Wonder Cruise: A heartwarming holiday romance in the 1930s

by Ursula Bloom

  ‘I was in bed, with the sun.’

  Mrs. Spinks buttonholed her, and they sat down on one of the lounge sofas, side by side. There was no escape. It seemed that in the evening several of the older ladies of the party had been anxious to see something of the night life of Naples. Their husbands could not help them, they knew nothing about it. Having heard that it was a particularly disgraceful city, the elderly ladies’ respectable whistles had been whetted. One of the cadaverous-looking guides who frequented the mole had accosted some lady, and had told her that he could show her a most extraordinary cabaret where the most peculiar dances in Europe were to be witnessed. ‘Nevaire see anyzing like-a,’ he had said.

  He wanted a considerable sum to act as their escort, because, as he informed them, the Fascisti had to be squared and it was a very dangerous business. Mrs. Spinks had been consulted, and, being only too anxious to show that she had money and to spare, she had offered to put up half. What was half to her? The result of all this argument and bargaining had been that at ten o’clock, five indiscreet ladies, in the fascinating pursuit of something which they considered would not be ‘quite nice’, had departed over the side.

  There the dark-haired, dark-eyed guide had joined them. He had been wearing a cloak, which had stirred the ladies considerably. A cloak was dangerous-looking, it was romantic. Brigands wore cloaks. They had all been squeezed into a taxicab, which had proceeded at breakneck speed over the cobbles of Naples, jolting them into one another’s arms. The guide had been very agreeable over it, very amusing, laughing all the time, and to the ladies in search of the disgraceful, it had really seemed that their adventure had already started.

  The car, climbing the hill, arrived after a devious route left them entirely bewildered, outside a somewhat seedy-looking café, which had obviously been forewarned of their arrival. A long conversation took place between the guide and the manager, before admittance could be obtained. Once inside, they were escorted to two small tables set on a sanded floor, the whole place being very ill-lit, and a great many soiled paper roses and shell flowers being entwined about the roof. Just at first it had seemed dull enough. Girls had danced, but so wholly respectably and in so many clothes, that the ladies had protested to the guide. He had charged them abominably for a very third-rate affair. The guide had shrugged his shoulders. All of a sudden he had become surprisingly ignorant of English. He held up hands in protest. But anyway after that things had started to happen. And such things! Oh, my dear, I thought I should have died!

  The ladies’ protests had certainly enlivened the proceedings. Suddenly the lights had fused. In the scuffle that proceeded, one lady found herself deprived of her bag, but as she said afterwards, she was so glad to escape with her life that she did not care. A wild scream reverberated through the café, oaths, a mysterious knocking. Then they had been aware of the guide clawing at them, ‘Signore, queek, this way. The Fascisti.’ They had no idea what it might all be about, but it had epitomized their way of getting their money’s worth. They had been only too glad to follow him down a queer little passage and out of the darkness into what was very obviously the café’s back yard.

  One of the ladies had had a heart attack in the subsequent ride back. Mr. Spinks was very angry with his wife for having embarked on the expedition at all. Anything might have happened, he said. Unfortunately when you came to analyse the whole thing, nothing of what they had expected had happened, and the guide had got away with a fat sum of money and somebody’s bag to boot, though it had all been very exciting at the time.

  Ann found it rather dull. People’s adventures are seldom so thrilling to others as they are to themselves. Ann would have hated to have been in a low Neapolitan café, while women screamed and fainted, and the Fascisti pummelled at the door. There was too much of Cuthbert in her for that, but she had to listen to Mrs. Spinks’s narrative at length and to agree that it had been amazing.

  And as she listened, her mind wandered away, and she remembered sitting on the veranda of the Pompeian hotel, and she was not at all sure that she had not had a wonderful time there with Oliver. Afterwards it is so easy to look back and to see the singular beauty of moments. At the time it is not so simple, you are too close to them, they do not stand out against the background of everyday drabness. She had been happy, radiantly happy.

  ‘Did you see Pompeii?’ asked Mrs. Spinks.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So did I, and I can’t say that I thought much of it. All in such a mess, I thought. So bitty. I felt sorry for the people who had gone on that wretched excursion. I would not go to such places if I could not afford the best. Do it in comfort, I say or not at all.’

  ‘Quite.’

  ‘Ah, there’s the beef tea.’ Mrs. Spinks watched the tray coming up in the lift with approval, though her figure cried shame to the very thought of beef tea. ‘That’s one of the little luxuries I always treat myself to. I must have my drop of beef tea.’

  And she moved off.

  VII

  They danced that night, with the lights of Naples astern, and beyond the bows Vesuvius, now and again throwing up a red glow, a marvellous sight against the darkness of the night sky.

  Ann could not dance because her head still throbbed a little, and Miss Brown had warned her about it.

  ‘I think you’ll do what I tell you,’ said Miss Brown, ‘though some of them ‒ Lord, bless your heart ‒ it all goes in one ear and out the other. That’s the worst of these cruises. Some of all sorts. Now the mail run’s different. There you sort of get to know your people. This is all chop and change.’

  So Ann drew a deck-chair to the taffrail and sat there with the sound of the band in the distance.

  ‘Looking at our little volcano?’ enquired Miss Bright cheerfully as she pattered by. She was wearing plimsolls. The cobbles had lamed her, for she had that afternoon done a prowl of the docks, until so beset by gentlemen who wished to sell her goods of a doubtful variety, that she had had to lay about her with an umbrella. The language of the umbrella as wielded by an irate female is the esperanto of the dago. Miss Bright had returned victorious, left severely alone, but quite lame from the cobbles; hence the plimsolls.

  ‘Nobody is likely to ask me to dance,’ she said.

  The ship was already full of its romances. Most of the young people had made friends. From where Ann sat she could see them grouped in couples.

  ‘So amusing to watch them,’ said Miss Bright, ‘sea fever, that’s what that is … I must go down to the sea again,’ and she hummed to herself.

  The A. P. had struck lucky. His eye had been attracted by a peroxide blonde, whom he had first sighted at Marseilles. The peroxide blonde was no sailor. She took to her bunk whenever the ship took to sea, and the A. P. had unfortunately not made enough progress when in harbour to take to her bunk too. He had hopes anon, having had some experience of the young girl who saves up and goes the whole hog on a cruise in other things beside money. He had a remote idea that there was some wholehogging to be done here, and he wasn’t going to be left out of it. Not likely.

  The A. P. brightening considerably, pursued the lady with avidity in port, because undoubtedly when at sea she would be missing. He was suggesting the boat deck, and he got such a view going up. The A. P. had been in the merchant service so short a while that he was still full of enthusiasms, still keenly interested in what came his way. And the purser himself never went on the boat deck! He had informed the A. P. of that only this morning, when behind the wrought iron bars of their office he had been occupied in converting passengers’ money into lire. And that was an advantage about the boat deck, thought the A. P. as he trundled up the companion with the lady of his affections just ahead.

  Ann watched him a little reproachfully. What a thing it was to be in the teens. What a joy to be a peroxide blonde. She was wondering whether, if she had had her life to live again, she would not have chosen fastness, and yellow-gold hair, and powder and lipstick galore. You had more fun that way. And whe
n you got on you didn’t regret the things you had done, but the things you hadn’t. Queer, that.

  Three girls were giggling together. She could not help overhearing their conversation. She listened languidly, feeling a little guilty, but they were so close, and anyway her presence did not seem to worry them much. It was quite obvious that they were in the passenger list as that part of the cruise that started from twenty-five pounds.

  They were three shop girls, she supposed, who, rather like herself, had never been farther than Margate before.

  ‘And oh, my dear,’ said the longest and leanest, ‘how was I to know that he wasn’t an officer? He looked like one. He had on one of those funny little short jackets, and a cap with a peak, and all, and then when he tried to kiss me I made sure that he must be an officer.’

  ‘And wasn’t he?’

  ‘My dear, he’s a steward. Isn’t it awful?’

  ‘I dunno,’ said the third, ‘a steward is better than no one. He does wear a uniform, and what with the shortage of men and all that …’

  But the longest and leanest was highly indignant.

  ‘All the same he ought to have been an officer. I can’t get over that, and it is so awkward meeting him again.’

  ‘You must have encouraged him. Stewards don’t try to kiss passengers.’

  ‘Oh, I encouraged him all right. You see I thought that he was an officer. It isn’t my fault that he isn’t.’

  The band struck up again, sparkling happy music of Congress Dances, and they drifted away. Flotsam and jetsam of a wonder cruise. Happenings. Events. Romances. Illusions. Disillusion. All crammed together into one bewildering whole.

  Ann sitting there heard a voice behind her.

  ‘What are you thinking of?’ asked Fergus.

  ‘I was thinking how funny a ship is. Listening to people talking.’

  ‘Some of all sorts.’

  ‘Yes, all sorts. My stewardess tells me the mail run isn’t like this?’

  ‘We don’t get such a mixed crowd of course. This is all one class and it produces that. There we have the people we like and dislike, more for themselves than for what they are. Now we take dislikes just because people look dreadful and do dreadful things. Mean of us perhaps; still, human.’

  He leant against the taffrail, and she noted the long slender lines of his body, the little short coat that fitted closely about the waist, and left the smooth line of his hip defined against the sea. Ann for her part interested Fergus. She was the most interesting woman he had met this cruise. In his own mind he could not ‘place’ her. She was different from the others. She seemed to be growing younger every moment, both physically and mentally. She was so rapid in this youthful development that she took him by surprise. Soon he believed that the real and rather lovely Ann would blossom out, and she would be worth noticing.

  He said, ‘Why did you come this trip?’

  She told him about the sweepstake.

  ‘And you are still in a whirl about it?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘You are coming out of it quickly too. You are shaping, finding your real self at last.’

  ‘And then there will be the going back.’

  He said slowly, ‘You’ll never go back. That isn’t in you. Nobody can go back in life, you know, that isn’t possible. You will go on.’

  When she undressed that night, she stood a little while peeping out of the round port to where Vesuvius stood lowering against the night sky. She thought, ‘He says I am never going back. I’m going on and on.’ And then she remembered what Oliver had said only yesterday … ‘You are lucky that no man ever asked you. That’s something to come. Lucky fellow!’ Life was dropping amazing possibilities into her lap.

  Chapter 5

  I

  Before the S.S. Allando cast off from the mole at Naples, a letter from Cuthbert was delivered on board. The letter was reproachful. He had received only postcards, and he felt that he had been grossly neglected.

  Cuthbert had never been geographically interested in places, much less in places that he was never likely to see for himself, and Ann had, in a fit of aberration, sent him a picture of the Spanish Cathedral at Gibraltar. It had been a match to the fuse of popery, for ever latent in his mind. He felt it necessary to rebuke Ann. It was all very well, but although she might be having a very good time, they were having nothing of the sort in Balham. It had rained dismally ever since Ann had left, and the seeds that had been put in in anticipation of a delightful summer, had been washed away, which was a wicked waste of money.

  Cuthbert was hard up. He was furious because his sister was not hard up. It wasn’t fair, he argued. There was never a time in his career when Cuthbert was not hard up, but he felt that it was worse now than before, because of Ann going and squandering that vast sum of money. He ought to rub it in. He did not suppose that there would be any holiday for them this year, not even such a simple holiday as Worthing. A pity! A hard-working man like himself needed his annual holiday. It meant that the winter would be additionally hard on him, and he wasn’t as young as he had been. Cuthbert’s letter was full of righteous self-pity, and it covered a good deal of ground. He had got as far as next winter, and his financial status next year, and he had deplored the unfortunate affair of the Spanish Cathedral.

  Ann sat down in the lounge and reviewed Cuthbert’s letter, and thought how much angrier he would have been had he known that she had had her hair cut short, and had bought new clothes ‒ thousands of francs’ worth, and a thousand francs extra because she had forgotten the deposit ‒ she had bought what he would have called fast clothes, that could be of no possible use to her when she returned to her drab life in the office and in South Kensington.

  And she had changed so much that she had actually gloried in the extravagance, that was the most extraordinary part of it.

  She sat down at a little side table in the lounge and she wrote to Cuthbert. She had an idea that he might consider the letter rude. There had been quite enough of this ‘you are wasting your money’ business. Whose money was it to waste anyway? She had had her fill of fraternal interference, and there was going to be a terrible row when she got home, she knew, but a lot lay between her and that time. Malta, Venice, Ragusa. Why, the cruise was not half through yet.

  Whilst she was writing her letter, Oliver Banks came across the lounge. He was holding a Marconi in his hand, and there was something a little odd about the way he looked; his mouth was caught and puckered, his eyes were dazed as though even when seeing her still he did not recognize her. He came straight to the other side of the writing desk, and sat there opposite her, with the pile of stationery all marked S.S. Allando between them, and the curtain of the porthole flapping a little in the light breeze, for they were running before the wind.

  ‘What do you say to that?’ he asked, and he laid the Marconi along the top of the papers so that she could read it. It had been sent from California, and it stated with brutal candour that Lilia had been killed in a car accident in Los Angeles.

  For a moment Ann did not know what to say, then the words came in a flood. ‘I’m most awfully sorry, and coming like this just when you are on a cruise, enjoying yourself. What can I say? What will you do?’

  But he was obviously thinking of Lilia and what she had meant to him.

  ‘It would have been so much easier if I had loved her, only I didn’t. I can’t be sorry. Not really sorry.’

  ‘But you must be sorry! You mean the grief is so great that you do not realize it?’

  ‘No, I don’t mean that at all. I mean what I say, and I am not going to be a hypocrite about it. I can’t express what I don’t feel, I’m not made that way. Lilia and I separated years ago, we were disappointed in each other. I should not have expected her to have been upset if I had been killed.’

  ‘But she was your wife?’

  ‘I know, only having split we were like strangers. You cannot live on a memory, that is the cruel part of life. I feel so wrong because I cannot
feel sorrier. You see, it just doesn’t mean anything to me at all.’

  Ann stared at him in amazement. ‘But it must do. You were married to her.’

  He shook his head. ‘Long long ago I had a romance and it faded. When a flower dies in your coat you forget its loveliness in its withering. It is like that with women.’

  She did not understand him in the least. She had never known any man at all intimately save her father and Cuthbert, and she had been afraid of both of them. It is difficult to ally romance with one’s father, almost impossible. Somehow she did not believe that he had ever loved and wooed and had children. Cuthbert had made a very prim marriage which left you wondering if and how consummation had taken place; still, there was Gloria as proof of that, or of Eleanor’s infidelity, which was more unlikely still. It was hard that now she could not understand Oliver in the least when she wanted most to help him.

  ‘I suppose,’ she said, ‘my world is so different that it makes it impossible for me to understand you, only I cannot think how it is that you are not despairing.’

  He lifted his head and looked into her eyes. ‘If you were now told that your mother was dead, would you be despairing?’

  ‘I couldn’t be, could I? She has been gone so long.’

  ‘That is my predicament. Lilia has been gone so long. It is very hard that she should die in this way, very hard indeed, though I don’t know that a car smash isn’t the best way of passing out, provided you are killed immediately. Lilia as she used to be is nothing but a ghost, and whether she is alive or dead it makes no difference to the carryings on of that ghost.’

  She sat there chewing the end of the pen. She wished that she could think of something to say, something sympathetic and sweet which would comfort him. But she realized that perhaps he was not in need of actual comfort, and that was the most amazing thing of all.

  He got up uneasily.

  ‘I’ll have to cable back,’ he said.

  II

  Ann sat on dully.