“The bastard called it seasickness!” Franz says bitterly. “Where is he? This is criminal!”
In the theater, as soon as Digby opens the abdomen, he sees what he feared: a distended, angry-looking gallbladder with dusky patches of gangrene. There’s your dyspepsia, Claude. He makes a small hole in the engorged sack. A sludge of yellow pus, green bile, and small pigment stones spills out onto the gauze pads and into the suction apparatus. He unroofs as much of the gallbladder as he can, leaving only the part stuck to the liver. He avoids the cystic duct where the gallbladder empties. Dissecting there with all this inflammation is hazardous. Lena’s tissues bleed vigorously. Before closing the belly, he leaves a rubber drain near the liver bed. After surgery Lena Mylin looks very pale and has low blood pressure. Digby hurries to the “blood bank”—a closet with a refrigerator, really—where, using typing serum, he establishes that hers is B blood group, a rare one. The blood bank is his innovation, one of the areas in which they are ahead of the other city hospitals. After a pint of blood, Lena’s blood pressure rises and color returns to her face.
“Whose blood was that?” Franz asks.
“Mine,” Digby says. His blood group makes him a universal donor. Luckily, he had two units of his own blood in storage for just such a need. “I’m going to give her a second bottle.”
Digby keeps vigil with Franz. By morning Lena is clearly improved. He learns that the Mylins have an estate on the other coast, near Cochin. Franz’s face relaxes when he describes their home of many years in the Western Ghats, where he grows tea and spices. “You must come and visit, Doctor Kilgour.”
At noon Digby returns to find Claude Arnold at the foot of the bed, examining Lena’s chart while Franz stands there, arms crossed, glowering, bursting to speak. Lena’s face is averted.
“Well,” Claude says, registering Digby’s presence, “Dr. Kilgour saved the day, it seems—” and with that he slips past Digby and walks out before they can react. Digby pacifies an apoplectic Franz.
Later, when Digby emerges from the ward, Claude appears from his rear. He must have waited behind a pillar. If Digby imagined that Arnold might be sheepish, or even grateful to his junior, he’s quickly disabused of that notion.
“You should have just put in a drain and come out. Nibbling away pieces of the gallbladder? Hardly standard practice.” Claude’s back is turned to the ward entrance and he misses Franz Mylin emerging to loom just behind him. “I call that irresponsible and foolhardy, Digby.”
Before a stunned Digby can think of a rejoinder, Claude once again walks away. But this time, with an oath, Franz lunges and slams a meaty hand on Claude’s shoulder, spinning him around. Claude’s supercilious expression is replaced by one of surprise and fear. Digby leaps between them as Franz swings, so the deflected punch hits Claude’s chest. Arnold flees. Franz roars at the retreating figure of Longmere’s chief surgeon: “Come back, you fucking coward! Who are you calling irresponsible? You’re not half the surgeon Kilgour is!” The words echo on Claude’s empty ward. For the rest of Lena’s stay, Claude stays away.
Lena turns out to be the more sociable and talkative half of the couple. She knows every probationer’s name and they cannot do enough for her. The drain is out in three days, and ten days after her surgery, she is ready for discharge.
When it’s time to say goodbye, Franz grasps Digby’s shoulders and squeezes; the big man is too moved to speak.
Lena takes Digby’s hand. “Digby,” she says, surprising him by using his first name. “How can I repay you? You saved my life. We’ll be offended if you don’t visit us at the estate. You need a holiday. Please promise you’ll come?” Digby’s sputtering reply isn’t convincing. “Digby,” she says, “do you have relatives in India?”
“No, I don’t.”
“Oh, yes you do. We’re blood now.”
CHAPTER 16
The Craft of the Art
1934 Christmas, Madras
Nungambakkam, where Claude Arnold resides, is a vision of England rendered on the canvas of southern India. Tree-lined avenues carry names like College Road, Sterling Road, and Haddows Road. The topiary outside the garden homes and bungalows is Bird-on-Pyramid, Ball-atop-Ball, and Bunny Rabbit, with little variation; Bunny Rabbit is the most popular. Digby thinks it’s the work of one itinerant maali, if for no other reason than that every Bunny Rabbit looks a little like a mongoose.
This fantasy of Belgravia in Madras must ignore the reality of the pariah dog’s corpse in the middle of College Road; it must stubbornly hold that this is indeed the eighth day of Christmas despite humidity that would dissuade eight maids a-milking from doing any such thing, and heat so relentless that the pariah dog, it turns out, isn’t dead, just felled by sunstroke. It staggers to its feet, forcing Digby to swerve around it on his bicycle.
Claude’s porcelain-white home stands out against the red clay of the circular driveway that is packed with vehicles. Oil lamps placed between the balustrades on the second-floor balcony and between the colonnades of the ground floor give it an ethereal glow as the sun approaches the horizon. “If only you brought this much attention to detail to your hospital work, Claude,” Digby mutters. He’d debated coming to the Christmas party; in the end he felt it would only worsen their fraught relationship if he stayed away.
A shiny black-and-green Rolls-Royce sits under the portico. Before Digby can lean his bicycle against the wall, a servant grabs it, assuring him by his smile that it will be swiftly hidden and no one will be the wiser.
The living room is overflowing. A Christmas tree rises above the bobbing heads; on its limbs the cotton-ball “snow” droops in the soggy air. The women are in long gowns, some backless, all sleeveless, with silk wraps draped over their shoulders.
Digby, sweating from his ride, would like nothing more than to remove the blazer he put on just before stepping inside. He passes behind three women, their backs to him, their floral perfume evoking Paris or London. He hears Claude’s voice, the words slurring just the slightest bit: “—the back seat was the only place the maharani could drink, hidden behind the curtains, while her driver circled the estate.” A woman asks a question that Digby doesn’t catch, but he hears Claude’s reply: “A Rolls never breaks down, my dear. Rarely, it may fail to proceed.”
Digby moves past a cabinet packed with sports trophies and framed pictures of two boys at various ages, lately as teenagers. A bearer proffers whisky; Digby takes a napkin instead. He slips into the dining room to discreetly mop his face and neck; he feels shabby and out of place. The heavy oak dining table, the goblets and metal plate holders evoke for him the knights of King Arthur. His back to the festivities, Digby stands before three large, framed landscapes, still sweating energetically. He’s angry at himself for being here.