Dreaming Spies (9 page)

After dinner Holmes and I divided forces: he to the smoking room where the men gathered over cards, and me to the cocktail lounge with the Young Things. I settled with my lurid drink into a seat between two middle-aged owners of Ceylonese tea plantations. They looked at me in
surprise, but I gave them a bright and slightly tipsy smile and asked them how things were in Ceylon. That took care of conversation for the next half hour. I pretended to sip and feigned interest, but my ears and brain were entirely taken up with the conversation going on behind my shoulders.

“Sorry to see your time among the Babus has ruined your palate, old man.” Thomas Darley’s drawl, answered by Monty Pike-Elton’s nasal honk.

“What’s wrong with gin, you snob?”

“Mother’s ruin.”

“It does the job. But speaking of mothers, that new one you’ve picked up—good work, man!”

“What, the Pater’s wife? Not bad.”

“A toasty crumpet, my man. How’d the old codger—”

“Monty, for God’s sake, can’t you at least pretend at civilised manners?”

“Touchy, eh? When’d they get hitched?”

“Last summer. They’ve known each other for yonks—she was married to some bloke the Pater knew in the War. After Mamá died, he said the house felt empty, and when they came across each other at some tedious party, she was at something of a loose end as well. They hit it off.”

“So, what, this is their honeymoon?”

“More like a world tour. They both have old friends, here and there.”

“And they brought Tommy-the-Lad on the honeymoon?” Monty’s laugh was goose-like.

“Not sure she was all that keen on it, but I guess she wanted to show that she didn’t intend to push him around. Fitting in with the family, you know?”

“I’d be happy to fit in, too, if there’s room.” His meaning was so unmistakeable, even Lady Darley’s unwilling stepson had to object.

His drawl became more marked. “Monty, have some respect, she is the Pater’s wife. She’s … well, she’s not a bad sort, really. Had a tough time of it, for a while.”

“What, your old man married an adventuress?”

“Monty, in another minute I’m going to have to stand up and hit you.”

“Ah, you know I’m just digging at you. Seriously, chap, I’m happy for your Pa. Nice enough bloke.”

“Thank you. How’s your family?”

“Don’t think Ceylon is doing what they’d hoped for the family fortunes. Father’s drinking himself to death. The Mother has herself a poodle-faker she drags around to garden parties.” I snorted into my mauve liquid, startling my tea-planters into silence. When I had them going again, my ears swivelled back to the two men behind me. They were talking about cards, a technical and complicit conversation that had me making a mental note: warn Holmes against playing with these two.

Madness and love are

The playwright’s favourite themes
.

Are they so different?

Once we had left Colombo and set out across the Bay of Bengal, the hard-driving tutorials—courses whose absence I had so happily anticipated—descended in force. My chief pleasure in the program, apart from the benefits of knowledge, was to see Holmes forced to labour beside me rather than wielding the whip.

Our initial intention, to abandon ship at the earliest opportunity, was rendered less urgent by this unexpected series of challenges. Holmes, happy enough to cram a new language into his brain, was even happier to be given a second chance at a perceived villain he had let slip through his fingers. I, for my part, found an investigation of my own: that of Miss Sato herself.

Invariably, we were thrown together outside of our actual lesson times. This was true for pretty much every First-Class passenger, but when one shared an interest in books and a lack of interest in other onboard amusements, certain conversations were inevitable.

A few mornings into the trip, I came onto my preferred section of
deck (the furthest from the shuffleboard courts) and found Miss Sato tucked into one of the deck-chairs, a book in her hand and a charming frown-line between her eyebrows. She glanced up, we exchanged greetings, and then both of us settled to our reading.

She was still working her way through the Shakespeare plays, although her book-mark had not made much progress. She was taking notes. A lot of notes.

So I wasn’t particularly surprised when, after I let my own library book fall shut (Sinclair Lewis: I should have chosen the Mary Roberts Rinehart), she stirred.

“Mrs Russell?”

I stopped rubbing my eyes and replaced my spectacles. “Yes, Miss Sato, what can I do for you?”

“Do you understand Shakespeare?”

Did Shakespeare understand Shakespeare? “Not entirely. What are you reading?”

“Henry Four.”

“You know,” I said, “the plays really need to be read aloud. Just following the words on the page, one loses a lot.” The rhythm of the language, the passion behind it. The meaning. There was a reason the Rabbis insisted that the Torah be read in full voice, that the whole body might participate in the learning.

“This one I did see, in New York. And I think I follow all the war and revolting things.” I stifled a smile at her English. “But Falstaff, him I do not understand. Why is he there?”

Greater literary minds than mine have wrestled with that question. Why, indeed, keep breaking into the drama of war with the continuous buffoonery of Prince Henry’s sotted companion? And why give that future King such an inappropriate companion in the first place? “I know. They might as well be called
Falstaff Parts One and Two
.”

“Prince Henry say—
says
—Prince Henry says he is only friends to make himself look better, later. This does not seem to me a noble thing to do.”

“No. I think Shakespeare was far more interested in Falstaff than he was in either of the kings, but he was working his way through the kings of England, so he had to let the Henrys come forward.”

“He would rather have been writing a comedy?”

“
The Merry Wives of Windsor
does seem a more comfortable setting for the old drunkard.”

“But Shakespeare put him into the Henry plays.”

“Most of his dramas have comic touches.”

She did not seem satisfied. Then again, neither was I. There was no way around it: Sir John Falstaff got a bum deal from his Prince, and his creator.

“I think maybe Falstaff is the hero,” she said after a time.

“Oh, I agree that Shakespeare probably wanted to write a comedy here, but at the time found himself stuck with dramas.”

“No, I mean, he
is
the hero. Prince and Falstaff both not what they appear: Harry says he is pretending to be young and irresponsible—an act, so everyone will be very impressed when he suddenly grows up, becomes noble. Silly reason. But Falstaff also act the fool, only he stay there, to force Harry to choose—really choose. Where does noble behaviour get a man? Forced to behave, made to marry a stranger for his country, having to lead men he loves into death? Who would want that? But with Falstaff, Harry is forced not just to look noble, but to
be
noble, and turn his back on the old friend for the bigger cause.”

She frowned at the book, looking for words that fit her thoughts. “I think maybe, secretly, Shakespeare make Falstaff not just the fool, but his hero. In the end, Falstaff teaches Harry all. About loyalty, about how very, very hard it is to be king. In the end, Falstaff give his—
gives
his life, his honour, to his new King. When Harry refuses his foolish old friend, that is when he is marked as a king.”

I stared at her delicate and unlined face, frowning at the mysterious volume in her hands as if it was conveying some personal message to her alone. I’d never thought of the character that way, merely regarded him as a problematic artefact of a playwright working too fast for reflection.

“That’s an … interesting interpretation.”

She looked up then. “Ah, sorry, is only my silly thoughts.”

“Absolutely not. It’s … Well, certainly that’s what the playwright did with Lear’s fool. Have you got to
King Lear
yet?” Lear’s nameless man-boy wields neither power nor fear. He is a despised servant who is yet the King’s only friend, a non-son who brutally mocks his master but remains loyal when everyone else has betrayed him. The Fool spends all his energies trying to goad Lear from his madness, and at the end—with an enigmatic,
I’ll go to bed at noon
—he disappears. Theologically speaking, the Fool is an Old Testament prophet with pratfalls. I shook my head. “I admit, I’d never seen Falstaff as a hero. I will have to read those plays again.”

“Aloud?” Her dark eyes had a twinkle.

“Yes. You know,” I said, “that’s not a bad idea. We might ask a few of the others to join in, and we could do group readings.” Long ago, my teacher Miss Sim had done that with me, revealing an invaluable dimension to the text.

This entailed another approach to the purser, who was looking a bit bemused at the seaborne university taking shape around Miss Sato. However, he agreed, and half a dozen of us were soon launched on the Henry plays.

All of which meant that between the stern linguistic demands of Miss Sato, earnest lessons from the devout American Buddhists, the group readings, and her public lecture series on customs of all kinds (followed by the enthusiastic discussions those lectures set off amongst the passengers), Holmes and I were well occupied. He made no further mention of a rapid disembarking at the next large port.

Plus, there remained the question of blackmailers and card sharks.

Three weeks of enforced intimacy made it difficult to hide matters from one’s fellow travellers. Only the most gifted and inexhaustible of actors could maintain a rôle that whole time. Some did not try. Lady Darley and her stepson, Thomas, for example, avoided expressing their mutual distaste by the simple means of coming together as rarely as two people could within a floating village: the viscount dined with his friends, participating in vigorous sport on the sun deck during the day and raucous
entertainments and card games during the night, while the earl’s wife kept to the shaded promenade deck, sat with her husband at the Captain’s table, and turned in early. The only times they were in a room together was during Miss Sato’s afternoon salons, and even then, the two occupied opposite sides of the room, each pointedly taking no notice of the other.

Similarly, one always knew if two passengers had a falling-out: when Tommy made amorous advances on Virginia Wilton three days before Manila, her brother, Harold, bristled every time the viscount appeared. But the ship’s relief when the two siblings disembarked for their missionary work in the Philippines was short-lived, for Tommy then turned his eyes on Lucy Awlwright, and the good-natured competition for that young woman’s affections that had been brewing between the two Australian brothers erupted overnight into open fury. For two days, we all awaited outright fisticuffs or a mid-night cry of “Viscount overboard!” Intervention came from an unexpected direction: I was up on the rolling deck one evening, dinner having started and the decks being nearly deserted, when my eye was caught by motion. I craned my neck, then went still at the sight of Lady Darley—and her stepson.

They kept their voices low, but one could see the intensity of their manner. Facing each other, the two stood as rigid as the deck-post behind them. She was delivering a lecture—and although he protested, even reaching out a hand to her, she took a step back and crisply delivered his marching orders. She left. He watched her go. Then he took out his cigarette case and smoked furiously, crushing the butt out on the wooden boards before he followed her down to the dining room.

That night over cards, Tommy withdrew his flirtations from Lucy Awlwright, leaving the field to the Arthur brothers. The rest of the ship breathed a sigh of relief.

Questions on the seas:

When is a fool not a Fool?

When his blood runs blue
.

If I was interested in Lady Darley, it was doubly true when it came to her titled husband. I might claim that I was merely being loyal to my own husband’s endeavours, like a golfer’s wife who learns to knock the gutta-percha ball into a hole. That was certainly true to a degree. But beyond wifely reinforcement, our relationship always had something in the order of a contest about it: who could claim the correct answer first?