20-Inspector's Holiday

by Lockridge, Richard

  “Ponte superiore, signor-signora. Upper deck, sir-madame. Ascensore, sir.” And a gesture.

  “How many floors up—I mean decks?” Susan said.

  “One, signora.”

  They were at the foot of a wide staircase.

  “We’d better—” Heimrich began and Susan said, “Nonsense. I’m fine,” and he followed her up the staircase. There was a rail to hold onto, but Susan did not touch it.

  They went down a wide passageway and, amidships, came to an open door marked “82.” They went through a narrower corridor and passed shelves on which their suitcases were already stacked. They passed a closed door and were in a room larger than it had appeared to be from the plans they had studied in front of a fire in Van Brunt. There was a bed under two closed portholes; on the other side—against the inner wall (except that it would be a “bulkhead”)—was a second bed. Between them there was a chest of drawers against one wall—no, bulkhead—and opposite it doors which opened on closet spaces with a full-length mirror between them.

  Susan looked around the room.

  “You know,” she said, “for the first time I believe it. Do you believe it, dear?”

  “It feels real enough,” Merton Heimrich said. “Are you all right, Susan?”

  “I,” Susan said, “am on holiday. Oh, I feel fine. We’ve never been on a ship together, have we? Nor, really—oh, on a holiday.” She sat down on the bed under the portholes. She looked up at him.

  “Actually,” Susan said, “I feel wonderful. As if—oh, as if we ought to drink champagne.”

  “Only,” Merton said, “neither of us much likes champagne.”

  “There is that,” Susan said. “And it is also only a little after ten in the morning. But—don’t you feel it too? As if—oh, as if everything were new?”

  “I feel it too,” Heimrich said, and went to sit on the bed beside his wife. He looked at her very carefully. Though they had got up too early and done last-minute packing and been driven into town on sometimes treacherous and at the end crowded roads, she didn’t look so tired any more. When she smiled at him it was her smile.

  They had not closed the cabin door. Sitting side by side on the bed they could look through the passageway of Cabin 82 and into the corridor beyond it. People were moving in the corridor. Men in white jackets carried luggage through it; people huddled in overcoats walked through it and said, “Here we are,” to one another. Bumping sounds came through a bulkhead from one of the cabins next to theirs. The S.S. Italia was filling up.

  A dark-haired young woman, trim in white and green uniform, knocked at their open door and Susan said, “Yes?” and the young woman—the pretty young woman—came into the cabin. She said, “I am Angela, madame-sir. Your stewardess. Is there anything I can do for you?”

  Her English was careful, precise. The intonation was British. There was nothing she could do for them.

  “You have only to ring,” Angela said. “Here.” She pointed to buttons set into the wall above the dressing table. “I will come. Or Guido will come. He is the steward.”

  “Thank you,” Susan said, and was almost as precise with words as Angela. “We’ll ring when we need you.”

  “We are not going to Boston,” Angela said. “There is a strike there. Those who were to have come aboard at Boston are coming here. We must wait for them, but they think it will not be long. Lunch will be served at one.”

  Susan said, “Thank you.”

  “You have but to ring,” Angela said. “I will come or Guido will come. I can bring you ice?”

  “No,” Susan said. “Thank you, Angela.”

  The stewardess went down the passageway to the cabin door. She stopped at it and turned and said, “I shall close the door, yes? It is noisy. There is confusion.”

  There was not, particularly. There was order.

  “If you will,” Susan said, and Angela went out and closed the door behind her.

  She seemed a nice girl. They agreed on that. They might as well start unpacking. They agreed on that. But for half an hour they merely sat, secure, in that peace which comes when something long planned on and worried about and worked toward has come about. Susan put it into words. “We’re really here,” she said. “When the people from Boston come we’ll sail away from winter.”

  She stubbed out her cigarette, making the action a period. They unpacked, hanging things in the wardrobes, putting things in drawers. Merton’s dinner jacket had survived unwrinkled. Susan’s dresses would shake out. They had finished, put cases back on shelves, when the ship began a gentle, just perceptible, vibration. “Engines on,” Heimrich said, and Susan said, “Yes. It’s coming alive, isn’t it? We’re really going on our holiday. Should we go somewhere—”

  A loud hooting drowned her voice. It seemed to shake the ship. It stopped.

  “—and watch?” Susan said.

  They left the cabin and went along the corridor and climbed a flight of stairs. They went out on the promenade deck and, through glass, watched a pier move slowly past them. The ship hooted again as it backed into North River. It stopped and then, slowly, tugs nudging it and then dropping away, began to move forward. New York City began to drift past them.

  “The cocktail lounge is on this deck,” Heimrich said. “I remember that from the plan they sent us. And we’re under way.”

  They found the cocktail lounge, which was very large and was open and was beginning to fill up. They found a table and ordered drinks, not of champagne, and when the drinks came they touched glasses, and Susan said, “Bon voyage to us both.”

  They had just finished the drinks when chimes sounded. Heimrich looked at a nearby bar steward, and the steward said, “Yes, signor. Luncheon is served. Shall I bring you and the signora another drink?”

  They decided against that and, instructed, Heimrich wrote “82” on the bar slip.

  They went down two decks in a small elevator and found the dining room, which stretched the width of the ship. They were guided to Table 17, which was set for two and from which they could see a long buffet table, with men in chef’s hats behind it.

  A waiter—no, steward—in a green jacket said, “Signor. Signora,” on a note of triumph and put menus in front of them. The menus were enormous and in Italian and English, side by side. The menus were slightly overwhelming.

  The steward said, “My name is Lorenzo, sir-madame. But Esposito, not de’ Medici.”

  The Heimrichs disappointed Lorenzo, being content with omelets. (“No appetizer? No soup? But surely dessert, signora? The spumoni, perhaps? The wine steward, signor?”)

  Heimrich said, “Tonight, perhaps,” to that, and Susan said, “Yes, spumoni, I think.”

  The four hearty women at the table next theirs, also served by Lorenzo, made up for the Heimrichs’ abstinence. They started with shrimp cocktails and were resolute thereafter. Three of them had two desserts each.

  After lunch, the Heimrichs went up to the promenade deck, by ascensore. On the starboard side the afternoon sun was shining through glass. A deck steward said, “Sirmadame,” and found two deck chairs, side by side with the right names on them. The sun poured onto the chairs. The S.S. Italia seemed still in the quiet water, but looking down they could see the white froth of her bow wave. She lifted her prow gently against the ocean and dipped it gently.

  There was an Italian lesson in the observation lounge on the boat deck. A bridge lesson was available in the card room, also on the boat deck—ponte lance. Shuffleboard was available on the belvedere deck. Tea would be served in the main cocktail lounge at four-thirty.

  The Heimrichs sat in the sun, and the Atlantic drifted westward. At a little after four, Susan said, “I’m going down to the cabin and take a nap, if I can wake up enough to get there.”

  They went down to Cabin 82, and Susan chose as hers the bed on the outboard side, under the portholes. She undressed and got into it, and Heimrich thought, That’s fine. She needs sleep. Sleep will be good for her. And then, I may as well lie down m
yself and be very quiet so as not to waken her.

  When he himself awakened, it was after six, and her bed was empty. For a moment he was almost frightened, which was absurd. But for weeks he had been almost frightened. He went to the bathroom door and listened outside it and could hear the shower running.

  He was surprised that he breathed in so deeply in relief. He got back into bed and lighted a cigarette and waited his turn.

  2

  It was a few minutes after seven when they went into the big cocktail lounge on the promenade deck. It was crowded. A great many other people were, apparently, on holiday. (Not on business, Susan thought. People on business flew in airplanes.) It was also noisy. And three men in red jackets roamed it, one carrying a guitar and one a violin and one only a tenor voice, of which he was making a great deal. (More, Susan thought, than it’s worth.) Susan said, “Oh,” in a diminished voice.

  “There must be another,” Heimrich said. “A quieter one. There must—hell, there’re probably half a dozen. Wait.”

  They waited just inside the entrance. A captain in a dinner jacket beamed at them. He held up two fingers at them. He moved in front of a banquette space for two and beckoned.

  On one side of the space he indicated, two men sat side by side, and one of them was smoking a cigar. On the other side two women sat together and they were, Heimrich thought, two of the four women who had had lunch at the table next theirs and had had two desserts apiece.

  “I remember,” Heimrich said. “On the boat deck, as I remember from the deck plan. All the way forward. Something called ‘veranda belvedere.’ The observation lounge, I think it is. It looked smaller on the plan.”

  He shook his head at the captain, who shrugged slightly and spread his hands and looked back with, it seemed to Merton Heimrich, understanding. Perhaps even with sympathy.

  They found one of the neat small elevators. In it, Merton pressed the button lettered “Ponte Lance.” The elevator closed its door and went up and stopped. They went through a passageway. They went past what appeared to be a small library. It was empty. They came into an uncrowded room with windows around it. Beyond the forward windows the bow of S.S. Italia gently rose and gently dipped.

  There were sofas for two with tables in front of them and chairs grouped around tables, and there was a bar, and a lounge steward in a white jacket said, “Signor-signora,” and waved a welcoming hand. There were no more than a dozen people in the room, which could have held fifty. Nobody was singing in the room, and the bow of the ship rose gently and subsided gently. There was a dance circle in the middle of the room, but nobody was dancing on it.

  They sat on one of the little sofas so that they faced forward and could watch the slow rise, the slow dip, of the prow. It was a holiday ship again.

  The steward stood in front of them. He said, “Sir? Madam?”

  “Martinis,” Merton Heimrich said. “Very dry. With a twist. Oh, and up.”

  The steward looked, Heimrich thought, slightly shocked. But he only said, “Certainly, sir,” and went away. He was back almost before cigarettes were lighted. He put stemmed glasses down in front of them and a little dish with slivers of lemon peel. “I am Mario, sir,” the steward said. “We chill the glasses.” His speech was entirely American.

  Susan twisted a lemon peel and put it in the ashtray. She sipped from her glass. She put it down and nodded and said, “You’re not as busy as they are downstairs.” She considered. “I mean in the main cocktail lounge.”

  “First night out,” Mario said. “Takes them a while to find us.”

  “Do the—er—musicians come here?” Heimrich asked.

  Mario grinned. He had very white teeth in a tanned face. He shrugged his shoulders. “Sometimes,” he said. He shrugged his shoulders, and his hands moved with the shrug. “Not tonight. Perhaps tomorrow night. People like to listen to them, sir.”

  There was nothing overt in his intonation. But Merton Heimrich, who listens to many voices and has an ear tuned to inflections, thought that Mario did not include himself among the people who liked to listen to the guitarist and the violinist and the singer.

  He left them. He greeted a pretty, blue-eyed woman and the tall, thin man with gray hair who followed her into the veranda belvedere. Mario said, “Two, sir?” and the tall man shook his head and said, “Couple of friends probably be along.”

  They were taken to a table for four.

  “They were just ahead of us when we came aboard,” Susan said, leaning toward Merton, keeping her soft voice very low. “Sir somebody?”

  “Sir Ronald Grimes,” Merton said, in a voice which was so low a rumble even Susan could hardly make out the words. “And Lady Grimes, I suppose.”

  “It seems to me I’ve read something—” She paused. “We’re staring. And probably they’re thinking things about vulgar Americans. And thinking we call ourselves Amuricans.”

  “They’re across the room,” Heimrich said. “They’re ordering drinks. They’re not thinking anything about us. And we’re not staring. Read what?”

  “Something about him,” Susan said. “In—oh, in the Times. U.N.? Was that it? Or Washington? Wait—member of the British delegation at the United Nations. Not the head of it. But answered the Russians once, I think. I don’t remember what about.”

  “Capitalist imperialism,” Heimrich said. “Almost certainly. As is well known.”

  “Would you say he’s about fifty-five?” Susan wondered.

  “Or a young sixty. Very fit, if so. Is your drink all right? And do you—”

  He caught himself, but she smiled gaily at him and said, “I’m fine, dear. I’m really fine. So’s the martini. And give me a cigarette.”

  “You’re not supposed—”

  But he looked at her and smiled back at her and shook a cigarette loose from the pack and flicked his lighter for her.

  “Better,” Susan said. “Much better. We’re on holiday.”

  A very handsome—a very big and handsome—youngish man followed a slight young woman into the lounge. The man had a crisply barbered mustache. He had a rather long head. The girl was darkly pretty; her black hair fitted her small head like a cap. Mario met them and said, “Sir? Madam?” but the man raised a hand in greeting to Sir Ronald and, presumably, Lady Grimes, and he and the girl went across the room and joined the Grimeses at their table.

  People drifted into the veranda belvedere. For the most part they came by twos. A substantial couple in, at a guess, their sixties—a smiling couple. They sat on a small sofa and ordered drinks and talked to each other with animation. In response to something the woman laughed and patted the man on his knee. Susan makes up stories about people in her mind. The smiling, substantial couple were celebrating their fortieth wedding anniversary. They had been talking to each other for forty years and still had much to say. That’s fine, Susan thought. A much younger man and woman came in together and sat on a sofa together and did not seem to have anything to say to each other. They’re married too, Susan thought. They have run out of words for each other. That’s too bad. Merton and I can be silent, drink and think our own thoughts. But, at another time, we have so many words for each other.

  Four men came in together, and two of them were smoking cigars, and one of them looked around at the others in the lounge as if he were about to say, loudly, “Hello, everybody.” They, Susan thought, are the spill-over from a convention. They are in the wholesale grocery business and live in California. But the four, after their drinks were served, began to talk rather loudly to one another, and they talked in French. So much for my intuition, Susan thought. She looked toward Merton, and he was turned toward her and smiling. He is getting over being worried about me, Susan Heimrich thought. It was dear of him to be so worried. I was not really worried; at the worst I was not really worried. Luck rides with us. The top of this table is not wood, but there is wood around the edges. She tapped the wood gently with her finger tips.

  “Yes,” Merton Heimrich said and knocked o
n wood.

  Mario stood in front of them and looked down at empty glasses and said, “Sir? Madam?”

  “Yes,” Heimrich said. “They’re very good, Mario.”

  “The bartender used to be at the Italian Pavilion,” Mario said. “I was a waiter at the Saint Regis for quite a while. There I was Henri.”

  He went away.

  There were two men behind the bar by then, but only Mario serving in front of it. The room still was not crowded, but there were a good many people in it.

  “He can be more than two places at once,” Susan said.

  “He can be four places at once. Mario, I mean.”

  A woman came in alone. She was slender and elegant in dinner pajamas, and a silver-white streak ran artfully through her black hair. She is older than she wants to be, Susan thought. If she smiled her face would break into pieces—would shatter. She is waiting for the rest of the party, but there isn’t any rest of the party. The rest of the party went somewhere else long ago. Two men and two women came in, and the woman in pajamas looked at them as if they were the friends she was expecting, but they went to another table for four. I can’t make up any stories at all about them, Susan thought, and Merton said, “Thanks, Mario,” for new drinks.

  They were halfway through their second round when chimes sounded. “The dinner bell,” Heimrich said, and looked at his watch. “Yes. Just eight.”

  The four men who had been speaking French, not Californian, finished off their drinks. The one who had seemed about to issue a general greeting stood up and crushed his cigar down into an ashtray. He said, “Garçon,” and spoke rather loudly, because Mario was at the other side of the room, and was putting drinks down on a table. The standing man pointed and said, “You! Waiter!”

  Mario crossed the room, very white teeth showing through a somewhat set smile. The four men put cabin numbers on separate checks and got up and walked out. The ship was moving a little now. One of the men clutched at the back of a chair in which a pretty young woman was sitting. He said, “Pardon” more loudly than was really necessary.