Their opponents arrived, a newly married Dutch couple, the Hendricks, who were on their way out to Chittagong, and the match began. At first Doris was carelessly erratic but, although he had never played the game before, he had a quick eye and managed to cover her mistakes, which he made light of, with his usual good humour. At this, she began to try, and to play brilliantly. She had a straight yet well-developed figure—round, very pretty breasts and hips, and long, well-shaped legs, revealed in motion by her short skirt. The Hendricks, a plump and heavy-footed pair, were no match for them. They won handsomely by six games to two. As he congratulated her, saying, “Your father told me you were good at games, and you are,” she gave him one of her rare direct looks, fleeting and unsmiling.
“Yes,” she said. “I’ve been taught a few tricks, and picked up some on my own. But aren’t you going to buy me a drink? Let’s have it up here.”
When the deck steward brought two tall lemon squashes, filled with ice, she lay back in her deck chair, with half-closed eyes, sipping her drink through the straw. He glanced at her awkwardly, at a loss as to what to say, a strange predicament for one who could invariably find the right word in the right place. The heat of the game had brought a faint colour into her pale complexion, and caused her singlet to adhere to her breasts, so that the pink of her nipples showed through the thin damp cotton. She’s an attractive girl, thought Moray, almost angrily, but what the devil is the matter with her? Had she lost her tongue? Apparently not, for suddenly she spoke.
“I’m glad we won. I wanted to knock out that sickening pair of Dutch love-birds. Can you imagine them in bed together. ‘Excuse my fat, dear.’ I’d like to win all the tournaments. If only to spite our delightful passengers. What a crowd they are. I hate them all, don’t you?”
“No, I can’t say I do.”
“You can’t mean it. They’re an appalling lot, especially our table. Mrs Hunt-hunter—what a horse-faced hag. Makes me sick. She’s common as mud, really. And the ship’s lousy too. I never wanted to come on this damn trip. My devoted parents dragged me on board by the hair. My cabin is supposed to be one of the best on A deck. Dad paid through the nose for it. You should see it. A dog kennel, with a bath like the kitchen sink. That’s the worst, for, if anything, I like to wash. And can you imagine, natives serving one’s food. Why can’t they have white stewards?”
“Our table boy seems a very decent jolly sort.”
“Haven’t you noticed how he smells? It would kill you. I’m very sensitive about smells, it’s something to do with the olfactory nerves the doctor told Mother. Phooey to him—smarmy windbag. The point is, I like people to smell clean.”
“Do I?” he couldn’t help asking, ironically.
She laughed, stretching her long legs widely apart.
“Wouldn’t you like to know? Frankly, you’re the one faint gleam on the horizon. Didn’t you notice me taking you in that first day at lunch? I either take to a person or I don’t. I can tell at a glance. To be quite frank, I asked Father to get you as my partner. He’s not a bad old bird though he is a bit of a soak. And Mother is passable, if only she’d stop clucking over me. But I have to keep them in order, quite often I absolutely freeze them, to get them to do what I want. I’m talking an awful lot. Sometimes I talk all the time, sometimes I say nothing, absolutely nothing. I like to treat people that way. I’m proud. I used to drive old Wainwright out of her mind. When she’d start lecturing me I’d simply look at her and throw myself into a coma.”
“She’s your headmistress?”
“Was,” she said idly. “She threw me out.”
“What on earth for?”
She gave him her slow smile.
“That may be revealed in a later instalment.”
On the following afternoon Doris and the doctor successfully played two rounds at bull board and one at deck quoits, and Doris’s parents were again spectators. Moray quite enjoyed the games. He’d never met anyone like her before, so amusingly prejudiced and intolerant, so sure of her own privileged position, and yet with a streak underneath of commonness, of vulgarity almost, that redeemed her absurd pretensions. The fact that she liked him was flattering. It was now apparent that the Holbrooks doted upon their daughter, unresponsive though she might be, and he was less surprised than he might have been when they rose and came towards him, quite unusually pleased by the triple victory. Mrs Holbrook gave him a noticeably kind smile.
“You brought our Dorrie out, doctor,” she remarked. “And did very well yourself, too.”
Doris herself, who was on the point of leaving, said nothing, but meeting his eye she gave him her peculiar half-smile. He talked to her parents for a bit; then as he left to go down to his surgery he observed them put their heads together, Mrs Holbrook apparently urging her husband to action. Indeed, some minutes later, Holbrook rolled into the dispensary, lush, genial and garrulous.
“Nothing the matter with me, doc. Nothing at all. Just felt like a sup of bishmuth. Nothing like bishmuth to ease the stomach. Where do you keep it? I’ll help myself.”
Moray indicated the bottle of bismuth, wondering, as he watched the other nudge a generous helping into his palm, if he ought not to alert Holbrook to the state of his liver, which was palpably cirrhotic. Most days with Henderson and Macrimmon, the two tea planters, the old boy, except for his ventures to the sports deck and his chat with the captain on the bridge, was practically a fixture in the bar.
“That’s the stuff,” Holbrook exclaimed, licking up the heap of white powder with prehensile thrusts of his furred tongue, “And here’s your fee, doctor.”
“Good heavens, sir, I couldn’t take all that. It’s . . . it’s far too much.”
“Doctor,” said Holbrook, slowly fixing Moray with his small, knowing, injected eye. “If you want the advice of a man who’s seen a lot of this wicked world, when you get the chance of a good thing, take it!”
With warm generosity he pressed a five-pound note into the dector’s hand.
Thoughtfully replacing the bottle on the shelf when Holbrook had gone, Moray, who had been infected by O’Neil’s vocabulary, caught himself smiling: “We’d bloody well better win all the tournaments now.”
This, however, was no more than a pose. The girl had begun to interest him, as a study. At times she seemed far more mature than her years, at others almost backward. One day she would be moodily taciturn, the next full of amusing and provocative talk. What he rather admired in her was her complete indifference to what people thought of her. She never sought popularity and, unlike those who were already first-naming each other in tight little groups, seemed actually to enjoy being an outsider. She had a particular gift for taking off people and could be offensively rude to anyone who tried to flatter or make up to her. Her careless attitude extended even to her personal belongings, of which she had an endless variety. She was always leaving a bag, scarf or sweater on deck, mislaying and losing valuable things without turning a hair. These complexities in her character aroused his curiosity. When at lunch and dinner she would look towards him with her concealed and puzzling smile, he was more at a loss than ever. Oddly enough he was inclined to feel sorry for her.
All this gave an added spice of interest to what the mother had so inaptly phrased as “bringing Dorrie out” in the tournaments. There was not, in fact, much competition in the games, since many of the passengers were elderly. Only one pair seemed to offer serious opposition, the Kindersleys, a couple with two young children who were returning to Kadur in Mysore after three months’ leave. He was about thirty-five, excessively hearty and downright, manager of a small coffee estate that had been hit quite badly by the slump caused by excess production in Brazil. His wife, reputedly a fine lawn tennis player, was a pleasant little woman with a frank, rather serious expression. They sat at the first officer’s table. As the Pindari drew near to the Suez Canal, Moray and his partner, playing well together, were in all three semi-finals. So also were the Kindersleys.