William Boyd - The Blue Afternoon

'You should see the propeller blades, exquisite. How much longer? Pulse is a bit thready.'

'Five minutes… Dressing forceps, Nurse.'

Carriscant pulled away more of the adipose tissue. 'Depends if there's a fistula, I suppose.' He felt with his finger. 'Don't think so.'

'I hope to have all the panels done by next week.'

'Really? Fast work… Lot of suppuration here.'

He washed out the abscess cavity with a solution of carbolic acid and inserted a drainage tube. He had found out where the Gerlinger school was, where the American woman worked. Bad idea to wait there while the children were studying. Later in the day perhaps. He closed up the wound with some sutures. One of the nurses laid a large wadding of soaked cotton wool over the wound.

'That should do it,' he said. 'And I think a large and abundant enema might be called for.'

Pantaleon chuckled. 'Cruz would certainly approve.'

'And some ergot of rye. Two doses for the next three days. Wheel him out.'

He walked over to the sink to wash his hands. Stink of pus clung to you. How Annaliese hated that. Carried the smell of your work home. Like being married to a fishmonger.

'What's up next?' he called to his nurse.

'Volvulus of the small intestine.'

Busy day, he thought, busy day.

The Gerlinger school was down a side street off Escolta, a hundred yards or so from that prosperous stripe of elegant stores and the tinselly allure of the Chinese fancy goods emporia. It was a former barracks of the guardia civil and still had a somewhat institutional and cheerless aspect although some attempt had been made to pretty it up recently by planting a border of zinnias along the foot of the facade. The children were gone by the time Carriscant arrived at the end of the afternoon.

An old woman swabbing down the stone flags in the entrance hall directed him to the teachers' common room where a trio of youthful nuns confirmed that Miss Caspar had gone for the day.

'Is it urgent business?' one of them asked, politely.

'Ah, no, Sister, it's…' He paused: how to express this? 'A personal matter.'

Something of his anguish must have irradiated the familiar phrase because the three nuns all glanced sympathetically at each other and then one of them volunteered the information that it was Miss Caspar's habit to take a walk on the Luneta before she went home. Especially if the Constabulary band was playing.

The Luneta was a small park between the battlements of Intramuros and the sea wall where traditionally the citizens of Manila gathered for the paseo at dusk. The custom had survived the arrival of the Americans and it was one of the few occasions during which foreigners, mestizos and native Filipinos encountered each other in some sort of relaxed and egalitarian social mix.

When Carriscant arrived at the modest esplanade around which most of the ostentatious parading and covert scrutiny took place a few people were beginning to saunter away and the last Angelus could be heard tolling faintly from the old city. All the same there were over a hundred carriages still making their steady clockwise circuit around and around, beneath the now glimmering streetlights. He ordered his driver to stop and he proceeded on foot down the central paved area, with some difficulty through the dawdling crowds, towards the bandstand, from where the sound of a competently played Strauss waltz was carried to him on the sea breeze. He glanced about him rapidly as he went, scanning every white, female face, completely confident that his eye would pick her out – rather in the way one's own name leaps out from any printed page-from the mass of people wandering to and fro, chatting, flirting, ogling, commenting on the burnished landaus and victorias and the lacy finery of the women they contained. There were many American soldiers present in their dress whites with their soft pinched hats, rich Chinese in vibrant silks, Englishmen in boating coats and solar topees, and here and there an old friar would shuffle past nervously, dreaming of the old days before the Revolution and the Americans came. On his right was the wide placid bay, its waters dark now the sun was dipping behind the Bataan headland, the darker shapes of the moored ships riding at anchor pricked out by coloured lights.

He waited by the bandstand a few tense interminable minutes but could not see her. In spite of the cool of the evening his fretful excited mood was making him perspire. He mopped his brow and dried his moist palms with his handkerchief before crossing the road to the sea wall where he stood for a while, eyes closed, telling himself to relax and fanning his glowing face with his panama. As he began to calm down a new mood of sober rationality began to infect him… What in God's good name did he think he was doing running about the Luneta like a lovelorn youth? He was Dr Salvador Carriscant, surgeon-in-chief of the San Jeronimo hospital; any number of people here would recognise him. He glanced tentatively left and right; it was just as well dusk was advancing – beyond the streetlights' glow most people's faces were shadowed. And if the woman had been at the school, what would he have done, he rebuked himself further? He had had some story ready about wanting to enrol a mythical niece in the school but the first elementary questions on her part would have exposed his visit for the evident sham it was. He felt a forceful disgust at his senseless impetuosity: it was not dignified. He settled his hat on his head and turned for home thinking with rueful wisdom that dignity was the first quality to be abandoned when the heart took over the running of human affairs.

And then he saw her.

With two other women and, he saw a moment later, two male companions walking behind, two men in drill suits, all of them approaching the bandstand, upon which the band had now struck up an irritating oompah-pah Souza march.

He crossed the roadway, darting between the carriages, and began to follow the group, hanging back some way off to the side. She wore a small hat, which made her look more neat and formal than that day on the archery field, but he could see that her face was animated, she was enjoying herself, and for the first time he saw her smile.

They gathered round the bandstand and the music changed again to a brassy but plaintive rendition of 'Quando me'n vo' from La Boheme. He moved to a position obliquely behind her, where her face was in quarter profile, and watched her clasp her hands to her throat in delight as she mouthed the words of the aria to herself, rejoicing in the music. His eyes dropped and he watched her haunches sway to and fro, pliantly twirling the folds of her long skirt this way and that as she shifted weight, almost dancing with herself, swaying to the poignant rhythms of the melody.

This was too much for him: this was too much for anyone in his position to bear. He felt a kind of hopeless swoon come over him, a lightness, as if his body had emptied, and he stood there, a husk, capable of being carried away by the lightest breeze.

Her two women companions stood a little way in front of her. One of the men at her side pointed out a girl selling candied sweets and nuts. She nodded and dispatched him to purchase some while the other man made the same request of the two women. Was one of these fellows her beau, he wondered? Or were these simply colleagues from the Gerlinger school? She stood now, alone for a few seconds, lost in the music. Three strides took him to her shoulder.

'Miss Caspar,' his voice was low, intimate, 'excuse me, please… '

She did not respond, did not turn. He repeated her name, raising his voice somewhat. Nothing. He reached out and with trembling fingers touched the material of her air-blue blouse.

She turned with a little shudder of surprise and he looked into that face once more.