The Boy in the Green Suit

by Robert Hillman

  I saved money. When I had twenty pounds, I went to a travel agency and asked about fares to the Seychelles. It was not possible to travel from Australia directly to the Seychelles, as it turned out. What you might do was travel to Ceylon, catch a boat to Mombasa, then another to the Seychelles. The fare to Ceylon was seventy pounds, one way. I paid a deposit on the boat fare, allowing myself four months to save the balance. My plan was to show my stories to the editor of a big newspaper in Ceylon, get a job as a reporter or book reviewer, save more money, then head off to Mombasa and finally to the Seychelles. In preparation, I sold my cricket bat and bought a beach towel.

  Ship

  My father was reluctant to let me, at sixteen, sail off to Ceylon. At the same time, he was impressed by my initiative. ‘Wouldn’t of believed he had it in him,’ he said to me. (He’d formed a habit of talking to me in this indirect way when he was offering praise.) ‘Nope, wouldn’t of believed it.’ What he did believe was that I had a return ticket and some hundreds of pounds in my pocket. That’s what I’d told him. He also believed that I had guaranteed employment in Ceylon. I believed it, too, in a way. I was surprised myself when I was later forced to admit that I had no return ticket, no guaranteed employment, and only two pounds in my pocket.

  The folly of my plan didn’t properly hit home until I turned a corner down at the pier and saw the ship. It was a huge white thing, terrifying. The portholes somehow made it grin. I wanted to run away. ‘Greek ship, is it?’ my father said. He’d come to see me off. He insisted on carrying my suitcase. ‘Don’t speak Greek, do you?’ My father’s suspicion of my reading extended to the belief that I may have picked up foreign languages on the sly. ‘Listen, I’m not coming on board,’ he said. He handed me my suitcase and sniffed, and walked away for a moment to wipe his eyes. ‘One thing,’ he said. ‘You know we love you. I’m y’ dad, wherever you are. You get in trouble, I want to know, okay?’ He walked away to wipe his eyes again. ‘Shouldn’t be letting you do this, should I?’ he said. He walked away again, but this time didn’t turn back.

  In my cabin, I dressed myself carefully in my new green suit. The green suit was the closest I could come to the sort of attire that more sophisticated people wore. In trying to approximate the figure that an expensively dressed gentleman would cut, I had under-estimated the importance of physique. My green suit gave me the appearance of a tall, thin grasshopper. The trousers were tight and too short, and showed too much of my white tennis socks. The jacket, quilted and with gold buttons impressed with the image of a Roman emperor, fitted me a little too loosely. Lacking a waistcoat, I wore a green cardigan, unaware that the plaited leather buttons of the cardigan diminished the impact of the daring, imperial buttons of the jacket. My shoes were stylishly pointed. I thought I looked smart, rakish, dangerous and cosmopolitan. My confidence was reinforced by the coolly appraising looks of the other passengers as I made my way to the dining salon for the first dinner out of port.

  I began to imagine myself coping. As I took my seat at the table, I experienced one of those warm updrafts of conviction. But these thermals can falter in seconds. The Greek woman beside me asked quietly if I wouldn’t prefer to sit with my mama and papa. I didn’t understand for a minute or so. ‘You going—by yourself?’ she exclaimed, and when I confirmed this, she whispered to her husband. He studied me sceptically, then shrugged.

  It was a struggle to hold on to the sophisticated image. But I had fifty pounds that my father had given me for postage stamps—he wanted no excuses about staying in contact. I went up to the bar on the open deck and ordered a dry martini—my first. Drinks were cheap on the open seas. I ordered a second and a third, impressed with the taste. I had never seen an olive before. I strolled back to my cabin (shared with five other passengers), carefully hung up my green suit, placed the three olives in the drawer of my bedside table and went to sleep.

  I woke in terror. I looked at my watch and saw that I’d slept for fifteen hours. The cabin was empty. The rackety, smiling Greeks in the other five bunks must have gone up on deck. The motion of the ship was an ugly swagger. I had gone away from everyone who knew or cared about me.

  I lifted my suitcase onto my bunk and opened it. On top was my typewriter, my little Olivetti. Next came my books, thirty of them. I stacked them beside the bunk, reassured by their familiarity. I put the typewriter under the blanket, then climbed in myself, clutching Doctor No and The Sun Also Rises to my chest. I began to feel better. I fingered the typewriter keys and thought of the novel I might write that combined the best of Ian Fleming and Hemingway. Then I dressed in my green suit and went up on deck for some more dry martinis.

  Loneliness, I discovered, is dense. One layer builds on another, packing it down. I lay in my cabin all day, reading, fretting, yearning. The Greek lady at the dining table had taken to cutting my meat into small pieces and exhorting me to leave a clean plate. She would croon softly, ‘Too thin, too thin …’ I had fallen in love with her, but also with a dozen other women. I wished just one of them would come to my cabin and allow me to speak to her wittily about literature before I took off her clothes and she smothered me with her breasts. I composed love letters to the Greek lady, telling her of my admiration for Greek civilisation and Plato and so on.

  I roamed the corridors late at night, hoping that a door would open and one of the many carefree girls I saw on deck during the day would wrench me inside and force me onto the cabin floor. I became a witness to the post-midnight life of the passengers. Alone in the deck lounge, a chubby girl with a mass of tight red curls like a russet cauliflour practised the lines of the argument she intended to have with her boyfriend. A shirtless old man played cards by himself on the floor of a C deck corridor. One of the carefree girls I so coveted slipped into the shadowed alcove in which I was suffering, bent nimbly and removed her pants from under her dress, then disappeared. An Englishwoman carried her son out onto the games deck, one hand muffling his mouth; she belted the hell out of him, then carried him back below, her hand again over his mouth.

  Most arresting of all was a woman in a nightie standing at the rail on the stern, nursing the tiniest of babies. The woman’s face in the moonlight was a green mask of fatigue and despair. I thought she was going to throw the baby overboard, but as I inched closer I heard the murmur of her song: ‘… little star, how I wonder what you …’ I had to admit to disappointment. If she had tossed the baby into the wake, I would have dived in and saved it. I would have denied hero status when interviewed for the ship’s newspaper: ‘“I just happened to be there at the time,” passenger Hillman insisted.’

  I could feel my brain—against my will—working out the details of another magnificent display of daring, like the Myers façade. Loneliness becomes looniness, after a bit. Whether madness is murderous or farcical is just a matter of temperament. Denied a good motive for jumping into the sea by that tired mum, I thought I might jump in for no reason at all. I was a good swimmer. I could imagine staying afloat for a very, very long time in the warm Indian Ocean. Eventually, I would bob ashore on the African coast, which didn’t look all that far away on the map near the Purser’s office. And so I began to plan this epic freestyle crossing of the Indian Ocean—I would need to take some oranges, and my sheath knife to fend off sharks. I had a very good sheath knife. I had packed it in case I needed a subsidiary source of income once I reached the Seychelles. My primary source would be writing tales for magazines, but during periods of writer’s block I would dive for pearls and giant clams in the reefs. I had also brought two packs of playing cards with me. I could make a living as a gambler if all else failed.

  The big obstacle to the Indian Ocean swim was my typewriter. My books were a problem, too. How could I lug them along with me? Eventually, I worked something out. If I were to partially blow up three or four balloons (balloons were no problem, they were everywhere in the entertainment lounge) and stuff them into my suitcase, then seal the suitcase with tape,
the thing would float, and I could push it ahead of me. I found the balloons and tucked them into the case, but it made a very heavy sea chest, I had to admit. I fretted over the problem for days, then put it aside and threw myself into preparing a costume for the fancy dress party in the entertainment lounge. I would go as an Arab—or not as an Arab, but as T. E. Lawrence. I was crazy about T. E. Lawrence. I’d seen the movie. When Peter O’Toole strode along the roof of the wrecked train in his flowing white fairy-tale robes, I flipped.

  I felt sublime on the night of the fancy dress party. I’d tossed down four or five dry martinis while stalking about the deck in my Lawrence outfit. The outfit was made from bed sheets. My sheath knife hung from my belt. My pointed shoes were not in keeping with the robes, but I’d tied some coloured streamers to the laces to give the footwear a festive look. By the time of the fancy dress parade, I was floating.

  I hit the floor with the other contestants, circling again and again past the judges. It occurred to me that I needed some sort of flourish to properly attract their attention. I drew my knife from its sheath and held it aloft, just as Lawrence might have done. I was pounced on immediately by a couple of ship’s officers, who wrestled me into a corridor and confiscated the knife. One of them thrust his nose against mine and dilated his nostrils like a foxhound. ‘Too much beers!’ he hissed. ‘Where your father?’ I refused to answer. My feelings were hurt. The two officers let me go, but only after a lot of scowling. I was told that I could retrieve my knife from the Purser in the morning.

  Up on deck, wounded, bitter, I gazed at the silver wash coiling against the hull. Not so far away in the black night lay the coast of Africa. I climbed the railing with some difficulty, hampered by my robes. When I leapt, I made slow progress. The same officers were now holding fast to my robes. I was made to sit in a deckchair and listen to a stern lecture, a tag-team lecture, with one officer taking over from the other at regular intervals. The first officer spoke about the terrible things that alcohol could do to a person. The second spoke about death by drowning. The first dismissed the luxury of drowning and promised me that I would first be mangled in the ship’s screw. The second asked if I had any brains in my head. In the end, they let me go.

  After the swimming-to-Africa debacle, self-preservation prevailed once more. I stopped drinking. I enjoyed periods of reflection. I wandered the ship without paying too much attention to anything. I decided I would live an essentially solitary life, and probably work for world peace. During one of these melancholy saunters, I discovered the ship’s library. It was a beautifully made room with dark wooden panelling. It was deserted when I found it and deserted every time I visited it. Amongst the books (in tall shelves that had been carpentered to fit around portholes) I came across writers who were new to me (well, a lot of writers were new to me) and entered into a reading rhapsody. I took Pale Fire down from the shelves, read the foreword and the 999-line poem where I stood, reached for Soldier’s Pay and read well into that, then harvested a further half-dozen volumes of whatever caught my attention and retired to the librarian’s desk. (The librarian, so far as I could ever judge, did not exist.) It was bliss. A hum developed in my head and heart that harmonised perfectly with the burr of the ship’s engines. I lived between the library, the dining room and my cabin for a week.

  I don’t know quite what it is that we might learn from reading, other than the template of narrative. My reading didn’t enhance my ability to cope with life. It didn’t place my fantasies in relief, so that I could see them for what they were. On the contrary. For Whom the Bell Tolls convinced me that my destiny lay in blowing up bridges on which fascists were advancing. Faulkner’s Soldier’s Pay gave me the feeling that war was probably very exciting, so long as you didn’t get shot too often. Brideshead Revisited nudged me in the direction of a career at Oxford, perhaps after the war on fascists. Doctor Zhivago made me a more convinced communist. Perhaps the reader can learn from literature only what he or she already knows—perhaps it’s confirmative rather than educative. I knew nothing.

  The ship, meanwhile, was drawing closer to Ceylon. Passengers intending to disembark at Colombo were invited to gather with their cabin luggage outside the Purser’s office. I lugged my suitcase down, filled in a form for the Ceylonese immigration officers, then spent an hour on the deck rail gazing in anxious rapture at the great green bay, at the dirty yellow sky above the ramshackle city, at the hundred small boats muddling toward us on the wrinkles of the sea. Men as black as shoes screamed at the passengers, hoisting up wares in nets on the end of long poles—cowries, conches, tennis shoes, yellow plaster buddhas. Bolts of cloth were unfurled, one after another, the merchants keening with nonchalant hysteria for attention. I noticed that many were no more than boys. The only difference between the boys and the full-grown men was age. All did the same work; all wore expressions of cheerful disdain. ‘Give us your money then go to hell.’ They terrified me, the merchants, but I was attracted, too. They were tough, lean, nimble. If I could survive in the city that was home to these pirates, I could survive anywhere.

  I picked out a three-storey colonial building down near the dock. That might be the headquarters of the newspaper I would work for—the Colombo Herald, the Ceylon Mercury, whatever it would turn out to be called. I saw myself setting off for work with a notebook and a couple of biros, interviewing conch hustlers down at the dock. Friendships would develop. I would become a familiar figure around Colombo, hailed by the mighty and the humble alike. Later, I’d head up into old India, and do for the Indians what I’d done for the Ceylonese. I’d be firm but affectionate with the women I came to know.

  But the Ceylonese immigration officers stuck a spoke in my wheel. I was called up by the Purser and asked to sit at a folding card-table with two men who looked like the boat merchants but wore white shirts and a weary manner.

  ‘What brings you to Ceylon, Mister Hillman?’

  ‘Just having a look.’

  ‘What is your profession?’

  ‘Reporter.’

  ‘Reporter?’

  ‘For newspapers.’

  ‘I see. Well, Mister Hillman, according to your form, you have brought no money with you. Is that correct?’

  ‘I’ve got some money.’

  ‘I see. How much, would you say?’

  ‘Seven pounds Australian. Seven pound ten Australian.’

  ‘I see. And it says here you have no return ticket?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘How do you intend to buy things? Food?’

  ‘I’ll get a job.’

  ‘A job?’

  ‘On the newspaper.’

  ‘I see. Mister Hillman, you cannot come to Ceylon. You must have money. You must have a ticket. You must have employment. Where are your parents?’

  Highly insulted once more, I took my suitcase back to my cabin and sat moodily on my bunk, thinking bitterly of all the obstacles that ambition had to leap. Eventually, one of the ship’s officers knocked at the door and invited himself in. He was fat and sour and could barely control his impatience. While he interviewed me, sitting on a bunk opposite, he held his hat in both hands and drummed one foot on the floor.

  ‘Do you know what now?’ he said. ‘Now you come to Greece.’

  ‘To Greece?’ I began to warm to the idea instantly. But new plans would have to be made.

  ‘Yes! Because you have no money! You have no ticket! You come to Greece and go to the Embassy Australia.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘You should be not on this ship! Where is your mama?’

  ‘In Australia.’

  ‘Ha! You go home, your father and mama smack you on the backside!’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Why! Why! Because you have no money! We take you to Greece, you go back to Australia!’

  I thought this plan absurd, but I didn’t say so.

  The officer glared at me for
a little longer, then shook his head in disgust and left. He took my passport with him.

  If that’s the way it is, I thought, then that’s the way it is. I went up to the deck bar for a couple of dry martinis, then to the library. Hmm. Madame Bovary. I’d heard of it. I took it back to my cabin and started reading.

  The five Greeks in my cabin began to take a real interest in me after the ship left Colombo. I explained why I was still on board, and they listened with respect. Then they laughed and slapped their thighs and punched me on the shoulder. They thought I’d pulled a swifty. They winked and pointed at their temples. One of them, a boy of about eighteen with the shoulder span of a sixteen-wheel highway clipper, offered to introduce me to the girlfriend of his girlfriend when we reached Piraeus. ‘More beautiful,’ he said. ‘More good for you.’

  Madame Bovary thrilled me, but it troubled me, too. I thought, whoa, I’m not like Emma, am I? Always thinking there should be something more? A complainer? Mere discontent was treated with scorn by my father. He would be sympathetic if there was an identifiable cause—‘I’m afraid of the dark’—but if I complained of just feeling miserable, he’d fly into a rage. ‘People don’t feel crook for just nothing! If you feel crook, what’s wrong with you? You’re not a girl, are you? Jesus Christ, look at Benny Fenshaw! Five kids to feed and he’s told he hasn’t got a job anymore! His bloody missus nagging him to death. How do you think he feels? You’ve got a bloody roof over your head. You’ve got your three meals a day. You’ve got your bloody family. What the hell more do you want?’

  This was working-class stoicism with a little poison added (the man–woman relationships of the working class in my father’s generation were often conducted on the frontier of homicide), but it was also the moral truth and seemed inarguable to me. Even today, as an approximate adult, my standard rejoinder to bleak voices from within comes straight from my father’s phrase-book of moral correctives: ‘Jesus, it’s not the friggin’ Burma–Siam railway, is it?’