Authors: Lawrence Scott
When they entered the ward, everyone wanted to talk to the doctor. ‘Okay, all of you’ll have my attention. After the bandaging, I want all nurses to collect on the verandah.’ Turning to Thérèse, ‘Feathers and cocoyea sticks. Get the children to help you,’ Vincent smiled. He loved to have her at his side.
‘Let’s have the nurses in rows.’ Thérèse was organising. Each nurse brought a chair from the ward and placed it at intervals along the long verandah, outside the women’s ward, as Thérèse instructed them.
There were a dozen chairs. This was what she wanted most, to be assisting him in his work. She watched Vincent working himself down the ward, examining hands and feet. There were one or two bad cases of eye injury and one patient had malaria. She was always at hand.
‘We need new mosquito nets on this ward.’
‘You right, Docta, I get bite, for so, last night. Some big big fellas,’ one of the patients called out.
‘I bet you one of them is
Anopheles
.’
‘Yes, Docta, I hear his violin in my ears.’ They liked the
ole talk
.
‘Don’t forget the dengue fella,
Aedes Aegypti
.’
‘Gawd! He sounding bad!’ the patient laughed.
Vincent smiled. He loved their spirit. Together, they would conquer this illness, no matter what superstitions their priests filled their heads with.
The patients liked to hear Vincent raging against the authorities on their behalf. This morning, Singh was coming down the ward the other way with the daily doses of cod liver oil, and dressings for those who were having clean bandages. Vincent noticed that he had Theo in attendance. He was wearing a white coat. He beamed at Vincent.
There was notice given of the dreaded Chaulmoogra Oil injections. Everyone still had a vivid memory of the meetings under the almond tree, or the riots as they were called. Between Singh and Vincent, the ward was in an uproar of laughter and revolt against the authorities. These were the moments when they could throw off their sorrows.
Theo was witnessing a new side to life on El Caracol.
Suddenly, there was a distinct quietening down at the end of the ward, near the ward-sister’s cubicle. Some of the patients began mumbling, ‘Good morning, Mother Superior, good morning, Mother.’ There was a kind of trained sycophancy in their voices. She progressed down the centre of the ward, her veil billowing out behind her with her stride, her black rosary beads, the Fifteen Mysteries, clattering.
‘Good morning, Mr Singh. Is everything in order here?’
‘Perfectly, Mother Superior. Things have never been better.’ There was often a trace of irony in Singh’s tone, and Vincent smiled, taking the lead from him. Theo looked on eagerly.
When she came to Vincent, Mother Superior’s voice was more challenging. ‘Doctor Metivier. What is going on here?’
All the patients were sitting up in bed, even Mildred Yard with her malaria. All eyes were on these well known rivals for their
well-being
.
‘Here, Mother Superior? The usual morning duties, plus a couple of miracles. Isn’t that so, Hilda?’ Vincent lifted Hilda Black’s notes hanging off the railing at the bottom of her bed. ‘Hilda’s sores are almost completely healed, and soon she will be picking up her bed and walking out of here. Isn’t that so Hilda? Right up to your hut and your garden.’ Vincent stopped himself from concluding with, as Christ once instructed the leper of Galilee.
‘You right, yes, Docta. Is garden I want to plant. You see
Corpus
Christi
gone, and I ent plant corn this year.’
Mother Superior stopped him short with, ‘Doctor, I mean, out there, on the verandah? What are all the ward nurses doing, standing in a row by chairs, rather than getting on with their duties? Sometimes, I just don’t understand what is going on in this hospital.’
Thérèse left the ward. She did not like to witness the open rivalry between her superior and Vincent. It challenged too many conflicting beliefs, too many conflicting loyalties. She went and gathered up some of the children from the school. She recruited Theo, stealing him from Singh. He was delighted to do another new job. They needed a dozen good feathers and a similar number of sharp cocoyea sticks.
Theo was put in charge of some smaller girls and boys, stripping coconut palms for the seam of the leaf. And others, chasing around the yard near Ma Thorpe’s chicken run for light fluffy feathers, were led by Ti-Jean. Both of the Doctor’s boys had an important job to do. Thérèse had found a way to combat any rivalry between the boys.
Each nurse, sitting on the verandah, was then given one of the softest feathers and a sharp cocoyea stick, which had been sorted by the children from the bundles they had deposited on the verandah.
‘I’m conducting an experiment, a piece of research, Mother.’ Vincent was, at the same time, ushering Mother Superior onto the verandah. ‘I need to do some tests on the hands of the patients. I’ve got a hunch.’
‘A hunch?’ She shook her head. ‘I do not know that word.’
‘An idea. A hypothetical theory, about hands.’
‘Do you think that this is what we need at the moment, Doctor?’
‘Well, we’ve nothing else. I cannot continue with this kind of nursing and doctoring. We’re getting nowhere.’
Vincent often felt it was better to have things out with Mother Superior in public, rather than in the privacy of her office, where
she could reign supreme. For instance, if he had gone and asked her permission to conduct this survey, she would have come down on it with a sledgehammer.
The truth was that she still missed Dr Escalier of the old school, the old order, when everyone knew their place. She had known where she was with him. Vincent was not sure what she imagined. Coupled with Mr Singh, she might as well have had her leprosarium run by Communists. There was some bit of Mother Superior which almost understood the Germans and their National Socialism. Vincent wondered whether she gave her sisters talks on the subject before Compline. Was her hero Petain?
‘Nowhere? This is the path to heaven, Doctor. This is their cross and they are bearing it courageously to their Calvary. Everyone’s Calvary is different.’
Vincent thought to himself, I’ve been here before. ‘Well, I’m not challenging you, Mother Superior. I just have quite good evidence that there is something else going on here. We’ve been looking at this disease with blinkers on. We need to try another strategy, and I want to conduct these tests on hands and feet, to see whether we should pursue it further. Have faith.’ Vincent smiled.
‘Faith, Doctor? You wouldn’t know the meaning of the word even if Karl Marx tried to persuade you of it. What would you know about it? Indeed.’
He did not know why he said it. It just came out. ‘Sister Thérèse Weil is persuaded that we should try it.’
‘I’m sure she is. Let me just say Doctor, that Sister Thérèse Weil, as you call her…’
‘Isn’t that her name?’
‘You know exactly what I mean, Doctor Metivier. Don’t pretend with me. You may think me some kind of religious fanatic. Some old, what do the English call it, fogey?’
‘Fogey?’ You know that word. ‘Hunch’ not, but ‘fogey’, Vincent thought.
‘Dr Metivier.’
‘Mother.’
‘Listen to me.’
‘Mother Superior, how could you think…’
‘What I want to say is that that girl. For that is what she is, a bright girl. And willing as she maybe in her youthful enthusiasm, to be persuaded by you, precisely why, I’m not sure, is a religious first of all. Don’t forget that, and don’t put temptation in her way.’
Vincent could feel himself physically recoil at the word temptation. He felt again like the naughty boy he had always been made to feel by priests and their church. He hoped he was not blushing.
‘Pride is one of the seven deadly sins, Doctor. I know that Sister Weil is from a medical family, may even have had a glittering career ahead of her in research, as you call it, but she has chosen to serve as a religious, first and foremost.’
Vincent was relieved. It was the sin of pride that concerned the nun. He shook his head in grateful agreement. Mother Superior could not have doubted his approval of what she was saying.
‘Come and see, Mother. You may yourself be persuaded.’
Thérèse had begun to line up the patients. While one Sister performed the test, another took notes. There were about
twenty-four
involved in all, two per patient, as they worked on twelve at a time.
Firstly, they tested with the feather and then with the sharp end of the cocoyea stick, using it like a pin, tracing the sensitivity to touch and pain in the different parts of the hand. They measured the range of movement in the thumb, fingers and wrist. Then they repeated this procedure for the toes and feet, keeping the precise measurement of the lengths of the toes and fingers, noting which digits had shortened and which muscles seemed to be paralysed. Any paralysis in the face was also noted.
After looking at the enterprise for a few minutes, Mother Superior asked, ‘And how long will this take, Doctor? All this tickling.’
Singh was smiling in the background. Theo was back at his side in his white coat.
Mother Superior sighed and left.
Vincent went up and down the line, checking what the sisters were doing, assisted by Thérèse. Singh, Theo and Christiana helped with the patients on the ward. It took the rest of the afternoon to
check all the patients in the women’s ward. ‘Tomorrow, the men’s ward!’ Vincent announced. The sisters gathered up their notes and bundled the feathers and cocoyea sticks for further use.
‘You feel you’re onto something here with this tickling?’ Singh laughed and played at testing Theo, who held out his open hand, giggling. Christiana laughed. The two went off together.
‘Boy, this might be the biggest revolution we’re going to create here.’ Vincent inspected some of the notes the nuns had made.
‘What you mean?’
‘This might be our leap out of the dark ages, from a world with shunned lepers, the superstitions of medieval religions, the stigma of society.’
‘Science.’
‘Yes, science, research. Do you know leprosy is responsible for the greatest number of cases of orthopaedic crippling? And, yet, the only known surgical procedure, so far, is amputation. Amputation!’ Theo was back, his eyes moved between the two men. Then he went off to return his white coat at the pharmacy and join Jonah at the jetty.
Singh called after him. ‘Tomorrow.’ Theo waved. He noticed Christiana entering the pharmacy.
Thérèse joined Singh and Vincent. ‘I want all the notes collated. We must go over them as soon as we can. Can you stay tonight at the hospital?’ Vincent looked at Thérèse. ‘I would like to see if there are any recognisable patterns before proceeding with the men’s ward tomorrow.’
‘I’ll have to get permission. Mother Superior doesn’t like me staying two nights in succession. But I’ll ask.’
‘Well. I had a little scene earlier.’ Singh and Thérèse smiled. They had witnessed it.
‘Little? Don’t we know, Mr Singh?’ Thérèse teased.
‘So, can you be particularly humble when you make your request to stay over. You must check your pride!’ There was a twinkle in Vincent’s eyes as he looked at Singh and then at Thérèse. ‘You don’t want her thinking that you’re in any way proud of what you do, or that what you do has anything whatsoever to do with yourself, your intelligence, the years of training you’ve had, your
own efforts in the research. All that you are, is an instrument of God. Do you understand? I tell you, there’ve been too many blunt instruments recently about this place. God needs to sharpen up.’
Thérèse did not like Vincent teasing her in front of Singh. She felt that it made it visible what was happening to them. She suddenly was blushing.
‘Lay off, man. Sister must have her beliefs.’
‘She knows exactly what I mean.’ Thérèse did what was her custom, folding her arms into her sleeves and turning away, bowing her head. He was in each and every way like her father, she thought. When he got hold of some idea, he did not let it go. She wished she could talk to the chaplain. There was no possibility that she could talk to any of the nuns. The community was too small. She would not be able to talk about Vincent with any sense of anonymity for him. The chaplain, what was she thinking? That would be like jumping from the frying pan into the fire.
‘You teasing her too much, man. I might think you were flirting with her.’ Singh looked at Vincent.
‘What you mean?’ As he turned to leave, he said, ‘By the way, I saw you last night. Out late? Who was that with you?’
‘Last night? Just hanging out with the fellas.’
‘Oh. See you tomorrow. You seem to have got Theo really interested.’
‘Bright too bad. See you.’
Vincent returned to the clinic, just as the ward sister was leaving cups of hot cocoa sprinkled with vanilla for Thérèse and himself. ‘Very kind of you, nurse,’ Vincent smiled.
‘I leave you to it.’ The door banged behind her.
‘What did she mean by that?’ Vincent asked.
Thérèse did not answer. She continued going through the notes on her desk.
‘Looking after my boy,’ Vincent sighed, as he sat down at his desk alongside her.
‘Your boy?’
‘Theo, how he’s getting on with Singh.’
‘He was splendid this afternoon. Thought you were speaking about Ti-Jean.’
‘I know. Ti-Jean’s not well. He was putting a brave face on things today. His wound has opened again. I’ve not been to see him with all that’s been going on. The place is not the same without him around. So, it was good he got involved today. Your doing.’
She smiled. ‘They are both so fond of you.’
‘If only we had Penicillin,’ Vincent complained. ‘Anyway, Theo. I can’t leave him at night easily. I had to get Jonah to stay with him. He likes Jonah. They fish together. They go out in the pirogue as far as Point Girod.’
‘Doctor and his boys.’
He looked up, sipped his cocoa and smiled.
‘Would you like to have children? Would you like to be married? Why aren’t you married?’ She spilt out her questions.
‘What’s this, the inquisition? What kind of questions are these, Sister?’ He put on his doctor’s voice, his doctor-in-charge-of-the
leprosarium-voice. ‘Out of the blue?’
‘Out of the blue?’
‘What did you say?’ He was distracted.
‘Out of the blue! Really, Doctor Metivier. Is this what you think this is? Out of the blue? We’ve kissed each other twice, Doctor.’
‘Lower your voice. And don’t call me doctor.’
‘We’ve not told each other what it means.’
They suddenly found themselves sitting in darkness.
‘I can’t see a thing.’ Vincent got up and lit the hurricane lantern. It spluttered, and then the blue flame grew steady.
When he sat back down to his desk, he asked, ‘Do we have to say what everything means?’
Thérèse did not answer immediately. She carried on with her classifications. The lantern threw their shadows together on the ceiling, and along the cream wall of the old clinic.
‘No. We don’t know the meaning of everything. But you’re the one always going on about reason, science,’ Thérèse insisted.
‘Certainly. There are mysteries in science also.’
‘I don’t know the meaning of these notes I’m reading right now, for instance,’ she added.
‘Yet.’
‘Yes, not yet. Hopefully, I will.’ She smiled.
‘I’m sorry for what
I’ve
done.’ He changed his tone.
‘What you’ve done?’ She looked up, surprised.
‘Yes.’
‘It’s not like that.’ She understood. ‘You’ve not done something to me. We’ve done something together.’
‘Do you want to talk about this?’ Vincent hoped not.
‘Isn’t that what we’re doing? Is that what you said to Simone? I’m sorry.’
‘Why do you mention Simone?’
‘Was she not a girlfriend of yours in Paris?’
‘No.’
‘Oh, I thought maybe you were in love with her?’
‘In love?’
‘Yes, in love.’
‘What do you know of love, Sister?’
‘Sister?’
‘Sister. Indeed.’
‘Indeed?’
Thérèse got up to close the window. There was a high wind. The lamp spluttered. The papers blew off her desk. ‘The sea’s rough.’
‘It was choppy when Jonah left in the pirogue.’
‘You think I’m not capable of falling in love, Doctor?’
‘Don’t call me doctor. This is not a consultation. You’re not my patient. Of course, I think you are capable of falling in love. What a ridiculous thing to say. What’re you asking me?’
‘If it were a consultation, you might be kissing me again,’ Thérèse teased.
‘Thérèse.’
‘Madeleine. It’s Madeleine speaking.’
‘Are you mad?’
‘That’s what some of the sisters think, I’m sure.’
Vincent had got up and was opening the window again. ‘The heat in here is unbearable. It’s so still. We should have ceiling fans. The generators never work. Another thing to think about.’
He rattled the window open. A gust of wind blew the papers off his desk. Thérèse held hers down. The sea crashed onto the jetty. There was the smell of salt and weed.
They could hear great waves breaking over the jetty, pounding against the sea wall on the beach. When the wind died down, they heard dogs barking in the hills. They heard the thud of a coconut fall to the ground,
b’dup
.
In the hills, there were voices crying out. They could hear the sound of the Demerara shutters in the wards being pulled down. Someone was running along the verandah above. The rain suddenly burst down heavily. Water was seeping under the door from the drain outside.
‘We’re getting flooded.’ Vincent was stuffing old newspaper under the door. Thérèse hitched up her skirts.
They were both sitting at their desks again, trying to get on with the work of classification and collation; the results of the research with feathers and cocoyea sticks, when there was a thunderclap that shook the building and sounded like the island had exploded,
followed immediately by the rain falling even harder. A huge wind broke into the room, as if trying to suck everything out of the clinic. The lantern went out. The thunder broke again, after a lightning fork grounded itself either side of the building. Thérèse put her head down on the desk. ‘Mother of God.’ Vincent pulled the windows shut.
‘What are we going to do?’
‘We can’t go out in this.’ She had not experienced a tropical storm before.
They could hear the wind buckling along the sides of the hospital buildings. There was a ripping noise on the roofs. Vincent caught sight of a sheet of galvanise being dumped under the window. It was still very difficult to see anything, because of the darkness and the heavy rain. They could hear the frightened shouts of patients and nurses above them. Vincent felt helpless.
He thought of Theo and Jonah alone in the Doctor’s house. He trusted Jonah to know what to do, but he wanted to be with Theo.
‘We’re trapped.’ Thérèse pulled her feet up onto the struts of her chair. She hugged her knees, tucking her skirts tightly about her. The water was still seeping under the newspaper. The newspaper was sodden.
‘On our own, and nothing anyone can do about it,’ she said with irony. ‘Can we light the lantern again?’
‘I’ll try,’ he said.
‘The kerosene has spilt. Watch where you strike the match.’
The flame spluttered and smoked.
Great swathes of sheet lightning lit up the skies over the gulf.
‘
Sons et lumière
!’ Thérèse exclaimed.
‘Nature’s war?’ Vincent mused.
‘Nature’s manifestation surely,’ she corrected him.
‘We make wars.’
‘Yes. And yellow stars.’ She was bitter.
‘No letters?’ He knew her father was on her mind.
‘I wait for the mail boat each day.’
‘I can’t see how they can get through.’
‘I know. I hope for a miracle. A coincidence.’
The rainwater was coming in again. They were both on the floor stuffing newspapers.
‘Are we a coincidence?’ he asked. They were kneeling facing each other.
‘I think so. I’m the coincidence.’
‘You’re the miracle.’ He surprised himself.
‘So, you’re a romantic after all, Doctor Metivier.’ She threw back her head and laughed. Then she giggled nervously.
‘What do you tell your confessor?’ he blurted out.
‘My confessor?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, I don’t tell him about you.’
Vincent protested. ‘No, I didn’t mean it like that.’
‘Well, it wouldn’t be proper would it? How did you mean it?’
‘I meant, how do you cope?’
‘How do you cope?
‘I asked first.’ He knew that she knew that they were playing a game.
Their nerves were stretched
A bolt of lightning broke right overhead. Then the thunder followed, echoing for seconds, as they both forgot their questions and and delayed their replies. Thérèse put her hands out, and fell against Vincent’s chest. He held her fast.
‘Does this frighten you?’ he asked gently.
‘What?’
‘I don’t know. The thunder, the lightning? This, us here, together, like this?’
‘You know my fears, even unto death.’
‘Even more reason for me not to take advantage.’
‘Advantage. I choose to touch you. I could tell you to stop. Well, maybe I couldn’t. You know what I mean. I’m allowing this, or at least…’
They realised that the rain had suddenly stopped. The silence staggered them. ‘Come with me,’ Vincent pleaded.
‘Where?’
‘Come, quickly. Pack these papers away safely. It’s so dark we won’t be seen. If we’re questioned afterwards, we’ll say we went to
check the huts on the upper terraces.’
‘Where are we going?’
‘Let’s take the donkey track to the Doctor’s House.’ He talked of his house as the Doctor’s House, how everyone else referred to it. In doing so, it seemed as if he was renouncing his position. He was just himself now.
She was reluctant to follow him on this escapade. Who she was, and her duty, tied her down. ‘Why?’ She guessed why.
‘We’ll say we had to check the boy. Come, come quickly, trust me. There’s a boathouse where we can shelter when we get there. You won’t have to enter the house with Theo and Jonah. They won’t know we’re there.’
‘Why?’ She wanted to resist but could not.
‘We can’t stay here. Not here.’ He looked around the room of the clinic. ‘Look all this.’ The smell of medicines, the dreaded Chaulmoogra Oil, seemed as intense as ever. He looked around him, as if to say, not here, meaning not only the room which had shrunk in the darkness to enclose them, but the yard, the hospital, the leprosarium, the place of their work, and their devotion as nurse and doctor. He wanted to be away from there with her, Madeleine. This was the place of Doctor Metivier and Sister Thérèse.
Should he desire this? he asked himself. A hideaway, like a turret room among the tip-top palmistes? A cocoa house with the roof pulled over, like a reckless boy? Or like a young man in search of love on the streets? The intimacy of strangers, far away from home? A shuttered room near the
Rue du chat qui pêche
? What was he doing once more? Trespassing! Would he be prosecuted?
Thérèse was already collecting up her papers, and putting them in order. She slammed the drawer of her desk till the next day. She was hardly thinking that there would be a next day. Time, as she knew it, seemed to have collapsed, as they were already half way out the door and ducking through the darkness along the back tracks, between the outhouses of the hospital, and the beginning of the huts, to where the donkey track began into the hills. They would surely be seen, someone would notice them, and wonder at them, hurrying along in the darkness on such a night as this.
As they left the yards, Vincent saw Singh running across from the pharmacy towards his quarters with the girl, Christiana. What was Singh up to? There was something going on between this girl and Singh.
The rain had stopped, but the showers still fell from the bushes, as Vincent and Thérèse made their way along the muddy red dirt track. Thérèse hitched up her skirts, collecting handfuls of black rosary beads. He held her hand as they tried to find the firm ground beneath them.
They took the track which led straight down to the small beach, where the boathouse was. They would not have to go through the yard of the Doctor’s House. The windows and shutters were closed. The house looked battened down, protected against the storm. Hopefully Theo and Jonah were asleep.
Inside the boathouse was the old launch which had been used by Dr Escalier, and which Vincent had never used, always preferring the companionship of Jonah and his pirogue. There was a small cabin in the bow of the launch. This was the place that he had in mind for Madeleine and himself to spend an hour, or more, of this time, this night of the hurricane. A mad imagining!
The tide was right in and the launch rocked in its tight moorings, knocking the sides.
The boathouse stood under two spreading almond trees. Their large rusting leaves covered the roof and the walkway. As Madeleine and Vincent entered the dark enclosure, he helped her into the launch. They both wondered what they had done so suddenly to find themselves alone, hiding here.
Vincent led the way into the cabin. He knew there was a bunk with a fibre cushion. The place was musty and smelt of paint and engine oil, with whiffs of gasoline from a small can in the stern. They sat on the bunk, their heads just missing the roof of the cabin.
‘The best I can offer you.’ He reached out to touch her.
‘I can hardly see you.’ She put out her arms. They could barely avoid touching each other, every time they moved; he making the bunk ready, she standing, waiting. She could hear her heart pounding.
Their eyes grew accustomed to the dark. He now thought of the time that he had stitched the wound on her ankle; examining her head for splinters of glass, making her take off her veil to reveal her shorn head. He tried lifting her veil now, but it was pinned to her skull cap.
It was different now, as she unbuttoned and unpinned herself. He waited. She lifted the veils off herself, and unclasped her skull cap, the tiny hooks and fasteners, the minute mother of pearl buttons slipping through her nervous fingers. She was trembling.
He would not have known where to begin. It had been bad enough not knowing how to undo Simone’s bra, how to unhitch her suspenders from her stockings, but easy enough to have them curl down her legs. With Odetta, there was so little to take off. It was like lifting air, her light cotton chemise.
As Madeleine lay back on the bunk, Vincent found the bottom of her skirts, and felt the surprising down on her legs, as if she were a young boy. Her girdle, with the black rosary beads, clattered to the floor of the cabin. The noise startled them, the beads slid along the floor.