Complete Works of Nevil Shute

by Nevil Shute

  He told her very little about his negotiations with the Medical Registration Board; throughout his letters there was a calm assurance that he would be a doctor again, but he had no definite ideas on how long it would take. He said once, “I am going to Melbourne again next week to see the M.R.B. and I think it may be easier to get into a hospital in England than in Melbourne because the Melbourne hospitals are very full of Australian students. I am thinking of booking a passage to England because it may take a long time to get a passage, and they will give back the money if you do not go.”

  Apparently he was not short of money, and this puzzled Jennifer a good deal. She asked in her next letter if he had really booked a passage to England, but he did not answer, nor did he answer when she asked a second time. She stopped asking after that; if he did not want to tell her things he need not; they were of different nationalities and from different backgrounds, and she knew that it would be a long time, if they ever married, before she understood him thoroughly. His letters were a great pleasure to her, and his calm assurance that all would be well was comforting.

  In September she got a letter that thrilled her, and informed her at the same time. “It has been arranged for me here that I can study for the English medical degree at Guy’s Hospital in London because there is no room in the Melbourne hospitals. I do not know how long it will be necessary for me to study and I do not think that they will tell me till I get there. I have passed two examinations in Melbourne since you left for England and these results are good in London; you see, I have been working very hard in the evenings at Lamirra and at Howqua learning again in English all the text book medicine I learned and forgot when I was a young man. So now they say that if I can get to England I may go to Guy’s Hospital. I do not know how long I must work there before I become qualified, perhaps not more than a year and in any case I do not think longer than two years.

  “So now I must come to England. There is a ship called the Achilles that is now loading sugar at Townsville in Queensland and I may be able to take a job on her as steward or on some other ship because this is the season when the sugar is sent to England. I may have to pay for the passage and if that is needed I will pay, but I have not got very much money so if I can work I would like it.

  “I am leaving Lamirra at the end of this week to go by train to Townsville which I think will take three days. I am sorry to leave this place; it has been good for me after so many years in camps in Europe to work for a time in the woods. I like this country very much, and when I am qualified to work as a doctor I would like much to come back to Banbury and work with Dr. Jennings if he has still no other doctor to help him.

  “I am bringing your picture with me in a packing-case. I have asked Billy Slim to look after my hut at Howqua, and I have left him a little money for repairs, and if a window blows in or a sheet of iron on the roof comes loose he will mend it for me, so it will be there for me to have when I can come back to this country. And there for you also, I hope.

  “I do not think that it will be possible for you to write to me again because I do not know what ship I shall go on, or when it will start or when I shall come to England. I will write to you to tell you these things as quickly as I know them, and I will come to Leicester to see you very soon.”

  She read this letter over and over again in the privacy of her bedroom. The sheer tragedy of her return to England was working out in comedy; Carl Zlinter was on his way to England and she would see him again. A picture came into her mind of the dynamic energy and competence of this dark, lean man that had produced this result and in so short a time. In a barrack hut at Lamirra, a hut similar to the one that he had operated in with her, smelling of washing and whisky and raw, unpainted wood, he had studied every night at medical text books; he had then gone down to Melbourne and sat for two examinations in a language foreign to him in a strange place with strange people, and had passed them. Over and above this academic effort he had somehow or other financed himself, and he had negotiated and corresponded till he had secured himself a place in a hospital in England, twelve thousand miles away, a country that he had never been to, and an alien, enemy country. This man was shouldering his way through all these difficulties and brushing each of them aside in turn, because he wanted to practise as a doctor in the country of his choice, and because he wanted to marry her.

  She could not possibly keep this news to herself. At dinner that night she said as casually as she could manage, “Carl Zlinter’s coming to England, Daddy. He’s going to requalify at Guy’s.”

  He noted her shining eyes and her faint colour, and he was glad for this daughter of his, whatever changes there might be in store for him. “That’s interesting,” he said, equally casually. “How did he manage that?”

  She told him, if not all about it, as much as she thought good for him to know. They discussed the matter for a quarter of an hour; in the end he asked:

  “What’s he going to do when he’s qualified? Practise in England, in the Health Service?”

  She shook her head. “I shouldn’t think so. He wants to go back to Australia and practise at Banbury. There’s a doctor there, Dr. Jennings — I told you about him. He’s very overworked. Carl thinks Dr. Jennings might take him as an assistant if he can get qualified before anyone else gets in.”

  He was about to ask her if she would like to go back to Australia herself, but he stopped and said nothing; no sense in asking her a thing like that. He knew very well that if she were free of her responsibilities to himself she would never have come back to England; if this chap Zlinter were to ask her to marry him and go back with him to Australia, he could not possibly stand in her way.

  For the first time the thought of going to Australia came into his mind as a serious possibility. Leicester without his wife was not the place it once had been for him. If Jennifer were to marry and go back to Australia he might have to choose between going with them and attempting to carry on alone in Leicester, where he had worked all his life and where all his friends were. It was not a thing to be decided lightly. He would hardly make many new friends at his age in Australia, but he would be desperately lonely if he tried to live alone at home in Leicester. In Australia he might do a little work, perhaps, and earn a little money, and so be able to come back to England every year or two to see his friends....

  Jennifer heard from Carl a week later that the Achilles had sailed without him and he was coming home upon a ship called the Innisfail, probably sailing in about three days’ time. “They will not take me as steward,” he wrote, “and I shall have to pay for the journey, which is a very bad thing, but I shall have time to work; I have brought many medical books with me to read upon the journey. If I was qualified as doctor I could work as ship’s doctor on the journey because they have difficulty in getting doctors now at Townsville, but although I have showed my Prague degree they will not accept it because English ships must have an English doctor. When I am an English doctor I shall be able to practise anywhere in the world, I think.”

  She heard nothing more until she got an air-mail letter from Port Said nearly a month later. His ship had called for fuel at Colombo. “We do not go very fast,” he said, “and although we have gone steadily all the time it has taken us thirty-four days to get to this place. I think we shall arrive in London in about another fortnight, and I must then find a place cheap to live near to the hospital. As soon as it is possible I will come to Leicester, but I cannot say what day that will be on.”

  He came to her on a Friday evening at the end of November. She had walked down to the chemist to pick up a parcel for her father; it was a fine, starry night with a cold wind that made her walk quickly. She was fighting her way back head-down against a freezing wind in the suburban street. She raised her head as she got near the house and saw a man peering at the houses in the half light of the street lamps, trying to read the numbers, perhaps looking for the doctor’s plate upon the door. He was a tall man, rather thin, dressed in a foreign soft felt hat and i
n a shabby raincoat.

  She cried, “Carl!” and ran to meet him. He turned, and said, “Jenny!” and took both her hands. She dropped the parcel and something in it cracked as it fell; it lay unheeded at their feet as he kissed her. She said presently, “Oh, Carl! When did you get to England?”

  He held her close. “We arrived on Tuesday,” he said, “to the London Docks. I have found a room to live in, in Coram Street, in Bloomsbury, and I have been to the hospital yesterday, and I am to start working on Monday. I do not know how long it is that I shall have to work, but I think that it will be for one and a half years. I do not think it will be longer than that.”

  She said, “Oh, Carl — that’s splendid! What are you doing now? Have you come for the week-end?”

  He said, a little diffidently, “I did not know if it would be convenient if I should stay. I have brought a bag, but I have left it at the station in the cloak-room. Perhaps I could take a room at the hotel, and see you again tomorrow.”

  “Of course not, Carl. We’ve got a spare room here — I’ll make up the bed. That’s where we live,” she said, nodding at the house. “Daddy’s in there now — he wants to meet you.” She stood in his arms, thinking, for a moment. “We’ve got such a lot to talk about,” she said. “Daddy’s got a meeting of the committee of the Bowls Club in our house tonight; he’s the chairman or the president or something. Don’t let’s get mixed up in that. Would you mind if we go out and have a meal, some place where we can talk? They finish about nine o’clock generally. We can come back then, and you can meet Daddy.”

  He smiled down at her. “Of course,” he said. “Whatever you will say is good for me.”

  “Wait here just a minute,” she said. “I’ll go in and put this parcel down, and tell Daddy what we’re doing.” She vanished into the house and he stood waiting for her on the pavement. In the dining-room her father was laying out the table with paper and pencils before each chair for the Bowls Club meeting; when this happened they had their evening meal at the kitchen table.

  She came to him in her overcoat, flushed and bright-eyed. “Daddy,” she said. “I got this parcel, and I dropped it and heard it crack; I believe I’ve bust whatever’s in it. Carl Zlinter’s here, and I’m going to make up the spare room for him. I’m going out to dinner with him now, and we’ll be back when this committee meeting’s over. Could you get your own meal, do you think? It’s sausages; they’re in the frig, and there’s half of that jam tart we had for lunch the day before yesterday on a plate in the larder.”

  He smiled at her excitement, his concern over the parcel half forgotten. “That’s all right,” he said. “What have you done with him?”

  “He’s outside waiting for me.”

  “Well, bring him in, and let’s say how-do-you-do to him.”

  “Not now,” she said. “I’ll bring him in when your committee’s over, when you’ve got time to meet him properly. We’ll be back about half-past nine or ten.”

  She whisked out of the room, and the front door slammed behind her. She left her father unpacking the parcel and smiling thoughtfully; changes were coming to him again, whether he liked it or not. Jennifer joined Zlinter underneath the street lamp. “I know a little place where we can get a meal,” she said. “Not like we’d have got in Australia, of course, but good for here. It’s quiet there, and we can talk.”

  She took his arm and they went off together down the street, walking very close to each other. She took him to a café near the station, a frowsy place undecorated for some fifteen years, but reasonably warm inside, and cheap: she knew that he was short of money and she knew that he would never let her pay for her own meal. There was no meat on the menu, so they ordered fish pie and cabbage, with apple tart and custard to follow. And then they settled down, and talked, and talked, and talked.

  They sat so long over their meal that the bored waitress began turning out the lights; they woke up to the fact that it was eight o’clock and the place was closing. Jennifer said, “We’ll have to go, Carl.”

  He paid the bill, and helped her into her coat. He said, “Shall we go back to the station and get my bag, and take it to your house?”

  “It’s too early,” she objected. “That blasted meeting won’t be over yet, and there’s no fire in the drawing-room ...” She thought for a moment. “There’s a little picture theatre, Carl,” she said. “It’s a bit of a bug-house. It’s showing one of those pictures the Americans make for South America, all gigolos and black-haired beauties dancing with tambourines — a perfect stinker. The house’ll be half empty. If we go in there we can talk quietly, at the back of the circle.”

  They went there, and the flick was as she had described it, a noisy picture with plenty of orchestra and raucous singing. In the warmth of the circle, seated very close together, they gave no attention whatsoever to the screen. “Tell me one thing, Carl,” she said when they were settled down, “what are you doing about money? You told me once that you wouldn’t be able to get to be a doctor again because you’d never have enough money. Are things very difficult?”

  He pressed her hand between his own. “I must be very careful,” he said. “I have now about one thousand one hundred pounds, and on that I must live till I am qualified. Then I shall ask if you will marry me, and by that time I shall be quite broke.”

  “We’ll manage somehow, Carl.”

  “I have not asked you yet,” he observed. “I am only warning.”

  “And I’m warning you that if you don’t look out, I might say, yes.”

  He leaned a little from her and undid his overcoat; he fished in an inside pocket and pulled out a little object. He put it in her hand. “It is for you,” he said, “one day. Perhaps not yet.”

  She held it up to the reflected light from the technicolour scene; it was a ring formed heavily of reddish gold with curious, cable-like markings around it. “Oh, Carl!” she said, “is this a wedding ring?”

  He took it from her. “You go too quickly,” he said. “It is an engagement ring, but it is not for you just yet. Not till I have met your father and he has said that he agrees.”

  “Well, let me see it, anyway. I promise I won’t put it on.”

  He gave it back to her. “It’s just like a wedding ring,” she said. “It’s gold, isn’t it?”

  “I know that an engagement ring, it should have precious stones,” he said. “I could not afford to buy precious stones to put in it, Jenny. But this is solid gold, gold from the Howqua.” He smiled down at her. “I know that it is very pure gold, because I made it myself.”

  She stared at him in the dim light from the screen. “You made it?”

  “I made it,” he replied. “Harry Peters showed me how to make a ring like this, or a bracelet of gold, or a pendant. He is the man who had the broken head, on who we did trephine. It is very lucky that we managed to save his life, or he could not have taught me how to do these things.”

  “But, Carl, where did you get the gold from?”

  “It is Charlie Zlinter’s gold,” he told her quietly. “It would not be good for you to talk about this, perhaps, even here in England and on the other side of the world.”

  In the stuffy half light of the Midland cinema she stared up at him. “I won’t say a word, Carl. Charlie Zlinter’s gold?”

  “There was a box,” he said. “The box that Mary Nolan told you she had seen, a tin box that he called his ditty box. In this box he kept his valuables.”

  “That’s right,” said Jennifer. “When she went back to the cabin the morning he was drowned, the door was open, and she looked for the box to put it away for him, and she couldn’t find it.”

  He nodded. “Charlie Zlinter had put it away before. He was not too drunk to look after his money.”

  “What do you mean?” she asked. “Where did he put it?”

  He smiled at her. “He had a very simple place for his box, a place that would be safe from forest fires and thieves and anything. Perhaps only a very simple man, a sailor and
a bullock driver, would have thought of such a simple place to keep his box, and yet that was so safe.”

  “Where was that, Carl?”

  “Under the stone,” he said. “The stone that weighed four hundredweight, that only he could lift. You remember the big stone we found together, on our last day in the Howqua?”

  She could remember every detail of that day, and the sheer grief of it, and the sunshine, and the clean scent of the eucalypts, and the flashing reflections from the river down below, and the brilliance of the parrots in the woods. “Of course I do,” she said. “Was the box under that?”

  “It was under the stone,” he said. “I found it only one week after you were gone to England, but I did not dare to say that in a letter. I think if it was known I had found gold it would be taken by the police, perhaps in England also, so you must not talk about it. I think that it is better that I use it to become a doctor.”

  “I won’t say a word, Carl. How much gold was there?”

  “There were fifty-two coins of one pound,” he told her. “Sovereigns, they are called. Also, there was just over five pounds in weight of washed river gold, the gold dust that they find in the river beds. Billy Slim has told me that in Howqua this gold dust was used for money. The hotel would take it for payment, and they had little scales in the bar to weigh the gold with, how much it was worth. I think also the bullock driver, he took gold for payment, too, because in the box were little brass scales also. His gold dust was in two leather bags, one large bag and one small bag.”

  “Was he a relation of yours, Carl? Were there any papers to say who he was?”

  He shook his head. “I do not know. The water had been lying in the hole beneath the stone, and the box was eaten away with rust. There had been papers once, but nothing was left, nothing that I could read. There was only the rusted sides and bottom of the box, and the two leather bags, rotten and with the gold spilling out from them, and the fifty-two gold coins lying in the rust, and the little scales.” He paused. “I do not think that we shall ever know who Charlie Zlinter was.”