Every Man for Himself

by Beryl Bainbridge

  We much admired the dining saloon, all, that is, except Wallis. In her opinion it was a travesty to do up a room in the Jacobean style and then paint the woodwork white. As for the cream vases stacked with lilies, why, it made her feel she was at a funeral.

  ‘It does smell like a florist’s,’ agreed daffy Ida, who would have sold her soul to keep the peace.

  ‘It’s not the lilies,’ exclaimed Molly Dodge, ‘it’s Ginsberg. He’s been to the barber’s shop,’ and she cruelly wrinkled her prominent nose.

  ‘It’s the latest French cologne,’ he told her, not in the least put out.

  ‘You won’t catch Morgan setting foot in the barber’s,’ said Hopper, and launched into a highly embellished version of my encounter with the dying man in Manchester Square.

  ‘He didn’t die in the chair,’ I said. ‘Nor was he covered in blood. He died rather peacefully, probably from heart failure.’

  ‘How did you know he was dead?’ asked Wallis.

  ‘Because he died in my arms . . . in the street.’

  She shivered, but persisted. ‘But how did you know? What did he look like . . . ?’

  ‘He was quite tall,’ I said. ‘And he had dark hair.’

  ‘Not him,’ she said. ‘Death. What did death look like?’

  I noticed her hands. She was brushing one tapering finger against the pulse in her wrist. One should always attempt to understand what is being asked of one, I thought.

  ‘As though a light had gone out,’ I said, and would have told her more if her sister Ida hadn’t shuddered and begged me to talk about something less sinister.

  We all drank a great deal. When I first heard my voice getting louder I was angry at myself, but by then it was too late. Most of us had got used to alcohol fairly early on in life. At Harvard only the swots and the athletes kept themselves pure; members of the smart set were expected to drink themselves under the table.

  Ginsberg grew heated pretty quick. He and George Dodge had begun a discussion on Germany and in no time at all the conversation had somehow switched from the superiority of the German navy to Ginsberg ranting on about there being only two overwhelming impulses, hunger and the sexual instinct. Out of respect for the girls, and timidity, George stopped disagreeing as soon as he saw which way the wind was blowing, but Ginsberg wouldn’t be quieted. ‘Hunger,’ he shouted, chopping at the cheese on his plate, ‘is easily satisfied, but the other . . .’ and here he breathed through his nose like a horse.

  ‘There is another impulse,’ I said. ‘Boredom. Which is never absent when you’re around.’

  ‘That isn’t an impulse,’ he retorted. ‘Merely a feeling.’

  I didn’t like playing the boss-man, but with George, who was always so eager to merge into the crowd, it was unavoidable. And it did shut Ginsberg up.

  Not that the girls turned a hair; judging by the serene manner in which she surveyed the room Wallis hadn’t even been listening. As for Molly Dodge, I doubt she could ever be put out of countenance. Right from a child she’d been sassy, unlike George, who was always a scaredy-cat and remained so. He’d been a weekly boarder at St Mark’s, which wasn’t usual – a delicate constitution was the excuse but we reckoned his father wanted to keep a bully rein on him – and on Friday nights he travelled the half-hour home on the family’s private train. The Dodges lived in Manchester-by-the-Sea, at Apple Trees, a colonial mansion on the North Shore, and sometimes George invited me along for the weekend. He and I weren’t great friends; it was just good to get away from school once in a while, and besides, George was needy and I felt I owed it to him seeing I was fortunate enough never to have been crushed by circumstances. In the fall it was misty along the shore and all through dinner one heard the melancholy wail of fog-horns and every damn time Molly would whisper, ‘Was that a fart, Morgan?’

  Ginsberg kept refilling my glass. I’ll say this for him, blatherskite or not, he wasn’t a sulker, and after all, he’d only voiced what the rest of us felt. Most of our time was spent thinking what we might do with women if only we had the chance. There were houses we could go to, of course, but with girls of our own set there was never the slightest opportunity of trying out even a little of what we’d learnt, which rendered us incapable of behaving naturally in their company. In our best moments, mercifully dominant, we thought of them as sisters or mothers and treated them accordingly; in our worst they were always whores, white and compliant, though we hid such unworthy speculations behind a general attitude of soppy regard. It helped to know that our elders seemed to have got the hang of it, yet often I wondered where love showed up.

  I was aware suddenly that Wallis was watching me, and without detachment. It was such an unusual state of affairs I lost composure and pretended to be deeply interested in the scene around me. A waiter was swerving in and out of the tables, holding aloft on the palm of one hand a great serving dish which glittered under the light; it was so heavy it spun him round and he swooped down and rose again like a juggler, at which I clapped my hands and shouted, ‘Well caught, sir.’ From the dais banked with palms came a whine of strings and the tinkle of a piano as the ship’s orchestra battled to be heard above the incessant sea-roar of conversation.

  ‘Morgan,’ said Wallis, and then fell silent, though she still looked at me.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, and waited. I did fancy, seeing she was hesitant, that she was about to make amends for having rebuked me so severely over that business of Kitty Webb’s jewels. She wouldn’t apologise, that wasn’t her way, but she possibly intended to soften her words. After all, vulgar was a pretty strong denouncement of something only meant as a joke.

  ‘That man,’ she said, at last. ‘Who is he?’

  ‘I’m afraid I didn’t ask,’ I said, deflated. ‘I merely laid him flat on the sidewalk, rang the bell of the nearest house and had the housekeeper send for a constable.’

  ‘I wasn’t—’ she began.

  ‘When he arrived, though only after some considerable time—’

  ‘Morgan—’ she interrupted.

  ‘I explained I’d never seen him before in my life and went home.’

  ‘I’m not talking about the dead man,’ she said. ‘I mean the one who—’ but before she could enlighten me, Molly Dodge pushed back her chair and said she wanted to dance.

  We walked in procession to the Palm Court. Young Melchett had crumbs caught in his yellow moustache. Wallis Ellery swayed at my side, swinging her white-gloved arms. When I opened the doors she rose on the toes of her white satin shoes.

  The band hadn’t yet arrived and Ginsberg and the other fellows went off to the adjoining smoke-room. They promised to return as soon as they heard the music. I might have followed them if Wallis hadn’t chosen to sit next to me. It turned me giddy. For half an hour, at least, she scarcely spoke to Molly or Ida. Though I can’t claim she hung on to my every word, she was remarkably civil and attentive. Molly kept rolling her eyes and smirking. We talked about Sissy and the baby for a time. She thought Sissy terribly brave to go through all that sort of thing, though supposed it was worth it. And she rather liked Whitney.

  ‘Sissy chose him for his eyelashes,’ I told her.

  ‘How sensible,’ she said. ‘They, at least, are sure to be genuine.’

  I announced I was rather looking forward to having children, a thought that had never before crossed my mind. ‘And I’ll make sure they’re properly looked after.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘They should always be looked after, shouldn’t they? . . . By someone or other.’

  Sissy, who liked her, said her cleverness stemmed from conflict. Her father kept a string of ‘girlies’ and her mother had twice attempted suicide. Her last botched effort, when she’d flung herself from the first floor of their Boston town house, had resulted in a damaged spine and confinement to a wheel chair. I wasn’t so sure cleverness arose from that sort of thing. In our circle such family upsets were commonplace, but then, so was stupidity.

  She leaned nearer and looked i
nto my eyes. It was all I coulddo to stop my lips from trembling. She wanted to know what I’d been doing in London for the past two months and why we hadn’t run into one another. I explained I’d spent a deal of time with Melchett’s people in Dorset, and for the rest I’d been occupied with family business.

  ‘What sort of business?’ she asked, as though she really cared. ‘Surely you’re not interested in banking, Morgan?’

  It was very encouraging. In my head I mouthed, Darling, you are my best girl, though even as I was romancing, her eyes, brilliant as glass, were cutting through my dreams. I said I’d been sent over to supervise the transportation of my uncle’s European art collection now that American import duties had been abolished. It wasn’t quite the truth. Jack was in charge of that sort of thing, though I had signed papers on the Trust’s behalf.

  ‘You mean to tell me,’ she cried, ‘that all those wonderful Rubenses and Rembrandts are down in the hold this very moment?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘There was a postponement due to the miners’ strike. The shipment will follow later.’

  ‘And will you come back again to keep an eye on things?’

  I said I rather thought I wouldn’t. There followed a dreary interlude in which she pressed me to explain what import duties entailed. I wasn’t clear myself and tried to change the subject, mentioning I had been working for the previous year on the design of the Titanic, though leaving out my involvement with plumbing.

  She seemed loath to drop the subject of my uncle’s paintings, or rather the difficulties surrounding the consignment, which was both puzzling and disappointing. I had thought our conversation was developing rather differently and had even been getting up steam to suggest a stroll on deck.

  ‘It’s a fearful responsibility,’ she said. ‘being in charge of such valuable works of art.’

  ‘Or would have been,’ I said.

  ‘But then, of course, you have your associates aboard.’

  ‘What associates?’ I said. ‘I haven’t any associates.’

  ‘I thought I saw you with someone in the foyer . . . earlier, before we anchored off Cherbourg.’

  ‘I was with Melchett,’ I told her. ‘We made a tour of the lower decks. It was quite an experience. Perhaps tomorrow you’d like me to show you below. As a member of Mr Andrews’ design team I can go anywhere I want.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ she said, without enthusiasm, and something, some illumination of the soul, died in her eyes and soon after she turned away and gave her attention to Molly Dodge.

  Aggrieved, I took myself off to the smoke-room where I found Charlie Melchett making calculations on the back of an envelope. Ginsberg had come up with the idea of making a book on the time of our arrival in New York. Apparently the steerage passengers had rigged up a blackboard on the third class promenade down on the stern of Cdeck and were taking money quite openly.

  ‘We can’t lay bets,’ said Hopper, ‘till we’ve studied form. We have to know average speed and take weather conditions into consideration.’

  ‘Twenty-four knots,’ Charlie ventured, and was shouted down by Ginsberg who knew for a fact that we couldn’t go beyond twenty-one or twenty-two. ‘We haven’t the coal to go full speed. I reckon we’ll do no more than twenty, and that only if we’ve got the weather on our side.’

  Someone tapped my shoulder; it was the fat man I had seen earlier in the company of Scurra and old Seefax. He said, without preamble, ‘Where is she?’

  ‘She?’ I said.

  ‘Is she with him?’

  ‘Him?’ I said.

  His eyes were enormous, like an infant’s, and lachrymose. There was a vacant chair against the wall and he pulled it forward and sat heavily down. I thought that showed cheek, but there was something in his expression, a mixture of hope and extreme resolve, that held me.

  ‘I think you are a friend of his,’ he said. ‘I would like your opinion of him.’ He had a curious accent which for no immediate reason I found familiar. His intonation was Jewish, of course, but his vowels were oddly flat.

  I said, ‘I haven’t the least idea who you’re talking about.’

  ‘The man disfigured in a fencing duel.’

  We stared at one another.

  ‘The man with the dent in his mouth,’ he urged, patting his lip with one podgy finger. ‘The man with the gift of the gab.’

  I almost smiled, it being such an apt description. All the same, I protested I scarcely knew Scurra and had only learnt his name that afternoon.

  ‘But you have formed an opinion?’ He actually seized my arm, which startled me.

  ‘I can’t help you,’ I said.

  ‘You must pay attention,’ he urged. ‘I have no time for subterfuge. I am a man of strong passions.’

  ‘You surprise me,’ I said, looking pointedly down at his hand.

  He released me at once. ‘I have made a mistake,’ he muttered. ‘You are, after all, too young to be curious.’ Yet he still transfixed me with those moist and sentimental eyes.

  ‘Morgan,’ interrupted Ginsberg, a glass in either hand, ‘I gather the purser’s the fellow to ask about average speeds. What say you and I go in search of him?’

  I rose immediately and followed him into the revolving doors which spun us out into the foyer. From the Palm Court came the strains of jazz-time.

  He said, ‘You seemed to be having trouble with our stout friend, Rosenfelder.’

  ‘You know him?’

  ‘Scurra introduced me.’

  ‘You know Scurra?’

  ‘Don’t you?’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ I said, and left it at that. For a man who continually played the fool he was remarkably astute, from which I concluded he was not quite straight. I’m capable of making such a judgement, being often not entirely straight myself.

  The information we wanted, the purser told us, would be available tomorrow, once we had left Queenstown. He agreed with Ginsberg that they wouldn’t be pushing the ship this trip. ‘Perhaps 500 miles a day,’ he estimated. ‘Maybe more, maybe less.’

  ‘But you reckon we’ll reach New York Tuesday?’ pressed Ginsberg, and the purser replied, ‘Tuesday night, yes. Barring accidents,’ at which they both laughed.

  The office was cosy from the warmth of an electric fire. Above the desk was pinned a photograph of an infant scowling beneath the shadow of a summer bonnet. ‘A fine little chap,’ Ginsberg remarked. ‘What do you call him?’ Assuming a sugary expression he touched the child’s paper jowls with the tip of one finger.

  ‘Eliza,’ said the purser. ‘After her mother.’

  Remembering I hadn’t a receipt for the luggage transported by Melchett’s chauffeur, I enquired if it was to hand. After much rifling through the compartments of his desk the purser produced the relevant docket. ‘One medium sized trunk,’ he read, ‘and a consignment of theatrical manuscripts in the name of J. Pierpont Morgan.’

  We were about to leave when Ginsberg said, ‘I noticed when looking out of the saloon windows that while the sea and the skyline were evident on my left, only the sky was visible to starboard. From which I gained the impression we’ve a distinct list to port.’

  ‘Very well observed, sir,’ exclaimed the purser. ‘It’s no doubt due to more coal being consumed from the starboard bunkers than from the port side.’

  ‘Which is occasioned, no doubt,’ said Ginsberg, ‘by the fire blazing in the stokehold of Number 10 bunker.’

  The purser looked shaken. ‘A fire, sir? What do you mean?’

  ‘Come now. We both know what I’m talking about.’

  ‘A fire?’ I reiterated, stupidly enough. ‘What sort of fire?’

  ‘The sort that burns,’ retorted Ginsberg.

  ‘If what you imply was true, sir,’ the purser said, ‘the Board of Trade inspector would never have signed the clearance certificate for us to leave Southampton.’

  ‘Well then,’ cried Ginsberg, ‘we have nothing to worry about, have we?’

  ‘What was all that about?�
� I asked, when we were in the corridor. He replied that he was a cautious man, which struck me as absurd, and that he had always found it inadvisable to take anything on trust.

  I didn’t return with him to the smoke-room; his know-all attitude irritated me. Sissy has constantly warned that my intolerance will land me in hot water. I’ve always felt that if a man tries to adopt attitudes which are not innate then sooner or later he will discover Nature cannot be forced. We are what we are, and it’s no good dissembling.

  Pleading lack of sleep and a mild queasiness of stomach, I loitered outside the Palm Court and listened to the band. A vocalist was singing Put your arms around me honey, hold me tight. Peering through the glass panels of the doors I caught sight of Rosenfelder, coat-tails flying as he strutted Molly Dodge across the floor. There was no sign of Wallis Ellery.

  Before retiring I went out on to the boat deck. There was a breeze but the air was far from cold. An elderly couple sat on steamer chairs, hands folded on their laps. From somewhere ahead came the squeal of bagpipes; walking astern I joined a group of passengers who stood at the rails looking on to the steerage space beneath. They were dancing down there, a kind of skirl, the men whooping as they swept the women in figures of eight about the deck. Someone next to me murmured, ‘They know how to enjoy themselves,’ and another said, ‘How steady the ship is,’ to which her companion replied, as though quoting from the brochures, ‘We’re on a floating palace, my dear.’

  Standing there, watching a woman who stood with her back to the crowd, shawl draped about her head and shoulders, I fancied I half remembered my own steerage passage to the New World, though indeed I didn’t, having only learnt of it from my aunt. She said I’d been put in the care of an Irish girl who reported I ate enough for three and was never sick. It was not meanness, I was assured, that had governed the decision to transport me so cheaply across the Atlantic, rather that it was felt more exalted accommodation, bearing in mind the circumstances of my early years, would have caused almost as much embarrassment to myself as to others. Sissy, of course, says it was because my aunt did not want people to know of our connection, but then, as she has never been abandoned, Sissy can afford to be critical.