by A. J. Cronin
‘Oh, dear, you’re ill,’ she exclaimed at once in dismay. ‘Half the night I was worrying you’d caught cold.’
‘It’s nothing much. But I’ll be laid up for a bit and I can’t make a nuisance of myself here. You’d better ring the hospital.’
‘I’ll do no such thing.’ She had taken his hand, which felt so hot to the touch that her heart contracted with concern. ‘You’ll stop with us in this very room. And I’ll look after you. Who else, indeed!’
‘Are you sure, Mary?’ Suddenly he wanted her to care for him. And what a bore it would be getting the ambulance, trundling back to the Infirmary as a patient. ‘I’ll only be a few days. If it’s not too much trouble, I’d far rather stay.’
‘And so you shall,’ she said firmly. ‘Now, should I send for the doctor?’
‘No, no, of course not I’ll prescribe for myself.’
He raised himself on his elbow and wrote a couple of prescriptions. The effort made him cough.
‘That’s all I need, Mary. And occasional hot fluids.…’ He forced a smile. ‘And you.’
He was worse than he made out. For ten days he was quite ill, with a high fever and a racking cough. She nursed him devotedly and, for one untrained, with surprising talent. With Aunt Minnie, she poulticed him, brewed him nourishing beef tea, fed him calf’s foot jelly with a spoon, made up his bed, exerted to the full her practical mind and housewifely skill to ease his distress. At the crisis of the attack, when he was obliged to have a steam kettle, she sat up half the night tending him. The dislocation of the household was, of course, acute. Meals were upset; sleep lost; service in the shop disturbed; Willie, back from the camp, had to be farmed out with Donaldson, the foreman. When, at the end of the second week, he was able to be up, and to sit in a long chair by the window, he apologised shamefacedly to Douglas for the trouble he had given them all.
‘Not another word, Davie,’ the little baker interrupted him. ‘Ye’re one of the family now.’ He smiled. ‘As good as, anyhow.’
When her father had gone out of the room Mary came over and knelt beside his chair. She gripped his knee tightly.
‘Don’t ever say you were a bother, Davie. What do you think would have happened to me if I hadn’t got you well?’
His eyes filled with tears, he was still rather weak.
‘What a perfect wife you’ll make me, Mary. Don’t think I haven’t noticed every single thing you’ve done.’
Presently he was out, walking with her on the Esplanade, slowly at first, then at a faster pace. Finally he pronounced himself recovered, and ready to look out for a locum tenens that would carry him through the next few months. He still had a stitch in his side that worried him, but he did not speak of it. To complain now would be a poor way to reward their united efforts on his behalf. However, on the following Monday when he travelled by train to Winton to leave his name at the Medical Employment Agency, he had a sharp bout of pain, and decided it might be wise to look in at his old ward and have his chest gone over by Drummond.
It was unexpectedly late when he arrived, back at Ardfillan, and Mary, who was serving a woman customer in the shop, read at once the dejection in his expression. The moment she was free, she came towards him, looking up into his face.
‘No luck, Davie?’
He tried to smile, but the attempt was scarcely a success.
‘As a matter of fact I didn’t manage to get to the agency.’
‘What went wrong, dear?’ she said quickly. She saw that he had something on his mind.
At that moment the shop door pinged and a child came in to buy sweetie biscuits. He broke off, relieved by the interruption. What a cursed nuisance it all was, and what a damned sickly nuisance of a fellow they would all think him.
‘Now, Davie?’ She turned to him.
‘It’s hard to explain, Mary,’ he said feebly. ‘ I’ll tell you upstairs.’
It was just on closing time. Hurriedly, she drew the blinds and turned off the lights, then followed him to the upper room. Her father and Aunt Minnie were there with him. He did not know how to begin. There was nothing for it, he had to reveal the reason for his visit to the hospital. Bending forward with elbows on his knees he kept looking at the floor.
‘So when I got there Professor Drummond screened me – X-ray that is – and apparently I have a patch of pleurisy on my left lung.’
‘Pleurisy!’
‘It’s very localised,’ he said, refraining from mentioning Drummond’s insistence that neglect would induce tuberculosis. Striving to keep the despondency from his voice, he added: ‘But apparently it knocks out any possibility of a locum.’
‘What’s to be done then?’ Douglas said, looking rather blue, while Mary sat silent, her hands pressed together.
‘Well, I could go into the country … somewhere not too far away…’.
‘No, Davie,’ Mary intervened nervously. ‘You’re not to leave us. We’ll look after you here.’
He gazed at her dismally.
‘Impose myself on you for another two months? Impossible, Mary. How can I hang around here, bone idle, just being a confounded nuisance, on top of all the fearful bother I’ve given you? I’ll… I’ll get a job on a farm.’
‘No farmer in his right mind is going to employ a sick man,’ said Douglas. ‘Surely the doctor… the professor ordered something definite for ye?’
There was a pause. Moray raised his head.
‘If you must know, Drummond did say that I need a sea voyage – as a ship’s doctor of course. In fact, he insisted on ringing up the Kinnaird Line.… He knows someone there…’
Now there was a prolonged silence. Finally the baker said:
‘That sounds like sense at last. And if it’s a question of your health, lad, that’s all important. We would keep you here gladly. But would you get better, with the winter coming on? No, no. Your professor’s advice is sound. Did he manage to find ye something?’
Moray nodded, unwillingly.
‘There’s a boat, the Pindari, leaving next week from the Tail of the Bank – for Calcutta – a seven weeks’ round trip.’
Another pause followed, then Douglas reflected:
‘A voyage to India. Ye’d get sunshine there.’
‘Do you want to go?’ the aunt asked.
‘Good God, no.… Sorry, Aunt Minnie. It’s the last thing I want. Except that if I must go the pay is good, ninety pounds in all. We could furnish our house with it, Mary.’
All that evening the matter was threshed out and at last was definitely settled. Despite the divergence of opinion, all, even Mary, yielded in the end to the baker’s simple argument; health came before all other considerations.
‘What good will ye be to anyone – to Mary, yourself, or to Glenburn – if ye don’t get yourself well? Ye maun go, lad, that’s all about it.’
On the following Tuesday he crossed to Greenock with Mary. It was a wet, stormy afternoon. He looked and felt ill, and the misery of the coming separation lay upon him. And upon her too, yet she was brave, resolved not to give way. Under her windblown tweed hat, raincoat buttoned to her chin, her face was set in a mould of resolute cheerfulness. The Pindari, which had arrived overnight from Liverpool to take on a cargo of woollens and mill machinery, lay in the estuary veiled by a driving mist. The wind swept in staggering gusts across the docks, but she insisted on coming to the pier end to see him off, her hand beside his, under the handle of his old leather suitcase, sharing its weight. As the tender plunged and bumped in the strong tide beneath, they held each other closely, passionately, under the grey and dismal sky. Rain, like tears, ran down her cold cheeks, but her lips and breath were warm. Sick at heart, he could not bear to part from her.
‘I’ll take a chance and stay, Mary. God knows I don’t want to go.’
‘But you must, dear, for both our sakes. I’ll write to you, and count every minute till you’re back to me.’ Just before she broke away and ran back along the jetty, she took a small package from her raincoa
t pocket and pressed it into his hand. ‘Just so you’ll mind me, Davie.’
In the cabin of the heaving tender, on the way out to the ship, he undid the wrappings and looked at what she had given him, It was an old thin gold locket, smaller than a florin piece, that had belonged to her mother. Inside she had placed a little snapshot of herself and in the back, carefully pressed, a single flower of the bluebells he had picked for her at Gairsay.
Chapter Nine
He clambered up the swaying gangway and came aboard. The merchandise from Winton had already been loaded; he had barely time to report to the captain before the tugs were alongside and they began to nose cautiously down the Firth. He stood on deck, striving to penetrate the mist that shrouded the vague line of the shore where Mary would be standing, watching the departure of this spectral ship. His heart was filled with sadness and love. There were few people on deck – he knew they were returning to Tilbury to pick up the main body of passengers – and the damp emptiness and dripping stanchions increased his melancholy. The deep, despondent sounding of the fog-horn gave him a strange sense of foreboding. As the mist closed down, obliterating the shore, he turned and went below to find his quarters.
His cabin was aft, on the starboard side, next to the chief engineer’s, furnished in polished teak wood with red curtains to the ports, a fitted locker and book rack, and a red-shaded bunk lamp, all particularly snug. A washstand with a metal basin that tipped up to let the water away stood in the comer, and above, on a guarded bracket, an electric fan. His consulting room and dispensary, conveniently situated across the alleyway, were both equally well equiped. Although the Pindari was an old ship, originally the Isolde of the Hamburg-Atlantic Line taken over after the war, she had been reconditioned from stem to stem and was now roomy, comfortable and notably seaworthy, capable of a modest seventeen knots, making a slow, sure run to India with cargo and passengers, touching en route at various ports.
When Moray had unpacked his suitcase, containing his own few things, all washed and ironed by Mary, and the two stock uniforms provided by the company’s head office in Winton, he felt completely done; his side was hurting too. A rough Irish Sea and a bad passage up the Channel did not help him. He had difficulty in carrying out his first duty, a medical examination of the native crew, and at nights his cough was so troublesome he got little sleep. Concerned not only for himself but for his engineer neighbour, an elderly Scot named Macrae, whom he must have disturbed, he dosed himself with codeine. However, at Tilbury, where they spent two days at the docks, a letter from Mary put fresh heart in him, and when they cleared the Nore and were actually on their way, he began to feel more himself. The ship had life in her now, the screws thrust forward with a stronger throb, voices and laughter echoed along the companionways.
In the dining saloon each officer took his place at the head of his own table. Moray, at his, was allotted only five passengers, all somewhat elderly and, he had to admit, dull: two well-seasoned Scotch tea planters, Henderson and Macrimmon, returning to Assam, a Mr S. A. G. Mahratta, the Hindu manager of a cotton mill in Cawnpore, and an I. C.S. official and his jaundiced, severe-looking wife, Mr and Mrs Hunt-hunter. Except for the planters, who, particularly after a session in the bar, were inclined to jocularity, and Mahratta, a fussy, hypochondriacal little man with a bad stomach, who was sometimes unintentionally funny, the general tone of the conversation was restrained and promised to be difficult.
But now they were through the grey turbulence of the Bay, sunshine suddenly blazed, sky and sea were blue as they passed through the Straits and cruised up the south-east coast of Spain towards Marseilles, where more cargo was to be taken aboard. Deck games were being set out and Moray was advised by the first officer, a long, lean, goodnatured Irishman named O’Neil, that part of the doctor’s duty was to organise them. So Moray, taking paper and pencil, approached the task of rounding up the passengers, at first with a sense of his unfitness for large-scale social intercourse, yet, after some preliminary self-consciousness, with success. His official position made things easier than he had imagined. He need not seek, he was sought after – a ship’s surgeon was apparently a position of some consequence. When they arrived at Marseilles, lists of competitors for deck quoits, shuffle-board and table tennis had been drawn up and Moray, with a grimace, began to overhear himself referred to as ‘our nice young doctor.’
At Marseilles a long, five-page letter from Mary awaited him. In his cabin he read it eagerly, smiling at her little bits of news, touched by the simple record of all she had been doing, through which there breathed a constant solicitude for his health. She hoped that his pain was gone, his cough less, that he was taking good care of himself. She sent him all her love. Dear Mary, how he missed her. In the surgery, squaring up to his desk, he wrote his reply, telling of all his activities, and was able to catch the outgoing mail before the sack was closed. The Pindari was no more than twelve hours in port. Loading completed, the hatches were battened down; then, almost at the last moment – the night train from Paris was late – three new passengers came on board. Since most of the tables in the saloon were fully occupied they were seated with the doctor, and their names added to the passenger list: Mr and Mrs Arnold Holbrook, Miss Doris Holbrook. Surreptitiously, Moray examined them, as they sat down to lunch.
Holbrook was a man of about sixty, not tall, but so heavily thickset as to be short of breath, with a red, porous, mottled face partly covered by a short grizzled beard, and small, bloodshot, genially knowing eyes. He was badly dressed in a greenish readymade suit, grey flannel shirt and a stringy maroon tie. His wife a little homely woman with small features and a gentle expression, was, in contrast, wearing heavy, fashionable clothes and an elaborate black-sequined toque. Yet she carried them without ease, as though they encumbered her and she would have preferred much simpler attire – instinctively Moray thought of her in an old loose print wrapper, busy with her household duties in a well-stocked kitchen. She wore also so much jewellery that he erroneously assumed it to be paste. The daughter appeared to be not more than twenty. She was tallish, of a pale, dull complexion, with a good figure, dark hair and slate-grey eyes which, sitting erect and silent, she kept lowered sulkily during most of the meal.
Not so Holbrook. In the accents of Manchester, genially, expansively, with an air of experience, he broke the introductory ice, tactfully set conversation going, jollied the Tamil table boy until he had him grinning, started Mahratta off on a diverting account of his recent gastronomic difficulties in London that brought a smile even to the meagre lips of Mrs Hunt-hunter. When he had awakened the table to life, he casually revealed that his son was in Calcutta opening a branch of his business, that Dorrie – he looked towards his daughter, who ignored the affectionate glance – had just left Miss Wainwright’s Finishing School in Blackpool, and that their voyage to India was pleasure and business combined. It was only when he proposed ordering champagne all round that a reproving glance from his wife drew him up.
‘Ah, well, Mother,’ he deferred humorously, ‘we’ll have it at dinner tonight. That suit you, Dorrie?’
Doris gave him a pettish glance.
‘You stop it, Dad. The story of your life will keep.’
‘That’s my girl.’ He laughed indulgently, with a note of pride. ‘ I like to have you keep me right.’
‘And about time.’
‘Now, Doris,’ her mother warned gently: then, looking round the table, she added, as though in extenuation: ‘Our daughter hasn’t been too well lately. And the night journey was real tiring for her.’
That same afternoon, as Moray came along the companionway towards his surgery, he found. Holbrook standing before the notice board with his hands in his pockets, studying the sports lists.
‘It looks as though you’ve got everyone pretty well booked up, doctor.’
‘I’ve gone through the passenger list fairly thoroughly, sir.’
‘Our Dorrie likes a game,’ said the other in a reflective tone. ‘And s
he’s a dab at most of them. Surely you could find her a partner, doctor.’ He paused. ‘ How about yourself? You’re an active young fellow.’
Moray hesitated.
‘I’ll be glad to, sir,’ he said, adding quickly: ‘If it’s permitted. I’ll … I’ll speak to the first officer.’
‘Do that, lad. I’d appreciate it.’
Moray’s impressions of Holbrook’s daughter had not been favourable; he had no wish to be let in for this job. Besides, as a ship’s officer, he doubted if he could participate in the competitions. However, when he had finished his consultations he found O’Neil on the bridge and explained the situation; the big Irishman had already been friendly and helpful, casually tipping him off on his more important duties.
‘Sure ye can play, doc,’ said O’Neil, in a Belfast accent you could cut with a knife. ‘Ye’re expected to be nice to the women. Besides, I saw this little bit come aboard. She looks as if she has something.’ O’Neil’s blue eyes twinkled. ‘ With luck ye might get a tickle.’
‘I wouldn’t be interested,’ Moray said flatly. His pure-minded feeling for Mary made the suggestion, however goodnatured, unutterably distasteful to him.
‘Well, anyhow, be civil – it’ll do ye no harm and may do ye some good. The old boy’s rolling. Holbrook’s Pharmaceuticals. Began in a back street chemist’s shop in Bootle. Made a fortune out of pills.’ He grinned. ‘Moving the bowels of humanity. The answer was in the purgative. Say, that reminds me. Did you ever hear this one?’ O’Neil, a brave and gallant soul who had been torpedoed in the war, swimming for five hours in the Atlantic Ocean before being picked up, had a positive mania for telling off-colour stories. Submitting, Moray prepared his smile as the other went on: ‘A Yank was coming tearing along the street in Chicago when another Yank standing on the sidewalk stopped him. “Can you direct me to a good chemist?” says he. “Brother,” says the other, in a raging hurry, “if ye want God’s own chemist just …’ At the unprintable punch line O’Neil topped his cap to a more rakish angle and lay back on the binnacle, roaring with laughter.