by James Barlow
‘Yes, but where?’
‘My cabin. It’s permitted,’ he explained, seeing some disapproval. ‘God, girl, we’d all go mad if we couldn’t even have a drink together.’
She was giggling, hiding her head.
‘Share the joke,’ he requested.
‘It’s funny, the way you call me ‘girl.’ Like a school teacher.’
‘I’ll call you Debbie. I think it’s a ghastly name,’ he said frankly.
She did not ask what she should call him, but said, ‘All right. Thank you. What time?’
‘Any old time after eight thirty tonight.’
‘Yes, but I don’t want to drink.’
‘God, girl, you worry too much! You need to drink!’
‘I like to be courteous,’ she reprimanded coolly.
‘Wasted on the second officer,’ he told her.
He took the anti-seasickness pills down half an hour after lunch to her cabin, burping gin, the sun in his face. He hoped, unaccountably, that she wouldn’t be there.
She was asleep Dempsey looked at her and wondered whether to wake her. He thought: How very beautiful she will be in a few years. And just then Debbie woke up. She was startled, shy and a little shocked as if she’d caught him ogling.
‘I’m all right now,’ she told him.
‘Well, in case you need them.’
‘How much are they?’
‘Nothing. It is part of the Greco-Australian Company’s policy that you shouldn’t be sick . . . ’
Dempsey took evening surgery while Dr. Zafiropoulos did the cabin calls in order that they both might then prepare for the party.
Typically, when Dempsey wished to finish quickly, there were quite a lot of passengers who waited for treatment. Sister Eleni worked with him, almost without a word.
The last one of the evening was a young woman of about twenty-three and she was, Dempsey knew with exasperation and foreboding, going to be difficult. She had the look in her eyes and the tension in her posture. She was one of those in whom carnality cannot be hidden, a girl who exuded electricity without in any way being vulgarly dressed or made-up. She was, in fact, in a modest pale blue dress, the hem of which was unfashionably close to the knees. But he identified her intense awareness. It was as if danger signals sounded in his mind. This one wasn’t ill; at the very least she wanted an argument: she was hungry with self-pity, but it wasn’t anything he could cure.
She stared around the small surgery with interest, and asked without preamble, ‘Does she have to stay?’
Dempsey said, ‘Sister Kalogeropoulou is as competent as I am.’
The girl insisted without a qualm, ‘I just don’t want her around. Hell, isn’t anything private?’
‘Sister Kalogeropoulou doesn’t know all that much English,’ Dempsey said, which untruth caused Eleni to open her mouth in surprise, then remain silent.
‘She’s got eyes, hasn’t she?’
Dempsey supposed he might oblige the young woman thus far, although to do so made him uneasy.
‘Would you mind, Sister? There’s no one else, is there? You might as well go. See you in forty minutes.’
‘All right,’ conceded Eleni.
Dempsey asked wearily when she had departed, ‘What’s the matter with you?’
The girl almost turned on him. ‘What do’you mean, what’s the matter with me? You know what’s the matter. I could see you did as I came in. And you disapprove because it’s emotional.’
Many people, perhaps women especially, talked like this to Dempsey. Strangers plunged straight into absolute details of their own lives, their sex difficulties, sparing him nothing. It was, he believed, an indicator of the breakdown of society, its rejection of God. They wanted help desperately, not physical but spiritual, conscience problems solved. At times it was funny, not tragic, manoeuvring so that he should not be seduced by a woman, a good wife perhaps, who wasn’t getting the sex she needed and was too scared, socially conscious and so on to go on the street and claim a man, or too nice to seduce a friend’s husband. But the doctor – well, he understood these things; it would remain confidential; he was clean, free from disease and, generally, nice . . . It was sad, an appalling reflection of the knife-edge on which society stood. Often they were frank to the point of casualness, stripping as soon as they’d got him in a bedroom. They took no offense when he refused them, and he invariably advised with honesty and sympathy.
He qualified now, ‘Let’s say, then, what can I do to help you?’
‘God only knows,’ the girl said candidly. ‘I’m going to strip off. Any objections? It’s so damn hot,’ she said oddly.
She had a superb body, but it meant nothing to him. He had seen so much flesh and examined it entirely as a series of problems. She left a very brief pair of pants on. ‘You can take those off if you want to,’ she remarked.
‘Let’s drop the nonsense,’ Dempsey said sharply. ‘You’re not ill, so what do you want?’
‘Don’t be like that,’ she requested. ‘Be human,’
‘Humans are like that,’ Dempsey said. ‘What’s your story?’ he asked in the same angry tone. ‘The hard smart story that is so unusual you’re still playing the part. Shall I tell you?’
‘Do,’ she challenged.
‘You were sixteen or seventeen, smart, cool, superior, aware of your power of attraction, and you hated somebody or something – your parents, society, school, a friend who’d pinched your boy. So you took up this many very publicly, for all the world to know, the dreary, moral, conventional, tired world you despised. An older man, probably, with a pretty wife, kids, big car, good clothes, knowledgeable about restaurants, theatre, sex, whatever it was. It was no problem for him to con you into dropping your pants. You felt that would smash his wife when she found out. It was love, of course,’ said Dempsey in contempt. ‘And, maybe he did love you enough to smash his life to bits. He loved you so much in fact he had to have you raw, and you and society hadn’t heard of the pill then. So you had a bun in the oven and you hated his guts because he went back to his wife, who gave him a big hello. Society didn’t stink quite so high those six or seven years ago. To have an abortion was something for rich people, not grammar school tarts. So you had the kid. What happened to it?’
He knew by her nipples that she had had a child.
She had paled a little in shock, and then laughed shakily. ‘I underestimated you. I’m sorry. I see you know what it’s all about.’
‘Christ, girl, I’m a doctor, but who doesn’t know? They watch it on TV from the age of seven. What you think is that it’s important, it’s superior to what poor old housewives do, it’s significant, strictly for cool twentieth-century people. It isn’t. It’s happened since people began.’
‘You looked like a smug suburban doctor on a cruise . . . Instead, you talk straight . . . I like you . . . ’
‘Oh, get burned,’ protested Dempsey. ‘You poor fools pithering about with sex like it’s something invented by Time magazine or some English radical bishop . . . People have had your problem since biblical times. I used to see them in Ireland, nice Catholic girls from the farm who’d been put in the pudding club. They had God to contend with as well. They didn’t whine like you people. They married the boy and lived happily ever after.’
‘Bovine,’ she said in contempt. ‘What do you mean, my problem?’
‘An agitated fanny,’ Dempsey told her crudely. ‘Well, what about it? What’s very version?’
The young woman said: ‘I was married at sixteen. Yes, to an older man. It was strictly love for me. I was brought up on Gone with the Wind, not Kinsey. I had two kids. By eighteen he rejected me. I had a woman friend who helped me. So I went to live with her. She had this curious habit of pawing me and lying on top of me. Sweet otherwise. I got to like it. But
she was bitchy and I had to leave her. They took the kids away. I’ve never decided which I like better since then. That’s my problem. I’ve got a butch friend with me now. Even she hates me. I’m paying the stewards and others to screw me. It annoys her . . . I was thinking of quitting . . . You know . . . Over the side . . . So I came to you . . . ’
He didn’t believe all this, although there was some truth in it. It was probably worse, even more unpleasant than her version.
‘You’re only about twenty-three,’ Dempsey pointed out. ‘And you’re nice. Somewhere in that mix-up is someone nice.’
‘Oh, wrap it up!’ she protested, rejecting this solution. ‘If I need the priest I’ll send for him. They all tell me I’m nice, but if I pull my pants down they don’t complain. Neither do I. I’m not nice.’
‘You’ve got a fine body and excellent physical health.’
‘Everything a girl needs.’
‘Exactly. So why do anything silly?’
She shrugged. ‘I never do anything else.’
‘What’s your name, anyway?’
‘Pauline. It doesn’t matter about the other names.’
‘What do you want? Can a temporary ship’s doctor really cure you? Can I do anything, even talk, advise? Frankly, I want to go to a party.’
‘Take me,’ she pleaded. ‘One way or the other,’ she begged outright.
‘Sorry, Pauline. It’s not that kind of party and I’m not that kind of man.’
‘I’d behave . . . It doesn’t matter,’ she said, suddenly decisive. ‘I’m a fool on heat.’ She began to dress. ‘How about some pills?’
‘We don’t carry that sort.’
‘Oh, come off it.’
‘They wouldn’t help you.’
‘You weren’t always so fussy,’ she said suddenly.
Dempsey was startled, and uneasy.
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘Exactly what I said. You weren’t always so high-minded about girls in trouble,’
‘You’re not in trouble.’
‘Oh, but I am, darling, and I love it.’
‘I see.’
‘I’ll repeat that,’ the girl said. ‘I love trouble. I love making it.’
Dempsey was silent.
‘Aren’t you worried, Daniel Dempsey?’
‘I was wondering,’ he told her, ‘whether to charge you for a consultation. I think I will. It’s fifty cents. And now will you get out of here?’
Surprising him, she went.
‘I’ll be back,’ she threatened.
‘I know that,’ he answered.
Dempsey went to his cabin and prepared if for his small party. He had only invited people he liked, not people with the relevant status. After a while he forgot the young woman, Pauline.
The two nurses, Anna and Sophia – who were rather the same in appearance, with round, ochre, good-natured faces; Sophia had a small black fringe – sat shyly on the battered small sofa in Dempsey’s cabin, crossed their knees carefully and waited politely to laugh, when someone translated, and be shocked by this new Australian doctor who was so cheerful and good-looking, to eat nuts, to sip wine . . . Kristina from the Purser’s Office sat on the arm of the sofa with a deliberate fragility as if the arm might break. She was a tall, slender, attractive, honest sort of girl in her late twenties, who paid close attention to anything Tomazos said when he finally turned up. Sister Eleni rested in a basket chair looking rather maternal and satisfied. Mollon, the tall tough Australian second officer, was helping himself and others to beer. Zafiropoulos handed out glasses of sherry and whiskey. Dempsey downed a quick one and commented, ‘What a day!’
Sister Eleni asked, ‘What did she want?’
‘What makes you think she wanted anything?’
‘I am thirty-two years old and a woman. I want things too.’
Everybody laughed, but Dempsey said, ‘I hope you don’t want what she wants. She’s crazy, that one.’
‘That was my impression,’ agreed Sister Eleni.
Tomazos came late, in uniform and with an attitude of duties still to be attended to, and announced, pleased about it, ‘We’re calling at Adelaide after all.’
Kristina blushed, looked daunted, even downcast, but pointed out with a laugh: ‘Nikolaos, what do you do on the bridge?’
‘Play cards,’ he assured her promptly.
‘Believe it or not,’ Kristina told him, ‘we have already organized tours tomorrow for two hundred and ninety passengers.’
Someone knocked on the cabin door. ‘Come in,’ Dempsey shouted.
It was the girl, Debbie. He was a fraction startled, for she was attired with such elegance. A rich family, Dempsey deduced. No problems. Blasted Americans.
They stared at her, a child still, but obviously soon to be something very special. Dempsey tried, in vain, not to swear. ‘I’ve no blasted lemonade,’ he had to admit at the top of his voice. ‘How about sherry or beer?’ and the girl decided upon sherry.
She sat on the other arm of the sofa – the two nurses giggled then because it squeaked alarmingly – and talked to Tomazos.
‘You will like Hong King,’ he told her. ‘I’ve been many times, but it continues to impress me. Don’t forget your money! You will get rid of that!’
‘What about Bali?’ Debbie inquired.
‘I’ve never been,’ the first officer said. ‘As a matter of fact I was just looking up in the Pilot about anchorages. We will have to anchor two miles out.’
Kristina leaned a little and with her long right arm touched Tomazos’ sleeve. ‘Nikolaos, I must tell you my news – good or bad. I am leaving the Areopagus at Singapore.’
Tomazos was startled.
‘What! Kristina, what will we do without you?’ Chaos in the Purser’s Office,’ he forecast in an aside to Debbie. ‘Are you so fed up with Demetropoulos?’
‘No, of course not. There has been much unpleasantness with the passengers, but that is all over.’
‘Kristina, I am sorry. No gracious lady to sit with me at the captain’s table.’
‘Thank you,’ she said quickly. ‘I just had to, Nikolaos.’ She did not say why. ‘It is a job in an airline.’
‘An airline!’ Tomazos protested with humour. ‘This is treason!’
Dempsey said, interrupting and addressing all of them, ‘Talking of the captain’s table, he sent the blasted soup and wine back last night. Both tasted good to me. These damn captains think they’re tin gods,’ he concluded. ‘He told me off, just like a schoolmaster, because I proved the eggs were mouldy.’
Seeing Debbie giggle at this, Dempsey said to her, ‘But have you seen the strong-arm boy, the master-at-arms? An amiable idiot, eighteen stone, but nothing between the ears! A little steward threw an ashtray at him and knocked him cold! Mind you, it was a solid brass ashtray! On the Opalescent we had –’
‘Oh, no!’ objected Eleni.
Dempsey said to Debbie, ‘You see? I cannot open my mouth! Sister Eleni is in charge! Still,’ he conceded, ‘she’s better than what we did have on the Opalescent! Carefully selected, fully experienced, completely sexless battle-axes, out to see the world before they dropped dead!’
‘And just as well,’ suggested Sister Eleni.
‘I am going to sing,’ announced Tomazos suddenly. ‘Nobody must stop me!’
‘My God! Have we reached that stage?’ questioned Dempsey.
Tomazos sang well. He had a deep chest and thick neck, which reddened a little. They applauded when he finished his sentimental Greek song.
‘Tom,’ he then said to the second officer. ‘Have I ever asked a favour of you?’
Mollon said at once, ‘No. And it’s about time you did. Before you say it, Nikolaos, the answer’s Yes.’
‘You seem to know all about it!’
‘You’re joking, mate. If I hadn’t seen my wife for months and the ship was putting into Adelaide –’
‘I did not believe,’ said Tomazos with feeling, ‘that the Australians knew about love! Sport, yes! Driving motorcars, a little! But love . . . You must excuse me now that I have deafened you. So busy. Twenty-two cars to load tomorrow and little space for them. Seventy-five people disembarking. Oil, water, tins of jam, air mail . . . ’
‘Just a minute, Nikolaos!’ Kristina cried, and followed him outside the cabin.
A nurse said something in Greek.
Debbie said, ‘What a nice man. No arrogance at all.’
Sister Eleni commented, ‘She is a nice girl. A pity to lose her. He doesn’t know of course . . . ’
Tomazos came back.
‘Doctor, there is a passenger here –’ and a man said, ‘There’s been an attempted suicide. Girl threw herself into the swimming pool.’
Dempsey opined, ‘And we know who that was, don’t we Sister Eleni?’
‘I will go,’ said Dr Zafiropoulos.
‘Oh, no, it’s me she wants,’ acknowledged Dempsey.
He left them and hurried to the surgery. They duty nurse had attended to the victim. It was, as he had guessed, the girl Pauline. He had no option but to put her into the hospital. The passenger was quite certain that she hadn’t fallen into the swimming pool accidentally. It had to be the day they neglected to empty the thing. Dempsey thought again in irritation, for usually this pool was emptied at sunset.
Her butch friend turned up and Dempsey talked frankly to her. Her name was Miss Reidy, and she was a stocky, rather pleasant woman of about thirty, with neat blond hair, short and straight.
‘I’m on the way to San Francisco,’ she told him. ‘I’m taking up a nursing appointment – in Canada, actually, but I wanted this trip. Pauline is also trained for that kind of thing, but she goes to pieces. She’s a bit of a nymph, frankly, and gets in a mess all the time. In confidence, she’s had men in the cabin. Picked up in the bars. Very embarrassing for me. Where am I supposed to go? And I paid her fare . . . ’