Dr Knight turned towards the door. Almost sotto voce he added: ‘And you’ll see, Conrad, he can still help you.’
At three o’clock that afternoon Conrad’s uncle appeared. Seated in a wheelchair, and pushed by his wife and Nurse Sadie, he waved cheerily to Conrad with his free hand as he entered the ward. For once, however, the sight of Uncle Theodore failed to raise Conrad’s spirits. He had been looking forward to the visit, but his uncle had aged ten years since the accident and the sight of these three elderly people, one of them partially crippled, coming towards him with their smiling faces only reminded him of his isolation in the hospital.
As he listened to his uncle, Conrad realized that this isolation was merely a more extreme version of his own position, and that of all young people, outside the walls of the hospital. As a child Conrad had known few friends of his own age, for the single reason that children were almost as rare as centenarians had been a hundred years earlier. He had been born into a middle-aged world, one moreover where middle age itself was for ever moving, like the horizons of a receding universe, farther and farther from its original starting point. His aunt and uncle, both of them nearly sixty, represented the median line. Beyond them was the immense super-annuated army of the elderly, filling the shops and streets of the seaside town, their slow rhythms and hesitant walk overlaying everything like a grey veil.
By contrast, Dr Knight’s self-confidence and casual air, however brusque and aggressive, quickened Conrad’s pulse.
Towards the end of the visit, when his aunt had strolled to the end of the ward with Nurse Sadie to view the fountains, Conrad said to his uncle, ‘Dr Knight told me he could do something for my leg.’
‘I’m sure he can, Conrad.’ Uncle Theodore smiled encouragingly, but his eyes watched Conrad without moving. ‘These surgeons are clever men; it’s amazing what they can do.’
‘And your hand, Uncle?’ Conrad pointed to the dressing that covered his uncle’s left forearm. The hint of irony in his uncle’s voice reminded him of Dr Knight’s studied ambiguities. Already he sensed that people were taking sides around him.
‘This hand?’ His uncle shrugged. ‘It’s done me for nearly sixty years, a missing finger won’t stop me filling my pipe.’ Before Conrad could speak he went on: ‘But that leg of yours is a different matter, you’ll have to decide for yourself what to have done with it.’
Just before he left he whispered to Conrad, ‘Rest yourself well, lad. You may have to run before you can walk.’
Two days later, promptly at nine o’clock, Dr Knight came to see Conrad. Brisk as ever, he came to the point immediately.
‘Now, Conrad,’ he began, replacing the cradle after his inspection, ‘it’s a month since your last stroll by the beach, time to get you out of here and back on your own feet again. What do you say?’
‘Feet?’ Conrad repeated. He managed a slight laugh. ‘Do you mean that as a figure of speech?’
‘No, I mean it literally.’ Dr Knight drew up a chair. ‘Tell me, Conrad, have you ever heard of restorative surgery? It may have been mentioned at school.’
‘In biology — transplanting kidneys and that sort of thing. Older people have it done. Is that what you’re going to do to my leg?’
‘Whoa! Hold your horses. Let’s get a few things straight first. As you say, restorative surgery goes back about fifty years, when the first kidney grafts were made, though for years before that corneal grafting was commonplace. If you accept that blood is a tissue the principle is even older — you had a massive blood transfusion after the accident, and later when Dr Nathan amputated the crushed knee and shinbone. Nothing surprising about that, is there?’
Conrad waited before answering. For once Dr Knight’s tone had become defensive, as if he were already, by some sort of extrapolation, asking the questions to which he feared Conrad might subsequently object.
‘No,’ Conrad replied. ‘Nothing at all.’
‘Obviously, why should there be? Though it’s worth bearing in mind that many people have refused to accept blood transfusions, even though it meant certain death. Apart from their religious objections, many of them felt that the foreign blood polluted their own bodies.’ Dr Knight leaned back, scowling to himself. ‘One can see their point of view, but remember that our bodies are almost completely composed of alien materials. We don’t stop eating, do we, just to preserve our own absolute identity?’ Dr Knight laughed here. ‘That would be egotism run riot. Don’t you agree?’
When Dr Knight glanced at him, as if waiting for an answer, Conrad said, ‘More or less.’
