The Tunnel · Chapter 3 (2/6)

“Oh confound.” He rang again hurriedly. “Show up Lady Cazalet.” Miriam swept from the bracket table the litter of used instruments and materials, disposing them rapidly on the cabinet, into the sterilising tray, the waste basket and the wash-hand basin, tore the uppermost leaf from the headrest pad, and detached the handpiece from the arm of the motor drill while the patient was being shown upstairs. Mr. Hancock had cleared the spittoon, set a fresh tumbler, filled the kettle and whisked the debris of amalgam and cement from the bracket table before he began the scrubbing and cleansing of his hands, and when the patient came in Miriam was in her corner reluctantly handling the instruments, wet with the solution that crinkled her fingertips and made her skin brittle and dry. Everything was in its worst state. The business of drying and cleansing, freeing fine points from minute closely adhering fragments, polishing instruments on the leather pad, repolishing them with the leather, scraping the many little burs with the fine wire brush, scraping the clamps, clearing the obstinate amalgam from slab and spatula, brought across her the ever-recurring circle. The things were begun, they were getting on, she had half-done⁠ ⁠… the exasperating tediousness of holding herself to the long series of tiny careful attention-demanding movements⁠ ⁠… the punctual emergence when the end was in sight of the hovering reflection, nagging and questioning, that another set of things was already getting ready for another cleansing process; the endless series to last as long as she stayed at Wimpole Street⁠ ⁠… were there any sort of people who could do this kind of thing patiently, without minding?⁠ ⁠… the evolution of dentistry was wonderful, but the more perfect it became the more and more of this sort of thing there would be⁠ ⁠… the more drudgery workers, at fixed salaries⁠ ⁠… it was only possible for people who were fine and nice⁠ ⁠… there must be, everywhere, women doing this work for people who were not nice. They could not do it for the work’s sake. Did some of them do it cheerfully, as unto God. It was wrong to work unto man. But could God approve of this kind of thing⁠ ⁠… was it right to spend life cleaning instruments⁠ ⁠… the blank moment again of gazing about in vain for an alternative⁠ ⁠… all work has drudgery. That is not the answer.⁠ ⁠… Blessèd be Drudgery, but that was housekeeping, not someone else’s drudgery.⁠ ⁠… As she put the things back in the drawers, every drawer offered tasks of tidying, replenishing, and repapering of small boxes and grooves and sections. She had remembered to bring up Lady Cazalet’s chart. It looked at her propped against the small furnace. Behind it were the other charts for the day complete. The drug bottles were full, there was plenty of amadou pulled soft and cut ready for use, a fair supply of both kinds of Japanese paper. None of the bottles and boxes of stopping materials were anywhere near running short and the gold drawer was filled. She examined the drawers that held the less frequently used fittings and materials, conducting her operations noiselessly without impeding Mr. Hancock’s perpetual movements to and fro between the chair and the instrument cabinet. Meanwhile the dressing of Lady Cazalet’s painful tooth went quietly on and Mr. Leyton was waiting, hoping for her assistance downstairs. There was no excuse for waiting upstairs any longer. She went to the writing table and hung over the appointment book.

It was a busy day. He would hardly have half an hour for lunch.⁠ ⁠… She examined the names carefully, one by one, and wrote against one “ask address,” underlined and against another “enquire for brother⁠—ill.” Lady Cazalet drew a deep sigh⁠ ⁠… she had been to other dentists. But perhaps they were good ones. Perhaps she was about thirty⁠ ⁠… had she ever gone through a green baize door and seen a fat common little man with smooth sly eyes standing waiting for her in a dark stuffy room smelling of creosote? Even if she had always been to good ones they were not Mr. Hancock. They were dentists. Cheerful ordinary men with ordinary voices and laughs, thinking about all manner of things. Or apparently bland, with ingratiating manners. Perhaps a few of them, some of his friends and some of the young men he had trained were something like him. Interested in dentistry and the way it was all developing, some of them more enthusiastic and interested in certain special things than he was. But no one could be quite like him. No other patients had the lot of his patients. No other dentist was so completely conscious of the patient all the time, as if he were in the chair himself. No other dentist went on year after year remaining sensitive to everything the patient had to endure. No one else was so unsparing of himself⁠ ⁠… children coming eagerly in for their dentistry, sitting in the chair with slack limbs and wide open mouths and tranquil eyes⁠ ⁠… small bodies braced and tense, fat hands splayed out tightly on the too-big arms of the chair in determination to bear the moment of pain bravely for him.⁠ ⁠… She wandered to the corner cupboard and opened it and gazed idly in. But none of them knew what it cost.⁠ ⁠… “I think you won’t have any more pain with that; I’ll just put in a dressing for the present”⁠—she was Lady Cazalet again, without toothache, and that awful feeling that you know your body won’t last⁠ ⁠… they did not know what it cost. What always doing the best for the patient meant. Perhaps they knew in a way; or knew something and did not know what it was⁠ ⁠… there would be something different in Mr. Hancock’s expression, especially in the three quarters view when his face was turned away towards the instrument cabinet, if he saved his nerves and energy and money by doing things less considerately, not perpetually having the instruments sharpened and perpetually buying fresh outfits of sharp burs. The patient would suffer more pain⁠ ⁠… a dentist at his best ought to be more delicately strong and fine than a doctor⁠ ⁠… like a fine engraving⁠ ⁠… a surgeon working amongst live nerves⁠ ⁠… and he would look different himself. It was in him. It was keeping to that, all day, and every day, choosing the best difficult tiresome way in everything that kept that radiance about him when he was quietly at work⁠ ⁠… I mustn’t stay here thinking these thoughts⁠ ⁠… it’s that evil thing in me, keeping on and on, always thinking thoughts, nothing getting done⁠ ⁠… going through life like⁠—a stuck pig. If I went straight on things would come like that just the same in flashes⁠—bang, bang, in your heart, everything breaking into light just in front of you, making you almost fall off the edge into the expanse coming up before you, flowers and light stretching out. Then you shut it down, letting it go through you with a leap that carries you to the moon⁠—the sun, and makes you bump with life like the little boy bursting out of his too small clothes and go on choking with song to do the next thing deftly. That’s right. Perhaps that is what they all do? Perhaps that’s why they won’t stop to remember. Do you realise? Do you realise you’re in Brussels? Just look at the white houses there with the bright green trees against them in the light. It’s the air, the clearness. Sh⁠—If they hear you, they’ll put up the rent. They were just Portsmouth and Gosport people, staying in Brussels and fussing about Portsmouth and Gosport and Aunt this and Mr. that.⁠ ⁠… I shan’t realise Brussels and Belgium for years because of that. They hated and killed me because I was like that.⁠ ⁠… I must be like that⁠ ⁠… something comes along, golden, and presently there is a thought. I can’t be easy till I’ve said it in my mind, and I’m sad till I have said it somehow⁠ ⁠… and sadder when I have said it. But nothing gets done. I must stop thinking, from now, and be fearfully efficient. Then people will understand and like me. They will hate me too, because I shall be absurd, I shan’t be really in it. Perhaps I shall. Perhaps I shall get in. The wonder is they don’t hate me more. There was a stirring in the chair and a gushing of fresh water into the tumbler. Why do I meet such nice people? One after another. “There,” said Mr. Hancock, “I don’t think that will trouble you any more. We will make another appointment.” Miriam took the appointment book and a card to the chair-side and stayed upstairs to clear up.

When she reached the hall Mr. Orly’s door was standing wide. Going into the surgery she found the head parlourmaid rapidly wiping instruments with a soiled serviette. “Is it all right, James?” she said vaguely, glancing round the room.

“Yes miss,” answered James briskly emptying the half-filled tumbler and going on to dry and polish it with the soiled serviette⁠ ⁠… the housemaid spirit⁠ ⁠… the dry corner of a used serviette probably appeared to James much too good to wipe anything with. Telling her would not be any good. She would think it waste of time.⁠ ⁠… Besides, Mr. Orly himself would not really mind; and the things were “mechanikly clean”⁠ ⁠… that was a good phrase of Mr. Leyton’s⁠ ⁠… with his own things always soaking even his mallets, until there was no polish left on the handles; and his nailbrush in a bath of alcohol.⁠ ⁠… Mr. Orly came in, large and spruce. He looked at his hands and began combing his beard, standing before the overmantel. “Hancock busy?”

“Frightfully busy.”

Miriam looked judicially round the room. James hovered. The north wind howled. The little strip of sky above the outside wall that obscured the heavily stained glass of the window seemed hardly to light the room and the little light there was was absorbed by the heavy dull oak furniture and the dark heavy Turkey carpet and dado of dull red and tarnished gold.

“It is dark for April,” murmured Miriam. “I’ll take away your gold and tin box if I may.”

“Thank ye,” said Mr. Orly nervously, wheeling about with a harsh sigh to scan the chair and bracket-table; straightening his waistcoat and settling his tie. “I got through without it⁠—used some of that new patent silicate stuff of Leyton’s. All right⁠—show in the Countess.”

James disappeared. Miriam secured the little box and made off. On her table was a fresh pile of letters, annotated in Mr. Orly’s clear stiff upright rounded characters. She went hurriedly through them. Extricating her blotter she sat down and examined the inkstand. Of course one of her pens had been used and flung down still wet with its nib resting against the handle of the other pens.⁠ ⁠… Mr. Leyton⁠ ⁠… his gold filling; she ought to go in and see if she could help⁠ ⁠… perhaps he had finished by now. She wiped away the ink from the nib and the pen-handles.

Tapping at Mr. Leyton’s door she entered. He quickly turned a flushed face his feet scrabbling noisily against the bevelled base of the chair with the movement of his head. “Sawl right Miss Henderson. I’ve finished. ’V’you got any emery strips⁠—mine are all worn out.”

Back once more in her room she heard two voices talking both at once excitedly in the den. Mrs. Orly had a morning visitor. She would probably stay to lunch. She peered into the little folding mirror hanging by the side of the small mantelpiece and saw a face flushed and animated so far. Her hair was as unsatisfactory as usual. As she looked she became conscious of its uncomfortable weight pinned to the back of her head and the unpleasant warm feeling of her thick fringe. By lunchtime her face would be strained and yellow with sitting at work in the cold room with her feet on the oilcloth under the window. She glanced at the oil lamp standing in the little fireplace, its single flame glaring nakedly against the red-painted radiator. The telephone bell rang. Through the uproar of mechanical sounds that came to her ear from the receiver she heard a far off faint angry voice in incoherent reiteration. “Hullo, hullo,” she answered encouragingly. The voice faded but the sounds went on punctuated by a sharp angry popping. Mr. Orly’s door opened and his swift heavy tread came through the hall. Miriam looked up apprehensively, saying “Hullo” at intervals into the angry din of the telephone. He came swiftly on humming in a soft light baritone, his broad forehead, bald rounded crown and bright fair beard shining in the gloom of the hall. A crumpled serviette swung with his right hand. Perhaps he was going to the workshop. The door of the den opened. Mrs. Orly appeared and made an inarticulate remark abstractedly and disappeared. “Hullo, hullo,” repeated Miriam busily into the telephone. There was a loud report and the thin angry voice came clear from a surrounding silence. Mr. Orly came in on tiptoe, sighed impatiently and stood near her drumming noiselessly on the table at her side. “Wrong number,” said Miriam, “will you please ring off?”

“What a lot of trouble they givya,” said Mr. Orly. “I say, what’s the name of the American chap Hancock was talking about at lunch yesterday?”

Miriam frowned.

“Can y’remember? About sea-power.”

“Oh,” said Miriam relieved. “Mahan.”

“Eh?”

“Mahan. May‑ann.”

“That’s it. You’ve got it. Wonderful. Don’t forget to send off Major Moke’s case sharp will ye?”

Miriam’s eyes scanned the table and caught sight of a half hidden tin-box.

“No. I’ll get it off.”

“Right. It’s in a filthy state, but there’s no time to clean it.”

He strode back through the hall murmuring Mahan. Miriam drew the tin from its place of concealment. It contained a mass of dirty cotton-wool upon which lay a double denture coated with tartar and joined by tarnished gold springs. “Eleven thirty sharp” ran the instruction on an accompanying scrap of paper. No address. The name of the patient was unfamiliar. Mrs. Orly put her head through the door of the den.

“What did Ro want?”

Miriam turned towards the small sallow eager face and met the kind sweet intent blue glint of the eyes. She explained and Mrs. Orly’s anxious little face broke into a smile that dispelled the lines on the broad strip of low forehead leaving it smooth and sallow under the smoothly brushed brown hair.

“How funny,” said Mrs. Orly hurriedly. “I was just comin’ out to ask you the name of that singer. You know. Mark something. Marksy.⁠ ⁠…”

“Mar‑kaysie,” said Miriam.

“That’s it. I can’t think how you remember.” Mrs. Orly disappeared and the two voices broke out again in eager chorus. Miriam returned to her tin. Mastering her disgust she removed the plate from the box, shook the cotton-wool out into the paper-basket, collected fresh wool, packing paper, sealing wax, candle and matches and set to work to make up the parcel. She would have to attack the workshop again and get them to take it out. Perhaps they would know the address. When the case was half packed she looked up the patient’s name in the ledger. Five entries in about as many years⁠—either repairs or springs⁠—how simple dentistry became when people had lost all their teeth. There were two addresses, a town and a country one written in a long time ago in ink; above them were two in pencil, one crossed out. The newest of the address books showed these two addresses, one in ink, neither crossed out. What had become of the card and letter that came with the case? In the den with Mrs. Orly and her guest.⁠ ⁠…

Footsteps were coming neatly and heavily up the basement stairs. Winthrop. He came in smiling, still holding his long apron gathered up to free his knees. “Ph‑Ph‑Major Moke’s case ready?” he whispered cheerfully.

“Almost⁠—but I don’t know the address.”

“It’s the ph‑ph‑Buckinam Palace Otel. It’s to go by hand.”

“Oh, thank goodness,” laughed Miriam sweeping the scissors round the uneven edge of the wrapping paper.

“My word,” said Winthrop. “What an eye you’ve got I couldn’t do that to ph‑save melife and I’m supposed to be a ph‑mechanic.”