The Young Physician

by Francis Brett Young

III

And it was pretty bad. No more concerts or operas; no week-ends at Overton; no dinners at Joey’s; no possible diversion of any kind that impinged upon the hours between six and nine. And yet Edwin was happy. For the first time in his life, and at a price, he was realising what independence meant. Even the break at Halesby had passed off without any severe emotional disturbance. He had written to his father again, telling him his new address and what he was doing, and his father had replied in his formal business hand, not, indeed, with any offer of help, but with an implied approval of what he had done, enclosing a number of bills (opened) and a couple of second-hand book catalogues.

There was nothing unfriendly in the letter, no heroics of outraged paternity. Reading between the lines, Edwin felt that by consulting no interests but his own he had made an awkward situation easy for his father. In that case, he reflected, Mr. Ingleby might very well have made him an allowance. It gave him a sense of grim satisfaction to remember that he was still a minor and that even if he were too proud to use it, he still held the weapon of his father’s legal responsibility in reserve, but the next moment he was ashamed of this reflection: when it came to a point the element of pathos in his father’s history and person always disarmed him.

It was enough that he should be happy, principally for the reason that his days were so full and any moments of relaxation came to him with a more poignant pleasure than any he had known before. He had very little time for reading outside the subjects of his final exam., that now overwhelmed him with an increasing weight. For pleasure he read little but lyrical poetry, finding his chief enjoyment in the last hour before he fell asleep in Dr. Harris’s empty lock-up, with a copy of Mackail’s selections from the Greek Anthology that he had salved from one of the second-hand bookstalls in Cobden Street.

In spite of himself, he was beginning to like Charles Altrincham-Harris. He didn’t for one moment alter his opinion of the degradation to which the man had subjected the nobilities of his calling, his meanness and his avarice. In his dealings with the unfortunate people who came to the shilling doctor for treatment, he still abhorred him; he knew him to be a person whose mind was a sink of pseudo-professional prurience, and whose body and habits were unkempt and unclean; but for all this, he could not deny the fact that in his relations with his dispenser he displayed a curious vein of natural kindness, and that his ideals, apart from his loathsome business, were of a touching simplicity.

Every morning they met at breakfast. The doctor believed in good food as a basis for work, and his housekeeper, a small, shrewish woman of fifty, was an excellent cook. At the breakfast table he would impart to Edwin the more salacious paragraphs of the morning paper, which he always opened at the page that contained the records of the divorce-court. He took no notice of politics. “They can do what they like as long as they don’t legislate about us.” And though Edwin felt sincerely that the sooner his kind were legislated for, the better, he was thankful that his employer was not a political bore or bigot.

After breakfast Dr. Harris always smoked a clay pipe in his carpet slippers, a present from a patient who, for some unimaginable reason, had been grateful. Then they would walk down to 563 Lower Sparkdale together in the fresh morning air, and the combination of gentle exercise with deeper breathing would impel the little man to make Edwin the confidant of his ambitions.

“Twelve thousand pounds,” he would say, “that’s all I want. Twelve thousand pounds. Five hundred a year. Then I shall find a quiet little place in the country and have a rest. Keep bees and poultry: that’s what I shall do, and smoke a pipe in the garden in the evening when the poor devil that buys my practice is going down to the surgery to rake in the shillings.”

In these moments he would reflect on the beginning of his career. “I took a good degree, you know. You wouldn’t think it to look at me now, would you? No . . . I had bad luck, and a bad wife, which is the worst sort of luck. She lost me my practice, and so I grew sick of medicine. I couldn’t be bothered with the social side of it. Money was what I wanted: money and quiet. And so I took a dose of medicine: fifteen years at a shilling a bottle, with advice thrown in, and then a quiet life. That was all I wanted. And I’ve very nearly got it. Another year or two will make me secure. Security . . . that’s what I wanted. Well, here we are. . . .”

So the morning’s work began, and no morning, as far as Edwin could see, was different from any other. He was thankful when the clock struck ten, and Dr. Harris ruthlessly locked his surgery door. Then, fortunately, he was obliged to take the next tram to the hospital; for if he had lingered, as he was sometimes forced to do on Sundays, Dr. Harris would have lit his pipe and proceeded to regale him with anecdotes of medical experiences that always related to sex, on which he dwelt with a slow, deliberate satisfaction, like a dog that nuzzles a piece of garbage.