Liner

by James Barlow

  ‘Nonsense.’

  ‘I am not being a tigress. It’s just true, and very tender I find it. Simplicity, like you said. And you tread on her emotions like an elephant.’

  ‘Good God! How absurd!’

  ‘She hinted – very delicately for one so simple! – that she’d have liked you to take her round Singapore. Yes. At Mollon’s party.’

  ‘Don’t try to make an innocent relationship uncomfortable. She’s a nice girl. That’s all. Someone asked me to look after her . . . ’

  ‘Why aren’t you married, Daniel?’

  ‘How the devil do I know?’

  ‘Shall I tell you?’

  ‘Can I stop you?’

  ‘Because you’re a very shy person. You were scared. You’re scared now.’

  ‘Of what?’

  ‘We are in Hong Kong two days. All right, so you’d like to take care of Debbie one day. Delightful for both of you. But how about the second day? Why not with me? Because you’re nervous.’

  Dempsey asked slowly, ‘Why did they boot you out of the Middle Hospital?’

  ‘Who says they did?’

  ‘What was it? Too friendly with the male patients?’

  ‘I love you, Daniel. You know that, don’t you?’

  ‘You don’t. You’re up to something.’

  ‘No. I’m emotional but I respect you . . . And that’s crazy for me.’

  ‘You threatened me.’

  ‘I did?’

  ‘About the Middle Hospital.’

  ‘Oh, that.’

  ‘Yes, that.’

  ‘I wanted to penetrate, to shock you, to force an interest in me.’

  ‘You’re only twenty-three now. You were a child when I was there.’

  ‘Yes, but I was a naughty child. I pinched things – pills, documents.’

  The telephone rang.

  Dempsey answered it. ‘I’ll be along.’ He said to Pauline: ‘A child hurt . . . We’ll have a day out in Hong Kong, Mrs. Triffett.’

  ‘Oh, Daniel, bless you! How sweet! That’ll be fun.’

  ‘Boring,’ he suggested.

  Dempsey hurried with his leather bag to the cabin on A Deck where a child of two had fallen six feet from an upper bunk.

  There was a man coming out of the cabin as Dempsey approached it – fair-haired man of about thirty, with a face burned by sun long before he came on this voyage.

  Dempsey told him: ‘I’m the doctor.’

  The man said indifferently, ‘She’s in there.’

  ‘Where are you going?’ Dempsey asked frankly, in astonishment.

  ‘There’s a meeting of the Toastmasters.’

  ‘I thought your child had hurt herself?’

  ‘I told you – the wife’s in there.’

  Dempsey asked outright: ‘Aren’t you interested in your child?’

  The man considered this in apparent perplexity rather than offense. ‘Listen, I pay you to see to the kid, don’t I?’

  ‘God Almighty!’ exploded Dempsey, and went into the cabin.

  The mother, dressed in a bikini, was almost equally indifferent, and obviously anxious to be elsewhere.

  The little girl lay on the deck. The mother had done nothing. The child’s face was very pale; she was moaning a little now and being sick.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Ah, she fell off the bunk. She looks a bit crook.’

  ‘She was knocked unconscious?’

  ‘Too right.’

  Dempsey examined the child.

  ‘Nothing broken,’ he told the woman. ‘She’ll be all right if she’s kept quiet for a day or two.’

  ‘No pills or nothing?’

  ‘No. She probably won’t feel like food for a while.’

  ‘How much, Doc?’

  Dempsey told her and went on his way.

  Marion Burston saw the child later in the day, lying in the tropical sun on the Parade Deck near the aft swimming pool. The little girl was asleep when Marion sat down by Miss Wearne. The sun moved in its almighty arc and soon it was beating on the child.

  The girl looked very pale indeed and a trickle ran out of her mouth. It worried Marion.

  Miss Wearne was teaching another daughter of the same parents how to knit. This girl was about six and seemed glad to have Miss Wearne’s attention.

  After a while Marion couldn’t stand it. She didn’t know about the girl’s concussion, but regarded it as dangerous for her to lie for over an hour in the full sun. People walked around the girl, or looked and walked on. Then Debbie came by on her daily exercise around the deck and stopped to consider the girl. She hesitated and then strode on. The woman ‘with wheels in her head’ didn’t seem to see the child, but went fixedly on her way.

  Marion said to Miss Wearne tentatively, ‘That kid’s been lying there an hour or more.’

  Miss Wearne agreed: ‘They do seem to neglect their children, those two.’

  ‘They’re just like little ragamuffins.’

  Miss Wearne inquired of the older child: ‘Where are your mother and father?’

  ‘Mum’s gone to the Fashion Parade.’

  ‘And Daddy?’

  ‘He’s gone too. It’s a joke.’

  ‘Why haven’t you gone?’

  ‘I’ve got to look after her.’

  ‘She looks very pale.’

  ‘The doctor came this morning.’

  ‘Why was that?’

  ‘She fell off the bunk.’

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘The top one. She was unconscious and sick and everything.’

  Marion was alarmed.

  She said in anger: ‘What are they thinking of, leaving her in the sun like that? I’m going to fetch them.’

  Miss Wearne forecast, ‘She won’t thank you.’

  ‘That child’s will. She’s being sick.’

  The little girl awoke and began to weep wretchedly, but as if it was an effort.

  Marion was apprehensive because the child was Phoebe, and her mother, the woman from Darwin, would conclude that she was trying to humiliate her. At the same time she was angry with the woman and anxious to express her contempt for such incompetent parenthood.

  The Fashion Parade was being held in the Aegean Lounge. Some of the female passengers and two of the dancers were parading the clothes they had purchased in Singapore. They were surprisingly competent, and Marion, entering behind an audience of three hundred or so, was a little daunted. Ricky, the entertainments officer, was broadcasting a running commentary, and so far from being frivolous, he was very professional, with a knowledge of fabrics and styles at least as good as Marion’s.

  Marion looked along the rows of seated passengers, but could not see the woman from Darwin or her husband. Ricky’s voice, enlarged by electricity, boomed across the lounge: ‘Next, and understandably glad to be cooler, June models a swimsuit of batik cloth. I’m not sure that batik cloth was intended to be chopped up into a bikini. But while we admire sloe-eyed Chinese girls and voluptuous Malay beauties dressed like birds of paradise in Kebaya, cheongsam and saris, and those billowing baju karongs, I understand that Australians like their women raw . . . Are you ready, June? I can’t keep up this prolegomenon much longer.’

  ‘Can’t find my shoes,’ a woman’s voice said from out of sight, and the audience laughed.

  The voice was that of the woman Marion was seeking.

  ‘Never mind your shoes,’ chided Ricky. ‘Come just as you are. Like you do for dinner!’

  Again the audience laughed.

  The woman from Darwin walked into view. At first Marion didn’t recognize her, for she wore a wig which changed her hair colour from dark brown to silver blonde
. She strolled about confidently, oscillating her buttocks exactly as she did around the Parade Deck. She pivoted and walked to and fro, and smiled at the audience. A few men whistled.

  Marion was now self-conscious because she alone was standing in the audience. She was tempted to retreat, but considered the child.

  She went behind the curtains and found an area which was a chaos of garments, wigs, a litter of shoes, and mirrors hung or leaning. About fifteen women, mostly young, were getting into and out of costumes.

  The woman, June, had received applause and came back into this area while Ricky was announcing the next item. Despite her self-confidence the woman was a little shaken, so that for a moment she forgot hostility, the by now normal condition regarding Marion, and asked. ‘You gonna have a go?’

  ‘Your kid’s ill,’ said Marion.

  ‘Yeah, I know. She fell off a bunk.’

  ‘She’s being sick.’

  ‘She ate chocolate ice. Serve her right.’

  The woman was now adjusting herself and realized that Marion had come specifically to tell her about the child.

  ‘Listen,’ she commanded. ‘Nice of you to tell me, but the doc has it in hand, so why don’t you go back to minding your own business?’

  ‘What kind of a mother are you?’ Marion asked angrily. ‘That kid’s lying in the sun and has been for an hour. Now she’s being sick.’

  ‘I didn’t know that.’

  ‘Well, now you do, why don’t you stop parading your arse around and come to see to her?’

  The woman was contemptuous.

  ‘You miserable Pommie wowser. Rose is looking after her. Why don’t you relax for half an hour and enjoy yourself?’

  ‘I can’t if a child is dangerously ill –’

  ‘Oh, burn up. She’s my kid, not yours. Haven’t you got any of your own?’

  ‘I’ve got three, and if they were ill I wouldn’t be tarting around in a wig –’

  ‘You’re just a miserable bastard. No wonder you’re going back to England. Now get lost, will you? I’ve got to put my next gear on.’

  ‘Your other girl isn’t old enough to look after Phoebe.’

  ‘Where we live, everybody’s capable –’

  ‘I’m going to fetch the doctor.’

  ‘You do that, Pom, and you’ll be in trouble.’

  ‘Then where’s your husband? I’ll talk to him.’

  ‘You do that. He’s a great conversationalist,’ said the woman, and turned her back on Marion.

  But the husband couldn’t be seen. Marion had to give up, and as she retreated, Ricky came on before the audience with the man she sought. Both wore grass skirts and began a parody of ballroom dancing. The audience shrieked with amusement.

  On the Parade Deck the steward who had the toy which made a noise like a cat had carried the child Phoebe into some shade, and was giving her a drink of water.

  After a while some of the people who had been watching the Fashion Parade came on deck.

  The woman from Darwin ostentatiously abstained from noticing Marion, and approached the child. The steward grinned his usual good-humoured interest and said, ‘She has been sick. Very sick. Not like the hot weather.’

  ‘Yeah. She’s a bit crook because she fell down. How are y’doing, Phoebe?’

  ‘I was sick.’

  ‘Where the hell’s Rosie?’

  ‘Can I have a lemonade?’

  ‘Sure. Why not? That’s what you’re here for – to enjoy yourself. Come on, kid. It’s almost time to go the pictures.’

  Stella Burston lay on her stomach on her bunk. She held a book by the side of her neck so that the light from the porthole fell on its pages. It was a dirty book which Diane had lent her. She read it with the impact of physical shock crawling like insects across her face, and then turned back to go again through the several pages which described seduction and tactile love. Her body writhed in restlessness. Her face was hot.

  Her mother came in the cabin and Stella slid the book with haste under a pillow and lay in a posture of dejection.

  Marion pleaded, ‘Don’t sulk all day, Stella.’

  ‘I’m not sulking.’

  Marion stepped nearer to talk with tenderness. It interested Stella by virtue of contrast. I’ve got them worried, she deduced, and the experience was one of power, fascination, a position to exploit carefully.

  ‘Come and get some fresh air.’

  ‘I can’t go anywhere,’

  Marion whispered, ‘You can’t expect your father to allow you the freedom of the ship.’

  ‘I hate him.’

  ‘That’s silly.’

  ‘It’s not. He’s inhuman.’

  ‘On the contrary, he’s human and bitterly disappointed.’

  ‘I’ll never speak to him again,’ declared Stella.

  ‘Would he be hurt and angry if he didn’t care?’

  ‘Care? He doesn’t care. Not about me. It was an automatic reaction. It’s himself he cares about, to be the boss, not to be made a fool of. I read that in a book on psychiatry – people don’t know their own motives.’

  ‘What were your motives?’ Marion asked.

  Stella was silent.

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘Nothing, Mum. Only what he saw.’

  ‘That was enough.’

  ‘They laughed at me,’ Stella informed her mother.

  It was true, but she had been willing to pursue the pianist; she had known her probable destiny with him. Even now, reading the book, the imprudent itch weakened her between the legs so that it would have been uncomfortable to stand up.

  ‘Who laughed at you?’

  ‘These people, his friends, in the bar, you know, grown-ups. They made me feel silly, not doing anything.’

  ‘Stella, you’re old enough to know better than that. There are always people like that – on ships, in offices; surely you had some even at school?’

  ‘There was Betty Bugg.’

  ‘She was raped.’

  ‘That’s what the papers said,’ affirmed Stella. ‘She was peculiar. She used to steal and she’d go with five or six boys every lunch time and take –’

  ‘I don’t want to know about it,’ said her mother. ‘Is it the way you want to be?’

  ‘No, Mum, you know it isn’t.’

  ‘I don’t know my daughter anymore,’ Marion pointed out. ‘I thought I could trust her.’

  ‘I was frightened,’ declared Stella.

  This also was true, but it had been a fear she had been eager to overcome, to abandon so that she could be like Diane. He had been very gentle, so that in seconds she’d been necking confidently, aggressively, with physical effort, out of breath, aching, and when his hands had opened her dress she’d been trembling, not with fear but in haste. The touch of his fingers on her breasts had scorched her, burned away reticence and anxiety. She’d been proud to see the alteration of expression on his face, what she had aroused. Any chance of this experience coming her way again, of continuing to fruition, withered, as if she’d been damaged physically. There was practically no fright left in her now: she lay in her bunk at night hot with frustration, knowing she’d be guarded, that months must pass before any situation with possibilities came to her again . . .

  ‘What about other boys?’ persisted her mother.

  ‘I don’t know any.’

  ‘You know what I mean.’

  ‘There was one, Ken, who tried to get fresh. I stopped him.’

  ‘And Roy?’

  ‘He was kind.’

  ‘There was nothing?’

  ‘No, Mum, honestly.’

  ‘You know what I mean?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘I
mean –’

  But Marion couldn’t say it.

  ‘You mean did any boy seduce me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘They didn’t.’

  ‘I’ll never understand how and why you allowed a vulgar pianist to go so far.’

  ‘I told you. I was scared.’ Stella was very anxious to convince and obtain trust. She sensed that her mother wanted to have faith in her. ‘I was shaking so much that I couldn’t speak. But he doesn’t believe it,’ she concluded sourly.

  ‘He was bound to conclude that if he hadn’t come into the cabin the situation would have deteriorated. His view is that you were offering no resistance.’

  ‘I was scared, Mum. My legs were shaking. And I’d been necking with him. That was nice, and this other thing was unexpected. I thought he might kill me. Not literally, but, you know, smash me up with his fists. They’re peculiar, I suppose the Greeks . . . ’

  ‘They’re no different from English or Australian . . . It was sordid, Stella, you can’t get away from it . . . But don’t sulk girl, or act as if your father had no right to be angry.’

  Stella asked, still fascinated by these, which were evidently peace proposals, ‘What shall I do, Mum?’

  ‘Say you’re sorry.’

  Stella flared up. ‘Why should I? He hit me. He was brutal and coarse.’

  Marion sighed.

  ‘It won’t hurt to say you’re sorry. We all do foolish things –’

  ‘Not according to him.’

  ‘All right,’ conceded Marion. ‘You don’t have to actually say it. Just stop being sullen.’

  ‘Nobody wants me,’ cried Stella, and suddenly it was easy to weep, to pour fluid.

  Marion touched her hair and head. ‘Ah, come on, kid. Be honest. You said harsh cruel things to him . . . Listen. We’re approaching Hong Kong. Come on deck. It’s something you may never see again.’

  ‘Oh, Mum, I’m too ashamed. People will stare.’

  ‘Nonsense. Nobody knows.’

  ‘He’ll tell Diane.’

  ‘I don’t think so. He’s feeling pretty silly, with a couple of teeth missing.’

  ‘Did Dad do that?’