Chapter One Late one October afternoon in the year 1924 a shabby young man gazed with fixed intensity through the window of a third-class compartment in the almost empty train labouring up the Penowell Valley from Swansea. All that day Manson had travelled from the North, changing at Carlisle and Shrewsbury, yet the final stage of his tedious journey to South Wales found him strung to a still greater excitement by the prospects of his post, the first of his medical career, in this strange, disfigured country. Outside, a heavy rainstorm came blinding down between the mountains which rose on either side of the single railway track. The mountain tops were hidden in a grey waste of sky but their sides, scarred by ore workings, fell black and desolate, blemished by great heaps of slag on which a few dirty sheep wandered in vain hope of pasture. No bush, no blade of vegetation was visible. The trees, seen in the fading light, were gaunt and stunted spectres. At a bend of the line the red glare of a foundry flashed into sight, illuminating a score of workmen stripped to the waist, their torsos straining, arms upraised to strike. Though the scene was swiftly lost behind the huddled top gear of a mine, a sense of power persisted, tense and vivid. Manson drew a long breath. He felt an answering surge of effort, a sudden overwhelming exhilaration springing from the hope and promise of the future. Darkness had fallen, emphasising the strangeness and remoteness of the scene when, half an hour later, the engine panted into Drineffy. He had arrived at last. Gripping his bag, Manson leaped from the train and walked quickly down the platform, searching eagerly for some sign of welcome. At the station exit, beneath a wind-blown lamp, a yellow-faced old man in a square hat and a long nightshirt of a mackintosh stood waiting. He inspected Manson with a jaundiced eye and his voice, when it came, was reluctant. ‘You Doctor Page’s new assistant?’ ‘That’s right. Manson. Andrew Manson is the name!’ ‘Huh! Mine’s Thomas, Old Thomas they mostly call me, dang ’em. I got the gig here. Set in – unless you’d rayther swim.’ Manson slung his bag up and climbed into the battered gig behind a tall angular black horse. Thomas followed, took the reins and addressed the horse. ‘Hue-up, Taffy!’ he said. They drove off through the town which, though Andrew tried keenly to discern its outline, presented in the lashing rain no more than a blurred huddle of low grey houses ranged beneath the high and ever present mountains. For several minutes the old groom did not speak but continued to dart pessimistic glances at Andrew from beneath the dripping brim of his hat. He bore no resemblance to the smart coachman of a successful doctor but was, on the contrary, wizened and slovenly, and all the time he gave off a peculiar yet powerful odour of the stable. At last he said: ‘Only jest got your parchment, eh?’ Andrew nodded. ‘I knowed it.’ Old Thomas spat. His triumph made him more gravely communicative. ‘Last assistant went ten days ago. Mostly they don’t stop.’ ‘Why?’ Despite his nervousness, Andrew smiled. ‘Work’s too hard for one thing, I reckon.’ ‘And for another?’ ‘You’ll find out!’ A moment later, as a guide might indicate a fine cathedral, Thomas lifted his whip and pointed to the end of a row of houses where, from a small lighted doorway, a cloud of steam was emerging. ‘See that. That there’s the missus and my little homestead. She takes in washin’ like.’ A secret amusement twitched his long upper lip. ‘Reckon you might want to know, shortly.’ Here the main street ended and, turning up a short uneven side-road, they boggled across a piece of pit ground, and entered the narrow drive of a house which stood amongst the adjacent rows behind a stunted ash tree. On the gate was the name Bryngower. ‘This is us,’ said Thomas, pulling up the horse. Andrew descended. The next minute, while he gathered himself for the ordeal of his entrance, the front door was flung open and he was in the lighted hall being welcomed cordially by a tall, spare, smiling woman of about fifty with a calm face and clear blue eyes. ‘Well! Well! This must be Doctor Manson. Come in please, come in. I’m doctor’s sister, Miss Page. I do hope you didn’t have a tryin’ journey. I am pleased to see you. I been out my mind, nearly, since that last awful fellow we had left us. You ought to have seen him. He was a bright one if ever I met one, I can tell you. Oh! but never mind. It’s all right now you’re here. Come along, I’ll show you to your room myself.’ Upstairs, Andrew’s room was a small camsiled apartment with a brass bed, a yellow varnished chest of drawers and a bamboo table bearing a basin and ewer. Glancing round it, while her clear blue eyes searched his face, he said with anxious politeness: ‘This looks very comfortable, Miss Page.’ ‘Yes, indeed.’ She smiled and patted his shoulder maternally. ‘You’ll do famous here, I’m sure. You treat me right and I’ll treat you right. I can’t say fairer nor that, can I? Now come along before you’re a minute older and meet doctor.’ She paused, her gaze still questioning his, her tone striving to be off-hand. ‘I don’t know if I said so in my letter but, as a matter of fact – doctor hasn’t been too well, lately.’ Andrew looked at her in sudden surprise. ‘Oh, it’s nothing much,’ she went on quickly, before he could speak. ‘He’s been laid up a few weeks. But he’ll soon be all right. Make no mistake about that.’ Perplexed, Andrew followed her to the end of the passage where she threw open a door, exclaiming blithely: ‘Here’s Doctor Manson, Edward – our new assistant. He’s come to say ’ow do.’ As Andrew went into the room, a long fustily furnished bedroom with chenille curtains closely drawn and a small fire burning in the grate, Edward Page turned slowly upon the bed, seeming to do so by a great effort. He was a big, bony man of perhaps sixty with harshly lined features and tired, luminous eyes. His whole expression was stamped with suffering and a kind of weary patience. And there was something more. The light of the oil lamp, falling across the pillow, revealed one half of his face expressionless and waxen. The left side of his body was equally paralysed and his left hand, which lay upon the patchwork counterpane, was contracted to a shiny cone. Observing these signs of a severe and far from recent stroke, Andrew was conscious of a sudden shock of dismay. There was an odd silence. ‘I hope you’ll like it here,’ Doctor Page remarked at length, speaking slowly and with difficulty, slurring his words a little, ‘I hope you’ll find the practice won’t be too much for you. You’re very young.’ ‘I’m twenty-four, sir,’ Andrew answered awkwardly. ‘I know this is the first job I’ve had, and all that – but I’m not afraid of work.’ ‘There, now!’ Miss Page smiled. ‘Didn’t I tell you, Edward, we’d be lucky with our next one.’ An even deeper immobility settled on Page’s face. He gazed at Andrew. Then his interest seemed to fade. He said in a tired voice: ‘I hope you’ll stay.’ ‘My goodness gracious!’ cried Miss Page. ‘What a thing to say!’ She turned to Andrew, smilingly and apologetic. ‘It’s only because he’s a morsel down today. But he’ll soon be up and doing again. Won’t you, my dear?’ Bending, she kissed her brother fondly. ‘There now! I’ll send your supper up by Annie whenever we’ve had ours.’ Page did not answer. The stony look on his one-sided face made his mouth seem twisted. His good hand strayed to the book that lay on the table beside his bed. Andrew saw that it was entitled The Wild Birds of Europe. Even before the paralysed man began to read he felt himself dismissed. As Andrew went down to supper his thoughts were painfully confused. He had applied for his assistantship in answer to an advertisement in the Lancet. Yet in the correspondence, conducted at this end by Miss Page, which had led to his securing the post, there had been no mention whatsoever of Doctor Page’s illness. But Page was ill, there could be no question of the gravity of the cerebral haemorrhage which had incapacitated him. It would be months before he was fit for work, if, indeed, he were ever fit for work again. With an effort Andrew put the puzzle from his mind. He was young, strong, and had no objection to the extra work in which Page’s illness might involve him. Indeed, in his enthusiasm, he yearned for an avalanche of calls. ‘You’re lucky, doctor,’ remarked Miss Page brightly as she came into the dining-room. ‘You can have your bit of snap straight off to-night. No surgery. Dai Jenkins done it.’ ‘Dai Jenkins?’ ‘He’s our dispenser,’ Miss Page threw out casually. ‘A handy little feller. And willin’ too. “Doc” Jenkins some folks even call him, though of course he’s not to be compared in the same breath with Doctor Page. He’s done the surgery and visits also, these last ten days.’ Andrew stared at her in fresh concern. All that he had been told, all the warnings he had received regarding the questionable ways of practice in these remote Welsh valleys flashed into his recollection. Again it cost him an effort to be silent. Miss Page sat at the head of the table with her back to the fire. When she had wedged herself comfortably into her chair with a cushion she sighed in pleasant anticipation and tinkled the little cow-bell in front of her. A middle-aged servant with a pale, well-scrubbed face brought in the supper, stealing a glance at Andrew as she entered. ‘Come along, Annie,’ cried Miss Page, buttering a wedge of soft bread and placing it in her mouth. ‘This is Doctor Manson.’ Annie did not answer. She served Andrew in a contained, silent fashion with a slice of cold boiled brisket. Miss Page had a cut from the same joint with, in addition, a pint of fresh milk. As she poured out the innocuous beverage and lifted it to her lips, her eyes upon him, she explained: ‘I didn’t have much lunch, doctor. Besides, I have to watch my diet. It’s the blood. I have to take a drop of milk for my blood.’ Andrew chewed the uninteresting brisket and drank cold water determinedly. Following a momentary dissatisfaction, his main difficulty lay with his own sense of humour. After all, he could not expect to find luxury upon the tables of these spartan valleys. During the meal Miss Page ate in silence. At length, buttering her last crust of bread, she finished her meat, wiped her lips after the last of the milk and sat back in her chair, her thin figure relaxed, her eyes reserved, appraising. Now she seemed disposed to linger at table, inclined to confidences, perhaps trying in her own way to sum Manson up. Studying him, she saw a spare and gawky youngster, dark, rather tensely drawn, with high cheekbones, a fine jaw and blue eyes. These eyes, when he raised them, were, despite the nervous tensity of his brow, extraordinarily steady and inquiring. Although Blodwen Page knew nothing of it, she was looking at a Celtic type. Though she admitted the vigour and alert intelligence in Andrew’s face, what pleased her most of all was his acceptance, without demur, of that cut from the three days old heel of brisket. She reflected that, though he looked hungry, he might not be hard to feed. ‘I’m sure we’ll get on famous, you and me,’ she again declared with quite a genial air. ‘We do need a bit of luck for a change.’ Mellowed, she told him of her troubles and sketched a vague outline of the practice and its position. ‘It’s been awful, my dear. You don’t know. What with Doctor Page’s illness, wicked bad assistants, nothin’ comin’ in and everythin’ goin’ out – well! you wouldn’t believe it! And the job I’ve had to keep the manager and mine officials sweet – it’s them the practice money comes through – what there is of it,’ she added with a shrug. ‘You see, the way they work things in Drineffy is like this – the Company has three doctors on its list, though, mind you, Doctor Page is far and away the cleverest doctor of the lot. And besides – the time he’s been here! Nearly thirty years and more, that’s something I should think! Well, then, these doctors can have as many assistants as they like – Doctor Page has you, and Doctor Nicholls has a would-be fellow called Denny – but the assistants don’t ever get on the Company’s list. Anyway, as I was saying, the Company deducts so much from every man’s wages they employ at the mines and the quarries and pays that out to the listed doctors according to how many of the men signs on with them.’ She broke off, gazing at him quizzically. ‘I think I see how the system works, Miss Page.’ ‘Well, then!’ She gave out her short laugh. ‘You don’t have to bother about it any more. All you’ve got to remember is that you’re working for Doctor Page. That’s the main thing, doctor. Just remember you’re workin’ for Doctor Page and you and I will get on a treat.’ It seemed to Manson, silent and observant, that she felt she had unbent too far. With a glance at the clock, she straightened herself, restored her napkin to its horn ring. Then she rose. Her voice was different, businesslike. ‘By the way, there’s a call for Number Seven Glydar Place. It came in the back of five o’clock. You better do it straight away.’