"Still, you asked for it."
Doctors Wear Scarlet (1960) by Simon Raven
Six years ago I started reading Simon Raven's perfect Doctors Wear Scarlet (1960). I wrote after finishing it that I did not need to read another novel. I have read a handful since then, and enjoyed each. But I think my 2017 conclusion is still a sound judgment.
* * *
“There is…something,” Milton said. “It’s an odd story and worth hearing in any case. It may fit in with what you’re after.” His can was restored to him by the enchanting Ganymede, who tickled his neck before leaving the table. “Insolent brat,” said Milton in a friendly parody of English tones: “he’ll charge a drachma extra on the can for that.” Then he settled himself forward on his elbows.
“It’s a little tricky this,” he began, “especially as it may concern a friend of yours. Still, you asked for it. The first thing to know is that some three miles up the coast to the North there’s a fine natural harbour, ’most as good as the one here, which the natives use as a kind of crude ship-building yard. There’s boat houses and a row of stone buildings, but mostly no one sleeps there. They just work there by day, tearing up the old craft that are sent to be junked there and using the sound timbers to patch the newer boats. Then in the evening they row back here. But sometimes, in the springtime, in the summer, some of the boys take food and stay up there the night as a kind of adventure, I reckon, or to get quit of their scolding old mothers for a while. So one day this June young Michaeli, who’s the son of the shipwright Thalassides, took his friend Nico and three bottles of wine and two lobsters, and off they went telling everyone they were going to camp out the night at Thyrias – which is what they call this shipyard.”
He took a long draught of wine.
“So no one thought anything of this – until the boys got back the next day and told everyone what they thought they saw. And it was a night, I may tell you gentlemen, with a beautiful round moon, so there’s reason enough to suppose they saw it. And what they told everyone was this. They were sitting drinking outside a hut up on the far end of the quay they have there, and because of the moon being so bright they weren’t bothered with a lamp, so probably no one would have noticed them. And as they sat there a small sailing boat came round the Northern point of the harbour. Well, at first they thought nothing of this, because it might have been some fisherman who had gone out for a night’s fishing, or it might have been some tourist who’d taken a fancy to the moonlight and hired the boat to take him around in it. Anyway, they just watched it without bothering much – until they saw it was putting in towards the quay. So then they got all anxious to see who might be coming to spoil their privacy, and they walked along a strip of beach which lies under the quay for a way; but they kept themselves hidden behind the hulks and all that were lying about, because whoever was coming they weren’t keen to be involved with them.
“The next thing that happened was that this sailing boat nosed up on to the strip of beach about twenty yards from where they were hiding behind a rowing boat. Out gets some ragged character whom they don’t recognize and ties up the boat to one of the old cannons, which are stuck muzzle down into the sand to act as bollards. Then he looks around him and apparently finds everything in order, so he calls back to the boat. And then… Well, I reckon this is the difficult bit, so I’ll try and get it right and you gentlemen must hear me out in peace, so’s I don’t lose it.”
He drank again, a magnificent swig straight from the can that would not have disgraced Jack Falstaff.
“What happened, so Michaeli and Nico said, was this. A tall young woman stepped off the boat, dressed in a sweater and pants, and with a kind of cloak hanging from her shoulders. She too looked around, and apparently she was happy about the beach and all, because she then spoke, very tight and cold, only they couldn’t hear the words, back in the direction of the boat. Then there was a deal of fumbling about in the bottom of the boat, and after a bit three other men come up with a kind of stretcher, which they ease forward over the bow, till the tall woman and the man who got out first are able to help them, and they get this stretcher thing lying on the beach. Then the woman kneels down by the stretcher and starts making soft sort of crooning noises, and the boys get to busting themselves to see what’s on it, and what they think they see is this.
“They reckon it’s a man on the stretcher, wrapped in blankets right up to his chin, and with a face which is bold and proud but…but sort of dead-looking. That is, it’s so white, in the moonlight, that it looks like the face of a figure on a tomb – you know the sort of thing, alabaster face looking straight up at the sky, eyes closed, immobile… And they reckon the hair is dark, but it’s not a Greek face; while Nico, who’s been to Athens once or twice, said it was rather like a picture he saw there of your Lord Byron. Handsome, and proud like I said. But all the time looking so dead. White, they said, with the hair falling over the forehead, and these blankets, held by straps, wrapped tight and coming right up to the chin, so that the body – the man – is rather like some kind of mummy.
“Well, they don’t find this any too nice to look at, but they can’t move, what with this woman and four men and all, so they just sit tight. Meantime the woman goes on crooning and sort of caresses this figure on the stretcher, strokes him all over, only of course she’s only stroking the blankets. She starts at the feet and works up along the body. When she comes to the face, she touches it with the ends of her fingers and tidies the hair back from the forehead for a bit; till suddenly she bends over to kiss the face – or it looks as if she’s going to kiss the face, but just as her lips get down there her whole head sort of slips aside and her mouth seems to nuzzle in under the ear, as though she’s got some secret to whisper first… But just then one of the men comes up and tugs her to her feet, and starts talking, fiercely but very low, so that once again the boys don’t get what’s being said.
“Then all the other men come and join in, and they still talk very low, but they seem to be angry over something; until after a time the woman makes a wave of her hand and then seems to be giving them money, and whatever it is it shuts them up for sure. Last of all, two of the men get back into the boat, while the other two pick up the stretcher and start away from the harbour towards the track that leads up into the hills. The woman follows them, with a good strong step and her cloak swinging as she goes, and the whole party vanishes round the shoulder of a hill. Meantime, the two men in the sailing boat untie her and take off out of the harbour, turning back up North when they get to the harbour mouth. As for the boys, they’re only a couple of kids, and they just go back to their hut, take a big swig of wine each, and pull their blankets up over their heads. And that’s it, gentlemen. That’s the story that Michaeli and Nico had to tell when they got back from their all night picnic the next morning.”
“They never thought of following…the stretcher?” I asked.
“They thought of it all right. But neither of them would have done it for ten thousand drachmas. They didn’t like the woman, see, and they didn’t like what they saw on the stretcher.”
Doctors Wear Scarlet (1960) by Simon Raven
https://www.amazon.com/Doctors-Wear-Scarlet-Simon-Raven/dp/1842321803
