Liner

by James Barlow

  It became terribly hard to bear. She was tensed with concentration, not quite understanding the relationship nor the fierce dialogue. After a time she was simply miserable and waiting for time to pass so that she could leave legitimately without being a poor sport or reminding them by her departure that she was a child.

  At eleven she yawned, not quite deliberately, and Dempsey, noticing it, chided: ‘I hope you’re not bored.’

  She was stung and said, ‘I want to go to bed.’

  The officers and women smiled at this.

  ‘I’ll walk you home,’ suggested Dempsey.

  But she was cross with him for his perfunctoriness.

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said tartly. ‘I’m not likely to get lost on a ship.’

  She hurried away and it was difficult not to weep in the protection of darkness.

  In the morning she escorted Miss Wearne around the shopping centre of Singapore, and strolled around the Botanical Gardens. Miss Wearne would have been hopelessly lost without her. They watched the monkeys and suddenly it began to rain. Nearby was a tin-roofed shelter in which people were selling orchids. The rain was the heaviest Debbie had ever seen. Or heard. It tattooed on the tin so that conversation was impossible, and bounced on hard surfaces. Disappointment and hurt filled Debbie. When anyone asked her about Singapore it would always open a small cicatrice. Ten years hence, the journey and the people forgotten, the City of Lions would be mentioned in some conversation thousands of miles away, and she would inquire, ‘Is that rain I can hear?’ and some small sensation of heat and a sadness like nostalgia would touch her, reopen the scar . . .

  Chapter Seventeen

  By now a number of passengers were coming down with some form of influenza. They at once identified it as Asian but Edgar suggested that it was ‘air-conditioning flu.’ Some of the old people were flushed or very pale, and for them enjoyment faltered and became distress.

  At lunch one day it happened to Squibb. He seemed to fall asleep at the meal, then recover several times until he finally fell forward over the table and his face dropped into the cream cake he was eating.

  Tornetta found this very satisfying, and sneered to the other two at the table, ‘He’s joking of course.’

  But Squibb wasn’t joking. He recovered a little and staggered away. ‘Oughtn’t you to help him?’ one of the old ladies suggested in reprimand. Tornetta was contemptuous. ‘He’d be humiliated,’ he excused himself.

  Tornetta didn’t go near the cabin for hours. Squibb did not turn up for the next meal. ‘How’s your friend?’ the same lady asked. Tornetta growled: ‘I don’t know. He’s no friend of mine. He’s a fool.’

  Such frankness, however truthful, was too much for her and her companion, and they were silent in condemnation . . .

  It was quite pleasant to have Squibb incapacitated. It allowed some freedom of action not possible before. Tornetta found Squibb pale and weak in his bunk. The cabin smelled of sickness. And it was amusing to hear Squibb, no longer an extrovert, but complaintive, anxious for consolation:

  ‘I was sick a lot. He never examined me. Just pills. How does he know –? I ought to be in hospital.’

  ‘Keep fit,’ sneered Tornetta. ‘Have a go at deck tennis! Cut your toenails! Apply deodorant!’

  The eyes stared at him wretchedly, unable to resist the mockery.

  ‘I was sick. Five times.’

  But if he expected consideration or offers to fetch glasses of water plates of dry toast, Squibb was disappointed. For Tornetta had no sympathy. He was tough. Illness was something he didn’t tolerate. It just didn’t happen to him, had never been allowable in the environments in which he had matured. Pain, yes, pain inflicted and received, that was necessary for progress, social adjustment.

  Squibb was a fool, one of many on board. He merited illness. And the others – how easy it was to despise and rob them! Old men and women whose skin under the tropical sun seemed to have cracked into squares like wood with dry rot. Women who exposed old big feet with lumpy toes as they sat in deck chairs waiting for the next excuse to fill their bellies. Muscle-bound bare-chested youths who queued for the picnic lunches reeking of the morning’s exercise. Woman with immense scabrous arms and mottled hands and faces dried out and cracked by years under the Antipodean sun long before they came here. They wore vulgar straw hats of too shiny blue or black, top heavy with ludicrous birds or fruit or silly messages of happiness. Old men who still, in sultry Asian heat, wore heavy dark gray trousers hitched high up on the chest and carried immense stomachs before them. They sweated into brightly coloured shirts. Only Australians or Americans, Tornetta felt, could be quite so ugly, and although they were good-humoured, reasonable and often polite, he despised them. Soft, vulgar provincials who had saved for years to stare at this sea. He moved among them, more conspicuous than he was aware, and it was easy to steal their money. Walk behind them as they went to lunch, see them put the key of their cabin in the box – fifth key, second row, say – and turn at the next junction and go around the other three sides of the square for it. Straight in and out. Of course, if they had forgotten something and came back for it – But so far this hadn’t happened. They were easily intimated by social customs, clocks and gongs . . .

  He stood in the right-hand of two queues of about eight persons each who waited for the shipboard branch of the Australian bank to open. He had a little Singapore money to change. Mr. Pybus was in the other queue, his breath rasping, heavy with complaint. ‘It’s after ten o’clock. What are they messing about at?’ No one answered him. Tornetta reminded himself that Pybus should be easy to rob, being half or totally drunk most of the time, and untidy, careless about jackets and, it was to be expected, about money and wallets . . .

  The bank opened and the two young men who were cashiers began business. They had a routine, slow and frustrating to people like Mr. Pybus. Every transaction involved dialogue, questions and answers about amounts of money, and the first two things the cashiers wanted to know where the passenger’s name and his or her cabin number. Almost invariably this was followed by an outright ‘How much?’ and Tornetta was able to listen. It was impossible to hold all the information in mind, but he didn’t need to. The cabin number and a name were enough, and could be checked against the passenger list.

  This morning a man in the adjoining queue, Mr. Ballantyne, was noisy with self-importance.

  ‘What’s the best currency for Hong Kong?’

  ‘Oh, anything, sir,’ the cashier told him. ‘Your Australian will do fine.’

  ‘Okay. Can you cash these traveller’s cheques? Five hundred dollars worth?‘

  If he thought the cashier would be impressed Mr. Ballantyne was in error, but Tornetta was interested. It was quite dull in this part of Metaxas Deck, and when Mr. Ballantyne had received his money he turned away to his left, rather than to his right where the other queue waited, and thus he did not see Tornetta at all. Tornetta waited a moment and then as if changing his mind or remembering something more urgent due at this time, moved away to the right and strode the length of the deck before ascending to the Parade Deck. After ten minutes he went down in the elevator to A Deck and to his cabin.

  Squibb wasn’t there, which surprised him.

  Tornetta examined the passenger list, which confirmed the information Mr. Ballantyne had been so ready to give in his loud voice to the cashier, namely, that he was in Cabin 37 of Attica Deck.

  This was a little worrying, as Attica Deck was regarded as being unstinted, not far short of luxurious; and on such decks –Delphi was even grander – stewards buzzed like flies and steward officers collected obsequiously. There was no Mrs. Ballantyne in the passenger list and Tornetta felt it was a matter of extreme haste, or not at all, and thus was too panicky to read through five hundred and fifty names and numbers to see who was in the cabin with Ballantyne, if
anyone was.

  He lifted the telephone. Hurry, you idle wench, his mind pleaded.

  A girl’s voice asked with a continental intonation: ‘Can I help you?’

  ‘Cabin thirty-seven, Attica.’

  ‘One moment.’

  Ballantyne’s voice said ‘Yeah?’

  The chain was flushed two yards from Tornetta, behind the partition wall, terrifying him, and Squibb’s hands were clattering the door.

  Tornetta’s heart accelerated to pure panic. He said hastily, ‘You’re wanted at the Purser’s Office.’

  Ballantyne procrastinated with irritation: ‘What for?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ was all Tornetta could think of.

  ‘Well, find out.’

  Squibb inquired, ‘Who’s that?’

  ‘Immediately, if you please,’ Tornetta pleaded furiously into the mouthpiece. Idle, lazy, arrogant loudmouth, why didn’t he do what the previous two had done, that is, agree to rush up the decks (in this case one deck) at once?

  ‘I was told it was urgent,’ he said now. ‘Please come at once.’

  ‘When I’m bloody ready,’ disputed Ballantyne, and rang off.

  Squibb repeated, ‘Who was that? You look worried.’

  ‘She turned me down,’ said Tornetta. ‘Me!’

  ‘Temperature’s down to ninety-nine,’ Squibb informed him. ‘Oh, but I feel weak.’

  ‘Back to bed then,’ urged Tornetta, and rushed out of the cabin.

  He hurried to Metaxas Deck and stared in the shop window. There were a lot of people trying to obtain attention at the Purser’s Office, itself like a post office counter, and only the German girl and deputy purser were attending to them. And they weren’t rushing themselves. If Ballantyne came now he’d expect to be seen to at once, but Australian aggressiveness in the others would delay him until they had been attended to first, and even if his sheer self-importance persuaded them to allow him before themselves, it was safe to assume that the German girl and Eleftheriadis were so dopey that some time would pass before they had convinced Ballantyne or themselves that in fact no one at the Purser’s desk required to see him at all. He’d disbelieve this until he got back to his cabin . . .

  Here came Ballantyne in haste despite his surly qualification. He had left behind the jacket he had been wearing in the queue at the bank. He hesitated, clearly irritated at the prospect of having to wait whole minutes while Eleftheriadis and the blonde girl sold stamps or attended to passport problems and tickets for excursions ashore.

  Tornetta waited no longer. He hurried behind Ballantyne, ignored the vacant elevator, and ran up the steps to Attica Deck. A long empty corridor stretched before him. There was no point in hesitation. A steward sauntered into view as he neared the point where Ballantyne’s cabin must be. He opened the small box and with nervous fingers picked key number 37 off its peg. Surely the presence of the key here proved that there was no one in the cabin . . .

  He passed the steward and, hot with misgiving, sweating and trembling, his legs fluttering, turned off the main line of cabins into the smaller row athwartships. He had words ready on his dry lips: ‘Oh, so sorry, I want one-thirty-seven’ – ‘Oh, excuse me. I was looking for Mr. Croxley.’ People were slow in reaction. Whole seconds would pass before they questioned, ‘Who gave you the key?’

  The fear diminished as he pushed the door open and went in. He was committed, in action, and his glands attended to his anxieties.

  It was gloomy in the cabin. His acoustic senses and his nostrils were touched before his retinae made identification. Otherwise he would have fled. Instead he closed the door. A strong smell of spirits and something else – medicine, antiseptics – assailed his nostrils. And then he heard the rasp which was not the sea or faulty plumbing or anything belonging elsewhere.

  A gross figure was sprawled on the carpet gasping and writing, huge and flabby, so that in terror Tornetta moved backwards quickly, believing it was some animal.

  His eyes then told him that it was Mr. Pybus and that he was having some kind of fit . . . He was on his face and stomach, one arm bent and the other outstretched with twitching fingers. The fist of the bent arm clutched banknotes. Other notes lay on the carpet.

  Tornetta was paralysed with fright, waiting for this animal thing, seething with its private miseries, to turn and see him. He had no interest or sympathy. If it dies or sent into unconsciousness, so much the better . . .

  He breathed through his mouth to obtain silence, but Pybus was far beyond hearing others. Then Tornetta’s eyes examining his position for a line of escape, saw Ballantyne’s jacket on the upper bunk.

  Tornetta moved a step or two and reached it at the full length of his arm. It dropped and made a heavy noise on an uncarpeted part of the deck. Keys or cash. Pybus made grunting ululations, a hoarse dissonance for help. But he evidently could not move, and if he could not move than he could not see. Tornetta in the speed of panic ripped the contents out of the pockets of the fallen jacket. It wasn’t too satisfying – the bulk of those five hundred dollars had been put somewhere else, and there wasn’t time.

  He snatched the wad of notes from the hand of Pybus and gave his head a quick kick, to occupy it with pain while he retreated, still unidentified. He stuffed all these notes into his own trouser pocket, and fled precipitately, not caring if a steward saw him or not.

  In this condition of inhibiting terror he hurried along Attica Deck, up to the Parade Deck, and, finding crowds, failed to calm himself and merge. He went higher, upon the near empty Sun Deck. The smoke from the forward funnel, without breeze or air to carry it upwards or away, was sinking as soon as it was belched out. Only the motion of the Areopagus kept it up long enough to prevent it falling all over the Sun Deck. Astern it sagged in an oily smokescreen onto a motionless sea.

  Tornetta stood between two lifeboats; no one was near. He took out the notes and counted them. Two hundred and five Australian dollars.

  He looked up and jumped guiltily. From another ship people were staring.

  The other vessel seemed dangerously close, and Tornetta saw in astonishment that it was on a hearing which might bring it into collision with the Areopagus. He joined other passengers who also were fascinated by the spectacle.

  The vessel was a Soviet merchant ship, very modern, and it was on the port side of the Areopagus. This meant that on courses which were clearly convergent this Soviet ship was obliged to give way and turn aside. Instead she was maintaining course and trying to cross ahead of the Greek liner.

  Passengers shook their fists at the Russian crew members who could be seen.

  The old Areopagus had the edge in speed, and also held her course. Slowly she overhauled the Soviet vessel, and this crossed behind her at scarcely a ship’s length.

  As it did so it ran into the heavy saturation of black smoke lying on the water, and a beginning breeze, or perhaps one created by the Areopagus, shifted the direction of the smoke from the funnel and it continued to pour over the bridge and decks of the Soviet ship long after she’d passed to the starboard quarter. The passengers on the Areopagus cheered.

  In the middle of the afternoon Tornetta went to the cinema simply because he felt nervous still and wanted to be out of the way.

  The cinema of the Areopagus was an amateur affair, with a projector placed on a tabled in the Ionic Lounge and wooden chairs assembled in rows. The chairs were used here on Sundays for church services.

  Quite a few people had turned up. The film to be shown was about their next port of call, Hong Kong.

  Alone, Tornetta felt his apprehension return. Everyone else chattered with friends and relations while waiting for the performance to begin. He felt isolated and therefore conspicuous, and cursed the electrician who was, as usual, late.

  Out of the corner of his eye he saw a girl looking fo
r a seat. It was the dancer, Barbara, on her own. He turned to examine her frankly, and she recognised him and came to the adjacent seat.

  ‘Do you mind?’ she asked, but already seated, fully aware that he did not.

  ‘Where’ve you been?’ Tornetta asked outright. ‘I haven’t seen you for days.’

  ‘Touch of the flu.’

  ‘I’ve missed you.’

  ‘That’s nice.’

  ‘I wanted to talk to you.’

  ‘Just to talk,’ she sniggered archly in a whisper.

  By now Tornetta was full of confidence and his natural tastes asserted themselves. The girl was wearing a vulgarly short dress. It had risen as she had sat down and he put his hand on her knees in the darkness now and moved it slowly around into the warmth of her inner thighs. She did nothing to stop him. The outright shamelessness of English girls startled Tornetta. He could remember a time only a few years ago when English girls visiting Italy had been scared to death. Now they were almost predatory.

  His body was bothered by the tactile concession. He took her nearest hand in his own and crushed it to his swelling genitals. Far from being alarmed or insulted, the girl from Aberystwyth explored delicately with her fingers and whispered, ‘I’ll see you tonight? After the show?’ and he had to move the fingers which were to sensual to bear . . .

  But he had to wait many frustrating hours for her and had doubts as to whether they would be able to find anywhere private.

  He watched her body in its various costumes in the late cabaret, librating with impertinence. She knew he was there and put just that extra ounce of oscillation into each of the three dances of the evening’s entertainment. He wondered if anyone in the audience was shocked or capable of identifying the lewdness added to what was simply a vigorous and attractive dance . . .