Dr Woolacott

For this, from stiller seats we came

CYMBELINE V. IV

1

People, several of them, crossing the park….

Clesant said to himself, “There is no reason I should not live for years now that I have given up the violin,” and leant back with the knowledge that he had faced a fact. From where he lay, he could see a little of the garden and a little of the park, a little of the fields and the river, and hear a little of the tennis; a little of everything was what was good for him, and what Dr Woolacott had prescribed. Every few weeks he must expect a relapse, and he would never be able to travel or marry or manage the estates, still there, he didn’t want to much, he didn’t much want to do anything. An electric bell connected him with the house, the strong beautiful slightly alarming house where his father had died, still there, not so very alarming, not so bad lying out in the tepid sun and watching the colourless shapeless country people….

No, there was no reason he should not live for years.

“In 1990, why even 2000 is possible, I am young,” he thought. Then he frowned, for Dr Woolacott was bound to be dead by 2000, and the treatment might not be continued intelligently. The anxiety made his head ache, the trees and grass turned black or crimson, and he nearly rang his bell. Soothed by the advancing figures, he desisted. Looking for mushrooms apparently,

they soothed him because of their inadequacy. No mushrooms grew in the park. He felt friendly and called out in his gentle voice, “Come here.”

“Oh aye,” came the answer.

“I’m the squire, I want you a moment, it’s all right.”

Set in motion, the answerer climbed over the park fence. Clesant had not intended him to do this, and fearful of being bored said: “You’ll find no mushrooms here, but they’ll give you a drink or anything else you fancy up at the house.”

“Sir, the squire, did you say?”

“Yes; I pass for the squire.”

“The one who’s sick?”

“Yes, that one.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Thank you, thanks,” said the boy, pleased by the unexpected scrap of sympathy.

“Sir…”

“All right, what is it?” he smiled encouragingly.

“Sick of what illness?”

Clesant hesitated. As a rule he resented that question, but this morning it pleased him, it was as if he too had been detected by friendly eyes zigzagging in search of a treasure which did not exist. He replied: “Of being myself perhaps! Well, what they call functional. Nothing organic. I can’t possibly die, but my heart makes my nerves go wrong, my nerves my digestion, then my head aches, so I can’t sleep, which affects my heart, and round we go again. However, I’m better this morning.”

“When shall you be well?”

He gave the contemptuous laugh of the chronic invalid. “Well? That’s a very different question. It depends. It depends on a good many things. On how carefully I live. I must avoid all excitement, I must never get tired, I mustn’t be—” He was going to say “mustn’t be intimate with people,” but it

was no use employing expressions which would be meaningless to a farm-worker, and such the man appeared to be, so he changed it to “I must do as Dr Woolacott tells me.”

“Oh, Woolacott…”

“Of course you know him, everyone round here does, marvellous doctor.”

“Yes, I know Woolacott.”

Clesant looked up, intrigued by something positive in the tone of the voice.

“Woolacott, Woolacott, so I must be getting on.” Not quite as he had come, he vaulted over the park palings, paused, repeated “Woolacott” and walked rapidly after his companions, who had almost disappeared.

A servant now answered the bell. It had failed to ring the first time, which would have been annoying had the visitor proved tedious. The little incident was over now, and nothing else disturbed the peace of the morning.

The park, the garden, the sounds from the tennis, all reassumed their due proportions, but it seemed to Clesant that they were pleasanter and more significant than they had been, that the colours of the grass and the shapes of the trees had beauty, that the sun wandered with a purpose through the sky, that the little clouds, wafted by westerly airs, were moving against the course of doom and fate, and were inviting him to follow them.

2

Continuance of convalescence… tea in the gun-room. The gun-room, a grand place in the old squire’s time, much energy had flowed through it, intellectual and bodily. Now the bookcases were locked, the trophies between them desolate, the tall shallow cupboard designed for fishing-rods and concealed in the wainscoting contained only medicine-bottles and air cushions. Still, it was Clesant’s nearest approach to normality, for the rest of

his household had tea in the gun-room too. There was innocuous talk as they flitted out and in, pursuing their affairs like birds, and troubling him only with the external glint of their plumage. He knew nothing about them, although they were his guardians and familiars; even their sex left no impression on his mind. Throned on the pedestal of a sofa, he heard them speak of their wishes and plans, and give one another to understand that they had passionate impulses, while he barricaded himself in the circle of his thoughts.

He was thinking about music.

Was it quite out of the question that he should take up the violin again?

He felt better, the morning in the garden had started him upon a good road, a refreshing sleep had followed. Now a languorous yearning filled him, which might not the violin satisfy? The effect might be the contrary, the yearning might turn to pain, yet even pain seemed unlikely in this kindly house, this house which had not always been kindly, yet surely this afternoon it was accepting him.

A stranger entered his consciousness—a young man in good if somewhat provincial clothes, with a pleasant and resolute expression upon his face.

People always were coming into the house on some business or other, and then going out of it. He stopped in the middle of the room, evidently a little shy. No one spoke to him for the reason that no one remained: they had all gone away while Clesant followed his meditations. Obliged to exert himself for a moment, Clesant said: “I’m sorry—I expect you’re wanting one of the others.”

He smiled and twiddled his cap.

“I’m afraid I mustn’t entertain you myself. I’m something of an invalid, and this is my first day up. I suffer from one of those wretched functional troubles—fortunately nothing organic.”

Smiling more broadly, he remarked: “Oh aye.”

Clesant clutched at his heart, jumped up, sat down, burst out laughing. It was that farm-worker who had been crossing the park.

“Thought I’d surprise you, thought I’d give you a turn,” he cried gaily.

“I’ve come for that drink you promised.”

Clesant couldn’t speak for laughing, the whole room seemed to join in, it was a tremendous joke.

“I was around in my working-kit when you invited me this morning, so I thought after I’d washed myself up a bit and had a shave my proper course was to call and explain,” he continued more seriously. There was something fresh and rough in his voice which caught at the boy’s heart.

“But who on earth are you, who are you working for?”

“For you.”

“Oh nonsense, don’t be silly.”

“’Tisn’t nonsense, I’m not silly, I’m one of your farm-hands. Rather an unusual one, if you like. Still, I’ve been working here for the last three months, ask your bailiff if I haven’t. But I say—I’ve kept thinking about you—how are you?”

“Better—because I saw you this morning!”

“That’s fine. Now you’ve seen me this afternoon you’ll be well.”

But this last remark was flippant, and the visitor through making it lost more than the ground he had gained. It reminded Clesant that he had been guilty of laughter and of rapid movement, and he replied in reproving tones:

“To be well and to be better are very different. I’m afraid one can’t get well from one’s self. Excuse me if we don’t talk any more. It’s so bad for my heart.” He closed his eyes. He opened them again immediately. He had had, during that instant of twilight, a curious and pleasurable sensation.

However, there was the young man still over at the further side of the room.

He was smiling. He was attractive—fresh as a daisy, strong as a horse. His shyness had gone.

“Thanks for that tea, a treat,” he said, lighting a cigarette. “Now for who I am. I’m a farmer—or rather, going to be a farmer. I’m only an agricultural labourer now—exactly what you took me for this morning. I wasn’t dressing up or posing with that broad talk. It’s come natural to say ‘Oh aye’, especially when startled.”

“Did I startle you?”

“Yes, you weren’t in my mind.”

“I thought you were looking for mushrooms.”

“So I was. We all do when we’re shifting across, and when there’s a market we sell them. I’ve been living with that sort all the summer, your regular hands, temporaries like myself, tramps, sharing their work, thinking their thoughts when they have any.” He paused. “I like them.”

“Do they like you?”

“Oh well….” He laughed, drew a ring off his finger, laid it on the palm of his hand, looked at it for a moment, put it on again. All his gestures were definite and a trifle unusual. “I’ve no pride anyway, nor any reason to have.

I only have my health, and I didn’t always have that. I’ve known what it is to be an invalid, though no one guesses it now.” He looked across gently at Clesant. He seemed to say: “Come to me, and you shall be as happy as I am and as strong.” He gave a short account of his life. He dealt in facts, very much so when they arrived—and the tale he unfolded was high-spirited and a trifle romantic here and there, but in no way remarkable. Aged twenty-two, he was the son of an engineer at Wolverhampton, his two brothers were also engineers, but he himself had always taken after his mother’s family, and preferred country life. All his holidays on a farm. The war.

After which he took up agriculture seriously, and went through a course at Cirencester. The course terminated last spring, he had done well, his people were about to invest money in him, but he himself felt “too scientific” after it all. He was determined to “get down into the manure” and feel people instead of thinking about them. “Later on it’s too late.” So off he went and

roughed it, with a few decent clothes in a suitcase, and now and then, just for the fun of the thing, he took them out and dressed up. He described the estate, how decent the bailiff was, how sorry people seemed to be about the squire’s illness, how he himself got a certain amount of time off, practically any evening. Extinguishing his cigarette, he put back what was left of it into his case for future use, laid a hand upon either knee, smiled.

There was a silence. Clesant could not think of anything to say, and began to tremble.

“Oh, my name—”

“Oh yes, of course, what’s your name?”

“Let me write it down, my address too. Both my Wolverhampton address I’ll give you, also where I’m lodging here, so if ever—got a pencil?”

“Yes.”

“Don’t get up.”

He came over and sat on the sofa; his weight sent a tremor, the warmth and sweetness of his body began casting nets.

“And now we’ve no paper.”

“Never mind,” said Clesant, his heart beating violently.

“Talking’s better, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“Or even not talking.” His hand came nearer, his eyes danced round the room, which began to fill with a golden haze. He beckoned, and Clesant moved into his arms. Clesant had often been proud of his disease but never, never of his body, it had never occurred to him that he could provoke desire. The sudden revelation shattered him, he fell from his pedestal, but not alone, there was someone to cling to, broad shoulders, a sunburnt throat, lips that parted as they touched him to murmur—“And to hell with Woolacott.”

Woolacott! He had completely forgotten the doctor’s existence.

Woolacott! The word crashed between them and exploded with a sober

light, and he saw in the light of the years that had passed and would come how ridiculously he was behaving. To hell with Woolacott, indeed! What an idea! His charming new friend must be mad. He started, recoiled, and exclaimed: “What ever made you say that?”

The other did not reply. He looked rather foolish, and he too recoiled, and leant back in the opposite corner of the sofa, wiping his forehead. At last he said: “He’s not a good doctor.”

“Why, he’s our family doctor, he’s everyone’s doctor round here!”

“I didn’t mean to be rude—it slipped out. I just had to say it, it must have sounded curious.”

“Oh, all right then,” said the boy, willing enough to be mollified. But the radiance had passed and no effort of theirs could recall it.

The young man took out his unfinished cigarette, and raised it towards his lips. He was evidently a good deal worried. “Perhaps I’d better explain what I meant,” he said.

“As you like, it doesn’t matter.”

“Got a match?”

“I’m afraid I haven’t.”

He went for one to the further side of the room, and sat down there again.

Then he began: “I’m perfectly straight—I’m not trying to work in some friend of my own as your doctor. I only can’t bear to think of this particular one coming to your house—this grand house—you so rich and important at the first sight and yet so awfully undefended and deceived.” His voice faltered. “No, we won’t talk it over. You’re right. We’ve found each other, nothing else matters, it’s a chance in a million we’ve found each other. I’d do anything for you, I’d die if I could for you, and there’s this one thing you must do straight away for me: sack Woolacott.”

“Tell me what you’ve got against him instead of talking sentimentally.”

He hardened at once. “Sentimental, was I? All right, what I’ve got against Woolacott is that he never makes anyone well, which seems a defect

in a doctor. I may be wrong.”

“Yes, you’re wrong,” said Clesant; the mere repetition of the doctor’s name was steadying him. “I’ve been under him for years.”

“So I should think.”

“Of course, I’m different, I’m not well, it’s not natural for me to be well, I’m not a fair test, but other people—”

“Which other people?”

The names of Dr Woolacott’s successful cases escaped him for the moment. They filled the centre of his mind, yet the moment he looked at them they disappeared.

“Quite so,” said the other. “Woolacott,” he kept on saying. “Woolacott!

I’ve my eye on him. What’s life after twenty-five? Impotent, blind, paralytic. What’s life before it unless you’re fit? Woolacott! Even the poor can’t escape. The crying, the limping, the nagging, the medicine-bottles, the running sores—in the cottages too; kind Dr Woolacott won’t let them stop…. You think I’m mad, but it’s not your own thought you’re thinking: Woolacott stuck it ready diseased into your mind.”

Clesant sighed. He looked at the arms, now folded hard against each other, and longed to feel them around him. He had only to say, “Very well, I’ll change doctors,” and immediately…. But he never hesitated. Life until 1990 or 2000 retained the prior claim. “He keeps people alive,” he persisted.

“Alive for what?”

“And there’s always the marvellously unselfish work he did during the war.”

“Did he not. I saw him doing it.”

“Oh—it was in France you knew him?”

“Was it not. He was at his marvellously unselfish work night and day, and not a single man he touched ever got well. Woolacott dosed, Woolacott

inoculated, Woolacott operated, Woolacott spoke a kind word even, and there they were and here they are.”

“Were you in hospital yourself?”

“Oh aye, a shell. This hand—ring and all mashed and twisted, the head—

hair’s thick enough on it now, but brain stuck out then, so did my guts, I was a butcher’s shop. A perfect case for Woolacott. Up he came with his

‘Let me patch you up, do let me just patch you up,’ oh, patience itself and all that, but I took his measure, I was only a boy then, but I refused.”

“Can one refuse in a military hospital?”

“You can refuse anywhere.”

“I hadn’t realized you’d been wounded. Are you all right now?”

“Yes, thanks,” and he resumed his grievances. The pleasant purple-gray suit, the big well-made shoes and soft white collar, all suggested a sensible country lad on his holiday, perhaps on courtship—farm-hand or farmer, countrified anyway. Yet with them went this wretched war-obsession, this desire to be revenged on a man who had never wronged him and must have forgotten his existence. “He is stronger than I am,” he said angrily. “He can fight alone, I can’t. My great disadvantage—never could fight alone. I counted on you to help, but you prefer to let me down, you pretended at first you’d join up with me—you’re no good.”

“Look here, you’ll have to be going. So much talk is fatal for me, I simply mustn’t get overtired. I’ve already far exceeded my allowance, and anyhow I can’t enter into this sort of thing. Can you find your own way out, or shall I ring this bell?” For inserted into the fabric of the sofa was an electric bell.

“I’ll go. I know where I’m not wanted. Don’t you worry, you’ll never see me again.” And he slapped his cap onto his head and swung to the door.

The normal life of the house entered the gun-room as he opened it—

servants, inmates, talking in the passages, in the hall outside. It disconcerted him, he came back with a complete change of manner, and before ever he

spoke Clesant had the sense of an incredible catastrophe moving up towards them both.

“Is there another way out?” he inquired anxiously.

“No, of course not. Go out the way you came in.”

“I didn’t tell you, but the fact is I’m in trouble.”

“How dare you, I mustn’t be upset, this is the kind of thing that makes me ill,” he wailed.

“I can’t meet those people—they’ve heard of something I did out in France.”

“What was it?”

“I can’t tell you.”

In the sinister silence, Clesant’s heart resumed its violent beating, and though the door was now closed voices could be heard through it. They were coming. The stranger rushed at the window and tried to climb out. He plunged about, soiling his freshness, and whimpering, “Hide me.”

“There’s nowhere.”

“There must be…”

“Only that cupboard,” said Clesant in a voice not his own.

“I can’t find it,” he gasped, thumping stupidly on the panelling.

“Do it for me. Open it. They’re coming.”

Clesant dragged himself up and across the floor, he opened the cupboard, and the man bundled in and hid, and that was how it ended.

Yes, that’s how it ends, that’s what comes of being kind to handsome strangers and wanting to touch them. Aware of all his weaknesses, Dr Woolacott had warned him against this one. He crawled back to the sofa, where a pain stabbed him through the heart and another struck between the eye. He was going to be ill.

The voices came nearer, and with the cunning of a sufferer he decided what he must do. He must betray his late friend and pretend to have trapped him on purpose in the cupboard, cry “Open it….”

The voices entered. They spoke of the sounds of a violin. A violin had apparently been heard playing in the great house for the last half-hour, and no one could find out where it was. Playing all sorts of music, gay, grave and passionate. But never completing a theme. Always breaking off. A beautiful instrument. Yet so unsatisfying… leaving the hearers much sadder than if it had never performed. What was the use (someone asked) of music like that? Better silence absolute than this aimless disturbance of our peace.

The discussion broke off, his distress had been observed, and like a familiar refrain rose up “Telephone, nurse, doctor…” Yes, it was coming again—the illness, merely functional, the heart had affected the nerves, the muscles, the brain. He groaned, shrieked, but love died last; as he writhed in convulsions he cried: “Don’t go to the cupboard, no one’s there.”

So they went to it. And no one was there. It was as it had always been since his father’s death—shallow, tidy, a few medicine-bottles on the upper shelf, a few cushions stored on the lower.

3

Collapse…. He fell back into the apparatus of decay without further disaster, and in a few hours any other machinery for life became unreal. It always was like this, increasingly like this, when he was ill. Discomfort and pain brought their compensation, because they were so superbly organized.

His bedroom, the anteroom where the night-nurse sat, the bathroom and tiny kitchen, throbbed like a nerve in the corner of the great house, and elsewhere normal life proceeded, people pursued their avocations in channels which did not disturb him.

Delirium…. The nurse kept coming in, she performed medical incantations and took notes against the doctor’s arrival. She did not make him better, he grew worse, but disease knows its harmonies as well as

health, and through its soft advances now rang the promise, “You shall live to grow old.”

“I did something wrong, tell me, what was it?” It made him happy to abase himself before his disease, nor was this colloquy their first.

“Intimacy,” the disease replied.

“I remember…. Do not punish me this once, let me live and I will be careful. Oh, save me from him.”

“No—from yourself. Not from him. He does not exist. He is an illusion, whom you created in the garden because you wanted to feel you were attractive.”

“I know I am not attractive, I will never excite myself again, but he does exist, I think.”

“No.”

“He may be death, but he does exist.”

“No. He never came into the gun-room. You only wished that he would.

He never sat down on the sofa by your side and made love. You handed a pencil, but he never took it, you fell into his arms, but they were not there, it has all been a daydream of the kind forbidden. And when the others came in and opened the cupboard: your muscular and intelligent farm-hand, your saviour from Wolverhampton in his Sunday suit—was he there?”

“No, he was not,” the boy sobbed.

“No, he was not,” came an echo, “but perhaps I am here.”

The disease began to crouch and gurgle. There was the sound of a struggle, a spewing sound, a fall. Clesant, not greatly frightened, sat up and peered into the chaos. The nightmare passed, he felt better. Something survived from it, an echo that said “Here, here”. And, he not dissenting, bare feet seemed to walk to the little table by his side, and hollow, filled with the dark, a shell of nakedness bent towards him and sighed “Here”.

Clesant declined to reply.

“Here is the end, unless you…” Then silence. Then, as if emitted by a machine, the syllables “Oh aye”.

Clesant, after thought, put out his hand and touched the bell.

“I put her to sleep as I passed her, this is my hour, I can do that much….”

He seemed to gather strength from any recognition of his presence, and to say, “Tell my story for me, explain how I got here, pour life into me and I shall live as before when our bodies touched.” He sighed. “Come home with me now, perhaps it is a farm. I have just enough power. Come away with me for an evening to my earthly lodging, easily managed by a… the…

such a visit would be love. Ah, that was the word—love—why they pursued me and still know I am in the house; love was the word they cannot endure, I have remembered it at last.”

Then Clesant spoke, sighing in his turn. “I don’t even know what is real, so how can I know what is love? Unless it is excitement, and of that I am afraid. Do not love me, whatever you are; at all events this is my life and no one shall disturb it; a little sleep followed by a little pain.”

And his speech evoked strength. More powerfully the other answered now, giving instances and arguments, throwing into sentences the glow they had borne during daylight. Clesant was drawn into a struggle, but whether to reach or elude the hovering presence he did not know. There was always a barrier either way, always his own nature. He began calling for people to come, and the adversary, waxing lovely and powerful, struck them dead before they could waken and help. His household perished, the whole earth was thinning, one instant more, and he would be alone with his ghost—and then through the walls of the house he saw the lights of a car rushing across the park.

It was Dr Woolacott at last.

Instantly the spell broke, the dead revived, and went downstairs to receive life’s universal lord; and he—he was left with a human being who

had somehow trespassed and been caught, and blundered over the furniture in the dark, bruising his defenceless body, and whispering, “Hide me.”

And Clesant took pity on him again, and lifted the clothes of the bed, and they hid.

Voices approached, a great company, Dr Woolacott leading his army.

They touched, their limbs intertwined, they gripped and grew mad with delight, yet through it all sounded the tramp of that army.

“They are coming.”

“They will part us.”

“Clesant, shall I take you away from all this?”

“Have you still the power?”

“Yes, until Woolacott sees me.”

“Oh, what is your name?”

“I have none.”

“Where is your home?”

“Woolacott calls it the grave.”

“Shall I be with you in it?”

“I can promise you that. We shall be together for ever and ever, we shall never be ill, and never grow old.”

“Take me.”

They entwined more closely, their lips touched never to part, and then something gashed him where life had concentrated, and Dr Woolacott, arriving too late, found him dead on the floor.

The doctor examined the room carefully. It presented its usual appearance, yet it reminded him of another place. Dimly, from France, came the vision of a hospital ward, dimly the sound of his own voice saying to a mutilated recruit, “Do let me patch you up, oh but you must just let me patch you up….”

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