“I’ll go and save her if you like.”
“My dear chap, will you? I daren’t. These poets are touchy brutes. And I always get their names mixed up. They arc like this fellow Humphries-they write home-to the Arts Council. I won’t forget this, Plarr. Anything I can ever do for you… up there…”
The doctor found himself with more work than usual on his hands when he returned to the north. He had no time for Humphries, that old troublemaker, and he was not interested in Charles Fortnum’s marriage-whether fortunate or unfortunate. Once, when some remark recalled the Ambassador’s words to him, he wondered whether Charley might possibly have married his housekeeper that hawk like woman who had opened the door when he visited the Consulate for the first time. A marriage like that seemed not improbable. Old men, like dissident priests, were frequently known to marry their housekeepers sometimes as a measure of false economy, sometimes from fear of a lonely death. Death to Doctor Plarr who was still in his early thirties, appeared in the guise of a fortuitous accident on the road or an unforeseen cancer but in the mind of an old man it was the inevitable end of a long and incurable sickness. Perhaps Charley Fortnum’s alcoholism was a symptom of his fear.
One afternoon, while the doctor was taking an hour’s siesta his bell rang. He opened the door and there was the hawk like woman, bristling yet again in the hope of carrion. He nearly took a chance and addressed her as Seńora Fortnum.
The guess would have proved mistaken. Seńor Fortnum, she said, had telephoned to her from the camp. His wife was ill. He wanted Doctor Plarr to drive out to the camp and visit her.
“Did he say what was wrong?”
“Seńora Fortnum has a pain in the stomach,” the woman replied with contempt. The marriage had obviously pleased her no more than it had pleased Doctor Humphries.
Doctor Plarr drove to the camp in the cool of the evening. The small ponds on either side of the highway looked like patches of molten lead in the last lingering light. Fortnum’s Pride was standing at the end of a mud road under a grove of avocados, the heavy brown pears the size and shape of cannon balls. On the verandah of the rambling bungalow Charley Fortnum sat before a bottle of whisky, a syphon and, astonishingly, two clean glasses. “I’ve been waiting for you,” he said reproachfully.
“I couldn’t come earlier. What’s the trouble?”
“Clara’s been in a lot of pain.”
“I’ll go in and see her.”
“Have a whisky first. I looked in at her just now and she was asleep.”
“Thank you then, I will. I’m thirsty. There’s a lot of dust on the road.”
“Soda? Say when.”
“Right to the top.”
“I wanted to have a word with you anyway-before you went in. You’ve heard about my marriage I suppose?”
“The Ambassador told me.”
“Had he anything to say?”
“No. Why?”
“There’s been a lot of talk. And Humphries cuts me.”
“That’s lucky for you.”
“You see-” Charley Fortnum hesitated. “Well, she is very young,” he said. It was not clear whether he was excusing his critics or apologizing for himself.
Doctor Plarr said, “Lucky again.”
“She’s not twenty, and, you know, I won’t see sixty again.”
Doctor Plarr wondered if he had been summoned to advise the Consul on a less soluble problem than his wife’s stomach-ache. He drank to fill what he thought might be an awkward silence.
“That’s not the trouble,” Charley Fortnum said. (Doctor Plarr was surprised by his insight.) “I can manage things well enough so far… and afterward… there’s always the bottle, isn’t there? An old family friend. The bottle I mean. Helped my father too, the old bastard. I just wanted to explain about her. Otherwise you might be a bit surprised when you see her. She’s so very young. And shy too. She’s not used to this sort of life. A house like this and servants. And the country The country’s awfully quiet after dark.”
“Where does she come from?”
“Tucumán. Real Indian blood. A long way back of course. I ought to warn you-she doesn’t much care for doctors. She’s had a bad experience of them.”
“I’ll try to win her confidence,” Doctor Plarr said.
“This pain,” Charley Fortnum said, “it did occur to me it might be, you know, a child. Or something of the kind.”
“She doesn’t take the pill?”
“You know what these Spanish Catholics are like. Superstition, of course. Like walking under a ladder. Clara doesn’t know who Shakespeare is, but she’s heard all about the Pope’s what-do-you-call-it. Anyway I’d have to get the pills somehow through the Embassy. Can you imagine what they’d say? You can’t even buy them under the counter here. Of course I always wore a thing until we were really together.”
“So you bore the sin for her?” Doctor Plarr teased him.
“Oh well, my conscience has got pretty tough with age. Another little thing won’t do it any harm. And if she’s happier that way… When you’ve finished your whisky…”
He led Doctor Plarr down a corridor hung with Victorian sporting prints: riders falling into a stream, checked at a bullfinch, rebuked by the master. He walked softly on tiptoe. At the end of the corridor he opened a door just a crack and looked in. “I think she’s awake,” he said. “You’ll find me on the verandah, Ted, with the whisky. Don’t be long.”
One electric candle was alight below the statuette of a saint, a saint whom Doctor Plarr didn’t recognize, and he was reminded for a moment of the small cells that stood around the patio at the house of Seńora Sanchez, each with a votive candle. “Good evening,” he said to the head on the pillow. The face was so covered in dark hair that only the eyes were visible; they peered back at him, like a cat’s from a shrubbery.
“I don’t want to be examined,” the girl told him. “I won’t be examined.”
“I don’t want to examine you. I want to hear about your stomach-ache, that’s all.”
“It’s better now.”
“Good. Then I won’t stay long. May I turn up the light?”
“If you have to,” she said and brushed the hair away from her face. Below the hairline Doctor Plarr saw a small grey birthmark in the spot where a Hindu girl…
He said, “Whereabouts do you feel the pain? Show me.”
She turned the sheet down and indicated a place on her naked body. He put his hand out to touch her, but she moved her body away from him. He said, “Don’t be afraid. I’m not going to examine you in Doctor Benevento’s way,” and he heard her catch her breath. Nonetheless she allowed him to press his fingers on her stomach.
“There?”
“Yes.”
“Nothing to worry about,” he said. “A little inflammation of the intestine, that’s all.”
“Intestine?” He could see the word was strange to her and frightening.
“I’ll leave some bismuth powder for you with your husband. Take it in water. If you mix some sugar with it, it doesn’t taste too bad. I wouldn’t drink whisky if I were you. You are more used to orange juice, aren’t you?”
She looked at him with a startled expression and whispered, “What’s your name?”
“Plarr,” he said, and added, “Eduardo Plarr.” He doubted whether she knew the surname of any man apart from Charley Fortnum.
“Eduardo,” she repeated, and this time took a bolder look at him. She asked, “I don’t know you, do I?”
“No.”
“But you know Doctor Benevento?”
“I’ve met him once or twice.” He stood up. “I don’t suppose those Thursday visits were very agreeable.” He added, before she could speak, “You aren’t ill. You don’t have to stay in bed.”