Wonder Cruise: A heartwarming holiday romance in the 1930s

by Ursula Bloom

  The Montgomerie relations had taken some notice of Oliver when he was twelve, and from these two strange homes of his early youth he had been suddenly taken to his maternal aunt’s in a dull square in London. Aunt Daisy was an unapproachable person, prim and strait-laced, who had married late in life, a rich banker. They had had no children of their own, and Aunt Daisy, having nothing to do, from sheer boredom had taken on the role of a chronic invalid.

  She needed an interest in life, and she believed that ill-health might provide that interest; it was unfortunate that the Deity, with a strange lack of discernment, should give her such robust health, but Aunt Daisy triumphed over that affliction with surprising fortitude. She talked of her florid colouring as a ‘consumptive flush’. Her tendency to put on weight and to do well on her food, she covered by vague allusions to dropsical tendencies. She went to great pains to get ill, and much greater pains to remain ill. She was considerably tried by the fact that she had never developed anything worse than a cold in her head, which, being a very strong woman, she always got over with a remarkable power of recuperation.

  Aunt Daisy’s house was entirely different from the ménage of dear Grandma and Auntie Miggs, and that in its turn had been as the poles apart from the public on the Portsmouth Road, kept by the engaging Uncle Alfred.

  Aunt Daisy employed a tutor for young Oliver, until she developed secret passions for the young man, which were immediately discovered by her large and comfortable husband. The husband changed the tutor, and Aunt Daisy as promptly changed the object of her affections. She found tutors to be far more interesting than imaginary illnesses, and probably that was the reason why Oliver found himself somewhat hurriedly sent to school. He was in no way qualified to pass any exam, which would admit him to a public school ‒ his education had been more than a little sketchy ‒ so he was shipped into one of those obliging establishments which are, so the prospectuses state, actually equal to the better-known public schools, though not of the same long standing.

  It was in fact a secondary college which gave an excellent education, though the boys who came there to be educated were a little mixed. Here in term-time Oliver learnt much knowledge (he was a clever boy), and got into the habitual scrapes which every schoolboy of that type gets into.

  The holidays were trying, for as he grew older he saw through the subterfuges of Aunt Daisy more and more, and, what was almost worse, her large husband was continually confiding his woes in the boy. He needed someone; he had felt the acute desire for the confessional for many years, and now he poured out his soul to his nephew by marriage. Feeling a traitor, Oliver could not help realizing that his aunt was entirely in the wrong, and his uncle, who was not a real uncle at all, entirely in the right. It was a most uncomfortable position to be in.

  Oliver left school at eighteen, having failed in his matric. The reason for this was not lack of brains. During the last two terms Oliver in company with three senior young gentlemen had been getting out at night. They had taken a short cut via a convenient tree that grew alongside the dormitory window, and they had found village girls who had welcomed their advances.

  The village girls had been willing to teach them of love. They themselves had been quite willing to learn. These nocturnal overtures had unfortunately sadly messed up the educational advantages offered by day. They had yawned and drowsed over their desks, doing just enough work to keep them out of trouble, and no more.

  When the big exams came along, they had failed.

  The family had deplored the fact that Oliver’s education had been wasted, but he himself was in no way dismayed. He was even at that age a philosopher, he had had his fun, you could not get it both ways, and he wasn’t going to grumble about it. It was Aunt Daisy who kicked up the fuss. He had not cared about school too much, though he had certainly cared less for the holidays. Life had been until now a hotch-potch affair, and he could not see how they could expect him to settle down. He had always had a wild longing to see America, and to America he had gone.

  America had proved to be a strange jumble of events, an even more hotch-potch affair than anything before. In America he fell in love and out of love. Beautiful women far exceeding anything that he had ever seen in England, strange drinks, perfect ice creams, all blended together into a blur. The statue of Liberty, with the lights blinking in the houses of New York at dusk behind her. Broadway, bustle, stir, commercial confusion, riot.

  In America he learnt that Grandma Banks had died, and that he was a little richer. Later it was Aunt Daisy, and he was very much richer. Then he met Lilia.

  Bermuda is an island of romance. An island of palms like great feathers, stirring in the wind; of lilies lifting cool white cups, the world suffused with their perfect scent. It had the atmosphere of love, and Lilia herself was love. She was young too, perfectly polished, with that youth of America which is so burnished. She was vivid; her face was almost blanched, for her hair, Titian in hue, had drained every tint from her skin. She painted her mouth. She was the first woman he had seen with a painted mouth, and he found it attractive. So deeply red, why, she did not need any colour in her cheeks with that dark crimson mouth of hers. She wore frocks that tempted him too; backless frocks when everyone else was covered. Directoires disclosing more than was good for a man to see. After the oafish village loves at school she was a startling contrast. She went to his head. She was bitter and cruel, and yet intoxicating. That was how she had affected him.

  They were married on the wave of a purely physical passion, and it could not last. A honeymoon that was the nearest approach to heaven that he would ever reach in this life, and then the awakening.

  There had come the knowledge that it had been a mistake, a dreadful, cruel mistake, the dregs of that bitter wine when he thought he had drained the glass. They had parted within the year. It had not meant as much to him as it might have done to some men, for he was not one of the type that takes root. He was essentially nomad. He had never settled in a home or a corner, bricks and mortar conveyed little to him, they were just a temporary abode, no more. People had not held him either. Uncle Alfred, dear Grandma and Auntie Miggs, Aunt Daisy … they were just people who came and went, they were not definite loves or hates. They did not hold him. And, although he had loved Lilia at first with the fierce passionate ardour of a physical emotion, that had gone too. There was no wrench in leaving her, she had never really been part of his life.

  Nothing had ever held him for long, he believed that nothing ever would. It was a jar to his pride to let her go, but far better than trying to hold on to her.

  He went off travelling to the East. He had a sudden longing to see Fuji-san, and to Fuji-san he went. It gave him ashes and grit, blown about on the wind of chance. Perhaps he had been in the mood for ashes and grit, for figuratively speaking that had represented his life. Then he had gone on. The years had gone on. The hotch-potch scheme that was his life had gone on.

  Until now.

  He had supposed it would last for ever, and whichever way it was it had not troubled him too much. Then he had met Ann pensively looking at the daffodils in Kensington Gardens.

  ‘They look very pretty,’ he had said, but really he had meant that Ann looked pretty.

  He had seen the imprisoned soul of Ann, shut in like a bird in a cage, and he had longed to set it free. On such a wheel of chance does our destiny run, it had just happened.

  Until to-night he had not known that he had wanted to marry her, and it had been true when he had said that he was not in love with her. Only he was beginning to be in love. That was the difference. He was not in love but he wanted her desperately, and certainly not in the same way as he had wanted Lilia. This was something bigger and greater, something that he felt would grow with the years.

  The cigarette burned to near its end. He took it out and flung it far into the sea. The ship trembled a little, trembled and stirred and steamed South.

  He had expected Ann to be astonished, even a little shocked. She was like tha
t. At heart he told himself she was unconventional, for all that she had been so involved with the conventions. But, given time to find her true self, she would escape. Oh yes, she would cast aside the shackles of her youth, she would get free.

  For Ann would never return to South Kensington. She would never go back to the plane trees in Queen’s Gate, and to Mrs. Puddock’s moods and tantrums in Onslow Gardens.

  Ann had started forth on the great adventure.

  Chapter 6

  I

  The Allando dropped her anchor with a jerk in the Grand Harbour cut deeply in sapphire blue between the gleaming whiteness of Senglea and Valletta. Ann watched it curiously.

  Malta after Naples, which lies like a lovely jewel clasped to the breast of Italy. Naples with its green hills, the wistaria, the bougainvillea flowing like spilled claret over archways and balustrades, the fullness of it, a city of verdure and of beauty, and now an island bald and white with a starkness that hurt.

  She had not seen Oliver since last night when he had asked her to marry him. She had been quite bewildered as she had tried to think it over in her cabin. She would, she told herself, never be able to meet him again, it was too dreadful; how could they go on seeing each other? Their first meeting, that would be ghastly; she felt sure that she could never appear natural. Then she had decided that it had been a joke, one of those jokes of extreme bad taste, and she had been silly to take him seriously at all.

  All the morning she had written postcards which she had bought in Pompeii, and was getting them into the box on B deck, which announced that it would be closed after eleven o’clock. Postcards for Miss Thomas and little Gelding, and Mr. Robert. She sent some to Gloria too, for surely Cuthbert could not grumble at these, because Pompeii was educational. Then she remembered some of the rumours that had gone round, frescoes, street signs, strange yet fascinating interiors. She had listened to the stories with horror, and it was queer that the old ladies were the ones who imparted them with such a relish. The pure old ladies who seemed to cleave with indefatigable appetite to something impure.

  Then she had turned from it in disgust. She had been thinking so much about Oliver, about his proposal (supposing that he had really meant it, but of course he hadn’t), and she did not realize how close they were getting to the Grand Harbour. Then she heard the anchor go down; she saw the harbour itself bespattered with little dghaisas, the men bending over their oars, their queerly elongated reflections in the water below. She thought involuntarily, ‘Venice will be something like this,’ which is the one idea that strikes most visitors to the ‘island of sunshine and romance’. But Venice is nothing like it; nothing at all.

  Ann was anxious to go ashore at once. And here was Miss Bright, with that dreadful panama hat, and all the gew-gaws dangling on her bosom.

  ‘Shall we venture?’ asked little Miss Bright. ‘It looks most Eastern, I declare I feel quite afraid.’

  But Ann said that she had a headache. She did not think she would go ashore this morning, perhaps later, when it was cooler. And, she told herself, not with Miss Bright anyway. Miss Bright turned from her disappointedly. Really, she thought, people had no enthusiasms, they took so little interest. She could not understand it, and she had thought that Ann was different. Well, it just showed that you couldn’t tell.

  The moment that Miss Bright had disappeared down the companion, deploring the indifference of modern people to the opportunities life offered them, and in search of other prey, Fergus appeared. He was in plain clothes about to go ashore, and he surveyed Ann in the white silk dress with the madonna-blue cape.

  ‘Come ashore with me?’ he asked.

  ‘I’d love it.’

  She did not know why he asked her, but these days men were taking some notice of her. They were asking her to go with them. It was part of the strange, the sudden overwhelming change of the wonder cruise.

  In the deep golden light of the hour before midday, Malta was dazzling like a white flower. She felt a little uneasy as she took her seat beside Fergus in the dghaisa. It was such a frail, flimsy little bit of a boat, and the man bent over his oar in such an unusual manner. It was but a little way to the Custom House steps, blazing in the sunshine. You could feel the heat beating down upon you as you stood there. Fergus hurried her through into the roadway beyond, cool and damp and smelling of fetidness.

  ‘Taxi!’ he called.

  There were two large taxis opposite, but neither of the dark-skinned drivers took any notice. Fergus approached one.

  ‘Didn’t you hear me? I want a taxi,’ he said.

  The chauffeur gazed at him indifferently. ‘Festa,’ he said.

  Fergus went to the second man; he also was not interested. He shrugged his shoulders and said quite imperturbably, ‘Festa.’

  ‘Hell,’ said Fergus.

  There were carozzis on the opposite side, but gayer, more debonair carozzis than those Ann had seen at Gibraltar. The horses wore tassels on either side of their ears like Dundreary whiskers, and a ridiculous single feather stuck in the centre of their heads, like Rosalind.

  A driver leant forward. ‘I take you, Signor. I take you where you wish …’

  ‘Oh, all right then,’ said Fergus. They climbed in side by side. Climbing in was all very well, but staying in was another matter. Malta was unlike Gibraltar, it was hilly. The driver whipped up his steed, tassels were flung in the breeze, and Fergus and Ann found themselves clinging to the brass rails and the flapping curtains of the carozzi. It reminded her of nothing so much as a game of hide and seek she had once played when very young, in a four-post bed with magenta curtains. There is something surprisingly bed-like about a carozzi.

  ‘And what is a festa anyway?’ she asked as they recovered from the anguish of passing the fish market at high noon.

  ‘It is one of their religious festivals, they are always having them …’

  ‘But what do they do?’

  At that very instant a maroon went off at uncomfortably close quarters. The horse shied, and they were again flung into each other’s arms.

  ‘That’s the festa,’ said Fergus grimly.

  Ann was much embarrassed. ‘I’m sorry about this,’ she said, ‘but I cannot help it. This cab simply throws you about.’

  ‘I know. They always do.’

  They spun round a corner on two wheels, and as they did so they became aware of a strange procession proceeding from the opposite direction, and bearing straight down upon them. A policeman waved them back. It was all very well, but they could not go back. The street was singularly narrow, and there was a long string of other wheeled vehicles behind them. Large cars, a taxi, three or four more carozzis with tassels tossing in the wind.

  There was a jabber between the driver and the policeman, and all the while the procession coming closer and closer, and all Malta in a wild and excitable state of festa accompanying it.

  ‘Blast!’ said Fergus at last, ‘this is what always happens.’

  ‘But I think it is fun.’

  ‘Well, we’ve got stalls for it, I suppose. That is if the tide of people doesn’t sweep us completely away; it may, you know.’

  The procession was led by a large quantity of little boys in cassocks and bearing candles, which scattered grease to right and to left of them. This did not seem to disturb the populace, who pressed closer and closer. Women in faldettas, men in rags, all eager for the festa. There was then a gentleman wearing a big dark wig and purple robes and carrying a strange gold umbrella raised aloft with pomp.

  ‘What do you suppose he is?’ asked Ann.

  ‘Oh, he is representing one of their saints or something. They get up to all manner of tricks half of which they don’t understand themselves.’

  More little boys, this time with flowers; a tribe of monks; a statue in pink plaster with flowers garlanded round it, and carried by six perspiring penitents who breathed heavily.

  ‘Have you thought,’ said Fergus, ‘this may be a mile long?’

  ‘I thi
nk it is remarkable, and I’m enjoying it.’

  All the unwashed of Malta surging round them. A crossbearer leading the multitude and engaging in little pleasantries with the people on either side of him. Good joke, this. Why be long-faced about it, was it not a festa?

  She could not help thinking of Cuthbert, Cuthbert and his popery inhibition. This was worse than popery, it was almost pagan. At last the crowd had surged on, and the wobbly candles had tottered round the corner, and the gentleman with his umbrella had proceeded with the dignity of a monarch, whilst the perspiring people under the statue had staggered along in compulsory attitudes of humiliation. At last the carozzi was freed and able to journey forth up Strada Reale.

  Ann had a vague impression of the main street of Valletta. It was hot with sunshine, and it smelt of sand and garlic and sweaty Maltese in one. Reale, with its queer little cabinets of flowers for sale, and with the Porta Reale at one end, and the thin blue line of sea at the other. With Muscat’s sports shop standing bravely half way, and the photographers who, judging by their windows, took no pictures save of sports groups from various ships, and Maltese brides in drooping modesty. The car exchange, and the wine shops, and, flourishing at the corner round which they turned, the Wembley Stores, which is the grocery establishment.

  ‘You’ll want some lunch?’ said Fergus.

  ‘I am rather hungry,’ she confessed.

  The carozzi stopped with a jingle of harness outside the hotel, and she saw a cool porch ‒ really it was very hot indeed, much hotter than Marseilles or Naples; she was quite glad of the uncarpeted floor, and of the fans going.

  ‘Lime and lemon?’ said Fergus. ‘It’s cooling.’

  ‘Please.’ She did not argue. She did not expostulate that she wanted to pay; she was so thirsty that really she did not care who paid. Why should she?