Liner

by James Barlow

  ‘Have a can?’

  She took it but didn’t drink.

  As they danced Ken drank out of his can. Other kids threw cans over the side. They were barefoot, intense, totally concentrated, here forever; it seemed, vibrant with energy.

  Stella asked, ‘What’s the time?’

  ‘Who cares?’

  ‘They’ll murder me.’

  ‘Another can and you won’t care. Hey, you haven’t drunk that one!’

  The music ended and a few youths and girls wandered off. A murmur of complaint could be heard from those who had settled down with blankets farther along the deck.

  ‘I’ll have to go,’ she said decisively.

  ‘Jesus, already?’

  ‘Soon,’ she qualified.

  ‘That’s better.’

  Ken sprawled on a deck chair. ‘Come on! There’s room for two.’

  They lay side by side and the thing creaked as if it would break. She could smell the sweat as it poured from him. He recommenced the necking, but with the violence promoted by the cans of beer and her anxiety about time.

  But she’d made a mistake and knew it. Struggles pleased him, were part of the game. She had to wrestle to get him off.

  ‘What’s the matter with you?’ he asked, whining.

  ‘There’s too many people.’

  She made this excuse because she didn’t want to appear a fool, a wowser. But now his hands were everywhere, between her legs, on her buttocks, and she jumped straight off the chair.

  ‘I’ve got to go,’ she said, and began to run.

  He didn’t follow.

  It had a dreamlike property. Was he real at all?

  In the cabin her mother greeted her with violent irritation.

  ‘Where have you been?’

  ‘Dancing.’

  ‘Who said you could wander around till midnight?’

  ‘Is it midnight?’ Stella asked, startled. They’d only just got going up there; what time would they finish?

  Her father said in a calmer reprimand, ‘You’re still going around with that vulgar Diane.’

  ‘I’m not.’

  ‘The lady she’s with says you are.’

  ‘That silly old thing.’

  ‘Are you crazy?’ shouted her mother. ‘Who do you think you are to decide if old people are silly?’

  ‘She thinks the world’s going to end next April.’

  ‘And you know it isn’t?’

  ‘Oh, Mum, don’t be crazy.’

  ‘You’d better not stay out until four in the morning like that girl does.’

  Stella complained, heavy with virtue, ‘I don’t, do I? There’s no chance, of that with you as parents.’

  ‘Don’t be stupid,’ hissed her mother.

  ‘What’s stupid about it?’

  ‘And stop this insolent answering back. We’re responsible for you.’

  ‘I suppose you’ll tell me next that you love me,’ Stella sneered thoughtlessly.

  ‘Why don’t you talk to that nice American girl who walks around the deck? She’s a sensible girl and she’s on her own.’

  ‘Nice?’ questioned Stella, repeating one of Diane’s opinions. ‘Nice? Her? She’s a snob. Imagine it! An American and a snob!’

  ‘Oh, get into bed,’

  After a few minutes Stella commented, ‘Whew! It’s hot in here. Did you know they’re all sleeping on deck?’

  She lay in the bunk, frustrated, everything wrong, not happy about anybody. And after a while she thought about the boy’s hand. He’d actually pawed her buttocks like someone who’d been married for years. No wonder Dr. de Haan frowned on necking. You could hardly be more personal than that, especially when it was so hot and his hands were sweating.

  Away from the fright of the experience and the noise of others she thought about it and fell asleep considering that it could be exciting with the right person. In her dreams the right person, faceless, but with tenderness, touched her, and her limbs stirred and responded in acceptance.

  ‘You look tired,’ her mother said with concern the next morning.

  ‘I’m all right. Stop bothering me,’ Stella protested petulantly.

  Marion inhaled to argue and correct her, but let it go.

  Stella lazed on a deck chair all morning. She saw no one who’d been on deck or in the Labyrinth Club last night. They didn’t emerge until nearly noon. It was like a continental city - Paris, say – in which the same boulevards were crowded by day with tourists of a different kind from those who filled them at night, people with a dissimilar perspective of the world. Stella’s mother and father were day people – they had small children to look after and were committed to them by day and to being near them by night, and they were willing and glad to go to sleep long before midnight. Stella was desirous of the things of the night, but within the orbit of her parents.

  She didn’t see Diane until nearly four o’clock in the afternoon, when the girl was encountered striding along the Parade Deck in a bikini, eating a banana.

  ‘Hi.’

  ‘Hello,’ greeted Stella awkwardly.

  ‘How did y’get on with Ken?’

  ‘Oh, all right.’

  Diane propounded her own philosophy: ‘No one should go on a cruise unless they can swim, dance, play bingo, drink heavily or make love frequently.’

  ‘I don’t like doing things in public,’ Stella qualified.

  ‘You don’t do ‘em at all.’

  It was like an accusation of cowardice, and Stella looked uncomfortable.

  ‘And have you ever -?’ probed Diane.

  ‘God, no, I’m not quite sixteen.’

  ‘But you want –’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Stella admitted, confused, the words of Dr. de Haan still loud in her mind, the qualities of her parents known perfectly well. It was just restlessness. If she had a boyfriend, however dull . . .

  ‘Not even a touch? When I’m at school –’ Diane told her what the girls did to each other at the school she’d been to. It wasn’t anything Stella had encountered or even heard about. Diane’s strong personality defied Dr. de Haan, mocked him, considered him a fool.

  ‘But where?’ Stella asked frankly, her pulse beating in great hammer blows. This, she knew, was enticing her into something: an arrangement would be made . . .

  ‘You’re scared,’ Diane said.

  ‘Honestly, no,’ Stella disputed. ‘I didn’t really like him.’

  ‘You’re itching, only you’re scared,’ Diane insisted, and Stella stood by the ship’s rail, abject in admission.

  Diane whispered, ‘Come to my cabin.’

  ‘When? What for?’ asked Stella shakily, but she guessed what for.

  ‘The old fool’s gone to tea.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘We’ll have a bit of fun, private.’

  Stella was trembling, shaking with timidity, and shame; but a more powerful lust disturbed her, fluttered her legs, and she justified herself. It wouldn’t be the same; it would be an experiment, an initiation; it would be a molestation without consequences. It would satisfy curiosity and that would be that. She’d be aware of the emotions of depravity without being committed to them by love. She would then calm down, go to the cinema with Patricia, be more considerate toward her parents, take Bumble for walks and stand by the kids’ pool while she splashed about. And this disgraceful sickness would be gone . . .

  But she emerged from Diane’s cabin coarsened and obdurate, unashamed, not even embarrassed by Diane having been witness to her moral dissolution. She had not known her body could be capable of this prurience.

  ‘I’m going to some tea,’ said Diane oddly, as if nothing of particular moment had taken place.


  ‘See you, then.’

  Stella wanted to be alone, to consider what had been aroused and how to experience it again. She hid many things from her parents and had a degree of cunning. But these previous deceptions had been almost accidental and of no great moral importance. The significance lay in the failure of submitting an account of them to her parents so that they could make a decision or criticism. But now and forever she would have to look them in the eye and talk of trivial things and all the time remember the secrets her body now carried.

  Stella could also deceive herself, and she did so now, persuading herself that nothing wrong had happened. Dr. de Haan had certainly been proved right. Petting carried to extreme certainly would be wrong. But there had been no boy here and so it didn’t matter: it had been like a rehearsal and the actual performance would never take place.

  The air-conditioning broke down altogether now and in the Burston’s cabin the temperature was 106 degrees. Stella had a shower – very distantly she recognized that there was a motive even in this – and it was impossible to dry herself. The sweat rolled.

  Her mother and father were grumbling, and she told them again. ‘Lots of people go on deck.’ Her pulse thundered at the possibilities now in view . . .

  But it took a quarter of an hour and howls from Bumble and Patricia before the whole family moved self-consciously on deck.

  It was nearly midnight and the Parade Deck was quite crowded with people asleep in deck chairs or even on the hard deck.

  Blasts of steam now and again startled them, unaccountable, until someone said, ‘It’s the safety valve.’ The Areopagus was moving through the night at nineteen knots.

  Stella was restless. ‘I’m too hot. I’m going for a walk.’

  A hundred yards away, on the other side of the deck, toward the stern, the record player wailed, enticing her. She was scared, hot with fright, but the great physical itch was there, demanding completion . . .

  ‘Stay where you are,’ Marion commanded.

  Stella was still awake an hour later, when her father was snoring and the two kids were silent. The music was still touching her senses and still her body made her writhe. Her hair was damp with sweat.

  She couldn’t make out if her mother was asleep or not. She justified herself: Well, I’d have to go to the lavatory . . .

  She was at the end of the row of prone figures, and she just had to move. She even hoped they would frighten her so badly she’d run back, desires eliminated. Just a touch of a hand to satisfy, to finish what Diane had started.

  They’d never find her now; she was a hundred feet away in a dark corner . . .

  Who? She now wondered in alarm. Everybody would have a friend. She’d look a fool.

  She was barefoot and had no bra on, but was otherwise dressed.

  The stewards were still rushing about, and there was a party of older men, drinking solidly. And there, alone with a can of beer, was Roy, bearded Roy, to whose cabin Diane had a once retreated.

  He looked at her and recognized the availability, but hesitated.

  ‘Hi,’ Stella greeted, and went toward him.

  Chapter Fourteen

  They were playing chess when John entered the cabin. Dimitrios hadn’t spoken to John for ten days and had not seen him for five.

  Rajaratnam usually won these games, and he was winning now. This did not disturb Dimitrios, because Keith had only recently taught him how to play, and he never corrected Dimitrios with anything but kindness.

  Dimitrios was immediately full of misgivings. He metamorphosed from pleasure to sulkiness. The emotion was so powerful and unreasonable he could not control himself, and, shakily, he asked:

  ‘What do you want?’

  John was at his most affable, loose-limbed, at ease. He carried a bottle of whiskey. Dimitrios knew he’d been a fool to give himself away in four words. Where emotion existed, John could exploit it, cause pain. And there were no secrets on board. He would find out, if he cared to; and with little effort, that Dimitrios played chess with Rajaratnam in the afternoons sometimes, stood with him looking at the stars, showered with him, ate talking to him; he might even be subtle enough to identify the relationship as innocent, even tender and beautiful. That would be sufficient for him to become interested, to wish to soil it. Seduction of the normal was John’s defiance of the world which identified him and sniggered. Thirty-two years old, this could still flay him. His nature was good-humoured and indifferent normally, but too often circumstances aroused the abnormality and the years had taught him how to be cruel. And Dimitrios’ rejection of him in favour of a fat priest, the dogma of God, this had stung, promoted hatred. To hurt what had been loved was satisfying, for one knew the weaknesses, and it had parallels with the original emotions . . .

  John answered in English. It was Dimitrios’ bad luck that John could speak English as well, if not better, than he could: he had had much practice among the passengers.

  ‘That’s a welcome! What do I want? Hello, young man. How is the world with you?’

  ‘Not bad at all,’ Keith said, seeing no viciousness because he contained none himself. ‘I think I might win.’

  ‘Let me see. Ah, yes. Checkmate in three moves, yes?’

  ‘Do you play?’ Keith asked.

  ‘Of course. We must have a game sometime.’

  This offer was made in genuine intention, but it was also intended to worry Dimitrios. And it did. He was now hot in the belly in apprehension, knowing the power of John’s charm John recognized the fear and was delighted. So that was the way it was! The fool! The dull ignorant peasant. He’d have him weeping soon.

  ‘I’ve acquired a bottle of whiskey.’

  ‘Stolen it,’ translated Dimitrios.

  ‘Not quite, not quite. Honest John, they call me. You know that the first officer is drinking? Did you know that?’ he asked Keith conversationally. ‘His wife’s shacked up with some muscle-bound Australian. He’s upset. Poor man,’ John said with savage indifference. The bastard had chewed him up in front of a great dumb English navvy. That was unforgivable. There was a technique for such fools; they withered if kept waiting. And Tomazos had on another day pulled him up during lifeboat drill. The dumb oaf, clowning about with bits of tape and inflated stomachs! He was suffering now because of love. What a fool, marrying an Australian tart!

  His face conveyed none of this vitriolic resentment. It was a droll item of gossip: the first officer was drinking. ‘Perhaps he’ll run the Areopagus aground,’ John forecast. ‘And there’s this passenger, a New Zealander, supposed to be a barrister. He’s on the bottle the whole day. I have to water it down a little, he’d be so ill otherwise.’

  ‘We don’t drink,’ affirmed Dimitrios.

  ‘We?’ queried John.

  ‘Keith is a Hindu.’

  ‘Don’t they drink?’

  Keith laughed gently and admitted, ‘In Singapore I am a good Hindu. But when I am with Christians I am a good Christian! I then drink! It makes me silly, but this is good Christianity to be friends, to loosen the Anglo-Saxon inhibitions.

  ‘My God, you’re a bit of a boy, you are,’ chided John.

  The words had isolated Dimitrios. It was their conversation now, which he could join if he was capable. He was so full of foreboding and sulky anger that he couldn’t. He recalled the lure of words which had seduced him a long time ago.

  ‘Finish the game,’ suggested John.

  ‘It does not matter,’ Dimitrios qualified.

  ‘You don’t like to lose?’

  ‘How do you know I will lose?’ Dimitrios demanded angrily.

  ‘Let us see.’

  ‘I cannot concentrate.’

  ‘I will be quiet.’

  ‘That is not enough.’

  ‘Oh, well,’ John sneered, shrugg
ing and smiling at Keith. They began to rink in the stifling hot small cabin. Dimitrios was silent and endured the careful taunts of John, apparently harmless, but which, in view of the previous relationship, stung.

  ‘I must go,’ John said after half an hour.

  ‘You are on duty?’ asked Keith.

  ‘No, but I mustn’t outstay my welcome.’

  ‘Have a game of chess?’

  ‘You will want to play with Dimitrios.’

  ‘Afterwards.’

  ‘But he has nothing to do.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Dimitrios bitterly.

  As they played John extracted information, took interest, asked questions about Keith’s experiences, his life in Singapore, his training in the Singapore dockyard, and questions which probed tenderly at racial problems in a manner which Dimitrios couldn’t achieve.

  ‘We’ll have another game sometime,’ Keith suggested.

  ‘Very well. That would be pleasant.’

  Keith had won the game but with effort, and was inevitably satisfied at beating a player of skill.

  ‘A return match,’ he said, laughing. His eyes were bloodshot. There was an alteration in facial expression, something Dimitrios had not previously seen. Why, he’s a fool, he thought miserably, but his emotions were in tumult. Happiness and calm were going to be taken away.

  ‘– in my cabin then,’ John was saying. ‘I’ll lay on some booze. How about you, Dimitrios?’

  ‘How about me?’ asked Dimitrios sullenly.

  ‘Want to watch? We’re having the return match tonight.’

  It was unbearable, Dimitrios qualified, ‘I’ll see,’ and John said, as if planning kindness, a party for intelligent friends, chess players. ‘I’ll get some nice food, too.’

  Dimitrios did not go.

  He waited for the two hours during which Keith was away. He suffered and knew it was absurd; Keith was not answerable to him. He was permitted to have other friends; a game of chess; to stick to Dimitrios’ company day after day would become tiresome and eventually end in silence, nothing to be said. Unless it materialized into love. This was something Dimitrios did not think about. Keith had assuaged pain and despair, delivered Dimitrios from unbearable loneliness. Keith was delightful because he was different, so incorruptible, and almost naive: in many hours of talk he, a boy of eighteen like Dimitrios, had not offered one coarse remark about girls or women. His perspective of life was so free from European and shipboard sophistication that to talk to him was like being cleansed, beginning again with innocence.