Back in his seat, Digby watches Jeb float about the room like a man running for office, offering a wave to Denzil and the Dukes, who acknowledge him like royalty. He walks past Jennifer, who snubs her brother, but then he sneaks up behind her and lifts her off the ground and onto the dance floor. Denzil and the Dukes strike up a cha-cha-cha; every eye is on brother and sister as Jeb expertly leads with just the faintest pressure on the tips of his fingers, driving with his hips. Digby is envious of a skill he knows he’ll never possess. He’s struck again by the contrast between Jeb’s blue eyes and brown hair and Jennifer’s coal-dark eyes and black bob, a finger curl on the left. With a sari, red dye in her hair-parting, and a pottu on her forehead, she could pass for a Tamilian lady, while Jeb could be a tanned Englishman, freshly returned from a summer in Italy.
Jeb releases his grinning sister by spinning her into her chair, only to zero in on a demure young beauty in a striking white gown with oversized red roses painted all over it and cut to show generous cleavage. But no—it’s the girl’s oversized mother he’s after. In his high-waisted slacks and white shirt with tuxedo frill, Jeb is like a matador expertly leading Auntie across the floor, acting awed by Auntie’s hidden talents as she proves that twenty years ago she was a hot number . . . and all the while Auntie’s demure daughter grows nervous in her seat, because she knows what Digby only now sees: that from the moment Jeb walked in, it was all misdirection, all smoke and mirrors, because the die was cast, there was only one girl in the world for him, and it was Auntie’s lovely daughter in the white, rose-decked gown, it was love-at-first-sight-my-dearest-darling, and forget the cock-and-bull you heard about me, just bloody slander by that chutney Mary and her Charley-Billy-po-po-gunda brothers, such up-country folks, just stories, rubbish, frogs stuck in a bucket trying to pull down the brave soul who wishes to see the world . . .
Digby is only mildly surprised to learn from Owen that Jeb’s new girl is named Rose. He can’t help thinking how Celeste would love the intrigue and the spectacle. But Celeste is a daydream, while flesh-and-blood women in clouds of perfume flash past him, calling him to adventure with their eyes. An hour later, when Digby and Honorine take their leave, the dance is going strong.
Digby motors at an easy pace, the only pace Esmeralda is capable of with a sidecar passenger, which is only slightly faster than a bicycle. The sea breeze is nourishing, cleansing. Digby slips his goggles up over his forehead and Honorine’s hair flies about behind her as she grins.
“It’s all roses for Jeb,” Digby shouts over his shoulder, the image of the white swirling gown covered with red roses still vivid. He wants to talk about Celeste, but of course he’s never mentioned her, or the excursion, never uttered her name to another.
Honorine laughs, shouting back, “Roses would be annoying weeds if the blooms never withered and died. Beauty resides in the knowledge that it doesn’t last.”
Well, Jeb surely knows that, Digby thinks. But does Rose? And if beauty is in the ephemeral, what about the beautiful things you can’t have? Perhaps that kind of beauty does last forever.
The arrival of the dog days of summer marks the start of another year at Longmere; Muthu notes the occasion on the kitchen calendar.
As Digby passes the operating theater anteroom, blotting away the stinging sweat with his kerchief, he recognizes a patient on a gurney. The man’s blue eyes and faintly tanned skin make him appear British, a rare sight when it comes to surgical patients at Longmere.
Digby glances up at Claude’s surgical list to see just one name there: Jeb’s.
“It’s nothing,” Jeb says, embarrassed to run into Digby. “A bloody abscess.” He points to an angry red bulge in his neck. “Thought I’d get it drained by Dr. Arnold. Claude’s a keen sportsman, you know. Comes to every match we have in town.”
“How long have you had it?” Digby says, when he really wants to say, I wouldn’t let Claude remove a tick off my backside. He peers at it closely.
“Oh, months and months, I’d say. But now the bugger’s a nuisance.”
When Claude’s orderly arrives to take Jeb into the theater, Jeb waves a jaunty farewell.
Months and months? It gnaws at Digby. Then it begins to alarm him.
He sends a probationer to ask Honorine to come to the theater if she can. He changes into theater garb and goes inside to take a second look. The chloroform has taken hold and Jeb’s eyes are closed. The swelling is red, angry—looking very much like an abscess. Perhaps I was wrong, Digby thinks. But when he puts his fingers on it, it isn’t warm, as an abscess should be. It is, as Digby feared, pulsatile, lifting and spreading his fingers with each heartbeat.
“Well, if it isn’t Dr. Kilgour,” Claude says, coming up behind him, scrubbed and gowned, just as Honorine slips in clutching the mask to her face. It’s well before noon, yet Digby thinks he can smell the metabolites of alcohol. “Aren’t we working you hard enough on the native side? Come to have a look-see?” If there’s a smile, it’s hidden by Claude’s surgical mask, and certainly not visible in the eyes.
“Oh, sorry. It’s just that I know Jeb,” Digby says. “A friend’s brother. I happened to see him in the anteroom.” He lowers his voice. “I’m wondering . . . I’m concerned, Dr. Arnold. Could this be an aneurysm and maybe not an abscess?”
Claude’s eyes turn cold. The naked hatred in them shakes Digby. For a moment Digby wonders if this is about Celeste, but the only sins he’s committed are in his head.
Claude recovers. “Nonsense, laddie,” he says. “Surely you’ve been here long enough to know an abscess when you see one. It’s turgid with pus. The vessels behind it are transmitting their pulsation. We’re in the tropics. Pyogenic abscesses are more common than acne.”
His words aren’t slurred, but carefully enunciated. Claude could be right.
“It’s just that it isn’t warm . . .” Digby says. “Maybe a small needle first might clarify—”
“It’s a pus-filled abscess,” Claude says flatly. “I was opening these things when you were learning to finger-paint! Just stand back and watch.”
Dr. Claude Arnold slices into the swelling with his scalpel before the antiseptic has dried. Pus wells out, thick and creamy, and Claude turns to Digby and is about to say, “You see?” but in the next instant a jet of blood, a bright arterial spray, strikes Claude in the head. He springs back, stunned, but doesn’t move fast enough because on the next beat it catches him again, a surging spout, timed to every beat of Jeb’s heart.
Claude knocks over a stool in his retreat. Digby steps forward, grabbing surgical towels with his ungloved hands to put pressure on the aneurysm, because that is indeed what this is: a focal weakening of the carotid artery wall. Honorine lets her mask drop and steps up to help.
Claude’s cut is so long and deep that compression doesn’t stanch the breach in the dyke. The pads turn red, as do Digby’s fingers; blood drips off the table and pools on the floor. Digby calls for a suture on a needle holder. Already, Jeb’s face has turned a ghostly white. When Digby pulls the towels away, blood is pumping less vigorously from the ragged tear. He stitches the vessel crudely, but by then Jeb’s heart has stopped because there’s no longer enough blood to pump. The patient has exsanguinated. Jeb’s eyes are half open and Digby feels their gaze is fixed on him as if to ask, Why did you let him do it?
The sound of the stool crashing to the floor has summoned everyone within earshot. A small crowd stands in the theater studying the grisly tableau. “Well, I’ll be damned!” Claude says from six feet back, breaking the long hush in the theater.
Claude is almost as pale as Jeb, save for the blood on one side of his face. Every eye is on Claude Arnold, a pathetic sight.
“The bloody thing would have killed him anyway,” Claude says. “No harm done,” he mumbles, stumbling out.
CHAPTER 20
In Glass Houses
1935, Madras
Through the church window, Digby has a view of the adjacent cemetery. Claude, how many souls have you sent here? The man was back at “work” the next day as if nothing had happened. Digby shudders now as an inner voice warns him: Tread softly, Digby. No surgeon is infallible.