Doctors Wear Scarlet

by Raven, Simon

  “Oh, Richard,” said Penelope, touching his arm.

  Now, at first sight, this was a kind offer which would be very helpful to Richard. He had only a tiny allowance from his father, the stipend paid to him as a research student would be minimal. But it was equally obvious that Walter, who never did anything for nothing, would be receiving excellent value for his money – in the form of Richard right under his eyes and under his thumb, in almost permanent contiguity with Penelope. It was really an outrageous suggestion, and the more so for the circumstances in which it was made. It had something in it variously of the slave-dealer, the procurer and the vampire. Walter, one felt, wanted to suck Richard dry and infuse God knows what noxious mixture back into him in place of his own blood.

  “Don’t you think it is a good scheme?” said Walter to me.

  “That is for Richard to decide.”

  “Well then… Richard?”

  Richard was white but collected. He simply said, “You’re very kind, Walter. I shall think it over and talk to you later, if I may.”

  But he said it in such a manner as to close this discussion firmly and for good; and from that moment he devoted the evening to revenge.

  His method was very simple. He behaved, except in matters of formal courtesy, as though Walter and Penelope were not there. He passed them the cigarettes and offered them his lighter, he answered them, though as shortly as possible, if they addressed him; but in general he contrived to give them the impression – and this in Walter’s own rooms – that he was spending the evening à trois with my cousin and myself and that Walter and Penelope were merely strangers who happened to be at a nearby table. Walter, who realised that he had gone too far (it was odd, if one considered his experience, how many tactical errors the man made), was apparently prepared to see the matter through without complaint. Certainly he contrived to play the host quite adequately and without abashment. Penelope, on the other hand, began to be very distressed indeed. Nor was her unhappiness in any way lessened when we moved on to the Ball itself; for here Richard, having danced dutifully for a while with my cousin and never looked in Penelope’s direction, left us without a word and was then variously to be seen dancing with the partners of friends or drinking with other parties. He knew how to make his presence felt, how to be brilliant on brilliant occasions; he went hither and thither winning admiration and undisguisedly warm glances in every part of the room except for where his business lay – with us. It was cruel for Penelope. An evening which was to have been a rich source of personal happiness and social triumph had been effortlessly turned by Richard into one of outrage and humiliation.

  In other circumstances she might have had the spirit to fight back, for she was a plucky girl and not without resource. But where Richard was concerned she was a blushing and hesitant fool. So she simply sat quiet and miserable, if not without dignity, blankly staring when he was not to be seen, following him avidly with her eyes (but not her head) when he was. We all did our best to treat her with sympathy and yet at the same time as if nothing untoward were happening. But by the time I rose to dance with her for the fourth time she was clearly near breaking point.

  “Why does he have to be so hard?” she said to me. “Why does he go on? He’s made his point.”

  “He doesn’t like people organising his life.”

  “Oh, he doesn’t.” She snorted – that, I’m afraid, is the only word. “He’s happy enough to let Daddy organise his life when it suits him. When it means getting books published or being allowed to stay on here as a Research Student. But when Daddy asks him to do something which will give pleasure…not to mention saving him money…out of pure kindness…”

  “He has his pride. And perhaps he doesn’t want your father…to have too great a share of his existence. After all, to go to live in someone else’s house is an important step. It is very committing.”

  “I suppose you’re on Richard’s side,” she said bitterly; “boys together.”

  At this moment we were dancing towards a table at which sat a large and rather raucous party whom Richard had lately joined. He was talking with some animation; and there was a kind of glitter about him which made me wonder what and how much he had been drinking.

  “I’m going to settle this,” Penelope said.

  Before I could stop her, she had detached herself from me and was moving squarely toward Richard. For a moment I thought she had found the spirit to confront him in anger; but if so her sudden animus had flagged before she reached him, and when she finally came to a halt in front of him she was standing as a supplicant.

  “Richard,” she said, “won’t you dance with me? I’m sorry if… We didn’t… Please dance with me.”

  For about ten seconds Richard looked into her face with a charming smile as though he were about to agree to her request. Then he rose, took a step towards Penelope, turned to one side and, without speaking, helped an attractive and sly-looking dark girl to her feet and swept her away across the floor. Penelope, who had already started to hold her arms out, let them fall in a gesture of utter defeat, turned about and walked with head drooping into the night. No spectacle I have ever seen has ever filled me with such horror and shame.

  A few days later Richard and I went to the Senate House to receive our degrees; and then I left Cambridge, to return, henceforward, only as visitor or guest. Richard’s quarrel with Walter and Penelope was soon healed. He excused himself on the ground of the strain of his examinations followed too soon by too much drink and excitement; and they were only too ready, with their various motives, to forgive him. But of course it had been nothing to do with strain; Richard had started the evening in a relaxed and pleasant mood, and would have stayed that way had not Walter’s mistimed gesture of possession called up the evil in him. Evil? Certainly some quality of which his friends had little previous notion: with the exception of myself, who remembered the Westerby incident at Charterhouse and the vicious manner (albeit in the cause of justice) in which Richard had then acted; who remembered lots of lesser and impalpable but curiously suggestive things over the three years we had been at Lancaster together; who was by now certain that there was something deeply and perhaps incurably… wicked?…perverse?…at any rate something wrong in Richard Fountain.

  But, as I say, I was now leaving Cambridge and going to live in London. I saw quite a lot of them all during the next two years, but there was no longer the same revealing everyday contact. As far as I could make out, Richard settled very steadily and contentedly to his research; in any case I heard nothing, even from the inventive and trouble-relishing Honeydew, which gave any hint of the diseased soul which I thought I had seen revealed at the May Ball. Richard never went to live with Walter in Grantchester: the offer was never again referred to. But now as ever he was Walter’s boy, and Penelope’s too, I suppose; for towards the end of his period of research, it was made plain to everyone that there was now an “understanding” between them – just as Marc Honeydew had presaged at Walter’s party for freshmen so long before. Still, there was to be nothing official about this as yet – one obvious and quoted reason being that Richard would now have to go away and do his National Service. For while Walter had easily got this deferred for another two years so that Richard might do his research, even Walter could not get it deferred forever. So in August 1953 Richard completed his dissertation – “Some Observations on the Survival of Minoan Rites into Classical Times” – , and handed it in to meet success or failure when adjudged the following Spring. And then, leaving Penelope happy in her “understanding” and Walter busied with manifold ambitions on his behalf, Richard Fountain went for a soldier; being at this time in his four and twentieth summer, as handsome and likely a lad to look on as ever swore loyalty to the Queen.

  III

  For some moments Tyrrel remained seated, still in the poised and tense position he had maintained throughout my narrative. Then he rose and went to my bookcase. After a time he said, “There are two books by Richard Fountain here
.”

  “The second is also poetry. Written in the Army this time.”

  “As artificial as the first?”

  “Yes and no. Some of the poems are only a hangover from the state of mind which induced the earlier ones. Look at page 73.”

  Tyrrel turned the pages, and then began to read in a sensitive voice which was somehow made the more impressive by a slight Midland flatness:

  “O aves nunc in silva canunt,

  The wind of the South is on the wing.

  Duri magistri mox abibunt,

  The lawyers cease from their chattering;

  Deserta stant in urbe turres

  And men make ready for journeying.

  Tristis est hiems et longa dies,

  Time for the old men’s lecturing –

  Time for the priest crudele locuto

  Pestes et oras, of death and sin.

  Sed animus omnis nunc solutus,

  The girls are ripe for the gathering;

  Laete per campos mittitur amnis,

  The bells in their towers this rhyme do ring:

  O aves nunc in silva canunt,

  The wind of the South is on the wing.”

  “You see?” I said. “Youth going on the rampage despite the muttering of lawyers and old men – for whom read Walter Goodrich.”

  He nodded.

  “But what about the poems which aren’t just a hangover?”

  “War poems – of a kind. Genuine, I suppose, but a trifle reminiscent of Rupert Brooke. And a little inflated, when you consider that the sort of action Richard saw was really only police work.”

  “Yet he seems to realise that was all it was,” said Tyrrel. “Here.

  Shall death find me?” he read,

  “Find me where the river ends?

  And shall I come to darkness

  For old men’s dividends?

  “Keeping the Empire ripe for the shareholder,” Tyrrel said. “For shareholder read Dr Goodrich again?”

  “I dare say.”

  “Did this book do as well as the first?”

  “Better. A soldier’s poems are almost the only kind that sell. And then you should remember that Richard became a hero in a small way.”

  “Yes…I can see he might have done well in the Army. Competent, intelligent, good physical specimen. Fully prepared to tell others what to do – and to take his own share in it. Brave. And with a very suitable outlet for this violence you speak of. Not popular with his men though?” said Tyrrel shrewdly.

  “No. Too good to be true. To be popular with his men an officer must be fallible.”

  “You remarked earlier,” said Tyrrel slowly, “that from time to time friends of yours in Fountain’s regiment – your old regiment – returned to England and told you of him. So what did they tell you?”

  “Mainly gossip. How the men trusted him but didn’t like him, as I say. How the officers found him superior and rather unsympathetic. Of course, he heard just before leaving for the Middle East that he had been awarded a Fellowship. This was hardly calculated to make him more amenable to military society.”

  “Ah,” said Tyrrel; “but from what you’ve just said it looks as if he was disliked, not because he was an intellectual or a scholar, but because he was more military than the military. Too good to be true, you said, Mr Seymour. Too efficient? Too keen? Too…ruthless perhaps?”

  “Perhaps. The Army in peace time can be very easy going.”

  But I knew Tyrrel was right. It was only fair that I should confirm his hypothesis more definitely.

  “No, not perhaps,” I went on rather angrily. “You’re dead bloody right, Inspector. Dead bloody right. They didn’t like Richard, partly because they knew he had another and in some ways superior world to go back to – a world they none of them could aspire to or even understand – but mainly because he was just a damned sight too good at his job. Not but what he was as unassuming about this as he used to be about his games at Charterhouse. But he got everything much too right. And if anybody got in his way, when he was told to get something done, he’d slap him down as smartly–”

  “–as he slapped down Westerby in Longroom,” said Tyrrel, using the expression as easily as if he had been an old Carthusian himself.

  “Yes. No little compromises over gin and tonics. No convenient delays. No little hints to people of the trouble that might be coming their way. Just do whatever it was, wham, wham, wham, and let the dead bury their dead. He was a very awkward colleague.”

  “And no doubt an awkward enemy, Mr Seymour. We should be fair. But it rather looks as if Mr Fountain’s brother officers spotted what a lot of his clever friends – except yourself of course – had missed. That there was this twist – a very ugly twist – in his make-up.”

  “In a crude way they may have spotted it. But they couldn’t see into the…subtleties…of it all.”

  “Nor could you, Mr Seymour.”

  “At least I knew they were there… But you mustn’t think, Inspector, that he was hated by the other officers. One or two were even very fond of him. Or at least interested enough to relish his acquaintance. The colonel found him rewarding. Several others. There was Major Longbow – who put him up for his MC.”

  “What about this MC? You say he was made quite a hero out of it all?”

  “It was more for displaying persistence and resource than actual courage… Though God knows there was that as well… That poem you were reading, Inspector: ‘Shall death find me?’ Read out the rest of it.”

  With evident pleasure, Tyrrel complied:

  “Shall death find me?

  Find me where the river ends?

  And shall I come to darkness

  For old men’s dividends?

  And shall old Charon have me,

  To ferry me clean away

  To the end of the river,

  To the end of my day?

  And shall my love follow me

  Over the river?

  Give me heart’s blood, that brings

  Life from the giver?

  O the bank I left is fairer

  And there my love will stay;

  Listening for the safe sweet chimes

  In the meadows of May.”

  “Apart,” I said, “from the unfair implication that ‘his love’ – Penelope one supposes – would soon forget him, what do you notice?”

  “A lot about a river.”

  “Yes. It isn’t only an image. This poem refers to an expedition led by Richard – a very unpleasant expedition down a particularly sinister river.”

  “Go on, sir.”

  “I’ve never talked to Richard about this, but I know the Sergeant Major who went with him as Second in Command quite well. He was once a corporal under me. I met him at the Depot a year or so back, and from his account what happened was this…”

  We were up there in the jungle on detachment, Sergeant Major Meredith had said. That is, the Company was, with Major Longbow commanding, and only Mr Richard and one other subaltern to help. The rest had all been taken with jungle belly, see, and a good third of the men besides and more getting it every day, so that things weren’t what they should have been, sir, very awkward, with everybody doing everybody else’s job and most of the men spending most of the day just cleaning up their mates who had this jungle belly. Which is a kind of dysentery, sir, fierce and runny like a geyser. And in the middle of all this there comes the District Commissioner from Nianga, and says his District Officer’s in trouble up the river.

  Now, sir, this District Officer had his headquarters with a clerk and a handful of nigger police thirty miles up the river at a place called Akoru, if you could call it a place; because all there was was a few raggy huts and a piss-run, and the only way of getting there was going up the river in boats, being as how there was thick jungle, like a hot-house crammed full with coiled barbed wire, for ten miles on either side of the river. And what they wanted to have a District Officer or any other of God’s creatures at Akoru for is more than I can
say; though I did hear talk that he was responsible for the River Tribes, which lived further up the river and scratched some sort of living up, like the birds picking meat from the holes in a crocodile’s teeth. Nasty work, I wouldn’t wonder, and no miracle they sometimes got a bit tired of things and should need for to take it out on somebody.

  Any road, this District Officer had come up on his wireless set and told his chief he didn’t like the smell of things up his perishing river, and would he send some more police at the double? After which his wireless goes out with a noise like a room full of drummer boys all farting at once, which makes the District Commissioner think he’s likely telling the truth. Only there wasn’t any more police to send, see, because they were all sorting out trouble in Nianga. All there was to go was us. And us two officers short, and half the men shooting their guts into buckets twice a minute; not to mention poor Colour Baines as yellow as pepper and floating round his bleeding stores like a prick-shaped balloon at a kid’s party – you only wanted a cigarette end or a pin and he’d have been a handful of damp rubber.

  But Major Longbow says, “We’re here to help the Civil Power, Sergeant Major, and help the –ers we will. There’s Mr Fountain,” he says, “and you can go as his 2 i/c, and you can take two corporals and twenty men and four of those large canoes. Six of you with your rations and bedding to each canoe.”