‘Damn’ sentimental twaddle!’ said O’Callaghan breathlessly. ‘She’s a modern young woman and she knows how to enjoy herself.’
‘That’s a complete misrepresentation.’ Phillips had turned exceedingly white, but he spoke evenly. ‘If, by the phrase “a modern young woman”, you mean a “loose woman” you must know yourself it’s a lie. This is the only episode of the sort in her life. She loved you and you let her suppose she was loved in return.’
‘Nothing of the sort. She gave me no reason to suppose she attached more importance to the thing than I did myself. You say she’s in love with me. If it’s true I’m sorry. I don’t think it’s true. What does she want? It’s not—’ O’Callaghan stopped short and looked frightened. ‘It’s not that she’s going to have a child?’
‘Oh, no. She has no actual claim on you. No legal claim. Evidently you don’t recognize moral obligations.’
‘I’ve sent her £300. What more will she want?’
‘I’m so near hitting you, O’Callaghan, I think I’d better go.’
‘You can go to hell if you like. What’s the matter with you? If you don’t want to marry her there’s an alternative. It ought to be quite simple—I had no difficulty.’
‘You swine!’ shouted Phillips. ‘My God—’ He stopped short. His lips moved tremblingly. When he spoke again it was more quietly. ‘You’d do well to keep clear of me,’ he said. ‘I assure you that if the opportunity presented itself I should have no hesitation—none—in putting you out of the way.’
Something in O’Callaghan’s face made him pause. The Home Secretary was looking beyond him, towards the door.
‘Excuse me, sir,’ said Nash quietly. He crossed the room with a tray holding glasses and a decanter. He put the tray down noiselessly and returned to the door.
‘Is there anything further, sir?’ asked Nash.
‘Sir John Phillips is leaving. Will you show him out?’
‘Certainly, sir.’
Without another word Phillips turned on his heel and left the room.
‘Good night, Nash,’ said O’Callaghan.
‘Good night, sir,’ said Nash softly. He followed Sir John Phillips out and closed the door.
O’Callaghan gave a sharp cry of pain. He stumbled towards his chair and bent over it, leaning on the arm. For a minute or two he hung on, doubled up with pain. Then he managed to get into the chair, and in a little while poured out half a tumbler of whisky. He noticed Ruth’s patent medicine lying on the table beside him. With a tremulous hand he shook one of the powders into the glass and gulped it down with the whisky.
CHAPTER 3 Sequel to a Scene in the House
Thursday, the eleventh. Afternoon.
The Home Secretary paused and looked round the House. The sea of faces was blurred and nightmarish. They were playing that trick on him that he had noticed before. They would swim together like cells under a microscope and then one face would come out clearly and stare at him. He thought: ‘I may just manage it—only one more paragraph’, and raised the paper. The type swirled and eddied, and then settled down. He heard his own voice. He must speak up.
‘In view of the extraordinary propaganda—’
They were making too much noise.
‘Mr Speaker—’
A disgusting feeling of nausea, a kind of vapourish tightness behind his nose.
‘Mr Speaker—’
He looked up again. A mistake. The sea of faces jerked up and revolved very quickly. A tiny voice, somewhere up in the attic, was calling: ‘He’s fainted.’
He did not feel himself pitch forward across the desk. Nor did he hear a voice from the back benches that called out: ‘You’ll be worse than that before you’ve finished with your bloody Bill.’
‘Who’s his doctor—anyone know?’
‘Yes—I do. It’s bound to be Sir John Phillips—they’re old friends.’
‘Phillips? He runs that nursing-home in Brook Street, doesn’t he?’
‘I’ve no idea.’
‘Somebody must ring Lady O’Callaghan.’
‘I will if you like. I know her.’
‘Is he coming round?’
‘Doesn’t look like it. Tillotley went to see about the ambulance.’
‘Here he is. Did you fix up for an ambulance, Tillotley?’
‘It’s coming. Where are you sending him?’
‘Cuthbert’s gone to ring up his wife.’
‘God, he looks bad!’
‘Did you hear that fellow yell out from the back benches?’
‘Yes. Who was it?’
‘I don’t know. I say, do you think there’s anything fishy about this?’
‘Oh, rot!’
‘Here’s Dr Wendover—I didn’t know he was in the House.’
They stood back from O’Callaghan. A little tubby man, Communist member for a North Country constituency, came through the group of men and knelt down.
‘Open those windows, will you?’ he said.
He loosened O’Callaghan’s clothes. The others eyed him respectfully. After a minute or two he looked round.
‘Who’s his medical man?’ he asked.
‘Cuthbert thinks it’s Sir John Phillips. He’s ringing his wife now.’
‘Phillips is a surgeon. It’s a surgical case.’
‘What’s the trouble, Dr Wendover?’
‘Looks like an acute appendix. There’s no time to be lost. You’d better ring the Brook Street Private Hospital. Is the ambulance there? Can’t wait for his wife.’
From the doorway somebody said: ‘The men from the ambulance.’
‘Good. Here’s your patient.’
Two men came in carrying a stretcher. O’Callaghan was got on to it, covered up, and carried out. Cuthbert hurried in.
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘it’s Phillips. She wants him taken to Phillips’s nursing-home.’
‘He’s going there,’ said little Dr Wendover, and walked out after the ambulance men.
O’Callaghan climbed up, sickeningly, from nowhere into semiconsciousness. Grandiloquent images slid rapidly downwards. His wife’s face came near and then receded. Somebody groaned close to him. Somebody was in bed beside him, groaning.
‘Is the pain very bad?’ said a voice.
He himself was in pain.
‘Bad,’ he said solemnly.
‘The doctor will be here soon. He’ll give you something to take it away.’
He now knew it was he who had groaned.
Cicely’s