Authors: Nevil Shute
From Jane she heard about her oil painting. Stanislaus Shulkin
had painted a picture of the main street of Banbury in glowing sunset light, which Jane liked for its glorious colours and Jack Dorman liked for its exactitude and because it showed the Queen’s Head Hotel. It now hung in the kitchen of Leonora homestead, and in planning the new house Jane Dorman was making a special place for it where she could see it as she sat before the fire. It had been much admired in the neighbourhood, and Mr. Shulkin had got commissions from two of their station neighbours who had come to the conclusion that a thing like that was rather nice to have about the house.
“I don’t know what he’s done with the portrait he was doing of you,” Jane wrote. “He told me that he couldn’t finish it because you’d gone away, and anyway, he said it wasn’t any good. I asked him once if I could see it because I never saw it at all, but he turned all arty and said that he never showed unfinished work to anyone. My own belief is that Splinter’s got it, but I don’t know that; perhaps you do.”
Of Carl Zlinter she said, “We see him about once a month; he came here to tea on Sunday. Dr. Jennings wrote to the British Medical Association about getting him on the register in less than three years, and Carl has been to Melbourne twice for interviews. He thinks he’ll probably get some concession, and he seems very anxious now to get on to the register and be allowed to practise in Victoria, but I don’t know where the money’s coming from to keep him while he studies. Jack told me to see if I could find out how he stood for money, and I tried to without asking the direct question, but he wasn’t a bit receptive; apparently he thinks he can manage his affairs himself and of course it’s much better if he can, but where the money’s coming from I can’t tell you. However, there it is, and he seems quite certain that he’s going to be a doctor again; the only thing that seems to worry him is that it’s going to be a long job, and that he’ll be so old before he’s able to set up a home.”
Jennifer heard from Carl Zlinter at odd intervals, usually four or five times in a month. He wrote to her irregularly, and when the mood was on him; on one occasion she got three letters in a week, and then nothing for a fortnight. His letters contained few protestations of love; they were mostly factual accounts of what he had been doing, sometimes with touches of sly humour. As Jane had supposed, Jennifer knew all about her picture.
“I have your portrait hanging in my hut in the Howqua,” he wrote, “and because I go there regularly even in this bad weather I see you every week-end. Last Saturday there were three inches of snow in Jock McDougall’s paddock where we parked the Chev and I got my feet wet, but I had plenty of dry wood in the hut and we soon had a big fire going. Harry Peters was with me, the driver of the bulldozer who had the head injury that we operated upon. He is quite recovered now and is back on the job driving a truck, but I do not think he will be able to drive a bulldozer again safely. He does
not want to; he wants to go to Melbourne and study metallurgy and get a job in a steel works, and I think he will be doing this before very long. In the meantime he comes out with me each week to Howqua.”
Jennifer wondered what on earth they found to do in the Howqua valley in the snow; he had told her in a previous letter that the fishing season was over. Perhaps they worked upon the furnishings and details of the hut….
“I had a great deal of trouble with Stan Shulkin over your picture because he did not want to give it to me; he said it was too good to give to Mrs. Dorman and he was going to keep it and put in an exhibition. I told him that you would certainly bring him to court if he did that without asking your permission, and I should go at once to the Police Sergeant Russell and tell him, and then he said that I could have it if I paid him for it. I told him that he was a very greedy man because Mrs. Dorman had paid him for three pictures, and then he said this was an extra that he had not shown to Mrs. Dorman. However, I got it from him in the end by promising to pay him when I became qualified as a doctor, and now it hangs in the hut at the Howqua, and I look forward all the week to going there to see it again.”
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 re-qualify 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 acccept 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 in 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.