The Lower Deep (4 page)

He doesn't understand, Henninger thought sadly. He's a good man and a brilliant doctor, but, oh, God, he just doesn't understand.

Alone again, Dr. Louis Clermont returned to the swivel chair behind his desk. Leaning back in it with his hands clasped behind his head, he fastened his gaze on the opposite wall. There, in the middle of an otherwise blank expanse of varnished wood, hung a large, hand-painted map of the Caribbean, including the Bahamas and the east coast of Florida. A favorite patient of his had done it for him because—in her words—his office was depressingly drab and needed cheering up.

After staring at the map for a moment, he let his eyelids droop. What the devil was wrong with Paul Henninger, actually? What was behind that haunted, driven look on the man's face?

And, for that matter, what about his other man-with-a-problem, the fishing-program fellow, George Benson? The one who kept savagely biting his tongue.

Clermont opened his eyes. Problems, he thought. Always problems. And now he had still another one, presented only yesterday, here in this office, by the parents of the girl who had done the map he was gazing at.

Ginette Jourdan—the nicest, smartest, steadiest girl in her class at the École Dame Marie. What the devil was happening to her? What the hell was going on in this town, anyway?

He pushed himself to his feet and walked into the outer office to see if he had patients waiting. Only a handful of Dame Marie's people had phones, so most of his patients came without appointments. If he was busy and they were not in serious trouble, they just patiently awaited their turns.

The chairs were empty now. "You should be going home for lunch while there's a lull," his receptionist said.

"I want to call on Ginny Jourdan's teacher. What time do they have lunch at the school?"

"This is a school holiday, Doctor."

"So it is, isn't it?" He flapped a hand at her. "Well, she may be at home, then. I should be back in half an hour."

Bareheaded in the blazing sunlight, he strode down the street wondering what he should say to Danielle André when he found her. Perhaps he oughtn't to talk-to Dannie at all, but go straight to the nun in charge of the school. That one was a fiercely intimidating woman, however. Always seemed to feel that because the Church had put
her in charge of its experimental girls' school here, people should stand at attention in her presence.

Well, he'd see. He had to talk to someone.

"Dr. Clermont!" His name was being called. "Have you got a minute?"

He halted. Across the road, toward him, strode the fisheries fellow, George Benson, apparently anxious to talk.

G
eorge Benson had bitten his tongue again that morning. "The fourth time this week," he muttered, leaning toward the bathroom cabinet to glower at his wide-open mouth in the glass.

From the doorway behind him his wife, Alice, said, "What, George?"

"I chewed a chunk out of my tongue again, damn it! Will you kindly tell me what the hell's going on?"

"Let me look."

Turning, George gingerly put his tongue out. Even that much movement caused a sharp stab of pain.

"It does look sore," Alice said. "Didn't you wake up when you did it?"

"I only just did it and, yes, I woke up." Actually,
the pain had jerked him upright in bed out of a sound sleep, leaving him gasping for breath while his eyes filled with tears. Alice couldn't have known about that, however. They slept in separate rooms now.

"Look," George said. "What's making me do this? Will you for God's sake tell me? I've never done anything like it before."

"It's nerves, George. Stress. You're working too hard."

"I haven't been working that hard." He hadn't, either—and, anyway, he enjoyed his work. Most of the time, at least.

"Well—the frustrations, maybe," Alice said with a shrug of her pretty shoulders. "Struggling to get your ideas across in this stupid St. Joe Creole. The government should at least have given you time to learn the language before expecting you to perform miracles here." George knew she hated having to live here now, though in the beginning she had thought of it as a great new adventure. The capital might be okay, but Dame Marie to her was the absolute end of the earth.

"I hope that's all it is," George said.

"Are you still having the headaches, too?"

"Not so often." He had been taking aspirin each night before turning in. The headaches were less severe now.

"Well, try to relax." Rising on tiptoe, Alice put her small brown hands on his bare brown shoulders and lightly kissed his face on the side away from the injury. In her shortie nightgown she looked pretty and sexy, but George knew the gesture was no invitation. Nothing like that ever happened spontaneously with Alice. You had to make arrangements in advance, like phoning for a reservation in a restaurant, for Christ's sake.

Dressed, he made coffee and boiled an egg for himself while Alice showered. They had stopped eating breakfast together because on the days she taught English at the school she could get coffee there. Today was a school holiday and she wouldn't be going out, but the habit was now solidly established.

Ready to leave, he called good-bye through the bathroom door before leaving the house. Government people had rented the house for them—one of the few in Dame Marie that Alice would consent to live in. The same people had also provided a Jeep for him to get around in, because his work with the fishermen took him all over this part of the island.

The government might have been considerate enough to provide transportation for her, too, Alice was fond of saying. It had been their idea that she help out at the school, as an exercise in public relations, so why, damn it, should she have to walk to her job?

Unlike his wife, George Benson was happy to be in St. Joseph. Born on the Mississippi Delta, he had been a commercial fisherman with his own boat before answering an ad for someone to help St. Joe's natives provide more fish for the island's people. He had played college football in his home state and wed the prettiest girl his hometown had to offer. Except for his recent headaches, and now the agonizing business of biting his tongue while
he slept, he had for thirty-one years enjoyed remarkably good health.

Here in St. Joe his job had boiled down to persuading the local fishermen to give up their primitive ways and teaching them ways that were more productive. Item: talk their tight-fisted government into providing them with outboard motors at cost, for a few pennies a month, then teaching them how to keep the motors in working order. Item two—well, skip the résumé. The job was full of booby traps, but he loved it.

Anyway, it was a damned sight more rewarding than his marriage. Even though, with the headaches and the tongue-biting, he was now running scared.

Today the bitten tongue really tormented him. The gashed side of it had swollen, and the whole thing felt like something alive and throbbing that he was trying to swallow but couldn't. He had difficulty talking—not only the Creole that he found so hard to master, but even English on the few occasions when he had a chance to use it.

At the Pointe Pierre pier a white-haired old-timer mending a fish trap wagged a finger at him and said it wasn't natural for a healthy young fellow to bite his tongue that way, and George ought to see a doctor.

Throughout the morning George worked with his fishermen, showing them how to construct nets with a mesh board and a hanging needle. At noon he gave up and headed for home, reaching his house just in time to exchange greetings with the fellow from the alcoholics place, Paul Henninger,
who was passing at the time. Alice had a lunch of canned pork and beans on the table.

He was afraid to try eating. "I think I'll go over
to Clermont's," he said.

Alice nodded her approval. "Yes. I think you should."

On stepping out of the house, George saw Clermont across the street and called his name, then hurried over to him. The doctor looked at his tongue and scowled at him like Lincoln pondering a presidential crisis.

"Hmm.
You
are
having a rough time of it, aren't you? Nerves, I suspect. Now what's causing the nerves?"

"I don't have any reason for jitters." Except a few I can't tell you about, George silently added.

"No problems with your fishermen?"

"Nothing I can't handle."

"What about those politicians commandeering your boat for pleasure trips?"

"Well, that used to bug me, but I've learned to live with it. I mean, after all, it's their boat."

"Is something wrong at home, then?"

George hesitated before answering. There had been a time, back in the States, when he had considered seeing a doctor or a marriage counselor about his worsening relationship with Alice. There could be something wrong with him, he had thought. Now, though, he knew the fault was not his, and he was reluctant to discuss it.

Not that a discussion of his problems would embarrass him. Nothing like that. Clermont, after all, was at least sixty and must have talked to a lot of folks about sex problems. He'd be understanding, anyway—he was that kind of guy. But there was Danielle André to think of.

He would have to mention Dannie if he got into any discussion of his sex life, and, of course, Clermont knew her. Everyone in Dame Marie knew everyone else. Certainly everyone knew the teachers at the school.

No, he'd better skip the home-life bit.

Changing the subject when he failed to get an answer, the Dame Marie doctor said, "Do you dream much, George?"

"Dream?"

"Some of us get pretty violent, you know. Throw ourselves out of bed, that sort of thing. I had a patient once who broke his wrist against the wall, flailing out against an imaginary attacker."

"I don't have any dreams like that."

"Hmm. Well, there's got to be something behind your tongue-biting. Your digestion okay?"

"Nothing wrong there."

"You complained of headaches once. Still having those, are you?"

"Well, yes. But I'm taking aspirin at bedtime now, and they're not so bad."

Clermont scowled again. "George, how about coming in for some tests?"

"What kind of tests? What do you think is wrong?"

"I'd rather not guess. Let's try to find out."

"You don't have an idea, even?" George was beginning to feel desperate again. Lately he had felt that way often. "I can't go on like this, getting no decent sleep. And if I keep on biting my tongue like this, I could get cancer, couldn't I?"

"Come and see me for some tests."

"When?"

"How about Monday morning? And come alone this time, eh? Not that we'll be doing anything we don't want your wife to know about, but I believe you'll feel more free to talk if she isn't with you."

George nodded in agreement.

Feeling a little sorry for George Benson, Dr. Clermont continued on his way. It must be rough, being married to a woman like Alice Benson. George was an all-right fellow, an easygoing man whose friendship you felt was genuine, but those very qualities probably made him vulnerable to a creature like her. She'd been making him miserable ever since their arrival in Dame Marie nearly a year ago, Clermont was positive. But she was so clever at it, and so damned attractive physically, that most of their friends felt sorry for
her.

Ah, well, one couldn't solve all the world's problems in a day, and he had Ginny Jourdan to think about. She was a problem he had to solve quickly, and right now he should be talking to her teacher.

Ginny's teacher, Danielle André, had come to Dame Marie from Cap Matelot. In the beginning she had lived at the school. But not for long. Too much a free spirit to be comfortable with such an arrangement, she had sought a place of her own and found a small, vacant house on one of the town's little side roads. Dr. Louis Clermont owned it. Might she rent it?

She might, he told her, and let her have it for next to nothing because he admired her for coming to help "his people" in what she probably felt was the end of the earth.

The woman who responded now when Clermont climbed the veranda steps and lightly tapped the door was twenty-six years old and shapely, with the most expressive dark brown eyes he had ever looked into. In her simple, sleeveless dress of pale yellow cotton she looked almost indecently cool. "Hello, Dannie," he said in French. "You busy?"

"Never too busy for you," she replied with a smile of welcome. "Come on in."