Earlier that year he had written to Compton Mackenzie about how he took no more interest in music, observing that the secret of happiness for an artist when he grew old was to have a passion which could take the place of his art. This was by way of explaining his new hobby. He went on to say he had discovered the joy diatoms could give him and that the miraculous world of beauty under the ocean as revealed by the microscope was beyond music. Now he kept Steward Pyce to a routine of gathering a daily sample, from this side of the ship or the other, from the bows and from the stern. After several days’ conscientious work with Dowdy’s A Pathologist’s Commoner Micro-organisms he had made his deductions. He resolved to visit Dr Ashe with the perfectly valid excuse of insomnia since he had been sleeping badly since leaving Madeira.
He found the doctor in a cabin disguised as a consulting room, in acrid contemplation from the swivel chair behind a desk of the ceiling fan. This gentleman did not precisely spring to his feet at his appearance but levered his angular form grudgingly upright, both hands on the blotter. In Edward’s recent experience this was a surprising enough departure from the deferential attitude of the ship’s personnel; he was still further taken aback by the question the doctor shot at him.
‘Have you come for an operation, Sir Edward?’
‘An operation? That is, well, no, not so far as I know.’
‘I’m sorry to hear it. I’m getting most infernally bored. Take a chair, sir. Do you know, I had a woman in here not half an hour ago who couldn’t get her necklace off ?’ With a bony finger he tapped his own shirt-front. ‘Royal Army Medical Corps. Qualified at Guy’s and served in France where we cut off the limbs of young men by candlelight. And this … this creature wanted me to help her out of her jewellery. I sent her to the Quartermaster. Told her he had some cable shears which were just the ticket. What?’
‘Indeed,’ said Edward weakly.
‘Can’t stand frauds. Never could. Put my teeth on edge.’
He was regretting he had ever come, especially on such a trivial pretext. Dr Ashe, although probably only in his forties and hence a good twenty years Edward’s junior, had that ability to make one wish to please him – even to placate – which went far beyond any ordinary social recognition of disparate status and in doing so trivialised the very idea. Edward suddenly wished he were quite ill. ‘At least you must have been kept pretty busy the first few days.’
‘If, sir, by “busy” you mean endlessly traipsing about from one cabin reeking of sal volatile to another then yes, I was. We must have walked miles, my assistant and I. Normally I imagine one can expect a few bona fide injuries in rough weather: scalded cooks, stokers who fall off ladders, skulls laid open, that sort of thing. But this time nothing. Nothing but puddles of vomit on the carpet and people with too much money lying around moaning they were going to die. Not soon enough for me. What?’
‘Pardon me if I remark that you’re beginning to strike me as an odd sort of doctor for a cruise liner.’
‘Odd, am I?’ Unexpectedly the doctor’s lower face opened a brief and mirthless cavern. ‘You’re right, sir. I don’t fit at all. This is my first trip and, DV, it’ll be my last. Already I’ve a yearning for dry land. Biggest mistake I ever made, resigning my commission. Fact is I’ve made a balls-up of things … What did you say you’d come about, sir?’
If the confession and the doctor’s manner had left Edward disquieted, this sudden question with its overtones of Punch jokes and bar-room stories made him wonder whether the unusual mode were not perhaps a form of humour designed to see if one were worth bothering with. Well, two could play at that game.
‘I didn’t say I’d come about anything. However, since you ask, are you any good at amputations?’
Dr Ashe’s raptor’s eyes brightened momentarily. ‘Tophole. Anything in particular?’
‘Shall we say it’s of a trichological nature?’
A short silence. ‘You want a damned haircut, sir?’ Abruptly he sat down. Then he grinned again and opened a drawer.
‘You’re a card, Sir Edward. I do believe you like a bit of a prank yourself from time to time.’ He produced a bottle. ‘Would you care for a snifter, sir? Unless you’re worried about the yard-arm?’
‘To be honest I’m not sure I’d know a yard-arm if I saw one. But I don’t mind a spot.’ Why was he all at once so sapped of energy as to allow himself to get drawn further into complicity with this dubious man?
‘I’m afraid it’s Madeira,’ the doctor was saying, ‘but I’m assured it’s a good one and it’s what people round these parts drink any time of day or night.’ He glanced at the porthole. ‘When I say these parts of course …’ He poured two tumblers with much steadiness. ‘Got it off a drunk,’ said Dr Ashe, handing one to Edward.
‘Ah, I heard about the drunks from Miss Air. Grateful patients, were they?’
‘They weren’t patients at all. Regular topers, all of ’em. Know all about the morning after. Not the sort to go running to doctor with a headache. Back to the bar for them, hair of the dog. What? Go on, what did you really come about? I’m not bad at doctoring provided I can stand the patient, you know.’
‘I’m a bad patient if I like the doctor. I pretend to be well just to oblige him. I came with a moan so I’ll keep it to myself.’ He caught a sudden, shrewd gaze from opposite.
‘Just as you please.’
‘On the other hand you might tell me about E. coli.’
‘E. coli? What did you want to know? We’re all riddled with ’em. Micro-organism of the lower alimentary tract not advisable to introduce into the upper.’
‘Does sea-water kill them?’
‘No. That’s why bathers sometimes get sick on beaches near towns.’
‘That partly explains why Funchal harbour’s full of rodshaped bacteria.’
‘I can’t say I’m surprised. How do you know?’
‘I took a sample and looked at it through my microscope. I was looking for diatoms and things but these bacilli just took over.’
‘You have a microscope with you, Sir Edward? I didn’t know you were a bacteriologist as well.’
‘Oh I’m not. Just an amateur. You must have done a bit yourself.’
‘Not since student days. Forgotten the lot. No, it’s interesting for another reason which I’ll tell you if you can keep a secret.’
‘Depends on the secret.’
‘If you like a joke, then. This is quite funny but it’ll spoil everything if you get miffed. You know your steward? He thinks you’re off your head.’
Edward bristled. ‘Pyce? Dash his infernal cheek! He came and told you that?’
‘He did. But before you get exercised let me ask you, has he ever seen your microscope?’
‘What? I suppose he might have done. But only in its case, I believe.’
‘Does he know what it is?’
‘I don’t imagine he does, no. I may have referred to “my instruments” or something like that, though.’
‘Hah. This is rich. The man’s convinced you have trombones in your cabin trunk and that you need sea-water to wash them in. Or to give them to drink, I forget which.’
‘Trombones?’
‘Well, you are a famous musician. And having asked around I gather the fellow has a bit of a history of getting bees in his bonnet about his passengers. Not over-bright, you know. There was apparently a most odd episode involving an American illusionist a few trips ago.’
‘Oh I say.’ And suddenly Edward began laughing and could scarcely stop. ‘Yes. That is … Ah,’ he sat back and dabbed at a trickle of Madeira on his chin. ‘If I read you aright you’re thinking a little fun might be had at the good Pyce’s expense, is that it?’
‘It would be more entertaining than coming clean, wouldn’t it? But only if you feel like a bit of amusement. What?’
Not many months earlier Edward and an elderly boyhood friend had roamed the streets of Worcester for a whole afternoon playing ‘Beaver’ again as they had half a century befor
e. Gripped by the infectious absurdity of beard-spotting they had worked themselves into a fit of near-hysteria. In pain from the effort of preserving a grave demeanour, scoring competitively in undertones, they had both exploded simultaneously on catching sight of a treble-score: a full, rich red beard sailing majestically down Lich Street. Their joint shout had caused heads to turn in time to witness the spectacle of two immensely distinguished men leaning helplessly against a wall by St Michael’s, tears streaming down their cheeks. ‘Japey in excelsis,’ Edward had commented on a postcard to his friend the next day. ‘Japissimo. As of yore. Wot think’ee?’
The conspiracy he and Dr Ashe now hatched was trivial enough: merely to prolong the misunderstanding as far as possible. He undertook to play up while the doctor promised to listen with due gravity to any more of Steward Pyce’s alarmed solicitations of professional advice. It was a measure of each man’s peculiar desperation that neither thought the enterprise tinged with extremity. Later when recounting the whole thing to Molly on deck Edward was astonished by the account he heard himself giving. That a ship’s doctor should admit within minutes to a celebrated passenger that he despised his job and had ruined his life was bizarre in itself; it was stranger still that at the time and under the influence of the man’s curious force Edward, instead of going to the Captain and remonstrating, had stayed to connive at a prank.
Molly was troubled but said nothing, only laughed uneasily into the wind as it flashed invisibly by. She was by now beginning to feel like one of the few people aboard who knew where they were going, what they were doing, why. She alone was not to be swept up into the common ennui, the dancing to all hours, the shrieks of the young, the elderly moping and jesting. Knowing she was not herself even slightly eccentric she was equally certain Edward wasn’t either. On the other hand the doctor had from the beginning struck her as quite mad. She had come upon him on the second day out being lurched as she herself was from side to side in a corridor, preceded by his red-moustached orderly. As one of the few passengers on their feet she had given him a sympathetic smile, greeting him with the observation that he and his orderly must already be tired.
‘Indeed I am,’ Dr Ashe replied, bracing himself against the mahogany handrail and letting his assistant go on out of earshot. ‘Of my dratted orderly. He hasn’t a clue. Frankly the man couldn’t give an enema to a brown-hatter. What?’
Five years had suddenly rolled back on themselves: she at once recognised the crude terminology, the manner of its delivery, something in the way the men held themselves. ‘He’s military,’ Molly thought. ‘They both are. He’s an Army doctor.’ As in Edward’s case the episode was so completely inappropriate, not least in its ferocity, that it was only later she had understood by how much it exceeded all bounds.
Since leaving Madeira she had spent much of each morning studying Portuguese, at first on deck but then in her cabin. It had not taken her long to discover that up in the sunshine the claims on her attention were too many and too strong. Quite apart from the hypnotic view of shifting water which drew her eyes from the page as effectively as though she were being stared at, the nature of a foreign vocabulary was such as to make one progress slowly. Perhaps a minute to read half a dozen new words and then five minutes’ repeating them to the horizon which, when one next looked at one’s watch, turned out to be half an hour’s daydreaming with not a single word memorised. In any case a single young woman sitting by herself in a deck chair with a book on her lap from which her attention was constantly straying acted like a lure to the drones who buzzed about the deck in blazers and white flannels. These tried a variety of approaches whose ingenuity would often have been entertaining had she wished to be entertained. A few had taken the trouble to discover her name; of those only one in five resisted making a pun or some reference to it. One young man, very short and sprite-like and undeniably good-looking had simply bounced up and said ‘I think I should tell you, Miss, that I’m a roaring cad,’ and bounced away again. An hour later he barged into her as she was coming down the stairs and he was going up. ‘See what I mean?’ he said and whizzed on up.
Accordingly she held herself to a set routine of three hours’ study in her cabin after breakfast, like one facing an imminent examination. This was no hardship: she was accustomed to a disciplined life and besides, she had been preparing for this trip ever since arriving back in Liverpool from her previous one. Not that she had spent the year systematically learning Portuguese. She had taken a job as a nanny to supplement what savings she still had and the children and their family had exhausted her to the point where her only thought on most nights was to crawl into bed. Her days off had been spent shopping in the local town and – in one or two rare instances – painting in the grounds of her employers’ Sussex mansion.
But if she had not acquired much book-learning she had been preparing herself mentally for the exile she was pleasurably storing up for herself. She had seen the Amazon and was as one who has glimpsed the Grail. There was indeed a purposefulness about her throughout that year reminiscent of someone about to set out on a crusade. She put her affairs in order; she wrote an unfaltering letter to Hugh Ogden telling him that her mind was made up; she broke the news to her parents. Her mother wept, her father was angry, her elder brother told her she was one of nature’s spinsters and a daubing spinster at that. She had herself wept, but in the empty Ladies Only compartment of the train taking her back to Sussex, angry for this little display of drama she was suddenly too weary to prevent, knowing as she cried that generally speaking people weep only when they can be seen but that of coarse this did not preclude their being their own audience. Not one of them, she thought miserably to herself, not one of them said a word of encouragement. Not one of them even cared to know why I’m doing it. Still less did it cross anybody’s mind that it might actually be rather an interesting thing to go and paint a famous and distant forest.
And at that moment, somewhere in the neighbourhood of Haywards Heath, she perceived her whole history in a flash as one continuous chain of other people’s objections. From preferring science to the violin at school, through nursing training and her demand to be sent to France, to her increasing determination to paint and travel: all this had been in the teeth of every possible discouragement including threats like her own brother’s disguised as prediction. And once this clean perception had come to her it was amazingly followed by a swift happiness as at bursting out of a tunnel and finding a tranquil landscape spread out on either side. That was how things were, it no longer constituted a problem; she was on her own. She had emerged at Hassocks singing like the blackbirds in the elder sprays which overhung the platform, pleased to find the children had come to greet her in the pony and trap.
In the end she and her two charges had become quite attached to one another and when her departure day came she was sorry to be leaving, while knowing that as soon as the carriage door closed on her she would not be at all sorry to have left. Suddenly the imminence of her great trip had made her afraid and for an instant she was like someone hesitating to leave a warm bed in a freezing dawn. But in the event it was an easy transition and she had sat on the station forecourt with twenty minutes to spare drawing a funny picture in each of the children’s autograph books. For Alastair she drew ‘Pony and Trap’, which showed a puzzled-looking horse sniffing a set mousetrap complete with a piece of cheese. (‘But does it go off and catch his nose?’ demanded the child. ‘Wait and see,’ she had told him. ‘One day you might open your book and find it has’.) For Hetty, who climbed anything she could, Molly drew ‘Horse and Rider’: a caricature of Hetty herself, pigtails flying, mounted on the clothes horse which often stood by the nursery fender. ‘If I keep looking,’ said Hetty, ‘do I fall off ?’ ‘Probably not,’ said Molly, getting out with her hat box, ‘but I expect you will if you keep climbing.’ Once or twice while learning Portuguese aboard the Hildebrand she would glance up and think of the children and smile without missing them. They were pleasant little imag
es while more puzzling concerns swiftly overlaid them. ‘Why on earth do they need two verbs “To Be”?’ she murmured to her cabin walls. ‘Surely one is quite sufficient?’
Several cabins away the adventurous Fortescue could also now and then be found, similarly engaged with preparations for his aerial surveys. He worked largely on the eau-de-Nil carpet since the writing table provided by Booth’s for their passengers was genteelly proportioned and his linen-backed maps overhung it like altar cloths. So he studied their exotic tapestries on the floor, on his knees, rulers and pencils and dividers strewn across mysterious terrains. More than ever as he drew his light lines and made notes in an exercise book he resembled a schoolboy, tongue emerging beneath the moustache as he frowned in concentration. Now and then he sat back on his heels and took up an ivory slide-rule which he then let fall with his hands to his lap. ‘A hundred gallons, near as dammit,’ he softly addressed the legs of the desk. ‘Call it a hundred and twenty … safe side … we’ll need two caches in that sector … one hour each way …’
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