The House of Eros by Donald James

Author:Donald James
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Endeavour Press
Published: 1991-08-10T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Nineteen

‘Aspirin and boiled water,’ the French priest said. ‘Not an extensive armoury with which to fight disease, but it’s all we have.’

‘Did you train in Paris?’ Max asked him.

‘As a priest. Not as a doctor. But I’m tolerated here for the little hit and miss medical knowledge I’ve acquired along the way.’ In the bright second-floor room cooled by a slowly moving wooden ceiling fan, Max lay back in clean rough linen sheets, his head slowly clearing. As the priest moved towards the door, he raised himself on his elbow.

‘When I get back to London, is there anything I can send you?’ The priest shook his head. ‘Nothing that would reach me. All modern medical supplies are allocated to the military. And to our masters.’ He crossed to the side of the bed and held out his hand. ‘I have to go up-country tomorrow. Goodbye, Mr Benning.’

‘Thank you again for what you’ve done, Father.’ Max shook his hand.

The priest smiled down at him. ‘In such fevers,’ he said, ‘nursing assumes more importance than the efforts of a priest turned doctor.’

The fever was now subsiding as quickly as it had come upon him. When the priest left Max pulled himself up in the wide iron bed. Feeling his cheeks and forehead for a feverish dampness he found his skin now dry and cool. He got out of bed and opened the briefcase Hal Bolson had brought across from the hotel. He registered that the case seemed unusually heavy and that his legs shook. But his head felt steady, his mind clear.

He considered for a moment going across to the courtroom for the sentencing. Bolson had said it would probably consist of a two-or three-hour abject plea from Quatch before he received the court’s judgement. Most likely, the newsmen thought, a long spell in a hard labour reconstruction camp. Or death.

Max sat on the side of his bed and thought about opening the briefcase of notes. But the wave of fatigue that came across him was dissuasive enough. Changing his mind he swung his legs back on to the bed.

* * *

He awoke from a deep sleep to hear the commotion out on the square. Voices in English were raised; angry Vietnamese voices rose above them.

Max pulled back the sheet and stood up beside the bed. His cotton pyjamas were dry and his face cool. But the earlier weakness in the legs was still there. He felt, somehow, always on the edge of another surge of fever.

He stepped forward two or three paces and stood by the long open window. Below in the square Vietnamese police, thirty or forty of them, were holding back the newsmen. Among shouts of outrage the Westerners were trying to push close enough to the courtroom doors to point their cameras.

Running footsteps along the stone corridor outside made Max turn from the window. Before the door burst open he knew it was Nan Luc. She stopped just inside the door, tears streaming down her face. Then she moved quickly across to the window and looked down.

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