‘Mind,’ said the steward behind Walker, poking a bowl of soup at him, ‘or you’ll get this all over you.’
‘I am liking it all wery much,’ said the Indian.
‘You play it with a sort of long stick and those round wooden counters, I suppose you might call them,’ said the shuffleboard man.
‘Talk, talk, talk,’ said the old lady.
The ship suddenly dipped and trembled a little in the open sea. Laughing screams came from other tables, and the steward spilled a bowl of soup in the lap of the shuffleboard man. ‘Good God, man!’ he cried.
‘Oh lord,’ said the steward, ‘look at me.’
‘It’s going to be rough,’ said the girl next to Walker, looking at him with fright.
‘Please do not be afraid.’ said the Indian. ‘That was really not at all bad. I have been in a ship that turned itself over. But I do not think this ship will turn itself over.’
‘A good wipe and you won’t know there’s been anythink spilled at all,’ said the steward, wiping the lap of the shuffle-board man with his cloth.
‘The crew are all drunk,’ said the old lady, leaning forward and looking at Walker. ‘Let’s all pray.’
‘And it is so very much safer here than to fly,’ said the Indian. ‘I have been on an aeroplane that crashed and burned many people to death on the side of a mountain.’
‘I bet you have,’ said the old lady.
The ship seemed to have steadied again, but it had disquieted all the less sophisticated passengers, of whom Walker was one.
‘I don’t know, I think I’d rather fly,’ said the girl next to him, turning to face him, ‘wouldn’t you?’
‘My dear,’ said the dowagerly lady, ‘if God had intended people to fly, he would have given them wings, you know.’ She turned her stony blue eyes to look at Walker and added, ‘Isn’t that so, Mr Bigears?’
Walker said rather boldly, ‘Well, by that rule, if God had intended people to go from England to America at all, he would have joined the two continents together.’
The dowagerly lady became haughty and declared to the shuffleboard man, ‘Mr Bigears knows no fear. Mr Bigears is absolutely fearless.’
‘My name isn’t Mr Bigears,’ said Walker delicately.
‘That’s my name for you,’ said the old lady, snatching up a cardboard dunce’s hat from beside her plate and putting it on her head. ‘I always have my own names for people. I call all my friends the most atrocious names. They hate me for it.’
At the other end of the table, Dr Jochum, who had donned a scholar’s cardboard mortar-board, was talking to the Indian about American schools. ‘Such places!’ he cried. ‘There are in existence many records of feral children, children who are abandoned in woods and parented by wolves or bears; of course, they cannot write or talk or reason logically but they are capable to catch a rabbit. So it is with these places, these high schools. We abandon our children there and when they grow up they cannot write or talk or reason logically but they know how to dance the quickstep. Always the minimum necessary for survival.’
‘I hope America’s nice,’ said the girl next to Walker. ‘Have you been there?’
‘No,’ said Walker. ‘I hope it is too.’
‘They all smoke between courses,’ said the old lady.
‘I never expected to go,’ said the girl. ‘It seems amazing, somehow, me here. I live in Rickmansworth, and I taught in a private school. Nothing ever happened to me. Then suddenly a friend of my father’s, who happens to be a London businessman, had to go over to America and he found they were terribly keen on having English secretaries over there. Apparently it’s a great status symbol to have people with English voices answering the telephone. So, well, this friend of my father’s told an industrialist in St Louis, Mo., that I had secretarial qualifications. And the next thing was, right out of the blue, such a surprise, I got a letter from him asking me to be his private secretary. Well, I weighed it up this way, and I weighed it up that way, and finally I decided to go. But I don’t know, I’m afraid it’s going to be very different over there, different from everything.’
‘I suppose it will be,’ said Walker.
‘I suppose that’s why people like us come. You can get so terribly bored with yourself, can’t you?’
‘Yes, indeed,’ said Walker.
‘I never do,’ said the old lady. ‘I find myself endlessly fascinating.’
Walker found himself gradually tempted to withdraw from the conversation. The gay concourse with wonderful people that he had rather expected on the voyage was hardly what he was getting, and in addition the swaying of the sea was upsetting him rather badly. The food struck him as rather less than magnificent, too, and all in all the bright light of new experience and great discoveries that he had expected to shine here on the ship was far from present. Some of his fellow travellers struck him as even duller people than himself. Then, suddenly, the old lady tapped on the table with a knife. ‘No more private talking please,’ she said. ‘This is not a good conversation. Not what I’m used to. We must have a simply brilliant conversation. Like people used to do. My mother used to say, No talking between meals. People thought she was terribly dull; then she would come down and be absolutely brilliant all through dinner. She was saving it up, you see; we must all save things up. As my mother said, the dinner table is for conversation: one can always snatch a scrap of something to eat between meals.’
‘Oh, very fine,’ said the Indian.
‘You push them along the deck into some marked squares, and that gives you your score,’ said the shuffleboard man.
The old lady looked at him indignantly, and then turned to Walker. ‘Think of something for us to talk about, Mr Bigears,’ she said. Walker felt uneasy, as victims who know they are in for misfortune often do, and he blushed and straightened his bowler hat.
‘I know,’ said the old lady, ‘let’s play “Who said it?” ’
‘Oho! Is this a game?’ cried the Indian. ‘I am always delighted by games.’
‘Yes, well, it’s a game about poetry. I don’t suppose you have any poetry in India.’
‘Oh, there you are quite wrong, there is much poetry in India.’
‘Well, don’t tell us any. I’ll start. Who said, who said, who said, “They also serve who only stand and wait”?’ There was a pause. ‘Do you know, Mr Bigears?’
Walker said grudgingly, ‘Well, yes I do, as a matter of fact.’
‘Well, say then. If you win it’s your go.’
‘Well, it was Milton.’
‘NO!’ cried the old lady. ‘You lose, I win. Now it’s my go again. Who said, who said . . .?’
‘It was Milton,’ said Walker.
‘Mr Bigears, it was Shakespeare.’
‘Well,’ said Walker, ‘we can look it up in the ship’s library after dinner. It’s the sonnet “When I consider how my light is spent . . .” ’
‘Shakespeare.’
‘I think you’ll find . . .’
‘Temper, Mr Bigears, temper,’ said the old lady. ‘Who said, who said . . .?’
The girl beside Walker had been growing bright red, and now she leaned forward and said, ‘But Mr Bigear . . . this gentleman’s quite right actually. It was Milton.’
‘My dear,’ said the old lady. ‘Don’t take so many potatoes, they’re bad for your spots.’
‘I learned that poem at school.’
‘My dear, of course it was Milton. But it’s my game. I want to win it.’
‘Oh, my word,’ said the Indian.
‘So let’s get on. Who said, “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” ’
‘Ah well, by the same logic,’ said Dr Jochum, ‘this must be Milton.’
‘No, you lose.’
‘Who did say it?’ asked the girl.
‘Omar Khayyam,’ said the old lady. ‘Well, now I’ve won twice, that’s enough of that game, isn’t it, Mr Bigears? Now you think of one.’
‘I suppose there will be many g
ames at the dance tonight,’ said the Indian. ‘Also I am anticipating balloons.’
‘Fun and games,’ said the old lady. ‘I love them. At home I have little parties when my friends come and dust. We play dusting games. It’s terribly popular, quite a thing in the village.’
‘Do people dress up very much?’ asked the girl. ‘I mean, for these dances on the ship.’
‘I hope so,’ said Jochum.
‘The Get-Together Dance,’ said the girl. ‘It sounds great fun.’
‘Ah yes, getting together is great fun, but I have always found that the great difficulty is getting apart again. What impossible friendships one makes on these ships! What hateful people one loves! After all it is only for six days, so one doesn’t need to be so selective. It is all splendid at the time, but a year later the telephone is ringing and a voice tells, “Hullo, you remember me on that ship; you promised to be my host for three months in your house.” We must not take these things too seriously.’
‘I should never dream of doing so,’ said the old lady.
‘Cheese or fruit?’ said the steward breathing hard into the exposed entrance of Walker’s ear.
‘What kind of cheese?’ he asked.
‘Well, now,’ said the steward, ‘there’s ordinary, and what’s that one that begins with a g? We’ve got that.’
The old lady suddenly leaned forward and waved her purse. ‘Oh, Mr Steward,’ she said, ‘be a nice man and get me some figs, will you?’
‘Gorgonzola?’ asked Walker.
‘Figs is first-class fruit, madam,’ said the steward, putting his hand on Walker’s shoulder to lean over.
‘Oh come on, Mr Vasco da Gama, you go and tell the Chief Steward that Lady Hunt-Francis would like a few figs.’
‘Gouda?’ asked Walker.
‘I’ll see what I can do, my lady,’ said the steward, going off. Defeated by privilege, reduced by this apotheosis of England, Walker looked across at the old lady, tying a scarf across her pinched and ancient breast. He felt that he and she were participants in some old war which he was always in the habit of losing.
‘See you at the dance then,’ said the girl next to him.
‘I insist you don’t dance with me, Mr Bigears,’ said the old lady. ‘I looked under the table at your feet. They’re as big as your ears.’ The steward came back and set down two plates: for Walker a piece of ancient mousehole cheese, and for Lady Hunt-Francis a large plateful of gaily arranged figs.
‘Thank you,’ said Lady Hunt-Francis, and then looked up across the table to catch Walker’s eye. ‘Shakespeare,’ she murmured, as she tackled a fig.
Why voyage? thought Walker, standing on deck after dinner, a sadly aggrieved man. Such things are never what they are said to be. The water whirled, the thought of the Get-Together Dance saddened him, and the prospect of dancing with the red-haired girl, who before they had left table had secured a promise of several dances, was as exciting as going to the dentist’s. Why did I come? he wondered, looking down over the side. Detritus poured out of a hole in the ship into the water. I’ve condemned myself to miseries I could get more cheaply at home, he thought. He went inside and stumbled, in the rock of the ship, downstairs to his cabin. Richard, Julian and Dr Millingham were getting ready for the dance, taking up all the available space. They stood in line in front of the mirror, tying their ties and discussing whether Wordsworth’s ‘Immortality Ode’ was his farewell to departing powers or his invocation to new ones. Walker wanted to lie down, but the guitar was on his bunk.
‘I thought you’d got lost,’ said Dr Millingham, surveying him through the mirror. ‘Nearly sent out the lifeboat.’
‘I just went out on deck for a minute.’
‘See anything?’
‘No, we must be right away from shore. It’s a black night.’
‘Had a hard day in the City?’ asked Julian. Walker had forgotten about the bowler; he reached up and took it off, leaving a large piece of cardboard adhered to his brow with sweat.
‘Going to the dance?’ asked Dr Millingham.
‘I was thinking I’d go to bed, I don’t fancy it very much.’
‘Oh, come on, it’s going to be utterly wild. To my knowledge there are thirty balloons up there. And a banner saying “Welcome Aboard”. I’m expecting an orgy.’
‘Anybody seen my heather?’ asked Walker. ‘I left some heather in a toothglass on that chest of drawers, and it’s gone.’
‘Oh, was that yours?’ asked Millingham. ‘I put it out in the passageway. Actually it was eating all the oxygen in here.’
Walker went outside and brought it back in again. ‘It was from my wife,’ he said.
‘Oh, very sorry,’ said Dr Millingham. ‘Far be it from me to intervene between man and wife. Look, shove a bit of it in your lapel and then you’ll look a real cut.’
Walker stood passively while Millingham inserted the heather in his buttonhole. ‘Now you’re all set,’ said Millingham. ‘Come on, I’ll take you up there and buy you a drink.’ They went out into the passageway. ‘Look, everyone’s going,’ said Millingham. ‘Just listen to all those lavatories flushing. All getting ready to get together. Where did you say this dance was?’
‘In the bar on the sports deck.’
‘What’s all this in the Winter Garden Lounge, then?’
They peered through the glass doors; a fair-haired purser, perspiring and jolly, was standing up in the middle of a large crowd, seated at tables, and was shouting, ‘Clickety-click, soisant-six, sixty-six, Kelly’s eye, numero un, number one, and what do we do, folks, we . . .’
‘Shake the bag!’ cried the crowd.
‘Bloody bingo,’ said Dr Millingham. As they went up the next staircase the sound of the Hokey-Cokey grew audible. ‘You put your left ear out,’ said Dr Millingham. ‘All the modern dances.’
The bar was a small room, mildly decorated with streamers, and some of the tables had been moved for dancing. A few people, mostly English girls with round blunt bosoms, sweatily danced the Hokey-Cokey to the music of Jack Wilks and His Trio, a group of elderly patriarchs trapped together with their instruments in one corner. Along the bar sat a row of Australians, men and women, all over six feet tall. The men wore black shoes, the women white gloves. As they arrived, the man at the end flicked the ear of the girl next to him and said, ‘Pass it on.’
It was all rather like the public houses Walker went to in Nottingham, and ‘When will this sameness cease?’ he sighed to himself.
‘What’s it to be?’ asked Millingham, pushing up to the bar.
‘I’ll have a stout,’ said Walker, looking around and noting that the red-haired girl was not yet in sight.
‘That’s not drink, that’s food. No, come on, try something American, one of these Tom Collins things. They even give you a stick to poke people with.’
When they had been served, Millingham picked up the drinks and made for the tables. ‘This is the really nice thing about these ships, the cheap booze,’ he said. ‘That’s why people sentimentalize about travel. They do it in a permanent alcoholic haze.’ They passed a table where a group of English youths sat, throwing potato chips in the air and catching them in their mouths as they came down, and another where three close-cropped American boys in tennis shoes wooed a French girl with a high hairdo by mentioning in rapid succession the titles of books they had read. The third table was empty and they sat.
‘Well, here’s to God’s Own Country,’ said Millingham, raising his drink, ‘where the Elk and the Buffalo roam. Not to mention Rotary.’
‘Cheers!’ said Walker, tasting the concoction: it was nice, but not like stout.
‘Where are you going?’ asked Millingham.
‘I’m going to a university called Benedict Arnold University.’
‘Never heard of it. And I’ve heard of most of them.’
‘I hadn’t actually, until they wrote to me. It was headed writing paper, so I thought they must really exist.’
‘Where is it?’ as
ked Millingham.
‘I forgot to look, exactly. Somewhere in the middle.’
‘The cow country, the Bible Belt. Where raiding parties from the Chicago Tribune kill off Englishmen travelling alone. You’re a brave man, Mr Walker. I’m playing it safe, going to Yale. They’ve got a lot of books at Yale.’
There was a stir in the doorway. Smart, looking as though they had just been unwrapped from cellophane, in came seven or eight of the American girls Walker had seen on the Pullman. ‘What’s this?’ said Millingham.
‘Oh, they’re bagpipers,’ said Walker. ‘There’s a party of girls who have been touring Europe playing the bagpipes on board. From a girls’ college in New England.’
‘Why the bagpipes when they could squeeze me against their chests?’ said Millingham.
The girls, wearing either neat black dresses or cashmere sweaters and pleated skirts, sat down; one of them called over a steward and ordered drinks. ‘You know, it’s funny,’ said Millingham, ‘American girls always look like English men. Neat hair, suits, white raincoats, very straight bodies. I’m fascinated by them. Do you think that makes me a fairy?’
‘I don’t think so,’ said Walker. ‘I’m fascinated by them too.’
The steward came back with a tray laden with small brown drinks with cherries on sticks in them; each of the girls took one in turn and the one who had called the steward earlier opened her purse and paid. ‘Salt of the earth, American girls,’ said Millingham. ‘The only thing is, it’s like shopping in a supermarket. There are so many good brands with only marginal differences that you never know which to pick. An embarrassment of riches, that’s what that lot is.’
‘I know,’ said Walker. ‘At one time there there were only a few beautiful girls. Think of all the expense of spirit you went to to get near them. Pushing other people out of the way, stamping on their fingers. Now there are so many it’s enough to turn men passive. Not like it was in my day. I sometimes think I missed out on all the good things. I was a bohemian when the world was against them; I was a lecher when it was frowned upon. It makes me feel like a tired old pioneer.’
Stepping Westward Page 8
