by Derek Beaven
With the prickle of tears beginning in her eyes, she tried again. This time the words came out in a flood, which she found she no longer had the will to censor or resist:
I am in the middle of nowhere. Everything I ever knew has been left far behind. I long for news of the boys. Why should I worry over them so? You will think it foolish of me, I know. To tell the truth I have not been well; nothing serious, I’m sure. Homesickness? Presumably. Separation from the children – and from you, no doubt. Of course. You must remember I am not used to being on my own. So these are just my wilder thoughts thrown down. Think nothing of them – I do not want you to turn into a worrier too. I suppose, Hugh, it just helps to spell it out on paper. It actually feels disloyal to be as agitated as I am. But it is nothing. Everything is all right. Will be all right when we meet and I am …
She had been intending to write ‘… in your arms again’. But could not. Simply could not. It was infuriating. And the watch said twenty-to-eight. They would give her up; she was not even dressed. She would have to find a postcard in the town somehow, and just send her love. Then write at length from Colombo to explain. Explain what? Oh, it was too maddening.
She had her spotted frock ready laid out. Underclothes. Stockings? Perhaps. Covering one’s legs – a seam up the back to assure the locals of a degree of formality? The elasticated roll-on. One dirty, the other nowhere to be found. Laundry not back? Nothing would go right!
She reached the door to the gangway having run across the ship’s waist and down the ladders. But her party had gone. She asked the officer. He had no idea when. She felt half finished. Her make-up was skimped. The officer, in his neatly pressed shorts and starched white shirt, looked at her steadily. Her stomach felt obscene, as though her horrid stretch marks might be visible beneath the frock. He was very sorry, madam, but he didn’t know her people by name. Several groups of passengers had recently gone ashore. There was a launch waiting just now, as it happened.
‘Thanks. Thank you very much.’ She hurried down the long flight of metal steps into the Arabian night. She would catch them up. There were a few places left. She stepped into the crowded and jittery little boat, with its two lamps and wooden seats. They could not have gone far.
32
Afterwards, her remembrances of Steamer Point would not keep still. They were full of stars and the tungsten filaments of naked bulbs. And of how she met Robert in a cramped dusty street that ran up towards a great clock tower. Of how they stood and talked by the people’s beds – low wooden frames with woven string to lie on – placed outside in the hot, peppery darkness with the crowds and the bustle of the ship’s community all spilled out. How it looked as though the whole town had always been full of chattering and bargains, in a language that rose and fell, half song, half nasal shout, to the humming of generators; full of brightly dressed travellers like paper flowers.
And they were invited by voices, importuned, or beckoned with thin, desperate fingers. ‘No. No, thank you,’ she had said. There were disputes like dreams. Smoke rose from lighted bins down back alleys and mingled with the drain fug that pervaded everywhere like the cooking of sour herbs.
It had been difficult, she thought now in her cabin bunk, saying clearly at once both no and yes. But at the time absolutely certain, moving along a certain line: no to things she did not want and yes to what she did oh most definitely want just at that moment – to walk in company with Robert Kettle under the stars and electric light.
You would not think of venturing off the main street. Yet despite the swirls of children who ran in and out of the shadows calling, begging, selling, ready to pick your pocket, no doubt; despite the hooded and armed desperadoes no doubt behind them, waiting with curled knives and moustaches, she did not feel threatened. She felt there was a safe route. She had said so to Robert Kettle. They had laughed about it, about the lack of menace.
With people from the ship all around them, they had pressed on up. They saw soldiers roistering, almost in slow motion, around a grey Indian-looking building. The cries of basket-makers, leathermen, tinsmiths, camera-vendors grew fainter. How slowly they went, looking into this doorway, noticing there a roof made out of overlapped carpets, commenting on that dangerous-looking web of power cables. How jealously they husbanded their time. She could remember every word he had said – how he had talked about his work, about his growing up, about the voyage – and almost none of her own, though she had chattered away too. She was sure of it. Had she said too much? He had been concerned that she missed Peter and Christopher.
The beggars were hideous. No one had ever begged from her. Nothing so stark, she thought. A light hung from a pole. From under its yellow blaze a man with no legs had lurched forward at them. He held twisted pieces of wood, like miniature crutches, polished shining grey by his grip. With these he kept up, calling in English for money, running alongside on his sticks and embryonic feet. And next there were outstretched hands holding cups, from the figures squatting by the walls, so that you must pick your way between, saying, ‘m sorry. No. No, thank you.’
In the small flattened square before the clock tower at the top they drew breath. Robert had pointed out Mr Chaunteyman amid the knots of other passengers straying up thus far. ‘Do you know him? He came into the sickbay this morning and lost his temper at me. I’ve no idea why. And that fellow with him is called Barnwell. Doesn’t he look grotesque in his suit and trilby hat?’
‘They’ve got Pom with them.’
‘Pom?’
‘The boy who found you in the sun. He was convinced you were dead. He wanted there to be a burial at sea. He was quite fed up with you for your poor old signs of life. I only know him as Pom. That’s what little Finlay Coote calls him. Oh, and that’s his mother, I believe.’
The blonde woman had come up to join Chaunteyman. Then, failing to secure his attention, she drifted slightly away, taking the boy with her by the hand.
Robert asked, ‘Do they make a family, then? Chaunteyman and his woman?’
‘I suppose so. They’re difficult to make out.’ The boy had pulled the woman to follow him until they had their backs to a white building. The mother seemed reluctant to be removed from the two men, but submitted. Penny had watched the paper bag twitch for a moment beside the red shorts, then slip out of the boy’s hand against the wall and fall to the ground.
‘Come on.’ She had taken Robert Kettle’s hand. It was on an impulse. And just at that moment it had seemed what one did and what one must do. She pulled him through the crowd until they stood a few yards up from the boy and the mother. ‘We must wait here a moment.’ She looked up into Robert’s smiling, surprised face and kept his hand, just a moment longer than was needed. It was a firm, safe hand. She found she had always wanted to hold it just so. Then she let it go.
Like everyone else they stood looking down at the little harbour where the Armorica’s floodlights blazed, and the town rose up in layers to their feet. The faint outlines of hills and rocks stood out all around.
‘It’s beautiful, isn’t it, in such a strange way? It’s like the fairground you could never have invented.’ He had made no reply. Only smiled into her eyes.
Then Chaunteyman and Barnwell moved off. The boy and his mother followed. Penny had darted forward and pounced on the paper bag just beating two Arab boys who appeared from nowhere in their striped and ragged night-shirts. They cried out in disappointment.
‘Wait a moment and you shall have it,’ she said. ‘Just wait, all right.’ They hung back muttering. ‘I only want to look,’ she told them.
The paper bag contained a pair of plastic Jayne Mansfield lips and a piece of Plasticine. ‘What do you make of these, Robert? May I call you Robert?’ She turned the items over in the glow of one of the light bulbs.
‘The kid’s little treasures, I suppose. Probably be lost without them.’
‘But I watched him drop the bag. He did the whole thing – deliberately. It was a manoeuvre.’ They laughed at the word.
‘Treasures!’
One of the Arab boys spoke. She did not understand.
‘Here then.’ She let the items fall back into the bag and handed it over.
On the way down they had found the Madeleys and the Cootes in the middle of the small, makeshift market next to a pyjama-clad coppersmith. There was still quite a press here, people flickering like the flames and moths of a softening camp-fire. Douglas was bargaining for a coffee-pot. A man with an old First War rifle was trying to move his bed. The animation of voices hung like a sweated flavour.
‘Oh, Penny. You’re here!’ Stella clutched Penny’s arm a moment. ‘We gave you up. Thought you must have decided to stay in your cabin … And Mr Kettle.’
‘I was late. Trying to write a …’ She glanced round. She had forgotten all about the letter. And now she was supposed to be finding a postcard. It had quite gone from her mind. ‘Do you know where I …’ It struck her that it was the least likely place for postcards she had ever come to. As if you might expect to find a stick of Aden rock, or trips round the pitch-dark bay.
‘The shops are owned by Jews, and Indians,’ Russell explained under his breath, catching her gaze. ‘Shops are foreign to the Arab temperament.’
‘You didn’t come out on your own?’ Stella studied her reproachfully.
‘Yes. Why not?’
‘All right then. But not a penny piece more.’ Douglas handed over his coins and received his pot. He nodded to Robert.
‘Luckily I ran into Robert,’ Penny added. ‘It was quite all right.’
‘You took a risk,’ Stella scolded.
‘Surely not.’
‘My dear. The notice. Didn’t you read it?’
‘What notice?’
‘She’s not been quite herself these last few days, have you, Penny,’ Douglas said pointedly to Robert.
‘I’m perfectly all right.’ Penny laughed. ‘Perfectly.’
‘Well, we’d all better stay together now, at any rate, I think,’ Stella said.
Penny glanced at Robert, then replied, ‘Of course. If you like.’
‘Of course,’ Robert added. ‘Good idea.’
‘It’s best to keep together, Penny.’ Clodagh Coote linked arms with her. ‘What do you think of the place?’
Penny surveyed once more the extraordinary scene. There were even some donkeys. And camels, surely, packed in over there amongst the people. She made out their silhouettes as the acrid, heated presence came to her nostrils. ‘It’s wonderful.’
‘But doesn’t it smell absolutely frightful?’
‘What do you think of this, Kettle?’ Douglas held out his purchase. The brass fittings glinted with points of light.
‘Pretty hideous,’ said Robert.
Everyone had laughed nervously. Except Penny, who laughed with sudden happiness, and thought of his burnt naked limbs; and, in one way or another, she had made up her mind to forget about the postcard.
33
Now it was her duty to say no. It was what was expected of her. She had the strength of will, too, if it was truly right. There was no sleep for her. The night had turned torment. After such happiness she felt prickly; a quiet fury. The hours fretted away. We should be gone from Aden by dawn, and she would pursue the course laid down for her. If it was truly right. Her thoughts plagued her – like toads – because she could not work them out.
Much as she liked Cheryl and the way she could live two lives at once – for she was sure Cheryl … Yes, of course she knew Cheryl was not just saucy insinuation and would have no hesitation in flirting, in entering a liaison even, entering it physically if she wished to … Yes, she was sure enough now that Cheryl would take the necessary steps to gratify her inclinations, no matter for society or gossip. No matter for marriage vows and God and all that. Just so long as she could be reasonably certain of getting away with it. Good luck to her, then.
Cheryl would regard it as her right, her freedom, darling. Why, it could well be Cheryl was already ‘romantically involved’ this trip. There had been an extra edge to her suggestive comments of late, since the tail end of the Red Sea.
Penny thought so. Now for her, too, the matter of Robert Kettle was suddenly a real choice. Between real yes and real no. And it was horrifying. Her feelings were aroused. Her flesh had known before she did. All the others had seen it coming. Their anxiety had grown as they sensed her body beginning to assert itself. They could have had no idea, of course, how her womb had thrown its helpless little passenger overboard. But while she was drenched and grief-stricken with that, they had caught the meaning intuitively. They had all gone on to a state of alert.
And so had she. Eventually, she dozed with exhaustion. But sleep was fraught and shallow, and only held her fitfully. The preoccupation circled, around and again. It would not stop. Eventually she thrashed the bedclothes from her bunk and sat up. Then she descended her ladder and flung off her nightdress. She stood naked in the dark. She scratched at her skin with the nails she had not filed for several days. Robert. Robert. She was pincered between two moral schemes, the one full of courtly sacrifice, her mother’s, with its iron will, school discipline and the greater good; the other represented by a woman such as Cheryl. The conflict was hateful.
Probing with her hands stretched out in front of her, she established the three or four feet of space between sink and bunk, door and dressing-table, and paced as best she could. How she would have loved tea and daylight and counsel – but none was available. The electric light in her cabin would merely mock her before the mirror. In this dark, in this cramped space she must create some resolution for herself. She must.
Renunciation was her duty. But that simply would not square with what could only be described as the wonderful purity of it all. It was like a call. Yet as far as she could see, the only passage to her feelings for Robert was a sort of grand harlotry. She was being tested, then? Surely Cheryl had been placed in her way as a snare and a delusion. By day Cheryl loved to talk, loved to burst out, almost, with innuendo – her body strained at her clothes. By night, if her chatter were to be believed, she luxuriated. Penny had the odd sense, however, that Cheryl’s men were inconsequential, and she wrapped herself somehow in her own rich and freckled skin – to hide, in a way, behind that. There was something unreal about it. In any of Cheryl’s intrigues or affaires, Penny suspected, it was always Lucas she thought of deep down.
Did she feel that of Hugh? As she turned, her foot stubbed against the bunk support. She cursed.
Cheryl ‘loved’ Lucas. Each intoxication would come to an end. Theirs was a tropical species of love, strange, strongly female, casual. It flourished in the heat. But then again, Penny realised, it was perhaps to be found everywhere in England too, if under glass and protected from draughts. She had lived so strait-laced a life at home, so sequestered, that she had misread her own class. For surely this voyage must show her what Cheryl kept saying: that in all probability the Torboys situation was in no way unique – just explicit; and there were already a number of sexual intrigues in progress, out of the starboard glare.
Blinkered fool. In books, where morality mattered, she could see through people so easily. Here, in real life, it did not matter. Because nobody actually minded. If the old dowager voyagers, as Paul Finch-Clark called them, tut-tutted at Cheryl Torboys and gave looks, it was only because they were jealous. And because their rheumy, domed and sun-freckled old men followed Cheryl’s passing with their eyes, as though she were some seagoing Marilyn Monroe. And her own passing, come to that. Probably with their tongues as well. Nobody cared. The truth was disturbing. Most of all, nobody would have dreamed of taking Cheryl under their wing. So why, then, was such especial chaperonage being extended to herself? For it definitely was. They must think there was something very serious about her. If so, what?
Penny sat down in the chair in front of her invisible mirror. She knew the answer well enough. Why not admit it? Let the word into her he
ad. It was desire. On the instant, her brain felt effervescent, transplanted. Her thought raced white-hot. Desire was neither inclination nor instinct, but something much more dangerous. She was beginning to understand that – and its implications. The journey: it had shaken her up, like the genie in a bottle. She was primed to explode. She laughed out loud. A starburst was happening.
She opened her door and immediately shrank back. Subdued lights were on in the corridor. Then she grew bold. Let them see. She was being challenged in her sex. Subjects never spoken of had been raised. For Robert she felt desire, not instinct. There was a difference, and the others knew it, deep down. Nothing more threatening to those self-appointed guardians could occur than that her whole person should make a choice of Robert Kettle. It was her they would be defending themselves against, sharpening up the daggers. Her intelligence had fallen in love – the brand on her imagination of his sunburnt body. It scared them stiff. How they were lining up against her, against the pair of them – even though they had committed no … Why, they had not even kissed.
Robert was going out to do the same work as Hugh. He was in the same trade of weapons and missiles and the like. Her heart sank and went dark, momentarily. There was some conspiracy. Hugh had gone out in September. He had said he was going via the Pacific. A stopover. A few tests. Some sequence of events, letters, news reports and former vague uneasinesses clicked together in her mind. The name of Christmas Island against the crackle and fireworks of happiness.
But she was in love. And if from Robert somehow had come that joy, then it could not be that he was the same as those frightened people. How defiant she felt. So far Robert and she had merely touched hands. She resisted the impulse to stride out. Instead she closed the door.
