Every Man for Himself (15 page)

The conversation turned to Scurra and the attraction he held for us. He was such a stimulating fellow, deep without being obscure, cultured yet devoid of cant. Neither of us were sure of his profession. I plumped for his being a lawyer but conceded that with his range of acquaintances and his knowledge of pictures, economics and politics he could be any one of a number of things. We remembered the way he had so adroitly dealt with Adele’s fainting fit. Possibly he was a medical man, and then again he might be the proprietor of a newspaper. Rosenfelder had seen him dining with Mr Stead in the a` la carte restaurant.

It was after we had swum three or four lengths and were temporarily beached on the tiled steps, Rosenfelder exhaling like a whale, that I remembered the several explanations given for Scurra’s scarred mouth.

‘That first time we spoke,’ I said, ‘when you took hold of my arm and asked who Scurra was . . . you seemed to think he’d been in a duel.’ ‘So he had. It accounts for his lip.’

‘He told me he was bitten by a parrot in South Africa. And Archie Ginsberg thinks it was a blow from a rifle.’

‘Bird, gun . . . who cares?’ said Rosenfelder. ‘It makes for interest,’ and he plunged into the water and sank upright, the bulge of his bathing cap bobbing like a lily-pad. Thrashing to the surface again, he asked, ‘The people you mix with . . . you find them amusing?’

‘Some more so than others.’

It was then he said, ‘Does it not occur to you that none of them are normal?’

At first I put up a defence, mostly because I feared I was included in their number, but soon fell silent. Nothing he said could be disputed. My friends, he argued, were not living in the proper world. Their wealth, their poorly nurtured childhoods, their narrow education, their lack of morals separated them from reality. Some, those with more intelligence, might struggle to break away, and succeed for a short time, but in the end, like the action of a boomerang, it was inevitable they would return to the starting point.

‘Then there’s little hope for me,’ I said.

‘You are different. You have a conscience. The others will remain perched on a dunghill of money piled up by those who climbed out of the gutters of Europe.’

‘You sound like Scurra,’ I told him.

‘I sound like any man who is no longer young,’ he retorted. ‘They are unworthy companions. I advise you to remove yourself from their influence. Among better people, you may find happiness.’

We didn’t breakfast together. Mrs Duff was taking him to meet Mr Harris, the theatrical producer. I didn’t bother going back to my room but went straight into the restaurant. I was full of good intentions. Wallis was there with Ida and they called me to sit with them. Rosenfelder hadn’t mentioned women among his list of undesirables. No sooner had I done so than Wallis leaned across and smoothed the damp hair back from my forehead. It was an intimate gesture, not in the least motherly. Then, drooping a little in her chair, she confessed to feeling sad.

‘Why?’ I asked.

‘Because you go out of your way to avoid me, Morgan. Which is a pity since I so enjoy being with you.’ She sounded absolutely sincere. She was wearing a blue dress fastened at the shoulder by a glass button which she played with while continuing to gaze at me steadfastly; she didn’t once look away to the door. The expression in her eyes could best be described as both fond and subservient.

I didn’t believe I was fooling myself. Even dear old Ida appeared conscious of undertones; I knew she didn’t take sugar yet twice she stirred her tea so violently that it slopped into the saucer. I didn’t give in immediately; Wallis had raised my hopes before and dashed them just as quickly.

‘I was feeling pretty blue myself earlier on,’ I said. ‘It’s so empty out there.’ I looked towards the windows that cut the now bright day into squares of glittering light; already I could scarcely remember why the world had seemed so dark.

Wallis said, ‘It’s confusing, isn’t it? We long to go home and once there ache to get away.’

‘But to what?’ I countered. Talking to Wallis was not unlike sparring with Scurra. It occurred to me that he’d infected the ship.

‘In your case,’ she said, ‘I imagine you have it mapped out,’ and again she touched me, this time the merest brush of her fingertips against the bruised skin above my eye.

‘If I’ve been avoiding you,’ I lied, ‘it’s because I have a lot on my mind. My future . . . that sort of thing. It’s different for you girls.’

‘Different, certainly,’ she replied, ‘yet no less hard. Not unless, like Sissy, one falls into marriage.’

‘Not falls,’ I protested. ‘It was a love match.’

She said she was glad to hear it and that I must have felt lonely once Sissy had gone off with Whitney and set up an establishment of her own. We had always been so close. It couldn’t be easy for me living with my aunt . . . now that she was deaf and often out of her mind.

‘I love my aunt,’ I said stiffly, ‘and have any number of friends. Too many, I often think.’ I didn’t need Wallis to feel sorry for me and found her reference to my aunt’s nervous disposition offensive, that is until I remembered the cross she bore on her own mad mother’s behalf. It’s true, I thought. We are none of us normal.

‘Hopper complains I avoid him too,’ I told her. ‘I guess I’m a fair-weather friend.’ She appeared to think this over, staring at me still and twirling that glass button round and round. Poor Ida didn’t know where to put herself; she started to hum Adele’s aria of the night before.

‘We played a game at tea the other day,’ Wallis said. ‘Hopper, Charlie, Archie Ginsberg, the usual crowd. Who would one choose to throw out of a balloon if it was in danger of crashing?’

‘I thought it was an open boat in danger of sinking—’

‘It’s the same principle,’ she said. ‘You’d be surprised who was the first to go.’

‘It’s a cruel game,’ I said. ‘And I expect it was Ginsberg.’

‘No,’ cried Ida. ‘It was Charlie. He was quite upset. We did choose Ginsberg but then he told us he knew all about balloons and that he was the one person likely to get us down safely.’

‘Ida went next,’ Wallis said. ‘Then you.’

‘Me,’ I exclaimed, and tried not to sound surprised.

‘Yes, you,’ she said. ‘Because we all agreed you wouldn’t bother to argue your case. You wouldn’t, would you?’

I shrugged and admitted it was probably so. ‘Do you suppose,’ I asked, ‘that if one went up in a balloon the earth would appear to drop rather than the balloon to lift?’

‘You don’t have much in common with Van Hopper, do you?’ said Wallis. ‘Or with Charlie? You don’t skim the surface.’

It was the second time that morning I had been singled out as different. It rather went to my head, though naturally I protested I was a fairly average sort of fellow. She would have none of it. In her opinion I was special. I had a quality of aloofness both tantalising and touching.

‘Tantalising?’ I said.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Very.’

Needless to say I picked at my food and was beside myself with excitement. It was obvious I had only to say the word and she would consent to an assignation. I shall dream no more, I thought, crushing my toast into fragments.

Presently, time having flown and it now being ten o’clock, she and Ida got up to leave. They were going to the Turkish baths. Wallis peered into the Gladstone bag she was holding and sat down again, ‘Oh dear, silly me,’ she wailed, ‘I’ve forgotten my bathing-robe.’ Prettily she asked to borrow mine; it was, after all, too utterly tiring trekking back along all those corridors.

‘I only have my dressing-gown,’ I said. ‘And it’s still rather wet.’

‘What does that matter?’ she replied. It can be imagined with what alacrity I handed it to her.

I spent a good part of the morning in the writing room going over my letter of the previous day. Impulsively I added the line
I long for our union
and crossed it out moments later, fearing it sounded too much like a proposal of marriage. It was not wedded bliss I was after. Lest such a reckless sentence could still be deciphered I overlaid it with the word ‘apple’ written out five times. It was something Sissy had taught me when I’d once crayoned a lavatorial phrase on the day nursery wall and found it wouldn’t rub off; the loops of ls and ps obscure anything. I would have used a fresh piece of notepaper if I hadn’t felt the drop of blood beneath my signature counted for something.

The morning lasted for ever. At least half a dozen times I went and hung about the doors of the elevator in hopes of seeing Wallis, and for an hour I waited in my stateroom anticipating her knock at the door, a seductive smile curving her moist lips, my damp dressing-gown on her arm.

She was in neither of the dining saloons at luncheon. Hopper said he’d seen her playing quoits earlier with Charlie Melchett and Mrs Carter. I had a drink with him and Rosenfelder in the smoke-room bar and talked gibberish. Rosenfelder was bucked because he’d shown Mr Harris a sketch of the dress Adele would eventually model and he’d pronounced it damn fine.

‘And so it is,’ I cried. ‘It’s the most beautiful dress in the world.’

‘You have not set eyes on it,’ said Rosenfelder. They both looked at me strangely. I longed to confide in them but couldn’t trust Hopper to keep his mouth shut; I didn’t want Ginsberg sniggering at me for the rest of the voyage.

I don’t know how I got through the afternoon. I was happy, impatient, terrified by turns. I drank quite a lot, of course, and penned a ridiculous letter to my uncle telling him I intended to follow in his footsteps and make him proud of me.
I do not forget
, I wrote,
that but for the love you bore your first wife, I would possibly be toiling in a cotton mill in Lancashire
. Fortunately I was not too far gone to tear it up before I dozed off at the writing table.

I was jerked awake by Ginsberg’s hand on my shoulder. He looked at me with concern and asked if I was feeling unwell.

‘On the contrary,’ I told him. ‘I’ve never felt better. What is the time?’

‘You don’t look it—’

‘I’ve been drinking,’ I cried impatiently. ‘Has it gone six o’clock?’

‘By ten minutes,’ he said, at which I rose unsteadily to my feet and rushed from the room.

There was just time to bathe my face and brush my hair before delivering the note to Wallis. If all went well it wouldn’t matter that I wasn’t dressed for dinner; food would be the last thing on our minds. And if it went badly and she turned me down – why then, I would throw myself overboard.

That wretched steward, McKinlay, did his best to delay me, rambling on about some absurd rumour he’d heard concerning George Dodge. ‘Young Mr Dodge, sir,’ he said, ‘has threatened Mr Ginsberg with the hiding of his life for upsetting his sister.’

‘Young Mr Dodge,’ I retorted, ‘would find it difficult to swat a fly, let alone engage in a punch-up. I advise you to stop listening to gossip.’

Heart thudding, I reached A deck and approached Wallis’s stateroom. As luck would have it people were changing for dinner and the corridor was deserted. I knelt, thrust the note under her door and ran back the way I had come. In my head I saw her sitting at her dressing table, tweaking a glossy strand of hair more fetchingly into place. In a moment she would rise, walk into the next room and catch that gleam of white on the floor. Now she was adjusting a fold in her dress . . . taking those few short steps into my life . . . she was picking up the envelope, tearing it open, smoothing out that creased sheet of paper with the rusted splodge below my name. She was frowning. ‘Oh God,’ I cried out loud, and bursting through the doors into the foyer came face to face with her.

I’ve no doubt my reaction was wild enough. For some seconds I thought time had accelerated, that she was on her way to our assignation; I actually seized her in my arms. I came to my senses when she beat at me with her fists. Appalled, I let her go. She said coldly, ‘Morgan, I suggest you drink several cups of black coffee. I shall pretend this never happened. It would be best, don’t you agree?’ and walked away towards the doors of the library.

I don’t remember going back to her room. For all I knew I might have travelled by balloon, for the earth had given way beneath me. I did have the cunning to knock at the door in case Ida was there. When I entered I could smell lavender water. The envelope rested like a diminutive doormat on the carpet. Snatching it up I crossed into the bedroom. It was in darkness but the light from the sitting room illuminated Wallis’s dress flung upon the counterpane of the bed. There were buttoned shoes to match, poking from the frill of the valance. My velvet dressing-gown lay in a crumpled heap in the shadows of the half-open door. Standing there, noting the glimmer of the powder bowl on the dressing table, the shimmer of silk stockings draped across the knob of the wardrobe, I heard the door open and close in the room beyond.

Wallis said, ‘Hurry.’ Her voice was uneven, as though she’d been running.

Scurra said, ‘My dear, you know I never hurry such things.’

I grew old cowering in the shadows of that room reeking of lavender. In spite of the ghastly nature of my predicament – any moment I might be discovered – I burned with a jealousy so fierce that I had to clench my jaws to keep my teeth from grinding. Not that I would have been heard. How foolishly I had deceived myself in thinking that I desired nothing more than a casual intrigue of the sort often described by more fortunate men – for now, listening to those voices which rose and fell and started up again with horrid definition, I shuddered with revulsion. It wasn’t the words themselves that shocked me –
I want your lovely prick
, nor his reply –
Show me your lovely cunt
, but the context in which they were used. Such expressions belonged to anger, mockery, contempt; how foul they sounded when linked to the making of love. I guess I was out of my senses for a time, or rather wholly under the sway of more primitive ones, for I shamelessly pressed myself against the jamb of the door and timed my groans with theirs. It was over for me quicker than for them, and I was left, a blind voyeur, scrabbling for memories to blot out the continuing din of their beastly coupling.