Ship's Surgeon (2 page)

Pat forced herself to move, to put away the last few garments from her trunk and slip a suit of pyjamas under her pillow, then, automatically, she took off her uniform, smoothed the plain pink frock she wore underneath and left the cabin.

The staterooms on A Deck were all doubles and lushly furnished. The one occupied by Deva Wadia and Mrs. Lai—Pat never did learn the servant’s full name—was panelled in apricot wood and its curtains and bedspreads were pale turquoise, the carpet a thick-piled dark grey. There were two deep oyster satin chairs, a fine long dressing table and a writing table, and between the beds a very modern table with bookshelves below it. On the wall beside each bed was an air-cooled cupboard which held a vacuum flask of ice water and glasses, and above each of the cabinets the air-conditioning hummed gently through a grid.

Deva was in bed, her small face and thick black glossy hair a little stark against the white pillows, her arms pitifully thin as they lay on the sheet which had been turned down over the bed-cover. Her skin was a pale grey-brown, her features small and perfect and oddly deadpan; but there was life in the lustrous dark eyes with their yellow whites and thick black lashes. She looked no older than ten.

“Hello, honey,” said Pat softly. “Feel good now you’re settled for a few weeks?”

“Oh, yes.” Deva’s voice was high-pitched and a little sibilant, but there was strength in it. She gave a delighted little laugh. “Poor Lallie is sick already.”

“Is she in the bathroom?”

“Yes. She was so sure she would be sick that she started at once!”

“I’ll get the stewardess to bring more tablets. She’ll soon be all right. I’ve spoken to the doctor and he’ll be coming to see you.”

“Will I like him?” Deva asked anxiously.

“I think so.” For the first time Pat thought about the man. “He’s not as old as Dr. Mears or the specialist, but I’d say he’s a first-rate doctor. He has the look and the manner.”

“Did you like him, Pattie?”

Pat didn’t answer for a moment; she was still thinking. Did one like or dislike such a man as Dr. Norton? She had a sudden inexplicable conviction that you didn’t; you loved or loathed him. She’d had the same conviction, in milder form, about other doctors, but not until she had known them for a while.

“I’d trust him,” she said, “and that’s all that matters.”

“Is he English?”

“Yes, and he’s interested in you.”

Deva slowly moved her hand and Pat took it, as she wished. “I’m so glad it was you to come with me, Pattie, that you would leave your brothers and take me home to my father and mother. I am lucky, you see. I have parents, and you and your brothers have none.”

Lucky ... after all she’d been through! Pat’s eyes misted. “Your parents must be longing to see you. We’ll post them an air letter from Gibraltar.”

“They are patient, but it must have disappointed them that I was not permitted to fly home. When you write you must tell them I am very well and happy.” Pat nodded. Deva’s good breeding, her acquiescence and courage, were of the East; in a way they made Pat feel humble. She was glad, at that moment, that the steward rapped on the door.

He brought in half a dozen gorgeous bouquets, a couple of flowering plants encased in polythene, a basket of fruit similarly swathed and a fistful of cables and letters. There were good wishes from a couple of embassies, from Sinhalese diplomats and students who were temporarily resident in London, from friends Deva had made at the nursing home, and even from a couple of English V.I.P.s. Deva’s case had made discreet headlines in the newspapers.

She listened raptly while Pat read the flowery goodwill messages, implicitly believed every word of them. A chastened Mrs. Lai came into the stateroom. As at the nursing home, the brown-skinned woman wore her straight grey hair combed back into an uncompromising bun, and draped her sari so that it could easily be pulled up over her head whenever she had to leave the cabin.

Pat said, “I’ve asked for more tablets, Mrs. Lai. Take some as soon as they arrive. My cabin is thirty-two, on B Deck. If you need me, send a steward.”

“No exercises today?” asked Deva anxiously. “I so want to get strong!”

Pat smiled at her. “And so you shall, darling. Embarking was enough for today, but we’ll start again tomorrow morning at ten. I’ll look in again later.”

She went out on deck, breathed in the cold misty atmosphere. Grey sea, a watery grey-blue sky and a faint smudge where the coastline was disappearing. England ... Tim and Keith were back there, cheerfully learning a little and playing football, and perhaps not quite so cheerfully remembering that she was leaving today, for Ceylon and Australia. They were chirpy and absorbed as boys of eleven mostly are, but Tim especially had looked a little odd when she had mentioned Australia. Tim was the more thoughtful one; he was capable of adding the fact that money was tight to the knowledge that Uncle Dan had his own business in Melbourne, and coming up with the right answer. Neither boy had looked very happy when she had told them she would do her utmost to be home before the summer vacation. To them, July had seemed an appallingly long way from early April.

Pat flicked a wetness from her lashes, turned resolutely and went inside for a coat. Passengers were taking tea in the main lounge, and Pat, glancing cursorily at them through the glass, saw the big man she had noticed at the dock. He was fair and red-faced, around forty and expensively tailored, and at the moment he was alone at a table and looking sideways, towards the ocean. Head bent, she passed on, and walked down to her cabin. She opened the door, blinked in the dimness and drew a sharp dry breath.

A woman in blue sat on her bed leafing through a magazine. Kristin. The long regular features smiled slightly, the afternoon light slanting through the porthole burnished the dark head so that it was a tiny pool of brilliance in the shadowed box of a room.

“Surprised?” asked the quiet yet metallic tones that Pat would never forget.

“Not ... entirely. I knew you were aboard.”

“Really?” with a faint frown. “You haven’t mentioned it to anyone?”

“I tried not to believe it.”

“Why should you do that? We’re not enemies, Pat.” The old spell began to exert itself. A dark spell, that made Pat feel very young, quite stupid and totally unable to deal with this woman who had insinuated herself into Richard Fenley’s heart when he was thirty-eight and she twenty-six. Pat had been ten years old when Kristin came into the house, and from their first meeting she had been attracted and repelled by the woman. At twenty-six Kristin had not been nearly so beautiful as she was now; she had been white and ill-looking and so grateful to the man who had fallen in love with her that she could gladly accept a stepdaughter. Pat had never learned how her father had met Kristin, but as she grew older she realized how it might have happened. A lonely man; a young woman more or less alone in the world who had accidentally come into his life and caught at his heart.

The change in Kristin had begun almost imperceptibly, soon after the twins had arrived. Kristin hadn’t wanted even one child, let alone two, but she was quick to make capital of the fact that her husband adored them. How fortunate that Pat was there, growing up now and able to look after the brats. Kristin could get out as often as she wished, she could even take a job, modelling for a Kensington store.

Blithely, Pat had taken charge of the babies; soft, darling babies, especially the one with a squint who always looked cross while possessing the most even of temperaments. In those days, Pat would have done anything for Kristin, who dressed more and more simply and exquisitely, and who dropped a hint one day that she was earning almost as much as Daddy. But only Kristin benefited from her earnings.

There came a grim period which had puzzled and frightened Pat. Sharp words between husband and wife, long silences; then a demand that Kristin give up working and settle back into the home. And in no time at all after that Kristin had left the house. “For a break from us,” Pat’s father had told her. “She’s tired.” Then that brief return, a patching-up while, covertly, she was amassing all the cash she could.

Pat steeled herself. “We’re not friends, either,” she said now. “Why are you on the
Walhara
?”

“Because you are, my dear. I had no intention of taking a sea-trip till I visited the shipping offices with Vernon Corey. A travel agent is not good enough for Vernon; he always goes to the shipping company’s offices to make sure that he’s given the stateroom he’s stipulated. He also likes to look at the passenger list. That’s how I learned you were to sail in this ship, though at first I thought the name was merely a coincidence. But my enquiries proved that it wasn’t.”

“And you actually booked a passage because of me?”

“I was going by air, in time to meet Vernon in Fremantle, but I decided to change my plans. If I could have persuaded Vernon to postpone his departure till the next ship I’d certainly have done so.” She lifted her shoulders. “He’s a coward—terrified of air travel—so I was caught.”

Pat’s fingers pressed her eyelids, fleetingly. “Who is this Vernon Corey?”

“My fiancé. We’re getting married after I’ve met his family in Australia.”

“Is he the ... the big man?”

“You’ve seen him? Yes,” with a humorous smile, “he’s the big man—big in every way. He and his mother own a dozen huge cattle stations but live a civilized life on the warm coast, near Brisbane. I’ve no intention of settling permanently in Australia, of course, but I shall have to live down-under for quite a while, to keep the old lady sweet.”

In strained tones, Pat said, “You were afraid to let the man sail alone, is that it? Do you think it’s at all likely that he and I would have ... mixed? That must have been what worried you.”

“By sea, it’s a long way to Ceylon,” said Kristin with a graceful shrug. “The ship stops half a dozen times on the way and there would have been every chance of your finding yourself alongside Vernon either on deck or ashore. He’s the chivalrous kind, and you’re still a bit large-eyed and dewy-looking in spite of your profession; you might easily have confided in him. By the way, there must be sweet pickings to that assignment of yours. The Wadias are rich and influential, I believe.”

“I’m getting a good salary,” Pat agreed briefly. “What does Mr. Corey know about us—the boys and me?”

Kristin’s glance flickered once, her expression remained smiling and remote. “That’s why I came to see you before you met the other passengers. Vernon knows nothing. To him, I’m thirty-two and a widow, without encumbrances.”

Pat’s throat contracted. “You can’t do that,” she whispered, aghast. “The twins are your own sons. The chances are that Mr. Corey would be proud of them!”

“It’s too late to tell him. When we first met he was even jealous of my dead husband, and I daren’t mention the boys. I told him I was married at twenty-seven, that I was widowed after only a couple of years. I can’t produce eleven-year-old sons even if I wanted to. Which I don’t. The boys were always more their father’s than mine—more yours than mine, come to that.”

“But if you’re going to marry Mr. Corey he has a right to know all about you!”

Kristin stood up, quickly for her. “Leave the ethical aspect to me. I’ll have to go now—Vernon’s expecting me to join him for tea. We’ll talk again, you and I. I came in as soon as I could to make contact and to let you know that on the
Walhara
you and I have no relationship except the coincidence of bearing the same surname. I dare say you’ll be fully occupied till you reach Ceylon, so you won’t find it difficult to keep your distance from Vernon ... and me.”

Kristin came towards the door, and Pat shrank back as the other passed. With difficulty she said, “You’re expecting rather a lot from me, aren’t you? Why should I help you to deceive that man?”

“Why?” With her long slender fingers on the door handle, Kristin turned and looked straight into Pat’s hurt green eyes. “For a simple reason, my dear. You’re determined that the twins shall miss their parents as little as possible, and have an ordinary life among their own kind. But I’ve discovered something. There’s a society that will take them on till they’re sixteen, give them a home in an institution and teach them a trade. I’ve only to prove that I can’t afford to keep them, and sign a paper or two.”

Pat’s mouth was dry. “You wouldn’t do that, Kristin. I can’t believe it.”

“Don’t try me. If I lost Vernon through you,” said Kristin steadily, “I’d do anything.”

She was gone, and Pat was left alone in the small cabin, leaning against shiny white paint and gazing at a face she saw in the mirror. A young face that was pale and bewildered and frightened. Not a pretty face, but it was small-boned and the skin was delicately pink over the cheekbones; at least, it was normally pink, though just now even her lips were pale. For a long time she blankly took in her reflection. Then it receded, darkly, and she knew it was time she switched on a light and put on a dress for dinner.

Dressed, she felt better, but not hungry. She went up to A Deck, knocked lightly at the door of Deva’s stateroom and walked in. Her first thought was how very attractive the spacious room looked in the soft artificial lamplight, and then she became aware of the tall man in uniform. No mistaking that brazen, springy hair, the broad shoulders. He turned from the bed.

“Oh, Miss Fenley,” he said absently. “Your patient seems to have taken the transition from one cosy nook to another in her stride. I suggest a little steamed fish and warm milk for her supper and a sedative straight after it.”