was undeniable.
It became apparent very soon that Frank was competing with Richard for Sonia’s attention. He did this without appearing to notice it himself, as if it were some routine performance in the clinic, not the method but the results of which interested him. I could hardly believe the ridiculous carry-on of these two men.
“Do they think she will really have any influence in the question of that job?”
“Yes,” my best friend said, “and so she will.”
That important member of the Medical Board – he who was passionate about horses – was in the district again. He had come for a long weekend’s fishing. It was all mad. There was no big fishing at Fort Beit.
I began to want Richard to get the job. I cooled off where Frank was concerned; he did not notice, but I cooled off. Richard had become highly nervous. As soon as he had free time he raced off in his car to Sonia’s. Frank, who was less scrupulous about taking free time, was usually there first.
I was at the tea-party when the ageing, loose-mouthed, keen-eyed chief of the Medical Board turned up. Richard and Frank sat at opposite ends of a sofa. Richard looked embarrassed; I knew he was thinking of the job, and trying not to seem to be exploiting his attachment to Sonia. I sat near them. Sonia, reciting a long formula from her book of etiquette, introduced us to the important man. As she did so it struck me that this recitation might to some ears sound like a charming gesture against the encroaching slackness of the times. She sat the man between Richard and Frank, and clearly she meant business.
She stood by. She had a beautiful shape; we nurses had not provided that, we had only called it forth from the peasant slouch. She said to the old man, “Richard yere wants to talk to you, Basil, man,” and touched Richard’s shoulder. Frank was peering into the abstract distance. It occurred to me that Frank was the administrative type; none of the research workers I had known were dispassionate, they were vulnerable and nervous.
Richard was nervous. He did not look at the man, he was looking up at Sonia’s face with its West End make-up.
“Applied for the job up north?” said this Basil to Richard.
“Yes,” Richard said, and smiled with relief.
“Want it?” said the man, casually, in his great importance.
“Oh, rather,” Richard said.
“Well, have it,” said the man, flicking away the invisible job with his forefinger as lightly as if it were a ping-pong ball.
“Well,” Richard said, “no thank you.”
“What did you say?” said the man.
“What that you say?” said Sonia.
My brother and I are very unlike in most ways, but there are a few radical points of similarity between us. It must be something in the blood.
“No thank you,” Richard was saying. “After all, I feel I ought to go on with research in tropical diseases.”
Sonia’s fury only made a passing pattern on her face. Her first thought was for the old man, fussed and suddenly groundless as he was. “Basil, man,” she said, bending over him with her breasts about his ears, “you got the wrong chap. This yere Frank is the boy I was talking of to you. Frank, may I have the honour to introduce to you this yere distinguished –”
“Yes, we’ve met,” said the man, turning to Frank.
Frank returned from the middle distance. “I’ve applied for the job,” he said, “and my qualifications are, I think –”
“Married?”
“No, but hoping to be.” He turned duly to me and I smiled back most nastily.
“Want the job?”
“Oh, rather.”
“Sure?”
“Oh yes, quite sure.”
The old man was not going to be caught again. “I hope you really want the job. There are a good many excellent applicants and we want a keen –”
“Yes, I want the job.”
Sonia said, “Well, have it,” and I thought, then, she had really done for the whole thing and outrun her influence.
But the old man beamed up at her, took both her prettily restored hands in his, and I nearly saw his slack mouth water.
Other people were pressing round for a word with this Medical Board man. Sonia was treating Richard with ostentatious neglect. Frank was leaning against the wall, now, talking to her. Suddenly I did not want to lose Frank. I looked round the company and wondered what I was doing there, and said to Richard, “Let’s go.”
Richard was looking at Sonia’s back. “Why do you want to go?” Richard said. “It’s early yet. Why?”
Because the curtain was fluttering at the open window, letting in wafts of the savage territory beyond the absurd drawing-room. The people were getting excited; I thought soon they might scream, once or twice like the birds, and then be silent. I thought, even, that Richard might change his mind again about the job, and tell Sonia so, and leave it to her to sort it out for him. It was the pull of Sonia that made him reluctant to leave. She was adjusting Frank’s tie and telling him he needed looking after, for all the world as if she had been brought up to that old line; we must tell her, I thought, not to do that sort of thing in public. And I would gladly have stayed on till sundowner time in order to jerk Frank back into a sense of my personality; but there was a storm coming, and it was no fun driving home through a storm.
Richard is stronger-willed than I am. After this party he kept away from Sonia’s and stuck in to his work. I broke off my engagement. It was impossible to know whether Frank was relieved or not. There were still three months before he was to take up his appointment in the north. He spent most of his time with Sonia. I was not sure how things stood between them. I still drove over to Sonia’s sometimes and found Frank there. I was dissatisfied and attracted by both of them and by their situation. In the dry spells they would often be down the river in the punt when I arrived, and I would wait for the sight of the returning pink parasol, and be glad of the sight. Once or twice when we met at the clinic Frank said to me, factually, “We could still be married.” Once he said, “Old Sonia’s only a joke, you know.” But I thought he was afraid I might take him at his word, or might do so too soon.
Sonia spoke again of travelling. She was learning to study road maps. She told one of the nurses, “When Frank’s settled up at the north I’ll go up and settle him down nicer.” She told another of the nurses, “My old husband’s coming from gaol this month, next month, I don’t know, man. He’ll see some changes. He get used to them.”
One afternoon I drove over to the farm; I had not seen Sonia for six weeks because her children had been home for the holidays and I loathed her children. I had missed her, she was never boring. The house-boy said she was down the river with Dr Frank. I wandered down the path, but they were not in sight. I waited for about eight minutes and walked back. All the natives except the house-boy had gone to sleep in their huts. I did not see the house-boy for some time, and when I did I was frightened by the fear on his face.
I was coming
