The Game

by Laurie R. King

  Mrs Goodheart broke in. “And since Thomas here arranged it, the maharaja’s invited us to come and spend some time with him. In his kingdom,” she added, lest we think they were to be shelved in some Bombay hotel. “Khanpur is its name.”

  A mild expression that might have been annoyance flitted across Tom Goodheart’s face, irritation at having the climax of his story snatched away, but before he could respond, a hugely contrasting swirl of pink and white merriment came dashing up the deck to confront us.

  “Oh! Mrs Russell, how super! Have you ever played shovel-board? On a boat? You shove the little puck down the deck and it’s going perfectly and then the boat tilts a little and—oops! There goes your nice straight shot, so then you try to compensate on the next turn and the deck tilts the other way and there goes your shot to the other side. Oh, it’s ever so funny!”

  “Sunny, this is Mr Russell,” her mother told her.

  “Oh!” the girl squeaked. “So pleased to meet you. Your wife is such a darling, and such a sense of humour!”

  “Oh yes,” Holmes agreed gravely. “Quite the joker is my wife.”

  The girl turned to me again. “They’re going to have an egg race next. Wouldn’t you like to come and join?”

  There was very little I would enjoy less than a shipboard egg race, but since one of those lesser pleasures was the idea of remaining within reach of Sunny’s mother and brother, I made haste to stand before we could be assigned some other task. “I won’t participate, but I shall come and cheer you on.”

  Holmes would have to manufacture his own escape.

  The old-fashioned egg race was every bit as fatuous as I had expected, the girls shrieking and giggling and bouncing on their toes for the benefit of the onlooking officers. One side of the deck had been roped off for the games, but the participants were somewhat thinner on the ground—or rather, on the boards—than they would have been during the autumn migration. Still, the girls made up for it in self-conscious enthusiasm during the first two heats of the P. & O.’s quaint idea of fun. After those, however, the paucity of numbers brought about a defiant change of house rules, and the relays became co-educational. The baritone voices were accompanied by a shift in the merriment to something resembling true competition, and if the men looked even more ridiculous than the women had in racing down the deck with spoon and teetering egg, everyone had a splendid time, and there was plenty of opportunity for jovial banter and a certain degree of innocent physical contact.

  The change in noise, however, attracted the parental authorities of those girls young enough to view the game merely as pleasurable exercise linked with mild flirtation instead of early negotiations in the serious economic business of matrimony. Repressive suggestions were made, Mrs Goodheart decreeing that Sunny looked quite flushed and a rest might be in order before it came time to dress for dinner, and the egg-race orgy died a natural death. The young men straightened their collars and went back to their corners; the young women recalled their sophistication and lounged off for a cigarette, illicit or open, depending on the smoker’s age. Holmes and I seized the opportunity for retreat.

  We made for the less occupied reaches of the deck, up where smuts drifted from the steamer stacks and the vibration from the engines far below bounced one’s feet on the boards. I had a coin in my hand, to practice flipping it across my knuckles. My fingers were remembering the drill and becoming more supple, the motions more nearly automatic.

  “Why on earth did you wish to speak with those people, Holmes?”

  “That is ‘Mr Russell’ to you.”

  “Holmes.”

  “I merely wished to examine the phenomenon of a wealthy and educated young American who embraces the cant of the Bolsheviks. I have some familiarity with his British counterpart, but I was interested to see if there were regional differences.”

  “And were there?”

  “None of import. The aristocracy amuses itself in many ways, among which is the pretence of being a commoner. You will note, however, that rarely is the claim accompanied by a renunciation of status or wealth.”

  “I suppose it’s a harmless enough flirtation. Better than yanking a variety of exotic animals from their homes and shipping them halfway around the globe in order to shoot them.”

  “Having granted them a long and prolific life before their demise,” he pointed out mildly. “And by comparison with the extreme behaviour of some of the native princes, the attitude of young Goodheart’s maharaja seems fairly tame. The boredom of the aristocracy reaches new highs amongst India’s hereditary rulers, and the lengths to which some of them go to escape it—well, let us say merely that ancient Rome might learn a few things about depravity.”

  I might have explored that interesting topic, but a sudden thought made me glance apprehensively at the dancing boards under my feet. “You don’t suppose those beasts of his are in the hold of this ship, do you?”

  “This is a P. & O. liner, Russell. They don’t even permit lap dogs.”

  That was a relief. I had seen bison, and did not like to imagine what an irritated one could do to a ship’s hold.

  We took our evening meal in our rooms, as well as breakfast on Monday, and by making immediately for the more insalubrious portions of the decks during the middle of the day, we avoided the Goodhearts until Sunny caught us strolling down the stairs at tea-time, her brother ambling along behind her.

  “Oh! Mrs Russell, I’ve missed you so. I hope you haven’t been ill, I was looking for you at lunch. Hello, Mr Russell.”

  “We’ve just been elsewhere,” I told her; Holmes murmured something vaguely apologetic and pulled a vanishing act. “Did you need something?”

  “Oh, yes, I just wanted to ask if you were thinking of going ashore at Port Said tomorrow. Tommy and I are skipping off to see Cairo and the pyramids by moonlight, although Mama says it’s too strenuous a jaunt for her. The purser says we’ll rejoin the ship in Suez, he absolutely promises. Please, won’t you come?”

  Moonlight? I thought. The moon would be but a tiny sliver, handsome enough in the desert sky but short-lived and less illuminating than a candle. Little point in saying anything to this young lady, however—the shipping line might not permit lap dogs, but Sunny was doing her best to make up for their absence, endearing herself to all and polishing off whatever odd scraps were put on her plate. I stifled an impulse to snap the order to Sit!

  “No, thank you, Sunny. I may go ashore in Aden, but not here.” I had not yet seen the pyramids, but I did not wish to do so for the first time on a rushed day-trip in the company of a shipload of tourists. Call me a snob, but I prefer to take in the world’s grand sights when I can at least hear myself think. Not that I was killjoy enough to say so aloud.

  Her round little face fell in disappointment. “I’m so sorry. Tommy was looking forward to it.”

  Tommy, I thought, cared not a whit if I came, although at the memory of the fellow’s bland and disinterested mask, I experienced a vague stir of disquiet. Before I could pursue the thought, Sunny perked up again. “Well, maybe you’ll join Mama? There’s a group going ashore to buy pith helmets and such, sounds ever so fun.”

  I rather doubted that, and could only imagine the sort of solar topees on offer at a shop catering to lady tourists fresh from England. Holmes would go ashore in Port Said to send a telegram to Mycroft; I’d ask him to buy me a sun-hat while he was there. “No, I’ll wait, thanks. You have a good time. And, Sunny? Please call me Mary.”

  Her face blossomed again, simple soul, and she chattered for a while about maharajas and camels before bouncing off to consider the proper wardrobe for pyramid-visiting. I smiled at her retreating back: It would not be long before the one-woman fishing fleet was reeling in a whole school of handsome young officers on her line.

  Chapter Four

  After Port Said, the Suez Canal sucked us in. As the shadows grew long we drifted down its narrow length, exchanging impassive gazes with the goats, camels, and robed humans that inhabited its
sandy banks. I sat on the upper deck with a couple of the oranges we had picked up in Port Said, reading the tattered copy of Kim I had discovered in the ship’s library, rediscovering the pleasures of a classic tale with unexpected depths. The story sparkled as I remembered it, the orphan boy free to attach himself to Afghan horse-trader and wandering holy man alike, learning the Jewel Game from the enigmatic Lurgan Sahib, meeting the Babu with his clumsy surface concealing his deep committed competence. I sighed when I finished it, and dutifully returned it to the shelves between Chesterton and Wodehouse. I perused the library’s other offerings, but its contents proved considerably less informative than the armload of books I had raided from Holmes’ shelves, and I went back to them.

  I was slowly putting together a picture of India in my mind, the size and immense variety in land and people, its hugely complicated caste system, based originally on the distinction between Brahmin/priest, Kshatriya/warrior, Vaisya/artisan, and Sudra/menial. The lowest of these was called “Untouchable,” but in truth, it sounded as if no one was allowed to touch anyone else, for fear the other might be of a lower caste and hence ritually unclean. And since the original four castes had splintered into thousands—as well as having Buddhists, Moslems, Sikhs, Christians, and a hundred others thrown into the mix—I thought the population must spend most of its energy sorting out where it stood on the ladder.

  I read for hours, absorbing India’s long history of conquest and reconquest, from Alexander to Victoria; the Moghul influence on the country, long and ongoing; the East India Company’s rule so violently cut short by the 1857 Mutiny; the subsequent authority of the British government, ruling directly those portions of the country not under the command of their native rulers. The Empire in 1924: a bit worn around the edges, perhaps, but still strong.

  The night was desert-cool and brilliant, and Holmes and I settled beneath the crisp crescent of moon and sat until long after midnight, wrapped in our thoughts and memories. The next day the canal spat us out into the Red Sea, and the younger Goodhearts rejoined us, transformed into old Egypt hands by nineteen hours inland, clothed in a variety of peculiar garments including topees (they no longer used the outsider’s term “pith helmet”) of a shape unknown outside the souks of Cairo, constructed of some vegetable matter (pith, one presumes) that sagged as the weather warmed.

  Which it did as we continued south. Cabin trunks went down to the hold in exchange for those marked “Wanted on Voyage,” and the shipboard community traded its English hats for rigid solar topees, casting off a few of its inhibitions along with the woollens. Wanton conversation broke out all over the ship, as formerly aloof ladies unbent so far as to offer comments on the weather and rigid-spined gentlemen exchanged opinions on cricket and horse-racing. The men’s dark serge suits changed to pale drill or linen (or, for the hopelessly flamboyant merchants known as box-wallahs, tussore silk) and male dinner-wear began to take on variations of the tropics, with white jackets or trousers but, oddly, never both. Women’s arms appeared even during the day-time, and some of the more daring members played short-skirted games of tennis on the top deck in the early mornings, until all the balls had vanished into the sea, after which they changed to the more controllable badminton. Decks sprouted awnings, making it more difficult to find a patch of sun, and beds were made up there at night—men on one side, of course, ladies on the other. The exercise equipment in the stifling shipboard gym went unused after mid-morning, and vigorous deck games were replaced by the more sedate shovel-board and quoits. Holmes and I spent the mornings in our rooms, palming coins, renewing our juggling skills, repeating and refining common phrases in my new tongue, until we were driven out by the mid-day heat. In the open, even in our less attractive chosen corners, magic tricks were set aside in favour of bilingual conversation and the relief of books. I was still working my way through The Mahabharata when a familiar shape plopped down beside me where I sat in the shade of a large crate.

  “There you are!” Sunny exclaimed. “What on earth are you reading?”

  I showed her the book, half irritated at the interruption, but also glad for it. An unrelieved diet of Holmes, Hindi, and Hindu mythology surely couldn’t be good for one.

  “Good heavens, look at those names!” she said. “I can’t even pronounce half of them. What is this, anyway?”

  “The great Indian Hindu epic, the battle between their great gods and demons, the founding of the people.”

  “I think I’d rather read one of Mama’s Ethel Dells,” she said, handing it back to me.

  “At this point, I think I might as well.”

  She sat for a rare moment of stillness, studying the distant shore. “Isn’t the Suez Canal just the superest thing? Tommy says it saves weeks and weeks of sailing all around Africa, with storms and all. You English were so clever to have built it.”

  It was slightly startling to be given personal credit for the project, and I felt an obligation to set her—and Tommy—straight. “Actually, the canal was here long before England was even a country. Ramses the Second was the first Egyptian to begin it, although it wasn’t completed until the days of Darius, about twenty-four hundred years ago. Not that it’s been open all that time. The silt blocks it, and a couple of times it was deliberately filled in for defence purposes, but we can hardly be given credit for thinking of the thing. Anyone who looked at a rudimentary map would be tempted to get out the shovels.”

  “Well!” she exclaimed. “I never. And Tommy said … But aren’t you clever, to know these things? I should have gone to school, university I mean, but somehow it just never seemed to come up.”

  “It’s not too late.”

  “I suppose,” she said dubiously, but we both knew she never would. She spent perhaps thirty seconds mourning her lack of education, then held out one arm alongside mine, which was growing darker by the day. (For, whatever our disguises might be in the weeks ahead, I doubted that pale-skinned English lady would be one of them.)

  “When Mama notices how brown you’re going, don’t be surprised if she has ten fits. Whenever she finds me sitting in the sun, she gives me a lecture about wrinkles until I put on my topee.”

  “Topees make me feel as if I’m speaking inside a bucket,” I said.

  She giggled. “Does your mother nag you, too, or does that stop as soon as you’re married?”

  “My mother’s dead,” I told her.

  Her expressive face crumpled. “Oh, I am so sorry. How stupid of me, I didn’t—”

  I interrupted before she burst into tears. “Don’t worry, it’s been a very long time. So tell me, have you decided to be a Kewpie doll or a harem dancer?”

  The fancy-dress ball was to be the following night, and the ship quivered with the thrill of anticipation, the ship’s tailors working round the clock, sworn to secrecy. Holmes and I planned on taking advantage of the evening’s empty cabins to begin juggling clubs. Wooden belaying pins when dropped make quite a noise.

  My distraction worked. Sunny clapped her hands and leant towards me as if there might be spies lurking on the other side of the crate to ask, “Have you ever been to the cabarets in Berlin?”

  I reared back to stare at the child, speechless. A Berlin night-club was not a thing I’d have thought Sunny’s mother would have allowed her daughter within a mile of.

  “Er, yes.”

  “Well, I haven’t seen one” (Thank goodness for small mercies, I thought.) “but Tommy told me about one girl who dances on stage with a big snake. And that made me think about the snake charmers in India, and, voilà!”

  “Where are you going to get a snake?” I asked. Did snakes perhaps not come under the P. & O.’s pet-exclusion clause?

  “Not a real snake, silly!” Sunny’s eyes danced. “I’m having the durzi make up a snake for me—durzi’s what they call tailors in India—and I’ll wear it around my shoulders. And I have a dress that matches its skin. Won’t that be fun?”

  I thought that it might be more fun than she was prepared for,
considering the number of young men on board. “It sounds … exotic. But, Sunny? Perhaps you shouldn’t mention Berlin in relation to the costume. Those night-clubs might be considered somewhat … risqué for a girl your age.”

  “Okay. But what do you think of the snake idea?”

  “I think you’ll have every young man on the ship slithering along the decks after you,” I said.

  She giggled.

  However, later that evening as we were dressing for dinner, Holmes astonished me as well. He chose a moment of weakness on my part, as he was brushing my long hair.

  “Russell, I think it might be a good idea to go to this costume ball.”

  “Holmes!” I jerked away from his hands to look up at him. “Are you feverish?”

  “Russell, I did not say that I intended to go.”

  “Oh no. If I have to go, so do you.” I took the hair-brush from him and turned to the looking-glass. “But why on earth should either of us wish to dress up with a room of drunken first-class passengers wearing bizarre clothing?”

  “Thomas Goodheart.”

  Holmes had continued to cultivate the young man’s acquaintance—I cannot call it a friendship, precisely—and the two spent a part of every day either lounging on the deck or in the depths of the all-male enclave of the smoking room, playing billiards, whist, or occasionally poker. My husband’s uncharacteristic sociability with the supercilious young American might have puzzled me had I not overheard some of their conversations, and known that, more often than not, the Communist Party and the politics of India were the chief topics of Holmes’ casual enquiries. Still, to Mr Goodheart I was clearly beyond the pale. Educated, free-thinking women were not his cup of tea, and he made no attempt at concealing that fact.