The Far Country

by Nevil Shute

  She did her best to conceal these feelings from her father; she had not come home to England to distress him by whining about a better country on the other side of the world. All his friends and all his interests were in Leicester, and her job was to make the best of it. She was not entirely successful in her efforts; Edward Morton was no fool, and as the grief at his wife’s death abated he began to take more interest in his daughter. The frequent air-mail letters that she never discussed with him showed that her interests were very far away, and the fact that most of them were in a continental handwriting intrigued him; he was quite shrewd enough to realise that in the few weeks she had spent out there a man had come into her life. He set himself to draw her out one evening, sitting by the fire when they had done the washing-up.

  “What’s it really like out in Australia, Jenny?” he enquired. “Is it very different from this? I don’t mean physical things, like food and drink. What’s it really like?”

  She sat staring down at the socks that she was darning.

  “It’s very like England in most ways,” she said. “The people out there think of everything in terms of England. I believe they think more of the King and Queen than we do. England seems to mean an awful lot to them. I don’t know how to tell you what it’s really like. It’s like England, only better.”

  He sat digesting this for a minute or two. “Is it like Ethel Trehearn thought that it would be, like England was half a century ago?”

  “Not really,” she said slowly. “There aren’t the servants and the social life that she was thinking of. All that’s quite different. But out there you feel perhaps it may be rather like the England she was thinking of, essentially. If you do a good job you get a good life.” She raised her eyes. “It’s all so very English,” she said. “When they make some money, they spend it in the sort of way we’d spend it, if we were allowed to make any and if we were allowed to spend it.”

  “You didn’t feel as if you were a stranger there?”

  She shook her head. “I never felt as if I was a stranger.”

  He filled and lit his pipe. “Meet any doctors out there?”

  “I met one,” she said.

  “They don’t have any Health Service there, do they?”

  “I don’t think so,” she said. “There’s no panel even, like we used to have. I think there may be some sort of a voluntary insurance scheme, but I’m really not very sure, Daddy.”

  “Are there enough doctors to go round? Too many, or too few?”

  “Far too few, I think. That’s in the country, where the Dormans live. I don’t know about the towns.”

  He sat in silence for a minute, thinking it over. “This doctor that you met—do you know what he charged a visit?”

  “I don’t know—he wasn’t in practice.” There was no harm in telling him, and it might make things easier between them than if she were to keep up an unnecessary concealment. “He was a D.P., a Czech doctor who’s not on the register. He’s the one who keeps writing to me.”

  “Oh. I wasn’t trying to be nosey, Jenny.”

  “I know you weren’t. I don’t mind telling you about him.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Carl Zlinter,” she said. “They call him Splinter in the lumber camp. All D.P.s have to work where they’re directed for two years when they first come to Australia; he works at cutting down trees. He graduated at Prague, and then he was a surgeon in the German Army in the war.”

  He opened his eyes; this daughter of his had certainly wandered far from Leicester. “How did you meet him, Jenny?”

  “There was an accident with a bulldozer in the forest,” she said. “I was with Jack Dorman; we came along just after it had happened.” She could smell the aromatic odours of the gum tree forest, and feel the hot sunshine in her memory. She stared into the fire, too small for coal economy to warm the room. “Two men were hurt very badly, one with a foot trapped under the bulldozer that had to be taken off upon the spot, and one with a fractured skull. There was nobody to do anything about it but Carl, and no woman to act as nurse but me, so he asked me to help him with the amputation and the trephine. He did both of them beautifully, but then the man with the amputation got hold of a bottle of whisky and got fighting drunk, and died. There was a fearful row about it, because Carl wasn’t on the register, of course.”

  Her father was deeply interested; in all his medical experience such a situation had never arisen in Leicester. He asked a number of questions about the operations and the treatment but refrained from more personal enquiries, and Jennifer did not take the story further than the medical side. Her father had enough information to digest without telling him about the lost township of Howqua, and Charlie Zlinter and his dog. All she said was, “Working with him like that kind of broke the ice. He writes to me still.”

  Her father smiled. “I imagine that you couldn’t be too distant after getting yourselves into a scrape like that.” Jennifer’s mother had been a nurse; his mind went back to the day when he had met her first, at St. Thomas’s, when he was a medical student; he had stepped back suddenly and made her drop a thermometer, which broke, and then he had to pacify the sister and explain that it was his fault. Medicine was strong in Jennifer’s family, but it was a pity that she had got mixed up with a foreigner who wasn’t on the register.

  Jennifer kept up a correspondence with Jane Dorman, largely about Angela’s coming visit to England; with some reluctance the Dormans had decided to let her go and take a job in the old country provided that she had a job lined up to go to before leaving Australia, and they had booked a passage for her for the following January. Jennifer and her father went to some trouble over this, and finally got the promise of a job for her at St. Mary’s Hospital in Paddington and put her down for a room in a hostel for young women in Marylebone; they were rewarded by an ecstatic letter from Angela and a steady flow of food parcels from Jane. Tim Archer wrote rather a depressed letter about all this to Jennifer, who told him in reply that he had nothing much to worry about; in her opinion Paddington would probably cure Angela of her obsession in about two years, and what he had to do was to get himself a grazing property within that time.

  From Jane she heard about her oil painting. Stanislaus Shulkin had painted a picture of the main street of Banbury in glowing sunset light, which Jane liked for its glorious colours and Jack Dorman liked for its exactitude and because it showed the Queen’s Head Hotel. It now hung in the kitchen of Leonora homestead, and in planning the new house Jane Dorman was making a special place for it where she could see it as she sat before the fire. It had been much admired in the neighbourhood, and Mr. Shulkin had got commissions from two of their station neighbours who had come to the conclusion that a thing like that was rather nice to have about the house.

  “I don’t know what he’s done with the portrait he was doing of you,” Jane wrote. “He told me that he couldn’t finish it because you’d gone away, and anyway, he said it wasn’t any good. I asked him once if I could see it because I never saw it at all, but he turned all arty and said that he never showed unfinished work to anyone. My own belief is that Splinter’s got it, but I don’t know that; perhaps you do.”

  Of Carl Zlinter she said, “We see him about once a month; he came here to tea on Sunday. Dr. Jennings wrote to the British Medical Association about getting him on the register in less than three years, and Carl has been to Melbourne twice for interviews. He thinks he’ll probably get some concession, and he seems very anxious now to get on to the register and be allowed to practise in Victoria, but I don’t know where the money’s coming from to keep him while he studies. Jack told me to see if I could find out how he stood for money, and I tried to without asking the direct question, but he wasn’t a bit receptive; apparently he thinks he can manage his affairs himself and of course it’s much better if he can, but where the money’s coming from I can’t tell you. However, there it is, and he seems quite certain that he’s going to be a doctor again; the only thing t
hat seems to worry him is that it’s going to be a long job, and that he’ll be so old before he’s able to set up a home.”

  Jennifer heard from Carl Zlinter at odd intervals, usually four or five times in a month. He wrote to her irregularly, and when the mood was on him; on one occasion she got three letters in a week, and then nothing for a fortnight. His letters contained few protestations of love; they were mostly factual accounts of what he had been doing, sometimes with touches of sly humour. As Jane had supposed, Jennifer knew all about her picture.

  “I have your portrait hanging in my hut in the Howqua,” he wrote, “and because I go there regularly even in this bad weather I see you every week-end. Last Saturday there were three inches of snow in Jock McDougall’s paddock where we parked the Chev and I got my feet wet, but I had plenty of dry wood in the hut and we soon had a big fire going. Harry Peters was with me, the driver of the bulldozer who had the head injury that we operated upon. He is quite recovered now and is back on the job driving a truck, but I do not think he will be able to drive a bulldozer again safely. He does not want to; he wants to go to Melbourne and study metallurgy and get a job in a steel works, and I think he will be doing this before very long. In the meantime he comes out with me each week to Howqua.”

  Jennifer wondered what on earth they found to do in the Howqua valley in the snow; he had told her in a previous letter that the fishing season was over. Perhaps they worked upon the furnishings and details of the hut….

  “I had a great deal of trouble with Stan Shulkin over your picture because he did not want to give it to me; he said it was too good to give to Mrs. Dorman and he was going to keep it and put in an exhibition. I told him that you would certainly bring him to court if he did that without asking your permission, and I should go at once to the Police Sergeant Russell and tell him, and then he said that I could have it if I paid him for it. I told him that he was a very greedy man because Mrs. Dorman had paid him for three pictures, and then he said this was an extra that he had not shown to Mrs. Dorman. However, I got it from him in the end by promising to pay him when I became qualified as a doctor, and now it hangs in the hut at the Howqua, and I look forward all the week to going there to see it again.”

  He told her very little about his negotiations with the Medical Registration Board; throughout his letters there was a calm assurance that he would be a doctor again, but he had no definite ideas on how long it would take. He said once, “I am going to Melbourne again next week to see the M.R.B. and I think it may be easier to get into a hospital in England than in Melbourne because the Melbourne hospitals are very full of Australian students. I am thinking of booking a passage to England because it may take a long time to get a passage, and they will give back the money if you do not go.”

  Apparently he was not short of money, and this puzzled Jennifer a good deal. She asked in her next letter if he had really booked a passage to England, but he did not answer, nor did he answer when she asked a second time. She stopped asking after that; if he did not want to tell her things he need not; they were of different nationalities and from different backgrounds, and she knew that it would be a long time, if they ever married, before she understood him thoroughly. His letters were a great pleasure to her, and his calm assurance that all would be well was comforting.

  In September she got a letter that thrilled her, and informed her at the same time. “It has been arranged for me here that I can study for the English medical degree at Guy’s Hospital in London because there is no room in the Melbourne hospitals. I do not know how long it will be necessary for me to study and I do not think that they will tell me till I get there. I have passed two examinations in Melbourne since you left for England and these results are good in London; you see, I have been working very hard in the evenings at Lamirra and at Howqua learning again in English all the text-book medicine I learned and forgot when I was a young man. So now they say that if I can get to England I may go to Guy’s Hospital. I do not know how long I must work there before I become qualified, perhaps not more than a year and in any case I do not think longer than two years.

  “So now I must come to England. There is a ship called the Achilles that is now loading sugar at Townsville in Queensland and I may be able to take a job on her as steward or on some other ship because this is the season when the sugar is sent to England. I may have to pay for the passage and if that is needed I will pay, but I have not got very much money so if I can work I would like it.

  “I am leaving Lamirra at the end of this week to go by train to Townsville which I think will take three days. I am sorry to leave this place; it has been good for me after so many years in Camps in Europe to work for a time in the woods. I like this country very much, and when I am qualified to work as a doctor I would like much to come back to Banbury and work with Dr. Jennings if he has still no other doctor to help him.

  “I am bringing your picture with me in a packing-case. I have asked Billy Slim to look after my hut at Howqua, and I have left him a little money for repairs, and if a window blows in or a sheet of iron on the roof comes loose he will mend it for me, so it will be there for me to have when I can come back to this country. And there for you also, I hope.

  “I do not think that it will be possible for you to write to me again because I do not know what ship I shall go on, or when it will start or when I shall come to England. I will write to you to tell you these things as quickly as I know them, and I will come to Leicester to see you very soon.”

  She read this letter over and over again in the privacy of her bedroom. The sheer tragedy of her return to England was working out in comedy; Carl Zlinter was on his way to England and she would see him again. A picture came into her mind of the dynamic energy and competence of this dark, lean man that had produced this result and in so short a time. In a barrack hut at Lamirra, a hut similar to the one that he had operated in with her, smelling of washing and whisky and raw, unpainted wood, he had studied every night at medical text-books; he had then gone down to Melbourne and sat for two examinations in a language foreign to him in a strange place with strange people, and had passed them. Over and above this academic effort he had somehow or other financed himself, and he had negotiated and corresponded till he had secured himself a place in a hospital in England, twelve thousand miles away, a country that he had never been to, and an alien, enemy country. This man was shouldering his way through all these difficulties and brushing each of them aside in turn, because he wanted to practise as a doctor in the country of his choice, and because he wanted to marry her.

  She could not possibly keep this news to herself. At dinner that night she said as casually as she could manage, “Carl Zlinter’s coming to England, Daddy. He’s going to re-qualify at Guy’s.”

  He noted her shining eyes and her faint colour, and he was glad for this daughter of his, whatever changes there might be in store for him. “That’s interesting,” he said, equally casually. “How did he manage that?”

  She told him, if not all about it, as much as she thought good for him to know. They discussed the matter for a quarter of an hour; in the end he asked:

  “What’s he going to do when he’s qualified? Practise in England, in the Health Service?”

  She shook her head. “I shouldn’t think so. He wants to go back to Australia and practise at Banbury. There’s a doctor there, Dr. Jennings—I told you about him. He’s very overworked. Carl thinks Dr. Jennings might take him as an assistant if he can get qualified before anyone else gets in.”

  He was about to ask her if she would like to go back to Australia herself, but he stopped and said nothing; no sense in asking her a thing like that. He knew very well that if she were free of her responsibilities to himself she would never have come back to England; if this chap Zlinter were to ask her to marry him and go back with him to Australia, he could not possibly stand in her way.

  For the first time the thought of going to Australia came into his mind as a serious possibility. Leicester without
his wife was not the place it once had been for him. If Jennifer were to marry and go back to Australia he might have to choose between going with them and attempting to carry on alone in Leicester, where he had worked all his life and where all his friends were. It was not a thing to be decided lightly. He would hardly make many new friends at his age in Australia, but he would be desperately lonely if he tried to live alone at home in Leicester. In Australia he might do a little work, perhaps, and earn a little money, and so be able to come back to England every year or two to see his friends….

  Jennifer heard from Carl a week later that the Achilles had sailed without him and he was coming home upon a ship called the Innisfail, probably sailing in about three days’ time. “They will not take me as steward,” he wrote, “and I shall have to pay for the journey, which is a very bad thing, but I shall have time to work; I have brought many medical books with me to read upon the journey. If I was qualified as doctor I could work as ship’s doctor on the journey because they have difficulty in getting doctors now at Townsville, but although I have showed my Prague degree they will not acccept it because English ships must have an English doctor. When I am an English doctor I shall be able to practise anywhere in the world, I think.”