The nurse came back with a young, skinny doctor with bad skin and an artificially authoritative manner.
‘Ah, Mr Lennox… you seem to have bashed your cranium last night. Perhaps we’ve partaken of a little too much of the uisce beatha?’ There was that first-person plural again.
‘Let’s get one thing straight,’ I said. ‘Firstly, it’s Captain Lennox. Secondly, if you had done the most basic of blood tests, you would know that there was absolutely no alcohol in my system. So, before you begin patronizing me, sonny, make sure you have the social or intellectual credentials so to do. Now, tell me… is my skull fractured?’
‘No.’ The young houseman’s cheeks flushed red. The British were always so easy to manipulate. So ridden with hang-ups about class and authority. There had been a few occasions since being demobbed where I had played the officer-class card. My accent being difficult to place also threw them. I found it funny: so many Brits had talked to me about the British ‘healthy disrespect for authority’. Next to the Germans, the British were the most likely to follow, without question, instructions from their ‘betters’. And the Germans had learned their lesson.
‘Do I have any kind of serious oedema resulting from the blow to my head?’
‘Not that I can see, Mr… Captain Lennox.’
‘Am I fit enough to be discharged?’
‘Actually, I think it would be a good idea if you stayed with us for a while.’
‘And why is that, exactly? According to what you have said, my head injury is not that serious.’
‘It’s serious enough for us to want to keep an eye on you.’ He struggled to recover some of his lost authority. ‘And if this wound was inflicted on you, then perhaps we should get the police involved. But it’s not your head injury that is our primary concern at the moment. As you know, tuberculosis is endemic in Glasgow. The National Health Service is keen to eradicate TB in the city. Everywhere for that matter. You were brought in by ambulance. You were found in, well
… unconscious in an alley. So you can understand why we thought that it had something to do with drink.’
‘What’s this got to do with tuberculosis?’
‘Well, as part of our programme, we routinely do a screen — I mean an X-ray — of the lungs of anyone brought in under such circumstances. Actually, there are plans to bring in a mobile screening service. Anyway, we did an X-ray of your chest. I’m afraid we found what would appear to be a small shadow on your left lung. However, we think it may simply be a faulty film. We’d like to take another X-ray of your chest.’
‘TB?’ I thought of the morning coughing bouts every time I lit my first cigarette; of the way I could always predict the onset of bad smog.
‘I wouldn’t be too alarmed, if I were you. There’s every chance it’s simply a smudge on the film. Have you been prone to coughing fits?’
‘Isn’t everyone in this town? Sometimes. In the morning.’
‘Is it a productive cough? I mean, do you cough anything up? Particularly blood?’
I shook my head.
‘I wouldn’t worry then. But if it is TB, then we have caught it early enough to sort out. There’s a place we can send you. A sanatorium, up north. Clean air. It would work wonders for you.’
‘One of these places where they push your bed outdoors overnight? I’d rather take my chances in the smog.’
‘It’s best to be safe.’
I spent the rest of the day in the ward while the shining machinery of Britain’s brand-new National Health Service ground with the efficiency of an ancient steamer. While I waited I used the public telephone in the hall to call Mrs White. I explained I had been taken into hospital for observation and told her that there were concerns about my chest. I left out the fact that for the second time in quick succession I’d been used as a punch-bag. I told her that I would let her know whether or not I was going to have to go into a sanatorium. In any case, I assured her, I would still pay rent to keep my rooms.
‘Let me know as soon as you find out, Mr Lennox.’ I liked the sound of her voice on the ’phone. It sounded younger. It helped me to imagine her before war and grief had changed her.
I was X-rayed again in the middle of the afternoon and an hour later the young doctor came back to confirm that it had come back clear. He re-examined my head.
‘You mentioned a sanatorium… where would that be?’
He looked confused for a moment. ‘You do understand that we’ve given you the all-clear?’
‘I know that,’ I said irritatedly. I wasn’t thinking about myself. It was a cheap lace handkerchief spotted with blood I had in mind. ‘I just want to know where you would send someone to recover if they presented tubercular or bronchial symptoms. Where are the sanatoria?’
He explained that most TB cases in Glasgow were treated at Hairmyers Hospital, from where they were sent to sanatoria in the countryside. He gave me three addresses: two in Inverness-shire, the other in Perthshire.
‘Most patients from Glasgow would be placed in the Perthshire sanatorium,’ he explained. ‘Easier for family to visit. ‘But the demand exceeds the supply. Sometimes they’re shunted further north.’
CHAPTER SIX
I had a house call to make before I took the train to Perth. After I got out of hospital I headed straight for my digs. Mrs White intercepted me at the door. I liked the tone of concern in her voice and I told her that I was in the clear. Any warmth dissipated when she saw me wince as I removed my hat.
‘Who have you been fighting this time?’ Her eyes were hard. This could be the crunch.
‘Listen, Mrs White. Someone assaulted me from behind in the smog last night. Hit me on the head. While I was in the hospital they wanted to check out whether I had TB or not. And that’s the truth. This is in no way connected to the police coming here.’
‘It seems to me that you attract trouble.’ She took my elbow and turned me brusquely around and examined the back of my head. ‘Elspeth
…’ she called through to her twelve-year-old daughter. ‘I want you to go down to Mr Wilson the fishmonger and ask for a bag of ice.’
Mrs White conducted me into the living room and sat me down on the leather Chesterfield while she busied herself in the kitchen making tea. I had only ever seen the living room from the door before and took the opportunity to survey it. The late Mr White had been a junior naval officer in the war and his family had been reasonably well- to-do. The room was well-decorated and furnished expensively. There was a large walnut radiogram against the wall but the new medium of television which had begun to appear in the more well-heeled homes had not yet made its presence felt here. I suspected a recent-past-tense affluence. A glass-fronted cabinet held some glasses and bone-china, as well as a bottle, half-full, of Williams and Humbert Walnut Brown Sherry. A marble and brass clock was the centrepiece on the mantle and was flanked by photographs in deco-style silver frames: a formally posed wedding photograph, each of the girls as babies, an austere-looking older couple with a pretty young girl whom I recognized instantly as Fiona White, standing awkwardly beside them.
She came back in with a large pot of tea and poured me a generous cup. Just then Elspeth, her daughter, returned with an oilskin bag. Fiona White scooped out some of the ice and wrapped it in a cloth, pressing it gently against the base of my neck and instructing me to hold it there. Two beatings’ worth of pain started to ease. She stirred two headache powders into a glass of water and laid it next to my teacup, then sat down as far away from me as she could, in a large yielding leather club chair.
‘Thank you.’ My eyes fell on the photographs again. ‘It must be difficult,’ I said, and regretted it immediately.
‘What?’ Flint glinted in her green eyes.
‘Bringing up the girls alone, I mean.’ I was digging myself a deeper hole and fast.
‘I manage perfectly well, Mr Lennox.’
‘I know you do. I didn’t mean anything… I mean, I think you do a marvellous job. It’s just that I imagine it can’t be easy. Doing everything alone.’
The flint remained in her eyes. The death of Fiona White’s husband had been lost in an ocean of statistics.
