死亡约会02

Chapter 2

Miss Sarah King, M.B., stood by the table in the writing-room of the Solomon Hotel in Jerusalem,idly turning over the papers and magazines. A frown contracted her brows and she lookedpreoccupied.

The tall middle-aged¹ Frenchman who entered the room from the hall watched her for a momentor two before strolling up to the opposite side of the table. When their eyes met, Sarah made alittle gesture of smiling recognition. She remembered that this man had come to help her whentravelling from Cairo and had carried one of her suitcases at a moment when no porter appeared tobe available.

‘You like Jerusalem, yes?’ asked Dr Gerard after they had exchanged greetings.

‘It’s rather terrible in some ways,’ said Sarah, and added: ‘Religion is very odd!’

The Frenchman looked amused.

‘I know what you mean.’ His English was very nearly perfect. ‘Every imaginable sectsquabbling and fighting!’

‘And the awful things they’ve built, too!’ said Sarah.

‘Yes, indeed.’

Sarah sighed.

‘They turned me out of one place today because I had on a sleeveless dress,’ she said ruefully.

‘Apparently the Almighty² doesn’t like my arms in spite of having made them.’

Dr Gerard laughed. Then he said: ‘I was about to order some coffee. You will join me, Miss—?’

‘King, my name is. Sarah King.’

‘And mine—permit me.’ He whipped out a card. Taking it, Sarah’s eyes widened in delightedawe.

‘Dr Theodore Gerard? Oh! I am excited to meet you. I’ve read all your works, of course. Yourviews on schizophrenia are frightfully interesting.’

‘Of course?’ Gerard’s eyebrows⁴ rose inquisitively⁵.

Sarah explained rather diffidently.

‘You see—I’m by way of being a doctor myself. Just got my M.B.’

‘Ah! I see.’

Dr Gerard ordered coffee and they sat down in a corner of the lounge. The Frenchman was lessinterested in Sarah’s medical achievements than in the black hair that rippled⁶ back from herforehead and the beautifully shaped red mouth. He was amused at the obvious awe³ with which sheregarded him.

‘You are staying here long?’ he asked conversationally⁷.

‘A few days. That is all. Then I want to go to Petra.’

‘Aha! I, too, was thinking of going there if it does not take too long. You see, I have to be backin Paris on the fourteenth.’

‘It takes about a week, I believe. Two days to go, two days there and two days back again.’

‘I must go to the travel bureau in the morning and see what can be arranged.’

A party of people entered the lounge and sat down. Sarah watched them with some interest. Shelowered her voice.

‘Those people who have just come in, did you notice them on the train the other night? Theyleft Cairo the same time as we did.’

Dr Gerard screwed in an eyeglass and directed his glance across the room. ‘Americans?’

Sarah nodded.

‘Yes. An American family. But—rather an unusual one, I think.’

‘Unusual? How unusual?’

‘Well, look at them. Especially at the old woman.’

Dr Gerard complied. His keen professional glance flitted swiftly from face to face.

He noticed first a tall rather loose-boned man—age about thirty. The face was pleasant but weakand his manner seemed oddly apathetic⁸. Then there were two good-looking youngsters—the boyhad almost a Greek head. ‘Something the matter with him, too,’ thought Dr Gerard. ‘Yes—adefinite state of nervous tension.’ The girl was clearly his sister, a strong resemblance, and shealso was in an excitable condition. There was another girl younger still—with golden-red hair thatstood out like a halo; her hands were very restless, they were tearing and pulling at thehandkerchief in her lap. Yet another woman, young, calm, dark-haired with a creamy pallor, aplacid face not unlike a Luini Madonna. Nothing jumpy about her! And the centre of the group—‘Heavens!’ thought Dr Gerard, with a Frenchman’s candid⁹ repulsion. ‘What a horror of awoman!’ Old, swollen¹⁰, bloated, sitting there immovable in the midst of them—a distorted oldBuddha—a gross spider in the centre of a web!

To Sarah he said: ‘La Maman, she is not beautiful, eh?’ And he shrugged¹¹ his shoulders.

‘There’s something rather—sinister about her, don’t you think?’ asked Sarah.

Dr Gerard scrutinized¹² her again. This time his eye was professional, not aesthetic¹³.

‘Dropsy—cardiac—’ he added a glib¹⁴ medical phrase.

‘Oh, yes, that!’ Sarah dismissed the medical side.

‘But there is something odd in their attitude to her, don’t you think?’

‘Who are they, do you know?’

‘Their name is Boynton. Mother, married son, his wife, one younger son and two youngerdaughters.’

Dr Gerard murmured: ‘La famille Boynton sees the world.’

‘Yes, but there’s something odd about the way they’re seeing it. They never speak to anyoneelse. And none of them can do anything unless the old woman says so!’

‘She is of the matriarchal type,’ said Gerard thoughtfully.

‘She’s a complete tyrant¹⁵, I think,’ said Sarah.

Dr Gerard shrugged his shoulders and remarked that the American woman ruled the earth—thatwas well known.

‘Yes, but it’s more than just that.’ Sarah was persistent¹⁶. ‘She’s—oh, she’s got them all so cowed—so positively¹⁷ under her thumb—that it’s—it’s indecent!’

‘To have too much power is bad for women,’ Gerard agreed with sudden gravity. He shook hishead.

‘It is difficult for a woman not to abuse power.’

He shot a quick sideways glance at Sarah. She was watching the Boynton family—or rather shewas watching one particular member of it. Dr Gerard smiled a quick comprehending Gallic smile.

Ah! So it was like that, was it?

He murmured tentatively: ‘You have spoken with them—yes?’

‘Yes—at least with one of them.’

‘The young man—the younger son?’

‘Yes. On the train coming here from Kantara. He was standing¹⁹ in the corridor. I spoke¹⁸ to him.’

There was no self-consciousness in her attitude to life. She was interested in humanity and wasof a friendly though impatient disposition²⁰.

‘What made you speak to him?’ asked Gerard.

Sarah shrugged her shoulders.

‘Why not? I often speak to people travelling. I’m interested in people—in what they do andthink and feel.’

‘You put them under the microscope, that is to say.’

‘I suppose you might call it that,’ the girl admitted.

‘And what were your impressions in this case?’

‘Well,’ she hesitated, ‘it was rather odd…To begin with, the boy flushed right up to the roots ofhis hair.’

‘Is that so remarkable²¹?’ asked Gerard drily.

Sarah laughed.

‘You mean that he thought I was a shameless hussy making advances to him? Oh, no, I don’tthink he thought that. Men can always tell, can’t they?’

She gave him a frank questioning glance. Dr Gerard nodded his head.

‘I got the impression,’ said Sarah, speaking slowly and frowning a little, ‘that he was—howshall I put it?—both excited and appalled²². Excited out of all proportion—and quite absurdlyapprehensive at the same time. Now that’s odd, isn’t it? Because I’ve always found Americansunusually self-possessed. An American boy of twenty, say, has infinitely²³ more knowledge of theworld and far more savoir-faire than an English boy of the same age. And this boy must be overtwenty.’

‘About twenty-three or four, I should say.’

‘As much as that?’

‘I should think so.’

‘Yes…perhaps you’re right…Only, somehow, he seems very young…’

‘Maladjustment mentally. The “child” factor persists.’

‘Then I am right? I mean, there is something not quite normal about him?’

Dr Gerard shrugged his shoulders, smiling a little at her earnestness.

‘My dear young lady, are any of us quite normal? But I grant you that there is probably aneurosis of some kind.’

‘Connected with that horrible old woman, I’m sure.’

‘You seem to dislike her very much,’ said Gerard, looking at her curiously²⁴.

‘I do. She’s got a—oh, a malevolent²⁵ eye!’

Gerard murmured: ‘So have many mothers when their sons are attracted to fascinating youngladies!’

Sarah shrugged an impatient shoulder. Frenchmen were all alike, she thought, obsessed²⁶ by sex!

Though, of course, as a conscientious²⁷ psychologist she herself was bound to admit that there wasalways an underlying²⁸ basis of sex to most phenomena²⁹. Sarah’s thoughts ran along a familiarpsychological track.

She came out of her meditations³⁰ with a start. Raymond Boynton was crossing the room to thecentre table. He selected a magazine. As he passed her chair on his return journey she looked athim and spoke.

‘Have you been busy sightseeing today?’

She selected her words at random³¹, her real interest was to see how they would be received.

Raymond half stopped, flushed, shied like a nervous horse and his eyes went apprehensively³² tothe centre of his family group. He muttered: ‘Oh—oh, yes—why, yes, certainly. I—’

Then, as suddenly as though he had received the prick³³ of a spur, he hurried back to his family,holding out the magazine.

The grotesque³⁴ Buddha-like figure held out a fat hand for it, but as she took it her eyes, DrGerard noticed, were on the boy’s face. She gave a grunt³⁵, certainly no audible thanks. The positionof her head shifted very slightly. The doctor saw that she was now looking hard at Sarah. Her facewas quite impassive, it had no expression in it. Impossible to tell what was passing in the woman’smind.

Sarah looked at her watch and uttered an exclamation³⁶.

‘It’s much later than I thought.’ She got up. ‘Thank you so much, Dr Gerard, for standing mecoffee. I must write some letters now.’

He rose and took her hand.

‘We shall meet again, I hope,’ he said.

‘Oh, yes! Perhaps you will come to Petra?’

‘I shall certainly try to do so.’

Sarah smiled at him and turned away. Her way out of the room led her past the Boynton family.

Dr Gerard, watching, saw Mrs Boynton’s gaze shift to her son’s face. He saw the boy’s eyesmeet hers. As Sarah passed, Raymond Boynton half turned his head—not towards her, but awayfrom her…It was a slow, unwilling³⁷ motion and conveyed the idea that old Mrs Boynton had pulledan invisible string.

Sarah King noticed the avoidance, and was young enough and human enough to be annoyed byit. They had had such a friendly talk together in the swaying corridor of the wagons-lits. They hadcompared notes on Egypt, had laughed at the ridiculous language of the donkey boys and streettouts. Sarah had described how a camel man when he had started hopefully and impudently³⁸, ‘YouEnglish lady or American?’ had received the answer: ‘No, Chinese.’ And her pleasure in seeingthe man’s complete bewilderment as he stared at her. The boy had been, she thought, like a niceeager schoolboy—there had been, perhaps, something almost pathetic about his eagerness. Andnow, for no reason at all, he was shy, boorish³⁹—positively rude.

‘I shan’t take any more trouble with him,’ said Sarah indignantly.

For Sarah, without being unduly⁴⁰ conceited⁴¹, had a fairly good opinion of herself. She knewherself to be definitely attractive to the opposite sex, and she was not one to take a snubbing lyingdown!

She had been, perhaps, a shade over-friendly to this boy because, for some obscure reason, shehad felt sorry for him.

But now, it was apparent, he was merely a rude, stuck-up, boorish young American!

Instead of writing the letters she had mentioned, Sarah King sat down in front of her dressing-table, combed the hair back from her forehead, looked into a pair of troubled hazel eyes in theglass, and took stock of her situation in life.

She had just passed through a difficult emotional crisis. A month ago she had broken off herengagement to a young doctor some four years her senior. They had been very much attracted toeach other, but had been too much alike in temperament⁴³. Disagreements and quarrels had been ofcommon occurrence. Sarah was of too imperious a temperament herself to brook⁴⁴ a calm assertionof autocracy⁴⁵. Like many high-spirited women, Sarah believed herself to admire strength. She hadalways told herself that she wanted to be mastered. When she met a man capable of mastering hershe found that she did not like it at all! To break off her engagement had cost her a good deal ofheart-burning, but she was clear-sighted enough to realize that mere⁴² mutual⁴⁶ attraction was not asufficient basis on which to build a lifetime of happiness. She had treated herself deliberately⁴⁷ to aninteresting holiday abroad in order to help on forgetfulness before she went back to start workingin earnest.

Sarah’s thoughts came back from the past to the present.

‘I wonder,’ she thought, ‘if Dr Gerard will let me talk to him about his work. He’s done suchmarvelous work. If only he’ll take me seriously…Perhaps—if he comes to Petra—’

Then she thought again of the strange boorish young American.

She had no doubt that it was the presence of his family which had caused him to react in such apeculiar manner, but she felt slightly scornful of him, nevertheless. To be under the thumb ofone’s family like that—it was really rather ridiculous—especially for a man!

And yet…

A queer feeling passed over her. Surely there was something a little odd about it all?

She said suddenly out loud: ‘That boy wants rescuing! I’m going to see to it!’

 

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