Wonder Cruise: A heartwarming holiday romance in the 1930s

by Ursula Bloom

  ‘Well, what do they call you? A nickname, eh?’

  She said, ‘I’m not prepared to tell you that,’ which he immediately accepted as being encouraging.

  ‘Oh, go along! Very well then, I’ll guess it.’

  He settled himself more comfortably in the gondola, prepared for a thoroughly jolly little flirtation. And she had not looked to be that sort either! But then you never could tell. Girls were so deceptive, and some of them so deep.

  ‘Well, what letter does it begin with? A, B, C, D?’

  It was too late for Ann to extricate herself from the tangle. Somewhat horrified at her deception, she still dare not be honest and say, ‘I haven’t a nickname at all. I only said that to prevent you calling me by my real one.’ So there was nothing for it but to persist, ‘I shan’t tell you.’

  ‘Oh, come along, yes you will. I’ll make you. You see if I don’t.’

  A lady in the next gondola who was fond of music turned her head at the loudness of his voice, and muttered a warning ‘Hsh.’ Then everybody else said ‘Hsh.’

  ‘We’re getting unpopular … what a crowd!’ said he, and he gave directions to the disappointed gondolier. The gondola slid out into the canal itself. ‘Where we can talk without all this shushing,’ he explained.

  IV

  Blue. Blue like love-in-a-mist and delicate hyacinths. Blue like river fog and water. It enfolded her. It drew them both to its heart. She felt his hand closing over hers, as Oliver’s had done last night, though not in quite the same manner. Oliver’s hand had been tender and sympathetic, something she sought not to escape, but rather to encourage. Cyril Harding’s was crudely amorous.

  ‘Come on, be a sport. Tell me?’

  She was playing up to the rules of the game of flirtation; she was in her ignorance playing the game as it should be played. The little secret that he must discover; intimate, revealing, yet modest.

  ‘Please,’ said Ann with what dignity she could summon, ‘let go of my hand. I shall not tell you. I certainly shall not tell you. Besides, what possible interest could it be to you what my people call me?’

  But he could not believe that she was snubbing him. It was all part of it, trying to put him off. Well, he wasn’t going to be put off as easily as all that. ‘Of course it is of interest to me,’ he averred, ‘you must know that. You can’t get away with it like that, you know you can’t.’

  Ann hadn’t known that she couldn’t, but she knew now. His arm crept round her, and it was the first time that any man’s had done that, in flirtation. It was a grim irony of fate that it should be Cyril Harding’s arm!

  ‘It’s no good being stingy,’ said he; ‘we are two English people alone here together and you must know how I feel about you.’

  His lips touched her cheek. Cold horror mixed with a strange and thrilling fascination tore Ann two ways. The horror won.

  ‘You hateful little bounder,’ she said.

  She turned to the gondolier, who was lazily plying his oar and singing softly to himself in that tender crooning voice all gondoliers seem to possess. She knew that he had seen the kiss, and had heard her rebuff. Both were the same to him. He took life philosophically. He took love philosophically, for was this not the city of love?

  ‘Back to the hotel!’ she ordered.

  ‘Si, signorina.’

  Cyril Harding looked at her indignantly. ‘Well, I do call that a bit hard. You encourage me. You do all you know how to lead me on, and then you let fly like that. Back to the hotel, indeed! What did you come out with me for?’

  ‘Not for that.’

  ‘Well, what the devil did you expect? You knew that I fell for you.’

  ‘I didn’t,’ she declared, a little wildly. She thought that he must have been drinking. How dreadful to be out here in beautiful Venice, in the middle of the lagoon, with an amorous young man who had been drinking.

  ‘A pretty girl like yourself,’ said he hotly, ‘why you ought to be ashamed.’

  The words fell as seeds on fertile soil. She had started the cruise as a woman, a woman nearing middle age, who had had nothing out of life, and less out of love, and who expected nothing. She had been awakened vividly in the Alameda by an old hag who had warned her to take what she could. She had taken what she could. And now she had become a pretty girl who tempted strange young men to kiss her. Whatever you might say, the change was a gratifying one to your vanity. She was going on to the Dolomites. She would never go back. Never. Never. She would take every penny she had got, plunge it all, invest it in the capital of happy memories, and what was more she didn’t care. Why should she care? She had become a pretty girl.

  ‘I am going back to my hotel at once,’ she said.

  ‘I say, don’t be silly. Come and have some supper at the Luna and don’t make a fuss.’

  ‘I certainly shall make a fuss, and anyway I’ve had my supper.’

  He picked her up for that. ‘You’ve had dinner, not supper. Supper is yet to come. This is going to be awkward to-morrow, isn’t it?’

  ‘Not at all. I’ve decided that I don’t want the Consul to see me home. I’m not going home.’

  ‘Well, I’m damned.’ He thought instantly, ‘She’s picked up with some bloke at the hotel, and found a game worth two of that, the little devil!’ But aloud he repeated, ‘Well, I am damned.’

  ‘You said that before, ’ Ann reminded him.

  ‘Yes, and I’ll say it again. You’re a deep one, you are,’ and he chuckled. ‘Only what about the hotel? They only took you in because I saw to it. Who’s going to foot that bill?’

  ‘I’m cabling to the Allando, and the purser will send me my money. Also I’m cabling home.’

  ‘That’s what I told you to do, and you turned up your nose at the idea.’ She loathed him for reminding her of it. The gondolier was not hurrying, why should he? The night was yet young, he had had some experience of lovers, they would probably make it up in a moment or two, and then keep him out until dawn. As they passed the Serenata, Cyril Harding said, ‘I wonder who the lucky fellow is?’

  ‘Lucky fellow?’

  ‘Well, somebody has made you change your mind.’

  She went hot and cold that he should think that of her. She said with some dignity, ‘Nothing of the sort. I met a woman friend,’ and was hurt when he laughed.

  Once again he put out a hand and took hers. Ann felt that perhaps she had been rude, and she did not withdraw it, whereupon the ardent Cyril immediately interpreted her acquiescence as encouragement. His lips came closer.

  ‘A bit stingy with your favours, eh?’ he said, ‘and me a lone Englishman trying to do my best to entertain a lone English girl.’

  Girl again! She was entranced at the idea, but aloud she said, ‘I’m sorry if I seem to be unkind, Mr. Harding, but I don’t think I’m your sort. I’m not used to this style of thing. I’m very old-fashioned,’ and she left him with that on the steps of the hotel.

  He ordered the gondola to take him home, and he looked apprehensively at the gondolier, who must have heard every word. But the gondolier was quite philosophical about it, quite used to the ways of women, and of love, and of rebuffs. That was that, he told himself. Cyril Harding lit a cigarette and cocked a weather eye towards the supple figure bending over the oar as they turned from the Grand Canal’s blue and grey into the green gloom of the canals which run to the heart of the city. ‘Women,’ he said, ‘are rum creatures.’

  The gondolier looked down at him passively. ‘Le donne,’ he philosophized, ‘sono sempre diavole.’

  ‘You’re right, old cock!’ said Cyril in English.

  Chapter 2

  I

  Ann slept amazingly well, and she had a confused jumble of dreams in which two men kissed her, Oliver Banks and Cyril Harding, and she liked it. She was quite ashamed when she awoke.

  She went down to breakfast and found this proceeding quite wrong, because first of all nobody fed first thing save in their bedrooms, and secondly there was not any break
fast. The dining-room was in a state of chaos; chairs were set in preposterous positions on the table-tops, their legs raised in protest to the ceiling. Shell flowers and artificial carnations were being dusted with feather brushes, flicked indolently by waiters who were in the process of much animated conversation. They gazed at her in dismay. No, she could not possibly breakfast here. They indicated the veranda, perhaps in a state of a little less undress, though displaying a large number of inverted wicker chairs and legs. What did the signorina desire? Some coffee? The signorina was desiring a good deal more than coffee. Bacon and egg, or fish. Something solid, for she was intensely hungry. The waiter protested to heaven! Only the continental breakfast, or perhaps they could procure a boiled egg. There had been some boiled eggs once, some time ago, he would see! Ann hastily disposed of the idea of the egg. She would have coffee and whatever went with coffee, and she would eat it in a corner of the veranda without being a nuisance to anybody. After a long delay a tray arrived. The pungency of the hot coffee made her feel hungrier than ever, and she tried a crisp roll. But the crisp roll was most deceptive. The crispness flaked away, and revealed a dismally hollow inside. Just when Ann was feeling very hollow inside too! She could have wept. Having regard to the outraged virtue on the waiter’s face, she did not like to ask for a second roll, therefore she ate all she could and left a large accumulation of crumbs. Eventually Eva Temple arrived.

  ‘Oh, but you poor dear,’ said Eva; ‘the thing is to get them to send it up to you, and then clash the bell for more. I always do.’

  ‘You needn’t worry, I’m not so hungry as all that. I want to get the money fixed up.’

  ‘First of all,’ said Eva, ‘you must wireless to the ship. They had better send your luggage and the money to the inn.’

  ‘And where is this inn?’ asked Ann.

  For the first time her interest had become keen. An inn in the Dolomites. She thought of the fascination she had felt that evening when she and Miss Thomas had gone to White Horse Inn, and now she was going to something very much like it. Ecstasy.

  ‘It isn’t very far from Merano, in a fir forest. It is adorable. Are you sure that you want to come?’

  ‘Quite, quite sure.’

  ‘I shall be painting; you’ll be left entirely to yourself. There’ll be hardly anybody else there.’

  ‘I don’t care.’

  Eva helped her to word the Marconi to the ship. She also helped send the message to Mr. Robert that he was to wire the money immediately. It took a very short time; Ann had had no idea that it would be so simple.

  ‘And now,’ said Eva, with the whole day before them, ‘we will go and see the Consul, just in case there is any delay over the money: we have got to catch that train.’

  Last night Ann had felt confident and assured, but now she felt a little afraid of the Consul. She thought he would probably be a superior sort of policeman. To-day she saw that her linen frock was creased. She felt both dishevelled and untidy and she had nothing into which she could change.

  ‘What shall I do?’ she asked Eva.

  ‘They’ll press the frock for you at the hotel, you’ll find. The moment the money comes I’d buy a neat travelling suit to last until the luggage arrives. Give your present frock to the chambermaid and tell her to be quick.’

  So that when she arrived at the Consulate she was at least tidy, and that gave her an additional confidence. The moment she was inside she knew that she need have had no fears. Eva Temple and the Consul knew each other very well; they had been brought up in adjacent villages in the epoch when neighbours were really neighbourly. They had remained friends, meeting at odd intervals in strange parts of the world. Seeing the Consul resulted in a lunch at the Luna, a pleasant and quite happy affair, with the sunshine splashing goldly on to the square. The Consul himself was a mild old man, quiet and reserved, and most enraged at the infamy of the gondolier who had been responsible for Ann’s being left here stranded. He felt that Ann should have taken his number, but she had never thought of gondolas as being taxicabs, which in truth they were, whereas in London (if she had ever taken a taxi, which was most unlikely) she would have had no compunction in reporting such perfidy to the police. Here in Venice she had not even thought of such a thing. And now she wasn’t sure that it mattered. Life had taken on a new twist. She was amazed at the adventure of it; it was alluring.

  They spent the afternoon in the picture galleries, which Eva was determined that Ann should see. They were almost too beautiful; you could not absorb so much loveliness all at once, and she came away confused.

  That evening Mr. Robert sent the money. Ann had not realized how relieved she would be, until she felt the crinkle of the notes in her hand. She thought that she would cry.

  ‘We’ll catch the eleven o’clock in the morning for Verona,’ said Eva Temple.

  ‘I feel as though we might meet the Two Gentlemen!’

  ‘Possibly! One each!’

  Ann went round to Bunt’s just before it closed, for she felt that she must explain to Cyril Harding that everything had been arranged satisfactorily, and that he need not worry any more on her behalf. Little did she know that he was not worrying. The pimply clerk consulted an inner office, where Cyril, upon hearing who it was, said, ‘Good God! Get rid of her,’ and grabbed at a seedy-looking panama. The clerk came back with the news that Cyril was engaged in a most important business consultation, and perhaps she could leave a message or could call again. He suggested the calling again as an after-thought, and without much enthusiasm, for in truth he did not want her to call again, and then have all the bother of getting rid of her for a second time.

  Ann left a message. She was impressed by the fact that Cyril was in an important business consultation, and she left word that she had fixed things up satisfactorily and that she would be leaving for Verona in the morning. The pimply clerk eyed her with a grin. He had half an idea that she might be leaving for Verona with Cyril, who also was taking a holiday to-morrow. Ann regarded him coldly; she had of course got no idea as to what he was thinking. If she had had she would have collapsed.

  She walked out into the square again. There remained only the purchase of the suit.

  II

  Ann bought herself a light flannel suit at a little shop that Eva had recommended. In spite of its severe lines, there was something schoolgirlish about it, something that fitted closely to the hips, which were still as slender as when she had been in her teens, and which gave her the hallmark of youth. She carried it home herself. Well, she supposed that the Allando would be sending on her luggage from Ragusa, but at the moment she possessed only two garments in the world, the tailor-made and the linen frock, and while they washed the underclothes she would have to stay in bed. A stale old joke, she thought with a wry face, but in her case it was coming true, and she failed to appreciate the humour of it.

  They were ready to start for the Dolomites in the morning; to start on the new adventure which should always be the best adventure of all.

  ‘But,’ she told Eva, ‘I’ll be sorry to leave Venice.’

  Eva nodded. ‘You’ll come back, for people always return to Venice, it has that curious quality about it. I’ve been back again and again, and have always discovered something new about it, something I have failed to see before. Venice is like a woman in a new frock; she changes every time.’

  ‘I wonder if I’ll come back?’ She wrapped her few small belongings in a sheet of rather brittle brown paper which the hotel had scornfully provided. ‘It looks very feeble,’ she explained, ‘but it will save a lot of trouble with the Customs if we want to cross frontiers.’

  Again there was that odd thrill within her. Customs. Frontiers. Going across Europe overland. In the boat it had all been lazy and quiet; it demanded no effort to live. Now suddenly life was demanding quite a big effort, a very real but very thrilling one.

  ‘I’m ready,’ she said.

  They went to the station in the gondola, cutting through the little canals, an
d coming out by the Rialto. Ann felt sorry in case this really was farewell, in case the old spell did not hold good and she did not return to this city of enchantment. Cupolas and spires faded into the blue mist which held them for ever; it seemed to her as though a giant forest of michaelmas daisies rose between her and the city, and blotted it out. They were the blue and heliotrope daisies of fantasy. It seemed that the new and unreal Ann was setting out on a voyage. Opposite her, Eva, whom she had only known a few hours, and yet knew so much better than people she had known for years. Yet journeys are like that; they make the impossible suddenly possible. They make fiction become fact. They make dreams come true.

  Behind them a blue island, which had started the whole adventure, and now the actual adventure itself, and anything possible.

  She looked out eagerly on either side, and somehow she wished that Oliver was with her, for he would have enjoyed it so much. The vines straggling along the hedges, their leaves yellowing in places already, the first little bunches of hard green fruit forming and lying against the earth. The rice fields. The ground lying in long furrows, and the line of hills beyond. It was most disappointingly English. Ann had hoped that Italy spread out before her would be something different, something as remote from England and the English scenery that she knew and loved, as she herself now was. But it was much as England; much more so than Malta had been with its rectangular houses and its ripe clover fields. She had unfortunately come to that part of Italy with the sombre fields that lie in the north-east, dull, and devoid of the brighter colourings, in some ways reminiscent of the Shires.

  It changed at Verona.

  They ate their lunch in the station, a typical lunch of tough chicken, and wide rolls between which were sandwiched large unappetizing slabs of meat. They drank Chianti in its straw-plaited bottles, and all the while the dismal disturbance of station life went on around them. A hot porter conversed in a noisy offensive with an even hotter confrère. Two peasants were having a pleasant little conversation which might equally well have been the fiercest argument. The heat beat down.