tell me when the appointment would be for, as I was afraid it would be urgent, for that evening, for the next day, and when he started to tell me I tried not to listen, but I heard his voice coming to me, saying that it would probably be for the following week, for the following Thursday afternoon, but that he would let me know when he had confirmed it. I was relieved a little; he could not be expecting her to die before next Thursday. I even gathered enough strength to ask what I should do about her cold, and was not dismayed when he said nothing, nothing at all, except for a baby aspirin at night.

When he had gone, I went back and picked Octavia up and sat her on my knee and gazed at her, possessed by the most fearful anguish, aware, as all must be on such occasions, that my state had changed in ten minutes from unknown bliss to known though undefined sorrow. I wept, naturally, for I weep daily for some cause or other, and Octavia smiled at my tears and put her finger in them as they rolled down my cheek, as though they were raindrops on a window pane. It seemed that in comparison with this moment, the whole of my former life had been a summer afternoon. And yet, presumably, nothing was changed; in that instant of listening nothing had happened, except that ignorance had changed into knowledge. Often enough, over the next few weeks, I wished that I had remained ignorant, that I had never sent for the doctor and never
found out. Peace of mind, fool's paradise, seemed to me at times to be better than profitable and useful misery, and it had never seemed that way to me before. They assure me I would have found out in the end, but I might have had a month more at least of ignorant delight. Though what difference would it have made? A month, a week, a day, an hour. It made quite a good deal of difference, in the event, but then I was not to know.

I really cannot look back upon that week. I had thought myself unhappy as a child, obsessed by unreal terrors, guilts and alarms, and as an adolescent, obsessed by myself, and as a woman, obsessed by the fear that my whole life and career were to be thrown into endless gloom by an evening's affection. But now for the first time I felt dread on another's behalf, and I found it insupportable. From time to time, stirring her soup in the pan, or clattering away at my typewriter in the BM typing room, I thought I would drop dead from the strain on my spirits. As I emerged from each fit of grief, I felt bitter resentment against Octavia and against the fate that had thus exposed me; up to this point, I had been thoroughly defended and protected against such onslaughts, but now I knew myself to be vulnerable, tender, naked, an easy target for the malice of chance. The fact that I was on my own, with no one to tell, made my anxiety both greater and more endurable; for in the same instant in which I wished that I had someone, anyone, George, to weep at, I found myself glad that George had been spared this quite unnecessary sorrow.

I cannot bear to write about my first visit to hospital, that following week, though I feel some need to exorcise it. However, I cannot do so. It was intolerable. I waited, in a queue, with other small children and a sordid array of teddy bears and other rubbish, for an hour and a half; it was the time for her afternoon sleep, but she would never sleep on my knee, and she moaned and fretted and sucked
her thumb and thrashed around till I was worn out from the effort of holding her. Then we saw the surgeon, and I did not dare to ask what he did not tell me, and then I had to trail her off to the X-ray department, a good mile away, it seemed, through dark corridors, and then back again to see the surgeon, who said something about the advisability of operating. This time I was in a trance, hardly listening to a word he was saying. Think about it, he said, and come back again the day after tomorrow. So we left, finally, two and a half hours after we had entered, and when we emerged from the hospital doors we were both crying bitterly, she from fatigue, and I from fatigue and fear.

We went home and I thought about it, and two days later I went back again and this time was not kept waiting more than twenty minutes, and was offered a cup of coffee by the surgeon when I got there. It seemed like charity to the condemned, but may not have been; it may just have been time for his coffee break. This time I was sufficiently hardened to notice his features, which before had been nothing but a dazzling blur, and to listen to what he was saying. He was murmuring gently on about the pulmonary artery; the very words were enough to throw me into a panic, so I stopped listening, for I could see that he was not really attempting to explain. When he had finished, and I had finished my burned institution coffee, he said, "So I think it would be advisable to operate as soon as possible."

"But you said," I said, remembering as though in a dream some other part of his conversation, "that it wasn't advisable to operate before the age of five or six."

"I was trying to explain to you," he said, "that we have really no choice. The severity of the condition varies so..."

"But there has been no sign of anything," I cried, suddenly coming round. "No sign. No symptoms. Nothing. She's always been so well."

"As I was saying," he said, "certain symptoms are not in
any case likely to become manifest until the child becomes more active. It was really a stroke of extraordinary luck that we discovered it at this stage, in view of the fact that there have been so few indications..."

"Luck, you call it, luck," I said, unable not to speak. "Luck, is it?" It has never ceased to amaze me that they showed, at this stage, so little professional sympathy; I see now, and suspected then, that his only emotion was professional curiosity. She was an odd case, my baby, a freak.

"Perhaps you could tell me," I said finally, when this retort received no response, and in a voice of renewed humility, "what the chances are. What per cent success you have."

"You must remember," he said, "that this kind of surgery is still in its very early stages, though we have been making great progress in the last few years. As little as five years ago, in an infant of this age, I should have said that the chance of survival was about five to one. Now we would put it at four to one, I think."

I almost think he expected me to congratulate him, but instead I burst into tears. It was the first time anyone had used the word survival to me, so bluntly.

"And otherwise," I said. "Otherwise, what would happen?"

"I am afraid," he said, "that there is no real alternative." And then, looking mildly concerned, he rose to his feet and said, "Now then, Mrs. Stacey, I think you'd better go home and talk it over with your husband, and do remember that we have every confidence..."

"Talk it over with who?" I said, ungrammatically, crossly, teetering on the edge of my self-control.

"Oh yes, of course, my goodness me," he said, looking back at his pile of documents. "But you do have someone you can discuss it with, surely? Your parents? Some relatives, surely?"

"My parents are in Africa," I said, standing up and buttoning up my coat, ready to go.

"In Africa?" He looked strangely interested by this piece of information, which I had volunteered in a spirit of defiance rather than of helpfulness; he sat down again and did a little thinking, and then looked up and said:

"You're not related to Herbert Stacey, are you?"

"As a matter of fact, I'm his daughter," I said grudgingly, aware that my avowal in these circumstances did my father little credit: but a change immediately passed over the whole demeanour of this man, who made me sit down once more and rang for another cup of coffee, and started to tell me how he was at Oxford with my father, and how they had belonged to this and that together, and spoken at this debate and that debate, and how he had always thought he would go in for politics, and how was my mother, and how were they finding Africa? Clearly, from his conversation, he had known both my parents quite well, and indeed, now I came to think of it, his name, which was Protheroe, was a name I had heard bandied around the dinner table a good deal at one time, and with favourable mention, too, for he was on the right side about the Health Service, and sufficiently distinguished to make distinguished remarks about it at conferences. A good socialist, this man was said to be, and we looked at each other with renewed interest.

We chatted amiably for at least a quarter of an hour more, during which time all the other wretched patients doubtless piled up in the waiting rooms outside with weary resignation; when he finally rose to let me go, he shook my hand warmly, took my telephone number, and said that I could bring the baby in for observation for a day in about a week's time, and that they would probably operate, all being well, in about a fortnight.

"Believe me," he said, "I won't pretend it isn't a big job, but she does seem to be unusually well despite her condition, and the chances of recovery, once we get past the initial stages, are excellent, quite excellent. And believe me, Miss Stacey, though I say it myself, she's in good hands here, you couldn't get her anywhere better."

And I believed him, too. Although I had never doubted his competence, I felt happier when he asserted it with a smile in this way. Flesh is weak, and we ask for too much, but it's a comfort when we get it, and without paying.

I did not know what to do with myself for the next fortnight: I was really off work, and consistently off, too, not just fancying I was off until I made myself open the books. I struggled through the days as best I could, tormented by Octavia's lovely smiling gaiety, and trying not to pick her up too often. Then, the second evening, it occurred to me that I needed a drink, so I took to drink. I think I have said elsewhere that drink always cheers me up, and it even managed to cheer me now. Being rather hard up, I bought very cheap red wine, which I quite liked if I warmed it up in a saucepan first. I drank a lot each evening, and after an hour or so reached a state where my thoughts swam dizzily from one optimistic refuge to another: one moment convinced of the immortality of the soul, the next that no pain is without purpose, but basically, quite simply sure, as I never am when sober, that luck and the odds were on my side.