The Doctor's Wife

by John Updike

T

he doctor's wife was a queen here. She was the only fully white woman resident on the island. When the rare British official and the rarer, fantastically minor member of royalty came to grace this most remote and docile scrap of empire with a visit, she was the hostess. When she roared along the dirt roads in her spattered English Ford—its muffler had long ago rotted away—the older natives touched their foreheads ironically and the children flapped their arms in her wake of dust. When she and the doctor condescended to call upon the American family staying three weeks in The Bay, Hannah had trembled with pride and broken a cup in the kitchen. The doctor was a slight, rapid-voiced man with a witty air of failure. His fingertips were dyed deep yellow by smuggled cigarettes. He preferred Camels, but Chesterfields were all that were coming through now. Camels had more scratch in them. He had never seen a filtered cigarette. He and his wife had been ten years in the tropics—Trinidad, Barbados, now this. He had some vague scheme of getting to America and making a fortune and retiring to a Yorkshire village. He was off for the day to St. Martin.

                "In America, now," the doctor's wife said, vehemently brushing sand from her knees, "are the coloureds well cared for?"

                "How do you mean?" Eve asked.

                "Are they well off?"

                "Not really," Ralph said, because he sensed that it would be better if he, rather than Eve, an­swered. "In some parts better than others. In the South, of course, they're openly discriminated against; in the North they by and large have to live in the city slums but at least they have full legal rights."

NOTES AND EXERCISES:

1.     Read the following words paying attention to the pronunciation of the digraph “sc” and learn their spelling:

crescendo	discipline	scissors	sceptic	fascism
scene	disciple	convalesce	scepticism	fascist
scythe	fascinate	adolescence	conscious	luscious
descend	acquiesce	science	conscience	condescend
discern	scent	lascivious	conscientious	consciousness

2.     Pronounce correctly focusing your attention on the pronunciation of “t” and learn how to spell:

fortune	future	temperature	misfortune	actual
picture	feature	literature	fortunate	righteous
lecture	creature	moisture	century	adventure
venture	furniture	posture	suggestion	debenture

3.     The forms of the verb “to dye”:

        dye Þ dyes Þ dyed Þ dyeing

4.     Verbs ending in a stressed “–er”, “–ar”, “–ur”, and “–ir” double the “r”:

        prefer Þ preferred Þ preferring

        star Þ starred Þ starring

        occur Þ occurred Þ occurring

        stir Þ stirred Þ stirring

5.     Guiana [gia:n¶], Trinidad [´trinidæd], Barbados [ba:´beidouz].

6.     The word saint used before names is abbreviated St. and is pronounced as [s¶nt] or [snt]: St. Martin [snt´ma:(r)tin].

7.     In names of English counties the word shire is pronounced [ò¶] or [òi¶]: Yorkshire, Berkshire, Lancashire, Hampshire, Wiltshire, Devonshire, Shropshire.

8.     Word study:

docile             UK [´dousail], US [´dosl]—easily trained or controlled: a docile child, a docile horse

vehement      [´vi:¶m¶nt] strong, eager (of feelings): a vehement person, a vehement speech, vehement behaviour; violent: a vehement wind

slum               a street of small badly-built, dirty, crowded houses; the slums—parts of a town where there are such houses

to sense          to feel, to be vaguely aware of, to realize: He sensed that his proposals were unwelcome.

9.     Translate the following expressions and use them in sentences of your own:

common sense, to be out of one’s sense, to make sense, there’s no sense, to bring someone to his senses, to come to one’s senses (to recover consciousness: She came to her senses in hospital.), (to recover one’s sense of proportion and of what is intelligent and just: You’re talking nonsense; I hope you’ll come to your senses later on.);

to be well-off, to be well-to-do, to be in comfortable/easy/good circumstances, to be on Easy Street, to be in funds, to be made of money, to roll in wealth/money, to have money to burn, to stink of/with money, to live in clover, to live on the fat of the land, to live in the lap of luxury