by Derek Beaven
‘That’s a good one. A new crack of the whip. Do you know anything about Australia, Bob?’
‘I’ve read what I can.’
‘Glad to hear it.’
Robert had tried to set himself a schedule of study, intending to put enforced idleness to good use, and to allay his anxieties about the job he was going to. When the voyage was new, before the storm swell began to develop, he divided up his day. He was full of good resolutions. For him, leaving England was supposed to be a cleansing. England felt soiled, fake, and Gothic. He did not know why.
He came clean at coffee one evening. People getting to know each other – sitting casually in little chance groupings under the frosted shell lamps, amid a strange, sea-borne, luxurious smell of coffee and fruit and wood dipped in spice dipped in salt dipped in alcohol. He spoke nervously about himself, possibly a little too loud: of the fake Gothic of the London grammar school he had gone to. Of the genuine Gothic of the Oxford college he had won an exhibition to and eventually joined. Then industry. ‘Gothic and square,’ he said. ‘Like an order at a transport cafe.’ They laughed politely. He did not know how angry he was.
‘What’s the square?’ she wanted to know. Then whispering: ‘Do you mean you’re a Freemason?’ The young woman whose name he now had, Penny Kendrick.
‘Oh, God, no. Square and functional. I call it laboratory architecture. And then I’m not sure whether it shouldn’t be lavatory architecture.’ He blurted the phrase.
A look of disapproval crossed her face. Other heads turned, and then turned away.
‘Science has to strip away the decorative, doesn’t it? The ornamental. Where I’ve been working it was all corners and wiring. Can you imagine? Metal chassis – what’s the plural? Chassises? Well, those; things with valves in. Wirelesses without the cabinet.’ He was relieved to see her smile again. ‘And instruments oddly piped together. Half neat and precise; half shambles. Strange, really. I suppose I’m not used to … all this.’ He indicated the fineness of the ship, was it? Or the sea? Or the ragged, low-bellied clouds brewing out of sight in the dark beyond the windows of the main lounge.
Anyway, as far as he was concerned a pall of post-war vileness had settled over England; much like the pre-war variety, though that was no more than the vague drift of a half-forgotten London childhood now. No, after the war, he had done his national service. ‘Barracks? I try not to remember that. Square in excelsis. Square even without the wires. Square bash!’ And had then gone to university together with older men, some still the returned servicemen, stragglers, showing up out of their experiences.
He had qualified quickly, working hard and barely noticing; and found himself ‘in industry’, helping to develop, eventually, the new field of radio-telescopy. It was in an enormous, and poisonously drab, factory complex near Hounslow. From the window of his shared laboratory a sad, soaked, unrelieved vista of sub-industrial housing stretched as far as the eye could see. It still looked battle weary. But he did not say this out loud. Nor did he quite acknowledge, even privately, that while the company he worked for ostensibly made radio receivers and recorded the latest pop singers, the project he was involved in was funded by the War Office.
But his feelings on England were untypical among his fellow scientists – who seemed rarely, if ever, to have opinions about anything – and his feelings were now especially untypical on board the Armorica. He knew that, at least. And why could he not be generous, or at least patient? He was not willingly subversive.
Later, in his top bunk, Robert found himself plagued by the notion that in his new life he had already made a social gaffe and offended her, them all, by his reference to the lavatory. It was exactly the sort of line that brought screeches of laughter on Workers’ Playtime or Midday Music-hall. It was exactly the smoky, faded smuttiness he wanted to put behind him.
Robert entered the voyage as if it were a novitiate. It was the last thing he would have admitted.
And for the last thing at night his self-imposed rigour required him, from the beginning of the trip, to digest a technical manual they had sent him from Australia relating to the circuitry of the equipment he would be using. It was also designed to protect him from Joe, who seemed by magic in those first days to appear, ready to turn in, just at the same moment as Robert.
From the lower bunk would come: ‘OK, I’ve moved. Your go. Can you make an atom bomb, yet?’
Despite the technical manual, Robert had from the very first found himself engaged in a series of chess games which he began to fear would continue even beyond the journey’s end. Maybe even at the tracking station, under the night sky, there would come in, mixed with the abstract hiss and jargon of the stars, Joe’s voice from the crackly transmitter of some sheep-run to which he would insist on driving, late and often, ‘Pawn to queen’s bishop five, Bob.’ He had constantly to break off from his reading, or even from composing himself for sleep, peer down from his bunk on to the exquisite board, and bluff out a convincing move.
He must fight back: but that was to enter a kind of strategic meta-chess. And even as Robert began to plot tactics, Joe went down with seasickness.
‘I really appreciate this, Bob. It really helps take my mind off feeling so rough. Jeez, I envy blokes who can call themselves good sailors. I’ll be all right in the Med, mind. It was the same in that bloody troop-ship when I was in the Army. Anyway, Nelson was always crook when he first put to sea, so I hear. Are you sure you want to move there; you’re just walking into big trouble? The big trouble with you, Bob, is your mind’s not on the job. Come on. Three more moves and we’ll call it lights out. Fair goes?’
13
The ship’s struggle with the Atlantic grew into a fact of life, and Robert’s studious good intentions gave way to the effort of keeping his stomach and his spirit from exchanging acids.
There are different kinds of seasickness, and different ways of dealing with them. Only one is to lie down. As he had already explained to Penny, Robert saw the enormous seas as England’s long reach of spite. His contest with Joe, laid out on his bunk, felt pointless and irritating; but his battle with England was full of purpose. And so he would haunt the decks as long as the cold permitted. He had only the faintest notion that the possibility of happening upon Penny again was an underlying motive. They found themselves in no new friendly exchanges, though when they did meet they would smile, and nod, and briefly remark.
Perhaps it was fortunate, then, that he did not see her come out of one of the bathrooms on B deck on the second night of the storm. It was about nine-thirty. I was waiting outside in pyjamas and revolver. She almost crashed into me as the ship swung. She was unsteady on her feet, and unsteady in herself. I could see that. I had no idea who she was. She looked dreadful, pale, red-eyed, lank-haired. I stared at her. She passed me and then stalled as the floor rose.
‘Sorry,’ she muttered, her hand against her back, moving on down the corridor as soon as the angle allowed. Then she disappeared into a cabin I presumed her own.
Robert was on the deck above, in the small starboard bar quaintly called the Verandah – one they were keeping open. He was talking to a good-looking man who was always there. Or rather the man was talking to him, or to anyone. Dinner-suited, he had an accent and appearance that seemed BBC with a dash of receding fighter pilot. He was very drunk.
‘So when all’s said and done, what d’you think of the field?’ He swilled the brandy round in his glass.
‘Sorry?’
‘Totty. Seen anything you fancy? Quite a line-up from what I can make out. Members’ enclosure. Should be a good trip.’
‘Oh, I see.’
‘Starched petticoats. Now there’s a thought, eh? Starched petticoats. Your turn.’
Robert made his way across the drunken floor and clung soberly to the bar.
‘God,’ he said.
Protectively the barman handed him two brandies.
When he returned, his table-mate grunted confidentially. ‘Time and place, old c
hap. Not yet Too rough. But just wait for the Tropics. They go mad. Can’t get enough of it. Got to build ourselves up, eh? They go mad. English women, eh? Eh?’ His eyes closed. He slumped back in the chair. Robert watched the glass he had just signed for slip from the man’s hand, empty itself over his trousers and fall on to the carpet. The ship rolled it casually against the far partition, where it smashed.
‘Don’t worry, sir,’ the bar steward called. ‘Everything under control. It’s when the chairs go you’ve got to start worrying. Notorious this ship, but don’t let on I said so. Jumps about like a porpoise as soon as the wind blows. Mind you, this is a blow and a half and no mistake. But we learned our lesson a couple of years ago coming home.’
‘How was that?’ Robert struggled back to the bar rail and took hold of it again.
‘Shouldn’t really tell you this. It was here in the Bay, but all the other way round, if you see what I mean. We were caught by a following sea and had to lay ourselves across it.’
‘To miss Brittany?’
‘Exactly, sir. To miss Brittany. Armorica, so I’m told. The olden name.’
‘Really? I didn’t know.’
‘The company’s old route, sir. Started last century, running grain and guns to our various southern allies. Long tradition at sea. Trading nation.’ He winked at Robert and touched his nose. ‘We’ll carry anything. Every ship’s got a memory.’
‘You were going to tell me …?’
‘Oh, yes. Following sea; we got across it. Wallowing about like a whale, she was. The water came over the stern – the cabins in tourist class go right down under the water-line. They have an F deck, you know, and the stern’s like open balconies anyway. To give a bit of light and space. Did you know that? Very nice. But not funny when half the herring pond jumps in on you. And up here in the first class main lounge,’ he gestured in that direction, ‘the piano broke loose and went for a run. Caught a passenger against one of the pillars.’
‘Was he killed?’
‘Not quite. We dug him out from under a pile of tables and chairs.’
‘They were there with the piano?’
‘Exactly. Arrived simultaneously. But we learned our lesson. Four hundred items of furniture smashed, to say nothing of the glass and crockery. Passengers screaming and panicking. So we don’t think too much about it now. Plenty more where that came from.’
‘Furniture?’
‘Exactly. Or whatever you like. We keep calm, they keep calm. She may have the lines of a goddess, but she can be a hysterical cow sometimes, the Armorica. Don’t tell anyone I told you.’ He touched the side of his nose again. ‘There was one time as well when she developed a list to starboard. It wasn’t heavy weather or anything. Up goes the captain. “Those stabilisers got out of line? Let’s have ’em in. Switch off the gyros, please, Number One.” They’re all ex-RN, see. So off goes the gyros and in come the fins, and slowly, very slowly,’ he matched his gesture to the inclination of the ship, ‘the bloody thing starts to list a bit more. Then a bit more. Then a bit more.’ He chuckled and eyed Robert’s dormant drinking companion.
‘And then?’
‘He stuck the fins back out pretty sharpish.’ He polished a glass. ‘Heavy on fuel. She’s a seven-day ship. Her sisters are nine. It’s the liquid ballast. The more she uses up the lighter she gets. And the sillier. Now, I have it on good authority from someone who was there …’
‘On the bridge?’
‘… On the bridge; that the old man said it was only the fins keeping her from rolling right over.’
‘Turning turtle?’
‘Exactly.’
‘They’re not out at the moment.’
‘No. Can’t have them out at the moment. Too rough. They’d break off. Can I help you, sir?’ He moved away to attend to someone else who was fortifying himself against the night, leaving Robert to ponder further the differences between a ship at sea and a brochure on dry land.
But everyone has to sleep sometime. The trouble was, Robert only needed to enter the cabin to switch Joe on, no matter how ill he was claiming to be. It was as though there were a transistor in the door handle.
‘Ah, there you are, Bob. I think I’ve got an interesting little dilemma for your knight here.’ And: ‘There are heaps of folks about, Bob, who think the Japanese will never be able to make a really good camera. See this?’ He held up a twin-lens reflex he was cradling in his bedclothes. ‘Singapore. Fifteen quid. Professional goods, would you believe. Hold still, I’ll take your picture.’
‘How can I hold still?’ Robert demanded, petulantly.
‘Bloke I knew said it would fall to pieces. Watch the birdie, say I, Bob. Tell me mate, were you ever married?’
‘No, Joe. I’m afraid I haven’t had that good fortune yet.’ It was Joe’s sheer accuracy that Robert found so difficult. Joe was concerned about him. He was a fellow traveller, and wanted to be.
‘There’s one or two interesting women on board, that’s for sure.’
How did he know? Robert wondered. He had hardly been out of his bunk.
‘You know they test the bomb in Australia, don’t you, Bob? They’ll test anything there.’
Robert said, ‘Do you think we’ll see sharks?’
‘You won’t see any sharks on this cruise, mate. Take my word. Not unless someone lets blood. Takes a good old-fashioned naval action to get the sharks interested. Now in the Pacific …’ Joe gave a grim laugh. ‘Nah,’ he said. ‘It’s all right. I was never in the Pacific’
Robert believed in the deterrent.
He said the next morning, ‘It’s not that I don’t admire the Bertrand Russells, the Canon Collinses of this world.’
‘What? The Bertrand Russell? The philosopher? What’s he been doing?’
‘The Ban the Bomb marches. They march to Aldermaston and so on. Where they make the … well, I don’t know which part of the bombs or what exactly they do make there, because it’s so secret …’ He felt it was his business to know but not to disclose – but then he really had been told nothing. The industry was compartmentalised, its units sealed, the best form of secrecy. The left hand never knew what all the other left hands were doing.
‘Aldermaston! I was brought up in Tadley. What’s all this about Aldermaston?’
‘I don’t even know where it is, to tell the truth. I only know they march there, the Aldermaston marchers.’ And suddenly, at the newspaper picture in his mind of the young people of his own generation with their duffle-coats and courage, becoming friends, lovers even, he was moved and sad. ‘Those are the headlines; and the newsreel pictures. Nobody mentions where it is, as such. They assume it’s common knowledge – which of course it is. Even signposted; though not in big lettering: “This way to the nuclear …” Well, of course not. Reading way, isn’t it?’
‘Course it bloody is! Bloody Reading way. Here’s me down under for the best part of my life, Bob, having to tell you where Aldermaston is. But now you’re telling me that’s where they make them. How long’s that been going on? I thought it was Cumberland or somewhere safely in the wilds. Just turn your back and they’re at it. That was down the road from us when I was a nipper, Alder-bloody-maston.’
Robert wanted to justify himself; to show that he was not just another white-coated yes-man who rattled along doing very nicely on government research, while washing his hands of the ethics. He did question. He did feel enormous reservations about, yes, England again. England at the root of it all, almost. Bloody-handed, clever England. He wanted to shout, ‘I’ve read Spengler and Marx! I play the piano!’ But he would merely have made himself ridiculous.
‘The Russians are stockpiling nuclear weapons. What’s the alternative? Human nature, I suppose; that’s at the root of it all. No one can afford to back down. Nobody likes it, but nobody wants the world to be incinerated. Blown to smithereens. I don’t. What’s the alternative, Joe, once two sides have got the damn things?’
Joe churned in the lower bunk and asked him to fetch
the basin again. Robert got down and did so.
‘Don’t ask me, mate. I’m just one of the poor bloody infantry.’ He retched uselessly and painfully over the bowl. ‘In Australia it’s a different matter, anyway. How would you like fall-out clouds drifting over your back yard? My bloody back yard. They do, you know. Or did. Drift. Maybe your papers don’t run those headlines. Don’t want to know. They wouldn’t care, would they? Of course they wouldn’t. Whack! The black cloud. Whack! That island up the coast from Perth, Monty-something. Whack! Maralinga. No risk at all. No risk to Westminster, more like. It just happens to be right where we live. And quite a lot of us don’t like it, no matter for Bob bloody Menzies.’
So Robert was left tarred as an apologist for the arms-race lunacy; even by this voyage going out to further it.
The steward knocked and came in with Joe’s tea.
‘Thanks, old sport.’ Joe fished for a coin on the locker top beside him and handed it over. ‘Out of hours, mate. Appreciate it.’
‘Thank you very much, sir.’ The steward left.
‘Good bloke, that.’
Joe’s forearm appeared to be tattooed, so that the finish of something mostly covered by pyjama sleeve and dressing-gown cuff could be seen on his wrist. Robert wondered idly what it was of.
‘Sailors!’ Joe gave a laugh. ‘Trouser pirates. Couple of pulls of merchant seaman we used to ask for at the bar, just to wind the poor joker up.’
‘Oh,’ said Robert.
‘It’s your move.’
14
At last there came a time when the Armorica turned her back to the wind, and Robert could anticipate the Med. Now, on the way in, the acute flexing of seascape seemed so mundane as to be beyond comment. Everyone had grown used to the bad weather. They had all worked out ways of shortening sail, as it were. It had become routine to cross even the smallest interior spaces as if at one minute you were scaling Everest, and the next leaping off.
