The Judas Tree Read online

  Chapter Ten

  The weather continued fine, the sea calm, the sky brilliant by day, shading through violet sunsets into velvet and luminous nights through which, the Pindari traced its phosphorescent wake. This was the sea of Jason and Ulysses; at dawn the ship seemed suspended between sky and water, timeless and unreal, except that there, on the starboard bow, was Sardinia, the healthy fragrance of the island borne on a soft and fitful breeze.

  Drawing deep, free breaths of this aromatic air without pain or hindrance, Moray knew that his pleurisy had gone. No need now to put his stethoscope on his chest. His skin was tanned, he had never felt better. After those years of prolonged grind, the present conditions of his life seemed altogether too good to be true. Awakened at seven by his cabin “boy”, who, padding barefoot from the galley, brought his chota hazri of tea and fresh fruit, he got up half an hour later, took a plunge in the sports deck swimming-pool, then dressed. Breakfast was at nine, after which he made his round of visits or, once a week, accompanied Captain Torrance on the official inspection of the ship. From ten-thirty till noon he was in his surgery. Lunch came at one, and thereafter, except for a nominal surgery at five o’clock, he was free for the rest of the day, expected only to make himself agreeable and obliging to the passengers. At seven-thirty the melodious dinner gong boomed up and down the alleyways—always a welcome sound, since the meals were rich, spicy and plentiful, the native curries especially delicious.

  On the following Monday the tournaments began, and just before eight bells, recollecting his engagement, Moray closed the surgery and went up to the sports deck for the first round of the deck-tennis doubles. His partner was already there, wearing a short white skirt and a singlet, standing beside her parents who rather to his embarrassment, had taken deck chairs close to the court so that they might miss nothing of the game. As he apologised for keeping her waiting, although actually he was not late, she did not speak, and barely glanced at him. He scarcely knew whether she was nervous or, as he had suspected at table, merely perverse.

  Their opponents arrived, a newly married Dutch couple, the Hendricks, who were on their way out to Chittagong, and the match began. At first Doris was carelessly erratic but, although he had never played the game before, he had a quick eye and managed to cover her mistakes, which he made light of, with his usual good humour. At this, she began to try, and to play brilliantly. She had a straight yet well-developed figure—round, very pretty breasts and hips, and long, well-shaped legs, revealed in motion by her short skirt. The Hendricks, a plump and heavy-footed pair, were no match for them. They won handsomely by six games to two. As he congratulated her, saying, “Your father told me you were good at games, and you are,” she gave him one of her rare direct looks, fleeting and unsmiling.

  “Yes,” she said. “I’ve been taught a few tricks, and picked up some on my own. But aren’t you going to buy me a drink? Let’s have it up here.”

  When the deck steward brought two tall lemon squashes, filled with ice, she lay back in her deck chair, with half-closed eyes, sipping her drink through the straw. He glanced at her awkwardly, at a loss as to what to say, a strange predicament for one who could invariably find the right word in the right place. The heat of the game had brought a faint colour into her pale complexion, and caused her singlet to adhere to her breasts, so that the pink of her nipples showed through the thin damp cotton. She’s an attractive girl, thought Moray, almost angrily, but what the devil is the matter with her? Had she lost her tongue? Apparently not, for suddenly she spoke.

  “I’m glad we won. I wanted to knock out that sickening pair of Dutch love-birds. Can you imagine them in bed together. ‘Excuse my fat, dear.’ I’d like to win all the tournaments. If only to spite our delightful passengers. What a crowd they are. I hate them all, don’t you?”

  “No, I can’t say I do.”

  “You can’t mean it. They’re an appalling lot, especially our table. Mrs Hunt-hunter—what a horse-faced hag. Makes me sick. She’s common as mud, really. And the ship’s lousy too. I never wanted to come on this damn trip. My devoted parents dragged me on board by the hair. My cabin is supposed to be one of the best on A deck. Dad paid through the nose for it. You should see it. A dog kennel, with a bath like the kitchen sink. That’s the worst, for, if anything, I like to wash. And can you imagine, natives serving one’s food. Why can’t they have white stewards?”

  “Our table boy seems a very decent jolly sort.”

  “Haven’t you noticed how he smells? It would kill you. I’m very sensitive about smells, it’s something to do with the olfactory nerves the doctor told Mother. Phooey to him—smarmy windbag. The point is, I like people to smell clean.”

  “Do I?” he couldn’t help asking, ironically.

  She laughed, stretching her long legs widely apart.

  “Wouldn’t you like to know? Frankly, you’re the one faint gleam on the horizon. Didn’t you notice me taking you in that first day at lunch? I either take to a person or I don’t. I can tell at a glance. To be quite frank, I asked Father to get you as my partner. He’s not a bad old bird though he is a bit of a soak. And Mother is passable, if only she’d stop clucking over me. But I have to keep them in order, quite often I absolutely freeze them, to get them to do what I want. I’m talking an awful lot. Sometimes I talk all the time, sometimes I say nothing, absolutely nothing. I like to treat people that way. I’m proud. I used to drive old Wainwright out of her mind. When she’d start lecturing me I’d simply look at her and throw myself into a coma.”

  “She’s your headmistress?”

  “Was,” she said idly. “She threw me out.”

  “What on earth for?”

  She gave him her slow smile.

  “That may be revealed in a later instalment.”

  On the following afternoon Doris and the doctor successfully played two rounds at bull board and one at deck quoits, and Doris’s parents were again spectators. Moray quite enjoyed the games. He’d never met anyone like her before, so amusingly prejudiced and intolerant, so sure of her own privileged position, and yet with a streak underneath of commonness, of vulgarity almost, that redeemed her absurd pretensions. The fact that she liked him was flattering. It was now apparent that the Holbrooks doted upon their daughter, unresponsive though she might be, and he was less surprised than he might have been when they rose and came towards him, quite unusually pleased by the triple victory. Mrs Holbrook gave him a noticeably kind smile.

  “You brought our Dorrie out, doctor,” she remarked. “And did very well yourself, too.”

  Doris herself, who was on the point of leaving, said nothing, but meeting his eye she gave him her peculiar half-smile. He talked to her parents for a bit; then as he left to go down to his surgery he observed them put their heads together, Mrs Holbrook apparently urging her husband to action. Indeed, some minutes later, Holbrook rolled into the dispensary, lush, genial and garrulous.

  “Nothing the matter with me, doc. Nothing at all. Just felt like a sup of bishmuth. Nothing like bishmuth to ease the stomach. Where do you keep it? I’ll help myself.”

  Moray indicated the bottle of bismuth, wondering, as he watched the other nudge a generous helping into his palm, if he ought not to alert Holbrook to the state of his liver, which was palpably cirrhotic. Most days with Henderson and Macrimmon, the two tea planters, the old boy, except for his ventures to the sports deck and his chat with the captain on the bridge, was practically a fixture in the bar.

  “That’s the stuff,” Holbrook exclaimed, licking up the heap of white powder with prehensile thrusts of his furred tongue, “And here’s your fee, doctor.”

  “Good heavens, sir, I couldn’t take all that. It’s . . . it’s far too much.”

  “Doctor,” said Holbrook, slowly fixing Moray with his small, knowing, injected eye. “If you want the advice of a man who’s seen a lot of this wicked world, when you get the chance of a good thing, take it!”

  With warm generosity he pressed a five-pound
note into the dector’s hand.

  Thoughtfully replacing the bottle on the shelf when Holbrook had gone, Moray, who had been infected by O’Neil’s vocabulary, caught himself smiling: “We’d bloody well better win all the tournaments now.”

  This, however, was no more than a pose. The girl had begun to interest him, as a study. At times she seemed far more mature than her years, at others almost backward. One day she would be moodily taciturn, the next full of amusing and provocative talk. What he rather admired in her was her complete indifference to what people thought of her. She never sought popularity and, unlike those who were already first-naming each other in tight little groups, seemed actually to enjoy being an outsider. She had a particular gift for taking off people and could be offensively rude to anyone who tried to flatter or make up to her. Her careless attitude extended even to her personal belongings, of which she had an endless variety. She was always leaving a bag, scarf or sweater on deck, mislaying and losing valuable things without turning a hair. These complexities in her character aroused his curiosity. When at lunch and dinner she would look towards him with her concealed and puzzling smile, he was more at a loss than ever. Oddly enough he was inclined to feel sorry for her.

  All this gave an added spice of interest to what the mother had so inaptly phrased as “bringing Dorrie out” in the tournaments. There was not, in fact, much competition in the games, since many of the passengers were elderly. Only one pair seemed to offer serious opposition, the Kindersleys, a couple with two young children who were returning to Kadur in Mysore after three months’ leave. He was about thirty-five, excessively hearty and downright, manager of a small coffee estate that had been hit quite badly by the slump caused by excess production in Brazil. His wife, reputedly a fine lawn tennis player, was a pleasant little woman with a frank, rather serious expression. They sat at the first officer’s table. As the Pindari drew near to the Suez Canal, Moray and his partner, playing well together, were in all three semi-finals. So also were the Kindersleys.

  On the eve of their arrival at Port Said Mrs Holbrook, reclining on the promenade deck, beckoned the doctor, indicating the vacant chair beside her. On several occasions he had been honoured by this invitation and, in response to her gentle questioning, had disclosed enough of his early “struggles”—comparable in some degree to her own—to win her sympathy and approval. Now, after a comment on the admirable weather and a query as to when the ship would dock, she leaned towards him.

  “We’re going ashore tomorrow to see the sights, and do some shopping. We expect you to come with us.”

  He shook his head.

  “I’m terribly sorry, Mrs Holbrook. I have to stay on board. I’ve all the health papers to attend to with the port M.O.H. And a sick man in the crew who may have to go to hospital.”

  “What a pity,” she said, upset. “Couldn’t Mr Holbrook have a word with Captain Torrance?”

  “Oh, no,” he interposed hurriedly. “That’s out of the question. The bill of health’s most important. The ship can’t sail without it.”

  “Well,” she said at length, “we were counting on you. Dorrie will be proper disappointed.”

  A short pause followed, then in an intimate manner she began to speak about her daughter. Dorrie was such a dear girl, just the apple of her father’s eye, but she had been—well, sometimes a bit of a worry to them. It wasn’t as though they hadn’t given her the best—yes, the very best education that money could buy; Miss Wainwright’s was one of the most select schools in the North of England. She spoke French and could play the piano beautifully, really classical pieces. She’d had all sorts of private lessons in tennis and such-like, elocution and deportment. Father wanted her to have all the advantages. But she was such a highly strung girl, not exactly difficult, but, well, kind of moody and, though, mind you, she could be very lively and outspoken at times, inclined occasionally to get depressed—quite the opposite of her brother Bert who day in and day out was the jolliest chap in the world. Mrs Holbrook paused, her eyes lighting up at the thought of her son. Well, she concluded, she would say no more except that she was really and truly grateful, and Father was too, for the way he had taken an interest in Dorrie, and done her so much good—really, as one might say, wakened her up.

  Moray was touched. He liked this homely little woman who, weighted by the expensive trinkets and unbecoming clothes heaped on her by her husband, made no bones about her origin, and was, despite Holbrook’s wealth, entirely devoid of social pretensions, yet was so eagerly and, indeed, anxiously solicitous for her daughter. But he hardly knew what to say, and was compelled to fall back on mere politeness.

  “Doris is a fine girl. And I’m sure she’ll grow out of her little difficulties. Just look how she’s doing in the tournaments. And of course, if there’s anything I can do to help . . .”

  “You are good, doctor.” She pressed his hand maternally. “I needn’t tell you we’ve all real taken to you.”

  Chapter Eleven

  On the following day at ten o’clock they were off Port Said, passed the breakwater with the great de Lesseps statue and, after an hour’s wait in midstream till the yellow quarantine flag came down, drew into the dock and began to take on oil and water. All the passengers who intended going ashore had left the ship by noon. The Holbrooks waved to Moray as they went down the gangway and he regretted not being with them. Viewed from the boat deck, the town had an enticing and mysterious air. Beyond the huddle of dock sheds it lay yellow and white against a flat horizon made hazy by the heat. Bright tiled roofs and balconies gleamed in the sun. The pencil shapes of twin minarets rose delicately above the narrow crowded streets filled with colour, sound and movement. A pity he could not have accepted Mrs Holbrook’s invitation.

  However, he had much to occupy him. The Lascar in sick bay was a suspect case of osteomyelitis, and when the port medical officer confirmed the diagnosis there were papers to be signed and irritating delays to be overcome before the man could be moved into the ambulance and transferred to hospital. Then the drinking-water tanks must be checked, after which the captain sent for him, and so it went on. The ship was full of hucksters, policemen, stevedores, Egyptian visitors, and company agents. Four bells struck before he was temporarily free, and as the outgoing post closed in half an hour he scarcely had time to finish and bring up to date the letter to Mary he had been writing at odd moments during the past few days. He felt guil about this, the more so since, when the agent came aboard at six o’clock, three letters were in the mail sack from her, with one, he judged by the handwriting, from Willie. Rather than skim through these now, when he was so pressed for time, he decided to leave them on his locker and enjoy them at leisure after he turned in tonight. He still had to make out duplicate medical supply sheets for the extra emetine which, since an epidemic of amoebic dysentery was reported in the town, he had obtained from the port M.O. as a precautionary measure. When he had completed the company forms, he took them to the purser’s office. Only then did he remember that he was due in the smoke-room, where the Holbrooks had asked him to meet them for a drink before dinner. Aware that he was late he hurried off along the promenade deck, meeting passengers, many in a state of hilarity, wearing fezes and laden with purchases from the bazaars: boxes of Turkish delight and Egyptian cigarettes made, according to O’Neil, from camels’ dung—terracotta models of the Sphinx, brassware covered with hieroglyphics: for the most part junk. Macrimmon, drunkenly draped in a white burnous, had bought a foetus in a glass bottle.

  The Holbrooks had returned earlier and were there, all three, when he pushed through the glass swing doors, father, mother and Doris, surrounded by a score of packages. Holbrook, in high good humour, ordered the drinks: double Scotch for himself, champagne cocktails for the others; Mrs Holbrook, who rarely “indulged” and usually tried to restrain her husband, allowed herself to be persuaded on the plea of a special occasion. Then they began to speak animatedly of their expedition. It had been a great success: they had taken
a car and driven out along the shore of Lake Manzala, visited the great Mohammedan mosque, watched the performance of a snake charmer, inspected a collection of scarabs in the museum, lunched in the garden of the Pera Palace Hotel, where they had been given a wonderful fish curry served with sunflower seeds and green chillies, and finally, on the way back to the ship they had discovered a marvellous store.

  “Not a trashy place like the bazaars,” said Mrs Holbrook. “It’s owned by a man called Simon Artz. We had a proper time, shopping with him.”

  “Artz is a man of parts,” Doris laughed. “He keeps everything from everywhere.” Holding up the mirror from her bag, she was putting on lipstick. Either from the sun or from excitement her cheeks were faintly flushed, making her eyes brighter. She had never looked more alive.

  “So we bought ever so many things for our friends,” Mrs Holbrook resumed. “And we didn’t forget you, doctor. Working hard for us here while we were off enjoying ourselves.” With an affectionate smile she handed him a small oblong package.

  Reddening, he took it awkwardly, not knowing whether or not to open it.

  “Go on, have a look,” Holbrook urged slyly. “It won’t bite.”

  He opened the case, expecting to find some trivial souvenir. Instead it was a red gold wristlet watch, with a delicately plaited gold strap, a Patek Phillippe too, the best and most expensive hand-made Swiss movement. It must have cost the earth. He was speechless.

  “You are quite the kindest and most generous people,” he stammered, at last. “It’s the very thing I want and need . . .”.

  “Say no more about it, lad,” Holbrook broke in. “Our Dorrie happened to notice you didn’t wear one. ’Twas her that chose it for you.”

  Looking suddenly towards her, Moray caught her gaze fixed directly upon him, that challenging, intimate look which somehow bound them together in a kind of conspiracy.