by Derek Beaven
‘Of course I will, Cheryl.’
‘Will you?’ She put her free hand round Robert’s neck and hugged him, nuzzling her face into his cheek. He felt the boning of her brassiere pressed against him. Then she broke off. ‘Thanks, darling. You’re a love.’
Why, in Cheryl’s boat everyone was at it. Secretly. Below the water-line, as it were. Then there was nothing out of the ordinary in his feeling for Penny. And she would maybe even expect him to … The done thing when out of sight of land. The done thing; it would not surprise anyone. It would not change the world – it was almost de rigueur, helped oil the wheels, keep the ship on course, calm the waters, give the old buffers down there something to grumble about.
‘You’re not cross with me, Bobby?’
‘I’m not cross with you, Cheryl.’
‘Do you like me?’
‘Yes. Of course I like you.’ Now he felt just a little irritated.
‘You don’t think I make myself cheap?’
‘No.’
‘I suppose it’s being a woman.’ She stood away from the aft rail and, looking down, placed her two hands intimately on her belly as if to anticipate the baby’s growth. The stem of the wineglass stuck out through the fingers of one hand, the handbag was looped over the other wrist. ‘It makes us go a bit doolally; I suppose you know all about women. Shakes us up a bit, darling. Out of control. You see?’
‘It’s all right,’ he said quietly. Acutely embarrassed, steadying her as much as he dared, he rescued the glass from her loosening hand. He felt for a moment as if he were holding a stethoscope, able to listen to things he should not hear through the glass’s heel.
‘Maybe.’ She allowed her hands back on the rail. ‘No. It isn’t that. It isn’t only being a woman. It would help to be able just to say to people, Bobby. Just to say what’s going on.’
To Robert’s amazement she started to cry. ‘Where’s Penny? I must go and find Penny.’ She looked about her. ‘Sorry. Have you got a clean hanky, darling?’
He had one in the side pocket of his blazer. Penny’s lenses were wrapped in it. He managed to contrive its release. She dabbed her eyes and laughed suddenly with a disarming, almost childish, candour. ‘Our ship’s got a little parcel in its pouch.’ She pointed down at the emigrants. ‘But we have to pretend it’s not there.’ Then she handed the handkerchief back. ‘Thanks. I’m sorry. I’m all right now. No, really I am. I’ll go and find Penny. She’s the only girl on this bloody boat who’s not part of the rigging.’
18
Behind the Nile Delta, there was a cut in the water. The thick, almost rancid fertility, the mud mixed with sun-water to the colour of a crocodile’s belly, gave way in favour of cloudy blue-green. We sighted at the same time the flat shore of northern Egypt, from which a pilot launch skipped out of the light to greet us.
By late afternoon the Armorica had rounded the sea walls of a land that sought to make vast square enclosures from its meeting with the Med. It looked like the board of an empty game. Finding ourselves within minutes harboured by a slick lagoon, we drifted gently in to drop anchor only a stone’s throw from a city waterfront.
Backlit, the city was genuinely non-European, unreadable at first glance. There were white low-rise blocks everywhere. Closer up, an avenue of date palms, and the hedge of shaped evergreens between them, set off the facade. There was no other hint of vegetation.
A causeway of rusty pontoons was connected to the ship; preparations were put in hand to run out the disembarkation gangways. Amid all this a froth of small boats came around the Armorica’s hull. Their oarsmen lost no time in hooking up lines to the deck rails high above them, and opening negotiations.
‘Bum-boatmen,’ Mrs Burns announced to anyone who was listening. ‘Don’t whatever you do pay them the prices they ask.’
Having shifted decks again, Robert saw Penny at last. He recognised her arm and the back of her head below him. She was on A deck calling out to one of the boats. He heard her voice: ‘For the wooden box and the little camel!’
The man shouted back up, ‘These two? Box? And this camel?’
‘No. The one with the red on it.’ She pointed. Then: ‘And the brass box as well!’
‘Brass box!’ The man held up a brass box from the array of bright things all about him. He wore a fez, and had mustachios. There was an excitement.
‘Yes,’ Penny said. ‘How much all three?’
‘Ten pounds!’
‘Ten shillings!’
Indicating his merchandise, the man threw wide his hands so that his boat rocked. ‘Special. Five pounds no less.’
They haggled. Penny would go no higher than a pound.
Finally the man raised his eyes to the heavens. ‘OK. Yes. OK.’
They came up in a basket into which she had first placed her pound note, weighted with the stone. When Robert got down and made his way along the deck to her, she was standing, clutching them. She wore a blue dress he had not seen before. Down on the dappled water, part shadowed by the waterfront buildings behind him, the man in the bum-boat smiled at them both, and waved. They smiled back.
‘I don’t know what I bought them for, really. I thought my children would like them; but now I have them,’ she embraced the camel and the two curiously worked boxes, ‘I don’t quite know which to give to which.’ She smiled at him again, helplessly. ‘Why did I buy three, I wonder? It’s the thrill. You get carried along. Would you like one of them? That would solve my problem.’
‘I’ve got your glasses.’ Robert took the pince-nez out of his top pocket. ‘You left it … them … in the observation lounge.’ He held them out.
‘Oh! That’s kind. I hadn’t even missed them. Where did you say? Thank you so much. I must have … It must have been when I got up and … The little girl said there was something in the water, and I went down to have a look. I must have left them then. But I can’t take them; I haven’t enough hands. Now you’ll have to help me out.’ She gave him the brass box in return for her property.
He had to take it. And once he had he could not give it back; because her hands were full.
‘Do please keep it. You’ll be helping me out.’
‘I couldn’t dream of it.’
‘No. I mean it. It’s for you. That must be why I bought it.’ She smiled. ‘You must have it.’
‘If you’re sure …’
‘Of course. Why not? Are you going ashore? Come with us. They say it’s safer to go in a group.’
The pontoons wobbled beneath them and clanked softly to the tread. At the end a man in a dark suit but without a tie stood on the waterfront to look at their documents. Behind him a couple of Egyptian soldiers fingered their rifles. Once on solid and unyielding land the body continued to rise and fall with the pattern of waves.
The emptiness, the absence of people was striking. Robert looked back. The bum-boats still clustered around the white walls of the ship. They had their boat-house under a very long, low cover to his right, exactly along the edge. Behind that was the made-up road with more soldiers on it. Then came the line of palms, from which the official buildings were just set back.
That frontage gave on to an urban region so lacking in known visual clues the other senses became heightened. The air, overwhelming the sense of smell, was laden with what could only be sewage, food, and a sort of tobacco spice – all arid, or drying. And they were aware of the quietness; through which the sound of their footfalls mingled with the tambour of voices behind walls, the occasional unseen vehicle, and even, faintly, the calls of the bum-boatmen round the ship, now some distance behind them.
There were no shops with glass windows, no billboards, signs, no kiosks, traffic, bus-stops; few kerbstones to tell you where to walk. There was, if anything, an extraordinary freedom, set off against the guns of the soldiers. They walked cautiously inwards by a likely route, making desultory conversation – it was not a big place at all. There were buildings whose function was unapparent. There were some people. A few c
ame out to offer goods for sale. A few children appeared and then disappeared. There were smiles, or scowls. Some street-level rooms had open doors. An old van passed them. The smell became sharper, more acrid.
‘Pooh! It’s so stinky!’ Finlay Coote held her nose.
‘You were the one who wanted to come, stinky.’ Mitchell, her brother.
‘Keep with us, you two. And don’t do that, Finlay. It’s offensive.’ Russell Coote shepherded them back from the middle of the street. Clodagh, he explained, was lying down in her cabin.
All Robert’s impressions of Port Said were modulated by his elation at the gift of the brass box, and by the nearness of Penny. At the corner of a sand-coloured building she turned to smile at him, and her body was wrapped in bright meaning. He returned the smile, amazed. And then they passed between them, these smiles, like proffered sherbet. They hardly knew each other.
Next he was walking just behind her. Mr and Mrs Madeley guarded her on either side. He heard them speculating about what the local currency actually was. Douglas was checking in the ship’s folded guide sheet.
Russell Coote said, ‘Given the choice, Clodagh and I would have preferred the Cape route, when all’s said and done. But it does depend on the weather you get.’
They passed through several broader streets and then a narrower one, at the end of which, in a small debouch, shouting began. About twenty yards away, two men came rushing out of a doorway. The one had dark trousers and a white shirt. He stopped, squared up. The other, in pursuit, wielded a carving knife. He was heavily built, paunchy, and wore a cloth round his head. With what looked like a night-shirt flapping at his ankles, he advanced, stamped a sandalled foot, and lunged with the knife. There were more shouts as men clustered, forming a ring. The still-hot sky from which the sun had almost dropped made silhouettes of the low buildings; the white shirts were like agitated spirits suddenly let out of a bottle. They whirled around. Within the circle now the first man could just be seen. Someone had given him a smaller knife. More lunges came in. He parried, and then crouched again at the ready. The tails of his shirt hung loosely.
‘Are you all right, Stella?’ Douglas Madeley enquired of his wife, once they were safely away.
Robert found himself next to Penny. For some distance neither of them spoke. They had ventured inward and encountered something – which had not touched them. It was like a dream that marks its mood on the waking state. And so they were put to flight, but would hardly admit it. Now he searched for casual conversation. He felt any words that slipped between them would shine and remain in the air like the memory of blades. ‘I ran into Cheryl Torboys earlier this afternoon; while we were still at sea. She was a bit upset. I wondered if she’d found you?’
They could see the dock again now. Perhaps not so many people after them had come ashore. Penny paused to light a cigarette. ‘That’s better.’ She blew the smoke out. ‘I hope it’s not a terrible sin to smoke in public. Just have to risk it. No. I’ve been in my cabin, doing this and that. Writing up my journal.’ She looked up at him. ‘I don’t want to let it all just go.’ She pointed about her. ‘Do you? But I haven’t seen Cheryl. What was the matter with her?’
‘She’d had quite a bit to drink. We were looking over the stern and she suddenly started crying.’
Penny flicked the ash off her cigarette. Ahead of them, as they came out on to the waterfront avenue again, the Armorica stood painted by the setting sun. Like a castle, he thought; like a flag; like a coat of arms. The white, illuminated walls rose up sheer; light caught a sequence of portholes and embroidered them.
‘It is real, I suppose. We can go there?’
‘It is real. How beautiful, extraordinary. It’s ours. Of course we can go there. Although it seems too … impossible. The high seas. A new life. Being offered to us.’ She held his gaze, and then drew on her cigarette. He watched the print of lipstick on the tan paper of the filter.
The gully-gully man came out of nowhere. Dressed in a blue suit, without a tie, he looked the commercial traveller at ease. But he was all electricity and movement. He held an egg under Finlay’s nose, took it behind his back; hey presto it was a chick. ‘See! Look! Chick. Chicky.’ He crammed the chick into his flies. He turned and produced an egg from his bottom. ‘Cheekee!’
Finlay giggled.
‘Come along, Mitchell, Finlay.’ Russell marshalled his brood towards the ship.
‘If we give him some money he might go away,’ said Mrs Madeley.
The gully-gully man shadowed them a good deal of the way back, scurrying and twisting in front of them, developing chicks and eggs from surprising places, holding them out to the children. ‘Look,’ he said. ‘See!’ And laughed.
At the pontoons they were aware of the soldiers’ hatred. A few of their fellow first-class passengers were gathered. Barry and Queenie Parsons were stepping along the dipping cause-way. And some of the emigrants from the tourist class, those who had passports, were also collecting at their separate pontoons to filter back.
Robert heard a genial, blazered man wearing a silver moustache turn and say to his companion, ‘Glad to see our precious cargo getting safely back on board.’ The man turned, beamed at Penny. ‘Hullo there. Had enough?’
They stepped on to the pontoon. Robert heard him continue behind him, as they eyed the other gangway. ‘The Aussies call it “Populate or Perish”. Entirely strategic. It’s the only intelligent option. Slit eyes don’t sleep for long, that we do know.’
My mother and I went ashore separately with Mr Chaunteyman.
19
At the captain’s table by invitation, Penny was placed at a corner, marking her status without a visible husband as ornamental but awkward. Across from her sat Mary Garnery, that woman whom Clodagh had described as ‘excessively thin’. Penny found her attractive and compellingly painful at the same time. Under discussion, while we lay still at anchor, was the situation in Aden, the next port of call. She said, ‘I don’t understand anything about it. Do they like us?’
She did not know the name of the man who answered. ‘Not very much, I’m afraid. Rather the same as here.’
She nodded acknowledgement as she drew off her evening gloves. What for Robert and me is an adventure … And then she felt wretched, for she realised she had coupled her name with his in thought, as if they were a fait accompli. She could not eat. She took one mouthful of the soup and nibbled a piece of bread roll. She tried not to think of him again, not to turn round. It was absolutely intolerable. What was Robert Kettle in his dinner-jacket and black tie? No different from all the other men in the room, personable or otherwise. She did not know what he actually did, nor why he was travelling. Only that he was a scientist, like her husband. They had not had long enough together even to exchange such simple information. Their contact had been social and disrupted by cross-currents; they had passed secrets with their eyes only, caught in the swirl of other people’s eddies. And yet in that delicious conspiracy had lain the prospect of something quite new, quite … emancipating. And then she told herself sharply not to be so ridiculous.
Michael Canning, the old ICS hand next to her, was talking. She suspected he would be interesting to listen to, if one were allowed to ask what one wanted to know. And that would easily explain why it was that she was interested in Robert Kettle. Because, quite simply, he talked about things just that bit more openly than the rest of the crowd. That was it – and he paid the price for it, being a touch problematic sometimes, socially. So then of course there was no mystery. She was relieved. And Elsie Canning spoke of the wrench of leaving her husband when she had taken the children back to England for schooling, before the war. Fortitude was what it demanded. ‘It’s harder for the men, of course. Running the place. The heat …’
Without Penny seeing, a main course had arrived in front of her. She took a mouthful. She was just missing Hugh; or good conversation going that bit deeper and further. She looked around. They were surrounded by a blur of chatter from the other
tables. These people were most of them so superficial … Robert Kettle was less so. Naturally he stood out somewhat, but that was all. She would be all right when she got back within her family.
On the other side of the captain, Mr and Mrs Piyadasa were guests as well. Their usual mild curry had arrived. Penny waved her fingertips beside her cheek. They smiled back. She thought of the invitation to spend the day with them in Colombo. But they were probably just being polite. The woman missing her family. Her boys.
All her life Penny had been in the company of boys: first living at the boarding-school, and then after her marriage to Hugh, with her own two, in the village between Hatfield and Stevenage on the Great North Road. There had hardly been a break. Not really. Not in terms of what home might mean. There had occurred, before all that of course, other young men; brief holidays.
‘If you lose their respect, you lose the whole show.’ There was a small silence; as if by a gap in the general conversation Michael Canning’s last words had earned a wider audience than he intended. Penny looked down at the cutlet in front of her, the parsley sauce, the neat vegetables. Shakily she cut it about with her knife, rearranged it with her fork, as if to display good intentions. She prayed that in a minute or so her appetite would return and the world would be normal again. She pictured Hugh, in his glasses and sports jacket, sitting at work in an office in Adelaide. No, a lab. In his shirt-sleeves. Electronics and filing cabinets. The hum of fluorescent strip lighting, the buzz of high-voltage instrumentation. Gothic and square – Robert’s phrase. No, not Adelaide, but Salisbury, some miles outside – the place he had roughly described in one of his letters.
Michael Canning was saying, ‘You bomb a country to bits, demand total war for six years, and then ask her to maintain her territories all over the place. Bit of a tall order in anyone’s book.’
For a moment Penny wondered where he was talking about.
