“Don’t be so crude.” Wooden bangles jangled on her wrists. I’m glad she doesn’t wear diamonds, Stephen thought. It was a small comfort to know she was not as extravagant as her mother. “I’ve been wanting to introduce you to the Neilsons—”
“Should I know the Neilsons?” Stephen sipped his beer; he felt sleepy and he wondered if he had had too many. He had been keeping pace with Tristram, and Tristram, now he came to think of it, had appeared to have an almost limitless capacity. He bent forward to kiss Rona’s cheek, but she pushed him away.
“You reek so disgustingly! You know how I hate you drinking beer.”
“No more beer,” he said. “Just vodka, arrack, plonk and other rot-gut. What do the Neilsons drink?”
“Darling, look.” She took his arm and led him to the railing of the patio. Her temper was gone and she loved him again. Sometimes he marvelled at her patience with him; he guessed he could be an annoying bastard at times. He went to kiss her again, aware of her loveliness and the odd streak of tenderness that would be there for ever in her, no matter how ambitious she was; then he remembered the beer on his breath, and he leaned away from her. Later he was to wonder what might have happened had he kissed her at that moment.
“Darling, look. The Neilsons are English. He’s with one of the London banks or something, he has one of those frightfully interesting jobs where they do nothing and get a fantastic salary for it, and they’re out here for a couple of weeks. I’ve been talking to them, they came with the Cudlips, and they know simply everybody in London! They’ve gone now, but the Cudlips want us to go down there and meet them. They’re having some more people in, just a small party, not a drink fest like this—”
“You have to catch a plane at nine in the morning,” Stephen said, trying to avoid the argument that he knew lurked just out of sight, like a savage watchdog waiting on Rona’s call.
“I’ll have three weeks in which to rest, darling. What does it matter if I sleep-walk on to the plane? Darling, this could be exciting – the Neilsons might give us just the introductions you’ll need—”
“They might be a little premature. The introductions, I mean. People aren’t going to wait around till I get my F.R.C.S. And you don’t get far in Harley Street without it.”
“Oh, don’t be such a terrific obstructionist! You’ll get your F.R.C.S. as soon as you sit for it. Didn’t Daddy get his the first time he went?”
“That was back in 1928. It wasn’t so difficult then. The market wasn’t overloaded with doctors wanting to be specialists.”
“The examinations are no more difficult now.”
“I didn’t say they were.” Stephen finished his beer; he felt the argument was inevitable now. “They just pass a smaller percentage of those who sit for the exams. Plumbers and wharfies have the same policy. It’s known as guarding the door of the closed shop. Ask your father. He belongs to three or four closed shops in the medical profession. Doctors are humanitarians, but they’ve got to keep up their standards of living.” I’m drunk, he thought; I’ve heard those words before, but I’ve never said them. Had Tristram said them some time over the week-end? But the words came from farther back than to-day or yesterday. And then he remembered. Dad, he thought; and heard again the chuckling sardonic voice that he had almost forgotten. “Medical skill has become a commodity—”
“You sound like a Domain Red-ragger, instead of a doctor. Stop talking like that! We’re going down to see the Neilsons—”
He shook his head slowly. He was either drunk or very sleepy, he didn’t care which very much. The Neilsons, who knew everybody, had all at once become people he didn’t want to, couldn’t meet. “No, my love. I’m going home, to bed. Not to make love or meet the Neilsons or even to talk to old Jack Tristram. Just to sleep.”
“Stephen, I told them we’d be down there – we don’t have to stay late—”
“No, darling.” He shook his head again; he was getting to be like Goodyear, underlining his negatives. He had a confused moment when he wondered if he had been too long with Charles, but he put that thought aside at once. He was confused enough as it was. “I’m going home. Tomorrow morning I’m due at St. Vincent’s at eight o’clock to operate on Mrs.—” He racked his memory, the memory that was usually so phenomenal with names; his head ached with the effort. “Mrs.–Mrs. Pitman. Mrs. Esther Marigold Pitman.”
“Who is she?”
“Nobody the Neilsons know. She’s from the public ward. She has an exophthalmic goitre.”
“Can’t someone else do the op.? Darling, if you’re so tired, wouldn’t it be better if you turned Mrs. Whatever-her-name-is over to someone else? Perhaps Daddy would do the op. for you. He’d understand how important it is to see the Neilsons—”
Stephen stared out at the distant blinking eye of the Barren-joey Light, which had just come on. Below them, down the steep slope on which the house stood, a koala was stirring in the white armpit of a eucalypt, and possums were beginning to materialise from the invisibility that was theirs during the day-time. The house was bright with chatter and light, the swarthy dusk came gipsying up the tangled hill, crows flew home against the last light of the dying day, taking their mournful song over the edge of the world. Stephen felt a creeping sense of loss, as if something he had valued had begun to slip from his grasp.
“No, Rona.” Mrs. Pitman had all of a sudden become very important to him, more important even than the first patient he had ever had. “I’m going home. Now.”
Then a voice said, “Miss Goodyear, Dr. McCabe. May I have a picture?” They turned round and a photographer stood there. His smile was bright and false: he despised everyone here, but a man had to work, had to deliver pictures of these useless empty-headed bastards to his magazine or newspaper. Rona, with the skill born of long practice, turned graciously and smiled. Stephen did his best to imitate her: the three of them smiled brightly and falsely at each other while the camera clicked. Then the photographer was gone.
“Stephen.” He could sense the anger in her: when she was angry her voice always lost the floweriness they had taught her at the expensive school: he liked her voice best when she was angry. “You’re not serious. This is my last night with you—”
“You’re not going away for ever. Only three weeks. I’ll be rested and compatible when you come back. I might even go with you to meet the Neilsons.”
“The Neilsons will be gone when I get back!” The hand on his arm tightened like a claw. “Oh, Stephen, can’t you see I’m trying to help you!”
He leaned forward to kiss her, not caring about the beer on his breath. “Have a nice holiday, darling. I shan’t be able to get to the airport to see you off – I’ll be with Mrs. Pitman—”
“Oh, to hell with Mrs. Pitman! Stephen!”
But he had already left her, working his way past the pansy interior decorators and the models, eyeing each other with mixed jealousy and admiration: both groups had the eyes of all of the men in the room; he went through the crowd, all of them strangers now, and out to his car. Tristram was sitting in it, his hat and jacket on, his brown carboard suitcase resting on his knees.
“I saw you having the blue with Rona. I thought you might gimme a lift back to town.”
“Have you said good-bye to Charles?”
“I said good-bye to him,” Tristram said, and the crackling voice was tremulous. “He said for the first time in his life he was gunna try and get drunk.”
So I’m not the only one who has lost something, Stephen thought. Life stretched ahead of him, lonely and unsignposted as a desert plain.
II
Stephen