Limekiller!

White rice and red beans were for her, and some coconut oil in her own bottle was for her, and some tea and some chile peppers (not very much of any of these items, though) and the inevitable tin of milk. (The chief difference between small shops and large shops in St. Michael’s was that the large ones had a much larger selection of tinned milk.) Tony weighed and poured, wrapped and tied. And looked at her expectantly.

She untied her handkerchief, knot by knot, and counted out the money. Dime by dime. Penny by penny. Gave them all a shy smile, left. “No fahget me when you rich, me Bet-ty gyel,” Tony called after her. “Would you believe, Mr. Limekiller, she is one of the grandchildren of old Mr. Pike?”

“Then why isn’t she rich already? Did the others get it all? — Oh. I forgot. Estate not settled.”

Captain Sneed grunted. “Wouldn’t help her even if the damned estate were settled. An outside child of an outside child. Couldn’t inherit if the courts ever decide that he died intestate, and of course: no mention of her in any will… if there is any will. ” An outside child. How welljack knew that phrase by now. Marriage and giving in marriage was one thing in British Hidalgo; begetting and bearing of children, quite another thing. No necessary connection. “Do you have any children?” “Well, I has four children.” Afterthought: “Ahnd t’ree oetside.” Commonest thing in the world. Down here.

“What’s wrong with you, Old Boy?” asked Captain Sneed. “You look quite dicky.”

“Feel rotten,” Limekiller muttered, suddenly aware of feeling so. “Bones all hurt.”

Immediate murmurs of sympathy. And: “ Oh, my. You weren’t caught in that rain yesterday morning, were you?”

Jack considered. “Yesterday morning in the daytime. And. before… in the night time, too — Why?”

Sneed was upset. „Why? Why, when the rain comes down like that, from the north, at this time of year, they call it ‘a fever rain’. ”

Ah. That was what the old woman had called out to him, urging him in out of the drizzle. Bide, she’d said. Not an “eager” rain — a fever rain!

“Some say that the rain makes the sanitary drains overflow. And some say that it raises the mosquitoes, I don’t know. And some laugh at the old people, for saying that. But I don’t laugh. You’re not laughing, either, are you? Well. What are we going to do for this man, Mik? Doctor in. right now?”

But the District Medical Officer was not in right now. It was his day to make the rounds in the bush hamlets in one half of the circuit. On one other day he would visit the other half. And in between, he was in town holding clinics, walking his wards in the hospital there on one of the hills, and attending to his private patients. Uncle Christopher produced from somewhere a weathered bottle of immense pills which he assured them were quinine, shook it and rattled it like some juju gourd as he prepared to pour them out.

But Captain Sneed demurred. “Best save that till we can be sure that it is malaria. Not they use quinine nowadays. Mmm. No chills, no fever? Mmm. Let me see you to your room at the hotel.” And he walked Limekiller back, saw him not only into his room but into his bed, called for “some decent sheets and some blankets, what sort of a kip are you running here, Antonoglu?” Antonoglu’s mother, a very large woman in a dress as black and voluminous as the tents of Kedar, came waddling in with sighs and groans and applied her own remedy: a string of limes, to be worn around the neck. The maid aspersed the room with holy water.

“I shall go and speak to the pharmacist,” Captain Sneed said, briskly. “What —?” For Limekiller, already feeling not merely rotten but odd, had beckoned to him. “Yes?”

Rotten, aching, odd or not, there was something that Limekiller wanted taken care of. “Would you ask anyone to check,” he said, carefully. “To check the bus? The bus when it comes in. Two young ladies. One red-haired. When it comes in. Would you check. Ask anyone. Bus. Red-haired. Check. If no breakdown. Beautiful. Would you. Any. Please? Oh.”

Captain Sneed and the others exchanged looks.

“Of course, Old Boy. Don’t worry about it. All taken care of. Now.” He had asked for something. It had not come. “What, not even a thermometer? What? Why, what do you mean, ‘You had one but the children broke it’? Get another one at once. Do you wish to lose your license? Never mind, I shall get another one at once. And speak to the pharmacist. Antonoglu-khan-um, the moment he begins to sweat, or his teeth chatter, send me word.

“Be back directly,” he said, over his shoulder.

But he was not back directly.