A Kind Man (13 page)

My daughter, who is twenty years old, has been crippled for eleven years after falling from her horse. She is not paralysed but able to move only with great difficulty, and is in extreme and constant pain. Doctors can do nothing more for her. She is in despair and threatens to take her own life.

We have heard of you and I am asking if you will come to Daphne and try, if not to cure her, at least to give her relief from her pain.

I will naturally pay whatever sum of money you require.

Tommy’s first reaction was of anger, which startled Eve for he was rarely out of temper. He had taken his dismissal sombrely but with the patience and acceptance she would have expected. She was the one who had been angry then, not with him but with those who now mistrusted him, were suspicious and wanted no part of him.

‘I am not for hire,’ he said after reading the letter.

‘But if this is the way you have of earning your bread, what is wrong with that? You would be out of pocket if you had to travel there.’

‘I am not for hire. Whatever has happened, it is not something I can take money for. How do I know if any of it has to do with me?’

‘But you do know.’

‘No,’ he said quietly. ‘I know what happened to me but all the rest … It is likely to be chance. I am claiming nothing, I understand none of it. And I am not for hire.’

‘Then go to see her without being hired.’

He was silent but after a day wrote that he was not able to help, though he felt badly about it as he walked to post his letter.

‘I would be afraid,’ he said. ‘I can’t set myself up in that way. It would be wrong.’

‘Why would it?’

But he simply shook his head.

He had been right that they were better off than most although he was without work, but that did not make things easy, and Eve fretted that they might have to leave 6 The Cottages at the end of the year if they could not find money enough for the rent.

Tommy walked all over the district looking for work for he could turn his hand to many things in the house and garden and even on the land and surely someone would need a labourer. But there were too many seeking and too few hiring and each time he returned without an employment apart from once, when he got work with a gang of men ditching, for a few days.

He saw that Eve’s face was set in lines of tiredness and worry and that she smiled little and kept glancing at him as if about to say something before changing her mind. She went to see Miriam and stayed for over a week to help with the children, set the house to rights, mended trousers and shirts and jackets and cooked proper food, saw that they were all clean, though she knew that once she had left things would revert to their old state. The boys were growing and rarely ill, which was a miracle. They fought and
tumbled about and spent the days of that summer fishing the canal and roaring round the streets with gangs of others.

Miriam sat in the chair on the back step watching without interest while Eve nursed the baby, a scrawny, sickly boy whose skin was tinged yellow from early jaundice.

‘Doctors are rich men,’ Miriam said.

‘Are they? They work hard for their money then.’

‘And look how many still die.’

‘We all die, don’t we? They can’t hold it off for ever, even if they are doctors.’

‘Tommy could be a rich man, couldn’t he? He’s done as well as any of them. He’s a fool, sitting idle when he could use the gift he’s been given.’

Eve rocked the baby and, after a moment, had to get up to tend Arthur George who came in from the street howling with a grazed knee, but as she did so, she could not dismiss from her mind what Miriam had said.

She had long given up trying to suggest to her sister that there should be no more children, though sometimes she made a sharp remark to John Bullard, who chose not to hear. But when she left to return home she worried about the boys, who might not be unhappy or ill but who did not get enough good food to eat
and about whom nobody seemed to take any trouble. True, they helped one another and grew up somehow unscathed, but what had they to hope for?

‘The man, Mr Arnold, wrote again,’ Tommy said the evening she got home. ‘It seems as if his daughter will try to do away with herself if she suffers more.’

She knew what he was saying.

‘You would walk to Hoargate and then catch a bus?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well.’

She took the spade from beside the door and went to dig up potatoes. Bert Ankerby had two marrows for her which he was in the act of bringing and so they went down the garden together, talking of what she might grow for the winter for he was anxious to make sure they had as much as might be possible, anxious that if Tommy did not get work soon they should still manage. That they lived mainly on eggs and potatoes and whatever vegetables they grew bothered neither of them. The rabbits had gone for the pot and provided suppers for a week.

The next morning Tommy got up at five and was at Hoargate waiting for the bus by six. He should be there by nine, though how long a walk he would have after the bus let him off he did not know.

In fact the stop was not far from the gate of the house, which was called ‘Laverings’, and he was walking up the drive before eight thirty. He had not let them know he was coming, thinking that the girl would not have gone anywhere and that as they had asked for him he would not be turned away.

He was not, but seeing the house, a large stone one with pillars at the entrance, long windows onto a lawn, a gravel drive round to stables, he almost turned round. He was not a man who ever felt troubled about his origins, he felt able to speak to anyone, hold his head up anywhere, and had always been respected for it. But walking up to this door he felt like a pedlar.

There was no need. He asked for Mr Arnold and gave his name and within a few seconds the man came into the hall and took hold of both his hands, holding them warmly and stumbling over words of thanks.

Tommy was offered breakfast but accepted only a cup of strong tea which he drank standing, hardly liking to glance round. But what he saw was not stately or imposing, it was solid and comfortable, everything good, everything well made, but still part of a proper home. Mr Arnold was a tall, broad man with a thick head of hair and a high forehead, a good suit, a watch chain. An honest look.

‘There is no one else,’ he said as they made for the
staircase after Tommy had drunk his tea quickly and hot. ‘I had no one else to turn to. Daphne is little alone, though we try not to let her feel she is being watched, but when she spoke of taking her life …’ They went along a wide corridor with a window at the far end overlooking parkland. The sun was climbing up the sky now. It would be hot.

‘You were the only person I could think of turning to. Everyone speaks of you. You have done wonderful things.’

‘I don’t know what I do,’ Tommy said. ‘I came because I felt for you but I may have nothing to give. I may be of no help. I can make you no promises.’

He felt nervous and as if he were some sort of impostor, for he had no confidence, no sense of sureness about what the outcome of it all might be. He felt a hollowness in the pit of his stomach. He had no right to have come and would have gone back down the quiet corridor and away if they had not stopped at a white-painted door on which Mr Arnold tapped, before beckoning Tommy to follow him.

She was sitting in a deep armchair beside the windows. Her hair was dark and tied back from her face, which was a pleasing face and would have been young and might have been pretty, if it had not been marked by years of illness and pain and of sitting alone looking
out of a window. A book was on the arm of the chair but it was not open.

‘This is Mr Carr,’ her father said. ‘I told you about him.’

She looked round and directly at Tommy. ‘He was not going to come.’

‘We thought not but he has.’

‘Why did you change your mind?’

Tommy hesitated. ‘I thought I should. I couldn’t rest.’

‘What happens now?’

For a second he almost said that he did not know, that he had not been taught, that he was as unsure of it all as anyone, but then it came to him that he did know, and this was nothing new or strange. Miss Arnold was no different.

He went across the room where an upright chair stood against the wall, and lifted it and set it down beside her.

‘Do you need anything?’

‘No.’

‘Do you chant and say prayers?’

‘No.’

Mr Arnold was still standing.

‘Give me your hand please.’

She stretched it out to him and he took it. It was small and soft and cool to his touch.

For a few moments they sat in silence until he felt a flutter of doubt, wondered if he would fail and why and what he might say to them.

Her eyes were on his face and he saw despair in them. And then he felt the heat rush up through his body until his skin and flesh and even the blood in his veins burned, and as he felt it so he saw that she did, it transferred itself from him until he began to feel drained and tired. He took his hand away from hers and sat for a moment. The young woman had closed her eyes and her pale skin was slightly flushed.

There was a great silence in the room.

M
R
A
RNOLD
offered him fifty pounds, which he refused, and then, assuming it was because fifty pounds was too little, Mr Arnold suggested one hundred, but Tommy would take no money except for his fare.

Two days later, a letter arrived. Daphne Arnold had been in no pain since his visit and was now able to walk about the garden, though it would take time for her muscles to strengthen fully. The envelope contained a cheque which Tommy tore up at once before going out to pick the last beans and take down their sticks.

Eve did not know what she felt. She was proud of him for refusing the payment, to which he said he had no right, but money was so short now and there seemed no chance of anyone employing him in the town, even if there had been work.

And every day someone came to the door, someone sick or with a sick child or husband or wife, wanting him to go back with them or sometimes to see them there and then. He always did.

Word travelled further, people came from many miles away, letters arrived asking him to travel here and there about the country.

‘Miracle worker?’

‘The Healer.’

‘Is this man a saint or a fraud?’

Those things were written in the newspapers and more besides and when he went into the town, he was shunned or embraced and did not know how to deal with either. He felt awkward and sometimes ashamed and would say, ‘I do nothing.’ Or, ‘I don’t know what happens.’ But most often he remained silent.

One day, as he was coming out of the grocer’s shop with the few things they could not manage without buying, he saw Dr McElvey.

‘Tommy.’

He stopped.

‘I have been hoping to see you.’

‘Doctor.’

‘Will you come to the surgery? There is something I must say.’

‘Say it here.’

‘No, it will not do for the open street. I have a patient to see. I will meet you there.’

He had looked at Tommy out of cold eyes and they were cold when he greeted him without a word at the door of the surgery. The room was empty but somehow the air seethed with all the sickness and pain and fear that crammed it full for hours of the day.

They went into the consulting room.

‘You know why I asked you here.’

Tommy stood, as he had not been asked to sit, and did not answer.

‘You know what happened to you, Tommy?’

Tommy shook his head for he did not but the doctor was not waiting for his answer.

‘I will tell you. My diagnosis was incorrect. That is perfectly possible, I am only a humble physician. I believed you to have malignant tumours but clearly you did not. Whatever the swellings were that caused your pain and weakness must have been benign – some form of cysts. Those can disappear as they appeared and why we do not know. Once they had disappeared you recovered speedily, as would be expected. And that is all, Tommy.’

Tommy was so shocked that his throat seemed to close up and he could not speak. Thoughts swirled round his head but he stood dumb.

‘And now all this wildfire talk round the town of healings and cures … this is nonsense, and you know it. It goes against medical science and it goes against common sense. You are not a doctor.’

‘I know that,’ he said loudly and it was easy to speak it out. ‘I know that well and I have never pretended to it.’

‘Perhaps not, but you have gone along with what the people have said and never denied the rumours, you have visited sick people pretending to be able to cure them, you have –’

‘I have done none of that. None of it. I have gone with people when they begged me, but not easily, not without great doubts.’

‘Mary Ankerby.’

‘Mary is my neighbour.’