Half of the Human Race Read online

‘Ah. She’s recovered, I hope?’

  ‘I think so. She was quite ill in the weeks after her release, but … getting back to her old self.’

  Will nodded seriously, as if he were a doctor digesting the latest news about a troubled patient. ‘I’m glad. Well … goodbye, Constance.’ He felt himself blush on seeing Connie’s flinch of surprise.

  ‘I don’t think I’ve ever heard you call me by my name before.’

  ‘Would you prefer “Miss Callaway?”’ he said anxiously.

  Connie smiled. ‘No. I asked you to call me Constance that day at the Savoy. But I couldn’t keep on telling you.’

  ‘Sorry. It’s just that I’m rather slow to – absorb things.’

  They shook hands, and with another exchange of smiles, took their leave of one other.

  Brigstock held the door open for Connie, and she entered the saloon bar at the back of the pub. It was a gloomy high-ceilinged place just off Whitechapel Road, with sawdust scattered on the floor. Even in the dim glow of the gaslight, she could tell within seconds that this was a haunt of the less privileged classes; a few women, shawls about their shoulders, deep in conversation, one of them smoking a clay pipe; the rest were men, attired in dun-coloured jackets, collarless shirts and caps, wearied by their day’s labour and now nursing their reward in pints of dark ale and bitter-smelling tobacco.

  ‘I dare say you’ll welcome a drink after that,’ said Brigstock, shouldering up to the bar. They had come away from the operating theatre of the London Hospital on Whitechapel Road, where Connie had just witnessed her first ever surgical procedure. While she watched the surgeon, Mr Cluett, make busy with his scalpel and scissors and clamps, Brigstock looked about the theatre with his air of abstracted concentration, making sketches of the raked seating, the staring faces of the medical students, and the little knot of activity centred upon the operating table. Apart from Cluett’s occasional muttered instruction, the only sound to be heard in the room was the hiss of the gas jets.

  Settled at a table with their gins, Connie fished out a Sullivan from her packet and accepted a light from Brigstock. She blew the first plumes down her nose.

  ‘Well! A profitable few hours?’ he asked.

  ‘It was … instructive,’ she said. ‘The surgery was fascinating, from what I could see of it. But I was alarmed by the standard of hygiene.’ She had noticed that one assistant, apparently in charge of Cluett’s instruments, sometimes sucked the thread before inserting it in the needles, and then handing them to the surgeon. ‘One would have thought Lister’s teaching had been heeded by now.’

  ‘But you found none of it – upsetting? Those gouts of blood?’

  Connie gave a small twisted half-smile. ‘I was too absorbed in it to be upset. Do you really think us women so terribly squeamish?’

  ‘Not in my experience,’ said Brigstock. ‘And I suppose I ought to have known you’d not quail. Been cornering any MPs lately?’

  She shook her head. ‘How are sales going at the gallery?’

  ‘Capital, since you ask. Three-quarters of my lot have been bought.’

  ‘Congratulations,’ said Connie warmly. ‘I wonder, did that little painting of me …’

  ‘Get sold? No, it didn’t,’ he said, waiting to see if her face betrayed offence. ‘Though I had a few offers for it – good ones, actually.’

  ‘Oh?’

  There was a faint sadness in his smile. ‘I couldn’t bear to part with it.’

  A few moments later the saloon door opened and Cluett himself entered, as previously arranged with Brigstock. The latter hailed his friend, who joined them at the table. He was tall, heavily bearded, with a noticeable stoop exacerbated by the demands of his profession, though in his placid grey eyes and casual manner one couldn’t have discerned any hint of his power over life and death. Cluett bowed neutrally to Connie when Brigstock introduced her, then pointed to the portfolio of sketches resting by the artist’s chair.

  ‘Did you get what you needed?’ he asked in his deep lugubrious voice. For answer, Brigstock took up the case with its blunted edges and untied the black silk cords that secured it. Pulling out five or six sketches of the surgeon’s workplace, he passed them over to Cluett, who eyed each one impassively before handing them back without comment.

  ‘As you see,’ Brigstock drily explained to Connie, ‘Cluett is one of my most ardent admirers.’

  Cluett rocked forward in a mime of silent, straight-faced laughter. Connie sensed that these two had been friends for many years. Once Brigstock went off to the bar, Cluett turned to her with a look of distant enquiry.

  ‘So – how long have you known old Dab?’

  ‘Oh, not that long,’ she said, amused at the mention of his nickname. There was a pause while Cluett rummaged around for more small talk.

  ‘Hope he’s been treating you well.’

  Not sure of his meaning, she said, ‘Erm, perfectly well, thank you.’

  He nodded bleakly, as if he’d heard the same answer often before. ‘Been at the modelling game long?’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  He perhaps heard something genteel in her tone, for he now looked confused. ‘You’re one of his models, yes?’ At that moment Brigstock returned to the table, and overhearing his friend’s question, gave out a long-suffering sigh.

  ‘Good heavens, Henry! Not every woman of my acquaintance is a model. Constance is the budding student I told you about – a first-rate mind, prevented from studying medicine by an untimely financial misfortune. I invited her for the purpose of fieldwork.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Cluett. ‘I didn’t expect someone – so young. Pardon me.’ Connie sensed in him a sudden coming to attention, as if she had been mistakenly dismissed and now had to be reappraised; and in the next instant realised that ‘model’ was quite possibly his codeword for ‘mistress’.

  ‘I did a year at the London School of Medicine,’ Connie explained, ‘but my mother had to put my brother through Cambridge.’ She had been careful not to resent this, though she sometimes wondered at the tacit assumption that Fred’s education took precedence over hers. Cluett asked her what she had read, and Connie reeled off the titles of some medical textbooks.

  ‘You’re familiar with Surgical Applied Anatomy?’ he said.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘That should be your guide. It contains everything you need.’ There was a pause as he narrowed his gaze. ‘Why do you think you could be a surgeon?’

  Connie heard the challenge in his voice. ‘I can’t be sure until I try,’ she said, ‘but I’m as clever as most of the college men I know, I learn quickly and I have steady hands.’

  ‘You sew, I presume?’

  ‘I do. This dress that I’m wearing, I made myself.’

  Cluett glanced at Brigstock, as if to say, hark at this one. He considered her for a few moments. ‘Would you be able to tell me what operation I performed just now?’

  ‘It looked like – an excision of the tongue?’

  He nodded, then said, ‘And could you perhaps explain the pathology?’

  ‘I would hazard that it was some form of wasting disease that had attacked the jaw and mouth. Given the number of match factories in this area, perhaps an occurrence of phosphorous necrosis?’

  ‘Good Lord,’ Cluett murmured, and from his blink of surprise she knew she had guessed right. Brigstock filled the silence between them.

  ‘I warned you, Henry. Sharp as a tack, this one.’

  Cluett raised his eyebrows in acknowledgement, then looked shrewdly at Connie. ‘I regret to say that it will be a more arduous journey for you, as a woman …’

  ‘I have no illusions in that regard.’

  ‘Surgery is a profession – one of many, no doubt – that barely takes women into account. But I know one or two institutions that offer training. With your leave, I could make enquiries.’

  ‘That would be very kind,’ said Connie, wondering how reliable such an offer might be. He had no need to help her, after all �
� few men did.

  Lights were beginning to glimmer on Whitechapel Road by the time they emerged from the pub. As Connie accepted Cluett’s hand, he held hers for a moment longer to examine. With a thoughtful look, he said, ‘What a surgeon requires in his hands – the delicacy of a lacemaker, and the grip of a seaman. Goodbye, Miss Callaway. I hope we’ll meet again.’ Hat raised, he turned and crossed the road back towards the hospital.

  Brigstock accompanied her on the ’bus towards Islington. ‘Good man, Cluett. He studied under Treves, you know – the King’s surgeon. He’s quite enlightened, for a medical fellow.’

  ‘It was kind of him to – take an interest.’

  ‘Hmm. I think you rather intrigued him,’ he said, adding slyly, ‘no surprise there, of course. And talking of enlightened fellows, how’s your young cricketer? Has he stopped apologising yet?’

  Connie smiled wryly. ‘He’s been contrite. My sister was so taken with him she invited him to her wedding.’

  ‘Ah, well. I like a fellow who can admit he’s wrong – it shows humility.’

  ‘He was very wrong about your paintings, as I remember.’

  ‘Ha! That was priceless, wasn’t it? There’s a gallery in Paris eager to put on a show of mine. You can tell your young man I’m considering his words for a title – Unfathomable Daubs!’

  ‘That’s twice you’ve referred to him as “my” young man. May I assure you – he’s nothing of the sort.’

  Brigstock responded with a slow, ironic nod of acquiescence that Connie found rather maddening. She turned her face to the window, determined not to rise to his bait. The ’bus was passing over Holborn Viaduct, thronged at this hour by office workers on their way home. After a while, Brigstock spoke again, in his familiar musing way. ‘In any event, I do hope you’ll come and visit.’

  ‘Visit where?’ she asked.

  ‘Why, Paris! I’ll be moving my studio there while I prepare for this exhibition.’

  ‘How long do you intend to be gone?’

  ‘At least six months,’ he said casually. ‘Possibly longer.’

  ‘I see,’ said Connie. Though she encountered Brigstock at only irregular intervals, it was a strange source of comfort to her to know that he was in London. She had always felt him to be on her side. For a moment she was tempted to say so, but then, with a quick glance, noticed him gazing interestedly at a young woman seated opposite them, and the urge to confide withered on her tongue. No doubt he would find plenty more to absorb his eye in Paris. ‘You set off – soon?’

  Brigstock, interrupted, looked round at her. ‘Hmm? Oh, in a week or so, once my digs there have been settled. You know, the devil of it is –’ an expression of amused regret was legible on his face ‘– you’re the one person in this city I’m actually going to miss.’

  Connie returned his look, but said nothing. The painter merrily beguiled the remainder of their journey with talk of his plans. At the junction of Pentonville Road and Caledonian Road he jumped up in a sudden show of decisiveness, kissed Connie’s hand in farewell and alighted from the ’bus. She watched his lean figure recede and disappear into the crowds.

  9

  WILL KNEW SOMETHING was wrong the moment he walked into the pavilion at stumps. He had had a good last hour at the crease, pushing on to eighty-odd and saving a match that might have been lost. The Priory had looked especially beautiful in the late-August light, with the pavilion brick a soft rose colour against the waning sun and the shadows closing in around the ground. While M—shire’s bid for the County Championship had been knocked off course with three defeats in July, Will at least could look back on another season of achievement. He had scored steadily all summer, and would again top the club’s batting averages by a distance.

  Once inside the dressing room, however, he sensed no great relief that the game had been drawn. Instead, the handful of players sitting around looked as though they’d just had their match fee docked. Then he noticed a long crack running down one of the large back windows. At that moment, a raw-boned young bowler named Cadell sidled in, and on seeing Will, said, ‘Smashing knock, that, Maits.’

  Looking about the room, Will said, ‘What’s wrong? Where’s Tam – and Middlehurst?’

  ‘You haven’t heard? They had the most fearful row.’ This was baffling: Tam had at last managed to make a fifty, and Will, on his way out to the square, had congratulated him as they crossed. All had seemed well. Cadell continued: ‘Middlehurst comes into the room and starts moaning, says Tam should have batted on and not thrown his wicket away. Well, Tam didn’t like that at all, and proceeds to tell Middlehurst exactly what he thinks of him – in some pretty ripe language, too. Then it got quite out of hand, I couldn’t follow everything that was said, but it ended with Tam hurling his bat across the room. And, as you see, that window got the worst of it.’

  ‘So where are they now?’

  Cadell shrugged. ‘I think Middlehurst is sulking in the committee room – like Achilles in his tent. Don’t know about Tam.’

  Will packed away his kit and, carefully avoiding the committee room, went to retrieve his bicycle from the shed. Ten minutes later he was cycling down the Parade, and, obeying an intuition that Tam would avoid the Fountain, a rowdy pub favoured by the other players, he turned up London Road and made for the Durham Arms, one of the haunts where his friend was less likely to be recognised. There was no sign of him in the lounge, but on passing through to the saloon he discerned the familiar outline of his back, hunched over the bar. He pulled up a wooden stool and joined him there.

  ‘How many windows have you broken in your time?’ said Will, keeping his voice light. Tam turned his head, and acknowledged Will’s drollery with a rueful snort. Then, with an indifferent flutter of his hand he invited him to have a drink.

  ‘A beer, but no chaser, thanks.’ He suspected Tam was on his second or perhaps third of the evening. A table of locals were carousing at the other end of the bar. Tam stared at them while the barman pulled their pints. Will sensed a need to tread softly.

  ‘Some innings, today. Vintage Tamburlain, I thought.’

  Tam’s expression remained morose. ‘Not everyone was so appreciative.’

  ‘You shouldn’t allow Middlehurst to bother you.’

  ‘He had the nerve to claim I threw my wicket away. Another couple of yards and that ball would have been over the ropes.’ Tam had been caught at deep square leg by a fielder who had only just been posted there.

  ‘It was desperate luck. But you’d got your fifty at least.’

  More booming laughter sounded from the far end. Tam turned again and stared, then called down to the coven of drinkers. ‘Keep it down, would you?’ It was not a friendly request. Will had noticed of late that Tam was becoming intolerant of noise. The drinkers, briefly silenced, fell to muttering.

  ‘Anyway,’ said Will, keen to divert his friend, ‘as you once said to me, talent is luck. You just have to wait for it to turn –’

  ‘Hmm. At my age the wait gets longer and longer.’

  ‘How’s the knee feeling, by the way?’

  ‘Like it’s on fire.’ He shook his head and, perhaps hearing his own glumness, half smiled at Will. ‘Don’t ever get old, Blue – not if you’re a sportsman.’

  The affable set of his mouth vanished as another mad hoot of laughter echoed from along the bar. It was followed by stifled sniggers as a couple of the locals looked round in mock apprehension of their disapproving neighbour.

  ‘Just ignore them,’ said Will quietly, but his words found no heeding ear. Tam had stood up, and was taking heavy but purposeful steps towards them. Will’s heart sank; he seemed increasingly to find himself in the company of people spoiling for a fight. There were four of them, flat-capped working men, house painters by the look of their smudged overalls; one of them, a stocky bantam, rose to face the wide-shouldered presence suddenly looming over them.

  ‘I asked you to keep it down,’ said Tam.

  ‘We ’eard you,’ said the ban
tam. ‘We got as much right to drink ’ere as you.’ He sounded much too cocky to Will’s ears.

  ‘It’s not the drinking that bothers me. It’s the noise you’re making.’

  ‘Oh. Sorry, I’m sure. Maybe you want to take this outside?’

  ‘No need,’ said Tam, who had imperceptibly altered his stance in a way that enabled him to send his fist flying arrow-straight at the man’s face. It connected with an explosive smack. For a fraction of a second the man stood, as if amazed at its impact, before he crumpled back over the table; glasses crashed to the floor and chair legs screeched sharply as his fellow drinkers hauled themselves out of the way. Will examined their reaction: one of them seemed about to offer a fight, but shrewdly perceived that a man who could throw a punch with that kind of strength and speed was perhaps best left alone. Instead he turned to help his stricken mate off the floor. The latter’s nose looked like a squashed strawberry.

  The publican had come from behind the bar, his jowls quivering with indignation. He had started ranting, and was wagging his finger so close to Tam’s face that Will, for the man’s own safety, stepped in between them.

  ‘It’s all right,’ he said, holding out his palms in conciliatory fashion, ‘we’re just leaving.’ He began gently to shoulder Tam out of the fight’s immediate blast area, glass tinkling beneath their feet.

  ‘You’ll pay for them breakages, ’n’ all!’

  Will put his hand in his pocket and fished out a sovereign, flipping it onto the bar counter. The publican seemed in no way appeased. ‘Fuckin’ ’ooligan! You come in ’ere again an’ I’m callin’ the pleece.’

  Tam, stung by this, began to push past Will, muttering, ‘Not if I break your fucking neck you won’t …’ The man flinched and took a step backwards, like one who had been baiting a bear and fatally miscalculated the reach of its chain. Will, fearful of catching a roundhouse himself, nevertheless clung to Tam’s arm, dragging against his forward momentum and repeating, almost crooning, his friend’s name in a tone of entreaty. Tam stopped suddenly and thrust his livid, glowering face at Will’s, so close Will could see the tiny broken capillaries of his mottled complexion and smell the downdraught of his drinker’s breath. In his eyes gleamed a terrible disgust, at what was unclear. With a brusque jerk he shook off Will’s restraining hand, and, taking a few slow steps back, he turned and pushed out through the saloon’s swing door.