Ingenious Pain Read online

  'How much?'

  She says: Tive shillings. In advance. Nothing fancy or unchristian.'

  He looks at her. The neck of her dress is absurdly low. On her right breast the half-moon of a cicatrix peeps from her tucker.

  He touches it. 'What was this?'

  'A hard bit, sir, that the surgeon cut out before Christmas.'

  He presses her breast around the wound. The girl pulls his hand away. She looks rattled, as if his touch has disturbed an old nightmare.

  'In advance, I said.'

  He has found two more lumps. She pushes him away and steps back into the passageway. In the grey rainhght of the passage she is already half ghost, and in a ghost's voice she says: 'Five shillings.'

  James shakes his head: 'I would not give sixpence for you. Have a fire made up. When a man called Gummer comes in, send him to me.'

  It is long after dark when Gummer, peevish and half cut, returns.

  James says: 'You found him?'

  Gummer walks to the fire. 'I have always loathed this place,' he says. 'Founded by a swineherd, they say. I believe it.'

  *I asked if you had found Munro. Be so civil as to answer.'

  Gummer spins round from the fire. His look is very straight, cool, murderous. He says: 'You'll go too far with this.'

  'There are no children here for you to terrify, Mr Gummer.'

  1 mean it,' says Gummer. 'You and your airs! You forget, mister, that I know exactly where you come from.'

  'You are more drunk than I thought. I suggest you get into the bed. What is it you are mumbling now?'

  'I was saying - you pup - that there will come a day. By God, Grace was right about you.'

  'When you bark like this, sir,' says James, 'you put me in mind of an old dog that has long since lost its teeth and sits all day in its own stink waiting for someone to do it the kindness of clubbing its brains out. Old men should not threaten. Did you see Munro?'

  'I found his house.' There is no more fight in Gummer's voice. He is staring at the flames.

  'And you delivered the note?'

  Yes.'

  'Then we shall call on our old shipmate tomorrow morning.'

  The fire is out. Gummer snores in the bed. James sits at the table, pulls open a purse, pours the coins into his hand, sorts the gold and silver into neat piles. A little under twenty-five pounds. A man might easily live two or three months together on such a sum, were he content to live quietly, to eat in chop-houses, stay away from the cards and have a fire only in the evenings. James has no such intentions. That life is behind him in London - his student lodgings in Duke Street at three and six a week (landlady: Mrs Milk, a widow and clergyman's daughter); tramping to St George's hospital in the hope of seeing John Hunter operate, or over the new bridge at Westminster to St Thomas' to trail behind Dr Fothergill on his rounds. Sitting in Batson's coffee house in winter for the sake of a good fire

  and always having to watch every shilling he spent. Enough of that.

  He slides the money back into the purse, drops the purse into his pocket, strips off his coat and waistcoat and shoes and lies down on the bed. Gummer snorts, gasps something unintelligible. James blows out the candle. The rain has started again.

  'Oh, dear boy! Dearest James! Well met indeed! You cannot know how often I have thought of you since our sea days. Our salad days! Come now, come and meet Mrs Munro. She has been all agog to meet the famous James Dyer.'

  'Hardly famous yet, sir.'

  'Time will see to that, James. We both know it. And this fellow I think I know. The name escapes me now.'

  'Mr Marley Gummer, sir. Yours to command.'

  'Gummer, eh? It comes back to me now, somewhat. Well, I am sure you are welcome also. Mind the pooch there, Mr Gummer. One of Mrs Munro's. Say hello to my old comrades. Chowder.'

  The dog darts at Gummer's leg, humps his stocking.

  'Affectionate Httle devil . . . Here they are, my dear. Pipe them aboard. Ha ha. Damn.' Munro trips over the end of the settle, staggers, clutches at a sideboard and pulls it over, sending glasses and bottles of Bristol blue-glass cascading to the floor. Everything smashes. The four of them look down at the debris, then James looks up at Mrs Munro. There is a red flush on her cheeks. She is young, mid-twenties, a face that verges upon handsome. Her eyes say: See what I am wed to? See what I must suffer? She looks over at her husband.

  Why, Robert, I declare you are more of an ox every day. He has been in a lather to see you Mr Dyer. I swear I have never seen him so pleased to see anyone.'

  'No more than I am to see your husband, madam. He was a most considerate teacher when we were at sea. I am greatly pleased at the prospect of working with him once more.'

  She darts a look at her husband. 'You are taking on a partner, Robert?'

  Munro looks back at his wife, then at James. 'A partner?'

  'Why, Robert, that is what I have often said you should do.'

  James bows, says: 'I am sure that you count half the town among your patients, sir.'

  'Half the town! Ha! No, my boy, we go on very quietly but we live. Don't we live, Agnes?'

  We have meat on the table, indeed, though I sometimes think you are too easily satisfied.'

  Wives, sir! One has to be a duke to afford to marry these days. You cannot satisfy them with less than a thousand per annum. It is a cold morning. Let us have a pint or so of mulled wine, some biscuits, and then I must be off to Mr Leavis. Took a tumble last night coming home from a ball at Simpson's rooms. Fractured femur.'

  'You must take Mr Dyer with you, my dear. To keep you in good heart. Is there not a great deal of pulling in these cases? I am sure he may assist you in that.'

  'He may, he may. Where are you lodged, James? You must send Gummer round for your trunk. No, no, I shall hear no dissent. Mrs Munro will be grateful for the company of a being more her own age. Now then, where is that blasted wine?'

  Agnes Munro hints at it; James sees it with his own eyes: the slow foundering of the practice which, upon Munro's arrival in Bath, full of the energy of a man newly married and determined to reform his character, had seemed so promising, and had indeed.

  during that first season, succeeded beyond all expectation. And when he is sober he is still competent, even the occasional gleam of something more, but those who call for him now do so more out of loyalty, out of a liking for the man, than from any great faith in his abilities. He is courteous, old-world, sitting at the bedside of some tediously dying single lady, stilling the fluttering of her hands, knowing all the while that she cannot pay her bills. He will bleed old men and their wives then drink with them half the afternoon, discussing politics and chiding in the gentlest vein the follies of the young people, though now he will turn to his new assistant, nod and say: 'Present company excepted,' and the old people crinkle their eyes and beam beneficence at Mr Munro's good fortune.

  In the unremitting cold of March - the blackthorn winter -Munro is too drunk to leave the house. Messengers who call for him are sent home to ask if Mr Dyer can be of assistance. Most agree that he can. After the first visit it is him they want, not the old fellow.

  In ballrooms and salons, the lame, the ailing and the bored, their breath sour with nostrums, discuss the New Man, only twenty if you can credit it. Very able. Very able indeed. Not as genial as old Munro, of course. Robert Munro, decent a man as you could meet in a day's walk, but . . .

  Mrs Nigella Pratt's ingrowing toenail, botched by Mr Crisp of Beaufort Square, is remedied by James Dyer. She says: It is almost indecent the speed he works at. Why, I don't imagine he was in the house five minutes before it was done. God's truth - one moment he was walking through the door handing his hat to the girl and the next he was stood in the hall having his guinea off Charles. I don't believe he said more than five words the whole time he was here.'

  Tobias Bone, Justice of the Peace in the County of Middlesex, a great mole removed from the end of his nose. Recounting in a coffee house by the Pump Rooms he raps the table for emphasis
.

  makes the china jump: 'James Dyer is the only competent surgeon in Bath, apart that is from old Munro himself. Reminds me of a man I had before me once accused of poisoning both his parents.'

  'Munro?'

  'No, sir. Dyer. Damn good hands, mind. Hands of a lady, eyes of an eagle, heart of a something or other - how does it go?'

  Salvatore Grimaldi, musician and intimate friend of Lord B, is cut for the stone. He has left it late. There is a total suppression of urine, and he is carried into the house, faint, sallow, shot through with spasms. Despite his agony, he comports himself with great patience; only once, when the chairmen knock him against the table as they lift him up, does he shout, a brief and furious burst of Neapolitan blasphemy. He begs pardon immediately and asks if Mr Munro will be with him soon.

  Munro, wrapped in blankets, a sealskin cap on his head, is sat in his bedroom breakfasting on Madeira and hot water. He has heard the commotion and when his wife comes in he asks her who it is.

  'Some foreigner with a pain. James can deal with it.'

  He nods. 'Where should we be without him?'

  She knocks at James's door. It is opened by Gummer who carries in one hand an open razor. Behind Gummer, James sits coatless at the dressing table.

  She says: 'Mr Grimaldi is below. A foreign gentleman of some influence. He suffers with the stone and Mr Munro begs that you would be so kind . . .'

  'As soon as we are finished here we shall come down.'

  She pauses. 'I pray you not to be too long for the gentleman does suffer so.'

  James looks at her in the mirror. 'That depends on Mr Gummer. You would not have me operate in a beard, I take it?'

  'No indeed. I am sure that would not be proper.'

  It is half an hour before he appears in the chill back room used by Munro as his theatre. His face shines from the razor, and a sweet expensive scent creeps through the air where it mingles with other, less agreeable stinks; the sweat of suffering, old blood. James examines the patient. The patient's eyes flicker; he looks at the young man across a dim and widening gulf He mutters something about a priest. James ignores him, orders the chairmen to strip off Grimaldi's breeches and then changes his own coat for one of the blood-stiff jackets that hang from a wooden peg behind the door. From the third button of Grimaldi's waistcoat a thick gold chain leads to a watch pocket. James draws out the watch, a gold repousse pair-case, enamel dial, London-made. He frees it from the waistcoat button and hands it to Agnes Munro, who has retired into a corner of the room. He says: Tou time from the first cut and stop as soon as the stone is out.'

  He goes to Grimaldi, leans by his ear. 'Mr Grimaldi, the fee for this operation is your watch. Is that agreeable to you, sir?'

  Grimaldi's Ups twitch into a smile. There is a perceptible nod.

  'Draw up his legs.' James takes a knife, forceps and staff from the drawer, then looks over at Mrs Munro. Trom the first cut, madam. And you' - he addresses the chairmen - 'will be witnesses. So . . . now!'

  One minute and twenty seconds,

  James holds up the stone. It is about the size of a small pickled walnut.

  Munro comes in, blinks at the party gathered around the table. He steps over and admires the wound.

  'Lateral cut, eh?'

  'As recommended by Mr Cheselden. But I am twenty seconds or more outside his best time.'

  'Cheselden! We must celebrate this, James. How is the gentleman? Is that not Mr Grimaldi? How do you go on, sir?'

  Grimaldi whispers: 'I have lost my watch.'

  Says Munro: 'Lost your watch but kept your life. I tell you, Mr Grimaldi, I have seen these operations last above an hour.'

  Grimaldi sw^ivels his eyes to James. 'Caro dottore. He is . . , an instrument of God.' He sketches a cross over his heart; the chairmen ease him back into his breeches, back into the chair, carry him off. Grimaldi waves feebly through the glass. Munro fetches a bottle of Frontiniac, the last of his prize-share from a French privateer overhauled hy Aquilon off Brest and saved for just such an occasion. In the theatre James changes his coat, stretches luxuriously.

  'You have my fee I think, madam.'

  He holds out his hand for the watch. Agnes Munro snaps shut the lid, gives it to him, then, as he turns to the door, she draws a handkerchief from her sleeve, reaches up on tiptoe and wipes a spot of blood from his cheek.

  *You are the strangest man I ever knew, James.'

  James considers his reply. Something gallant, something out of a novel, a play. But he reads no novels and the few plays he has seen, at Drury Lane or Covent Garden, have made precious little sense to him. The game is too tiresome and his mind is still enamoured of his work with Grimaldi's bladder; the neat way he was able to dilate the neck, his skilful avoidance of the artery. A gold watch was little enough for such work, for an instrument of God.

  He bids her good day, goes out. She stays a minute, watching the blood darken the floorboards. She smiles, then shivers. The abbey bells tumble out their music.

  Grimaldi recovers. Lord B sends James a diamond ring, then sends his friends, his circle. By midsummer the practice boasts three baronets, a general, an admiral, a bishop, a celebrated painter and two Members of Parliament among its patients. The competition is not pleased. Mr Crisp in particular has been busy spreading rumours, calling them barbers and quacks and saying old Munro

  could not rise in the morning without a bottle of port wine, could not rise at night either. Perhaps his young protege could? He places two fingers above his head, waggles them, grins, gets his laugh.

  But Crisp loses the wealthy Mrs Davy to them, and then the Robinson family, a populous tribe whom James inoculates against the smallpox. Three guineas a head, an outrageous sum, yet Mr Robinson is convinced that the lives of his loved ones are safer in this man's hands, young as he is, than in those of any other operator in Bath. Munro is there, of course, to keep an eye on things, to soften the young man's presence and nod senatorially at his work.

  They advertise in the papers:

  MUNRO AND DYER, SURGEONS in the ORANGE GROVE BATH beg leave to announce they are willing to receive a SMALL number of NEW PATIENTS due to the RECOVERY and COMPLETE RESTORATION of those formerly under their care. INOCULATIONS, CUTTING for STONE, REMOVAL of TUMOURS WARTS FIBROUS GROWTHS, the SETTING of LIMBS, the HEALING of GUNSHOT wounds a speciality. Favoured by the QUALITY and all who DEMAND the BEST service. LADIES treated with the utmost DISCRETION

  Gummer takes care of such matters; advertisements, puffs. His figure, tall and weathered, is a common sight among the gardens and Palladian walkways, arm slipped through the arm of some influential gentleman who nods and smiles, half amused and half flattered to be in the company of such a worldly rogue. Gummer also handles the billing; he knows people who know how to see that a bill is never left unpaid. Masters of the nudge, the honeyed threat, and when other means fail there is never a shortage of

  brawlers in tight coats who, for a shilling, will loaf outside the debtor's door. So the money comes in: gold, silver; large, beautiful banknotes. Also hogsheads, bolts of cloth, heirlooms.

  Munro's old sign comes down. A new one - Jms Dyer & Rbt Munro, Surgeons - swings from the iron scroll above the door, and beneath its shadow come the citizens of the republic of pain: the chronic sufferers, and those struck down suddenly by some bloody disaster, and hustled in, faint, in the arms of friends. And most come out again, if not precisely healed, at least somewhat easier than when they entered, and all dazzled by the young man's skill, soothed by the elder's kindness. Some even die grateful.

  On James's twenty-first birthday, Munro gives a party, crowding the first-floor dining room with friends and feasting them on beef and oysters, summer pudding, syllabubs and champagne. Grimaldi sings for them, a sweet tenor voice that carries across the half-lit Grove to where a band of homegoers stops to listen.

  At the end of the port decanter's second round, Munro throws down his napkin, attains his feet and makes a speech. There are tears in his eyes, a we
b in his throat as he speaks. 'My boy,' he says, 'my boy,' gesturing to James at the opposite end of the table, and there are those among the guests who wonder if Munro means it, if James might be the progeny of some youthful adventure of Munro's. They look from one to the other, trying to discern some likeness. That mouth? The chin? And then their eyes turn to Agnes Munro, and even the dullest are struck by the transformation in that face.

  She could not say exactly when it started. Perhaps that first day when he strolled into the drawing room svelte beside her bumbling husband; or when he spoke to her through the mirror when she came to fetch him to attend to Grimaldi; or on any one of those occasions, frequent as she can contrive them, when she has watched him work, his face like clear water.

  She is careful, wary of the force of her feelings, but her life is already slung between one encounter and the next, the anxious suspense of not seeing him and the anxious joy of his presence. With Munro she is polite, more so than at any time since their wedding. Yet the harder she plays her part - good wife, loyal wife, wife not enamoured of the beautiful young wolf they have brought under their roof - the more intent he seems on throwing her in James's way. The shopping expeditions, the visits to balls, the evenings at the theatre, the Sunday promenades, all at Munro's suggestion, while he himself takes off to the house of a crony- Kent or Thomas or Osbourne - coming home crapulous in a hackney or a chair and sitting out the night in his study, dozing, browsing in old books, mumbling to the dog. It is as if he were grateful to James for taking up the burden of his marriage. Is he making a gift of her? She knows well enough what kind of wife she has been to him, keeping him out of her bed, upbraiding him in company, particularly in company. Yet she does not doubt his affection. It is as large and clumsy as the man himself In the lacquered box in her bedroom she has a sheaf of his poetry to her, passionate lines, full of allusions she cannot understand. She waits for a sign, a word, a scene. How can he not suspect? How can he not know? And yet he does nothing.