Doctor at Sea

sobs, she lived in number seventeen, on the third floor; the key was in her handbag. I took her up to her own door and opened it. At that moment her knees gave way. She began to slide slowly down the doorpost.
    ‘The room opposite,’ she muttered. ‘For God’s sake help me in.’
    I supported her across the hallway and into the room opposite the flat door. I turned on the light with my free hand, and found I was in her bedroom.
    ‘Put your arm round my neck,’ I commanded. She obeyed, and I lifted her up, laying her on the bed heavily.
    ‘All right,’ I said. ‘You can unclasp my neck now.’
    I heard a noise behind me and turned. Standing in the doorway was a tall, stern, greying gentleman with a stiff moustache and a military eye, dressed in a yellow silk dressing-gown. Behind him was a timid, sandy, be-crackered woman in a faded housecoat.
    ‘I’ve a damn good mind to horsewhip you,’ the grey gentleman said decisively.
    ‘Now look here, I say ...’I began.
    ‘I might tell you I consider you an unmitigated cad. I’ve no idea what your upbringing is, but I don’t imagine it’s very savoury. If I were a few years younger I’d give you a good hiding with my bare fists. A young puppy like you needs teaching a good lesson.’
    ‘Be careful, Charles,’ the woman said nervously. ’You know what you did to the Rolleston boy.’
    Charles twitched his muscles under his dressing-gown. Ella seemed to have Bulldog Drummond for a father.
    ‘I should never have let her go on that damn ship,’ he said bitterly. ’I believed at least the officers would be gentlemen. I was mistaken.’
    ‘Mind your temper, Charles,’ the woman added timidly, covering her eyes with her hands.
    ‘Now, look here,’ I said angrily. ’I assure you I have had nothing to do with your daughter ...’
    Charles snorted. ’Pray, how do you explain that lipstick all over your shirt? A disgusting exhibition! By God, I’m not at all certain I shan’t horsewhip you after all ...’
    ‘Charles, Charles!’
    ‘You have got quite the wrong end of the stick ...’ Charles by now had time to look at me carefully and find I was much smaller than he was. He advanced, going red in the face.
    ‘Put them up, you young hound!’ he growled. There was nothing for it. I threw one of Ella’s pillows at him, sidestepped quickly, and dashed for the door. I shot into the lift, leaped for the taxi like a survivor grasping for a lifeboat, and drove back to the ship, looking nervously through the back window at every turn for cars bearing greying gentlemen in silk dressing-gowns, who were anxious to relieve the strangling monotony of Buenos Aires social life by avenging the honour of their daughters. And when I got back I found Trail had recovered sufficiently to climb into my bunk.

16

    I SPENT the rest of our time in Buenos Aires walking the broad, criss-crossed, sun-drenched streets looking for a cheap watch. I kept out of the bars, and if I thought a woman looked at me I jumped.
    The momentum that had carried us headlong into the pleasures of South America had expended itself by the end of the dance; afterwards our lives settled into the unexciting routine of a ship in port. Every morning I read carefully through the English Buenos Aires Standard , had a cup of tea with Hornbeam, and strolled round the active decks; in the afternoon I filled my cabin with the last squirts of our D.D.T. spray and slept soundly until tea, in defiance of the rattling winch just beyond my head. Now and then I picked up War and Peace, but the freezing plains of Russia seemed so fantastic I killed a few cockroaches with it and finally put the books away for the voyage home.
    In the evening, when the sun had gone down and a breeze sometimes blew off the River Plate to refresh our decks, we sat in Hornbeam’s cabin with a case of tinned beer playing sober games of bridge or liar-dice. I felt that I had been living alongside the wharf in Buenos Aires for a lifetime, and I sometimes stared at the familiar angles of my cabin in disbelief that they had ever been softened with the shadows of an English winter’s day. When I told the others this one evening Hornbeam said:’ You’d get used to living in Hell, Doc, if we sailed there. All these places are the same, anyway,’ He lay on his bunk half-naked, fanning himself with a copy of the Shipping World. ’They’re hot and sweaty, and full of blokes ready to cut your throat for tuppence. It’s the same out East and