Fairness

by Ferdinand Mount

  He paused at the end of the recital, then looked at me with sudden recognition, almost as if we had just bumped into each other.

  ‘Yes, yes, you were the tipster. When I came to see you in bed you would give me horses for courses. And in the staffroom they would ask what does Nicky say for the Guineas.’

  ‘Gus.’

  ‘Gus. And when they went down to the Spread Eagle at lunchtime, they would all have their bets.’

  I was touched by his remembering. On those mornings when I was too ill to go down to breakfast, the nurse would bring up the Sporting Life for me and I would run through the form, to be ready for Dr Maintenon-Smith plumping his bulk on top of my feet and his Dettol breath swamping me as he leant forward to look at the runners and riders with me.

  ‘I hadn’t realised I had so many customers.’

  ‘You were keeping us all afloat. Ah les beaux jours.’

  The wistful look he cast across the sea touched me too. It had not occurred to me that life in the clinic, with its draughty, carbolic-scented corridors, the dismal breathing exercises, the rough rituals of the dormitory, not to mention the starchy, watery food, could be anyone’s beaux jours.

  ‘But enough of these backward glances, we must look to new horizons. You will excuse me, I have a passenger with advanced emphysema to see, a retired metal-broker. We share an interest in Mahler.’

  He went on his way, impervious once more, with hands clasped behind his back, I’Empereur stalking the deck of the Bellerophon, caged but not tamed.

  His departure left me feeling frail in mind and weak at the knees. He had shown me his vulnerable side, if only to explain the name-change. Even he had spent half his life clinging on by his fingernails, it seemed. How could the rest of us hope to cope? And yet he was still clinging to his little mensonges about the descent from Madame de Maintenon, probably other things too.

  Then it came to me properly for the first time that I was stuck on this boat for the next five days with Jane, about the same length of time in fact that my affair with her, or call it what you like, had lasted. Then, I had longed to see her bright eager face peering through the glass door into the dark sitting-room. Once or perhaps twice, when we had been uncertain whether Brainerd might weary of arranging his Orangina cans or Mr Stilwell (even now that he was dead I found it hard to think of him as John) might come in from golf, which would give us a minute or two to rearrange ourselves because there would be a clatter as he put his golf clubs in the hall stand, once or twice we would huddle in the angle under the stairs where there was a long low stool out of sight of either of the doors. There was room to touch and fondle on the ridged green velvet of the stool but no room for our heads except bent low over one another’s shoulders, so that if I opened my eyes I was staring into the dark greasy varnish of the stairboards. In these intense hunched grapplings, we must have looked like wrestlers in one of those specialised codes in which the two contestants scarcely seem to move, although every muscle in their bodies is braced. How white her skin was in that dark corner as we broke away gasping, as white as she had said my teeth looked in that first peculiar overture of hers.

  Now it would be a question of finding on this boat a similar dark corner but this time one for me to be alone in. In my cabin I would be a sitting duck. Even if I feigned illness – but she had already seen me, probably the healthiest passenger in this boatload of invalids – even that would offer a pretext for a sympathetic visit. But then perhaps these speculations were all futile self-flattery. She would surely be wrapped up in her new husband, would not wish to be reminded of a stupid interlude which had ended with her wading out to sea. If I lay low and got through Anna Karenina as I intended (I had given up on Moby-Dick), I might survive the voyage with only a little harmless general chat with her at mealtimes.

  Too much to hope for. Within half an hour the little white telephone with its fuchsia frill jangled pertly with a summons from Dodo Wilmot to come and help them get rid of a shakerful of Bloody Marys.

  ‘We’re in Mistral on A Deck, it’s the one after Sirocco.’

  The steamer chairs were mostly taken now. One or two of the patients looked so frail I wondered how they had managed to come up on deck at all, their hollow cheeks trembling with each feeble breath. The scudding sea and the level hum of the engine drowned out their gasps, which must have been one of the reliefs, for the sound of your own laboured breathing I remembered was the most dismal sound in the world and an embarrassment you couldn’t extricate yourself from, like being condemnded to tell a tedious anecdote you knew had no ending. So perhaps they were as happy as could be expected with their mufflers frothed up around their stringy gullets and their pale eyes staring at the dark swelling sea.

  Dodo and Jane looked like beings from a different race: she stretched out yawning in a pink candy-striped boudoir chair, her long legs brown and surprisingly muscular seeing she was so thin, he massive in a sailor’s shirt and white yachting slacks brandishing a bulbous silver shaker as though he was in a steel band.

  ‘Well, how do you like her?’

  ‘Her? Oh, you mean the boat. She’s great. Well, to be honest, I haven’t had a chance to see her properly yet. I’ve been more struck, I suppose, by the patients.’

  ‘They’re a great crowd, aren’t they? Eighty-five per cent occupancy and no discounts, plus a few freeloaders like you. Not bad for off-peak.’

  ‘A lot of them seem awfully ill, I’m surprised some could make it at all.’

  ‘You got it, that’s our pitch. If it’s the last breath you take, why not take it on the good ship Zephyr with the sea breeze in your hair and the sun sinking over an exotic Caribbean island?’

  ‘See Nassau and die,’ Jane offered.

  ‘Yeah, but of course we don’t say it that crudely. We just reassure them that the medical care is first-rate and we’re fully prepared for any emergency.’

  ‘Including the final one.’

  ‘Temperature-controlled mortuary down on D deck, but in case anyone asks, burial at sea is strictly O.U.T.’

  ‘Why?’ asked Jane. ‘I rather like the sound of burial at sea.’

  ‘Discourages the other passengers, to adapt what Monsieur Voltaire said about them hanging Admiral Byng.’

  ‘It wouldn’t discourage me.’

  ‘You’re different, honey. Doesn’t she look great?’

  He bussed her lightly on the lips as he refilled her chunky crystal glass. She did look different now, different from my memory of her at any rate. Her movements seemed slower, almost languid, and the quick look in her eye seemed to have switched off. Perhaps that was what money did for you, removed the urgency, although come to think of it John Stilwell had been rich, perhaps very rich, but then he was also anxious in a buttoned-up way. Or perhaps it wasn’t Dodo’s easy, spread-it-around style that had calmed her as much as his adoring her so visibly. As he passed to refill my glass, he slid his great paw alongside the inside of her knee up to the edge of her crisp Bermudas.

  Suddenly I was so choke-full of resentment that I could not help flushing up.

  ‘Too hot for you in here, is it, Gus?’ inquired Dodo with that always startling alertness. ‘We Yanks are hothouse plants, ain’t a damn thing we can do about it.’

  What was there to resent? Obviously I had no moral rights on her, no immoral rights even, never had had. My adolescent fling was a long time ago and an embarrassing fumbling affair best forgotten. That at any rate was what I tried to think, to help recall the colour from my cheeks and look like a normal human being.

  Then for some reason I started thinking of Anna Karenina and how dull Anna and Vronsky become after they have run off together and how the betrayed husband Karenin who is the only really interesting character in the book becomes more interesting still, probably more interesting than the author intended or realised. And I thought how interesting it would have been to know John Stilwell’s innermost thoughts about his wife, and hers about him and how – this wasn’t to be thought but I
thought it all the same – how exciting it would have been to come upon them making love, what an awkward yet delicate way he might have had, a delicacy which would have remained pristine, protected rather than blunted by his non-committal public persona and his talk of train timetables. And in comparison how dull and blatant were all Dodo’s uninhibited pawings and her languorous responses. That was it, Dodo had made her boring, that was what I resented, he had ironed out her little mysteries.

  It was a relief to escape their remorseless healthiness and to seek out the company of the sick. Mrs Fitch had made a friend, another widow whose husband had been in the Gulf too but at another time and for another company, perhaps in another state – I couldn’t quite catch every word of their talk over the noise of the Zephyr cutting through the glassy sea.

  ‘Woterrooeding?’

  ‘What? Oh? Anna Karenina.’

  ‘Silly girl’ – this from Mrs Fitch’s friend, who spoke tartly as though of someone she used to know, not in that distanced way people normally spoke of characters in books. ‘Read a lot out East, odd books, whatever they had in the library, kept you out of mischief, though a lot of the hanky-panky was only pretend. We weren’t all Happy Valley types, you know.’

  She snorted, amused at the thought of herself as someone with a flighty past, then more reflectively said: ‘Though there was a chap in Skinner’s Horse who made passes at every girl, simply threw them to the ground.’

  ‘Was that in India then?’

  ‘Not just in India, wherever he was stationed. Simply threw them to the ground.’

  She was a big woman, her face swollen under the powder, perhaps by drugs, but even so I could see how lively and cherry-ripe she must have looked.

  ‘Big strong chap was he?’ Mrs Fitch asked, smiling. The thought of the man in Skinner’s Horse seemed to have cured her speech difficulty for the moment.

  ‘No, he was only a little man, but they often are aren’t they, the handfuls? I’m Cynthia Perse.’

  She held out her hand, which was swollen too with the flesh half-hiding the rings on her fingers. A certain contentment stole over me as their conversation wandered around various outposts of empire and the afternoon sun crept round to our side of the deck.

  Then a shadow fell across it.

  ‘Well hi, there you are, you certainly have picked yourself the perfect spot, haven’t you? Good afternoon ladies, do you mind if I borrow this young man for a minute?’

  Jane Stilwell – Wilmot, as I supposed I must now think of her – held out a lightly tanned arm with the gawky grace of a gazelle but an irresistible air of command. It was like being back in her employ when she would say, Gus dear, would you be a darling and go fetch the bread from Madame Henri.

  ‘It’s kind of you, I know,’ she said, putting the gazelle arm firmly through mine and marching me down the deck. ‘And I’m sure those old biddies much appreciate you sitting with them, but don’t you think at your age you ought to be doing something a little more active?’

  ‘Active?’

  ‘There’s the pool, that’s where all the other able-bodied passengers spend most of the day, and the gym of course, and the deck tennis and the badminton though it’s a bit too windy today, or even the pingpong for Christ’s sake. You don’t have to just vegetate.’

  ‘Don’t I?’

  ‘If you want my opinion, I think you’re getting to be too broody. Nobody wants a broody person around. But that wasn’t what I wanted to say. Dodo’s talking to his broker, so I thought I’d just scoot along and get a few things straight. Now don’t get me wrong, Gus, it’s great to see you, it was just a lovely surprise, but there mustn’t be any misunderstandings between us.’

  ‘I didn’t know there were any.’

  ‘You know I’m just incredibly fond of you and what happened between us was wonderful and I’ll always keep the memory of it very dear, but it’s over and –’

  ‘Of course it is,’ I broke in crossly, ‘I know that perfectly well, I’m not a complete idiot. It was years and years ago.’

  ‘Well then, you mustn’t goggle at me like that, it was a terrible embarrassment, even Dodo noticed, in fact he had to say something and then afterwards when you’d gone he said I think that little guy still has the hots for you.’

  ‘Still?’

  ‘Oh it’s been a joke between us, you know, that I was in love with the tutor, which I was of course so it’s an easy one to play along with. He has no idea, really.’

  ‘I wasn’t goggling at you at all, in fact I was thinking of something quite different.’

  ‘Well, it’s sweet of you to pretend but at my age I think I’m a pretty good judge of when a man’s making eyes at me.’

  ‘I wasn’t.’

  ‘Have it any way you please. I just don’t want you to do it again, whatever it was you were doing. Anyway, haven’t you still got that dear little blonde person, you know, the chemist?’

  ‘She was never a girlfriend, not properly.’

  ‘Not properly? You carry on with her all summer so shamelessly I try to kill myself and now you tell me ten years later you didn’t manage to do it properly. Jesus, you English.’

  ‘We were only friends, it wasn’t anything to do with her that you –’

  ‘No it wasn’t, was it? It was another of your bizarre escapades. I’ll say that for you, you packed a helluva lot into one summer.’

  ‘It wasn’t an escapade at all. It was simply mistaken identity, I thought I’d explained it. Tucker just –’

  ‘Are you trying to kill me again or something? How can you dare to talk to me about Tucker in the present situation? That woman is dearer to me than you’ll ever know and I’m not going to have her name brought into this whole sordid thing.’

  Her slender arm was jammed so hard against mine that it felt like an iron bar.

  ‘Look, Jane, it wasn’t sordid, I wasn’t goggling at you and even if you still think I was I promise I won’t do it again.’

  ‘If you only knew.’ She looked at me in a way which she may have meant to seem bitter – that was what I expected anyway – but only came out expressionless, dulled by her brown skin and the shades perched on her brindled hair.

  ‘If you only knew,’ she repeated. ‘Well, I guess you will know soon enough and then you’ll be, no, sorry I don’t think, sorry isn’t in your nature, but you may understand just a little more of what we women go through. Now you run along back to your senior citizens, at least you can’t do them much harm.’

  She unhooked her arm, I felt the bone of her forearm sear mine, it was like being unshackled from a chain gang.

  ‘A fine-looking woman, your friend,’ Mrs Perse said. ‘You knew her before, I suppose?’

  ‘Yes, I tutored her children years ago.’

  ‘Children of the first marriage?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Who are now grown up.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose they must be.’

  ‘Older than she looks then.’

  Mrs Perse gazed out to sea, with the quiet satisfaction of the old-fashioned amateur detective who can unravel the whole mystery without stirring from her armchair.

  ‘You will sit with us at dinner, I hope, and feed us a few crumbs from the captain’s table. It is so nice to have a friend on the inside.’

  Mrs Fitch was taking a puff at her inhaler while Mrs Perse was issuing this invitation, but she seconded it with a vigorous nod. I accepted with unfeigned pleasure. Their company was both restful and bracing, just as a cruise ought to be. Besides, seated between them I would be protected from the Wilmots.

  ‘I hope I may see you at morning service tomorrow.’

  Dr Guderian whispered this hope into my ear as we were trooping into the cavernous dining-room.

  ‘Oh I didn’t –’

  ‘It is Trinity Sunday. I shall be conducting the service myself.’

  ‘No, I mean –’

  ‘I became a communicating member of the Church of England when I was on the Isle of Man. I
t was intended that I should become a lay reader, but circumstances forbade it.’

  ‘Doesn’t the Captain usually take the service?’

  ‘Captain Bosinney prefers to preside over the bingo.’

  Guderian passed on his way, bowing this way and that, dispensing his ingratiating menace in that remote way of his, as though he was rehearsing this courtly progress to an empty room or perhaps not in an empty room but in front of a group of judges who would be expected to award him marks at the end but for the time being had to act as extras for him to bow to.

  ‘He gives me the creeps,’ Mrs Perse said. ‘I expect you think I say that because he’s foreign, but doctors always give me the creeps.’

  ‘You must have seen a lot of creeps recently, dear.’ Mrs Fitch’s cheeks, so pale and furry when we had met in the train, now shone with pleasure, or perhaps she had caught the sun. The cruise seemed to be doing her nothing but good. You would scarcely know she had any trouble with her speech. Perhaps it was partly a nervous thing.

  ‘That’s the worst thing about ill-health, having to be polite to doctors. Still, I always like to see their faces when I tell them I’ve never smoked in my life and it must be the gin.’

  ‘Oh Cynthia.’

  ‘Call this asparagus. It looks like something they’ve just caught in the propellers. Great thing about cancer is you don’t have to finish everything on your plate.’

  ‘Ladies an’ gentlemen . . .’

  At the far end of the long dining-room with its rococo swags of cherubs and roses roistering along the walls, Dodo heaved into view, massive in his white dinner jacket like some huge creature of the deep long suspected to be extinct but now and then washed up on some far shore to be surrounded by chattering islanders.

  ‘Lemme introduce myself to you good people. I’m Waldo Wilmot and I have the privilege to be the chairman of your line, so I’m where the buck stops. You might say I’m the end of the line. I don’t want to keep you from your gourmet dinner here tonight but I know you’d want me to say a big thank-you to Jacques and his team down in the galley for the magnificent work they do. This is a great company because it’s a great people company. And I’d like to take this opportunity to introduce to you some of the wonderful people who’ll be taking care of you on this trip. On my right here is Captain Philip R. Bosinney, now Phil –’