Ship's Surgeon by Celine Conway

of the photograph. And suddenly she felt too bitter and let down to care what he thought. Head high, a smile back on her lips, she walked past him.
    “Thank you for the shot, Doctor,” she said clearly. “Goodnight.”
    Barefoot, it is impossible to walk regally, but Pat managed to walk with dignity at least. She entered her cabin and closed the door, took off her wrap, washed her hands and got into bed. In the darkness she lay listening to the ceaseless wash of the sea and wondering why she felt as bruised as if she had been physically battering at a locked door. After a while her mind became startlingly clear, and she saw herself back there in the doctor’s cabin, forlorn and shaky and needing something which Bill Norton had interpreted as a careful doctor would interpret it. For that, she couldn’t blame him. But for other things she felt she would never forgive him; the icy rebuff ... and that photograph.
    Was she the woman who had wanted him to become a fashionable London doctor? Pat didn’t think so; she looked jolly and uncaring, and Pat had the conviction that the photographer’s imprint at the bottom of the picture had read ‘Raymond, Sydney’. An Australian woman. Perhaps she had travelled out on the Walhara the trip before last. In Sydney, where the ship sometimes spent as long as a week, she had shown him her city. What was it he had said to Pat that night before Gibraltar: “I’d like to see Gib with your wide innocent slant.” He would have said something similar to ... Bonnie, some time before Sydney. And they’d grown friendly enough for her to inscribe her photograph: “Ever yours, darling.” And for him to fix it over his bed.
    Pat felt chilly and damp with sweat under the blanket. That coldness of his was a pose, a defensive measure against women. She had met it before in doctors, particularly if they were attractive. Bill wasn’t good-looking; too rugged and angular. He did have a charm, though, and it wouldn’t have taken him long, during his houseman days, to realize that women were apt to fall in love with their doctor. And the very idea would have repelled him.
    Pat’s head began to ache, but she couldn’t leave the subject. He was on his way to Sydney, would have a free month in Australia before he left for the Fijis. Perhaps by the end of that month he would decide he couldn’t leave this ... person; they’d have to marry.
    He might at least have said something about her; instead, he’d hugged the woman’s existence to himself as though the whole thing were too new and brittle to be talked of. But she was there in his cabin with him during his leisure hours and through the night, a presence that laughed and was full of promise.
    Dawn was silvering the porthole before Pat slept, and an hour later she was dragged back from the depths by the stewardess bringing tea and biscuits with an orange on the side. She sat up, and wondered whether she looked as ragged as she felt. She sipped tea, remembered Deva, and hurried into her dressing-gown.
    On board the Walhara Deva was her reason for living. Not Bill Norton, nor that cruel joker who made the hairs stand out on her neck with fright when she saw his italicized writing. Just Deva Wadia. If she could keep that in mind all the way to Ceylon she might stand a chance of being at least moderately happy.
    She did her hair and went quickly along to the stateroom.

 
    CHAPTER FOUR
    Pat did go ashore at Marseilles. She left the ship after lunch, with Van Pickard, Frank Thornton and Avis Markman, but Avis and the middle-aged Frank were joining up with others, while Van decided to hire a taxi for the afternoon for Pat and himself.
    Van was what Alan would have termed an oddball. He was so friendly that it was impossible not to like him, but because he rather tried to sell himself as a ladies’ man it was also impossible to like him a great deal. Pat had never met any young man who was so difficult to know. He wouldn’t talk about business