Doctor's Assistant Page 2

  During his first weeks of freedom he had talked often with Laurette and discovered, to his disgruntled amazement, that though he loved her deeply he knew hardly a thing about her. She was sweet and even tractable, but she had her own opinions, this young woman not yet out of her teens, and most of them seemed hopelessly incomprehensible to a man who had lived and worked solely among men. Eventually he had decided that before settling down together it wouldn’t be a bad notion for them to take a holiday, during which they could get to know each other. To Captain Delaney, who had served at many British outposts, a holiday meant a voyage, and he had chosen South Africa for no better reason than that when going through his vast collection of snapshots Laurette had exclaimed most over one of a much-ornamented Zulu rickshaw boy. At once he knew a hankering to show her the real thing.

  Laurette had loved Cape Town and Durban. She had thrilled almost wordlessly to every new sight and sensation; but there had been no suggestion that they make their home in the country till a small steamer carried them down the Wild Coast of Pondoland to Port Quentin. There they had met a couple of writers and an artist, old Mr. Kelsey, and one or two others who had houses above the sea and described the spot as peaceful yet exhilarating. Providentially, a modestly-priced bungalow was for sale, and neither Delaney had hesitated to confess to the other that it would suit them perfectly. Laurette’s only problem was how to earn a living in such a sparsely populated district, and a solution to that had cropped up the first time she met Dr. Vaughan.

  To John Delaney the five months in Port Quentin had been some of the best and most fruitful of his life. He worked well, took much pride in the small banana plantation at the back of the house, and derived untold pleasure from Laurette’s unflagging interest in all things African.

  When she had burst in to tell him the yacht had been spotted, he had been tempted to leave his work and scramble with her down to the jetty. But she had vanished so quickly that he had thought better of it, and watched the navigation of the vessel through the “Gates” from his window instead.

  He was in the lounge to greet Laurette as she hurried in and thrust the door closed behind her.

  “So the Barracuda is safe in harbor,” he said. “Was that Charles Heron with old Kelsey?”

  She nodded, unknotting the scarf from her hair. “A bearded autocrat. Thinks no end of himself.”

  “With reason. That was a tricky piece of manoeuvring. Did you invite him to have a meal with us?”

  “I did not,” she answered firmly. “I hope he’ll be bored stiff and shoot off to Basutoland.”

  “Why should you wish that about a man you scarcely know?”

  Smiling, she shook her head. “It’s odd, but I do. He doesn’t belong in Port Quentin.” She thought for a moment, then asked, “What is Basutoland like?”

  “It’s untamed and mountainous. No railways, and most of the roads are merely tracks. They have cold winters and quite a bit of snow on the mountains. It’s administered like any other British Protectorate.”

  “Untamed. It sounds an admirable setting for Mr. Heron,” she said, and added dismissively, “Ready for tea?”

  She went to the kitchen and prepared the tea tray herself. The Fingo boy, Bwazi, was their only servant, and Laurette, like most people newly from England, was half afraid of asking too much of him. Bwazi was free every day from two-thirty till six; to be sure, he invariably spent the time idling on the step of his hut, but it never occurred to Laurette to break into his meditations.

  Waiting for the kettle to boil, she looked from the window across the riotous flower-beds towards the light, lush green of the cultivated bananas which brought a little additional cash into the house and a great deal of satisfaction to her father’s heart. She still had not quite got over the wonder of having such fruits as bananas, papaws, oranges, avocadoes and mangoes right here in the Delaney garden. In fact, it still thrilled her to remember that this house in one of the loveliest parts of Africa was their very own.

  She recalled the place when they had first seen it: the garden blanketed by a superabundance of rubbery weeds and vines, the veranda smothered in wild bougainvilia, the walls stained both inside and out. In one of the bedrooms they had found a nest of poisonous spiders, and the kitchen ceiling had sprouted a curious lilac-colored fungus. The pervading smell had been of damp warmth and excessive growth blended with the musty odor of mildew.

  On that first inspection of the house Bwazi had presented himself—small, chocolate-skinned and dressed in his best khaki shorts and white shirt. By the telegraphic means employed among natives he had heard that the master was hoping to stay in Port Quentin, and he wished to offer his services. The master had only to say the word and he, Bwazi, would at this minute begin to clean the house.

  All three of them had worked on the place. They had scraped and painted, renewed sections or the roof, plastered cracks and reinforced the veranda pillars with an extra layer of cement. Bwazi had scrubbed the floors, and within a week or two they gleamed a rich mahogany brown. Most of the furniture and rugs had been made at the mission, eleven miles away in the low mountains whose sides were splodged with groups of native kraals surrounded by mealie lands.

  The “Delaney place,” as it came to be known, had become one of those houses at which local people stare in passing. From a decrepit and crumbling square of overgrown bricks and stucco surmounted by a rusty roof it had been transformed into a pleasing abode in five acres of productive land.

  “These English!” someone said. “Who else would tackle such a job in a hot climate without professional help?”

  In Laurette’s opinion, the whole adventure had been something she wouldn’t have missed for the world, and her father, comparing the worth of the house as it stood with what it had cost them, expressed a deep contentment. Though its value to them both was above money.

  The kettle sang and Laurette made the tea. She heard noises at the front door, followed by men’s voices, and automatically she put two more cups on the tray and heaped a dish with the almond fingers and fairy cakes she had baked that morning.

  But there was only one guest—a familiar one. Ben Vaughan was standing near the table, one hand pressing down his windswept fawn hair, the other plunged into his pocket. His thinnish face smiled at Laurette as he came to take the tray.

  “You’re late today,” she said. “I thought you must have gone straight home.”

  “I did, and came on here. I need your help, Laurette.” He caught her swiftly-enquiring glance and nodded reassuringly. “It’s nothing alarming, so we won’t bore your father with the details. Sit down, my dear. Having tea in this house always makes me forget I’m a hard-worked and little-appreciated doctor.”

  “That,” said John Delaney, “savors of self-pity. You’re a good doctor, Ben, but it may console you to know that if you were an even better one, the natives would still supplement your remedies with their own. You can’t blame them; their herbs and witcheries have been with them for centuries.”

  “I’ve been reconciled to that for a long time,” Ben said. He handed the first cup Laurette had filled to the Captain, and sank back into his chair to take his own. “One of my troubles is not being able to get away for a break. When I bought this practice from the retiring doctor three years ago, I thought that living in Port Quentin would always be enough. One could climb, bathe, go fishing, do a bit of gardening. And there was the added interest of serving all kinds of patients.”

  “What’s gone wrong, then?” demanded John Delaney bluntly.

  Ben stirred his tea and abstractedly transferred a cake to his plate. “I don’t know. I seem to be perpetually unsettled, that’s all.”

  “It’s the weather,” said Laurette lightly. “But don’t you rather like feeling unsettled? I think the sensation can be exciting.”

  The two men, one middle-aged and watchful and the other much younger yet jaded-looking, exchanged amused glances. But Ben at once looked back at the bright young face on the other side of th
e tea table.

  “I’m not nineteen,” he said. “I’m thirty-one and feeling every day of it.”

  He looked his age, too, Laurette admitted to herself. There were permanent lines at the corners of his eyes, and the slackness about him which she had hitherto regarded as part of his nature might be attributable to a state of chronic over-tiredness. He did need a holiday.

  “You ought to get married, Ben,” commented her father. “There’s nothing so effective as a wife to give one’s working life its proper perspective.”

  Ben laughed. “I’ll think it over,” he said.

  The talk veered and second cups were poured, and presently John Delaney went off to do a little more work. As soon as they were alone Ben stood up and placed his cup on the tray. He paced to the window and back again.

  Laurette’s blue eyes softened. During her contacts with him at his house she had come to know Ben Vaughan very well. She knew how he chafed against the limitations of his practice, how he longed to be able to promise his patients who required surgery that he would see them through; instead they had to be sent miles away across the mountains to be attended to by strangers. The mission, situated on the edge of a huge native reserve, was equipped with a clinic and a native ward, but there was only makeshift provisions for urgent white cases. Occasionally he got heated about the lack of facilities, and Laurette thought that that was what bothered him now.

  But he stopped, and gave her a small smile. “Thank heaven for you,” he said. “It was a miraculous wind that brought you to Port Quentin. I’ve often wondered what I’d have done if you hadn’t turned up.”

  “You’d have managed all right. I’m not a very good nurse. What was it you wanted to see me about?”

  He hitched his trousers and lowered himself to the arm of the divan. “You remember my telling you about a piccanin at the mission who has distorted leg muscles? Well, I’ve brought him down to stay with my boy and his wife in their hut. Between us, you and I are going to massage that leg into shape, Laurette.”

  “Are we? When do we start?”

  “Tomorrow—you in the mornings and I in the evenings. I’ll show you how to go about it.”

  “I’m so glad. If we can send him back normal it’ll do heaps of good. The others will believe...”

  “Not so fast!” He leaned over and patted her shoulder. “I love your enthusiasm but it’s a wee bit frightening, because eager people always suffer the most bumps. I want life to be kind to you, Laurette.”

  “That’s sweet of you—but then you are a sweet person.”

  “I must make the obvious rejoinder, because it’s true. You’re the easiest person in the world to be sweet to. It was as inevitable as the moon and the stars that I should fall in love with you.”

  His final words washed over Laurette like a tide of icy water. She went still as death, staring at him; then slowly she roused and contrived a smile.

  “For a moment I thought you were serious.”

  “I am serious,” he answered in flat tones. “Don’t lose color and tremble. I’m not asking you to marry me or even to try and love me back. Nothing’s altered.”

  It was, though. There was the difference between lighthearted ignorance and uneasy knowledge—except that the whole thing was incredible.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “Don’t be,” he told her softly, “or you’ll make me wish I’d kept quiet. I wanted you to know because ... well, girls of your age and upwards do sometimes think about such things”—he crinkled a smile at her—”and I don’t see why I shouldn’t be in the running.”

  Soon after this he strode out into the gale, leaving a faint sadness in the atmosphere of the plain little lounge. Laurette carried away the tray and began to make preparations for dinner, but she could not be downcast for long. When one has never experienced the pangs of love one is apt to underrate their effects upon other people. Besides, Ben was a doctor, and doctors are notoriously unemotional.

  Next day he behaved as if the talk had never happened. Laurette walked down to the doctor’s house, donned her cap and apron and was introduced, in the tiny room adjoining the consulting room, to a ten-year-old boy who had no word of English. Ben explained the muscular malformation of the leg and demonstrated the necessary type of massage. He stood behind Laurette with his hands over hers, yet there was not the smallest sign that he regarded her as other than his paid assistant.

  For twenty minutes Laurette worked gently upon the boy, after which he was taken to his quarters and she turned to other duties. There were records to be written up, various medicaments to be ordered, and twice she was called to apply dressings to injured natives in the enclosed back veranda which Ben called the “Casualty Department.” She lunched alone on the front veranda and at three o’clock mounted the rutted red track for home.

  The wind had died to a strong breeze, and the steamer which had caused anxiety now lay alongside the jetty behind the Barracuda. Looking back, Laurette could see the boys unloading meal, sugar and tinned foods.

  Yes, the gale had passed. Port Quentin rose from the sea bathed in glory, the growth about the hills and headlands rich in coloring and so dense that only a slice of roof or a patch of wall indicated the dwellings. Some houses, like the huge, rambling mansion belonging to Mr. Kelsey, were completely hidden among the casuarinas and palms. This was the paradise of the rich and retired, the haven of the sensitive writer to whom long spells of solitude in inspiring and restful surroundings might be indispensable.

  Not the least of the benefits of Port Quentin, thought Laurette as she reached the white wooden gate which her father had made and she had painted, was the comparatively low cost of living. Bought foods were expensive, but the garden produced a superfluity of fruit and vegetables, and it was invariably easy to acquire a chicken from an African on the barter system. Meat was delivered only once a week, and for three days out of seven the Delaneys were happily vegetarian.

  In the porch Laurette sighed with satisfaction. She was healthily tired and looked forward to a delicious hour with a book on the divan. Her father was deep in some drawings commissioned by an advertiser, but he would emerge as usual at four-fifteen for a cup of tea.

  The door stood ajar about a foot and Laurette spared a moment to reflect upon her single regret about the house.

  She would have preferred a hall, even a tiny one, to having the main door open straight into the lounge. Not that it mattered very much; even modern houses in this country were often built that way.

  She stepped into the lounge, pulled off her hat and tossed it into a chair, and stretched with sensuous abandon, as one sometimes does when alone.

  “Pretty as a sapling,” said a cool voice, and she swung about to gaze with hostile bewilderment at the stranger.

  No, not a stranger. There was no mistaking that haughty nose and the sea-green eyes. The beard was gone, that was all. He was tall and tanned and mocking, his white shirt open at the throat, and his hands carelessly thrust into the pockets of his shorts.

  “Good afternoon,” she said. “How nice and polite of you to call.”

  “Not a bit.” Charles did not move from his negligent position near the false fireplace. “I came to see your father on a business matter.”

  The words were almost a snub but the tone was utterly courteous. Laurette was vexed to find herself straightening her belt as if she were nervous.

  “I’ll tell him you’re here.”

  “He knows. He’s rooting out some drawings to show me.”

  “Oh. How’s the arm?”

  He withdrew his right hand from his pocket and showed her a long strip of adhesive plaster on the inner side of his forearm. “It’s nearly right. I heal quickly.”

  “You didn’t let Dr. Vaughan stitch it.”

  “I didn’t put on this plaster till I came out. It seemed a pity to disturb your beautiful dressing.”

  She ignored the hint of sarcasm. “You’ll have a scar.”

  “Perhaps, but I can
stand the physical sort.”

  “You’re probably tough enough to stand any sort,” she said.

  There was a silence. Laurette wished her father would come and relieve her of the necessity for small talk. She didn’t care for Charles’ analytical regard, and somehow he made the lounge appear what it actually was: cheap, small and cosy. “What of it!” she exclaimed fiercely to herself. “No one else looks out of place in it—not even monied old Mr. Kelsey.”

  “I suppose you’ve just come off duty?” he asked. “Do you enjoy working for Ben Vaughan?”

  It hadn’t occurred to her that Charles and Ben were acquainted, though it was perfectly natural that they should have met long before Laurette had come to Port Quentin. Charles spent all his short leaves here; doubtless he knew everyone.

  “It’s interesting,” she answered, “and he’s a patient instructor. He won’t let me do any real nursing.”

  “I expect he realizes you wouldn’t be any good at real nursing.”

  She looked at him with displeasure and exasperation. “You like annoying people, don’t you? What grounds have you got for believing I’m made of poor stuff?”

  “I didn’t say you were; you fire too quickly.” Indolently he straightened. “I’m as gifted with judgment as the next chap. You’d do a job of nursing if you had to, and do it well, but you’d end up limp as wet string. You’re too young, anyway.”

  Laurette did not parry that one, but her chin tilted and tiny sparks shone in her eyes. “I don’t suppose a woman has ever told you before that you’re insufferable,” she said.

  “Not in so many words,” he returned evenly. “Most of those I knew could give you ten years, and you’d be surprised at the difference those years mean in poise and wisdom.”