Читать книгу Pause - Emily Carr - Страница 7

Table of Contents

The Harley Street Specialist pretended that he had not noticed me lay his fee in gold upon his desk. He hoisted his well-satisfied self onto the toes of his shiny patent-leathers, and forcefully repeated, “Madam, the voyage to Canada is for the present entirely out of the question. Best of care, rest, rest, good food, above all fresh air ... you are young....”

“But Doctor—?”

“You have people this side of the world?”

“No one.”

“Who looks after you?”

“I look after myself.”

“Inadequately. Sunhill Sanatorium, that is the place! Doctor Sally Bottle, Lung Specialist, Harley Street. Arrange with her for a year’s stay in the Sanatorium. A year’s rest and care will do wonders. Good day.”

“But Doctor, I am not T.B. I came to London to study Art. I’ve just worked too hard, that’s all.”

“Precisely.” He rang for the maid to show me out.

“A year!” I stumbled down the steps of the Specialist, made my way to Doctor Sally Bottle’s. Within twenty-four hours I was seated in the train, bound for Sunhill Sanatorium, wildly rebellious at heart.

I was met at the station by James, sole male worker around the Sunhill Sanatorium. From doctors to ‘Odd Jobs’ the entire staff were women.

“Sun’ill, Miss? ’Osses is be’ind ’ere.” He gathered up my luggage.

The seat of the San bus was shaped like a horseshoe, intimating luck to San curings, perhaps. At the back, across the opening of the shoe, were two iron steps. To keep you from falling off the horseshoe cushion, it was circled at about the height of your shoulder blades by a narrow strip of upholstery mounted on an iron rail. The bus was drawn by a pair of meek grey horses. James woke them, boosted me up the two iron steps, tossed a sack of mail at my feet, and from the back called “Gidaap”; by the time he had leisurely walked round to the driver’s seat the horses had each put one foot forward.

Low hillocks puckered the face of the land; everything was fast whitening under a turbulent snowstorm. I was soon white and shivery. There was no protection under the horseshoe seat and none over top. The wind did what it liked with you. It was useless to tuck your skirt round your legs. You were lucky to be able to sit on the top part of your skirt or the thing would have flown away altogether. The greys pulled slowly up the little hills. The weight of the horseshoe bus pushed them down again ready to climb the next. Our wheels made lazy zigzag trails on the white road.

The Horseshoe Bus

We kept overtaking slow-moving little groups of red-nosed men and women with bare blue hands. “Why don’t they hurry a little to keep warm?” I asked of James.

“Dassen’t, Miss. Lungs is all in tatters. Doctor’d fix ’em proper if they was to ’urry. Most all ’ere is T.B. Cook now, and Doctor is sound. The rest on us—!” He produced a cough, as intimation.

“That’s ’er, Miss.” James pointed with the whip, as it returned from a gentle lag over the backs of the greys, just to remind them that they were dragging the big horseshoe bus along the road and not standing in their stalls. “Sun’ill San! there she be.”

Sunhill Sanatorium stood on a grassy bump hardly worth the name of hill. It had a chunky body and two long, long wings, spread, drooped slightly forward so that every window could catch its share of sun during the day. It was now covered in a drape of snow, not a sign of life anywhere; it lay in horizontal deadly flatness, having the cower and spread of a white bird pausing, crouching for flight. This cold white place was approached by a long straight drive. I learned afterwards that I had come during the evening Rest Hour, five to six o’clock. Every patient lay upon his bed resting, the House Doctor was making visits from room to room, and nurses were preparing supper trays for their bed-patients.

Matron came out of a tiny office near the door meeting me with a broom and sweeping snow from me. Then she swept James and bade him carry in my luggage. She rang for a nurse who came with a wheel-chair and insisted that I get in and be wheeled down one of the long, long corridors in the wings to my room. I would have preferred to walk.

My room had no front. From the ceiling to a foot above the floor it was open to the turbulent snowstorm. All the patients’ rooms were on the south side of the corridors; the north side of each corridor was all open windows, the wind roared down with hurricane velocity. High over our beds was a row of small windows opening into the corridor; patients were forbidden ever to shut windows without permission. A draft swept across the ceiling of patients’ rooms continuously. It was colder in the rooms than outdoors. The nurse asked, “Did you bring a hot bottle? There is a stone pig in your bed.” She shook a mound of snow off the counterpane and showed a smaller mound underneath not warm enough even to damp the snow. I crawled into bed and stuck my frozen feet against the hard cool thing. Hoping for something better when the nurse came back with my rubber bottle I found she had filled it with only tepid. I wanted to scream, “Boil it, boil it!” but she was gone, clicking off the light. I was in the cold, the dark. A year of this! I turned into my pillow and cried. It seemed the only logical thing to do.

Suddenly my room was full of light and an abnormally large woman stood by my bedside. I stuck out a snivel-red nose.

“Any temperature?”

“No.”

“Cough?”

“No.”

“What ails you? Doctor Bottle sent no instructions. She will be down herself tomorrow. Meantime, what’s the good of crying?”

“Who could help crying in this most horrible place? My people are all in Canada. The Doctor says I must have a year’s rest before I can travel. I’ve worked too hard.” I dived under the bed-clothes again.

Doctor McNair was Scottish by birth. Her tongue clung still to the Scots but her ways were English. She was London trained and wished to acquire English professionalism. She stood by the heaving lump in my bed for a minute or two but I did not come out till she asked the surprising question, “Do you smoke?”

Promenading in the Corridor

Promenading in the corridor upon a windy day

Is enough to turn hair red or gold

To purest white or grey.

Blow, blow, ye merry winds of March,

Slam every hinged door

And when we take a little

Blow, blow ye all the more.

“Why, a little,” I admitted, “but I did not expect to be allowed to here.”

“I’ll be in after supper and have one wi’ ye.” She was gone.

A maid in scarlet with a frilly white cap and apron hummed in and clattered, hummed out and clattered, swinging her implements. Nurses started pattering up and down the corridor, clanking trays, banging doors. They could not help it with a typhoon raging in the corridor. I humped my knees up to throw off the snow that had drifted in afresh. My supper was wheeled up across the top of the bed.

Doctor came after supper, smoked one of my cigarettes and approved the brand.

“Ye’ll reconcile to the place after a wee bittie,” she said, and left me in the dark. Snow was still falling. Wind howled. “Please couldn’t you make them a little hotter?” I pleaded when the nurse filled the hot bottles for the night.

“That is regulation,” she said coolly. I kicked their clammy uncomfortableness onto the floor. They chilled what little warmth there was in me.

I heard a scrabbling sound over by the bureau. Prickly with nerves I darted for the light switch. There, perched on top of the mirror was a tiny brown bird. At the light click she took her head from under her wing and looked at me. After one sleepy blink she put it back.

Nurse with Pills

Just as you’re feeling better

And joy your bosom fills,

Down falls your heart to zero

For in comes nurse with pills.

The little bird in my room made all the difference. I slept fitfully, turning on the light every while to see if she were still there. Her coming unasked was so friendly, so warming. Next morning a robin breakfasted from my tray.

Stupid, stupid Doctor Sally Bottle, praising this and that about your old San, omitting to tell of the chiefest, most joyous thing—Sunhill’s birds.

Sunhill’s Birds