History of a Pleasure Seeker

by Richard Mason

  “What if we’re caught?”

  “You’ll be set off the ship at the next port. I’ll be dismissed. There are worse places to be stranded together than Madeira. Believe me, first class will be much more to your taste.”

  Piet shook his head, still looking out to sea. “You’ve already lost one place because of me. Unlock the gate and disappear. I’ll come through alone. That way only I end up in Madeira if things go wrong.”

  This was not at all the outcome Didier sought. However, the conversation had lasted too long already. “All right. Once you’re through the grille, slide it closed behind you but leave it off the latch. Walk down the corridor. Open the door, go up the main staircase. I’ll be in the Winter Garden at the top. It’s fairly quiet until four.”

  Half an hour later, wearing one of his two good shirts and feeling more cheerful, Piet Barol slipped into the deserted corridor behind the tourist-class reading room and let himself through the open grille at its end. He was about to open the baize door to first class when a steward came through it.

  “May I help you, sir?”

  Piet was aware that the faintest trace of nerves would betray him and imagined Constance Vermeulen-Sickerts waiting upstairs. This allowed him to say “I was exploring. How big is the ship?” with convincing naturalness.

  Maurice Moureaux had spent twelve years working on liners and knew his business. It was not uncommon for passengers in other classes to attempt intrusions into first class, if for no other purpose than to steal an ashtray and earn a colorful boast. He took personal delight in seeing these men (they were always men) thrown off at the next port. He was unerringly accurate in spotting an invader, which meant that he wholly trusted his instinct in the matter of the gentleman standing before him, encountered though he was in a service corridor.

  “Almost twenty-four thousand gross tons, sir.” His tone was an expert counterfeit of enthusiasm. “Seven hundred and thirteen feet long, seventy-five wide. We’re at a full complement of two thousand and twenty-six passengers in four classes.”

  “What’s she like to work on?”

  “A privilege.” In fact the crew accommodations on the Eugénie vibrated unbearably, and Maurice Moureaux had far preferred his previous ship. As he looked at Piet Barol, however, he thought that this voyage might have its compensations.

  Piet saw his look and understood it and was not embarrassed, which made Moureaux bolder.

  “There are almost three miles of passageways and the noise below the passenger decks gives you some idea of the power of the engines. Would you like to see the staff quarters, sir?”

  It was thus—subtly, unmistakably—that a range of services not mentioned on any menu were referred to between the staff of a Loire Lines ship and a select circle of passengers. All the first-class stewards were attractive and Maurice was no exception. He was in his midthirties, wiry and youthful, with a sharply defined face he could bring to life with a dazzling smile when he chose. He chose to do so now, since the chance to enjoy himself had arisen so naturally.

  “At another time, perhaps.” Piet, who had read all of this, smiled with polite regret. “But I am meeting a friend in the Winter Garden.”

  “Of course, sir.” Moureaux bowed. “Permit me to escort you there.”

  Didier Loubat was pleased that his first encounter with Piet Barol should take place in a woodland glade traveling across the waves at twenty-four knots. He liked the Winter Garden’s cool, white pillars; the ranked masses of greenery positioned for maximum discretion. Gilt birdcages hung from the ceiling, the doves inside as white as the walls. Their cooing made it possible to speak in absolute privacy.

  Unlike Piet Barol, Didier Loubat was not accustomed to taking charge of his own destiny. In the days after leaving the Vermeulen-Sickertses he had tried to resign himself to never seeing Piet again, tried and failed, and so conceived this bold plan of a rendezvous in midocean. Because he had never yet applied himself to intervening in the narrative of his own life, he was not prepared for the euphoric rush this first success unleashed.

  The standards of service in first class were in every way superior to those in tourist, and Maurice Moureaux found nothing remarkable in the rapturous smile with which Piet was greeted by the Winter Garden’s duty steward. He said good-bye warmly and left them, wondering who would have him. It was well known that there was “someone for everyone” on a Loire Lines ship.

  Didier led Piet to a corner table, pulled out his chair and slid it beneath him, unfolded a napkin and placed it on his lap. In the undertone of an expert waiter, audible only to the person addressed, he said, “Everything’s free. Would sevruga and blinis please you, Mr. Barol?”

  Piet nodded. Didier brought the caviar in a silver dish above a tower of crushed ice, and as the black eggs popped between his teeth the despair that had threatened to overwhelm him retreated. “How on earth do you come to be here?”

  “Just a job. Difference is I wake up in a new place every day.” Didier had prepared this explanation and delivered it nonchalantly. “Whatever spell you cast on Mevrouw Vermeulen-Sickerts worked. Her reference was like a love letter. I always thought she disapproved of me.”

  “Obviously not.”

  “Were they sad to say good-bye to you?”

  At this moment a passenger signaled for Didier, who went at once to attend to him. By the time he returned, Piet had considered candor and decided against it.

  “They had a dinner for me and gave me a trunk. Nightmare to carry it, since I can’t afford porters, but I was very touched.”

  “How much of the money have you gone through?”

  “Too much.”

  “Well you can save here. Passengers only pay for alcohol, and I’ll slip whatever you want onto someone’s bill.” Didier inclined his head. “Permit me to fetch you the wine list, Mr. Barol.”

  In contemplation of this catalog of treasures, Piet’s mood improved further. The room was filling now and Didier more regularly engaged. Piet tried not to be caught staring as he drank his way through an excellent bottle of Petit Chablis. On the ceiling above him three pretty nymphs were caressing one another. Between two pillars on the opposite wall a woodland bacchanal was taking place.

  “They’re not afraid of bare flesh,” he remarked, when Didier next returned.

  “No. And neither are the passengers.”

  “Randier than the guests at the Amstel?”

  “Much. There’s nothing to do all day on a ship but scheme and flirt.”

  The natural and immediate restoration of their old banter stilled Didier’s nerves. He fetched a duck soufflé and boasted of his opportunities for sexual intrigue, feeling mildly ashamed to begin their encounter with a half-truth. Though he described an engaging series of female conquests, in fact it was the line’s male passengers who had shown him approving attention. Didier had accepted a judicious selection. There had never been any question of payment for these encounters, but though his presence had been voluntary he had not sought the intimacy of a second meeting; he had given his heart already. “This is only my third voyage, but I’ve already lost count,” he said. “People do as they please in the middle of the ocean.”

  “These women invite you to their cabins?”

  “While their husbands have a massage or a swim. But the ship is full of nooks and crannies. It was designed for mischief.”

  “Lucky devil.”

  Didier grinned. “Let me get you an ice, then you’ll have to be off. Monsieur Verignan will be along shortly and you’re at his table.”

  Jay Gruneberger had spent a very pleasant half hour watching the gorgeous young men, one dark, one blond, flirting with each other on the opposite side of the room, pleasant even though he was beginning to feel old and their bloom confirmed it. He was forty-two, in committed good condition, his arms and shoulders still well muscled though his trousers, once a favorite pair, were biting painfully. His face was almost ugly, with full sensual lips and a hawk nose; he would never again have t
he thoughtless slenderness of youth. Though his expression was one of a man lost in abstract thought, he was watching the young men intently.

  When the dark one rose to leave Jay stood to follow. He was surprised to see that the blond one led the dark one. Had they agreed an assignation? It was clear that some intimacy existed between them. He reached the door a discreet distance behind them, keen to learn its nature, but his escape was blocked by a torrent of effusive greeting.

  Albert Verignan, founder and chairman of the Loire Lines Company, was a man of influence on both sides of the Atlantic: a plotter who achieved his ends with a guile that did not endear him to Jay Gruneberger, who in all but his sexual life was as straightforward and honest as good manners permit. They greeted each other with noisy amity. With a regretful glance at Piet Barol’s retreating back, Jay allowed himself to be detained in one of his host’s characteristic tête-à-têtes.

  Verignan was deftly complimentary. He praised the cut of Jay’s suit and the genius of his wife. “I have never known anyone with such an eye for spectacle, for beauty, for detail, as Rose!” he exclaimed, though he meant that he knew of no one besides himself with such rare talents. “She has chaired the committee superbly—though she might bankrupt me yet, mind you.” He looked down modestly, as he always did when introducing the subject of his own generosity. “She has insisted on having a five-hundred-foot terrace blasted by dynamite from the rock. The line’s timetable has been overthrown and a new route to South Africa added. Really, I should be very cross. But how can one resist her?”

  “You have acted wisely not to try.”

  Verignan laughed good-naturedly. He knew that Jay Gruneberger did not like him and was determined that he should. Verignan had been a young man when the Prussians invaded France in 1870 and had witnessed the end of the Second Empire on the battlefield at Sedan. The destruction wrought by their advancing armies had left him with a virulent hatred of Germans, which decades of rivalry with the Hamburg-America and Norddeutscher Lloyd Lines had greatly concentrated. He approved of the entente cordiale with Britain, but though Georges Clemenceau seemed a decent patriot he could not forgive him his attempts to impose an eight-hour workday and an income tax. Verignan had lost hope that democracy, with its compromises and debate, its half measures and delays, would rise to the kaiser’s challenge. He had made a fortune by following his instinct and it told him now that an unchecked Germany spelled disaster for France.

  The hour called for a hero. And every hero has his maker.

  Verignan had chosen his man already, an ambitious young deputy named Colignard. He should be elected democratically and seize power when he had control of the army, as both Napoleons had done. Verignan doubted very much that France could meet the German threat alone, whoever led her. A grand alliance of France, Great Britain, Russia, Poland, perhaps even the United States, would be necessary to check the kaiser’s ambitions. Bringing it about was just the sort of challenge Verignan relished. He understood the seductions of glamour and had devised the voyage to introduce the elites of his favored nations in a setting as conducive as possible to the forging of friendship—a setting, moreover, that would remind them of the priceless contributions France had made to the world. He intended that the ball he had planned should be reported in every illustrated newspaper on earth.

  Verignan had chosen St. Helena so that clever journalists might detect a symbolic Anglo-French reconciliation almost a century after the Battle of Waterloo. Its extreme remoteness was a further attraction. The idea of showing five hundred people who thought they had seen everything something they had never seen satisfied his feeling for publicity. So did the notion of transporting them miraculously from the depths of winter to a scented summer’s night. Since he himself was paying for the three hundred waiters, the eighty chefs, the four thousand bottles of champagne, the fireworks, the orchestra, and the dynamiting of a hollow in the rock where the dancing could take place if the weather was fine, the enormous sum raised could be spent directly on needy, photogenic children in each of the countries that formed his imaginary alliance.

  These plans shimmered in the air as he remarked how pleasant it was to be with a ship full of friends, and Jay Gruneberger thought wistfully of the men Verignan’s arrival had prevented him from following. He emphatically preferred the dark one.

  Noting his abstraction, Verignan remembered hearing that his companion was vulnerable to certain kinds of blackmail. He preferred to gain his ends by charm but was prepared to resort to darker strategies if necessary, since Jay Gruneberger was listened to in quarters whose support would be vital. Whatever must be done for the peace of Europe, he thought.

  Auguste Colignard was brought over to be introduced. He was square jawed and inspiring, his manner subtly flirtatious: a man for posters. Jay was compelled to drink a cup of tea with him and spent the afternoon roaming the ship in search of the dark beauty he had missed.

  But he had quite disappeared.

  Over the next five days, Didier Loubat’s long-mounting infatuation with Piet Barol became a roaring love. They met every morning and were not once challenged. Sometimes they spent six or seven hours together before Piet’s return to tourist class, longer than they ever had in Amsterdam, and the pleasure Piet took in his company made Didier wildly happy. He was a junior steward, assigned as needed. The bounties of the earth were available to first-class passengers at any hour, and wherever he went he took his love and rained delicacies upon him.

  “You never speak of your parents,” he observed on the sixth day out as Piet sprawled in the depths of a smoking room sofa, nursing a twenty-five-year-old brandy though it was only eleven a.m. It was an overcast day with an unsteady sea and the paneled room with its cozy fire was almost empty. A copy of Winterhalter’s portrait of the Empress Eugénie presided over the fireplace, her gown rather more revealingly cut than in the original.

  “With the Vermeulen-Sickertses to absorb us, it never occurred to me.”

  “Will you miss your father?”

  Piet contemplated the liquid in his glass. “I don’t suppose so.”

  “Not miss your own father?”

  “He’s not a very sympathetic man.”

  “Is he a drunkard?”

  “Heavens no. He’s not vile in that way. In fact, he doesn’t approve much of indulgence in any form. My mother used to say he lacks the gift of joy.”

  Didier loved his parents and was well loved in return. That Piet should have no mother, and a father who never embraced him, made him want to care for him forever. Monsieur and Madame Loubat were well accustomed to their son bringing handsome friends home for the holidays. They treated them with great kindness and put them in Didier’s bedroom without remark. As he led Piet from the Renaissance through the reigns of Louis XV and XVI, following his roster from smoking room to salon to the veranda café, he grew ever surer that his mother would love Piet as her own and imagined telling her of him without shame.

  The unifying theme of the ship’s decoration was the sea, and Verignan’s decorators had not missed a single opportunity to allude to it. While Didier worked, Piet sat in a haze of contented drunkenness and counted how many gilt shells and crossed Ls he could see. It was an extremely pleasant form of self-sedation. Sometimes a single fireplace yielded as many as twenty. In the panels of a double door in the salon he counted eighty-three. It made him feel sophisticated to disapprove of this fussiness and of the embroidered antimacassars, the too-showy reliance on gilt, the ostentatious hats of certain female passengers. But the effect was undoubtedly arresting, and its splendor helped to dull his memories of the Herengracht.

  Both young men were so absorbed in each other and themselves that neither noticed the regular presence of a worldly, well-built male passenger in his forties, with a neat beard and a hawk nose. Jay Gruneberger wondered whether the dark one was a poor sailor, because he never appeared at meals—but no, he was eating with great delight whenever he saw him. He could find no explanation for his regular absences
. Nor for the blond and the dark always and only appearing together. He watched them and saw the look on the steward’s face when his friend spoke. More than once he was tempted to intrude on their conversations and introduce himself, but he was too well known and too happily married to initiate contact until he could be certain of their discretion.

  On the ninth day of the voyage, Didier was on lifeguard duty at the first-class indoor swimming pool. He had put a pair of bathing trunks on a passenger’s bill and given them to Piet, who looked magnificent in them. The pool was one of the glories of the ship, decorated in the stylized motifs the first Napoleon made fashionable after his Egyptian campaign; as grand and shadowy as a Pharaoh’s tomb.

  The sight of Piet Barol in bathing drawers heightened Didier’s sense of urgency. They had only eight more days in this world-no-world on the ocean; the approaching shore threatened everything. It was a calm day. Ropes and swings had been attached to the ceiling to be climbed up and dived from. Piet made rather a display of himself, climbing hand over hand halfway to the roof, the muscles in his back writhing like serpents; knotting the rope around his feet; diving down again.

  His performance drew applause. He had a steam in the Turkish hammam and then a dip in the iced plunge pool. By the time he reentered the changing room, his body was red and tingling. He was aware of his skin, a pleasant tautness in his limbs, and then, abruptly, of having had no contact with another human being since his last delicious afternoon with Jacobina. He needed to piss and went to the urinal, wondering how he might get some of what he needed. He had just pulled his vest down to free himself when Didier entered the room.

  Didier went to a locker and undressed quickly, knowing that if he were caught in the passenger changing room he would be dismissed. The impulse to be naked near his friend was imperative; it dimmed all risk. Piet glanced round and saw Didier facing away from him, changing from one bathing suit into another. He turned back to the wall, but at the reaches of his vision he was aware of the lightly muscled body he knew so well. It brought to mind their first conversation; the flicker of instinct that had told him Didier might be persuaded to ease certain intimate frustrations.