Wonder Cruise: A heartwarming holiday romance in the 1930s

by Ursula Bloom

  She said, ‘I’m just going down to book my passage first.’

  ‘Oo-er,’ said little Gelding.

  V

  For the look of the thing she had to go down Cockspur Street way. She would invent some excuse later; she could say that the cruise was already full, anything ‒ there would be time enough to think of that during her meal.

  She entered the street in the bright sunshine. It seemed quiet as though caught in a hush, just as though the cars ran more smoothly, and the ’buses put on silencers when they passed down it.

  She thought that it was very nice, a great deal nicer than the noisy Strand, or Henrietta Street always so full of vegetable carts, and their quarrelsome drivers. She liked this far better. In this mood she came to the frontal of the enterprising steamship company.

  In one big window was a model of a great ship. She stopped to look at it, and the wonder of it held her. To the side was a little panorama of what would be seen on the cruise. You looked through little windows, and you caught glimpses. The glimpses were entirely breath-taking. She thought of Worthing and the esplanade which she had once thought to be so grand and imposing. Why, it wasn’t grand at all, it was just dingy ‒ or worse!

  She passed into the big portal to peep through the wide door at another picture of Pompeii. It held her attention. Ruins. A rutted road. A cypress which stood like an old lady wrapped in a dark shawl, hooded and still. Ann stood there watching it and her thoughts flew along the route, for with all this fascinating loveliness before her she could not control them. If only it were possible for her to go, but of course it wasn’t. It would be ridiculous, for after all she was thirty-five, and she had never been out of England in her life. Little Gelding had said that there might be sheiks, and, although Ann held no exaggerated ideas of her charms, well, you did hear of such things happening! After all, whatever Mr. Robert said, and even if she had won three hundred pounds in this illicit manner, she could not go gadding about Europe on it.

  As she stood there, a large American gentleman, supported by an even larger American wife, came blustering round the corner. He had not expected anyone to be standing just inside, and when he saw Ann it was too late to stay himself. He and his fat wife actually swept her inside the door of the steamship office before them.

  She had got inside.

  The gentleman who was all American did not attempt to apologize. Ann was standing in the office alone, on a carpet that was like moss into which her feet sank. There was a square table in the middle and on it forms waiting to be filled up. A beautiful young man with hair that shone like an advertisement for brilliantine came forward.

  ‘And what can I do for you?’ he asked.

  There was nothing that he could do for her, but somehow Ann could not say so. She could not possibly say, ‘I have been pushed in here by accident, and now I am going out again.’ She felt herself going red, and she glanced down at the paper which she still carried for the address. The young man glanced down too.

  ‘Oh, of course,’ he said, ‘the Mediterranean cruise.’

  Then things started happening.

  If Ann had been brave it would have been easy enough, but she wasn’t brave. She had not got the moral courage to tell him that she wanted nothing of the sort. Around her were people booking passages to the other side of the world, people who wanted to go to China, and to Australia; it seemed such a silly little thing only to want to go for an insignificant cruise lasting a modest three weeks.

  She saw a plan of the ship, and the young man, who was still of the opinion that she had come into the office in good faith and that she really wanted to go on the cruise, indicated the cabin which he considered would be the most suitable. The bath was so close. The dining-saloon was so handy. He dwelt on the advantages of swimming-bath and library, of music-room and cinema.

  Suddenly the fever of travel seized hold of Ann like some dreadful disease which drags you remorselessly into its clutches. She recalled Mr. Robert’s suggestion that life does not offer you its opportunities twice. In case she might miss anything she handed over the wad of notes before she had time to change her mind.

  ‘I’ll have that cabin,’ she said.

  She had forgotten Cuthbert; she had forgotten Mrs. Puddock; she had forgotten the rules and regulations by which she had lived for five-and-thirty years. Her only anxiety was that someone would snatch the chance from her before she could grab it.

  And now she was filling in an impressive-looking form her name, her age, her parentage. The helpful young man was giving her details as to how to obtain a passport; he was murmuring something about labels being sent to her, special trains, embarkation forms. She turned to leave the office like a woman in a daze, and she did not know what or whom she had to thank for all this. The sweepstake, or the circular, or Mr. Robert, or the large and impetuous American gentleman who had swept her willy nilly into the offices of the most obliging steamship company.

  But she had done it now.

  Ann felt that a new spirit had settled down upon her, the new gay spirit of adventure. She had reserved a cabin for herself on a wonder cruise. For the second time in the day she found herself outside Charing Cross, and she knew that she had had no lunch.

  She could look at the poster of Naples and say with satisfaction, ‘I’m going there. I’m going there almost at once,’ and it gave her a delicious feeling of complete satisfaction.

  She thought that she would buy herself a packet of sandwiches and take them back to the office to eat; that way you saved money. Not that money mattered so vitally at the moment. Not that anything mattered.

  She went back to the office a quarter of an hour too soon, and she sat down in the deserted secretaries’ room, and she started to eat the sandwiches, spreading her hankie in her lap, for it would never do if she got her good fawn frock soiled, and fawn did show marks so quickly. In between bites of somewhat tough ham sandwiches she let herself indulge in day-dreaming. They were the most remarkable dreams of a most remarkable day. Every little while a vision would float before her, a broken Colonnade, a little fountain at play in an orange grove, the white glare of Malta. And when the distracting visions came, Ann would stop eating, and would just sit staring owlishly into space.

  That was how Miss Thomas found her. Miss Thomas was disgruntled. After all she had bought the ticket, and Ann did not seem to be any too pleased with her. The offer of lunch had been refused, and Ann, entirely obsessed with the idea of this idiotic cruise, had gone off to book a passage. She had not even suggested that, as the money had been won by their united efforts, her company might have been desirable on the journey. And now Miss Thomas had a vague idea that in spite of her protestations she would have liked to go. Her father had been an archaeologist, and he had been interested in old stones. Miss Thomas felt the sudden pangs of archaeology. She came in exceedingly annoyed with Ann, and she was a great deal more annoyed when she beheld her sitting before her desk, eating her sandwiches over a distinctly crumby pocket handkerchief.

  ‘Well, my word,’ said Miss Thomas hotly (she had got to vent it on somebody), ‘you’re too grand to come out with me, and this is what you do. I’m sure I don’t know what has come over you.’

  ‘I’m very sorry, but by the time I’d finished at the steamship offices I hadn’t time to get lunch anywhere, so I just bought some sandwiches and brought them along.’

  Miss Thomas sniffed. ‘So you did get your ticket?’

  ‘Oh yes.’

  ‘My goodness!’ Miss Thomas began pulling off her gloves. ‘If that doesn’t beat the band! You really do surprise me.’

  ‘I’ve always wanted to travel, and now I’ve got my chance.’

  ‘But alone? Nice women don’t travel by themselves,’ and Miss Thomas looked down her long nose.

  ‘I’m thirty-five; surely at that age it is all right? It is nineteen thirty-two, not eighteen thirty-two.’

  Ann was getting irritated, though she hoped that she was not showing it. She knew quite wel
l that Miss Thomas wanted to come with her; she also knew that she wanted to go alone. She wanted to cut herself adrift. To go out in a great white ship which reminded her of a beautiful white bird with spread wings. She wanted to see things for herself, all those precious things that were so beautiful that they made you feel like crying! She had a vague idea that they were going to affect her that way.

  ‘You’ll need clothes,’ Miss Thomas was saying, ‘and the tips will be awful, and you won’t understand the people you mix with because they won’t be our sort of people. You will be sorry that you ever went.’

  ‘Then I’ll be sorry,’ said Ann obstinately.

  Somehow all the keen opposition was making her feel obstinate. She finished the last sandwich and, taking up her hankie by the corners, she shook the crumbs into the waste-paper basket. ‘That’s that,’ she said.

  Miss Thomas eyed her coldly. ‘You aren’t angry?’ she asked. ‘After all, if it hadn’t been for me you would never have won the three hundred pounds at all. Only you do seem to be so funny about it, batchy I’d call it; I am sure I can’t understand you.’

  ‘I haven’t meant to be funny,’ Ann apologized in all humility; ‘it was very good of you to do it for me, because of course alone I should never have gone in for it. I’m very grateful.’

  ‘I shall invest my money,’ said Miss Thomas; ‘it will be something for my old age. You’d far better have done that yourself; still, I suppose it is no good talking to you, you seem to have taken leave of your senses.’

  They heard little Gelding coming up the stairs, two at a time, singing to herself as she came. For she had had a most successful lunch with a new boy friend and he had given her real salmon mayonnaise ‒ not that nasty tinned stuff ‒ and chicken and a meringue. Although little Gelding was supposed to be dieting, for there was a certain fullness just above the waist-line, over the ribs, she had however succumbed to the meringue. It had been a most recherché lunch, and he had suggested dancing together one night at the Café de Paris too. All so select. Little Gelding was thrilled to the core.

  ‘Well, I’ve got it,’ said Ann, very flushed.

  ‘Got what?’ And then little Gelding remembered: ‘Oh yes, your passage. Good egg! I’d give something for your chance, reely I would.’

  They heard Mr. John coming up the stairs, and little Gelding fled rapidly to the cloakroom. She always lived in fear and terror that her face might be in need of ‘doing-up’. She was over-elaborate with powder-puff and rouge-pad, and to have Mr. John see her not titivated for the occasion would have been too awful.

  The office settled down for its afternoon ritual.

  Typewriters broke the silence with their chatter. There was the sound of paper crackling as it slipped into the carriage. The Mediterranean seemed to be far away, and no longer did the world dance to fantastic music. It was the monotonous, everyday office world, with the chirruping of typewriters and the constant use of rubber ‒ for never had Ann made so many mistakes. She just could not settle to it. Round the corner, across the chimney-pots and the leads, was the enchanted world, and she could not forget it.

  It was little Gelding’s turn to get the tea. Because it was a celebration, it was Bourbon biscuits and a whole quarter of a pound of petits fours from the little grocer’s round the corner. And because little Gelding was extremely hard up, she borrowed perforce from Ann to pay for the biscuits.

  ‘I’ll be flush again on Friday night,’ she explained, ‘but I laddered my new stockings yesterday, and that did me. I’ll be better off next week.’

  So really the celebration tea came out of Ann’s pocket, although it wasn’t her turn. When she took the last letters into Mr. Robert to sign, he said, ‘Well, did you do as I said?’

  ‘Yes, I booked the passage.’

  He nodded approval. ‘You won’t regret it; you are a wise young woman.’

  But Ann, as she passed down the stairs into drab London, was not at all sure that she was not beginning to regret it already.

  Chapter 3

  I

  Mrs. Puddock entered into the affair of the ticket in the sweep with an enthusiasm which quite surprised Ann. Ann mentioned it when she got back, and instantly Mrs. Puddock launched herself into innumerable ‘Well, to be sures’, and ‘Fancy that nows’. It appeared that Mr. P. had very often had a bit on a good thing. Not that it generally turned out to be such a good thing as he thought. He had been a great man for sweepstakes, though as far as she knew he had never won a prize in his life. Mrs. Puddock’s chief regret at the moment was that she had not had a ticket herself. She should have done, of course, but she just hadn’t. Then, seeing that someone she knew had won, it had, so to speak, brought it home to her. Next year, she told herself, she wasn’t going to act so silly, that she wasn’t.

  ‘I knew there was a bit of luck coming to the house,’ she informed Ann, ‘because this evening there was two black cats a-fighting in the area. That’s always a good sign,’ and she went downstairs.

  She cooked an extra dish for Ann’s supper, a nice bit of macaroni cheese, for after she had had her poached egg on baked beans, and her bit of cold bar tart. Mrs. Puddock prided herself on her bar tart. It had been the first thing that had attracted Mr. P. to her, he having a rare sweet tooth. ‘Not the first tart as has attracted me!’ he had been wont to say. Such a one for his jokes! And some of them none too nice!

  It was Wednesday and it should have been the mending night, but somehow Ann could not mend. The sweepstake and the circular, and the ultimate booking of a passage, had been too much for her. She eyed the basket of stockings ‒ those last elephant-grey ones had worn disgracefully ‒ and, although she knew that she ought to be busy with her needle, she couldn’t. All the broken colonnades and the tremble of red roses and the still shapes of cypresses seemed to come between her and her work.

  She would need clothes, different clothes, to go on that cruise. She would get a new jumper, one of those light crocheted ones; her big coat would do, perhaps a new semi-evening frock …

  Then suddenly she remembered that the news would have to be broken to Cuthbert. She would have to tell him on Sunday, and it was not an enviable task. He would somewhat naturally be disgusted at the way in which the money had been won, and probably equally disgusted at the way in which she intended spending it. Anything in the nature of a cruise was quite outside his comprehension.

  She would have to tell Cuthbert, and she had no idea how she was going to do it. Usually under difficulties she would enlist the sympathies of Eleanor, but she did not feel that under these circumstances Eleanor would be sympathetic. She would take Cuthbert’s part. For anyway a very considerable portion of the money had been wasted ‒ they would probably use the word ‘frittered’ ‒ on travelling to a part of the world where people had no morals at all. Cuthbert had the usual outlook of an Englishman, with the beautiful belief that though the Almighty had made the British Isles, with the possible exception of Ireland, which was Popish and Sinn Fein, the devil had undoubtedly made every other part of the world. And that was that!

  It would not be easy to tell Cuthbert, and Ann was dreading Sunday. She went to bed very frightened, and through her dreams she wandered in an Italian orange grove, and listened to the alluring music, but every now and then the devil would peep out at her. The devil was in his accustomed uniform of horns and a tail and nothing much beside. And then it would not be the devil at all, but just Cuthbert with his neat little jam-pot collar, and his silly little saucer hat. It was most confusing.

  II

  Between the extraordinary happenings of that most extraordinary day and the Sunday, the cheque was sent from the sweepstake offices and cashed, for their horse was scratched. The balance due on the ticket was delivered to the offices of the steamship company, and the amount lent by Mr. Robert was returned to him. The remainder was locked into the office safe, for Ann had a terror of a banking account, and Mr. Robert said she could leave it there if she wished.

  ‘I’ll be you
r banker,’ he said brightly.

  Instead of feeling wicked and damned for ever, Ann found herself feeling amazingly thrilled and all the better for the venture. She would not let herself think of Sunday.

  On Friday she put up office tea, éclairs and cream buns, and Miss Thomas forgave her her previous sins, and over the friendly kettle they all became fast friends again. Little Gelding borrowed a whole five shillings ‒ another pair of stockings had done it on her, she explained; and it seemed to Ann that there was very little chance of seeing the fourpence for Bourbon biscuits the other day or the five shillings to-day back again.

  Still Ann tried not to think of Sunday.

  On the Saturday afternoon she and Miss Thomas, feeling too rich for words, attended a matinée of White Horse Inn, sitting in the upper circle, and feeling just like duchesses. And White Horse Inn whetted Ann’s whistle for further travel. Why was she going to a stupid place like Italy, when there were lovely places like the Austrian Tyrol? Of course she oughtn’t to have rushed off like that and booked herself a passage for the very first cruise that had attracted her attention. She ought to have waited a little while. There were so many places to choose from.

  Only she knew that if she had waited, she would never have gone at all. She would have provided herself with a hundred and one satisfactory reasons for not going; she would have thought of what Cuthbert would say, she would have told herself that she ought to save the money, and eventually she would have saved the money. Undoubtedly she would have saved it.

  On the Sunday morning she simply had to think of Cuthbert. Within an hour or two she would be faltering out the truth to him, and hearing his opinion. It was a horrible thought. Ann put on her clean underclothes, which, in deference to the precepts of her youth, she faithfully aired by placing them under her pillow all Saturday night. She put on her best dress, the navy-blue one with the little spotted vest which Cuthbert and Eleanor thought looked so nice and ladylike. At South Kensington tube Station she bought some pink tulips to take to Eleanor. The very fact that she bought the tulips showed that she was disturbed and not in her proper senses, for Cuthbert had very definite ideas about shopping on a Sunday. In the first place he considered that it was breaking the commandment which bade you to keep the Sabbath day holy; also it was aiding and abetting other people not to keep the Sabbath day holy.