DOCTOR AT SEA

'Yes. Strikes me as a reliable honest sort of fellow.'

I swallowed. I felt any opinion of mine would spoil the contentment of both of them.

'Very well. Conference dismissed.'

As we went down the companionway together I said to McDougall 'The prohibition order's going to delay you chaps getting Hogmanay away to a good start.'

He dropped a red eyelid over a crafty eye.

'It'ud take more than yon pipsqueak to stand in a Scot's way on Hogmanay, lad. Come along to my cabin when you've finished yer tea to-morrow. We'll find you a dram or two from somewhere.'

Chapter Fifteen

I was called from my shower at eight the next evening to put half a dozen stitches in the forehead of a fireman who had fallen down the stokehold ladder. For this reason I was the only officer who arrived on deck to greet the guests sober. Captain Hogg's orders had been punctiliously obeyed, except for the one impounding the ship's supply of liquor; since tea-time Whimble had been poking his head in his locker like a nervous ostrich in a perilous desert, in the Chief Engineer's cabin Scots accents rawed under the sting of neat whisky, Hornbeam and the Mates poured gin from the water-bottles above their basins, and Captain Hogg himself had been entertaining Mr. Montmorency and his sleek Argentine wife.

The boatdeck of the Lotus looked surprisingly attractive. Fairy-lights shone on the fresh white chalk spread over the scrubbed deck, ensigns and signal flags lined the rails and obliterated the stark Frigorifico, and on the long tables garnished with blazing Argentine flowers glass and linen fell pleasingly and promisingly on the eye. The band-three Argentines with piano, guitar, and drums was seriously tuning up behind the ensign of the Commonwealth of Australia. At the head of the gangway, which was enlivened with bunting and a string of bulbs, a quartermaster stood nervously in white matelot's rig; stewards in shining jackets stood with silver trays and serviettes between the fresh-painted ventilators; behind the bar was Easter, with an expression of disarming honesty on his face that suggested a bishop going through the Dover customs with two bottles of brandy in his gyp.

Besides the quartermaster the ship's officers-in clean white number tens, white shoes, correct epaulettes, collar fully buttoned up-stood greeting the guests with great charm and affability. To me it seemed that the decorum of my shipmates had a certain brittleness about it, a nervous overemphasis. This was noticeable in the way the Chief Engineer tenaciously kissed the hands of the ladies; the hesitation with which Whimble brought a match to a guest's cigarette; Hornbeam's roar of laughter; Trail, openmouthed, mentally stripping every woman under forty stepping off the gangway; and the abandon with which Captain Hogg was pinching Mrs. Montmorency's bottom.

I felt a tug at my elbow. It was Easter leaning across the bar, holding out a long glass of brownish fluid.

'Best respects, Doctor,' he said hoarsely. 'This is the stuff I'm making up for me and my mates.'

'What is it?'

'Little cocktail I invented on the Western run. I calls it 'Fire Alarm.' '

'Thank you, Easter. I fancy I have some leeway to make up.'

The guests seemed to be shippers and senior Fathom Line employees who knew each other and Mr. Montmorency well, and were therefore relieved of the cumbrance of social chatter while getting down to the free drinks and lobster patties. As I was not in uniform no one bothered to talk to me, and I was content to stay in the shade of a ventilator by the bar, smoke the ship's cigarettes, drink Fire Alarms, and leave the entertaining to my companions.

'Chй, un cigarillo por favor.'

A slim brunette with incandescent eyes and teeth stood in front of me.

'I beg your pardon?'

'Oh, don't you speak Spanish? I only want a cigarette.'

I handed her one from my own tin.

'Thanks. You work in the meat-works too, do you?'

I was hurt. The Lotus may have been a rusting old-fashioned tramp, but that night I was proud of her.

'Not a bit. I'm one of the officers.'

'What of this old tub? You look too respectable. Why aren't you dressed up?'

'I am the doctor,' I explained stiffly.

Her eyes instantly shone brighter. 'Well, what do you know? I get the most crippling pain in my back.'

I saw at once that I had committed a social error. During my spell as a general practitioner I had learned that members of the public meeting a doctor socially believe they can entertain him only by briskly trotting out an account of their illnesses. When introduced to the bank manager they do not immediately start talking about their overdrafts, and on shaking hands with the local J.P. they are not compelled to discuss the number of times they have been summonsed. But they firmly hold the idea that the doctor can be diverted for half-hours at a time by details of their symptoms, or even those of far-away relatives and dead acquaintances.

'It sort of catches me round here,' she continued, twining her arm behind her and pushing her sharp bosom forward. 'Whenever I twist round suddenly-Ouch! See what I mean? I've been to doctors all over the world-London, Paris, New York, here in B.A. They never did me a bit of good, though. I still had my pain. Sometimes I woke up in the night and screamed.'

'Very distressing for you, I'm sure.'

'Oh, I began to lose faith in doctors. You don't mind my saying so, do you?'

'Not a bit. Have a Fire Alarm.'

'What is it?'

'It's a drink. Very good for backache.'

She giggled. 'Well, then I went to an osteopath in Wimpole Street-he was sweet. He told me I had a displaced spine. What do you think? He slipped it back again, like shutting a door. There!'

'I think that…'

'I only used to get it after that when it rained. Why do you think that was? And then I was playing tennis out at the Hurlingham Club last month, when Bingo! I…'

'May I introduce you to our Third Officer?' I interrupted. 'You will find him very charming.'

For the past few seconds Trail had been staring at my companion with his mouth open. He jumped at my remark so much he spilt his drink on the deck; then he stepped forward with the expression of a hungry deckhand going in for his Sunday dinner.

'Mr. Trail,' I said, 'Miss…?'

'Ella Robinson.'

'Mr. Trail is our most popular officer,' I whispered to her. 'The Captain thinks highly of him. But if I may speak as a shipmate, he is a little shy and needs encouragement. Enjoying the dance, Three-o?'

'Have another drink,' Trail said thickly.

'I think he's cute,' Miss Robinson decided, flashing him a swift glance of appraisal. I had been treating his spots since we left Santos, and in his clean white jacket and painstakingly Brylcreemed hair he looked as presentable as an Ian Hay subby.

'Har!' Trail said. 'How about a dance?'

'Mmm! I've never danced with a sailor before! Be a sweetie and hold my glass, Doctor.'

Grinning weakly, Trail drew her on to the chalked square of deck and began dancing with the spirit that nightly won him hearts in Reese's dance hall in Liverpool. I contentedly took another Fire Alarm from Easter and leant back on my ventilator. After the night at the Saratoga anyone so pressingly feminine as Miss Robinson was too much for me.

When the music stopped the couple came back to my corner of the deck. Both of them were flushed and breathless.

'You're a swell dancer,' Miss Robinson said to Trail, giving him a hot glance of admiration.