A Girl in Winter by Philip Larkin Read Free Book Online

is, she might faint or——”
    Whether she was speaking the truth or not she did not know. But she wanted desperately to move him, to make some contact. As it was, she could not even be sure he heard what she was saying.
    “Well, I have told you the law, that is the law I have to obey,” he said, refusing to add any more to the argument . Curiously, he had not grown more human during the exchange: once more the image of arrested development occurred to her as he stood outlined against the window. She had no idea what he might say or do next.
    “But we never imagined there would be any trouble,” she said, refusing to let the matter drop but carefully keeping her voice below any tone that might offend him.
    “It’s the law—the law of this country,” he snapped. She took heart at this insult, knowing it to be a sign of defeat.
    “But what are we to do? Surely, now you have started —now you have got so far——”
    “I can’t waste any more time,” he grunted. He turned on Miss Green. “You have had gas before?”
    She gave an almost inaudible assent. There was a silence.
    Suddenly he put down the syringe and said: “All right,will you come into the other room.” His anger—if his semi-articulate abruptness had been anger—had sunk out of sight without being dissolved or forgotten: as he collected a few instruments together and led the way he was breathing through his mouth. As they followed, Katherine’s triumph suddenly flagged. They passed through the blank doorway that had remained locked, and found themselves in a small, permanently blacked-out room, dingier than the first. A dentist’s chair stood in the middle of the floor, with a washbowl and a few appliances, but there was no drill. In a disused rack on the wall were half a dozen old instruments, rusty and disused: in one corner were the long gas cylinders on a trolley. He gave this an impatient tug so that it rolled up silently behind the chair, and shut the door.
    Miss Green took less kindly to this room than to the last. She stood by the chair, lifting her hands and dropping them; when he gestured that she should sit down, she balanced on the edge of the seat, and had to manoeuvre herself into the proper position by degrees. Most of the time she kept her eyes shut. The dentist filled a glass with water and dropped a tablet into it, which sank furiously to the bottom. There was no chair in here for Katherine to sit on, and she backed up against the wall.
    He had finished his preparations, and turned towards Miss Green.
    “You had better take your glasses off, and your necklace .”
    Uncertainly her hands crept to the back of her neck, unfastening a thin gold chain which drew into sight a small cross. This and the spectacles he laid aside.
    “Now lie back, rest your head back, and fold your hands.”
    She lay back.
    “Fold your hands.”
    She did so.
    He put a roll of cotton wool in her mouth, then propped her jaws open with a sort of rubber gag. Unhooking the small, cupped, rubber mask, he twisted a small wheel slowly with his left hand. The needle on a dial gave a spasmodic flicker. “Breathe in through this,” he said. Her eyes flew to it. It hid her mouth and nose. “Breathe in slowly. That’s right. Keep on breathing in.” There was a hush, that might have been the tiny sibilance of the gas. The dentist’s voice continued, thick and expressionless. He did not remove the mask. It was impossible to tell whether Miss Green was conscious or not, but the gas seemed to be going on for many stretching minutes. The needle on the dial kept moving unsteadily. Katherine wished he would turn it off.
    Yet when he suddenly hooked the mask back onto the trolley, and reached into the open mouth with forceps, gripping the tooth horizontally, she felt an upswerve of terror lest the girl should still be half-conscious but unable to move or speak. Her head stirred as he first pulled, and he put his free hand on her forehead, rumpling her hair, before