by Nevil Shute
“Would it be easy to find such an old person?”
“I shouldn’t think it would. Those gold-mining towns, they weren’t settled places, if you know what I mean. People went there to take up claims and work the gold; if it didn’t work out right for them, they went off to some other place—West Australia or South Africa, maybe, where there was gold to be found. They didn’t stay around where there wasn’t any gold. I think you’ll have a job to find anybody who was living at Howqua then.”
The Czech said quietly, “That is very bad luck.”
He seemed so disappointed that Jennifer asked, “Is it very important?”
He smiled at her. “It is not important at all,” he said. “Only, if a member of my family had been here before me, I would have liked to know.”
Presently Jane went to the kitchen door and rang the hand-bell on the veranda to warn Tim and Mario that it was five o’clock and time to knock off for tea. Jack Dorman took the Czech off for a wash, he came back to the veranda presently and found Jennifer there alone.
He said, laughing, “I must try to remember the way to behave. This will be the first time that I have eaten in a private house since I left Germany, nearly two years.”
She was appalled at the casual statement. “Is that really true?”
“But, yes. I do not think that I know anybody in Australia yet, although I have been here for fifteen months. Hotels and bars and cinemas—I know those. This is the first time that I have entered a person’s home.”
She did not know what to say. “I suppose you don’t meet many people, living up there in the camp?”
He smiled. “Ordinary people keep away from camps, and sometimes for good reason. And I have spent much of my life in camps. Since 1939 I have lived always in camps, with practically no break, twelve years. I really do not know how ordinary people live.” He laughed.
Over the meal they talked of small, casual matters of the countryside and afterwards, in the cool of the evening, they sat on the veranda, smoking. When in the dusk he took his leave Jack Dorman offered to run him back to Lamirra. He refused that, saying that Jim Forrest was coming out of town and would pick him up upon the road; they did not press it, thinking that perhaps he meant to stop at the hotel and have a drink. On his part, he was unwilling to extend their hospitality, and preferred the four-mile walk back to Lamirra. Jennifer strolled across the paddocks with him to the road.
She knew that the matter of Charlie Zlinter and his dog was still upon his mind, and she raised the subject for him, in case he wanted to talk about it. “It’s funny about that headstone,” she said. “Charlie Zlinter.”
“I would like to find out something about Charlie Zlinter,’ he said.” “I think he must have been related to me in some way. All of the Zlinters in Pilsen are uncles or cousins of each other.”
He turned to her. “When you leave your own place and you start again in a new country, with nobody that you know, it is wonderful to find that someone of your family has been there before,” he said. “Even fifty years before. It makes a tie with your own home. And however good the new country may be, unless you know somebody in it you are not a part of it.”
They walked on in silence for a time. She had not met such loneliness before. “You know some real people now, anyway,” she said. “You know the Dormans, and me. More substantial than Charlie Zlinter. I hope you’ll come and see us again some time.”
“I would like to do that,” he said. “But also, I would like to find out about Charlie Zlinter and his dog.”
She laughed. “I believe you’ve been making it all up. I don’t believe there’s any such person, really.”
He laughed with her. “I promise you that it is true. I would say that I would take you there and show you the stone, but it is ten miles to walk and ten miles back. Some day when Mr. Dorman goes with Mr. Fisher in the Land Rover to fish in the Howqua you must come with him, and I will show you the stone.”
“That’s a bargain,” she said. “I’d like to do that some day.”
“I should be much honoured if you would,” he said.
They walked across the last paddock to the road in silence. It was nearly dark.
At the gate on to the road he turned to her. “Now I must say good-bye. I am afraid that I have been awkward in company this evening, and I ask if you will forgive me.”
“You’ve not been awkward a bit,” she said. “You’ve been very interesting, and very charming, Mr. Zlinter. I hope you’ll come again.”
He laughed diffidently. “It is many years since I have been in company with people of good family, like you. You must forgive the awkward things I must have done. But I would like to come again, and some day I would like to take you to the Howqua to see the stone.”
“We’ll fix that somehow or other,” she said. “Good-night, Carl. Don’t get run over on the way back, and don’t stop at the pub too long.”
“Good-night, Miss Jennifer,” he said formally. “Thank you again for all that you have done for me. I shall not stop at the pub tonight at all.”
“I bet,” she laughed. “Good-night. Come and see us again.”
She walked back across the paddocks deep in thought. She found Jane sitting on the veranda with Jack Dorman; Angela was away with friends in Banbury, driving her mother’s Morris. Jane said, “I rather like Carl Zlinter.”
Jennifer dropped down into a chair. “It’s extraordinary,” she said. “He’s been in the country fifteen months, and this is the first time that he’s been inside a private house.”
“Is that right?” asked Jack Dorman.
“That’s what he said.”
Jane said slowly, “Well, I can understand that in a way, although it sounds rather awful. They’re a pretty rough lot up at Lamirra. Before that camp started up, Jack and I used to go down sometimes to the hotel and have a glass of beer and chat with Mrs. Hawkey, the landlady, but we haven’t been for a long time. Too many drunks.”
“From the lumber camp?”
“Yes—from Lamirra.”
“Of course, he’s different to the ordinary lumberman,” Jack Dorman explained. “He’s an educated man.”
There was a little silence. “I don’t suppose he thinks much of Australia and Australians,” Jane said.
“He thinks it’s a lovely country,” Jennifer told her. “He doesn’t want to live anywhere else. Only, he’d like to know some people. That’s why he’s so keen to find out something about Charlie Zlinter and his dog.”
In the dim light Jane stared at her. “But Charlie Zlinter’s dead!”
“I know. All the same, he’s the only person in Australia that Dr. Zlinter knows, outside the lumber camp.”
“My dear. I think that’s rather touching.”
“I thought that, too,” the girl said. “I told him he must come and see us here again—I hope you don’t mind. It seemed such rotten luck.”
“Of course, Jenny, I liked him. Makes a change to talk to somebody who’s lived outside the Shire of Banbury.”
“He wants to take me over to the Howqua some time, to see his tombstone,” she said. “I’d like to see it, and I’d like to see the Howqua, but I’m not going to walk ten miles there and ten miles back in this hot weather.”
Jane said, “You don’t have to walk ten miles to get into the Howqua, surely? You can ride over on a horse.”
“I can’t,” said Jennifer. “I’d fall off.”
Jack Dorman said, “You could probably get into the Howqua in a utility, in this dry weather. You can get in in a Land Rover any time of year. It’s easy going on the track this side; the other side’s a bit steep. You could leave the utility parked up in Jock McDougall’s paddock on the top of the ridge, and walk down to the river. That’ld only be about two miles. Zlinter can drive, I suppose?”
“I really don’t know,” Jennifer said. “I should think he could.”
“I never met a doctor yet who couldn’t drive a car,” said Jane.
“He wouldn’
t be used to driving on our side of the road, anyway,” said Jennifer.
“Aw, look,” Jack Dorman said, “there’s only a mile and a half of road before you turn off on the track across the paddocks up into the timber. He won’t hit anything in that distance. If you want to get into the Howqua, make him drive you up to Jock McDougall’s paddock and then walk. You can take the Chev.”
“That’s awfully good of you,” the girl said. “We’ll ask if he can drive, if he turns up again. I’d be afraid he might smash the Chev. up.”
“It’s worn out, anyway. I’ve been thinking we should get a Land Rover to replace it.”
“That’s enough of that,” said Jane. “We’ve got too many cars already. I’m going to have my painting before we get another car.”
“I thought you’d forgotten about that,” he said.
“Indeed I haven’t. It’s just that I don’t know how to get the sort of painting that I want. I’m not going to have one of those modern things we saw in Melbourne.”
Jennifer went to bed that night unreasonably happy. She was deeply grateful to Jack Dorman for his casual offer of the old utility; she had wanted to do something to ease the loneliness of Carl Zlinter, but she had been powerless to do much about it by herself. She was still happy next morning till the postman came by just before dinner, and Mario went down to pick up the mail from their box on the main road. There was a letter from her father, airmailed from England; the happiness went from her face, and was succeeded by a troubled frown. Jane saw it, and said casually, “Everything all right at home?”
“Not absolutely,” the girl said. “Mummy’s been in bed with bronchitis. They seem to have had terrible weather in England. Of course, it’s January.”
“Not serious, is it?”
“Oh, no. The thing is that when Mummy’s ill it makes things hard for Daddy. They’ve only got a woman who comes in in the mornings.” She paused, “It happened last winter, and I took ten days of my holiday and went up there and ran the house. I didn’t bargain on it happening again this winter.”
She said no more, but she was troubled at the thought of difficulties in the snow and rain of the Midlands, so far away. It needed a strong mental effort to picture the conditions of an English winter in the Australian summer heat, though she had left so recently.
At dinner Jack Dorman said, “I’m going in this afternoon to meet Jim Forrest at the hospital. Anyone got anything for the post?”
“I shall have,” Jennifer said. “I want to write an air-mail to my mother. I’ll let you have it after dinner. What time are you going?”
“Not till about three.”
“I’ll write it as soon as we’ve cleared away.”
Jack Dorman drove into Banbury in the new utility, posted Jennifer’s letter before he forgot it, and drove round to the hospital. Jim Forrest’s car was parked in the street; he parked behind it and went in. A New Australian ward-maid told him that Mr. Forrest was with Dr. Jennings in the office; he put his head in at the door.
“Come in, Mr. Dorman,” said the doctor. “I was just telling Jim here about these men.”
He was a small, brown-haired man with a sandy little moustache and blue eyes; he had been an officer in the Royal Australian Army Medical Corps in the war, and he still had the appearance of an officer in civvies. Jack Dorman went in and sat down. “What’s the news, Doctor?”
“I was telling Jim,” the doctor repeated. “I’ve just finished the post-mortem. The man was an alcoholic all right. You never saw such a liver. I’m preserving part of it in spirit until after the inquest, just in case anybody wants to see it. He was full of whisky too.”
Jim Forrest said with feeling, “He must have been.”
“He certainly was. Matter of fact, I should have thought there was more than a bottle in him, but I suppose I’m wrong. There was certainly a lot.” He paused. “I had a look at the amputations, while I was at it. It was carefully done. One of the ligatures was damaged a little, probably while he was struggling. But the job was done all right.”
Jim Forrest said, “He’d have been right, but for the whisky?”
“I wouldn’t say that. Sepsis might easily have set in. As I understand it, the amputation was done out in the open, to free him from the bulldozer. All I can say is that the job was well done from a surgical point of view.”
Jack Dorman said, “It wasn’t a botched job?”
“No. It wasn’t a botched job. The damaged ligature was clearly the result of a blow. He probably kicked it against something in the struggle, while you were trying to keep him in bed.”
Jim Forrest nodded. “He was thrashing about all over the place.”
There was a pause. “As regards the other one,” the doctor said, “the fractured skull, it’s much the same story. I took an X-ray this morning. If I had been doing the job here I’d have taken an X-ray before operating, of course. If I had done so, I should probably have removed one more small piece of bone that Zlinter has left in. Working without the X-ray, as he did, I should very likely have left it, as he did. Considering the X-ray this morning, I decided to leave well alone. I don’t really think that it’ll make much difference, and one doesn’t want to submit the patient to a further operational shock.”
He paused. “There again, infection is the danger. Zlinter showed me what he did, and I don’t think anybody could have done much more. But there’s no denying that the conditions were bad for any cranial surgery.”
Jack Dorman said, “Taking it by and large, though, he didn’t do a bad job?”
“I think that’s a fair statement. Taking it by and large, he didn’t do at all a bad job, considering the difficulties.”
“You’ll tell them that at the inquest, Doctor, will you?” asked Jim Forrest.
“That’s right. That’s what I shall say at the inquest.”
Jack Dorman said, “If he can do a job like that, why can’t he be a doctor properly? Get a licence, or whatever you call it?”
“There’s a ruling about these immigrant doctors. In this State they’ve got to do the last three years of their training over again. It varies according to the State, I think. I know it’s easier in West Australia.”
“Pack of bloody nonsense,” said the grazier. “We could do with another doctor here, and now we’ve got one and we’re not allowed to use him.”
“You’ve got to have a rule,” Jennings said. “Most of these D.P. doctors are crook doctors, oh my word. You’d be the first to raise a scream if some of them got loose upon your family.”
“That’s right, is it?” asked Jim Forrest. “They’re very bad?”
“I don’t really know,” the doctor said. “You’d have to ask somebody who knows about these things. I believe the truth of it is this: when they’re first qualified their standard is much lower than ours. What they pick up from experience in practice may bring them up to our standard, but who’s to say? Take this Zlinter, for example. He seems to be a careful sort of chap, and since he qualified he’s had a very wide experience of surgery in front-line conditions with the German Army. You’ve seen him at his best. He certainly knows a lot about these sort of accidents. But’s that not general practice. Ninety per cent. of the general practitioner’s job is trying to decide if an old lady’s pain is heart trouble or wind, or whether a kiddy’s got scarlet fever or a sore throat. Zlinter may be useless at that sort of thing—probably is.”
He paused. “I don’t want you to think I’m against Zlinter,” he said. “I think he’s a good man. If he was qualified I’d like to see him practise in this district and take some of the work off me. But not until he’s been checked over at the hospital and been passed out as competent.”
“And that takes three years?”
“I don’t know if that would apply to Zlinter. I don’t know if they make any exceptions. Probably not. I think he probably would have to do three years again.”
“It seems the hell of a long time,” the grazier said.
The docto
r got up from the desk; he had still a lot of work ahead of him. “It’s better to be safe than sorry.”
The grazier went out into the street with the timber manager. “What about a beer?” They got into their cars and drove down to the main street, and parked under the shade of the trees in front of the Queen’s Head Hotel.
It had been market day in Banbury, but the market was over before dinner, and now in the late afternoon only the dregs of the crowd remained in town. The bars, which had been hot and crowded most of the day, were thinning out; the tired barmen were relaxing, watching the clock for closing time at six. Jack Dorman and Jim Forrest went into the saloon bar and ordered beers, and stood discussing what they had learned from the doctor about Zlinter.
It was still warm and the beer was very cold; they had a glass of beer, and then another, and another in the space of twenty minutes. As they stood their talk was mostly about Zlinter, how he would be situated at the end of his two years of lumber work, whether he would have a chance to qualify as a doctor, how much it would cost, whether he could raise the money on a loan from any bank, whether if he had the money he could get admission to a hospital.
The bar that they were standing in was merely a partitioned part of the long bar-room, but it was select and mostly frequented by graziers and those with money to spare. Drinks at this portion of the bar cost a trifle more, and there were little plates of onions, cheese, and other snacks, all highly spiced to induce a pleasant thirst. A yard away from Jack Dorman and Jim Forrest as they discussed Carl Zlinter was an old man sitting hunched upon a stool, a red-haired old man, now turning grey but still fiery on top; a broad-shouldered old man who must have been a very strong man in his time. He had a comical twist to his mouth and a general appearance of good humour, and he was drinking whisky, evidently determined to sit it out until the bar closed. From his appearance he had been there all the afternoon.
Presently the barman said, “Last drinks,” and the clock stood at two minutes to six. Jim Forrest hurriedly ordered four more beers and the barman pushed the dripping glasses across the counter; the old man by their side sat sunk in reflection or in slumber, a half glass of whisky before him. They drank two beers apiece, and then, at ten past six, the barman said, “We’re closing now,” and it was time to go. He said to the old man, “Come on, Pop. Closing now.”
