Wonder Cruise: A heartwarming holiday romance in the 1930s

by Ursula Bloom

  Ann felt quite sleepy as the little dghaisa slipped across the water to the Allando lying at anchor. Ann climbed up the gangway.

  ‘I think I’ll lie down for a little while before dinner.’

  ‘Au revoir, then, don’t forget the bathe to-morrow.’

  Yet she did not think of the bathe as she lay down on the slim bed in her cabin. She slept late. The heat had had a drugging effect; it steeped her, and when she awoke she was grateful for the first coolness of night coming through the open port. The little lights of Senglea were peeping out one by one, and on the other side the nearer, greater lights of Valletta. There were ships in the harbour, and she saw their gangways lit by electric lights reflected below in the blueness of the water. It was like a fairy harbour, lit by magic. She dressed and went down to dine, but somehow her heart was not in the conversation of the table.

  She could only answer Fergus’s enquiries in monosyllables; she had no interest in the Spinkes’ indignation at the food and the charges in the island, or the Duncans’ complaints that they had thought there would be a lot of young Naval boys, which would have been so charming for dear Ethel. Only Monsieur Vallé was silent, and he had his very own reasons for being quiet, though at that moment he could not divulge them.

  For Ann her own adventure had outgrown everything else in her life. Perhaps she was growing selfish (as Cuthbert had said), but she had no interest in outside matters. She had refused Oliver. She could not marry him; it would be positively indecent with Lilia so recently dead. Talk about undue haste! … She got quite hot when she thought about it. Yet she liked him. Yes, she quite liked him …

  Something has happened to her, thought Fergus, and what? She is buying experience out of life’s shop and getting it at bargain prices. Queer, that, for old merchantman Life generally does everybody down.

  Ann made an excuse to go up into the lounge early.

  She heard the band playing on B deck, but to-night she could not dance. She was too happy. She saw the A. P. with a girl she had noticed before, blonde, with a mouth red as a wound in the whiteness of her liberally powdered face. The A. P. was making the most of his opportunities. He was not one of the gentlemen who missed chances; he had had his eye on the large and flamboyant Jewess who was for ever being trotted down to the barber’s shop to choose herself some little souvenir of an illicit passion. The A. P. had confided to a friend that he ‘liked them large’. He had no patience with all this slimming. But he had decided that the lady in question was too expensive; she wanted presents, she wanted to be taken ashore; she liked big cars, and big diamonds, and was not solely satisfied with a manly passion.

  ‘No bon,’ said the A. P. reflectively.

  You can’t rise to that when you have a governor who won’t shell out, and a godmother who, having sent welcome cheques during your schooldays on various birthdays, had suddenly gone dotty on retrenching, and only sent silk pocket handkerchiefs these hard times. And as to your pay … The A. P. had something to say about his pay. He called it a damned disgrace.

  So he had selected the girl with the mouth like a red wound; she had told him that her name was Kinky, and he thought that was good enough! A girl called Kinky should be plain sailing, he promised himself.

  As Ann went aft to where she could see Valletta closer, with its faintly pungent smell of fish market and hot Maltese, she passed several of the beret and blazer brigade just off to dance. But she wanted to be alone. She wanted to stand here and to listen to the tinkle of carozzi bells, and the far-away jangling of Maltese in argument. The rather harsh notes of church bells all clanging together, seeming paradoxically like some pagan paean to their deity. A new world, and a new self in that new world. She wanted to be alone with this strange self, in the new strange frock, in the new strange world.

  ‘This is me,’ she was saying, ‘this is me, and I find that I am quite different from what I thought I was. I don’t know myself a bit. I’ll never be able to go back again. I shall never be like what I once was.’ And it was true. It was dreadful truth, because she could not face the future.

  Not the future that was London.

  IV

  At breakfast ‒ everybody sat where they would at breakfast ‒ Miss Bright, already dressed for the day and crowned by a serviceable little hat that she had brought to withstand the sun, assailed Ann. She had got to explain, she said. The monk had been no ordinary monk at all. Ann must not let herself run away with ideas. Miss Bright had gone ashore and had set herself to see the sights. She had gone to the Cathedral first and had been most delighted with the crypt. It appeared that she had a passion for the morbid. She doted on crypts. She had a complex about vaults. Her whistle well whetted, she had gone on to see the Chapel of Bones, which she found was closed. Some midshipman had made too merry therein, and had thrown skulls about, with the result that the agitated Maltese had in desperation been driven to close it. You could not have young men playing cricket with a dead monk’s tibia, and the skull of some departed devout!

  Miss Bright had been coming away most half-heartedly when she had met the monk. Getting into conversation ‒ and how that was achieved she treated with a delightful vagueness ‒ he had suggested that as she had unfortunately been unable to see the pleasant sight of the Chapel of Bones, she had better go to the convent where there were skeletons of monks, stood in the crypt, wearing the habits that they had worn in life. The gruesomeness of this had appealed to Miss Bright, and the monk who was a most useful person had offered to escort her. He had expressed the hope that a contribution to the Brotherhood would not come amiss, and reluctantly Miss Bright had been persuaded to part with half a crown.

  They had driven out to Floriana in great style, the monk and the carozzi driver being on particularly amiable terms, it ultimately transpiring that they were brothers. This had surprised Miss Bright a great deal, for she had no idea how anyone so admittedly respectable as a monk could be related to anyone so villainous as a carozzi driver. But be that as it may, they eventually arrived at the convent, which was disappointingly plain in appearance.

  Ann was wearying of the rigmarole. She wanted to get on with her breakfast, but Miss Bright would not let it go. She would be heard.

  Further parley had been entered into and an English-looking verger had for further remuneration escorted them into the crypt. Miss Bright had been thrilled to the marrow, for not only had she seen the darkest, most gruesome and odorous crypt that she had ever dreamed of, but she had been shown one miserable skeleton of a monk, still draped in the tattered rags of his faded habit. Her appetite for the morbid had been fed to the full. She had actually parted with a still further remittance for the good of the cause, and this in spite of the fact that her people were all Plymouth Brethren and would have been horrified at good money going to the maintenance of popery. But she could not help that. Her lust for the morbid had been sopped. She had arrived back on board only deploring the ridiculous fiat that set the seal of celibacy on the priesthood. And when they had so much in common too! It would have been marvellous to go about with a man like that, seeing things, really interesting things, mummified remains, chapels of bones, sarcophagi, tombs and vaults.

  To-day the monk had offered to show her other exciting incidents in Maltese religious life, and she was galloping down her breakfast in a hurry to be off. She had quite forgotten that she had wanted to go ashore with Ann, and that Ann had refused and had gone with Fergus.

  ‘So you must excuse me if I run,’ she said.

  Ann finished her own meal, and then went up to the lounge, intending to write some letters. It was a glorious day, fine and warm. She saw where the deep trembling purple of the Judas trees ashore burned against the dazzling white of the city itself. She saw the sky rising from haze to deep impenetrable blue, looking as though it went up and up for miles. Space! She wondered vaguely what she, a mere atom in the universe of things, could mean in all this space. Or was she matterless? And if so what was anything but the moment? And did not the moment
appear the most vital thing of all?

  ‘Something I want and cannot have,’ she thought. Then, looking up from the desk where the letter she had started lay, she saw Oliver.

  ‘Come along for that bathe?’

  ‘Oh, but I don’t bathe.’

  ‘Well, then, come and watch me bathe? There’s a dress for you if you want it; you may change your mind,’ and his grey eyes twinkled.

  ‘I meant to write to Cuthbert.’

  ‘He can wait. You’ll have Cuthbert all your life, and Malta for only two days.’

  What can you say to such an argument? And anyway she did not want to write to Cuthbert, not really. He was boring. He was dull. Prosy. Exasperating.

  ‘All right,’ she said.

  V

  Cala Mistra is a little bay that is so entirely away from the rest of Malta and so unlike it, that it might in itself be an unknown island lying ready for the exploration. It has fine gold sand, and there are convenient rocks set round it, with little nooks and crannies which can be used in lieu of bathing huts.

  The car turned down a road, hot and dusty, across which a green fig tree sprawled indolently. Through the boughs they could see a blindfolded donkey turning a water-wheel.

  Round and round it went, too foolish, too blind to stop. Ann could not help thinking, ‘I was like that donkey, going round and round, and then something happened to me and I broke free. Now I have this, all this, and I am going to make the most of it.’

  The moment. The precious influence of the moment. That was of vital importance now.

  The car came to a standstill, and they were in the little bay itself. Oliver got out, and he lifted up a bundle of towels; she saw beneath it a basket. ‘What’s that?’ she asked.

  ‘I got the steward to cut me some sandwiches and things. I thought that we might have a picnic?’

  ‘What fun!’

  He gave her the towels and carried the basket, linking his arm in hers again. Somehow that way had become natural to them. She would not have had it different for the world.

  The day had come up very hot indeed, and she was glad to reach the shadow of the rocks. What would her tweeds have been like now? she asked herself. And she was quite amused at the silly arguments she had used in London to do with being able to stand the heat, and it only being for a short while.

  The sea was clear; it seemed to be a new sea expressive of the new self, for she could peer down to where along the fine sand lay trails of dark weed and starfish and shells.

  ‘It is wonderful,’ she said.

  He spread the car rug along a rocky surface. ‘Sit on this, you’ll be comfier. Later you will find you will want to bathe. You’ll want to be cool.’

  In her heart she thought he was probably right, though Cala Mistra was quite different from Worthing. There were no huts; no pungent smells of rubber bathing caps, and of hot sand mingling with too hot humanity. The sun beat down, and the shadows were violet and claret colour from the rocks across the surface. In shape they were like felled cypresses, lying in long even lines. She hugged her knees and looked down at the small white shoes that Fifinelle had insisted on. The whole dress was juvenile and attractive, white, with the gay scarf she had bought in England fluttering lightly out. She had taken off her hat, and in the heat could feel her hair curling against her neck; it had curled like that when she was a child in the apple orchard at home, she remembered. The heat had always made it twine itself into little ringlets, and only the weight of it growing so long and abundant had changed that in the later years.

  ‘These things are too hot. I’m getting into my bathing dress,’ he said, ‘you’ll be all right here, won’t you? There is some fruit in the basket if you feel thirsty.’

  She sat there leaning back against the rock, with the bay stretched before her. It seemed that this had always been, and that the old life of South Kensington and of Henrietta Street had existed only in her imagination. It was so far away. She opened her bag to powder her nose, for Fifinelle had given her a small compact ‒ pour souvenir ‒ and now she touched her cheeks lightly with the rouge, and ran a red lipstick across her lips. The old life was dead. It did not matter any more. It never had mattered really.

  She saw Oliver coming round the bend in his dark blue bathing-dress. He seemed tall and brown, and she noted the big muscles standing up on his arms in knots. He was quite unembarrassed by her presence and sat down beside her. ‘Whew! That’s better. Men do wear such fearfully unsuitable clothes.’

  ‘They must be very hot.’

  ‘They’re deathly. I can’t tell you the relief it is to get into this.’ He lit a cigarette and then flung across a small blue bundle to her. ‘Here is a spare dress for you if you want to bathe.’

  ‘Oh, I couldn’t.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘There isn’t anywhere to undress,’ she began in confusion.

  ‘Heaps of rocks, and you need not worry about being disturbed, for nobody ever comes here.’

  ‘It ‒ it isn’t that …’

  He looked up at her. ‘What is it then? You say it is so hot, and the sea is delightful. Is it convention? Prudism? What is it?’

  She tried to explain. ‘We used to stay at Worthing …’

  ‘I understand. That alone says a lot. This isn’t like Worthing! What is more it never will be like Worthing. Why not risk a bathe here?’

  ‘You tell me if the water is cold.’

  He slid down into the sea and in the clearness she could see his body elongated, and become strangely fish-like with sprawling legs and arms.

  ‘Glorious,’ he called to her.

  She felt a fierce longing for the cleanness of that sea, and as the sun growing strong beat down upon the hot earth she felt the desire growing keener. Her body’s need for coolness was fighting her own prudism. Oliver had swum out to an islet which the tide had left, and he was sitting there with the gulls screaming about him. She knew she could not stem the temptation to join him. She called, ‘All right, I’m coming,’ and disappeared with the blue bathing-dress behind the rocks.

  Ann had never undressed in the open before. She had never felt the air touching her body as she lay her clothes down one by one; she had never felt the fierce joyous intimacy of it, the freedom, the precious heritage of that freedom. She slipped into the bathing-dress. She felt it cover her, far less of her than the dress that Cuthbert had insisted on at Worthing, but somehow here that did not matter. One could be natural, and it was wonderful to be natural. She was entirely primitive woman as she went across the rocks, and lowered herself into the water. Oliver still sat on the little island, slashing his feet in the sea.

  She let herself slide down, feeling only the merest chill as the sea touched her body. It was far warmer than Worthing, she told herself. There, bathing on the crowded beaches, in the close intimacy of huts and tents and among the innumerable people, she had been so body-conscious. Here bathing was just what it should always have been, natural and beautiful.

  It was, she felt, as though she had no body left. Her arms cut through the water, and as she swam she looked down and saw the weed again, and little rocks, and large shells. The bottom looked so close that she was quite surprised when she lowered her feet and found that she could not touch it. She swam out to the islet and laughed as she climbed up beside him. She was a child again. She was no longer Ann Clements, but the young unsophisticated girl Ann, who had never lived until now. They sat there with hunched knees, and feet dabbling in the water. They talked, and afterwards she could not remember what they had talked about.

  Then they swam ashore side by side, and climbed up to the old niche in between the rocks for the picnic. And never once was Ann body-conscious. She was only aware of sitting there with a friend, a dear friend. They ate salmon sandwiches, and meringues, and apples.

  ‘Glad you came?’ he asked.

  ‘Enormously glad.’

  ‘I guessed you would be. Not like Worthing, eh?’

  ‘Don’t be annoying.
Of course it is not like Worthing.’

  ‘What is it like then?’

  ‘The most wonderful day that has ever been,’ she said, and she meant it.

  After the meal he smoked a cigarette and then they bathed again. It had been hot in the shelter of the rocks, and the sea stung their bodies and received them with a stimulating chill.

  ‘Time we were getting back,’ he said as they swam ashore for the last time.

  She dressed lazily, for the heat and the general tiredness of bathing had crept over her. She drew on her clothes over a skin sticky with salt. Finally there came out the little compact which she had got from Fifinelle. And as she powdered her nose, she thought with a certain horror that she had been here for hours entirely alone with a man, and almost naked. The complex of clothes had got her again. As she put them on she had donned with them much of her old self. The dreadful dogma of decency as drummed into her by her father and Cuthbert.

  In the car returning she was very quiet. He thought it was the first bathe, which always makes you sleepy.

  ‘Have a good lie down,’ he advised her, and his hand closed possessively over hers.

  If only they could have gone on and on, out there on the little island left by the tide in the centre of Cala Mistra. There she felt that they had been simple and natural people, like children, and now returning to civilization she felt that it had been all wrong, and was overcome with the horror of that extreme decency which had been her undoing all through her life.

  ‘I have enjoyed myself so much,’ she said as the dghaisa reached the gangway of the Allando.

  ‘Something to remember?’ he suggested.

  ‘Of course,’ but her heart said, ‘It should be something that I ought to forget …’