The Judas Tree (14 page)

At the end of the week it suddenly turned cooler, his work and the weather became less hectic. He had time to write a long, loving letter to Mary, with an enclosure specially for Willie. And that same afternoon he was given a further lift when O'Neil took him aside to say:

‘I thought you'd like to know, Doc, the skipper had a good word for you on the bridge this morning. In fact, when he heard about the Kindersley kids, he said you were doing a hell of a nice job. The only sawbones we've had yet that didn't get corns on his behind.' The big Irishman paused, took a long look at Moray's new watch, and grinned. ‘Present from a grateful patient? Go to it, my boy. You'll soon reach pay-dirt or I'm not from County Down.'

‘Haven't I told you I'm not interested,' Moray said, irritably. ‘ I'm only rather sorry for her because she's such a little outsider.'

‘Then why aren't you a little insider?' said O'Neil, and roared with laughter. ‘Ah, now, don't be so backward in coming forward, my boy. We're all looking for a bit of skirt on this bloody tub – otherwise it would bore the arse off us. Say, did you ever hear this one…'

Moray had to laugh. What a decent sort O'Neil was. There wasn't a bit of harm in his remark, he didn't really mean it – like his profane limericks, it was just fun. Why couldn't the Kindersleys see it that way?

On the following day, when it was even cooler, Doris appeared on deck. He came on her reclining in a sheltered spot, her hair bound with a silk scarf, a light cashmere rug over her knees, looking dull and with dark lines beneath her eyes. She did not move, merely flickered her lashes towards him.

‘Hello, stranger, where have you been hiding?' He took the chair beside her. ‘Feeling better?'

Injured by his brightness, she did not reply.

‘Quite a few people have been laid out by the heat,' he continued. ‘But now it's really lovely.'

They were in the Indian Ocean where the soft monsoon made songs in the rigging and a school of young whales, disporting gaily, blew temperate fountains about the ship.

‘You've seen our escort,' he went on. ‘ I thought whales were only found in the Arctic, but O'Neil tells me they're a regular feature of this run.'

She took no notice of the remark, making it sound fatuous. Head pillowed sideways on the chair, she watched him with flat eyes as if she were drugged.

‘You're a nice one,' she said.

‘Why, Doris, what's the matter?'

‘Don't pretend, after what you did. It was an insult. I haven't forgiven you yet. Who have you been dancing with while I was away?'

‘No one. I've been waiting on my own special teacher.'

Her expression lightened faintly. She gave him a languid smile.

‘Why didn't you come to see me? Oh, well, there wasn't any need. And I can't bear anyone when I have these turns. I don't get them often, mind you, not more than once in six months.'

He looked at her curiously; it wasn't what he had imagined.

She went on:

‘But they're not exactly fun. Even when the headache goes, they leave me so blasted low.'

‘That's not you, Dorrie.'

‘Don't give me that, like Mother. When I'm this way I keep thinking what's the good of anything, why go on, what's the use. I feel I'm a terrible person, different from other girls, all so full of sweet ideas. You know what I mean. Clapcows!' She laughed suddenly. ‘Where did I get that word?'

‘Well, it's good to be a little different from the ordinary.'

‘Glad you think so. I used to try to work it all out, that time I was off school for a bit, wanting to be respected, to have everything just right. But I couldn't do anything about it So now I just do as I feel, you know – what I feel like doing. I can't fight it. Don't you agree? You kill everything that's in you if you don't give way to your feelings.'

‘Well …' He stared at her perplexedly. Why was she going on like this? He didn't follow her at all.

‘You know the motto, be yourself. It's a challenge. I'm glad I'm feminine, made for love, so I just want to be myself. Did you miss me? But you wouldn't, you beastly rotter, you make friends so easily and get on with everybody. I've never made any real friends, I just don't seem to get on with people, except you.' She paused, said in a low voice: ‘ Can't you see I've a frightful crush on you?'

He was touched by the admission. Her apathetic voice and unusual depression went to his heart. And of course he was flattered, too.

‘Come now, Dorrie, you mustn't give way.' He reached out and pressed her hand. ‘If you want to know, I did miss you.'

Inclining her head a little more to one side, she looked at him intently; then, retaining his hand as he made to withdraw, she tucked it beneath the cashmere rug.

‘That's cosy. I missed
you
so much.'

Moray was fearfully embarrassed, not only by the unexpectedness of her action but because, undoubtedly without her knowing it, she had pressed his fingers against the warm softness, of her thigh.

‘Now, Doris,' he tried to speak lightly. ‘ you can't do that there here – not to the ship's surgeon.'

‘But I need a little petting. Mind you, I don't let anybody into my life. Oh, I've been around with boys, some of them high, wide, and handsome, but you're different. I've such an unselfish feeling towards you.'

‘Please … someone is sure to come along.'

‘You can say you're feeling my pulse.' She gave him a malicious caressing look. ‘Or else I'll tell them it's what the doctor ordered. Oh, you're doing me so much good. I feel less of a washout already.'

At last with a laugh she released him, but not before a wave of heat brought the blood to his cheeks, Quickly he countered it, forcing a reproving smile.

‘You mustn't try these sort of tricks, my girl, or you'll come to a sticky end. In the first place you're too damned attractive, and in the second you might pick the wrong man.'

‘But I've picked you.'

‘Now, listen, and be serious.' He turned the conversation determinedly. ‘There's something I've been thinking. It's this. As you're not quite up to the mark, I feel we ought to scratch from the tournaments.'

‘What!' she exclaimed, losing her air of indolence. ‘Pack up. After we've gone all the way to the finals and are practically sure to win?'

‘If we do, and scoop in all the prizes, we're sure to be blamed for pot-hunting.'

‘I don't care about the prizes – that plated tea-service and cheap Woolworth china I frankly wouldn't touch with a barge pole. But if I start something I have to finish it, convince people I amount to something – especially that prissy Kindersley bitch. I got my self-respect to think of. I want to show that we're the best in the ship.'

‘Well, we may be, but why rub it in?'

‘Because I want to rub it in. And when I want a thing I usually get it. I may be a bit down now but I pick up quick. I'll be on top of my form in no time.'

‘All right then,' reluctantly he pacified her. ‘Have it your way. But we must play Saturday at the latest. It's the captain's dinner that night and the presentation comes before the concert.' He rose. ‘Now I must get on with my round. See you anon.'

Saturday came, they did play – in the afternoon – and, as Moray had anticipated, won all three events. Mrs Kindersley and her husband fought hard in the deck-tennis match, but as Doris, quite herself again, played a fast aggressive game they were scarcely good enough. The climax came in the final set when Kindersley, reaching too far, missed his footing, skidded, then upended himself on the deck with a fearful thud.

‘Oh, do be careful.' Doris leaned over the net with mock solicitude. ‘You're rocking the boat.'

Not many spectators attended the event and a hollow silence greeted the remark. Indeed, when the match ended the applause that greeted the victors was less unenthusiastic than perfunctory. Moray was annoyed although Doris, who was again in high spirits, did not appear to notice any lack of warmth. Nor did her parents who, inevitably, were present. When Moray came off the court Holbrook took his arm and drew him into the smoke-room.

‘I thought you and me ought to have a chat, doctor,' he remarked, with an approving smile, when they had found two armchairs in a quiet corner. ‘And the better the opportunity the better the deed. Will you have a spot of something? No? You'll not refuse a lime-juice then. And I'll just take a chota peg of Scotch and soda.'

When the drinks were brought he raised his glass.

‘Good health! You know, lad, you remind me of my own young days. I was ambitious too – a chemist's assistant in Bootie, making up prescriptions for ignorant G.P.s who didn't know an acid from an alkali. Many's the time I had to ring up and say: “Doctor, you've prescribed soda bicarb, and hydrochloric acid in the same stomach mixture. If I make it up it'll blow the bottle to bits.” Maybe 'twas that sort of thing first gave me the idea that there was money in Pharmaceuticals that actually worked. When I'd saved a bit and married the wife and opened my own bit of a shop in Parkin Street, I started off with a few of my own prescriptions: Holbrook's Headache Powders, Holbrook's Senna Paste, Holbrook's Anti-Sprain Liniment. I remember that liniment, it cost me three farthings a bottle, and I sold it for one-and-six. Damn good stuff too, all the Rugby League teams used it, it's still one of our lines today. Well, that was the beginning, lad.'

He took a slow swallow of his drink, then resumed, explaining the growth and expansion of his business, not boastfully, but with the quiet North Country assurance of a man who has built up an immensely successful enterprise and amassed a fortune from it. Holbrook's were now one of the biggest manufacturers of chemists' supplies in the United Kingdom, but the bulk of their profits came from the marketing of a large number of highly profitable proprietary medicines ranging from cough cures to anti-bilious pills.

‘And don't you despise them, doctor, they're all first-rate prescriptions, I can show you testimonials by the thousands. I've kept a personal file of grateful letters that would warm your heart.' Holbrook nodded confidingly and warmed his own cockles with another swallow. ‘So as we stand now we have the main factory in Bootle, a secondary unit in Cardiff, and big distributing warehouses in London, Liverpool, Glasgow and Belfast. We do a tremendous export trade with the East, and that's why my son Bert is out opening up new offices and larger stockrooms in Calcutta. But that's not all, lad,' Holbrook continued, knowingly prodding Moray with a forefinger. ‘ We have plans, big plans, for extending to America. Once Bert gets through with Calcutta I'm sending him to New York. He's already spied out a good factory site there. Mind you, it'll be a different kind of trade in the States. Times are changing and we'll go in for high class stuff, vitamins and such-like. We might even have a go at some of the new barbiturates. But believe me, whatever we do we'll make a slap-up success of it.'

He sat back, pulled out a cigar and lit up, wheezed a little, then, his twinkling eyes still holding Moray, be smiled.

‘These are my prospects, young fellow me lad. Now what about yours?'

‘Well, sir,' Moray had coloured slightly at the directness of the question, ‘when I get back from this trip I have a hospital job waiting on me. A good one too, with opportunity for research work and … a salary of five hundred a year.'

‘Ay, that's a job, lad, right enough and, saving your presence, a pretty ordinary one. I asked about your prospects.'

‘Naturally, I'm hoping for advancement …'.

‘What kind of advancement? A move to a bigger hospital? I'm pretty familiar with that line of country; It'll take years. Once you're in the hospital service you're bogged down in it for life. And for a smart young fellow like you, with brains and personality, that would be a crime.'

‘I don't regard it as such,' Moray said stiffly.

‘Well, I do. And I wouldn't tell you so if the missus and I didn't think the world of ye. Now look here,' he tipped the ash off his cigar end, ‘I'm not a man to beat about the bush. We could use a young medico like you in our business, especially in the American plant. You could advise us on technique, work out new prescriptions, lay out our advertising and, since ye speak of research, get busy in our new laboratory. There would be plenty of opportunity for you. And from our point of view it would help us to have a professional man on the board. As to salary,' he paused, riveting Moray with a friendly, bloodshot eye, ‘ I would start you at fifteen hundred quid a year, with a possible bonus, and annual increases. Furthermore, I'll go so far as to say that, in time, if things went well between us, there might even be a partnership in store for ye.'

Thoroughly taken aback, stunned, in fact, Moray averted his gaze. The nature of this startling offer, while it had a sound basis of commercial logic, was in reality as transparent as the porthole through which he now viewed with embarrassment the slowly heaving sky. And Holbrook meant it to be transparent. How to refuse gracefully, without hurting the old boy's feelings without indeed alienating the entire family, that was the problem. At last he said:

‘It's extremely generous of you, Mr Holbrook, and I feel deeply honoured by your good opinion of me. But I've accepted the hospital appointment, given my word. I couldn't break it.'

‘They'll get somebody else,' Holbrook countered easily. ‘Ay, without the slightest trouble. There'll be a regular hard-up rush.'

Moray was silent. He knew that he had only to mention his approaching marriage to kill the offer dead. But for some obscure reason, perhaps an over-sensitivity, an exaggerated delicacy of feeling, he hesitated. He stood so well with this worthy family, that he did not relish the thought of shattering – as he undoubtedly would – a very pleasant and satisfactory relationship. Besides, the question of his engagement had never once come up during the voyage. It was not his fault if he had been mistaken for an unattached young man; he had simply not had the opportunity to introduce the subject. How painfully odd it would seem if he were forced to do so now. He'd look an absolute idiot, or worse, as though he had almost been ashamed to speak of Mary, No, with the end of the trip almost in sight, he could not place himself in so invidious a position. It wasn't worth it. In a few more days the Holbrooks would be gone, he would never see them again. And on the voyage home he would take good care to declare his position early so that this kind of contretemps could not possibly recur. In the meantime his best course would be to temporise.