by Michel Déon
‘Oh what a shame, another lady in need of a good fuck!’ Elizabeth drawled, in unmistakable English this time.
The waiter, who was in the process of respectfully setting down a truly wafer-thin slice of foie gras on Getulio’s plate, almost choked. He caught his tray just in time. Normally the dining room was a place where passengers hardly dared speak above a whisper, for fear of offending its neo-Victorian majesty and that of its bewhiskered head waiters, but Elizabeth’s laughter and shocking language shook them out of their stuffy gloom. It started with a low murmur, like the first cracking sounds of a thaw. By the time the cheese course had been reached it had turned, with some help from the port decanter, into a Babel-like uproar.
‘Miss Murphy’s laugh is the perfect painless antidote to boredom,’ Concannon said. ‘Look at all these people: bankers, businessmen, wealthy lawyers with their pasty wives dripping with jewellery, real and fake. At home, in their offices, they’re kings; everyone bows down in front of them, while here, where nobody knows them, they’re so shy and reverential they can hardly move their facial muscles. It’s as if they feel out of place, despite having paid for their staterooms with those handsome greenbacks they earned from the sweat off the workers’ backs.’
Arthur remarked that if anyone should feel ill at ease among all these strangers, it was him, because he would have been back in steerage with the other migrants but for his mother’s surprise gift of a first-class ticket.
‘How interesting!’ Augusta said. ‘But you shouldn’t have accepted. You’re depriving yourself of one of life’s essential experiences. My brother and I have decided that next time we go across we’re going to share a cabin with a very poor family of emigrants. It’ll be so exciting, won’t it, Getulio meu?’
‘Fascinating, I’m sure.’
‘I’m coming too,’ Elizabeth said.
The dining room was emptying. Professor Concannon, having drunk two or three dry martinis before lunch, a bottle of Château Margaux on his own, and several cognacs with his coffee, got to his feet, staggered a little, and regained his balance by grabbing the back of a chair.
‘Take my arm, Professor,’ Elizabeth said. ‘I’ll feel more comfortable among these idiots.’
‘What about you, Monsieur Morgan, how are you feeling?’ Augusta said.
‘Captivated.’
‘At last! Someone saying something nice. Makes a change from our usual backbiting and nastiness. Are you a sensitive soul?’
‘I’m afraid I am.’
‘You must harden yourself.’
‘Will you help me?’
‘Don’t count on me. I think it’s a very good thing for men to shed tears. A man who cries is touching. A woman who cries is ridiculous.’
‘You’ve never shed a tear.’
‘How would you know?’
They walked out to the promenade deck. The Cunarder was making twenty knots out into the Atlantic. Out of a yellow and grey sky the afternoon sunlight brushed the white cottages of the Scilly Isles as it would soon, with its last rays, the Fastnet lighthouse. A trawler struggled against the swell, followed by a cloud of seagulls that twisted and whirled above its nets.
‘The sea is completely stupid,’ Augusta said. ‘I hate it, don’t you?’
‘I don’t really have an opinion. But why don’t you go by plane?’
‘No thank you! Not when one in two disappears somewhere over the ocean.’
‘If that was true, we’d have heard about it.’
‘They never find anyone, which is why they never talk about it. But it’s boring that you don’t have an opinion about the sea. You’re not really very interesting.’
‘I suppose you mean I don’t try to make myself interesting. Well, that’s true.’
Elizabeth came back alone.
‘I put Concannon to bed and I left Getulio playing poker with three Americans. You don’t play cards, Monsieur Morgan.’
She could have said, ‘Do you play cards?’, which would have required either an affirmative or negative response, or she could have given her sentence an interrogative emphasis, but said like that, her ‘You don’t play cards’ became a simple observation, no more or less than if she had casually mentioned that Arthur had blue or green or brown eyes or a nose that was straight or squashed or turned-up. Perhaps he didn’t play cards because he hadn’t had the opportunity, or because, absorbed in his studies, he had put off till later an activity that didn’t greatly attract him. The error – which he fortunately did not make – would have been to answer Elizabeth, to explain or even to invent, because neither Elizabeth nor Augusta was expecting him to say anything. Elizabeth’s ‘You don’t play cards’ had the simple merit of being clear, of situating the Frenchman in a different milieu from Getulio’s, without the slightest condescension, one might add, and even with some obvious sympathy for a young man who came from a different country and class from those they inhabited.
Yet Elizabeth had no hesitation in describing a woman three times her age as ‘in need of a good fuck’ or walking through doorways ahead of elderly passengers who were unsteady on their feet or squeezed into unsuitable baby-pink or lavender-blue dresses, and her contempt for other Americans was boundless. As for Augusta, when she discovered that the wife of a Brazilian ambassador in Europe was on board, she repeatedly made sure that the woman was seated as far away from her as possible. Her stratagems surprised Arthur. His own upbringing had revolved around the family circle and arranged introductions and, being the son of an officer killed in the last war, he had always had the French presented to him as the most heroic and socially acceptable people on earth. Yet what many people take for granted is not enough for some sceptical souls, and Arthur already had his suspicions. The crossing from Cherbourg to New York was reinforcing them.
‘It’s icy out here,’ Augusta said. ‘I’m going in, before I die of cold. Arthur? As you’re dining with us …’
This was news to Arthur.
‘… I must ask you at once not to wear a tuxedo. Getulio never wears one and he will feel awkward if he sees you turn up in a black tie. Professor Concannon will be at another table. If he makes it to dinner. Every crossing is an ordeal for him. All this water makes him so thirsty. But you’ll see … on dry land … What I mean is that before, during and after his classes, he’s a man of extraordinary intellect and originality … when he isn’t under the table. Elizabeth, don’t forget to tell me when we get to Cork, even if it’s dark.’
‘It will be dark.’
‘I want to see all those hundreds of little priests coming aboard.’
‘Not every Irish person is a priest.’
‘These are! I have my sources! The purser is … he pouts awfully, I know, but anyway, he’s an “adorable, absolument adorable” man, as you French say. And he explained to me that the country around Cork regularly sends parcels of little priests to America, which has a shortage, whereas Ireland, which is blessed by the gods, mass-produces them. Apparently it’s very good for regulating the balance of trade.’
Was Augusta really suffering from the cold, or was it all a pretence that she was some kind of poetical creature, doomed to hide indoors, sheltered from every storm, or cough consumptively like Marguerite Gautier? One day a man would expose her to cold reality, loving her with enough lucidity to detect what was real about her character and be just sufficiently intoxicated by the part she had invented about herself so charmingly and cleverly. From the way she muffled herself up, wrapping her arms tight across her chest and hunching her neck and chin deep down into her fur collar, she really made it seem as though the promenade deck was being buffeted by glacial winds, despite being sealed at both ends by sliding doors.
‘Anybody home?’ she said to Arthur. ‘You’re miles away.’
‘I was thinking about you.’
‘In that case you may carry on.’
She kissed Elizabeth.
‘I’m leaving him with you. He’s a tiny bit odd. You’d better tell me what happens
. And please behave: don’t get up to anything naughty. It’s very bad for your blood pressure in the afternoon.’
She was gone by the time Elizabeth shook her head resignedly.
‘What does she know?’ she said to Arthur in French. ‘Nothing, I’ll bet. The man who manages to tie her down will never be bored. Unless, like a caged bird, she suddenly stops singing.’
‘Yes, I was thinking the same thing.’
Elizabeth took his arm.
‘Come on. We’ll go and sit at the bar. There won’t be anyone there. You can tell me what you’ve been thinking about … we might as well call each other “tu”, it’s so much simpler. Do you think you’re already in love with Augusta, like every other man?’
‘I wouldn’t exactly put it like that. And anyhow it’s too soon. I mean, what I’m trying to say is, it’s not too soon because we’ve only known each other since this morning, just too soon in life, too soon because I don’t really know what love is, or what you’re supposed to do with it. I’m putting it badly, and I expect you think I’m an idiot or a sissy, but you understand French so well I’m sure I don’t need to spell it out.’
Elizabeth stopped abruptly, tugging at his arm.
‘Yes, I do speak good French, and I like speaking it. My father and mother died in a plane crash. From what I remember of them, they were completely foolish. Though not totally, actually, because they gave me a French governess … Madeleine … I’ll tell you about Madeleine one day. She’s the person I go and see every year, at Saint-Laurent-sur-Loire: my real mother. She taught me to read very young, she made me go to the cinema and the theatre very young too. One day she said to me, “Now you know everything I know … now is the moment for you to fly away on your own, with a motto: believe nothing and everything.”’
‘Ha! The ghastliness of the happy medium.’
‘Oh you sweet boy, we shall make something of you! Now, I’ve had enough of pacing up and down in front of these mummies bundled up in their rugs. Not to mention the old women glaring at me and thinking that if I’m wearing jeans I must have horrible legs and I shouldn’t be wearing a man’s cap and it’s about time I put on some make-up … They give me the willies. I must know half of them, and they know damn well that I’m a Murphy, but they’re so plastered in make-up I find it impossible to work out who’s lurking behind which face.’
They walked to the bar past the smoking room. Getulio, sitting with three other players, winked as they went past. He collected the cards, shuffled, and dealt them again. Arthur had seen enough card games to know that the Brazilian did not have the dexterity that marks out the great players. As he dealt, he even dropped a card. One of the other players mocked him.
‘Come on! We’re putting him off.’
In the bar Professor Concannon was teetering dangerously on a stool in front of the barman who was obstinately refusing to answer to the name of Paddy, his face pink with suppressed anger. Concannon kept insisting: ‘It would be so much easier for all concerned, not just on board the Queen Mary but on all the ships in the British merchant fleet.’
Elizabeth did not want to wait for the barman to lose his temper.
‘After five minutes it stops being funny,’ she said to Arthur. ‘Now, a ship is a village. Suppose that, not knowing what else to do with ourselves, and notwithstanding Augusta’s explicit instructions, I go with you to your cabin or you go with me to mine: in five minutes the whole ship will know, and no one will talk about anything else at dinner. Better avoided.’
‘Won’t not spending the afternoon together make them gossip just as much? They’ll just start whispering that I’m queer or you’re a lesbian.’
‘Frankly I don’t much care, but I rather feel like watching a film this afternoon.’
They were showing, for the hundredth time, An American in Paris. Gene Kelly danced exuberantly. Leslie Caron’s legs were very shapely, if a bit short. Arthur dropped off to sleep for a spell, as doubtless did Elizabeth. The lights went up. The Queen Mary was rolling heavily in the swell outside Cork as it took on what Augusta had referred to as ‘the little Irish priests’. Little, however, they were not, but tall and blond or red-haired, their faces made pink by the wind and rain. Without their dog collars they looked more like members of a sports team, and many were in fact laden with tennis racquets, golf clubs or hockey sticks, clumsily tied to their cardboard suitcases with leather straps or string.
Augusta had appeared from her cabin and posted herself at the top of the great staircase and was watching their arrival with a sparkling gleam of mischief in her eyes.
‘Couldn’t you just eat them up?’ she said to Elizabeth. ‘Do you think they really intend to resist the sins of the flesh for the rest of their lives? If I were you, I’d try to corrupt at least one of them this very night.’
‘Why don’t you try?’
‘Me? I wouldn’t know what to do. Nor him, I expect. Look at him, licking his finger …’
Arthur was startled by her expression: he had never seen anyone look so innocent.
‘Why are you making that face, Arturo? What were you thinking about?’
‘Nothing. As usual. I’m just listening, and by the way, it looks to me as if that young priest’s wetting his finger rather greedily …’
‘Mmm. So he can find the bit in his instruction manual about unexpected meetings. You know they all have a little guide to love, to tell them what happens in case the Devil leads them into sin. Whereas you, Elizabeth, would be able to teach them everything without having to open a book. Such a practical girl!’
The Queen Mary weighed anchor during dinner. A conspicuous number of passengers had succumbed to the Atlantic swell, and the dining room was no more than half full.
‘If I’d known,’ Augusta said, ‘I wouldn’t have bothered changing. My rose gets very discouraged when it’s not admired.’
At the point of the V of her white silk blouse, cut lavishly low, she had pinned a rose of the same crimson as her lips. Its petals lay soft against the amber-coloured skin at the dip between her breasts, which were visibly unconstrained. When she spoke, she held her hand up to the flower, dropping it again when someone spoke to her.
‘What’s going on?’ Elizabeth said to Arthur. ‘You’re wearing a tuxedo.’
Arthur took some pleasure in her surprise. He smiled at Getulio, who was wearing a blue velvet jacket with black silk lapels, far louder than his own altered black barathea jacket, which had been his father’s and was too short in the sleeves and too tight at the shoulders.
‘I rather thought Getulio would dress for dinner.’
Getulio disputed this. He had merely forgotten what they had decided. He would never have dreamt of making his dear friend Arturo feel awkward, and besides, hadn’t everything turned out perfectly, since even Elizabeth, usually so unconventionally dressed, had come to the dining room in a Dior suit? Augusta frowned suddenly.
‘Are my ears deceiving me? Arturo and Elizabeth are calling each other “tu”.’
‘What’s so extraordinary about that?’
‘Nothing, except that you must have decided to pass the time by sleeping together this afternoon.’
‘Unfortunately not, I’m afraid,’ Arthur said with a deep sigh of regret.
‘Don’t treat me like a goose. I can tell; it’s as plain as the nose on your face.’
Elizabeth threw down her napkin and stood up, pale with annoyance.
‘That’s enough, Augusta. You’re going too far. Say it again and I’ll go and eat at a different table.’
‘With your lover?’
‘All right, stop it!’ Arthur said. ‘Your suspicion is flattering … but sadly bears no relation to reality. Augusta, I swear on your rose that we did not do that naughty thing you mentioned after lunch.’
‘In that case, how bored you must have been! Darling, calm down … I take back my base thoughts.’
Elizabeth sat down, picked up her napkin, and called the waiter. Getulio was oddly silent, his gaze d
istracted. Augusta revealed the reason.
‘He lost rather badly this afternoon. We don’t even know if we’re going to be able to carry on to New York. Perhaps they’ll throw us overboard before we get there.’
‘Can you swim?’
‘No. If the captain has any feelings at all, he’ll have to lend us a lifeboat. Getulio can row, he loves that.’
‘I hate rowing. I’d prefer to sink like a stone. With you, obviously.’
Elizabeth spoke to the waiter. ‘Mr Mendosa is having a breakdown, or a tantrum, or perhaps both. Even the sight of the menu is likely to bring on a fatal allergic reaction. Would you be very kind and deliver our four dinners to some emigrants of your choice? Preferably some who have only ship’s biscuits and salt water to last them for the crossing.’
‘I didn’t know you were a communist,’ Augusta said.
‘You don’t know everything … The only cure for Mr Mendosa’s bad temper is caviar, several tons of it. Mr Mendosa will choose the champagne himself, if your sommelier will be good enough to bring him the list; I’m sure he will, because I can see him from here, yawning, with nothing to do but nurse his contempt for all the passengers who are drinking Coca-Cola with their oysters and scalding themselves with the hot chocolate they’ve ordered to go with their roast beef and Yorkshire pudding. We have a Frenchman with us, and he is beside himself with rage … You can put everything on my account, obviously. Cabin 210.’
*
When he left them Arthur made his way to the upper deck, where the lifeboats and life rafts were. Its superstructure flooded with light, the liner steamed blindly on into the ink-black night, maintaining its course through the long Atlantic swell. Shorter waves crashed against its bow, sending up spurts of iridescent spray that fell on the foredeck in soaking gusts. Leaning on the rail, Arthur contemplated the uneven line of foam as it curled away from the ship and disappeared into the depths of the night. At the end, the very end of the journey, the skyline of New York was waiting, still hidden. Oh, he certainly wasn’t on his way to conquer the New World, as so many passengers on the Queen Mary were, and nor had he ever had any ambition to settle there, but something else drew him, an intuition that there he would find the constituent parts of a future denied to a Europe exhausted by its five-year-long civil war.
