Liner

by James Barlow

  Anyway, I’ve written enough of this, so let’s go and post it. Debbie wrote to six pen friends regularly. It was her hobby, and even aboard the Areopagus she had informed them of the ship’s schedule; and at each port there had been a satisfying small stack of mail for her. But something was causing a loss of interest, remoteness; he had said only silly people did it. At Hong Kong one friend was to meet her. It was funny because Debbie didn’t know if her correspondent was male or female.

  At eleven Draco took six of them through the same steps as yesterday and the day before and the day before that. He used the same record day after day. But slowly they were learning the Greek dance. Sooner or later, Debbie anticipated in trepidation, the six of them would have to put on a public performance. However, it was too late to back out now.

  At twelve she went to lunch. There was a young officer who teased her. ‘We must feed you,’ was his theme. It was an amiable relationship which would never alter. She knew that there was no other intention but to bait her tenderly. How crude and without charm in comparison were the boys around the pool or staring in the lounges in selfish demand.

  But today the chief steward also came to her table. ‘Miss Vertigan?’ he inquired. ‘You are Miss Vertigan?’ She agreed that she was and he gave her an envelope. Inside was an invitation to dine with the captain. The chief steward was waiting for an answer and Debbie said, ‘Well, thanks. What do I do?’

  The other passengers at her table viewed her with slight envy and regarded Debbie anew: she must be someone important. But she presumed that the invitation was because she was her father’s daughter. Or perhaps he had engineered it.

  The young officer again teased her: ‘Oh, he’ll feed you’ You’ll groan!’

  It was Debbie’s habit to walk around the Parade Deck from about four o’clock to five in the afternoon. It was a time when many people had gone to have a drink of tea, and, having had it, they proceeded to the Ionic Lounge for an hour’s bingo session.

  Today the sea and sky were so flawless that Debbie did not understand how people could sit in a stuffy lounge in a herd for any silly gambling game.

  There were only a dozen people on the port and starboard sides of the Parade Deck. At some time in the day most people exercised by walking around it. Some did it after breakfast, some late at night. Many wouldn’t stroll alone. They felt, correctly, that they would be stared at, and so went around with husband or friend. Debbie had to walk alone. Sometimes in the morning she proceeded with Miss Wearne at that lady’s small pace, two or three times up and down, by then Miss Wearne had had enough and flopped into a deck chair. But Debbie went around and around the deck – sixteen or twenty times. Each time she was baited gently by three old men who sat together, and acknowledged by a few solitary elderly women. She smiled self-consciously back at them.

  There was another female who did this at the same time. She was a thin hatchet-faced woman of about thirty, sexless, of grim countenance, always in an orange dress so that women tittered maliciously and joked about her meagre wardrobe. She didn’t even look at the old men and they, having been snubbed long since, made loud and caustic remarks almost every time she came around. If she heard, the woman ignored them. There was a rumour that she was on her way to San Francisco to take up an important scientific appointment. But this was contradicted by the fifth-hand information that someone on board (no one knew who) had worked in the same government office, and she had been loathed there and finally dismissed for stealing. Each day the woman went into the pool and swam fifteen times around in grim exercise, in a clockwise direction, in a costume the same drab colour as a dishcloth.

  Debbie had smiled and said ‘Hello’ ten days ago, the first time she took up the four o’clock routine, but the woman had stared through her spectacles and ignored the greeting. Now it was slightly embarrassing to meet her and it required a little determination to exercise at all . . .

  There was a cat miaowing. Debbie stopped perambulating in her long, careful, nervous stride. She liked cats and was astonished that there was one on board. But she couldn’t see it. There was a steward making a noise as he stacked deck chairs, sliding them violently into each other. Debbie hesitated and then walked on. As she came around once more she again heard the cat. She was worried now, feeling it might be trapped, and began to look for it.

  She called to the steward, ‘There’s a cat.’

  He was the steward who served the bouillon each morning and stacked chairs at dusk. That was all she or any passenger knew about him. He was about thirty and of medium height. His handsome good-humoured peasant’s face was traced by lines of sweat.

  ‘Pleeze, miss, a cat? You’ve lost a cat?’

  ‘I heard one.’

  ‘Listen. You like cats?’

  ‘I love them.’

  ‘She doesn’t like cats. She doesn’t like anything.’

  He referred to the grim woman just striding around by the aft pool for the fourteenth time.

  ‘Listen,’ the steward repeated. ‘I am a Greek, yes? I am a simple sailor. Now tell me, why does a woman like that come on a cruise?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Debbie frankly.

  ‘She has wheels in her head,’ the steward observed.

  Debbie giggled and he grinned.

  ‘You know that in the night she goes around looking at the rubbish bins? Crazy, that one. She tells the crew how to run the ship. She shouts at the librarian: ‘How dare you close the library at half past five?’ Listen. Why do you travel on the Areopagus?’

  ‘I’m on my way to Washington.’

  ‘Ah, you are not Australian.’

  ‘I’m American.’

  ‘That is nice. Everyone wants to be American and rich. But what does it matter? A cat is happy without any nationality.’

  The cat made a noise.

  Debbie said in shock, ‘You’ve got it in your pocket! A kitten!’

  The steward smiled, ‘Listen! He’s very lively, this cat. He scratches.’

  ‘Let me see him.’

  ‘You like cats?’

  ‘I told you.’

  The steward brought out of his pocket a small thing which looked like a concertina. He squeezed it and it gave forth a noise like a cat.

  Debbie exhaled in disappointment.

  ‘Listen, miss. You won’t tell anyone? Sometimes I get the old ladies very worried. They search and search for the cat. You are not married?’

  ‘Not at my age.’

  ‘Listen. I am – what you call it? Not married, but –’

  ‘Engaged?’

  ‘That is it. To an English girl. Very beautiful. She comes to Athens on holiday. We fall in love. She sends me letters and cards. Every port. Next April we get married. High Wycombe. She doesn’t speak much Greek, but I speak a little English.’

  ‘That’s romantic,’ acknowledged Debbie.

  ‘It is romantic, yes. But you are a nice girl. It will happen to you. You will marry an American who is an attorney or great aviator or doctor – Ah, you blush!’

  ‘I shall stay single and run a home for cats,’ Debbie said decisively.

  It was still hot at eight o’clock at night. The captain had picked a sultry evening for his guests. Debbie felt it must be the hottest night she had ever experienced; the temperature only stood at ninety-three but the humidity was that of a hothouse. The men looked uncomfortable in their dark suits and as they ate and drank the sweat boiled out of them and the mopped red faces.

  The chief steward – who had an extraordinary memory for names, even foreign names – introduced the ten guests to each other before they entered the dining room, but Debbie at once forgot the names and reintroduced herself to the two men between whom she sat. One was an Englishman named Mr. Burston, who seemed very shy. ‘I don’t know why he asked me,’ he con
fessed to her. ‘I’m only a truck driver.’ His odd nervousness made him likeable, human. Debbie’s other neighbour was an Italian, a seedy, rakish-looking man of about thirty, named Tornetta. He viewed Debbie with outright sexual interest, and probed with questions as if he had a proposition of some kind, even a proprietorial interest: ‘I can get you a job. Big money. I’m in the entertainment business’ – ‘I haven’t been to college yet’ – ‘You don’t need that sort of education. You’ve got the looks’ – ‘I can’t sing or dance’ – ‘Who cares?’

  That baffled her. Later this man asked about currency. ‘Have you got any American dollars?’

  This alarmed Debbie more than the inexplicable suggestions about a job, and she answered evasively, ‘Only a little. I’m using Australian currency.’

  At the far end of the table Dempsey’s voice preceded frequent loud laughter, and Captain Vafiadis stared with apparent disapproval. The chief engineer smiled thinly. Between courses he was bored and silent and employed a toothpick. Debbie used the opportunity to stare at Dempsey, examine him affectionately, collect details for the mind’s eye. She did not believe that he had noticed her, but during the meat course he suddenly called out loudly: ‘I remembered about your uncle, Debbie. His name was Toogood. Damn silly name. Is he dead as well?’

  She was very embarrassed, because they all stared at her, but delighted that he had not ignored her as he could have one with four people between them, one of whom was the captain. She shook her head. Across the table a big man, an Australian loudmouth, drummed his fingers on the wood. He had suggested, when introduced, ‘My name’s Ballantyne, but call me Harry.’ But no one did. The women who sat on each side of him, too timid for such a man, preferred to talk to their other neighbours at the table, and Mr. Ballantyne was building up a pressure of resentment likely to be inflicted on someone before the night was out.

  The captain sent back his soup and, later, his red wine, Mr. Burston, observing this, whispered to Debbie: ‘I wonder why he does that? It seems okay to me. Do you think it’s to irritate the chief steward?’

  ‘Perhaps he’s a snob.’

  ‘It makes a change,’ Mr. Burston said oddly, ‘to have decent cutlery and service.’

  Someone had made the mistake of asking the captain of the Areopagus if the ship would be late reaching Singapore. Captain Vafiadis answered in his wooden manner, slowed down by translation, ‘As far as I am concerned the ship would be on schedule. But the wishes of the company and myself cannot always be translated into steam.’

  The passenger, a middle-aged lady, who was finding the captain by her side rather heavy going, was satisfied by this adroit answer.

  But it had been overheard by Mr. Bitsios, the chief engineer, who now addressed her, without heat but as it amused.

  ‘The heat and pressures of steam are known factors, and a specific number of propeller revolutions can be provided. The schedule could be arranged with the benefit of this information. But it rarely is. It is assumed by those who ought to know better that the Areopagus can always maintain maximum speed and that the sea will always be of a calm disposition. These others are perhaps not aware that the world is round . . . ’

  ‘My navigating officers,’ the captain informed the lady, ‘can bring the Areopagus to within a specific hundred square yards of the Pacific Ocean. They can do so at a given time providing their modest instructions over the telegraph are carried out.’

  ‘I have served on this vessel since it was purchased,’ Bitsios told the passenger, who was now scarlet and uncomfortable. ‘We have had three masters and it speaks well for them that for our first five years we had a reputation of arriving within a quarter of an hour of the advertised time. Of course, most captains have acquired their positions, not by birth or financial considerations, but by experience and merit.’

  Mr. Bitsios evidently considered the subject of no further interest and resumed activity with the toothpick.

  Mr. Ballantyne complained with sour animosity, ‘If we ran a business the way they run this ship we’d never last a week.’

  But no one took any notice of this, nor of his subsequent complaint: ‘Aren’t we keeping the cabaret waiting?’

  They were. It was the custom of the captain to take his guests from the dinner to the late cabaret, but he in no way hurried them or himself to do so. He led them into the Aegean Lounge twenty-five minutes late. The assembled audience was already restive. The performers were furious.

  Debbie sat by Mr. Burston at one side the stage where a dozen seats had been placed for the captain and his guests. If it had been hot before, here it was stifling, two or three hundred people crowded in for the second performance, curtains drawn, lights hot, cigarette smoke thick under the coloured bulbs. Debbie could see the sweat shining on scores of faces.

  The six girls danced with their usual precision and nimbleness, and then Edgar confronted the audience.

  ‘Are you hot?’ he asked. They sniggered. ‘Have you taken your shoes off? And your shirts and . . . other things? Well!’ They laughed. ‘That’s right. Make yourself at home. Tired? Are you sticky? Did you have a good dinner? The captain did! Three extra courses.’ They tittered now. Edgar continued: ‘Are you looking forward to seeing Singapore? Do you think we’ll be allowed ashore? Do you think we’ll ever get there?’ There were cries of ‘No!’ Edgar said, ‘Never mind. They’re trying. Do you know, to make sure we get there on time, they’ve hired a hundred tugs and they’re pulling Singapore Island to meet us! Isn’t that nice of them? There’ll be a small charge, of course . . . ’

  The captain and chief engineer were used to being the butt in concerts and other entertainments. It went with their jobs. And the satisfying truth was that, late or not, decrepit or not, the passengers remembered the Areopagus with affection. Perhaps it was because she and her crew were fallible, as they were. They came back for second journeys or visited her like an old friend when she was in port.

  Now Edgar and the other comedian, with the dancers in support, began to sing:

  Bless this ship, O Lord we pray,

  Keep it moving night and day.

  Bless the turbines and the steam,

  Make them better than they seem.

  The audience loved this and bellowed. Some of them were already drunk and empty beer cans were rolling about. The sweating stewards hurried about with trays. One placed a small glass of green liquid in front of Debbie, but she left it alone.

  Edgar now sang:

  Bless the captain, tall and proud,

  Far above the common crowd.

  Teach us him to fairly trust,

  And not because we simply must.

  Bitsios smiled carefully in satisfaction at this and lit a cigar. Captain Vafiadis stared woodenly at nothing.

  The other comedian sang caustically:

  Bless the funnels pouring smoke,

  Dropping spots on reckless folk.

  Send some experts down below.

  To make the air-conditioning blow.

  Mr. Ballantyne stood up and shouted, ‘Hear, hear! This isn’t a Greek ship! It’s a Turkish bath!’ He received a laugh and a flutter of applause and was satisfied.

  Twenty-two hours later Miss Wearne inquired, ‘Are you going somewhere special? You do look smart.’

  Debbie, sitting near the telephone, hating the instrument, qualified, ‘I don’t know about that.’

  It rang, and she jumped. Her agitated hand reached out. A voice said, ‘Eric, listen, we’ll see you in the midships in ten minutes. Okay?’

  It wasn’t going to ring for her; the clock admitted that. A vague invitation of five days ago, and his promise. ‘I’ll let you know,’ not fulfilled. He had a lot to attend to; she forgave him, but was nervous about thrusting herself into a party to which the overture had been a mere ‘You’ll come, too, won’t you?’ She wasn’t even sure of whe
re Mr. Mollon’s cabin was or how to get to it. However, the radio officer, when encountered, told her.

  They accepted her readily, Daniel even commenting, ‘I wondered where you’d got to. Come and have a beer.’

  This seemed promising enough, and she even drank the liquid which, to her, tasted like chilled dishwater. But the evening soon began to go wrong. She probed cautiously: ‘What are you doing to do in Singapore?’ and he answered, yawning with enormous indifference, ‘God only knows.’ This hurt, proved utter unconcern. Perhaps it was a careless moment and e hadn’t really ignored the hint. She selected words carefully: ‘I’ve never been,’ to which he said, typically, ‘It smells and the taxi drivers are corrupt.’

  Mollon, overhearing, commented, ‘They’re all corrupt, but the girls are beautiful.’

  Sister Eleni said, ‘That is not true about the corruption. The present government is very much against corruption. It demands six signatures where others require one . . . ’

  Mr. Tomazos sighed.

  ‘I hope not, Eleni!’

  And then the evening’s hopes were foiled, the pleasure was diverted. The woman Pauline barged in. Daniel shouted at her, but it was the noise of familiarity. The vulgar poise of the woman outclasses Debbie’s capabilities. She was not at ease anyway at parties in which others became noisy through drinking. Even smoking discomforted her. If only there was a window to open!