Patrick McGrath - Dr. Haggards Disease

PRAISE FOR

DR. HAGGARDS DISEASE

No one writes a dark epiphany like McGrath... The horror, as ever with Patrick McGrath, is not external, Edward Haggard becomes its locus, our trick-narrator, the voice of reason, the grimacing guardian of surprise... McGraths most chilling castaway yet, and his most enduring Tom Adair in Scotland on Sunday

Outstanding... a Gothic tour de force of doomed love, unsavory secrets, morphine, disfigurement, untimely death and a physician who will not heal himself... The final denouement, where event and delusion combine, delivers a terrible and a brilliant coup Katherine A. Powers in the Boston Globe

Dr Haggards Disease leaves one yet again impressed by how well Patrick McGrath writes. Few novelists use language as gracefully, as effectively, as economically as he does Eileen Battersby in the Irish Times

McGraths brilliant design weaves delicate parallels in plot with nubbed grotesqueries of name and event to produce a seamless but richly textured psychic mystery... sets the neck hairs creeping Katherine Dunn in the Washington Post

Patrick McGrath was born in London and grew up near Broadmoor Hospital, where for many years his father was Medical Superintendent. He has lived in various parts of North America and spent several years on a remote island in the north Pacific, He moved to New York City in 1981. He is the author of Blood and Water and Other Tales, The Grotesque, Spider, Asylum and Martha Peake, all of which are published by Penguin.

Patrick McGrath lives in New York and London and is married to the actress Maria Aitken.

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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author's imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright 1993 by Patrick McGrath

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ISBN 978-0-671-72733-8

ISBN 978-1-5011-2541-6 (ebook)

For the immense help hes given me medical, psychiatric and literary not only on this book but on Spider as well Id like to express my love and gratitude to my father, Dr Patrick McGrath.

For Maria

We two being one, are it.

JOHN DONNE

I WAS in Elgin, upstairs in my study, gazing at the sea and reflecting, I remember, on a line of Goethe when Mrs Gregor tapped at the door that Saturday and said there was a young man to see me in the surgery, a pilot. You know how she talks. A pilot, Mrs Gregor? I murmured. I hate being disturbed on my Saturday afternoons, especially if Spike is playing up, as he was that day, but of course I limped out on to the landing and made my way downstairs. And you know what that looks like pathetic bloody display that is, first the good leg, then the bad leg, then the stick, good leg, bad leg, stick, but down I came, down the stairs, old beyond my years and my skin a grey so cachectic it must have suggested even to you that I was in pain, chronic pain, but oh dear boy not pain like yours, just wait now and well make it all go away

I crossed the hall, youd have heard the floorboards, and opened the surgery door. Always full of shadows that room, no matter how bright the day, and stinking of ether, but there on the far side, over by the cabinet, a figure. And the figure turned. And it was, indeed, a pilot, this I could now see clearly, a dark-haired young man of eighteen or nineteen in a blue uniform with wings over the left breast. You approached me rather formally and held out your hand. Dr Haggard? you said.

What did I do, nod? Sigh?

My name is James Vaughan, you said. You didnt falter. You said: I believe you knew my mother.

Oh God. I believe you knew my mother had you any idea the effect those words would have on me? I dont believe you did. I dont believe you did.

I closed the door and limped over to my chair. You sank gracefully into the chair on the other side of the desk and crossed your legs, and I couldnt help observing how you crossed them, in the exact same way that shed always crossed her legs, with the one ankle pulled in close to the other and the foot pointing at the floor. I could hear nothing but the throbbing of blood in my head and the cry of a gull from the cliffs. As calmly as I could I offered you a cigarette but was unable to light it, for my hands were shaking. You half rose from your seat and lit both cigarettes with a small flat silver-plated lighter. Tea? I said.

Lovely. You even sounded like her!

I went to the door, stepped into the hall and called Mrs Gregor, who appeared from the kitchen wiping her hands on her apron, and asked her for tea. Everything seemed to be happening so slowly.

Look, is this a bad time? you said, suddenly suspecting that my unease was caused by your interrupting me in the middle of something important.

Not at all, I said. Excuse my agitation, I dont that is, I havent seen your mother since

The sentence died in the surgerys gloom. Neither of us said a word, and the uneasy fluster of the first minutes subsided as we pondered the immense unspoken world that filled the silence between us like a gas. Then our eyes met across the desk and locked for an instant, just as Mrs Gregor turned the doorknob, pushed the door open with her bottom and backed into the surgery with the tea tray. We smiled. Im awfully sorry, doctor, she said, but were out of biscuits.

Oh dear, I said, my eyes still upon you, I dont think we can manage without biscuits.

Theres never anything in the house on Saturdays, Mrs Gregor remarked, setting the tray on the desk, what with the rationing and all. She closed the door softly behind her.

You continued smiling as I lifted the lid of the teapot and peered at the contents. That you should be here, her son, in Elgin ! As I poured the milk I glanced over and saw you suddenly scratch at the fabric of your trousers the smile vanished you frowned and I tried to remember the last time Id felt her presence as acutely as I felt it then.

It was at a funeral I first saw her, did she ever tell you that? And do you know, I cant remember whose it was! Who was dead, I mean. It was October 1937, a fine, crisp day, and the air in London had a sort of smoky quality to it. The leaves drifting off the chestnuts along Jubilee Road heaped themselves on the pavement and between the iron railings and crunched underfoot as I hurried along. Id been up all night in Accident and Casualty, so I arrived ten minutes after the service began. I was wearing my black suit of course, and my black overcoat, and I slipped into the pew at the very back of the church and sat down clutching my hat (a black homburg) and adopted the sort of demeanour one does at funerals. There was a ripple of disturbance and a few heads turned, then it subsided. Id been working at St Basils only six weeks or so, but I recognized a number of the doctors, including Vincent Cushing, and, in the pew in front of me, the senior pathologist. Him I knew only slightly, and Id formed no particularly strong impression of the man. This would change, of course; as you know, your father was to have a profound impact on my life (Spike is with me still, if proof were needed) though at the time, as I sat with my homburg in my lap and gazed at the broad black back and the roll of pink flesh at the collar, I naturally had no inkling of any of this. But heres the curious thing, and Ive thought about this often and I still dont know why, Im still no closer to an explanation what was it that immediately riveted my attention on the woman by his side?