Wonder Cruise: A heartwarming holiday romance in the 1930s

by Ursula Bloom

  In the other window a jaunty-looking doll, dressed in an over-French fashion, perched above the notice Fifinelle, modes et chapeaux. It gave no hint as to what else there might be within. If Ann had been alone she would certainly have turned back, but she was not alone, she had Miss Bright to consider, and the impression that would be made on Miss Bright’s mind. Boldly, she opened the door and marched inside.

  A delicate perfume assailed her; a satin-clad young woman; unbelievably svelte, seemed to swim towards her. Ann began with the Englishwoman’s inevitable formula abroad.

  ‘Do you speak English?’

  ‘But of course,’ said the lovely young woman who was entirely curveless.

  Ann explained hesitantly what she wanted, and all the while she clutched her franc notes in her hand. She had the vague idea that they might be stolen from her. She suspected Fifinelle. She suspected everything that was French. She wanted some cooler frocks for the cruise, her things were all wrong, she knew, and she wanted to buy some others.

  The young woman called Madame, and Madame settled down to the business as only a Frenchwoman who is also an artist can. She disposed of Ann and Miss Bright (whom she insisted on alluding to as Maman) in spindly gilt chairs, and she waved before them young girls in the frocks that she considered would be suitable. Ann thought she had never seen anything so unsuitable. The girls looked lovely enough. They looked just as Ann had always wanted to look, young and glamorous and alluring.

  ‘This,’ said Madame, ‘is gentille,’ and lo, she waved to the dais a girl in a slim white frock with a tiny madonna-blue cape.

  ‘But too young for me …’

  ‘Jamais,’ said Madame gallantly.

  Madame was inclined to stoutness but she had severely buttoned that stoutness in. She had an extremely French bust, poised at the angle only Frenchwomen can poise their bosoms. Above it was Madame’s face framed in her henna-ed hair, and her ears in which hung elaborate pearls as big as little billiard balls.

  ‘You try heem,’ said Madame.

  Now Ann had not meant to ‘try heem’. She was however beguiled into a fitting-room and persuaded. She found herself looking quite unlike herself, for Madame banished the woolly underclothes. She waved aside the corset upon which Ann had pinned her faith for all those years since she had been promoted from a Liberty bodice.

  ‘Ridicule,’ said Madame.

  She found herself sheathed in satin. Over it there slid cami-knickers which she could only describe as being fast. A petticoat that was all allure. And last of all the frock. It might be Madame’s way of disposing it about her, a twist here, a tweak there, but the material no longer looked too young, or the cut too slim.

  ‘I could never put it on like that,’ said Ann plaintively.

  ‘Vous fautes ‒ I teach you,’ said Madame, and her bright little eyes shone and the pearl knobs quivered in the rouged lobes of her ears. Madame was the perfect saleswoman. Her mission in life was to sell frocks, and she saw to it that she sold them. She had a positive genius for showing you yourself as you wished to look; just as you had always wanted to be. Every dress that Ann put on, she felt that she must buy. She could not resist it. To a woman who has been suppressed for thirty-five years, there is a desperate allure about the blossoming. She grew reckless, and undoubtedly Miss Bright egged her on. Miss Bright sitting there on her little gilt chair, with the gold watch and the pince-nez quivering and gibbering together on her bosom. She kept saying, ‘Well, really now,’ and ‘Just look at that,’ and ‘That one is a dream.’

  The inevitable happened.

  Ann had not enough money.

  ‘I shall have to go back to the ship for more,’ she explained.

  Madame shrugged her shoulders. To her a few francs more or less did not matter. She thought only in thousand franc notes. Her modes were very reasonable, absurdly so when they were so chic ‒ ridicule, she explained. Perhaps Ann could leave a small deposit, hey?

  Ann left a thousand francs and thought that it was a very large deposit.

  ‘It is usual, and commode,’ said Madame, ‘it secure the garments too.’

  Ann thought that it ought to.

  She and Miss Bright bundled outside and into the taxi. An array of vivid boxes splashed with audacious French flowers was dashed in beside them. The rest, waiting under seal of the deposit, were put on one side in the shop.

  ‘The ship. Bateau,’ said Ann, becoming quite violent in her French according to Dr. Ahn.

  The taxi-man had expected that. Mesdames who shopped at Fifinelle’s usually ran out of money. Inevitably they rushed back to the ship, and kept a car waiting for their return, and they never complained how fast you drove either. Mais non! Their minds were entirely centred on les chemises, les robes, les pantalons! They were picturing how superb, comme gentilles, they would look in their new finery.

  He drove recklessly, skidding deftly along the streets, while Ann and Miss Bright clutched at each other and prayed that their end might not be yet, though it looked very much like it. Then, righting himself, he proceeded to spin perilously down towards the docks.

  ‘This is life,’ said Miss Bright, ‘this is really living. Oh, my dear, isn’t it all fun?’

  But Ann was remembering the old hag in the Alameda ‒ ‘Youth goes. Look at me!’ She was thinking as the taxi-man had supposed that she would be thinking, in terms of peach crêpe-de-Chine, and lavender georgette. Perhaps she had been a little fool! Well, she had enjoyed it. She only regretted that she had not bought the other frock, the one that Madame had described as being tout á fait chemise! Perhaps she had squandered her money, but she had bought happiness with it, and that is what counts. She had bought a certain yet subtle thrill of joy which centred within herself.

  That was something.

  IV

  Ann actually ran into the purser’s office to get more money. She had thrown caution to the winds. Outside Miss Bright sat prinking in the taxi as though it were a private car. The scum of Marseilles tried to divert her attention. Lean, cadaverous-looking gentlemen offered their services as guides. Little boys attempted to sell her all manner of useless commodities, from postcards of a very dubious nature, to local guide-books and beadwork.

  ‘Go away, my little boy,’ said Miss Bright, for she still smiled in that gay manner of hers, which the little boys who understood no language (save that of the stick) took to be encouraging. Eventually she found the taxicab becoming too conspicuous. She began to wonder when Ann would return. She began to have grave doubts as to what might have happened to her.

  Ann had cannoned into Oliver Banks, who also had returned for more money. It is the eternal quest of all cruising passengers, this hurried and humiliating sojourn to the purser’s office, this demand for more of the wherewithal to spend.

  ‘Oh, you’ve been done down too,’ Oliver commented. ‘Frocks?’

  ‘I’ve been a tremendous bust,’ she admitted, ‘I’ve never done such a thing in my life before.’

  ‘Well, go on. Have some more. It will do you good.’

  Ann decided in her heart that after all she would have the little frock that Madame said was tout á fait chemise. She had not meant to melt, but why shouldn’t she? You might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb. Mrs. Puddock was always saying so. (‘And by the bye, I must send Mrs. Puddock a picture postcard,’ she thought).

  ‘A frock,’ said Oliver, ‘is a tonic. Go a good bust, and you will feel a new woman.’

  So Ann returned to the taxi and she saw all the rag-tag of Marseilles gathered round, and Miss Bright sitting there very erect and very perky, and saying, ‘Go away, little boy,’ to little boys who did not mean to go away. Ann got into the taxi beside her new friend, and they started off again.

  En route they met the Spinkses being driven along in a gigantic car which they had commandeered, looking most hot and uncomfortable in the sun. Mrs. Spinks habitually sat upright with her amply upholstered bosom before her; she felt the heat badly, and was both crimson and dam
p. They were not enjoying themselves, and all the better-forgotten memories of the miserable holiday at Juan les Pins had come back to them. For Mr. Spinks had gone into a café to get something for them both, and had had an ‘umptarara’ with a girl there! She had been bad, downright bad through and through, Mrs. Spinks could see that at a glance. Brazen too, for she had winked at him, and it had enraged his wife. She had recalled the horrible affair when they had occupied separate rooms at Juan les Pins. In France all the best couples had separate rooms, it seemed to be the proper thing to do. Mr. Spinks, fussy and fidgety, had been convinced that his bed was damp. To make certain he had put his watch into it, and had found the glass (as he had expected) misted. He had called the femme de chambre, and there unfortunately his French had failed him. He had tapped the glass, and had indicated the bed. She had understood. Mais oui, she understood parfaitement. ‘Un moment,’ she had said, and only one moment had she been. She had totally misunderstood his need. She had reappeared in the scantiest chemise, she was well used to the exigencies of English gentlemen with fat and old wives.

  Mr. Spinks had forgotten himself so far as to scream. His wife had come rushing out. She too had misunderstood everything. Never to this day would she believe that he had not staged the whole affair. Never to this moment would she understand that he was no good at languages. The language of the eye was the same with every nation that ever was, and Mr. Spinks was good at that, too good at it. And here he was, starting it all over again with another little girl in a café. No wonder she was sitting bolt upright in the car, and keeping a watchful eye on him. She was taking him to Grasse. It sounded pure, lovely scenery, hill-sides and mountains, pastoral and simple. No more French hussies for Mrs. Spinks. And she’d take good care there were no more French hussies for Mr. Spinks either. That she would.

  Ann saw that they were miserable. She saw it as her taxi hustled past them. For the second time that day she drew up with a clatter outside Fifinelle’s, and rushed inside.

  ‘You wait here,’ she told Miss Bright, ‘I shan’t be a moment; it is only to have the boxes sent out.’

  She couldn’t have Miss Bright witness her weakness about the frock that was tout á fait chemise. With the pressing need of a woman who already sees forty coming out of the shadows ahead and twenty lost in the mist of the twilight behind, she was daring. She did not care. This was her entire spring and summer wound into the one St. Martin’s summer which comes at the end of the year and is too brief, too lovely to be believable. She intended living every moment of it, getting the most out of it, giving the most to it. Time enough to regret when she returned to Mrs. Puddock’s and the office, and the humdrum monotony of the mechanical pattern of living. Time enough for all that then.

  She went flying into the shop.

  Madame had other customers, and as she believed that she had finished with Ann she did not come readily to her assistance. Ann had bought all that could be reasonably expected of her, therefore Madame did not trouble herself too much. A young assistant appeared.

  ‘Mais oui,’ she lifted the boxes ‒ ‘l’addition …’ she read out the amount.

  ‘And the frock, the other little frock,’ breathed Ann hurriedly, ‘I’ll take that too.’

  Madame, who had strangely furtive ears for overhearing what she wanted to hear, turned quickly. ‘Aussi le petit chapeau,’ murmured Madame.

  It seemed that there was a petit chapeau, a mere morceau, but it went with the frock that was tout á fait chemise. It was the very thing for cruising, tiny, provocative, and very sweet.

  Ann had told herself that the frock really must be the very last thing of all, but when the assistant fitted the petit chapeau over her head, she knew that she had to have it.

  ‘Oh, very well,’ she said.

  She counted out the notes. There seemed to be dozens of them. Little fluttering notes, and now Ann was in a hurry to leave the shop where she had spent so much. She was in a hurry to leave before she spent more, for the tide of wild and reckless extravagance had overtaken her, and in it her wiser and better self was drowned.

  The boxes were crammed into the taxi, where Miss Bright still sat in all her dangling jewellery. She was sitting there saying softly to herself, ‘Broom, broom, broom.’

  As they drove down the hill, Ann said, ‘Why are you saying “broom, broom, broom”?’

  Miss Bright laughed. ‘Oh, it’s just a little way of mine. My mother always said it gave a pleasing expression to the face, moulds the lips, you know. I used to laugh and to say that I was one of those girls who always said “brush, brush, brush”. Not at all the same, you know, not at all the same.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Ann.

  In a few years’ time she would be as old as this, and perhaps as silly as this. She might wear her mother’s brooch, and pince-nez. She might be saying ‘broom, broom, broom’, or ‘brush, brush, brush’, to herself. It was rather an awful thought.

  And now she wanted to open the magic boxes with the gay flowers on the lids. She wanted to strew the bed in her cabin with the contents, to glory in the kind of materials in which she had never gloried before, but had always been forced to admire on somebody else.

  ‘We seem to get on well together,’ said Miss Bright, ‘what about doing some of the churches this afternoon? They’re Roman of course, and not quite nice, but we’d be safe, the two of us?’

  ‘I’m going to have a quiet rest.’

  ‘I don’t believe in quiet rests in foreign parts, except of course the siesta, but that’s India.’ Miss Bright was not always reliably informed, but liked to give the impression that she knew a lot. ‘And although Marseilles is hot it isn’t quite India.’

  ‘Not quite,’ Ann agreed.

  She thought she would never get rid of Miss Bright, but eventually she had greater trouble in getting rid of the taxi. The taxi-man considered that he had been grossly underpaid, whereas truly Ann had in ignorance overpaid him. The mere fact that she obviously did not understand the value of the franc, and that she was a lady travelling alone ‒ he did not count Miss Bright as being of any consequence whatever ‒ encouraged him to demand more.

  ‘Ma’m’selle not understand,’ he said, ‘the extra for wait?’

  Ann began fumbling with further notes. The sight of the fumbling put fresh hope into the taxi-man’s soul. Really these English were so very easy, they hated being considered mean, they hated people to presume that they did not understand the difference between francs and sous.

  Doubtfully Ann inquired as to what more she owed.

  ‘What Ma’m’selle will,’ said the obliging driver, and he doffed his cap and held it over his heart, standing in a pretty attitude of respectful attention.

  Ann had no idea what she wanted to pay. She thought she had given him enough, and she was covered with confusion. ‘There must be some set sum,’ she protested. There had always been an accepted fare at Worthing.

  ‘It is what Ma’m’selle wish,’ and again he bowed with all the perfidious courtesy of the Frenchman.

  At that moment the master-at-arms noticed the scene. He moved forward ponderously, his advance much like that of one of the ’buses he had driven in his days along the Number Nineteen route.

  ‘’Ere, what’s all this ’ere?’ he demanded.

  Instantly the courtesy of the driver faded into thin air. He knew masters-at-arms of old. They had no scruples as to the justice of so much and no more. They did not care who thought them mean or ungenerous or ungallant.

  ‘Now then, come off it,’ said the master-at-arms. ‘Money for waiting, why that’s on your meter. You ’op it, me lad.’

  The driver professed a complete ignorance of the English language. He waved his hands in deprecation.

  ‘And don’t you start doin’ of that there at me,’ said the master-at-arms, ‘I don’t like it,’ and he turned to Ann. ‘You pop inboard, Miss,’ said he, ‘and I’ll settle this ’ere.’

  Gratefully Ann popped.

  V

  Ann
had all the precious clothes laid out on the bed, cyclamen georgette, tissue in golden folds, a green floral threaded through with little quick rivers of fire, the frock that was tout á fait chemise!

  She would never dare put them on, and yet they were so lovely. Even supposing she never wore them, she would have got her money’s worth out of them, she told herself. Just looking at them was enough.

  But the heat of Marseilles, coming down in its exhausting high noon, and the realization that she was tired to death, overcame her. She laid aside her serviceable costume, which she had once thought so smart. She drew on the white frock with the cape that was the colour of a madonna’s cloak. She put on the appropriate underthings, and discarded the old corsets that had steeled her through life.

  ‘All nice women wear them,’ her mother had said, when as a child she had protested against promotion from the Liberty bodice to the drab courtil corset ‘for maids’ wear’.

  She wasn’t going to be a nice woman any longer. Sheer satin clasped her close. She was surprised that she was so slender, that she did not bulge. The freedom was delightful.

  She tied the narrow sash of the frock about her waist. She had never before experienced the exquisite joy of drawing a string together like that, soft in the fingers, crushing into a tie. She put it on and fluffed out her hair, drawing it forward over the low smooth brow. She looked a new person.

  She had lunch like that, a rather desolate lunch, for no one was about, even Fergus had gone ashore.

  Later she went down to tea. The band was playing in the café when she slipped in for her cup. A few couples were dancing languorously. Stewards were standing about awkwardly, for fire stations had been warned for five o’clock, and they were expecting the bell to go at any moment.

  Ann sat down at the nearest table and she asked for China tea. It was funny but China tea gave her a thrill. It seemed so remote from Balham and Onslow Gardens and the office. It intrigued her. At first she had not liked it, the stewardess had brought her some in error when she was ill, and the name had fascinated her. It sounded like cocaine, or something frightfully wicked. Yet the taste had reminded her of her childhood when she had sat in one of the church pews, and for want of something better to do had sucked her kid gloves. Yet it was a taste that grew on one. She did not believe that she would find it easy to go back to the strong black Indian tea that she had been used to. And it would never do for the office to think that she was giving herself airs and graces; what was more, Mrs. Puddock wouldn’t hold with it, and as to Cuthbert, he would make scathing allusions to the new-fangled ways she had got in foreign places. But now she could enjoy its fragrance unmolested. She sipped it contentedly enough. An officer came up to her. He was the assistant purser, and he believed in making the most of his opportunities. He saw a brownish fair head, and the delicate curve of her neck. Ann had a dear little curve, rather childish, most attractive. He saw the flutter of a blue cape, and a white frock cut as only a Frenchwoman can cut clothes.