Wonder Cruise: A heartwarming holiday romance in the 1930s

by Ursula Bloom

  ‘Well, in a way.’

  ‘Poor Ann! You came out into the world entirely unsophisticated, you knew nothing of life, much less of love. You have come against something far too big for you.’

  ‘Oh, I’m not in love with him,’ said Ann.

  ‘Not mentally perhaps, but a little physically.’

  She wondered whether she dared confess the truth, and for a moment hesitated, then suddenly it seemed as though she had known Oliver such a very long time. She recalled that bathe together in Cala Mistra; that night at the Serenata. Pompeii.

  ‘I’m so dreadfully afraid I might marry him,’ she said.

  ‘Oh Lord, you mustn’t do that! Live with him if you like, but don’t be a fool and marry him.’

  It was hopeless. Oliver would not understand. A man of his age suggesting such a thing, such a wicked and sinful thing; it made her quite sick.

  ‘You have no right to think of anything so awful,’ she said.

  ‘My dear, it would be far less sinful to have an affair of that sort than a lifetime’s misery for both of you. That’s what marriage would mean with him, I can assure you of that.’

  ‘I know,’ she admitted.

  ‘And you still want him, I suppose?’

  ‘I’m afraid I do.’ And then she started to tell him the truth. She started to tell him of the amazing happenings of the previous night; of the arrival of the chit and Herbert, and the affair of Pablo and the chit. ‘And yet even that wouldn’t make any difference to what I felt for him,’ she said despairingly, ‘it’s awful, isn’t it?’

  ‘It’s natural.’

  It was nice of him to say that, but she knew that he was only trying to be kind.

  ‘You see,’ he said, ‘you had got to experience some reaction after your cooped-up little life. It had to come. Pablo is the reaction.’

  ‘Look here,’ she said, ‘you’ve got to help me. You have got to make me see sense. I want you to arrange about trains home. I know nothing about such things, but I’ve got to get away at once. I want to go right away from here, I want to go home. Will you take me to Bolzano or Innsbruck or where-ever it is I go from, and see me aboard the right train and send me home?’

  He took her hand and drew her down to the grass. They sat there close to the earth, with the dry powdery smell of it, and the trees stirring about them.

  ‘You’ve told me what you feel. Now I want to tell you what I feel.’

  ‘Please?’

  ‘I’m afraid you’ve got to listen. It is no good fighting against it. I’ve got to tell you and there is a lot to tell. When I first met you, you attracted me. You were a new experience in life. You were so fresh, so untouched, opening like a flower, and it was interesting to watch that opening.’ He paused a second, then he went on. ‘I did not realize that I was growing fond of you. I knew of course after Pompeii. I knew for certain that day we bathed together at Malta. In Venice I was wild about you. Then, when the ship went off without you, I started thinking seriously. I told myself that it had been a passing phase perhaps, there are so many of those in life. I’ve always been a nomad. I haven’t wanted to settle down. I didn’t believe I ever would.’

  ‘You said you wouldn’t.’

  ‘I’ve wanted to go on and on and always on. Perhaps it is never having had a home as a youngster, not a proper home. You couldn’t count Uncle Alfred’s, and Auntie Miggs’, and Aunt Daisy’s, they weren’t home in the true sense of the word. But after you had left the ship I knew that I couldn’t go on without you. I just couldn’t, Ann, and that’s the truth.’

  She did not know what to say.

  ‘I got your luggage and I came back after you. I guessed something like this might have happened. I guessed you would have turned homesick and frightened and afraid of going on, and that you would want to turn back and go home. But, Ann, the heart of you doesn’t want to go back to work and to London. The heart of you wants to go on searching through life, with me.’

  She said, ‘I don’t know what I want,’ which was true, but not helpful.

  ‘Supposing you risked it?’

  ‘But Lilia has only been dead for such a short ‒’

  He put his hand over her mouth. ‘The old silly argument. It doesn’t hold water, my dear. Lilia has been dead to me for years, and you have been alive to me for years though we only met such a little while ago. Do you think you dare trust me with your future? Do you think you could possibly risk it?’

  ‘I’m afraid of my own future,’ she told him.

  ‘I know. Risk it with me. You can’t go back. After a cruise like this you can’t take up a drab existence again. You can’t marry your young man. He isn’t your age, and he isn’t your sort. Ann, I’m understanding, I’m tolerant, and I find I do care for you most tremendously.’

  There was something humble in his voice, something reverent in his touch. It was not only the glamour of the cruise, and she knew it. They had met in drab London, they had met before any of the illusion had started. She knew that she would be safe with Oliver. She did not question his understanding her.

  Funny to end the cruise here in a wood of Tannenbaum sweeping down a mountain side, into a village flanked by green larches. Funny with the tinkle of cow-bells in the distance, and the one bell from the Kirche. One of the queer happenings of life that a chain of circumstances will set going.

  She lifted up her face to his.

  ‘Take care of me, Oliver,’ she said. ‘It is absurd, I know, but I feel dreadfully young and irresponsible.’

  His lips touched hers.

  ‘You’re both, my dear, and I’ll take great care of you. You see, I love you very much.’

  V

  In Balham Cuthbert read and re-read the letter. He read it with his glasses on and then he took them off and re-read it, having polished them up, as though he hoped he had mis-read the first time.

  ‘Upon my soul,’ said Cuthbert.

  He looked across at Gloria. Poor little Gloria! Poor little Gloria done out of all that money! And she having such trouble with her shorthand speed, it was a shame of Ann behaving so wildly.

  ‘She is married,’ he said, ‘they are going on to see the East. Mr. Banks is a widower of independent means, she says that he is rich …’

  ‘She must be mad,’ said Eleanor.

  ‘I always thought winning that money turned her brain,’ commented Cuthbert, ‘now I am sure of it. We ought to close our doors on her, turn her away, but ‒’

  She had said that Oliver was rich. That was the chief point to Cuthbert.

  ‘We must show a Christian forgiveness,’ he said.

  ‘But,’ sniffed Gloria over her shredded wheat, ‘why shouldn’t Auntie marry?’

  ‘Of course she shouldn’t,’ said Cuthbert.

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ said Eleanor.

  It was disgusting of Ann marrying. It was disgraceful. And now what would happen about the insurance which was ultimately to have come to Gloria? How could they make sure that she would keep the instalments paid up, or anything else if it came to that? She might even have children of her own, Eleanor thought, and blushed for the very idea. That same suggestion had presented itself to Cuthbert, but he had repudiated it as being unworthy. Ann had no right to have married, she would have no right to have children. That was unthinkable.

  But unfortunately Oliver was rich.

  ‘We … we ought to send them a wedding present?’ he commented.

  ‘I suppose we ought,’ lamented Eleanor.

  Money was tight. The papering of the spare room this spring-cleaning had been a big consideration. She did not want to give Ann a wedding present. She would have liked to smack her hard for being so silly. Only you couldn’t very well.

  ‘Haven’t we something about the place that she would like? A sentimental value is far greater than a mere mercenary one,’ said Cuthbert.

  ‘Yes, dear, of course,’ agreed Eleanor.

  They put their heads together. They abandoned the idea of the portrait of h
er father; a dealer had told them that it was valuable, and one day they might need to raise the money on it themselves.

  They thought of the biscuit box which had been given to them by grateful parishioners, and then remembered that it had been tactlessly engraved with the good wishes of the same parishioners.

  They decided on the Sheffield plate candlesticks at last. Ann had never seen them, and they had been rolled up in tissue paper in the false roof for some time. They would strike a very good note. They were delightful, and they would be so useful. Travelling about in all those dreadful foreign parts she would need a light quite often, and though a little cumbersome, it would be nice to have your very own candlesticks.

  Cuthbert packed them himself. He and Eleanor wrote ‘With loving wishes, from us both.’ Afterwards when they had gone, they suddenly remembered that the message had not included Gloria. That was most remiss. Gloria would have to give something. She would have to fall back on a pin-cushion; she made them rather well, and it seemed to offer the solution.

  The candlesticks arrived at Bombay.

  ‘My God,’ said Oliver.

  Ann, who had grown very rapidly more modern, said, ‘My God’ too, and ‘isn’t that just like Cuthbert?’

  The parcel was delivered to them as they were getting into rickshaws to go to see the Towers of Silence.

  ‘What do I do with them?’ asked Ann.

  Oliver leaned out of his rickshaw. He handled them with suspicion. ‘What muck!’ he said.

  A beggar clawed closer, and pushed thin fleshless hands out pleading for alms. For one instant Ann had a vision of a face much like the old hag’s in the Alameda. ‘Malo piccaninny,’ and then ‘Look at me.’ Oliver thrust the candlesticks into the clawing hands.

  The rickshaw coolies bore them swiftly onwards.

  THE END

  Three Sisters by Ursula Bloom

  If you enjoyed Wonder Cruise we are sure that you will want to read Three Sisters, also written by Ursula Bloom. Here is a preview of the introduction and first chapter.

  (i) The Setting.

  The little market town of Godsmead sprawled in a leisurely manner through a Sussex valley. The hills shouldered it, greenly wooded in spring, tawny gold in autumn; the pasture land and cornfields spread along the north side of the town and were riven by the high road to London which twined between the closely sheared hedgerows.

  The town itself boasted a main High Street, which turned half-way along into Church Street; the prosperous butchers and grocers dwindled into a few little sweetmeat and tobacco shops, wedged timidly in between private houses of the ostentatious type. Finally Church Street became completely residential, a quarter dedicated to doctors, dentists, and solicitors, with opulent houses standing in their own large gardens. Eventually it rounded the bend to end in a sprawling churchyard, surmounted by a spired church with trees where the rooks built, and made obstreperous noises in spring, when love matters, and subsequently nursery ones, made them fractious.

  The river wound its way through the town and was pleasant enough, so that two boat builders made a most excellent living out of it. On Good Fridays the new boats were brought out ready for the season and lay alongside the landing stages in slim, yellowly-varnished sequence; in October they were gathered in again, many of the cushions missing, the oars lost, and the brave new varnish knocked about. In autumn they were taken into the repairing sheds for the winter’s work, when the river became dimmed by mist, the willows yellowed, and the loosestrife and cherry-pie ragged and dried to nothing by the banks.

  On market days the small town was gay. The cattle market was held every Tuesday, with the beasts and sheep and the squealing, terrified pigs being sold from their iron pens, whilst the auctioneer straddled across them to take count of the bidding. On Friday mornings little stalls sprang into being from nowhere, and were erected along the High Street, for the country folk who came jogging in in their springless carts, to sell butter and eggs, and stiff mixed bunches of flowers, always tied too tightly.

  The carriers’ carts were full on Fridays and the streets unaccustomedly noisy with drovers and carters, and the fat country women not averse to their pint at the publics. After it was all over there was a general air of untidiness about Godsmead, paper blowing in the gutters, old fruit skins and cores, and the jetsam of market day everywhere.

  In the tall house at the top of Church Street the Walkers resided; they had been there since 1897.

  It was a beautiful spreading house standing flush with the street, its large studded oak door set in a severe porch, with Queen Anne windows on either side and a row to match immediately above. It had a stucco front, and the tiled roof was venerably time-worn, and dark with age.

  The door opened into a large square hall from which the stairs rose with austere straightness. The morning-room, which was immediately on the right, was little used; it faced north and was always cold, as also was the dining-room on the left. The small Victorian grate set about with ugly terracotta tiles, hardly served to warm this large long room, and at meals people were chilled through. Beyond it the inner hall was lit by the sun through a skylight, and was pleasant enough, whilst the drawing-room ran the full length across the house, and had three large french windows opening on to a terrace attractively pale mauve with wistaria in early summer.

  Beyond it was the garden itself, and it was the prim garden so popular at the end of the last century. A well-mown lawn had three crescent-shaped beds cut into it, just before the terrace. They were gay with bulbs in springtime, and changed to yellow calceolarias, with a blue lobelia surround and a centre of red geraniums, in summer. An herbaceous border was on the right, and shrubberies were dark on the left. At the far end the low wall boundaried the kitchen garden, which was again set to pattern, growing only the common and plentiful vegetables, so that the family lived on cabbage and carrots and rarely saw anything nicer. The apple trees peered above the wall spaced regularly, and in spring they were a maze of delicate pearl, making the kitchen garden a fairyland of beauty.

  Upstairs there were eight solid bedrooms leading from an enormous landing quite impossible to heat, but giving an air of magnificence. It was never crossed by any of the maids, save when on duty and therefore able to vindicate the trespass. As to the maids themselves they were conveniently segregated from the rest of the family by means of baize-covered doors both on the ground floor and upstairs, which meant that all their somewhat vulgar activities were completely cut off.

  Church House commanded a heavy rental and there were rates also to be paid. Only rich people lived in that sort of house, and those who passed it would say ‘Oh, that’s Church House’, and appraise the curtains looped on either side of the Queen Anne windows, much as Victorian women looped their hair from a central parting, to drape about their ears. A doctor had once occupied Church House. Before him it had been a Canon of some local importance to whom a tablet had been inscribed in the church, remarking that he had been ‘universally loved’, although he had only twice left Godsmead. But it all went to prove that the handsome house had been only occupied by people who mattered.

  Even the market women coming in on a Friday with their country wares for sale knew that the quality lived there.

  Let us look at the quality.

  (ii) The People.

  Harold Walker was a solicitor, one of those men who have never been young; a praiseworthy, over-mothered son, he had been a conscientious schoolboy of a studious disposition. He was round and portly from the knickerbocker days, so that in the late twenties he gave the impression of nearing forty. He had always had a tubby little stomach shaped like an agreeable pumpkin, and draped with watch chain, much as his windows were draped with curtains. He fed over well. Harold liked his food. Good but plain was his motto; plain but plenty would have been more truthful.

  He was short-sighted with small peering eyes set in a rubicund, round little face, and he prided himself that he always smiled.

  ‘A smile costs nothing,’ he w
ould say, losing sight of the fact that the smile had become a meaningless grimace, and was stuck there for all the world to see, whilst the hard eyes searched from behind steel-rimmed glasses. His hair had begun to recede very early ‒ it had always been difficult hair ‒ and when Harold got to the mid-thirties it went up in two surprising points on either temple. He strutted as he walked, because the actual effort of carrying the pleasant little pumpkin of a stomach was tiring, and strutting he had found to be the easiest way.

  Harold Walker had come to Godsmead as an articled pupil from Birmingham, where he had been born. He was extremely fortunate in that the second partner in the firm died at the right moment, and Harold Walker was able to strut into his shoes in a record space of time.

  It is to be said for his perspicacity that he had foreseen the possibility of this happening, and had made additionally sure of it by engaging himself earlier that summer to Miss Anna Amery, the senior partner’s only child.

  Anna was what is known as ‘getting on’. Her family were distressed that she would never get off. She was retiring, a modest violet rather than a flamboyant rose, and in small country towns, hard as it may seem, the flamboyant rose is the one that invariably climbs the higher. Anna didn’t dance or play tennis (Mrs. Lambert Chambers had made this game fashionable). She was very anti-sport for women, and the thought of the feminine cyclist actually made her blush. She was housewifely. In fact she had the good qualities which attract no attention, and which are so praiseworthy in wives but almost detrimental in the beloved! She wasn’t pretty and was shy of the opposite sex, so that she became extremely quiet in their presence and did not show off to advantage. She wasn’t used to ‘gentlemen paying her attention’, so she was blissfully ignorant of what Harold Walker could be after when he came to supper so frequently on summer evenings, and one day asked with surprising suddenness for the honour of driving her out in the phaeton.

  When he proposed to her the family was charmed, having given up all hope, and bustled her into marriage.

  The couple were married in Godsmead church, Anna conspicuously nervous and aware of the fact that she had married Harold because in her heart she knew that he was her only chance. She was tall, rather angular, a pale girl with light red hair (then not appreciated, even though Mr. Burne-Jones had done so much to draw attention to its beauty); she had weakly blue eyes, and a skin that had been lovely as a child but had changed lamentably ever since she had become affected by her catarrh. Anna’s catarrh had been a misery to her and was probably the main reason for her shyness. She was mottled by it, and, what was a good deal worse, it made her nose perpetually and moistly pink, which was quite distressing.