The Breaking Point Read online

  ‘Something happened to me, didn’t it?’ she said. ‘I tried to get away.’

  The nurse glanced at the surgeon. He nodded his head.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘you did. And, frankly, I don’t blame you. I blame myself.Those lenses I inserted yesterday were pressing upon a tiny nerve, and the pressure threw out your balance.That’s all over now.’

  His smile was reassuring. And the large warm eyes of Nurse Brand - it must surely be Nurse Brand - gazed down at her in sympathy.

  ‘It was very terrible,’ said the patient. ‘I can never explain how terrible.’

  ‘Don’t try,’ said Mr Greaves.‘I can promise you it won’t happen again.’

  The door opened and the young physician entered. He too was smiling. ‘Patient fully restored?’ he asked.

  ‘I think so,’ said the surgeon. ‘What about it, Mrs West?’

  Marda West stared gravely at the three of them, Mr Greaves, the house physician and Nurse Brand, and she wondered what palpitating wounded tissue could so transform three individuals into prototypes of an animal kingdom, what cell linking muscle to imagination.

  ‘I thought you were dogs,’ she said. ‘I thought you were a hunt terrier, Mr Greaves, and that you were an Aberdeen.’

  The house physician touched his stethoscope and laughed.

  ‘But I am,’ he said, ‘it’s my native town. Your judgement was not wholly out, Mrs West. I congratulate you.’

  Marda West did not join in the laugh.

  ‘That’s all right for you,’ she said. ‘Other people were not so pleasant.’ She turned to Nurse Brand. ‘I thought you were a cow,’ she said, ‘a kind cow. But you had sharp horns.’

  This time it was Mr Greaves who took up the laugh. ‘There you are, nurse,’ he said, ‘just what I’ve often told you. Time they put you out to grass and to eat the daisies.’

  Nurse Brand took it in good part. She straightened the patient’s pillows and her smile was benign. ‘We get called some funny things from time to time,’ she said. ‘That’s all part of our job.’

  The doctors were moving towards the door, still laughing, and Marda West, sensing the normal atmosphere, the absence of all strain, said, ‘Who found me, then? What happened? Who brought me back?’

  Mr Greaves glanced back at her from the door. ‘You didn’t get very far, Mrs West, and a damn good job for you, or you mightn’t be here now. The porter followed you.’

  ‘It’s all finished with now,’ said the house physician, ‘and the episode lasted five minutes. You were safely in your bed before any harm was done, and I was here. So that was that. The person who really had the full shock was poor Nurse Ansel when she found you weren’t in your bed.’

  Nurse Ansel . . . The revulsion of the night before was not so easily forgotten. ‘Don’t say our little starlet was an animal too?’ smiled the house doctor. Marda West felt herself colour. Lies would have to begin. ‘No,’ she said quickly, ‘no, of course not.’

  ‘Nurse Ansel is here now,’ said Nurse Brand. ‘She was so upset when she went off duty that she wouldn’t go back to the hostel to sleep. Would you care to have a word with her?’

  Apprehension seized the patient. What had she said to Nurse Ansel in the panic and fever of the night? Before she could answer the house doctor opened the door and called down the passage.

  ‘Mrs West wants to say good morning to you,’ he said. He was smiling all over his face. Mr Greaves waved his hand and was gone, Nurse Brand went after him, and the house doctor, saluting with his stethoscope and making a mock bow, stepped back against the wall to admit Nurse Ansel. Marda West stared, then tremulously began to smile, and held out her hand.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘you must forgive me.’

  How could she have seen Nurse Ansel as a snake! The hazel eyes, the clear olive skin, the dark hair trim under the frilled cap. And that smile, that slow, understanding smile.

  ‘Forgive you, Mrs West?’ said Nurse Ansel. ‘What have I to forgive you for? You’ve been through a terrible ordeal.’

  Patient and nurse held hands. They smiled at one another. And, oh heaven, thought Marda West, the relief, the thankfulness, the load of doubt and despair that was swept away with the new-found sight and knowledge.

  ‘I still don’t understand what happened,’ she said, clinging to the nurse.‘Mr Greaves tried to explain. Something about a nerve.’

  Nurse Ansel made a face towards the door. ‘He doesn’t know himself,’ she whispered, ‘and he’s not going to say either, or he’ll find himself in trouble. He fixed those lenses too deep, that’s all. Too near a nerve. I wonder it didn’t kill you.’

  She looked down at her patient. She smiled with her eyes. She was so pretty, so gentle.‘Don’t think about it,’ she said.‘You’re going to be happy from now on. Promise me?’

  ‘I promise,’ said Marda West.

  The telephone rang, and Nurse Ansel let go her patient’s hand and reached for the receiver. ‘You know who this is going to be,’ she said. ‘Your poor husband.’ She gave the receiver to Marda West.

  ‘Jim . . . Jim, is that you?’

  The loved voice sounding so anxious at the other end. ‘Are you all right?’ he said. ‘I’ve been through to Matron twice, she said she would let me know.What the devil has been happening?’

  Marda West smiled and handed the receiver to the nurse.

  ‘You tell him,’ she said.

  Nurse Ansel held the receiver to her ear. The skin of her hand was olive smooth, the nails gleaming with a soft pink polish.

  ‘Is that you, Mr West?’ she said. ‘Our patient gave us a fright, didn’t she?’ She smiled and nodded at the woman in the bed. ‘Well, you don’t have to worry any more. Mr Greaves changed the lenses. They were pressing on a nerve, and everything is now all right. She can see perfectly. Yes, Mr Greaves said we could come home tomorrow.’

  The endearing voice blended to the soft colouring, the hazel eyes. Marda West reached once more for the receiver.

  ‘Jim, I had a hideous night,’ she said. ‘I’m only just beginning to understand it now. A nerve in the brain . . .’

  ‘So I gather,’ he said. ‘How damnable. Thank God they traced it. That fellow Greaves can’t have known his job.’

  ‘It can’t happen again,’ she said. ‘Now the proper lenses are in, it can’t happen again.’

  ‘It had better not,’ he said,‘or I’ll sue him. How are you feeling in yourself?’

  ‘Wonderful,’ she said, ‘bewildered, but wonderful.’

  ‘Good girl,’ he said. ‘Don’t excite yourself. I’ll be along later.’ His voice went. Marda West gave the receiver to Nurse Ansel, who replaced it on the stand.

  ‘Did Mr Greaves really say I could go home tomorrow?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes, if you’re good.’ Nurse Ansel smiled and patted her patient’s hand. ‘Are you sure you still want me to come with you?’ she asked.

  ‘Why, yes,’ said Marda West. ‘Why, it’s all arranged.’

  She sat up in bed and the sun came streaming through the window, throwing light on the roses, the lilies, the tall-stemmed iris.The hum of traffic outside was close and friendly. She thought of her garden waiting for her at home, and her own bedroom, her own possessions, the day-by-day routine of home to be taken up again with sight restored, the anxiety and fear of the past months put away for ever.

  ‘The most precious thing in the world,’ she said to Nurse Ansel, ‘is sight. I know now. I know what I might have lost.’

  Nurse Ansel, hands clasped in front of her, nodded her head in sympathy. ‘You’ve got your sight back,’ she said, ‘that’s the miracle. You won’t ever lose it now.’

  She moved to the door. ‘I’ll slip back to the hostel and get some rest,’ she said. ‘Now I know everything is well with you I’ll be able to sleep. Is there anything you want before I go?’

  ‘Give me my face-cream and my powder,’ said the patient, ‘and the lipstick and the brush and comb.’

  Nurse
Ansel fetched the things from the dressing-table and put them within reach upon the bed. She brought the hand-mirror, too, and the bottle of scent, and with a little smile of intimacy sniffed at the stopper. ‘Gorgeous,’ she murmured. ‘This is what Mr West gave you, isn’t it?’

  Already, thought Marda West, Nurse Ansel fitted in. She saw herself putting flowers in the small guest-room, choosing the right books, fitting a portable wireless in case Nurse Ansel should be bored in the evenings.

  ‘I’ll be with you at eight o’clock.’

  The familiar words, said every morning now for so many days and weeks, sounded in her ear like a melody, loved through repetition. At last they were joined to the individual, the person who smiled, the one whose eyes promised friendship and loyalty.

  ‘See you this evening.’

  The door closed. Nurse Ansel had gone. The routine of the nursing-home, broken by the fever of the night before, resumed its usual pattern. Instead of darkness, light. Instead of negation, life.

  Marda West took the stopper from the scent-bottle and put it behind her ears. The fragrance filtered, becoming part of the warm, bright day. She lifted the hand-mirror and looked into it. Nothing changed in the room, the street noises penetrated from outside, and presently the little maid who had seemed a weasel yesterday came in to dust the room. She said, ‘Good morning,’ but the patient did not answer. Perhaps she was tired. The maid dusted, and went her way.

  Then Marda West took up the mirror and looked into it once more. No, she had not been mistaken. The eyes that stared back at her were doe’s eyes, wary before sacrifice, and the timid deer’s head was meek, already bowed.

  Ganymede

  They call it Little Venice. That was what drew me here in the first place. And you have to admit that there is a curious resemblance - at least for people like myself, with imagination.There is a corner, for instance, where the canal takes a bend, fronted by a row of terraced houses, and the water itself has a particular stillness, especially at night, and the glaring discordancies that are noticeable during the day, like the noise of the shunting from Paddington Station, the rattle of the trains, the ugliness, all that seems to vanish. Instead . . . the yellow light from the street lamps might be the mysterious glow you get from those old lanterns set in brackets on the corner of some crumbling palazzo, whose shuttered windows look blindly down upon the stagnant sweetness of a side-canal.

  It is, and I must repeat this, essential to have imagination, and the house-agents are clever - they frame their advertisements to catch the eye of waverers like myself. ‘Two-roomed flat, with balcony, overlooking canal, in the quiet backwater known as Little Venice,’ and instantly, to the famished mind, the aching heart, comes a vision of another two-roomed flat, another balcony, where at the hour of waking the sun makes patterns on a flaking ceiling, water patterns, and the sour Venetian smell comes through the window with the murmur of Venetian voices, the poignant ‘Ohé!’ as the gondola rounds the bend and disappears.

  In Little Venice we have traffic too. Not sharp-nosed gondolas, of course, gently rocking from side to side, but barges pass my window carrying bricks, and sometimes coal - the coal-dust dirties the balcony; and if I shut my eyes, surprised by the sudden hooting, and listen to the rapid chug-chug of the barge’s engine, I can fancy myself, with my same shut eyes, waiting for a vaporetto at one of the landing-stages. I stand on the wooden planking, hemmed in by a chattering crowd, and there is a great surge and throbbing as the vessel goes hard astern. Then the vaporetto is alongside, and I, with my chattering crowd, have gone on board and we are off again, churning the water into wavelets with our wash, and I am trying to make up my mind whether to go direct to San Marco, and so to the piazza and my usual table, or to leave the vaporetto higher up the Grand Canal and thus prolong exquisite anticipation. The hooting stops. The barge passes. I cannot tell you where they go.There is a junction, close to Paddington, where the canal splits. This does not interest me; all that interests me is the echo of the barge’s hooter, the echo of the engine, and - if I am walking - the barge’s wake in the canal water, so that, glancing down the bank, I can see a film of oil amongst the bubbles, and then the oil disperses, and the bubbles too, and the water becomes still.

  Come with me, and I’ll show you something. You see the street across the canal, that one there, with the shops, going towards Paddington Station; and you see the bus stop, halfway down, and the board with blue letters on it. Your eyes won’t be able to pick it up at this distance, but I can tell you that it reads MARIO, and it’s the name of a small restaurant, an Italian restaurant, hardly more than a bar. They know me there. I go there every day.You see, the lad there - he’s training to be a waiter - reminds me of Ganymede . . .

  2

  I am a classical scholar. I suppose that was really the trouble. Had my interests been scientific, or geographical, or even historical - though history has associations enough, heaven knows - then I don’t believe anything would have happened. I could have gone to Venice, and enjoyed my holiday, and come away again, without losing myself to such an extent that . . . Well, what occurred there meant a total break with everything that had gone before.

  You see, I’ve given up my job. My superior was exceedingly nice about it all, most sympathetic in fact, but, as he said, they really couldn’t afford to take risks, they couldn’t permit one of their employees - and, naturally, that applied to me - to continue working for them if he had been connected . . . that was the word he used, not mixed-up but connected . . . with what he called unsavoury practices.

  Unsavoury is a hideous word. It’s the most hideous word in the dictionary. It conjures up, to my mind, all that is ugly in life, yes, and in death too. The savoury is the joy, the élan, the zest that goes with mind and body working in unison; the unsavoury is the malodorous decay of vegetation, the rotted flesh, the mud beneath the water of the canal. And another thing. The word unsavoury suggests a lack of personal cleanliness: unchanged linen, bed-sheets hanging to dry, the fluff off combs, torn packets in waste-paper baskets. None of this can I abide. I am fastidious. Above all things I am fastidious. So that when my superior mentioned the word unsavoury I knew I had to go. I knew I could never allow him, or anyone, so to misinterpret my actions that they could consider what had taken place as, to put it bluntly, nauseous. So I resigned. Yes, I resigned. There was nothing else for it. I just cut myself loose. And I saw the advertisement in the house-agent’s column, and here I am in Little Venice . . .

  I took my holiday late that year because my sister, who lives in Devon, and with whom I usually spend three weeks in August, suddenly had domestic trouble. A favourite cook left after a lifetime of devotion, and the household was disorganized. My nieces wanted to hire a caravan, my sister wrote me: they were all determined to go camping in Wales, and although I would be welcome she was sure it was not the sort of break that would appeal to me. She was right. The idea of hammering tent-pegs into the ground in a tearing wind, or sitting humped four abreast in a tiny space while my sister and her daughters produced luncheon out of a tin, filled me with misgiving. I cursed the cook whose departure had put an end to the pleasurable series of long, lazy days to which I had been accustomed, when, relaxing in a chaise-longue, favourite book in hand, and most delightfully fed, I had idled away my Augusts for many years.

  When I protested over a series of trunk calls that I had nowhere to go, my sister said, or rather shouted over the muffled line, ‘Get abroad for a change. It would do you a world of good to break routine. Try France, or Italy.’ She even suggested a cruise, which frightened me even more than a caravan.

  ‘Very well,’ I told her coldly, for in a sense I blamed her for the cook’s departure and the cessation of my comfort, ‘I will go to Venice,’ thinking that, if I was obliged to get myself out of the rut, then I would at least be obvious. I would go, guidebook in hand, to a tourist’s paradise. But not in August. Definitely not in August. I would wait until my compatriots and my friends across the Atlantic had b
een and gone again. Only then would I venture forth, when the heat of the day was done, and some measure of peace had returned to the place I believed was beautiful.

  I arrived the first week in October . . . You know how sometimes a holiday, even a brief one, a visit to friends for the week-end, can go wrong from the start. One departs in rain, or misses a connexion, or wakes with a chill, and the thread of ill-luck laced with irritation continues to mar every hour. Not so with Venice. The very fact that I had left it late, that the month was October, that the people I knew were now back again at office desks, made me more aware of my own good fortune.

  I reached my destination just before dusk. Nothing had gone amiss. I had slept in my sleeper. I had not been annoyed by my fellow travellers. I had digested my dinner of the preceding night and my luncheon of the day. I had not been obliged to over-tip. Venice with all its glories lay before me. I collected my baggage and stepped out of the train, and there was the Grand Canal at my feet, the thronging gondolas, the lapping water, the golden palazzi, the dappled sky.

  A fat porter from my hotel who had come to meet the train, so like a deceased member of the royal family that I dubbed him Prince Hal on the spot, seized my trappings from me. I was wafted, as so many travellers have been wafted before me, through the years and centuries, from the prosaic rattle of the tourist train to an instant dream world of romance.

  To be met by boat; to travel by water; to loll upon cushions, swaying from side to side, even with a Prince Hal shouting the sights in one’s ear in appalling English - all this makes for a loosening of restraint. I eased my collar. I threw off my hat. I averted my eyes from my walking-stick and my umbrella and my burberry tucked in the hold-all - I invariably travel with a hold-all. Lighting a cigarette, I was aware, surely for the first time in my life, of a sense of abandon, of belonging - certainly not to the present, nor to the future, nor even to the past, but to a period in time that was changeless and was Venetian time, that was outside the rest of Europe and even the world, and existed, magically, for myself alone.