Random Island E-Book

Vivian Stuart

• Herausgeber: Jentas Ehf
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

INTRIGUE. TENSION. LOVE AFFAIRS: In The Historical Romance series, a set of stand-alone novels, Vivian Stuart builds her compelling narratives around the dramatic lives of sea captains, nurses, surgeons, and members of the aristocracy. Stuart takes us back to the societies of the 20th century, drawing on her own experience of places across Australia, India, East Asia, and the Middle East.    Samarinda Lazenby had had an eventful and exciting career. The first few years of her life had been spent in a Japanese internment camp, the middle years accompanying her father around the world, and her adult life training as a surgeon. When her father died it was hardly surprising that she accepted a post as Senior Surgical Officer on Random Island in the Pacific. And almost immediately 'Sami' was flung into a maelstrom of chaotic event. The island, in the grip of a typhoon, became inaccessible by normal transport and Sami – aware of their desperate medical needs – was forced to turn to the handsome but enigmatic Captain James Bruce for help ...

Leseprobe

Random Island

Random Island

© Vivian Stuart, 1967

© eBook in English: Jentas ehf. 2022

ISBN: 978-9979-64-482-8

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchase.

All contracts and agreements regarding the work, editing, and layout are owned by Jentas ehf.

____

For Ursula Bloom . . .

finest of writers and best of friends

CHAPTER ONE

Troubles, they say—and quite correctly—never come singly. Mine have always come in threes with the result that, as soon as the first mishap has befallen me, I tend to wait fatalistically for the other two, aware that I am powerless to avoid them. While admittedly a fatalist I am not, I hasten to add, pessimistic or resigned to my fate and I don’t deliberately go looking for trouble. It’s rather that I seem to attract it and, just as some people are accident-prone, I’m right in the path of every disaster, large or small, that occurs anywhere in my vicinity.

Possibly this was the real reason why I chose medicine as a career, although at the time, I remember, I told my father that I’d chosen it because I wanted to help suffering humanity . . . and he believed me or, at any rate, said he did. I had undoubtedly seen more than my share of human suffering in the course of a childhood spent, when not at a boarding school in Yorkshire, following my father, who was in the Colonial Service, from one far-flung corner of our diminishing Empire to another. We were very close, my father and I, understandably on my part, for he was all the family I had after my mother’s death, which took place when I was too young to remember anything about it or her, in a Japanese prison camp in Java during the war.

As a child of less than a week old, I had been with both my parents on the upper reaches of the Rejang River in Sarawak, when the Japanese invasion forces made a landing in Borneo during the latter part of December, 1941. There were ten thousand of them and they met with little organised resistance, the speed of their advance taking everyone by surprise. My birth, which was two months premature, was almost certainly caused by the shock of the invasion and by the news that Kuching had fallen on Christmas Day. Equally certainly, I suppose, my untoward arrival cost my poor mother her life, since she was in no condition to join in the precipitate flight which was the only alternative to capture. But, conceiving it the lesser of two evils, fly she did, carried, for most of the way, by my father.

I, of course, have no recollection of the nightmare journey, first by river boat and then by jungle tracks, on foot, across the mountains, but, by reason of my odd-sounding Christian name, I am a living memorial to those brave Europeans who made and survived it. Our departure having been too hurried to permit of my being christened before the journey began, a Dutch Calvinist missionary performed the brief ceremony, at my father’s request, while we were waiting at Samarinda for the promised rescue plane that was to take us to Batavia and, as everyone imagined, to safety. Because he so obviously intended it as a thank-offering for our deliverance, I never afterwards reproached Father for having called me Samarinda. I should, it is true, have been grateful for a less exotic name in addition, to serve as an alternative. Samarinda Lazenby is a pretty awful mouthful, but in the circumstances, I could no more blame my father for failing to think of this than I could blame him for the three and a half years I spent in a Japanese camp for civilian internees.

My imprisonment did me little permanent harm—apart, that is to say, from the loss of my mother, which seems to matter much more now than it did at the time. My friends get round my strange Christian name by calling me Sami, and the fact that it was so unusual enabled my father to trace me with the minimum of delay when, at the end of the war, we were released, I from the camp at Batavia, he from a very much worse one outside Kuching. After seeing my mother and me on to the rescue plane, he had stayed in Sarawak, believing this to be his duty, but when the war was over, he transferred from the Sarawak Government Service to that of the Crown and was sent to Malaya, whither I accompanied him. As I say, we were very close, having only each other, and the life of a district officer is usually a lonely one, so Father kept me with him for as long as he could and did not send me, protesting, to England to be educated until I was nearly twelve. Even then, because I hated school and our separation so much, he always allowed me to join him for the holidays wherever he was. By the time I was seventeen I had flown all over the world, attracting trouble as a magnet attracts steel filings, and my G.C.E. passes at ‘O’ Level included three different Oriental languages, though I had to sit the English paper twice before I managed to scrape through with minimum marks.

My medical studies presented, on the whole, fewer difficulties. For one thing, I was inspired by a missionary zeal and for another, my father, having been appointed Governor of the Polynesian Dependencies, decided to retire when he completed his term of office and came home just before I sat my Finals. His presence, combined with the knowledge that he had purchased the lease of a London flat, which I was to share with him, made even this greatly dreaded hurdle seem easy. I passed reasonably well, if not brilliantly, and to my own delighted surprise, won a minor award in surgery. This, although only a silver medal, meant that I was offered a junior house appointment at my training hospital and I seized upon the opportunity gratefully. Trouble had for once, it seemed, been averted, at least so far as my career was concerned, and the next two years were the happiest of my life.

My Chief, Sir Robert Fraser, had no prejudice against women surgeons; he expected his housemen to work as hard as he did himself, but he gave us, in return, all the responsibility we were capable of taking, and he was a fine teacher. My first year over, he kept me on his firm and encouraged me to work for my Fellowship. I was happy in my professional life, happier still at home where, for the first time, I was able to enjoy my father’s companionship without the fear that we might be separated. He had an adequate pension; we lived well and, though officially resident at the hospital, I spent all my free time at the flat, kept house for him and acted as hostess when he entertained.

Of course, I might have known it couldn’t last, but, fool that I was, I spoilt the last few months for both of us by falling in love. It was natural enough that I should, I suppose; I was nearly twenty-six and up till then, apart from a mild flirtation or two, had had my nose too hard to the grindstone to have time to take a serious interest in any man except my father. When I did fall, I fell hard, and the worst of it was that Father disapproved very strongly of my choice. Again, it was natural that he should—I can see that now, even if I failed to at the time—for they had nothing in common and didn’t begin to understand each other.

Sean O’Connell was an Irish-American, a war correspondent for the New York Scene, cynical, hard-boiled and twelve years older than I was. He had been badly wounded in Vietnam and his paper had sent him to London to recuperate. He came to the hospital for dressings and injections and, as ill-luck would have it, I was duty house surgeon the day he first reported to Out-Patients. We talked, as I attended to him, and before he left he asked me to go out with him. He was tall, good-looking and attractive, his mind more deeply wounded than his body, and, as well as being conscious of his Irish charm, I felt sorry for him, sensing that after all he had gone through he needed sympathy and understanding. I didn’t, unfortunately, sense that the last thing he wanted was for me to take him seriously, but Father spotted this as soon as I brought Sean to the flat to introduce him. He tried to warn me and I misunderstood and resented his well-intentioned efforts, just as I misunderstood Sean’s apparently insatiable desire for my company and his sophisticated, demanding lovemaking.

‘He’s not for you, Samarinda,’ Father said. ‘Believe me, he’s not your type and he’s not in love with you.’

‘But he needs me,’ I protested. ‘Honestly he does. And I can help him, he’s told me so.’

‘Perhaps you can,’ my father conceded. ‘But at what cost to yourself? That’s what worries me, my dear. No doubt he does need you now, when he’s down and feeling sorry for himself. It won’t last. He’ll pick himself up and recover his self-confidence and then it will all be over, so far as you’re concerned. He’ll go back to the States or to Vietnam and that will be the last you’ll see or hear of him. He’ll break your heart, if you let him, child . . . because there’s no future in it and he’s not thinking in terms of a future. A man like Sean O’Connell doesn’t want to be tied.’

I had no answer to any of Father’s contentions. In my heart, I think I knew that he was right. Sean had been married, I knew, and it had broken up. He had been divorced for six or seven years and he hadn’t any intention of being ‘caught’ again, he had once told me; certainly he hadn’t mentioned marriage to me. He did, when I tried to take my father’s advice and put an end to our relationship and, like the idiotic, trusting innocent I was, I believed he meant it.

I accepted his casual proposal and having done so, quarrelled with my father for the first time in my life, so bitterly that I stopped going to the flat and didn’t see or speak to him, except on the telephone, for over a month. I had just passed Part One of my Fellowship and, in order to prepare for the very much harder second part, ought to have put in every spare moment I had with my books. In the belief that this was my intention, Sir Robert Fraser relieved me of several of my normal ward and clinic duties and I neglected the rest, so that I could be with Sean. In his company, of course, I never opened a book—I shouldn’t have been able to make sense of it if I had, and anyway there was never time.

It’s an old, oft-repeated story; the original cautionary tale, I suppose, and it only seems new if you are taking part in it. The end is as inevitable as the beginning, but if you are cast as one of the characters, you play your part right through to the bitter, foreseeable end like a drug addict who, aware of what his addiction is doing to him, yet continues to indulge himself and lives in a world of fantasy. I had noticed a change in Sean, but because I did not want to admit I had, even to myself, I refused to recognise that, as Father had warned me he would, Sean was regaining his self-confidence. He was picking himself up, becoming his normal arrogant, egocentric self, losing his need of me and, in the process, being transformed into a stranger. He probably arranged his own recall to New York, I don’t know, but it came very suddenly in the form of a lengthy cable and barely allowed him time to pack.

‘It’s a great chance, Sami . . . the kind of job I’ve always wanted,’ he told me, while leaving me uncertain as to the precise nature of the job he had been invited to accept. ‘So I can’t pass it up, can I? You wouldn’t want me to, I’m sure, seeing what it will mean to me . . . to us both. I’ll write, honey, just as soon as I get myself settled, and we’ll figure out how you’re to join me and when. But there’s no hurry, is there? I mean, if you’re to sit for that Fellowship of yours, as I guess you want to, I wouldn’t be able to forgive myself if I stood in your way. We’ve got to be sensible, figure everything out and not let ourselves go off half-cocked. But right now’—looking at his watch —‘I’ve got just two hours to catch my airplane, you know that? And this apartment is in a mess! Help me clear up, will you, and then come and see me off. You are coming with me to the airport, aren’t you?’

I went with him to the airport, numb with misery. His farewell kiss was affectionate but absent-minded, as if he’d already half forgotten me. But he repeated his promise to write. He kept it, too, only his letter did little to assuage my misery and was very short. The job in New York hadn’t come up to his expectations, after all, so he was going back to Vietnam, despite his ‘beefing about the goddam place,’ he was going back because the terms he had been offered were too good to miss. He hoped I would understand, though he guessed I might not feel like waiting for him, and if I didn’t, then he would understand and not hold me to any promises I had made. It had been wonderful knowing me; we had had a great time together, hadn’t we, and there need be no regrets and no hard feelings. Certainly there were none at all on his side, he assured me. The letter ended with his sending ‘all his love’ to me and his ‘most cordial good wishes’ to my father. I read it through twice, feeling anger rise in my throat, and then, my hands shaking so much that I almost let the thin sheet of airmail paper slip from them, I held a match to it and watched it burn to a little heap of charred ash, anger succeeded by self-pity and pain. Sean didn’t write again and I didn’t reply to his letter or, at any rate, didn’t post any of the replies I had composed in the first throes of grief and disillusionment, since I was ashamed of the emotions they betrayed.

I was also too much ashamed of the way I had treated him to make contact with my father right away. When I finally swallowed my pride sufficiently to ring him up, he neither asked questions nor reproached me but simply suggested that we might dine together. I called at the flat to pick him up; we had a marvellous dinner at a Soho restaurant that specialises in Malayan curries, and Father, who was in great form, refused even to let me apologise until the meal was over. When the waiter brought our coffee, he ordered liqueurs and passed me his cigarette case.

‘O’Connell’s gone, I take it?’ he asked.

‘Yes. Back to Vietnam, to his old job. I . . .’ the words nearly choked me, but because I owed him that much at least, I was determined to get them out. ‘You were right about Sean, Father. Completely and . . . and humiliatingly right. I’m sorry.’

‘Thank God you’ve found that out at last!’ He picked up my liqueur glass and placed its stem between my fingers. ‘Drink up, child . . . this is by way of being a celebration, you know. And don’t be sorry—I’m not. To tell you the truth, I’d begun to fear I was wrong and that he was going to ask you to marry him, after all. I should have been very sorry indeed if you’d married him, Samarinda.’

‘There wasn’t much danger of that,’ I answered, with conscious bitterness. ‘He did ask me, but he didn’t mean it, he . . . oh, they were just words. I was idiotic to believe them. Don’t you want to say “I told you so,” Father? Because you did tell me.’

‘No. It wouldn’t afford me any satisfaction, my dear.’ He shook his head wearily and I realised, with a sense of acute shock, how old and ill he looked. He had always been lean and spare, his skin, after years of exposure to the tropical sun, deeply tanned, but now, I noticed, the tan had faded to a muddy pallor, disclosing lines about his mouth and eyes which had never been there before. And he had lost weight; his suit, one he had ordered less than a year ago, hung on him as if it had been tailored to fit someone else. His hair, too, which I had thought of for years as iron-grey, although still as profuse and strongly growing as that of a much younger man, was quite white.

I wondered why I had failed to notice these changes in him sooner and my conscience pricked me. I had been too wrapped up in my own concerns, too conscious of my own emotional conflict, too full of self-pity to be aware of what had been staring me in the face all evening. And Father, of course, seeking to spare me further hurt, had gone out of his way to be have as if nothing was wrong. He had pretended to be in good form, had laughed and made all his favourite little jokes, so as to make me laugh and feel at ease during our meal, when all the time . . . tears stung at my eyes. Was it possible, I asked myself wretchedly, that I had caused such a change in him? Had our quarrel, which had been entirely of my making, upset him so much that it had made him ill? He had been anxious about me, on his own admission, but surely that . . . I put out my hand, reaching across the lamplit table in search of his, and as my fingers closed about his wrist, all my professional instincts were suddenly alerted. His pulse was rapid and shallow, his wrist so thin that the bones seemed almost as if they were protruding through the skin and the skin itself was burning hot and clammy to my touch.

‘Father, you’re not well, are you?’ It was more a statement of fact than a question and, to my relief, he didn’t deny it.

‘I have been a trifle off-colour lately,’ he admitted, and then forced a wry little smile, which clearly cost him an effort and failed dismally in its attempt to reassure me. ‘Probably a touch of my old malaria. These modern drugs help, but they don’t cure it, do they? As you know, I had my first dose of fever in the prison camp. The Japs hadn’t any mepacrine to waste on POWs, so mine wasn’t treated for years and that has made it harder to shake off. There’s no need for you to worry, my dear . . . although perhaps it might be as well if I called it a day now and went home.’ He signed to our waiter for the bill and added, as if it were an afterthought, ‘Are you coming with me?’

I inclined my head, not trusting myself to speak. He had told me not to worry, but I was worried. I had seen malaria in all its forms too often not to be able to recognise it, and this wasn’t malaria. I was still too inexperienced a diagnostician to decide, without a thorough examination and laboratory tests, what in fact was wrong with him, but a terrible fear had taken root in my mind and would not be dispelled. I had to persuade Father to consult my Chief and to do so without delay, but I said nothing about this until we were back once more in the flat. When he was in bed, sipping at the whisky and hot water he had asked me to prepare for him, I sat down beside him and prepared for a lengthy argument, but to my surprise he agreed to all my suggestions without a demur. I think he knew, even then, although he did not say so; probably he had suspected for some time, but, as people do, had put off any attempt to confirm his suspicions from day to day.

I arranged for him to see Sir Robert Fraser next morning, in his Harley Street rooms, but at his request did not go with him. Half an hour later I was called to the phone and Sir Robert told me that he was sending Father to the hospital for investigation.

‘I’ve arranged for a bed in the private wing,’ he said, ‘and he’ll be under Mr Arkwright’s care. But I imagine you would like to be on hand to receive him, wouldn’t you?’

I thanked him and said I would, then ventured a diffident question for which he gently reproved me.

‘We can’t tell without a full investigation—you know that as well as I do, Miss Lazenby. Let’s meet our fences as we come to them, shall we? Your father is undoubtedly a very sick man . . . which you also know, or you wouldn’t have referred him to me. But I trust that we shall be able to help him, once we find out precisely what his condition is. I don’t have to tell you that I shall do all in my power for him, do I?’

‘No sir,’ I managed. ‘Of course not.’

‘Then leave him in my hands. And, Samarinda, try not to worry too much, won’t you? Above all, don’t let Sir John see that you’re worried. I shall be doing a teaching round this morning and I shall expect you to be in attendance, you understand?’

I said I did and he rang off. Father arrived by taxi and I met him in the reception hall of the private wing, with David Arkwright, the registrar, having dashed back to the flat to pack a bag with the things he would need. We took him up to his room on the fourth floor, a pleasant, sunny room with a view of the river with which, as soon as he saw it, Father expressed his delight.

‘By Jove, you do your private patients proud! But I imagine they pay through the nose for it, don’t they? Still’—he flashed me a boyish smile—‘I hope I shan’t be here for more than a week. Sir Robert Fraser said he did not expect it would take much longer than that to discover what’s wrong with me.’

He was cheerful and calm, but he looked so desperately tired that my heart ached for him. Despite all my years of training, despite the fact that he was my father, there was very little I could do for him, and try as I would, I could not even match his cheerfulness or simulate his stoic calm. I was grateful when David, sensing my distress, suggested that I might get him something to read. While the floor sister was helping him into bed, I went down to the news-stand to buy him some papers and magazines and, having delivered these, left him with David and went obediently but in a sort of daze to join our Chief’s teaching round. This occupied the rest of the morning, if not my thoughts and it did help me to regain a measure of self-control.

Sir Robert’s investigation took less than the promised week, but every single day of waiting dragged unbearably, as I alternated between hope and a chilling fear. It revealed a serious internal condition, for which the only treatment was immediate and radical surgery. To my dismay, the examination also revealed a far from robust heart, with hardening of the coronary arteries. This, while not precluding major surgery, would inevitably increase the operative risk. Some surgeons might well have refused to take the risk, but Sir Robert Fraser was not one to evade his responsibilities, and when he sent for me to tell me his findings, he expressed his willingness to operate.

‘Provided your father knows what his chances are and agrees, that is to say,’ he qualified. ‘I couldn’t think of it otherwise, Samarinda.’

The room, which had been spinning in crazy circles about me, slowly steadied. ‘You mean he’ll have to be told what his condition is, sir?’ I asked, my throat tight.

He nodded and came to lay both hands on my shoulders.

‘Yes, my dear. I promised I would tell him the truth, whatever it might be, and I see no reason to go back on my word. He’s a courageous man and he already has his suspicions . . . he’ll take it on the chin. And I think he has the right to make this decision for himself, don’t you?’

I could only agree. ‘What is the alternative, sir, if you don’t operate? I mean . . .’ I had myself under stern control, but my voice rose, high-pitched with strain. ‘How long would he have?’

Sir Robert sighed. ‘I can’t possibly tell you. There’s no way of telling, in a case like this. You’ve had enough experience to know what complications might arise . . .’ he listed them, taking pity on me. ‘I can only hazard a guess.’ I was silent, my eyes pleading with him, and he shrugged. ‘At a guess then, perhaps a year. Two even, if we . . .’ again he went into technicalities, and I listened, trying vainly to swallow the lump in my throat, as realisation of the sort of life poor Father would have to live slowly sank in. He had always been so active; he would hate being an invalid, tied to the hospital, dependent on me to nurse him when he wasn’t undergoing treatment, dependent on drugs to enable him to endure his pain, to live at all . . . I shivered.

‘By itself, of course,’ my Chief went on, ‘the heart condition wouldn’t be too serious, and if he came through the operation successfully your father could live an almost normal life for many more years, taking reasonable precautions. If we operate, we can give him a fighting chance, that’s what it amounts to, Samarinda. If we don’t . . .’ he repeated his shrug. ‘I can’t spell it out to you more clearly than I have. At the same time, I can’t, in all honesty, minimise the risks of surgical intervention, do you understand?’

I nodded, ‘Yes, I understand.’

‘Good girl!’ Sir Robert smiled down at me and then returned to his desk. He consulted his list. ‘This is pretty full, but I can fit your father in on Wednesday morning. With your agreement, I propose to go and talk to him now. I’ll give him all the facts and you can discuss them with him afterwards, if he wants to discuss them with you. But, as I said, the final decision has to be his, neither you nor I can make it for him.’

Once more I dumbly nodded my agreement. My discussion —if it can be called a discussion—with Father took place that evening, when I went off duty. He was sitting up in a chair by the window, looking out at the river, and he sat there without speaking for quite a long time, holding my hand. Finally he said, very quietly, ‘You know, don’t you, child? Sir Robert told you?’

‘Yes, Father, he told me.’ His fingers tightened about mine, but he didn’t look at me. ‘I’ve decided to have the operation, Sami. Do you mind?’

I shook my head. ‘No. I mean I . . . it’s what I expected you to decide.’

He turned from his contemplation of the river then, and studied my face anxiously. It was suddenly as if our roles had been reversed, as if he were the child, I the adult, and he wanted my approval, needed it, for his own peace of mind.

‘You honestly don’t mind?’

‘How could I? It’s what I’d do if I were in your place, Father.’ And it was, of course, so that I was able to say it with complete sincerity.

His expression relaxed. ‘The truth is that I’m a coward, Sami . . . too much of a coward to face the alternative.’

‘Then we’re both cowards,’ I told him. ‘I couldn’t face it either.’

‘Suppose the—how did that Chief of yours put it? Suppose the fighting chance doesn’t come off, you’ll be all right, won’t you?’

‘Of course I will. You don’t have to worry about me.’ Our respective roles were back to normal again, I thought, and managed somehow to twist my stiff lips into what passed for a smile. ‘I wouldn’t like it, but I’d be all right, I promise you, Father. After all, I’d have my work.’

‘And you do that very well. Sir Robert Fraser thinks very highly of you, as I imagine you know.’ He echoed my smile. ‘By the way, you’ll have the flat for five years, I’ve seen to that.’ And my will is with Alec Grainger, duly signed and witnessed . . .’ To my dismay, he insisted on going into financial matters, and I made a frozen pretence of listening, although nothing he told me concerning my future inheritance made sense just then. However, talking of the provision he had made for me had evidently lifted a weight from his mind, for he looked much happier when he had explained everything to me in careful detail. I started to say that the fighting chance Sir Robert had promised him would come off, but he did not let me finish.

‘If God wills it, Sami my dear.’

‘Yes, but you—’

‘The matter is out of my hands, child,’ he put in gently. ‘I’ve accepted that and so must you.’ His smile remained, affectionate and kindly, even serene. ‘Thy will, not mine, be done . . . that’s how I’ve always prayed, Sami, and it helps, you know. One doesn’t have to look for reasons or be afraid of what’s going to happen if one trusts in the workings of a Divine Providence. I’m not afraid on my own account—only on yours. I should have liked to have seen you married to—well, to someone like young David Arkwright, for example.’

‘David? Oh, good heavens, no!’ I tried to pass it off as a joke. ‘Why David?’

‘Because he’s decent and trustworthy and kind.’

‘And dull,’ I supplied. This time the joke fell flat.

‘Decent people often seem dull,’ Father told me gravely. ‘As dull as their virtues. Well . . .’ his smile returned, but a trifle wearily, ‘let’s change the subject, shall we? They’ll be bringing me cocoa or some such horrible brew as a nightcap soon—you can oblige me by drinking it and then you’d better get some sleep, Samarinda. You look as if you need it.’

Perhaps I did, but needless to say, I couldn’t sleep, either that night or the next, and then it was Wednesday, with my father’s case first on Sir Robert’s list. He was very cheerful. I stayed with him until he had his pre-medication, but after that, on David Arkwright’s advice, slipped away.

It was David who, less than an hour later, broke the news to me that my father was dead. I heard his slow deep voice offering consolation, knew that he was telling me the truth when he said that everything possible had been done.

‘He hadn’t a hope, Sami—the disease had progressed much further than we anticipated. For his sake, believe me, it was the best way. He was spared an awful lot of suffering . . .’ These were the things one always said to the patient’s relatives, of course; I had said them myself, just as David was saying them. Yet I knew he wasn’t lying to me. He was, as my father had said, decent and trustworthy and kind; I saw the pity in his eyes and thanked him, shaking my head to his suggestion of a sedative and a few days off.

‘I’d rather go on working. There’s the Out-Patients’ Clinic and you’ll be in the theatre with Sir Robert until well into the afternoon. Let me do it, David.’

‘Are you sure you can?’ He sounded doubtful.

‘I’m quite sure,’ I answered, and added, ‘Please!’

He let me go reluctantly. I worked until six, thankful for something to do, and it wasn’t until I came off duty that the full awareness of what had happened struck me with the force of a physical blow. This was the second disaster, I thought . . . the second, and it hurt immeasurably more than the first had done. I knew I couldn’t stay where I was, just calmly waiting for the third, and besides, the hospital, the flat—even David and Sir Robert Fraser—were all associated in my mind with my father. The flat, in particular, had too many memories for me ever to be able to live there. When the funeral was over, I put it into the hands of an agent and resigned my appointment at the hospital. I had a month to fill in before I could leave, of course, but that would give me a chance to find something else—a post abroad, for preference. Sir Robert was kind; he pressed me to stay on, reminded me that I’d be losing my chance of a Fellowship by resigning, but when he saw that I had made up my mind to go, did everything in his power to help me find the sort of job I wanted.

It was through his good offices that, a fortnight later, I went for interview to the Headquarters of the Good Samaritan Mission in London. His recommendation must have been pretty glowing, because they accepted me then and there, and before I left I signed a three-year contract to serve as Senior Surgical Officer to the Polynesian Dependencies Mission Hospital at Random Island. It was arranged that I was to take a short refresher course in tropical medicine and fly out, as soon as this was completed and my father’s affairs settled, via America and Honolulu, to Meldrum, the capital of the Dependencies. From there one of the regular mail boats would take me on to Random.

David Arkwright asked me to marry him a week before I was due to leave England. I refused, feeling absurdly guilty, but I knew it wouldn’t have worked . . . not then, at any rate. He smiled and said, cutting short my stammered explanations, ‘All right, Sami, I understand. I’m rather a dull sort of chap and you aren’t in love with me. But I’m quite willing to wait, you know, in case good works on a Pacific island should ever pall and you feel like coming back. We’ll keep in touch and I’d like you to have this, to remember me by. You can send it back if you meet someone else . . .’ He gave me his signet ring and, when I hesitated, himself put it on to the third finger on my left hand. ‘Useful protective camouflage,’ he pointed out. ‘If you meet any over-amorous characters on the journey . . . and you never know, do you?’

‘No. you don’t,’ I had to concede, blinking back the cowardly tears which threatened suddenly to overwhelm me. In spite of everything, it was going to be a wrench leaving David, I realised. We had known each other since our student days, and although he was senior to me and three years older, we had been friends for a long time . . . and perhaps, as Father had said, his virtues made him seem dull when, in fact, he wasn’t dull but simply controlled and possessed of a rocklike, unshakeable calm.

As the days passed, far too quickly for my liking then, I found myself regretting my impulsive decision to run away. I even found myself wishing that David were coming with me and almost weakened when, at a farewell party given for me by my friends and colleagues at the hospital, he kissed me with a passion he had never previously permitted himself to display, and repeated his proposal. But we had both had a few drinks and my conscience wouldn’t let me weaken when it came to the point. Besides, there was the third disaster, which hadn’t yet caught up with me; I didn’t want to involve poor, innocent David in that, and there was Sean who still, because I had loved him, came between David and me like some insidious, soft-footed ghost.

David went with me to London Airport and I was wearing his signet ring when I boarded the Pan-American jet for the first stage of my journey. But that was all; I had no other ties, no other loyalties. I was free and ready to face whatever fate might have in store for me.

CHAPTER TWO

I had breakfast in New York—a hearty meal, which fortified me for the crossing of the American continent by jet aircraft, high above the clouds and unconscious of speed in the luxurious comfort of the pressurised cabin.

At San Francisco I was joined by two nurses, both bound for Good Samaritan Missions in the Pacific. The elder, Miss Myra Lewis, was plump, white-haired and a most knowledgeable and entertaining travelling companion, but as her destination was Panay, in the Philippines, I didn’t really have much time in which to get to know her. The other nurse, Susie Wright, was young and quite lovely, daughter of a Japanese mother and an American naval officer, both of whom had died when she was a child, leaving her to the tender mercies of her paternal grandmother, who had disapproved of mixed marriages in general and of her son’s in particular.

You would never have thought so, however, to hear little Susie talk. She was as gay as a lark, always smiling, always ready with a shy little joke, and it wasn’t until—delayed for forty-eight hours in Honolulu by a typhoon in the area—we found ourselves sharing a hotel room, that she told me her story. Even then she made a joke of it, glossing over the bad bits, the years of frustration and the cultured cruelty of the old woman who had brought her up. She wasn’t bitter—there was no bitterness in her make-up—but she had been hurt and, save where her work was concerned, she had no illusions. I formed the impression that she was extremely good at her job and that she loved nursing for its own sake, and although this was to be her first assignment after the completion of her training, I was glad that Susie, like myself, was bound for Random. We became friends during the journey and the friendship deepened during the time of enforced waiting, when Miss Lewis left us and we were on our own. Chance had, of course, thrown us together, but it seemed to me a happy chance that had given us a common destination, as well as a common purpose. By the time the typhoon had blown itself out, I was feeling much less lonely and lost and it was with a keen sense of pleasurable anticipation that I boarded the small, piston-engined aircraft which was to take us to Meldrum Island.

During my father’s term of office as Governor, I had twice visited the capital of the Polynesian Dependencies, the last occasion some three and a half years ago. I hadn’t been able to stay long, though, and hadn’t met my father’s successor so—deliberately, I suppose—had not written to advise him of my coming. The Mission had booked temporary accommodation for both Susie and myself in a guest-house-cum-hotel, run by a Dutch couple, on the opposite side of the bay to Government House, and on arrival we were met and conveyed to the guesthouse by the proprietor, Hans van Koller, a corpulent, friendly man in his late sixties. He spoke excellent English and pointed out objects of interest to us as we drove in his rattling stationwagon along the beautiful, undulating road which, bordered by shade trees, followed the curve of Liana Bay from the airfield.

The bay, with its smooth blue lagoon and the dazzling white sand of its beaches, presented a scene of spectacular loveliness, at the sight of which Susie exclaimed in delight.

‘It’s so peaceful . . . the sort of paradise one dreams about I guess, but never really expects to find. Have you lived here long, Mr van Koller?’