The Gate of Angels by Penelope Fitzgerald

Author:Penelope Fitzgerald
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

By the next day, James Elder did not remember saying he lived in Wapping. The envelopes in his pockets had a name, but no address. No friends or connections appeared. There was nothing about him in the newspapers, at any rate nothing was seen by anyone in the hospital who had time to look at them. Matron took the Morning Post, the doctors glanced, so they said, at The Times, the juniors read the Daily Mail and in the hospital kitchen there were copies of Tit-Bits and the Police Gazette and the local, which came out three times a week. Newspapers were not allowed in the wards.

Dr Sage put 23 on milk and soda, with alcohol and ammonia as a stimulant, and steel drops to guard against anaemia. ‘We’ll soon see the last of you,’ he said in the voice which comforted many. But James Elder refused to eat or drink anything at all, and since his stomach had been empty when he was admitted, he did poorly.—Talk to him, find a good moment, make him see it’s all for his own good, persuade him.—Daisy was put on the job: have a go at him, Saunders. Strong, reassuring, smiling, never gives up. He knew her voice, his memory seemed to prick up its ears. You were the one on duty, you were the one that was going to fetch my paper.—Daisy had been instructed to offer a glass of the warm milk, which she did, though inwardly feeling that no-one could gain anyone’s confidence with warm milk, on which the skin was just forming. At once she became an enemy who had withheld the newspaper or destroyed it or who was too crass to understand the printed word. ‘It said GALLANT SUICIDE ATTEMPT. Didn’t you learn to read in Board School?’

‘We’re all of us a bit slow in here,’ said Daisy. ‘You’re sick of us nurses, you need some visitors. We could wire them, you know, from the telegraph office.’

He said nothing.

‘There was somebody you knew called Flo. Was that Flora, or was she Florence?’

‘Bitch.’

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