The View from Mount Dog (14 page)

On the other hand, of course, you would almost certainly have been wearing a knife….

You did fish again but it was not the same. Your dreams were
full of aggression aimed at Badoy, the lucklessly innocent repository of your fantasies. Nobody is as put out as a jilted fantasist, and the fantasist who thinks to perceive an actuality in what he is doing is the most put out of all. You became tired of his voice, his
‘ay!’,
his wife moving dolefully about their dark house while radiating some tough resolve. You hoped he would soon get a job abroad. One day word reached you that the dendro-thermal project was shelved and with it your feasibility study, but that if you went back to the capital and bullied the right civil servant you could get your accrued salary.

Your leavetaking from Badoy was friendly, offhand, as if in six months or so you might well fetch up back in Anilao and find him still mooching and dreaming of emigration. Then he would dig out your old spear-gun and you would both slip back into the water as if no time had passed. But on the battered once-a-day bus which took you away up the coast you sat on the landward side, ignoring the blue waters creaming over the reefs on your left, staring fixedly into the palm-groves and the forest above them pouring skyward through ravines and gullies to the peaks of the central massif. And what were you thinking? That even if you never did return to that particular place wouldn’t the sea always be in waiting? And wouldn’t there be other Badoys and other involuntary opportunities to hear that lone whistler with his private note set ringing a bare inner room? For you cannot help yourself.

As even now the distant thud, the compressor’s stench rise from inside.

The honeymoon was nearly over. That morning the
Mooltan
had emerged unscathed from the Bay of Biscay, and already the gathering overcast and heaping grey-green seas were beginning to throw into brighter and ever more unreal relief the memories of long Mediterranean days, of vivid and pungent ports.

It had been fun, thought Christine, simultaneously catching herself out on the note of wistfulness and mentally giving herself a cross little shake. It
had
been fun, of course; and Paul had been sweet in the way their short (but not indecently brief) engagement had promised: attentive and … and, well,
thoughtful.
That was the word, wasn’t it, which everyone always used about Paul? There was no escaping it. It was hard not to make comparisons with the other young men with whom she had had somewhat reserved dealings; young men in plus-fours and open cars, young men in Oxford bags, young men in white tennis longs. Some, she admitted, had been attractive to a greater or lesser extent (usually the notorious cads, if she were honest) and all had had that crashing, puppyish nonchalance which – if it were ever capable of being reflective – would have blushingly supposed itself lovable. So if ‘thoughtful’ described someone who considered consequences rather than perfunctorily observed etiquette, then Paul was undoubtedly thoughtful. The only trouble was the direction that thoughtfulness took.

Christine had of course imagined the honeymoon in considerable detail well before it ever happened and by now, practically
within sight of Southampton, she ought according to her predictions to have been feeling a changed person. True, she was no longer a virgin; and nothing in her imaginings had prepared her for the oddity of the experience through which this had come about. It was not that their lovemaking wasn’t marvellous – she definitely presumed it was. But the act which above all was supposed to unite two people in each other’s sight (unlike the wedding, which had united them in the sight of God) had seemed to make Paul, if not more distant, exactly, then strangely jocular. He called it ‘Bonzo’ and laughed knowingly before he turned the cabin lights off, at which point she felt her upbringing called upon her to make a proper girlish response such as ‘Oh, really, Paul, you are a wicked boy!’ but she could only remain silent while listening to her new husband groping his way across the room, barking his shins on unfamiliar nautical obstructions. She must have had other preconceptions, too, since without knowing why she had expected it to last longer. But, although ‘Bonzo’ was brief, it was quite frequent, so she supposed that was how it was. And then – as at all other times – Paul was solicitous. Was he all right? Was he hurting, pleasing, loving enough for her? Was he all right?

Yet after all that, when maybe the earth had moved for her or there again maybe it was just the swell beneath the
Mooltan’
s forefoot, here at the end of her honey-month she could not in all honesty consider herself changed in any significant way whatever. Well, why should she be? she thought impatiently; her own fantasies had obviously been based on childish suppositions. Paul was untroubled by such foolishness. He was manifestly unchanged.

They had finished their penultimate breakfast aboard; the last night was to be spent berthed in Southampton since the ship would dock too late for convenient train connections to London. They left the dining room and somehow Christine found herself being escorted courteously but firmly via their stateroom to the secluded reading room on the upper deck.

‘You can tell we’re getting nearer home with your eyes closed can’t you, Kitten?’ He closed his eyes in illustration before ushering her through the door of the reading room, which smelt of the beeswax and turpentine polish which stewards applied liberally to every wooden surface they could find. ‘There’s a real edge to that wind. That’s why I want you to wrap up well and stay inside today. We don’t want chills after all that wonderful
sun. Can’t risk our baby.’

Now, what did that mean? Christine wondered as she allowed herself to be tucked into a leather armchair like some elderly patient on a health cruise. He sometimes called her ‘baby’ in joshing recognition of the American films they had watched together (on those occasions when he had said as if impulsively, ‘I know, we’ll go to the flicks,’ but on arriving at the cinema she would discover he had already bought the tickets. Thoughtfulness again). But now might ‘baby’ mean something more literal?

‘You’ve got your book, haven’t you?’ he asked. ‘You’ll be able to get through that comfortably before we have to return it to the ship’s library. We might do that at tea-time.’

‘I could practically do it now. I’m afraid I’ve cheated and read the last page already.’

‘You bad girl.’

‘What are you going to be doing, Paul?’

‘Nothing, Kitten; just pottering. Thought I might go and say good-bye to the engine-room. That sort of thing. It’s like leaving a familiar old house, isn’t it?’

The engine-room had exercised a fascination for Paul right from the start of the voyage. He had asked the Captain on their first night out, who had been happy to introduce him to the Chief Engineer. Rather to Christine’s surprise Paul had insisted on taking her as well when the next morning a boy in a white mess-jacket had appeared to conduct him below. The thought crossed her mind that maybe she was expected to find the engine-room so noisy or smelly or otherwise boring that it would give him
carte
blanche
in future to spend hours there without her. He had, it was true, passed much of the voyage in visits to the various mechanical innards of the ship, afterwards explaining what it was that he had seen. In point of fact, none of it had struck her as particularly dull in itself or, come to that, particularly un-dull: it was merely machinery doing precisely what she supposed it would. But she was pleased on his behalf because it had obviously given him immense satisfaction, as well as something to do. She had rather liked the engine-room. It was indeed hot, and the noise was so intense it seemed to blot out even itself. She had stood amid a kind of deafened silence on a perforated catwalk gripping the handrail tightly and watching two immense cranks below her, one on each side, alternately rising and falling. Each time they rose their bright
steel knuckles brushed against a cloth wick dangling from a brass pot bolted just above their reach. She presumed it was some primitive but effective device to keep the bearings oiled. Once outside, in a different kind of silence, she heard Paul’s voice coming as if through layers of felt: ‘Did you see the automatic oilers?’

‘Those brass pot things with wicks?’

And she had caught something in his eye, a flash of annoyance perhaps, a demand that she let things be his way.

Now she watched him leave the reading room and, through the thick pane of glass next to her, could see him crossing the deck and going down a companionway, tall, boyish, but contriving for all that to look dignified in an elderly way. Perhaps it was his lack of bottom; the back of his trousers seemed empty in a very English manner. She found herself wondering how they would both look in fifty years and was surprised at how easily she should have skimmed over their whole lifetime as if to glimpse the outcome. Not only was that a kind of cheating, it was perfectly ludicrous. What on earth did it matter what they were going to look like,
die
like? They had an entire life ahead of them. Live it to the full, she told herself, but could not quite banish the poignancy of this piece of sententious self-heartening.

She read desultorily for an hour; the ship’s library was not well stocked. Restless and feeling guilty for leaving the place in which Paul had installed her, Christine then gathered up her shawl and book and went outside. The sky was still greyer, the bangs of wind still colder and more violent. From far overhead and slightly forward the sound of the exhausts blew back from the funnels. Paul had explained that the ship had recently been converted from coal- to oil-burning, and seemingly this had reduced one of the funnels to redundancy, all the exhausts having been routed through the other. Up here the wind’s buffeting carried noise and smuts in gusts: now the exhausts seemed no more than a distant hum, now they leaped out at one with a deep furry blare. Despite the deck-hands’ regular sluicings the forward-facing parts of the superstructure were filmed with black deposits, the granules of carbon sticking to the salted paintwork. Seagulls were crying round the rigging, one was perched on the masthead. Their melancholy cries were quite unlike the raucous assertions of identical gulls in Marseilles, Genoa, Piraeus, Jaffa, Alexandria…. She heard in
them the difference between harbingers and contented inhabitants.

She crossed the deck, pausing uncertainly at the head of the companion way. No, she decided, don’t pry, don’t pester the poor boy. So she walked on down the deck past the rows of lifeboats to a kind of saloon whose real purpose or title she had never learned. Perhaps it was a still-room or buttery of sorts, if they had such things on board ships. At any rate one could get tea or coffee at almost any time, and she now went in, stepping decisively over the brass strip on the coaming, the door-closer shutting out wind and gulls and yelling exhausts. Inside it was quiet and empty. Behind the small bar a mess-waiter was polishing glasses. She vaguely recognised him.

‘Good morning, miss,’ he said. ‘Turned cold out there now, hasn’t it? They say there’s some nasty weather off the starboard bow, but no need to worry, it’s mainly the Channel that’s copping it.’

She smiled at him, not displeased at the ‘miss’ until a sort of invented dignity caught up, but this only made her smile more. She turned away and sat down at a table by the window.

‘What’ll it be, miss, to keep out the cold?’

Was it difficult always to be so affable? she wondered. ‘A pot of coffee would be lovely.’

‘Coming right up.’ He began bustling, whistling so quietly it was almost an ostler’s hiss.

The peculiar thing about this room, she now remembered on catching sight of it, was the staircase leading up into it from the First Class dining room below so that on occasion it could be used as an annexe. She recalled the last time she had been there: the evening they sailed from Alex when Paul and she had spent so long leaning over the rail watching the mythical coastline of Egypt deepen from rose-and-ochre to shades of invisibility that they had not heard – or perhaps had elected to ignore – the dinner-gong. They had been late; to their surprise the dining room was already full. The Steward was abject in his apologies; since they hadn’t appeared he had assumed they had chosen to dine at second sitting and had given their table to
new
arrivals.
He stressed these words rather archly, and looking round Christine could see several faces she did not know, very brown with brown hands and pale wrists which gleamed nakedly as cuffs were shot. ‘Egyptian Civil Service,’ the Steward explained
sotto
voce
as if referring to mental patients. ‘They normally go
from Port Said by their own line. Now it’ll be
malesh
and
mafeesh
all the way to Southampton.’ Then Paul had apologised for their lateness and said that, though they were both extremely hungry, they would come back for second sitting, whereupon the Steward showed them the staircase leading to the deck above. ‘We can’t have that, sir; we can’t have our guests forced to starve by Johnny-come-latelys’ – Christine did think he was rather overdoing it – ‘so if you’d care to dine upstairs we would be more than happy to oblige you.’

They had gone upstairs; and much to their amazement that room, too, had begun to fill until at one point halfway through the soup Paul was disconcerted by the sight of passengers in evening dress standing awkwardly at the head of the stairs.

‘I say, those poor blighters are in for a long wait.’

‘Not more than an hour at the most,’ said Christine. ‘And they can go and have cocktails in the bar meanwhile.’

‘Even so.’

Five minutes passed and then a distinguished-looking couple appeared at their table-side.

‘Good evening, sir, madam,’ said the man with a grave nod to Christine. ‘I am extremely sorry to intrude but I was wondering if by the remotest chance you would consent to share your table? My wife is, well, in a certain condition and … but do forgive me – Major Sholto Perceval … my wife Humility. Ghastly name, I know, but I can assure you she doesn’t live up to it.’

Paul made the introductions; Christine heard herself add: ‘We’re just married, you know’ – a remark clearly addressed to Paul.

‘My dear Mrs Fennessy,’ said the gallant Major, ‘we owe you the profoundest apology. We should neither of us dream of imposing. We spent our own honeymoon not that long ago in Port Said, which is scarcely the most ideal spot, and we know only too well the value of privacy. Permit us to withdraw at once.’

But Paul would not hear of it and Christine found herself going along with his hospitable gestures, summoning waiters to bring napkins and cutlery, reassuring the Percevals that, far from being an intrusion, their presence was all that was needed to complete the evening’s pleasure. His thoughtfulness again, of course, although she conceded it might as well have been an undiscriminating desire to be liked. Then she felt mean: how
could he possibly have wanted to be liked more by total strangers than by his own new wife? As a matter of fact the evening had then gone off very well: the Percevais were an amusing and well-travelled couple, and by the time it came to leave the table one of those shipboard friendships was well under way and was even now closer than ever. None the less, Christine had permitted herself a small resentment at the alacrity with which Paul had sacrificed their privacy and, once this had taken up residence, she appeared powerless to suppress it completely. It worried her.

A movement beyond the window caught her eye. A long figure in a wind-whipped coat with the collar up was sidling – that was the only word for it – in and out of the davits. He was not so much blurred as darkened somewhat by the smuts on the window, which gave him a shadowed, melancholy air. He stopped outside, his back towards her, leaning on the rail and gazing downwards as if trying to gauge something. My God, it’s a suicide, she thought. In a moment that man’s going to jump. The whole
mise-en-scène
of emergency suggested itself in a rush: her uncertain cry of ‘Man overboard!’, the whistles and sirens, the stampede to the rail, the throwing of lifebelts, the shuddering of engines at Full Astern…. And in that instant she recognised Paul.