World of Suzie Wong : A Novel (9781101572399) (38 page)

Chapter Seven

“S
uzie, you're so beautiful.”

“No, I am ugly. I have cried so much that my cheeks are all swollen. I can see them. They are like big bumps in front of my eyes.”

“I don't care, you're beautiful.”

We lay clutched together. We had neither of us been able to speak when I had come back into the room, but she had known as soon as she saw me that I had found out what had happened and had begun to cry again, and I had wanted to go to her, but had felt too ashamed. I had felt too ashamed to touch her. And then suddenly I had gone to her and taken her hand, and pressed it to my cheek and kissed it, and then kissed her face, and then she was clinging to me and kissing me and crying at the same time; and then the great joy had swept over us, because the two imperfect halves had come together again, and without speaking or even thinking we had made love, and it had been like the first time we had made love because Suzie had again been shaken by those great cataclysmic sobs; and then the sobs had brought me back to earth, and I had been frightened because of their violence, and because I had been carried away and had forgotten that she was ill.

I kissed her nose, and the red swelling under her eyes. She closed her eyes and I kissed the soft eyelids.

“Suzie, that was awful of us. We shouldn't have done that.”

“I'm glad. I feel beautiful.”

“I'd get a doctor if there was time—but I think it's better to go if you feel all right.”

“Yes, I told you—I feel beautiful now.”

“Well, you needn't move yet. Just lie quietly while I pack.”

We took a trishaw to the boat. Suzie seemed to have quite recovered, but despite her protests of unnecessary expense I took a bunk for her and made her lie down. The other occupant of the cabin was an English schoolmistress from Hong Kong, who said she always “splurged” on a cabin because she was easily seasick and liked to be sick in private. She already looked green about the gills from apprehension alone. She asked the steward if it was going to be rough and the steward said, “No, it'll be nice today,” but after he had gone she said, “Do you think he was telling the truth? You haven't heard anything?”

“I should think it'll be like a millpond,” I said.

It was a hot oppressive day with the usual heat haze over Macao and there was no wind in the harbor. However, crossing before the mouth of the Pearl we hit a stiff breeze, and there was a good sea running. The
Fatshan
began to creak and lurch. I went along to the cabin. Suzie did not mind the lurching and was nearly asleep, but the schoolmistress was retching over an enamel spittoon, so I retired again and went into the bar for a brandy. I was still in the bar an hour later when the ship suddenly changed course, and the loud-speaker announced that an overturned sampan had been sighted with survivors clinging to the wreckage. I went out onto the deck. The engines of the
Fatshan
fell to a low throb. A lifeboat was lowered and the passengers hung over the rail to watch the rescue. Next to me a tall powerful bull of a man, with a ginger mustache, exclaimed “Clots!” as the Chinese seamen maneuvered the lifeboat clumsily, and he also called the sampan crew mucking clots for coming so far out in rough weather—the boat people were all the same, it was the third time that this had happened to him on trips to Macao. Then the loud-speaker crackled and a voice urgently requested any doctors among the passengers to go down to “B” deck. “Muck 'em, they won't get me,” said the big ginger bull, evidently a doctor himself. “It's the muckers' own fault—let 'em drown.” But it was only a token protest and when I looked round a moment later he had gone. I watched the bedraggled figure of an old woman hauled aboard. She looked as tiny and fragile as a featherless bird with her drenched black silk suit clinging to her body. Then a young man was hauled up, nervously tittering and laughing although three-parts drowned, and then somebody touched my arm and I looked round, and it was the schoolmistress. Her face was ghoulish green. “I think you'd better come,” she said.

“What's happened?”

Her gray parched mouth moved but no words came, and I did not know whether it was because she was sick or because the answer would have been too distressing. I turned quickly and groped my way along the cakewalk of the deck, and as I entered the cabin my foot skidded and I nearly fell. The floor was smeared with vomit. The cabin smelt of vomit and there was a tinny clatter as the spittoon rolled back and forth on the floor. I went over to Suzie. Her eyes were closed and her face was very white and there was a pink foam at the corner of her mouth dribbling onto the pillow.

“Suzie!”

She opened her eyes and closed them again without speaking.

“I'll get the doctor,” I said. “I won't be long.”

I clambered down the companionway to the lower deck. Chinese seamen were carrying one of the survivors into a cabin. Others lay on the deck and the big ginger bull of a doctor who had said, “Let the muckers drown,” was astraddle a woman on his knees, with his big hands spread over the woman's back. He thrust down on his hands, groaning with exertion, crushing her ribs under his weight. The woman was unconscious but when the doctor lifted his weight the air was sucked through her open mouth with the silver teeth and gurgled down her throat into her lungs.

“Doctor, my wife's ill,” I said.

He said without looking up, “Your mucking wife can go to mucking hell. This woman's dying.”

“I think my wife's dying.”

He did not say anything but went on working on the woman, thrusting down on his big spread hands until the air moaned out of the woman's throat and there was no air left and her throat was silent, and still thrusting, and then lifting his weight so that the air gurgled back, and then thrusting again. And then after a minute he said without taking his eyes off the woman, “Who can take over? Anybody here can take over?”

“Yes, sir, I am a trained lifesaver, sir,” a Chinese seaman said smartly. “I have a certificate and a medal, sir.”

“Come here.”

He went on thrusting but lifted one knee over the woman so that he was kneeling on one side of her, and the seaman kneeled on the other side and placed his hands flat over the doctor's, and they thrust together until the doctor was satisfied that the seaman had got the rhythm, and then he withdrew his own hands, and the seaman lifted one knee over the woman's body and went on thrusting alone. The doctor watched him to make sure he was doing it right and then got up, saying, “Now who wanted me? Who spoke to me just now about his wife?”

“It was me,” I said. “I'm sorry, but she's really ill.”

He glared at me without belief, as if he suspected that she was only seasick and that I was rating her comfort above a Cantonese fisherwoman's life. “She'd mucking better be,” he muttered. He followed me to the upper deck and we went into the cabin. The schoolmistress was standing helplessly by Suzie's bunk, her color-drained mouth dragged down at the corners. There was the sharp sweet smell of vomit. The doctor went over to Suzie and glanced at the pink trickle of foam. He looked up and sniffed and said, “Christ, let's have some bloody air—you two get out.”

I followed the schoolmistress out onto the deck. We stood clinging to the rail in the hot sticky wind that left a film on the skin like oil. The last of the sampan family was brought on board, and there was a lot of shouting, and then the lifeboat was hauled up. The engines began to throb again.

“I'm sorry about the cabin,” I told the schoolmistress.

“Oh, it doesn't matter,” she said. “The cabin doesn't matter. I only wish I could be more help. I'm usually so good at helping at times like this—but I feel so useless when I'm sick.”

The doctor came out of the cabin. The ship gave a roll and he lurched across the deck, crashing against the rail and knocking a wooden litter-box askew with his knee. I waited for him to swear but he only winced and nursed the knee with his hand.

That's bad, I thought. If Suzie had been all right he'd have sworn and called me a mucker for wasting his time.

“Well, we're moving again—we'll be in pretty soon,” he said. “There's not much we can do until then except keep her cool. Get some ice from the steward and give her a compress. Here, over the lungs.”

The schoolmistress said eagerly, “I'll do that. I'll get some ice. I can make a compress from a pillowcase. I've done it before.”

“And give her some ice to suck,” the doctor said.

I said, “How bad is she really?”

“She'll be all right once she's in hospital,” the doctor said. “She's lost a bit of blood, but they'll fix her up all right in hospital. They'll be getting some ambulances for these boat people, so she can go with them to King's.”

“She's got a bed waiting for her at St. Margaret's,” I said. “They've a special T.B. ward there.”

“I can't promise anything.” He strained his ear to listen to the loud-speaker as a voice announced that a hat would be passed round for the sampan survivors, whose sampan had not only provided their livelihood but had also been their home. They had lost everything. The doctor looked defiant and said, “Muck 'em—they won't get a mucking penny out of me,” and felt for his wallet in readiness to hand out fifty dollars. “Well, I must get down below again—and I'm afraid you may have to settle for King's.”

But at Hong Kong, after Suzie had been carried ashore on a stretcher and put in one of the three waiting ambulances, the doctor came up and winked and said, “I've squeezed all the boat people into the others, and told this driver to take you to St. Margaret's.”

“You've been awfully kind,” I said. “How much do I owe you?”

“Muck all.” And he was gone.

I climbed into the back of the ambulance and the orderly began to close the doors. He said carefully, “All right, King's?”

“No, St. Margaret's,” I said.

He shook his head. “This ambulance go King's.”

“But the doctor said you'd take us to St. Margaret's.”

The driver was standing behind the orderly. They watched me in silence as if waiting for something to sink in. I felt in my pocket and took out a five-dollar note. I handed it to the orderly and said, “All right, make it St. Margaret's.”

The orderly took the note thoughtfully. He folded it into a square and tucked it into the pocket of his suit. He closed the ambulance doors. I heard the two men climb into the cab and the doors slam but the engine remained silent. The other ambulances had driven off. Suzie lay in silence with her eyes closed. The hemorrhage had stopped with the ice but she was very weak and she had not opened her eyes for the last hour, and I do not think she had even known she was being carried ashore. It was suffocating inside the ambulance. I peered through the window into the cab. The orderly and driver were busy talking. I rapped on the window and made signs to them to hurry. After a minute the orderly got out again and came round to the back. He opened the doors and said, “Sorry, St. Margaret's too far.”

“But it's not a mile,” I said. “It's nearer than King's.”

“Too far.”

“You mean you want some more ‘squeeze,'” I said. “How much do you want?”

“Give me ten dollars for extra petrol.”

I gave him a ten-dollar note. “That'll buy you enough petrol to take you to Pekin.”

“Pekin no good now,” he grinned. “No fun. No dance girls. No good-time.”

“And no ‘squeeze,'” I said. “Now for God's sake get moving.”

They must have been delighted with the fifteen dollars because the ambulance shot off at once with a great clanging of the bell to clear other traffic off the road. I held Suzie's hand. It was pale and waxen like her cheeks as if she had been drained of blood to the last drop. I tried to remember how many pints of blood there were supposed to be in the human body, and work out how many pints she might have lost. The ambulance stopped outside St. Margaret's. I watched Suzie taken off on the stretcher and then went to the desk in the hall. There was a note from Kay saying that she had gone off duty, but that she had briefed Sister Dunn in the T.B. ward, “who's a poppet, and who I know will do all she can.” I found my way upstairs to the T.B. ward and asked a nurse outside for Sister Dunn.

“She'll be out in a minute,” she said. “You can't go in, some of the women are doing their ablutions.”

I waited in the corridor and presently Sister Dunn came out with a brisk efficient impersonal smile and said, “Don't worry. We'll look after her. Just go home and leave her to us, and I'm sure she'll be delighted to see you tomorrow afternoon.”

“Tomorrow afternoon?”

“We only allow visitors in the afternoon—three to four.” She smiled, but the smile had been sterilized along with the chromium scissors and scalpels, and picked out with sterilized chromium tongs, and never touched by human hand. Well, she may be Kay's idea of a poppet, I thought, but she isn't mine.

I said, “I'd like to wait until the doctor's seen her.”

“I'm afraid you can't wait here. You'll have to wait in the hall.”

“You'll let me know when there's any news?”

“Of course. Just wait in the hall.”

I waited an hour in the hall and nobody came. I waited another quarter of an hour and then went upstairs to the ward. The ward doors were wedged open and I could see down the long room with the twirling fans and the shining waxed floor down the middle like a bowling alley, and the two long rows of beds and the silent vacant Chinese faces. I spotted Suzie with a bottle strung up over her bed, and a red tube from the bottle bandaged to her arm. I turned back down the corridor to look for Sister Dunn, and just then she came briskly out of a door. She saw me and stopped and said, “Oh, I'm awfully sorry, I forgot all about you.” Her manner was less sterilized, almost warm. “I'm afraid I forgot.”