Уильям Моэм - The Narrow Corner

“How could you think if you were as scared as all that?”

“I was scared with my body. That didn’t prevent me from thinking with my mind.”

“Bit of a character, aren’t you, doctor.”

“I don’t know about that.”

“I’m sorry I was so short with you when you asked if you could have a passage on this boat.” He hesitated an instant. “I’ve been ill, you know, and my nerves are a bit funny. I’m not crazy about people I don’t know.”

“Oh, that’s all right.”

“I don’t want you to think I’m just a rough–neck.” He looked round at the peaceful scene. They had sailed out of the narrow arm between the two islands, and now found themselves in what looked like an inland sea. They were surrounded by low–lying islets, thickly covered with vegetation, and the water was as calm and blue as a Swiss lake. “Bit of a change from last night. Got worse when the moon rose. How you could have slept through it beats me. There was a hell of a racket.”

“I smoked.”

“Nichols said you were going to when you and the Chink went into the cabin. I wouldn’t believe it. But when we came down—huh, it was enough to take the roof of your head off.”

“Why wouldn’t you believe it?”

“I couldn’t imagine that a man like you could degrade himself by doing such a thing.”

The doctor chuckled.

“One should be tolerant of other people’s vices,” he said calmly.

“I’ve got no cause to blame anybody.”

“What else has Nichols said about me?”

“Oh, well.” He paused as he saw Ah Kay, as neat as a new pin in his white dress, slim and graceful, come along to fetch the empty cups. “It’s no business of mine, anyway. He says you were struck off the rolls for something.”

“Removed from the Register is the correct expression,” placidly interrupted the doctor.

“And he says he believes you went to gaol. Naturally one can’t help wondering when one sees a man with your intelligence, and the reputation you have in the East, settled in a beastly Chinese city.”

“What makes you think I’m intelligent?”

“I can see that you’re educated. I don’t want you to think that I’m just a larrikin. I was studying to be an accountant when my health broke down. This isn’t the sort of life I’m used to.”

The doctor smiled. No one could have looked more radiantly well than Fred Blake. His broad chest, his athletic build, gave the lie to his tale of tuberculosis.

“Shall I tell you something?”

“Not if you don’t want to.”

“Oh, not about myself. I don’t talk much about myself. I think there’s no harm in a doctor being a trifle mysterious. It adds to his patients’ belief in him. I was going to give you a reflection based on experience. When some incident has shattered the career you’ve mapped out for yourself, a folly, a crime or a misfortune, you mustn’t think you’re down and out. It may be a stroke of luck, and when you look back years later you may say to yourself that you wouldn’t for anything in the world exchange the new life disaster has forced upon you for the dull, humdrum existence you would have led if circumstances hadn’t intervened.”

Fred looked down.

“Why do you say that to me?”

“I thought it might be a useful piece of information.”

The young man sighed a little.

“You never know about people, do you? I used to think you were either white or yellow. It seems to me you can’t tell what anyone’ll do when it comes to the pinch. Of all the rotten skunks I’ve met I’ve never met one to beat Nichols. He’d rather go crooked than straight. You can’t trust him an inch. We’ve been together a good while now, and I thought there wasn’t much I didn’t know about him. He’d do his own brother down if he got the chance. Not a decent thing about him. You should have seen him last night. I don’t mind telling you it was a pretty near thing. You’d have been surprised. Calm as a cucumber. My opinion is that he just revelled in it. Once he said to me: ‘Said your prayers, Fred? If we don’t make the islands before it gets much worse, we shall be feeding the fishes in the morning.’ And he grinned all over his ugly face. He kept his head all right. I’ve done a bit of sailing in Sydney harbour and I give you my word I’ve never seen a boat handled like he handled this one. I take my hat off to him. If we’re here now it’s him we owe it to. He’s got nerve all right. And if he thought there was twenty pounds to be made without risk by doing us in, you and me, d’you think he’d hesitate? How d’you explain that?”

“Oh, I don’t know.”

“But don’t you think it’s funny that a chap who’s nothing but a born crook should have all that pluck? I mean, I’ve always heard that when a man was a wrong ’un he might bluster and bully, but when it comes to a crisis he’d just crumple up. I hate that chap, and all the same, last night I couldn’t help admiring him.”

The doctor smiled quietly, but did not answer. He was amused by the lad’s ingenuous surprise at the complexity of human nature.

“And he’s conceited. We play cribbage all the time, fancies himself at the game. I always beat him, and he will go on.”

“He tells me you’ve been very lucky.”

“Lucky in love, unlucky at cards, they say. I’ve played cards all my life. I’ve got a knack for it. That’s one of the reasons why I went in for being an accountant. I’ve got that sort of head. It’s not luck. You have luck in streaks. I know about cards, and in the long run it’s always the fellow who plays best who wins. Nichols thinks he’s smart. He hasn’t got a dog’s chance playing with me.”

The conversation dropped and they sat side by side in easy comfort. After a while Captain Nichols woke and came on deck. In his dirty pyjamas, unwashed, unshaved, with his decayed teeth and general air of having run to seed, he presented an appearance that was almost repulsive. His face, grey in the light of early morning, bore a peevish expression.

“It’s come on again, doc.”

“What?”

“My dyspepsia. I ’ad a snack last night before I went to bed. I knew I oughtn’t to eat anything just before turnin’ in, but I was that ’ungry I just ’ad to, and it’s on me chest now somethin’ cruel.”

“We’ll see what we can do about it,” smiled the doctor, getting up from his chair.

“You won’t be able to do a thing,” answered the skipper gloomily. “I know my digestion. After I been through a patch of dirty weather I always ’ave dyspepsia as sure as my name’s Nichols. Cruel ’ard, I call it. I mean, you would think after I’d been at the wheel for eight hours I could eat a bit of cold sausage and a slice of cheese without sufferin’ for it. Damn it all, a man must eat.”

DR. SAUNDERS was to leave them at Kanda–Meira, twin islands in the Kanda Sea, at which vessels of the Royal Netherlands Steam Packet Company called regularly. He thought it unlikely that he would have to wait long before a ship came in bound for some place to which he was not unwilling to go. The gale had forced them out of their course, and for twenty–four hours they were becalmed, so that it was not till the sixth day that, early in the morning, with but just enough wind to fill their sails, they sighted the volcano of Meira. The town was on Kanda. It was nine o’clock before they reached the entrance to the harbour, and the Sailing Directions had warned them that it was difficult. Meira was a tall conical hill covered with jungle almost to its summit, and a plume of dense smoke, like a huge umbrella pine, rose from its crater. The channel between the two islands was narrow and tidal streams were said to run through it with great force. In one place it was barely half a cable wide, and there were shoals in the centre with very little water over them. But Captain Nichols was a fine seaman and knew it. He liked an opportunity to show off. Looking astonishingly disreputable in loud, striped pyjamas, a battered topi on his head, and a week’s growth of white beard, he took the Fenton in with style.