The Narrow Corner (2 page)

H
E LOOKED
up. He gave a cry of surprise. For there, strolling towards him, down the middle of the dusty road, were two white men. No ship was in and he wondered where they had come from. They walked idly, looking to right and left of them, like strangers visiting the island for the first time. They were shabbily dressed in trousers and singlets. Their topis were grimy. They came up, saw him sitting in the open shop and stopped. One of them addressed him.

“Is this Kim Ching’s?”

“Yes.”

“Is he here?”

“No, he’s sick.”

“Bad luck. I suppose we can get a drink.”

“Surely.”

The speaker turned to his companion.

“Come on in.”

They entered.

“What’ll you have?” asked Dr. Saunders.

“A bottle of beer for me.”

“Same here,” said the other.

The doctor gave the order to the coolie. He brought bottles of beer and chairs for the strangers to sit on. One of them was middle-aged, with a sallow, lined face, white hair and a scrub of white moustache. He was of the middle height, spare, and when he spoke he showed hideously decayed teeth. His eyes were cunning and restless. They were small and pale and set somewhat close together, which gave him a foxy look, but his manner was ingratiating.

“Where have you come from?” asked the doctor.

“We just come in on a lugger. From Thursday Island.”

“A goodish way. Have fine weather?”

“Couldn’t want better. A nice breeze and no sea to speak of. Nichols’ my name. Captain Nichols. Maybe you’ve ’eard of me.”

“I can’t say I have.”

“I been sailin’ these seas for thirty years. There’s not an island in the Archipelago I ain’t put in at one time or another. I’m pretty well known around ’ere. Kim Ching knows me. Known me for twenty years.”

“I’m a stranger myself,” said the doctor.

Captain Nichols looked at him, and though his face was open and his expression cordial, you had a feeling that there was suspicion in his glance.

“I seem to know your face,” he said. “I could swear I seen you somewhere.”

Dr. Saunders smiled but did not volunteer any information about himself. Captain Nichols screwed up his eyes in the effort to remember where he had run across the little man. He scanned his face with attention. The doctor was short, only just over five foot six, and slight, but with something of a paunch. His hands were soft and podgy, but they were small, with tapering fingers, and if he had been vain it was possible to suppose that once upon a time he had been not a little pleased with them. They had still a sort of well-bred elegance. He was very ugly, with a snub nose and a large mouth; and when he laughed, which he did often, you saw big, yellow, uneven teeth. Under his bushy grey eyebrows his green eyes gleamed bright, amusing and clever. He was not very closely shaved and his skin was blotchy; he had a high colour which over the cheekbones
spread into a purple flush. It suggested some long-standing affection of the heart. His hair must once have been thick and black and coarse, but now it was nearly white and on the crown very thin. But his ugliness, far from being repellent, was attractive. When he laughed his skin puckered round the eyes, giving his face infinite vivacity, and his expression was charged with an extreme but not ill-natured malice. You would have taken him then for a buffoon, but for the shrewdness that gleamed from his shining eyes. His intelligence was obvious. And though merry and bright, fond of a joke and amused both at his own and at others’, you had an impression that even in the abandon of laughter he never quite gave himself away. He seemed to be on his guard. For all his chattiness and however hearty his manner, you were conscious (if you were observant and did not allow yourself to be taken in by his superficial frankness) that those merry, laughing eyes were watching, weighing, judging and forming an opinion. He was not a man to take things at their face value.

Since the doctor did not speak Captain Nichols went on:

“This is Fred Blake,” he said, with a gesture of his thumb towards his companion.

Dr. Saunders nodded.

“Makin’ a long stay?” continued the captain.

“I’m waiting for the Dutch packet.”

“North or south?”

“North.”

“What did you say your name was?”

“I didn’t mention it. Saunders.”

“I’ve knocked about too long in the Indian Ocean to ask questions,” said the captain, with his ingratiating laugh. “Ask no questions and you won’t be told no lies. Saunders? I’ve known a lot of chaps as answered to that name, but whether it was theirs or not by rights nobody knew but theirselves. What’s the matter with old Kim Ching? Fine old sport. I was lookin’ forward to ’avin’ a bit of a chin-wag with ’im.”

“His eyes went back on him. He’s had cataract.”

Captain Nichols sat up and held out his hand.

“Doc Saunders. I knew I’d seen your face. Fu-chou. I was up there seven years ago.”

The doctor took the proffered hand. Captain Nichols turned to his friend.

“Everyone knows Doc Saunders. Best doctor in the Far East. Eyes. That’s his line. I ’ad a pal once, everyone said ’e’d go blind, nothing could stop it, ’e went to see the doc and in a month ’e could see as well as you or me. The Chinks just swear by him. Doc Saunders. Well, this is a joyful surprise. I thought you never left Fu-chou from one year’s end to the other.”

“Well, I have now.”

“It’s a bit of luck for me, this. You’re the very man
I wanted to meet.” Captain Nichols leaned forward and his cunning eyes fixed the doctor with an intensity in which there was something very like menace. “I suffer from dyspepsia something awful.”

“Oh, Christ!” muttered Fred Blake.

It was the first time he had spoken since they sat down and Dr. Saunders turned to look at him. He slouched in his chair, gnawing his fingers, in an attitude that suggested boredom and ill-humour. He was a tall young man, slight but wiry, with curly, dark brown hair and large blue eyes. He did not look more than twenty. In his dirty singlet and dungarees he looked loutish, an unlicked cub, thought the doctor, and there was a surliness in his expression that was somewhat disagreeable; but he had a straight nose and a well-formed mouth.

“Leave off bitin’ your nails, Fred,” said the captain. “Disgustin’ ’abit, I call it.”

“You and your dyspepsia,” retorted the young man, with a chuckle.

When he smiled you saw that he had exquisite teeth. They were very white, small and of a perfect shape; they were so unexpected a grace in that sombre face, their beauty was so dazzling, that you were taken aback. His sulky smile had great sweetness.

“You can laugh because you don’t know what it is,” said Captain Nichols. “I’m a martyr to it. Don’t say
I’m not careful what I eat. I’ve tried everything. Nothin’ does me any good. This beer now. Do you think I shan’t suffer for it? You know just as well as I do that I shall.”

“Go on. Tell the doctor all about it,” said Blake.

Captain Nichols asked nothing better. He proceeded to narrate the history of his malady. He described his symptoms with a scientific accuracy. There was not a revolting detail that he omitted to mention. He enumerated the doctors he had consulted and the patent remedies he had tried. Dr. Saunders listened in silence, an expression of sympathetic interest on his face, and occasionally nodded his head.

“If there’s anyone as can do anythin’ for me it’s you, doc,” said the captain earnestly. “They don’t ’ave to tell me you’re clever, I can see that for meself.”

“I can’t work miracles. You can’t expect anyone to do much in a minute for a chronic condition like yours.”

“No, I don’t ask that, but you can prescribe for me, can’t you? There’s nothin’ I won’t try. What I’d like you to do is to make a thorough examination of me, see?”

“How long are you staying here?”

“Our time’s our own.”

“But we’re pushing off as soon as we’ve got what we want,” said Blake.

A quick look passed between the two men. Dr.
Saunders noticed it. He did not know why he had an impression that there was something strange in it.

“What made you put in here?” he asked.

Fred Blake’s face once more grew sullen, and when the doctor put his question he threw him a glance. Dr. Saunders read suspicion in it and perhaps fear. He wondered. It was the captain who replied.

“I’ve known Kim Ching donkey’s years. We wanted some stores, and we thought it wouldn’t do us any ’arm to fill up our tank.”

“Are you trading?”

“In a manner of speakin’. If anythin’ comes along we ain’t goin’ to miss a chance. Who would?”

“What cargo are you carrying?”

“A bit of everything.”

Captain Nichols smiled genially, showing his decayed, discoloured teeth, and he looked strangely shifty and dishonest. It occurred to Dr. Saunders that perhaps they were smuggling opium.

“You’re not going to Macassar by any chance?”

“We might be.”

“What’s that paper?” said Fred Blake suddenly, pointing to one that lay on the counter.

“Oh, that’s three weeks old. We brought it down in the ship I came on.”

“Have they got any Australian papers here?”

“No.”

Dr. Saunders chuckled at the notion.

“Is there any Australian news in that paper?”

“It’s Dutch. I don’t know Dutch. In any case, you’d have had later news than that on Thursday Island.”

Blake frowned a little. The captain grinned craftily.

“This ain’t exactly the hub of the universe, Fred,” he sniggered.

“Don’t you ever have any English papers here at all?” asked Blake.

“Now and then a stray copy of the Hong Kong paper finds its way here or a ‘Straits Times’, but they’re a month old.”

“Don’t they ever get any news?”

“Only what the Dutch ship brings.”

“Haven’t they got a cable or a wireless?”

“No.”

“If a man wanted to keep out of the way of the police I should think he’d be pretty safe here,” said Captain Nichols.

“For some time, anyway,” agreed the doctor.

“Have another bottle of beer, doc?” asked Blake.

“No, I don’t think I will. I’m going back to the rest-house. If you two fellows would like to come and dine there to-night, I can get you some sort of a meal.”

He addressed himself to Blake because he had a feeling that his impulse would be to refuse, but it was Captain Nichols who answered.

“That’d be fine. A change from the lugger.”

“You don’t want to be bothered with us,” said Blake.

“No bother. I’ll meet you here about six. We’ll have a few drinks and then go up.”

The doctor rose, nodded and left.

B
UT
he did not go immediately to the rest-house. The invitation he had so cordially given to these strangers was due to no sudden urge of hospitality, but to a notion that had come into his head while he was talking to them. Now that he had left Fu-chou and his practice, he was in no hurry to get back, and he had made up his mind to make a trip to Java, his first holiday for many years, before he returned to work. It occurred to him that if they would give him a passage on the lugger, if not to Macassar, at least to one of the more frequented islands, he could then find a steamer to take him in the direction he wished to go. He had been resigned to spending another three weeks or so on Takana when it seemed impossible to get away; but Kim Ching needed his services no longer, and now that a chance offered he was seized with an immense eagerness
to profit by it. The thought of staying where he was for so long with nothing to do suddenly became intolerable to him. He walked down the broad street, it was less than half a mile long, till he came to the sea. There was no quay. Coconuts grew to the water’s edge, and among them were the huts of the natives of the island. Children were playing about and gaunt pigs rooted among the piles. There was a straight line of silver beach with a few prahus and dug-outs drawn up on it. The coral sand glistened under the fiery sun, and even with shoes on it was hot under the soles of your feet. Hideous crabs scuttled out of your way as you walked. One of the prahus lay bottom up and three dark-skinned Malays in sarongs were working on it. A reef a few hundred yards out formed a lagoon, and in this the water was clear and deep. A small crowd of boys were romping in the shallow. One of Kim Ching’s schooners lay at anchor and not far from it was the strangers’ lugger. She was very shabby beside Kim Ching’s trim craft and badly needed a coat of paint. She seemed very small to rove the trackless ocean, and Dr. Saunders had a moment’s hesitation. He looked up at the sky. It was cloudless. No wind stirred the leaves of the coconut trees. Drawn up on the beach was a squat little dinghy, and he supposed it was in this that the two men had rowed ashore. He could see no crew on the lugger.

Having had a good look, he turned back and strolled along to the rest-house. He changed into the Chinese trousers and silk tunic in which from long habit he felt most at ease, and taking a book went out to sit on the verandah. Fruit trees grew round about the rest-house and opposite, on the other side of the path, was a handsome grove of coconuts. They rose, very tall and straight, in their regular lines, and the bright sun, piercing the leaves, splashed the ground with a fantastic pattern of yellow light. Behind him, in the cook-house, the boy was preparing tiffin.

Dr. Saunders was not a great reader. He seldom opened a novel. Interested in character, he liked books that displayed the oddities of human nature, and he had read over and over again Pepys and Boswell’s Johnson, Florio’s Montaigne and Hazlitt’s essays. He liked old travel books, and he could peruse with pleasure the accounts in Hakluyt of countries he had never been to. He had at home a considerable library of the books written about China by the early missionaries. He read neither for information nor to improve his mind, but sought in books occasion for reverie. He read with a sense of humour peculiar to himself, and was able to get out of the narratives of missionary enterprise an amount of demure fun which would have much surprised the authors. He was a quiet man, of an agreeable discourse, but not one to force his conversation on you
and he could enjoy his little joke without feeling a desire to impart it to another.