It has to be said that I was completely unaware of anything else taking place for the rest of 1936 — such as the course of the Spanish Civil War or the abdication crisis, Roosevelt winning a second term, or the beginning of the Rome — Berlin Axis pact — as I lay in a ward in the London Hospital in Whitechapel. It was felt to be ‘too dangerous’ to move me, the doctors advised, and who was I or anyone else to disagree, given the severity of my condition after the beating I had received?
However, Global-Photo-Watch had its pictures, all taken by Lockwood, and so, capitalising on this exclusive, they duly ran a special issue of the magazine. The world was alerted to the sinister potential of the British Union of Fascists and something of a stir ensued, I learned later. Lockwood made a name for himself and was swiftly employed as a senior photographer by the Daily Sketch but, as I say, all this passed me by at the time.
My medical problem was clear enough: I was suffering from near-constant, stop-start bleeding from my vagina as a result of that final kick delivered by Snub-Nose Lenny. I’d lie in bed for two days without any problems, thinking everything had calmed and then wake in the morning with my sheets drenched in vivid red.
I had three blood transfusions before the year ended but they seemed to make no difference at all. I wore a form of padded nappy-cum-elasticated-rubber-knickers device that managed to contain the bouts of bleeding and save any gross embarrassment but, as the months passed, I became steadily weaker. The doctors who stood deliberating around my bedside had no solutions for me. Diet and rest were all they could prescribe. I ate nothing but bland foods — junket, blancmange, rice and suet puddings, potato cakes and milk dumplings — as if anything tasteless and vaguely pale could stem the ceaseless sanguine flow.
Images from the Maroon Street Riot, 1936 (photographs by Lockwood Mower).
Nevertheless, in the spring of 1937 I was estimated to be well enough to be moved to a cottage hospital near Lewes called Persimmon Hall, closer to home. And, once there, I did seem to begin to recover my health slowly, sitting on a bench in the garden on sunny days (wearing my heavily padded rubber nappy) where I could receive visits from friends and family. I was still very underweight, despite my milky, creamy diet, anaemic and continually tired but, I told myself, I was finally on the mend. Lockwood came and recounted the full story of my rescue — and thanked me profusely for the proper job with the Sketch that had ensued after his photographs were published. Faith Postings came and told me of the motorcycle dash to Southampton with Lockwood’s photographs and negatives. My mother and Xan were my most regular visitors and even my father came by from time to time, though I sensed the quiet trembling of unease in him, despite his constant smile, unconsciously unhappy at finding himself in a hospital environment again. Dido sent a vast bouquet of flowers once a week. Greville came and made me laugh. Then Faith Postings popped in one day and told me the GPW office was being closed down.
And then Cleve Finzi came.
3. PERSIMMON HALL
‘COTTAGE’ HOSPITAL SEEMED THE wrong appellation. ‘Rural hotel’ hospital was more apt. Set in its own capacious grounds off the Lewes — Uckfield road, Persimmon Hall resembled a small country-house hotel with annexes. There was the central building, a medium-sized Georgian mansion in pale sandstone, and connected to it were two long low modern wings overlooking the terraced lawns and gardens. There were a couple of wards but most patients had their own private rooms where they were well catered for by uniformed staff (cleaners, porters, serving girls) as well as nurses.
Through the French windows of my room in the east wing I could see the front terrace with its York stone pathways, herbaceous borders and well-placed teak benches in front of a low retaining wall. Steps led down to a couple of lawns and a lily pond. Cedars, rhododendrons and monkey-puzzle trees marked the boundary. It was all very bourgeois and calming.
I found that the process of recovering from a long illness simplified life unimaginably. All you — the patient — had to do was endure the malady and try to become well. All further concerns — bathing, eating, communicating with the outside world — were dealt with by others offstage, as it were. I lay in bed feeling weak and tired, was fed and medicated, taken for strolls, had my padding changed when it was blood-soaked and lost consciousness punctually each night after my sleeping draught.
And the world turned and history was made — the incendiary destruction of the Hindenburg airship, the Sino-Japanese War, the release of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs — and also the GPW office in Shoe Lane was closed and Faith Postings paid off. My mother and Xan emptied my King’s Road flat and put my bits and pieces, my sticks of furniture, into store and wound up the lease as I lay in my bed, lethargic and uncaring. There is, it should be said, something addictive about being so useless, so dependent. One regresses. An agreeable, creeping sensation of total irresponsibility found me asking myself — sitting on a bench outside my room, on a sunny, warm day, a cup of tea in my hand — why life couldn’t always be like this. It was near ideal. I was succumbing to the potent allure of semi-invalidism.
Months past. I lost more weight, but more slowly, despite the amount of pale pabulum I ingested. I still felt tired and every few days my body would ritually expunge a half-pint or so of blood.
It was my mother who alerted me about Cleve. We were sitting on my bench outside my room, wrapped up because it was chilly.
‘I meant to say,’ she broke off from whatever anecdote she was recounting. ‘I’ve had a peculiar telephone call from an American. A Mr Finzi. He claims to know you.’
‘He was my employer in New York, Mother.’
‘Well, he wants to come and see you — here. Can you imagine?’
I experienced the first sensation of genuine excitement in ages. I felt, for a moment, that I was fully alive again.
‘Fine with me,’ I said, trying to keep the smile off my face. ‘Be a distraction.’
Cleve came to Persimmon Hall. It was a Wednesday morning in June and I was in my tartan dressing gown, sitting on my bench, looking out over the lily pond and the South Downs beyond, when I saw him being led by a nurse along the pathway from the main building.
I sensed that old heart-lurch, the weakening spine-shudder — and then rallied.
He was wearing a three-piece navy blue suit with a brilliant red tie — with the usual tiepin securing it to his shirt. His thick hair was oiled flat and he looked very tanned, as if he’d been sailing for weeks on some sunlit ocean. Absurdly handsome, I thought. Too handsome, really — it was something of a joke.
He kissed my cheek and sat on the bench beside me, staring at me, taking me in.
‘May I take your hand?’
‘There would be terrible gossip. All right, go on, let’s risk it.’
He took my hand in both of his.
‘You look well, Amory. If a little too thin, I must say.’
‘Right. Not true, but compliment duly paid. You, however, look disgustingly well.’
We talked a little more about my state of health, of the general air of bafflement surrounding my condition. I explained that I had seen a dozen doctors, I had had X-rays taken, that I was now on a regime of concentrated iron pills but something profound had happened during that attack, that last kick administered by Snub-Nose Lenny, that had deeply injured me, and my body still hadn’t recovered.