Every Man for Himself (12 page)

Not that I could keep it up for long, not with Hopper carrying on in such a remorseful manner. I swear I saw tears in his eyes as he dabbed at my forehead with the sleeve of his pullover. ‘What a fool I am,’ he kept repeating, ‘what an absolute fool.’

‘I don’t suppose you’ve got any sticklebacks with you?’ I asked, but he was too upset to catch the reference and looked more concerned than ever, convinced I was delirious. Once, long ago, he’d pitched me from the orchard wall and sent me spread-eagled on to the melon patch, my cheek splitting open on the shard of a broken pot. Thinking he’d killed me he’d run and hidden down by the boat-house, until, after nightfall, I was dispatched to look for him. ‘Are you alive?’ he’d demanded, seeing me standing in moonlight. Then, as if to reassure himself of the truth, he’d stretched out his hand to take the warmth of my face on his fingertips, spat into the grass and swaggered off ahead to the house. Before I went to sleep he gave me his jar of sticklebacks. In the morning he took them back again.

White was all for treating me like a big soft girl, expecting me to lie down, but I said I had to meet someone urgently. Hopper, never one to stay contrite for long, having first insisted he accompany me to the lift suddenly remembered he wanted to send a wireless message to a woman he knew in Boston and abruptly left me. I shook off Melchett by telling him I needed to be quiet.

Armed with two volumes of poetry and a copy of Shakespeare’s
Romeo and Juliet
I sat down at a library table and struggled to write to Wallis. I soon gave up on Shakespeare, having forgotten that Romeo’s intentions were honourable and how often Juliet blushed. Besides, considering it was life I was after, the emphasis on death was unsuitable. Nor were the poems of much help, the only lines that appealed,
When we are gone, love, Gone with the breeze, Woods will be sweet, love, Even as these
, striking me as more expressive of an affair drawing to a close rather than one just starting. In the end, after much crossing out I simply wrote,
Dear Wallis, I think you’re wonderful. Please, I must talk to you. Will you meet me tonight at seven o’clock on the port side promenade?
I had wanted to suggest we meet on deck but I knew what a flap girls got into when they thought their hair might be blown about. I had just put my name to this admittedly gauche note when a small drop of blood from the cut above my eye fell on to the page; it landed exactly beside my signature and became star-shaped. Far from looking messy, I reckoned it lent emotional significance. Just then Rosenfelder sat down opposite me.

‘She won’t do it,’ he wailed. ‘She absolutely refuses.’ His cheeks wobbled in distress.

‘You mean Adele won’t sing?’ I said.

‘She will sing her head off . . . but not in my dress. Where is Scurra?’

‘Why won’t she wear it?’

‘She says it is not suitable for her song. She has in mind something oriental. I need Scurra.’

I said I believed Scurra was resting but would be in the Palm Court at tea-time. Pointing at my forehead he asked if I had been fighting. He had heard of a fracas in the dining room. One or two of the older passengers had complained of the younger members not being able to hold their drink.

‘It was Ginsberg,’ I told him. ‘Ginsberg and Hopper arguing about the Kaiser.’

‘Such things the young bother themselves with,’ he marvelled, looking heavenwards and clapping his hands like a child at a party.

I didn’t immediately slip the letter under Wallis’s door, believing it more prudent to turn the words over in my mind while taking a stroll on deck. There were several couples at the rail, admiring the dramatic aspect of the sky. The afternoon was dying, the horizon piled with black clouds tipped with silver light. Even as I watched the blocked sun burst forth, dazzlingly pale and ringed with crimson as it sank towards the sea. A little ratty dog skidded towards the rail and jumped upwards, jaws wide, thinking he might catch it. This so perfectly mirrored my own deluded behaviour that I took out my letter and was in the act of casting it overboard when a sudden gust of wind tore it from my hand and blew it back on deck, at which the dog, cheated of the sun, pounced on it and trotted triumphantly away. Horrified that others might read what I’d so foolishly written, I gave chase.

I was led the devil of a dance along the full length of the deck, and just when I thought I had the wretched animal cornered it leapt the iron gate separating the first and second class areas and disappeared from sight.

Convinced that at any moment the thief would deposit my letter at the feet of its owner and not wanting to be identified, I turned hurriedly back. No sooner had I reached the gymnasium doors when something amazing happened – the dog appeared round the corner of the port promenade and racing towards me dropped my letter on deck. Miraculously, though the paper was a little damp at the centre and the speck of blood slightly fuzzy, my love-note was otherwise unspoilt. I was so elated by this stroke of good fortune that I decided to go at once to Wallis’s room.

I was advancing cautiously along the starboard corridor of A deck – I didn’t want to encounter either Wallis, Ida or Molly – when who should approach from the opposite end but Scurra. We met in the middle and expressed surprise at seeing one another. I said I’d taken a wrong turning and he agreed that it was easy to get lost in a ship of this size. We retraced our steps and entered the lift, he remarking that he’d slept for two hours.

‘I had a knockabout on the racquets court,’ I told him.

‘So I see,’ he said, looking at my forehead. ‘One should never dive for the ball. The trick is to let the ball come to you, don’t you think?’

He then told me he’d been thinking over our conversation of earlier that day and come to the conclusion that he’d been too hard on me. After all, ideals were important and it was good to have the courage of one’s convictions.

‘I’m delighted you think that,’ I said, to which he replied that convictions were worthless unless based on insight.

We both got out of the lift on C deck and I assumed he was going to his quarters. We were nearing the door of my stateroom when he took a tumble. The corridor was narrow and we were walking side by side, jostling one another, and suddenly he tripped and fell down. He sprang up again immediately but the blood had drained from his face. I was about to commiserate and give him my arm when I realised such an action would considerably embarrass him. Reasoning that he was a proud man and one not capable of accepting help, I walked on, opened my door and asked him casually enough if he’d care to come in for a drink.

The room was cold; McKinlay had forgotten to close the porthole. I was tugging it shut when I heard Scurra exclaim, ‘Good God.’ I turned, thinking he had taken ill, but he was standing in front of my mother’s picture.

‘The painting,’ he said. ‘How strange to see it here on this particular wall. Surely it can’t be part of the ship’s furnishings?’

‘It isn’t,’ I said. ‘It was in my cousin’s house and I’m taking it home to my uncle.’

‘Do you know who the subject is?’

‘I do,’ I replied, and fetched whisky and glasses from the cabinet. He sat down on the sofa and regarded me steadily while I poured out our drinks. I was shaking. I knew instinctively that he was about to tell me something, something I’d been waiting to be told since first setting eyes on him in the breakfast room of the South Western Hotel. I saw him more clearly than I had before, noticed his large hands, his muscular neck, the threads of grey in his dark hair. For once, his eyes were sober, watchful. When I gave him his glass his fingers touched mine and I snatched my hand away, not wanting him to feel I was trembling.

At last, he said, ‘Don’t misunderstand me. I didn’t know her well. I can tell you very little on that score.’

‘Where was it?’ I asked.

‘In Provence. Twenty-four years ago.’ He explained that he’d been in Paris on business and had cause to go south, to Aix, to stay in the country house of a dealer in pictures. One day they had gone to the studio of a painter called Cézanne where the dealer had bought a still life and two portraits, one of an old man, the other of a girl—

‘My mother,’ I said.

‘I knew her name and knowing of the connection advised the dealer to get in touch with your uncle. He dislikes modern works, as you know, but in this instance I thought he would make an exception.’

‘And did you meet my mother?’

‘On two occasions only. Once in the painter’s studio and once in the local café.’

‘What was she like?’

‘She was just a girl. A little like the painting, a little like you.’

‘I look like her?’

‘A very slight resemblance . . . something about the eyes. It’s a long time ago. If I had known I would be interrogated I might have taken more notice.’

‘I thought you did know,’ I said, startling myself.

‘My dear boy,’ he remarked dryly. ‘Even I can’t be expected to know everything.’

‘You’ve told me very little,’ I cried, and was surprised at how angry I sounded. ‘I need to know more.’

‘There’s little more to tell,’ he protested. ‘A girl sitting on a lop-sided stool, a smell of rabbit glue from the iron pot on the stove, a smudge of cobalt blue on the stone flags of the floor—’

‘Who was she with?’

‘The first time she was alone, save for Cézanne. The second, she was waiting on tables.’

For some moments I couldn’t speak.

‘I’ve upset you,’ he said. ‘Forgive me, but you asked to be told.’

‘It’s hard,’ I said, my voice wobbling, ‘to think of her serving in a café.’

‘Come now,’ Scurra chided. ‘I thought you believed in the dignity of labour and the equality of man.’

‘I do,’ I shouted.

‘But not when it approaches too close to home, is that it?’

He was wrong. My thoughts were not really of my mother at all. In the newspaper cuttings she had figured as a widow whose husband, unnamed, had died abroad. I had never thought of my father, never heard him described, never known anyone who had spoken with him, not even my uncle. My mother and he had met in London, she had eloped to Paris with him, they had begotten me and two months before I was born he had vanished from the picture. It was my mother who came into my dreams and that only as someone I cried out for when the old woman made those terrible noises and the yellow bile jerked on to my cheek.

‘And did you never meet
him
?’ I blurted out.

‘Who?’ Scurra asked. He was sitting on the edge of the sofa, shoulders hunched, his expression guarded.

‘My father.’

‘She was alone,’ he said, evading the question.

‘Is it possible he’s still alive?’

And then he understood me, and hope died, for he said, ‘I’m not your father, Morgan.’

Of course I pretended he’d misunderstood me, that I hadn’t thought any such thing, and of course he said he knew I hadn’t and even if I had that he would have taken it as a compliment. After that we both laughed, fell silent, and then I wept.

Scurra got to his feet, cleared his throat several times, took out his handkerchief and thrust it at me. He walked up and down while I remained standing in the middle of the room, shoulders heaving, the tears running down my cheeks. He didn’t tell me to be quiet or urge me to pull myself together. Now and then he squeezed my shoulder as he passed.

I suspect my loss of control had much to do with the blow to my forehead. Delayed shock, I shouldn’t wonder. The odd thing was, I didn’t feel in the least ashamed, though thinking about it now it was a pretty unmanly way to behave, and had it been the other way round and it was Scurra who broke, or any other fellow for that matter, I’d have wished the ground to swallow me.

Gradually, I grew calmer and Scurra barked, ‘Blow your nose.’ Then he ordered me to go and bathe my face, and when I’d done so and emerged restored, he refilled my glass, waved my apologies aside and told me to sit down.

‘When you first saw me,’ he said, ‘you thought you had known me before. Am I correct?’

‘Something like that,’ I replied.

‘We have met twice before,’ he said. ‘The second time was ten years ago in Luxor, when I was staying at the Winter Palace and joined your uncle’s party at a picnic amid the ruins of Karnak—’

‘I don’t remember,’ I cried.

‘You had climbed on to the feet of Rameses II and were throwing hard-boiled eggs at your friend Van Hopper.’

‘I don’t remember,’ I repeated.

‘Nor do I expect you to remember the first time,’ he said. ‘You were five years old and sitting in the office of the superintendent of an orphanage in Manchester.’

I was so agitated, so astounded that he had known me before I had known myself, that I jumped up and would have seized him by the shoulders if he hadn’t pushed me away and warned that if I didn’t compose myself and remain seated he wouldn’t utter another word. I did as I was told; there was something of the lion tamer about him as he strode back and forth, stabbing the air with one finger as his clawed mouth spat out the facts.

‘I was instructed by your uncle’s lawyers to make enquiries into your background. You had the right name and nothing else. You had been brought to the orphanage by a man called Mellor, landlord of the house you had previously lived in with your mother. The two rooms on the back of the ground floor were occupied by a wealthy spinster named Barrow who had £1,600 invested in India stock and a considerable sum in an account with the Salford and Manchester City Savings Bank. She also owned the leaseholds of both a public house and a barber’s shop. Under her bed she kept a tin trunk containing never less than £400 in gold. It was evident she had no need to live in such squalid surroundings, but it was thought she’d become addicted to alcohol and been obliged to leave various other premises on account of it. Miss Barrow had taken a particular fancy to you and when your mother died of influenza, one week after your third birthday, she took you in, neither the landlord nor the authorities raising any objection.’