Author: Anya Seton
Category: Literature
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“You’ll doubtless hear soon from Sir Richard, Mr. Simpson. He and Lady Marsdon would wish to extend their regrets at the abrupt ending to the house party if they could. I’ll send the butler up with the train schedule.” He bowed and shut the door behind him.
“Well,” said Edna, “takes a lot on himself, that one, doesn’t he! What d’you suppose ails the Marsdons? I wonder, could it be food poisoning? I thought the crab was a bit off, at dinner last night. Come to think of it, I was sick m’self, wasn’t I! Ten to one it was the crab!”
“It might be,” agreed George eagerly. “Glad you’re all right now, old girl.”
He bustled into the dressing room and began to pack his bag. Edna, too, began to pack, while her resentment at being ousted from Medfield yielded to a growing desire. She had begun to feel queasy again, and her own chemist was luckily open this Sunday. The minute they got back to Clapham she could get a new bottle of the tincture. Craving for the tincture soon extinguished every other consideration, but she did not mention this to George.
At the hospital there was no change in Celia. When Akananda entered with Lily, the pert little nurse stood up, her young eyes critical. She watched Akananda in silent contempt as he examined Celia. She had had three years of training and she knew a corpse when she saw one. Matron had agreed when she popped in from time to time.
“Have to get her out of here,” said the matron. “We need the bed. There’s been a three-car smash on the A-twenty-seven, and we’ve got ’em lying on stretchers below. Hospital’s here to care for the living, and this woman isn’t; baronet’s lady or not, it’s ridiculous.”
During his examination, Akananda came very near to private agreement with the nurses. He could find no vital signs of life, no pulse, respiration or reflexes, the body was chill and pallid, though not quite as cold as might be expected in true death. Nor had any rigor recurred since the oxygen had relaxed her. All Celia’s muscles remained limp.
Akananda tried to see her aura, as he had the Simpsons, but his clairvoyance failed and left him with nothing to rely on but stubborn hope. He found this hope very hard to sustain against the hostile nurses.
“Cart the body back home then, Doctor?” the matron snapped, after a few minutes argument. “I suppose it’ll be buried from there anyway, and aside from wanting the bed, this business is unnatural and upsets the young nurses, let alone patients, if they guess it.” She yanked the sheet up over Celia’s face.
Lily, who had been watching, now gave a moan and pulled down the sheet. “Don’t do that, Matron! Please don’t. At least wait until the specialist gets here from London.” She took Celia’s hand and held it against her cheek.
The matron tightened her lips. “Well,” she said, “Dr. Foster says Sir Arthur may be here tonight, and charmed he’ll be to waste his time on a fool’s errand. I was going to suggest he not come.”
“No,” cried Akananda and Lily together.
The matron shrugged. “Carry on then,” she said to the young nurse. “I need you below.” The two white-coiffed figures rustled out.
“Do you think Richard would let us bring her home?” whispered Lily, stroking her daughter’s hand.
Akananda shook his head. Only if she were really dead, he thought. No doubt the force of tradition would impel the baronet to hold a funeral suitable to a Lady Marsdon. Though one wasn’t even sure of that. Nanny Cameron, in a horrified whisper as Akananda left Medfield Place for the hospital, had informed him that Sir Richard was smashing photographs of Celia, and had cut into ribbons the new oil painting of her which hung in the stairwell.
The hours dragged by as Lily and Akananda waited in the hospital beside the sheet-draped mound on the bed.
But it was not yet midnight when Sir Arthur Moore emerged from his chauffeur-driven Daimler and mounted the hospital steps, exuding the confidence and shrewd amiability which had helped earn him a fat income and a knighthood. He was short, stout, bald, and looked far more like a prosperous alderman than a neuropsychiatrist, renowned amongst the nobility for his discreet treatment of various embarrassing afflictions such as chorea, epilepsy, hysterical manifestations, and even alcoholism. He was quite aware that his practice had, of late, begun to bore him, and only slightly surprised at himself for having, two hours ago, quitted Lady Blackwood’s dinner party—even before finishing an excellent souffle Grand Marnier—in response to a relayed summons from an unknown Sussex G.P.
The matron received him at the hospital door and began to dither.
“Oh, Sir Arthur—great honor—frightful to bring you down from London—absolutely useless—that foreign doctor, if he is a doctor . . .”
“What?” interrupted Moore, waving a plump, impatient hand. “Chap who called me in wasn’t foreign—name of Foster.”
“Not that one,” stammered the matron. “I mean the one who won’t admit your patient’s dead, was dead on arrival, I think, though they got a few post-mortem reactions, but that was hours ago, and to me it’s perfectly obvious that . . .”
She trailed off as the great man raised his bushy white eyebrows and gave her the chill, speculative look which had silenced volubility in obstreperous royalties, disapproving colleagues, and even hospital governors.
“Ring up Dr. Foster to say I’ve arrived,” he said, “but, first, show me to the patient.”
Sir Arthur entered Celia’s room and went straight to the bed, ignoring the two people who were but dimly illumined in the night light. He clicked on the top light himself, and took Celia’s wrist while he peered intently at her face. Presently, he dropped the wrist, which flopped down on the motionless chest with a little thud they could all hear in the silent room.
“You may go,” Sir Arthur said to the hovering matron. He added, “I have nothing to say until Dr. Foster arrives.” Thereby extinguishing her triumphant smile, and as she vanished he continued, half to himself, “Tiresome woman, she’s right, of course, the girl’s certainly dead, but . . .”
He was suddenly aware of the man and woman across the bed from him. “Sorry,” he said to the anguished yet pretty middle-aged woman, “You the mother?” As Lily nodded mutely, Sir Arthur turned to the man, and evinced uncharacteristic astonishment. “Good Lord,” he cried, “is it Jiddu? Jiddu Akananda?” He stared at the chiseled, unlined dark brown face, the straight black hair, the slender body in well-cut country tweeds. One of the most brilliant students in their class at Guy’s and later at the Maudesley. “What in blazes are you doing here?”
Akananda smiled sadly. “I am trying to prevent this young woman from totally relinquishing her present body, and to prevent others from forcing her to.”
“Indeed,” said Sir Arthur blandly, walking around the bed and shaking the Hindu’s hand. “Same old visionary, aren’t you! You haven’t altered a bit. Must be thirty-five years, too, since we swotted together at Guy’s. Remember that scrape we got into, shock treatment wasn’t it? Against old Murdock’s express orders—the grandmother and grandfather of a row! What’ve you been doing with yourself all these years?”
“Calcutta, London, research—very quiet compared to your career, Arthur, and I need your help now.” He glanced toward the bed, and the other physician started. He had forgotten the present situation in the pleasure of meeting an old classmate whom he’d always liked, though most of their fellow students had thought the man an oddball.
“Yes, tell me all about this case,” said Sir Arthur, “every detail.”
Lily, who had been overlooked by both, felt the forlorn relief of surrender to helplessness while awaiting the verdict of experts. Her misery sank to apathy, and murmuring that there must be a cup of coffee somewhere, she wandered out towards the nurses’ desk.
Sir Arthur sat down in one straight chair while Akananda took the other. Sir Arthur pulled out a cigar and carefully clipped the tip.
“Don’t usually do this near a patient, of course,” he said, striking a match, “but it helps me to think, and honestly, my dear fellow, I don’t see how we
can consider that—a patient. However, fire away.”
Akananda talked for ten minutes, starting with medical details and procedures, while his colleague listened carefully, nodding at intervals.
“Clinical death is no longer so simple to establish,” he remarked as Akananda paused, “the transplant chaps are finding that out. By and large, though, brain waves can give us some clues. We’ll have to get her to a machine to find out, though if it weren’t for your determination I’d sign a death certificate on the present condition alone. Still, until true rigor and putrefaction set in, we won’t really know. I’ll hold off the ghouls for you.”
“Thank you,” said Akananda. “I prayed you would.”
The other man was a trifle embarrassed by Akananda’s shining gratitude. He crossed his fat legs and said, “Well . . . extraordinary case. By the bye, your interest seems a bit personal—romantic tinge perhaps? Might be an attractive girl when she’s ‘alive,’ as it were, or is it the mother? You were quite a lad with the girls as I remember, females swooning over you. I was often jealous.”
“No, no,” said Akananda smiling. “Those days are long past. And though I have much sympathy for these two unhappy women, it’s not the carnal kind you mean.”
“Still pretty ascetic? No wine, women or red meat?”
Akananda nodded. “Sounds dreary, doesn’t it?”
“Takes all kinds . . .” said Sir Arthur absently. He frowned towards the bed, his mind reverting to the present problem. “The husband—the baronet—sounds a proper stinker from what you tell me.”
“He is behaving like one,” agreed Akananda slowly. “Pathologically so. But he’s acting out evil compulsions from the past, and greatly suffering.”
“Childhood trauma?” asked Sir Arthur, blowing a smoke ring and watching it float towards the white ceiling. “Oedipus complex and all that Freudian stuff they crammed us with?”
“That, yes, in part perhaps.” Akananda turned his head and gazed out of the dark window into the starlit night. “Sir Richard is in a dangerous state of fugue, repudiation of present reality. This poor girl, also”—he jerked his head backwards towards the hospital bed. “As you see, in even greater danger. Also from the past.”
Sir Arthur nodded dubiously. “Depth analysis indicated? Tedious business and academic at the moment. Can’t analyze a virtual corpse. By the way, Jiddu, that was a curious remark you made about trying to prevent others from forcing her to relinquish her body. Sounds like witchcraft, or for that matter”—he put down his cigar and frowned—“sounds like murder. You can’t mean that?”
Akananda exhaled and stood up, clasping his hands behind his back. “Murder is exactly what I mean,” he said gazing down at his bewildered colleague. “It was murder before, and will be again, unless . . .”
“You mean the girl’s poisoned?” Sir Arthur interrupted. “Never occurred to me. We’ll run tests; Brainerd’s the man for that. I’ll see if I can get on to him.” He jumped up.
“No, no.” Akananda put a detaining hand on the stout shoulder. “There’s no poison here that one can test by Western science, not yet.”
“Well, then, what the hell are you talking about?”
“Therapy,” said Akananda, choosing his words carefully, “preventive measures, and an abreaction.” He hoped that these sonorous terms would satisfy his friend. “That is, reconstruction of the original traumata in order to cause a curative catharsis.”
But Sir Arthur grunted crossly. “Lot of pretenious gobbledy-gook for the layman, old boy, I’ve done it myself when I was groping. In plain English—if the girl isn’t dead yet, you hope to bring her out of this cataleptic trance or whatever it is, by making her unconscious live through and accept the disasters she’s suicidally trying to escape from?”
“Something like that . . .” Akananda answered after a moment. He hesitated, longing to clarify, to win his friend’s entire cooperation for a venture back into the past. But he knew that frankness might provoke doubt, even hostility. Arthur was an excellent neuropsychiatrist and a great believer in material methods, such as chemotherapy. From the analytic viewpoint he would accept possible regression into any past—even fetal—of the palpable body in which a patient was presented to him. Of any life existence before the womb or beyond the grave he was scornfully contemptuous. Young Artie Moore had been thus at medical school, and Sir Arthur the eminent specialist had obviously not changed.
“Unconscionable time that G.P.’s taking,” Sir Arthur remarked, then jumped. “Good God, what was that?”
He whirled around and stared at the bed. He rushed over and put his ear to Celia’s chest. The girl’s condition was unchanged, no apparent heartbeat, no reflexes, no expression either, except the remote secret surprise, in itself common enough on newly-dead faces.
“I thought I heard her speak,” said Sir Arthur. He pulled out his silk handkerchief and wiped his forehead. “Didn’t you hear anything, Jiddu?”
The Hindu had not, and he shook his head. “What did you hear her say?” he asked quietly.
Sir Arthur tamped out his cigar. “Perfectly idiotic, of course. I must be hallucinating. Need a holiday. Getting as nervy as my patients!”
“But what did you think she said?” insisted Akananda.
“Well, it—it sounded like ‘Stephen.’”
“Ah-h—” said Akananda on a long drawn breath. “You heard what she was thinking, Arthur, at least you heard an impassioned cry from her soul.”
“My dear chap!” Sir Arthur exploded. “This case is peculiar enough without muddling it with your metaphysical, extrasensory, transmigrational, and God knows what theories. I remember ’em well. The arguments we had! I imagined I heard something, perfectly simple auditory hallucination. Sorry I mentioned it, but I was startled.”
Akananda, seeing that his friend was shaken, dropped the subject except for one temperate remark. “If you can believe in television, Arthur, you can believe anything, don’t you think? Invisible pictures, words, vibrations continually surrounding us, and only made manifest by turning buttons on a properly tuned receiver.”
“Rubbish, no parallel at all. And damn it, I’m not a bloody wireless!” He heard footsteps outside and cried, “Thank God, this must be Foster. Now we can get cracking!”
Dr. Foster appeared and Sir Arthur plunged into the directives and practical arrangements at which he was adept.
By the next morning of another balmy June day, Celia had been transported to London and installed in a luxurious room at the London Clinic. The electroencephalogram, taken immediately, had shown minimal brain wave function, quivers so feeble and sluggish that they were a marvel not only to the technician, but to all of the fascinated staff who examined the graph. The prognosis was black.
Akananda stood by while Sir Arthur himself cautiously administered shock therapy. Celia’s brain waves were unaffected.
“This beats me. I’ve never seen or heard of anything like this,” he finally confessed. “Living corpse, like that American poet, what’s his name—Poe—wrote about. Even ten years ago she’d have been embalmed or cremated by now, and that really would finish her off. As it is . . . I give up. Jiddu, you have a free hand. What do you want to do?”
“Be entirely alone with her, uninterrupted.”
Sir Arthur sighed. “Very well. I’ll give the orders. I suppose you’ll try hypnosis, or some damn-fool Indian trick?”
“Perhaps,” said Akananda smiling. “I’m going home now to rest, I’ll return to my patient later.”
“Home?” Sir Arthur was astonished. The chap seemed so rootless, and so dedicated. “You don’t mean wife and kiddies, grandchildren for that matter. I’ve got one myself. Grandchild. Poor wife’s been dead six years.”
“No—none of that. Mine is a solitary path—in this life,” he added deliberately and watched the other’s expression, which remained affectionately inquiring, for Sir Arthur was deaf to the implication. “I have a small flat in Bloomsbury,” he added.
&n
bsp; “Well, good luck,” said Sir Arthur, who had missed both breakfast and lunch while struggling to arouse Celia, and was thinking longingly of his own elegant Mayfair mansion where his cook would immediately produce a cheese omelet. “Give me a ring if there’s any change. And I’ll check in tomorrow.” He moved majestically along the corridor, ignoring the flutter of nurses and lesser doctors who had hoped for a word with him.
Akananda went down to the waiting room and found Lily Taylor staring at a closed copy of Punch.
“Any news?” she asked hopelessly. Her anxious face without make-up, her bright gold curls hanging limp, the simple heather tweeds she had flung on at Medfield yesterday when the tragedies began, all made her look young and defenseless.
“Nothing new,” Akananda said gently. “I’m going to try my experiment later. For that I must be alone, but I know you want to stay near here. Get yourself a room in town—Claridge’s?”
“Can’t I do anything?” she cried. “It’s awful just to wait.”
He nodded. “Of all unhappy human stresses, inactive suspense is probably the worst. I suggest that you do do something.”
“But what?” she cried. “I don’t want to see people, go to a movie, distract myself. Can’t pray either, I’ve tried. Celia’s dying in some horrible way nobody understands; Richard has gone crazy, or at least insanely cruel; this nightmare can’t be real.” She folded the glossy edge of the magazine cover and began to tear off little scraps, staring at the bits of paper as they fluttered to the carpet.
Akananda watched her, frowning. He stepped quickly to the nurses’ desk and gave an order. He came back with decision. “Mrs. Taylor, I want you to take a taxi to some church, some spiritual place where you will sit quietly for at least one hour. Where do you wish to go? St. Paul’s perhaps?”
“No, no—” she murmured. “Too much bustle, too many tourists.”
“One of the smaller churches?”
She shook her head, still pleating and tearing at the magazine cover.