The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold

by Evelyn Waugh

  And the woman laughed odiously. “Soon wish he was dead,” she said.

  There was a click (someone seemed to be in control of the apparatus, Mr. Pinfold thought), and two passengers were speaking. They seemed to be elderly, military gentlemen.

  “I think the passengers should be told,” one said.

  “Yes, we ought to call a meeting. It’s the sort of thing that so often passes without proper recognition. We ought to pass a vote of thanks.”

  “A ton of copper, you say?”

  “Pure copper, cut up and chucked overboard. All for the sake of a nigger. It makes one proud of the British service.”

  The voices ceased and Mr. Pinfold lay wondering about this meeting; was it his duty to attend and report what he knew of the true characters of the Captain and his female associate? The difficulty, of course, would be to prove his charges; to explain satisfactorily, how he came to overhear the Captain’s secret.

  Soft music filled the cabin, an oratorio sung by a great but distant choir. “That must be a gramophone record,” thought Mr. Pinfold. “Or the wireless. They can’t be performing this on board.” Then he slept for some time, until he was woken by a change of music. The bright young people were at it again with their Pocoputa Indian three-eight rhythm. Mr. Pinfold looked at his watch. Eleven-thirty. Time to get up.

  As he laboriously shaved and dressed, he reasoned closely about his situation. Now that he knew of the intercommunication system, it was plain to him that the room used by this band might be anywhere in the ship. The prayer-meeting too. It had seemed odd at the time that the quiet voices had come so clearly through the floor; that they had been audible to him and not to Glover. That was now explained. But he was puzzled by the irregularity, by the changes of place, the clicking on and off. It was improbable that anyone at a switchboard was directing the annoyances into his cabin. It was certain that the Captain would not deliberately broadcast his private and compromising conversations. Mr. Pinfold wished he knew more of the mechanics of the thing. He remembered that in London just after the war, when everything was worn out, telephones used sometimes to behave in this erratic way; the line would go dead; then crackle; then, when the tangled wire was given a twist and a jerk, normal conversation was rejoined. He supposed that somewhere over his head, in the ventilation shaft probably, there were a number of frayed and partly disconnected wires which every now and then with the movement of the ship came into contact and so established communication now with one, now with another part of the ship.

  Before leaving his cabin he considered his box of pills. He was not well. Much was wrong with him, he felt, beside lameness. Dr. Drake did not know about the sleeping-draught. It might be that the pills, admittedly new and pretty strong, warred with the bromide and chloral; perhaps with gin and brandy too. Well, the sleeping-draught was finished. He would try the pills once or twice more. He swallowed one and crept up to the main deck.

  Here there was light and liveliness, a glitter of cool sunshine and a brisk breeze. The young people had abandoned the concert in the short time it had taken Mr. Pinfold to climb the stairs. They were on the after deck playing quoits and shuffle-board and watching one another play; laughing boisterously as the ship rolled and jostled them against one another. Mr. Pinfold leant on the rail and looked down, thinking it odd that such healthy-seeming, good-natured creatures should rejoice in the music of the Pocoputa Indians. Glover stood by himself in the stern swinging his golf-club. On the sunny side of the main deck the older passengers sat wrapped in rugs, some with popular biographies, some with knitting. The young Burmese paced together in pairs, uniformly and neatly dressed in blazers and pale fawn trousers, like officers waiting to fall in at a battalion parade.

  Mr. Pinfold sought the military gentlemen whose ill-informed eulogies of the Captain he believed it to be his duty to correct. From the voices, elderly, precise, conventional, he had formed a clear idea of their appearance. They were major-generals, retired now. They had been gallant young regimental officers—line-cavalry probably—in 1914 and had commanded brigades at the end of that war. They had passed at the Staff College and waited patiently for another battle only to find in 1939 that they were passed over for active command. But they had served loyally in offices, done their turn at fire-watching, gone short of whisky and razor-blades. Now they could just afford an inexpensive winter cruise every other year; admirable old men in their way. He did not find them on deck or in any of the public rooms.

  As noon was sounded there was a movement towards the bar for the announcement of the ship’s run and the result of the sweepstake. Scarfield was the winner of a modest prize. He ordered drinks for all in sight including Mr. Pinfold. Mrs. Scarfield stood near him and Mr. Pinfold said: “I say, I’m afraid I was an awful bore last night.”

  “Were you?” she said. “Not while you were with us.”

  “All that nonsense I talked about politics. It’s those pills I have to take. They make me feel rather odd.”

  “I’m sorry about that,” said Mrs. Scarfield, “but I assure you, you didn’t bore us in the least. I was fascinated.”

  Mr. Pinfold looked hard at her but could detect no hint of irony. “Anyway I shan’t hold forth like that again.”

  “Please do.”

  The ladies who had been identified as Mrs. Benson and Mrs. Cockson were in the same chairs as on the day before. They liked their glass, that pair, thought Mr. Pinfold with approval; good sorts. He greeted them. He greeted anyone who caught his eye. He was feeling very much better.

  One figure alone remained aloof from the general conviviality, the dark little man whom Mr. Pinfold had noticed dining alone.

  Presently the steward passed by, tapping his little musical gong, and Mr. Pinfold followed the company down to luncheon. Knowing what he did of Captain Steerforth’s character, Mr. Pinfold found it rather repugnant to sit at the table with him. He gave him a perfunctory nod and addressed himself to Glover.

  “Noisy night, wasn’t it?”

  “Oh,” said Glover, “I didn’t hear anything.”

  “You must sleep very sound.”

  “As a matter of fact, I didn’t. I usually do, but I am not getting the exercise I’m used to. I was awake half the night.”

  “And you didn’t hear the accident?”

  “No.”

  “Accident?” said Mrs. Scarfield overhearing. “Was there an accident last night, Captain?”

  “No one told me of one,” said Captain Steerforth blandly.

  “The villain,” thought Mr. Pinfold. “Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless villain,” for though Captain Steerforth had shown no other symptoms of lechery, Mr. Pinfold knew instinctively that his relations with the harsh-voiced woman—stewardess, secretary, passenger, whatever she might be—were grossly erotic.

  “What accident, Mr. Pinfold?” asked Mrs. Scarfield.

  “Perhaps I was mistaken,” said Mr. Pinfold stiffly. “I often am.”

  There was another couple at the Captain’s table. They had been there the night before, had been part of the group in which Mr. Pinfold had talked so injudiciously, but he had barely noticed them; a pleasant, middle-aged nondescript, rather rich-looking couple, not English, Dutch perhaps or Scandinavian. The woman now leant across and said in thick, rather arch tones:

  “There are two books of yours in the ship’s library, I find.”

  “Ah.”

  “I have taken one. It is named The Last Card.”

  “The Lost Chord,” said Mr. Pinfold.

  “Yes. It is a humorous book, yes?”

  “Some people have suggested as much.”

  “I find it so. It is not your suggestion also? I think you have a peculiar sense of humor, Mr. Pinfold.”

  “Ah.”

  “That is what you are known for, yes, your peculiar sense of humor?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “May I have it after you?” asked Mrs. Scarfield. “Everyone says I have a peculiar sense of humor too.”
<
br />   “But not so peculiar as Mr. Pinfold?”

  “That remains to be seen,” said Mrs. Scarfield.

  “I think you’re embarrassing the author,” said Mr. Scarfield.

  “I expect he’s used to it,” she said.

  “He takes it all with his peculiar sense of humor,” said the foreign lady.

  “If you’ll excuse me,” said Mr. Pinfold, struggling to rise.

  “You see he is embarrassed.”

  “No,” said the foreign lady. “It is his humor. He is going to make notes of us. You see, we shall all be in a humorous book.”

  As Mr. Pinfold rose, he gazed towards the little dark man at his solitary table. That is where he should have been, he thought. The last sound he heard as he left the dining-saloon was merry young laughter from the purser’s table.

  Since he left it, not much more than an hour before, the cabin had been tidied and the bedclothes stretched taut, hospital-like, across the bunk. He took off his coat and his soft boots, lit a cigar, and lay down. He had barely eaten at all that day but he was not hungry. He blew smoke up towards the wires and pipes on the ceiling and wondered how without offence he could escape from the Captain’s table to sit and eat alone, silent and untroubled, like that clever, dark, enviable little fellow, and as though in response to these thoughts the device overhead clicked into life and he heard this very subject being debated by the two old soldiers.

  “My dear fellow, I don’t care a damn.”

  “No, of course you don’t. Nor do I. All the same I think it very decent of him to mention it.”

  “Very decent. What did he say exactly?”

  “Said he was very sorry he hadn’t room for you and me and my missus. The table only takes six passengers. Well, he had to have the Scarfields.”

  “Yes, of course. He had to have the Scarfields.”

  “Yes, he had to have them. Then there’s the Norwegian couple—foreigners you know.”

  “Distinguished foreigners.”

  “Got to be civil to them. Well that makes four. Then if you please, he got an order from the Company to take this fellow Pinfold. So he only had one place. Knew he couldn’t separate you and me and the missus, so he asked that decent young fellow—the one with the uncle in Liverpool.”

  “Has he got an uncle in Liverpool?”

  “Yes, yes. That’s why he asked him.”

  “But why did he ask Pinfold?”

  “Company’s orders. He didn’t want him.”

  “No, no, of course not.”

  “If you ask me Pinfold drinks.”

  “Yes, so I have always heard.”

  “I saw him come on board. He was tight then. In a beastly state.”

  “He’s been in a beastly state ever since.”

  “He says it’s pills.”

  “No, no, drink. I’ve seen better men than Pinfold go that way.”

  “Wretched business. He shouldn’t have come.”

  “If you ask me he’s been sent on this ship as a cure.”

  “Ought to have someone to look after him.”

  “Have you noticed that little dark chap who sits alone? I shouldn’t be surprised if he wasn’t keeping an eye on him.”

  “A male nurse?”

  “A warder more likely.”

  “Put on him by his missus without his knowing?”

  “That’s my appreciation of the situation.”

  The voices of the two old gossips faded and fell silent. Mr. Pinfold lay smoking, without resentment. It was the sort of thing one expected to have said behind one’s back—the sort of thing one said about other people. It was slightly unnerving to overhear it. The idea of his wife setting a spy on him was amusing. He would write and tell her. The question of his drunkenness interested him more. Perhaps he did give that impression. Perhaps on that first evening at sea—how long ago was that now?—when he had talked politics after dinner, perhaps he had drunk too much. He had had too much of something certainly, pills or sleeping-draught or liquor. Well, the sleeping-draught was finished. He resolved to take no more pills. He would stick to wine and a cocktail or two and a glass of brandy after dinner and soon he would be well and active once more.

  He had reached the last inch of his cigar, a large one, an hour’s smoking, when his reverie was interrupted from the Captain’s cabin.

  The doxy was there. In her harsh voice she said: “You’ve got to teach him a lesson.”

  “I will.”

  “A good lesson.”

  “Yes.”

  “One he won’t forget.”

  “Bring him in.”

  There was a sound of scuffling and whimpering, a sound rather like that of the wounded seaman whom Mr. Pinfold had heard that morning; which morning? One morning of this disturbing voyage. It seemed that a prisoner was being dragged into the Captain’s presence.

  “Tie him to the chair,” said the leman, and Mr. Pinfold at once thought of King Lear: “Bind fast his corky arms.” Who said that? Goneril? Regan? Perhaps neither of them. Cornwall? It was a man’s voice, surely? in the play. But it was the voice of the woman, or what passed as a woman, here. Addict of nicknames as he was, Mr. Pinfold there and then dubbed her “Goneril.”

  “All right,” said Captain Steerforth, “you can leave him to me.”

  “And to me,” said Goneril.

  Mr. Pinfold was not abnormally squeamish nor had his life been particularly sheltered, but he had no experience of personal, physical cruelty and no liking for its portrayal in books or films. Now, lying in his spruce cabin in this British ship, in the early afternoon, a few yards’ distance from Glover and the Scarfields, Mrs. Benson and Mrs. Cockson, he was the horrified witness of a scene which might have come straight from the kind of pseudo-American thriller he most abhorred.

  There were three people in the Captain’s cabin, Steerforth, Goneril, and their prisoner, who was one of the colored stewards. Proceedings began with a form of trial. Goneril gave her evidence, vindictively but precisely accusing the man of an attempted sexual offence against her. It sounded to Mr. Pinfold rather a strong case. Knowing the ambiguous position which the accuser held in the ship, remembering the gross language he had overheard in the dining-saloon and the heavy, unhealthy discourse of the preacher, Mr. Pinfold considered the incident he heard described exactly the sort of thing he would expect to happen in this beastly ship. Guilty, he thought.

  “Guilty,” said the Captain and at the word Goneril vented a hiss of satisfaction and anticipation. Slowly and deliberately, as the ship steamed South with its commonplace load of passengers, the Captain and his leman with undisguised erotic enjoyment settled down to torture their prisoner.

  Mr. Pinfold could not surmise what form the torture took. He could only listen to the moans and sobs of the victim and the more horrific, ecstatic, orgiastic cries of Goneril:

  “More. More. Again. Again. Again. You haven’t had anything yet, you beast. Give him some more, more, more, more.”

  Mr. Pinfold could not endure it. He must stop this outrage at once. He lurched from his bunk, but even as he felt for his boots, silence fell in the Captain’s cabin and a suddenly sobered Goneril said: “That’s enough.”

  Not a sound came from the victim. After a long pause Captain Steerforth said: “If you ask me, it’s too much.”

  “He’s shamming,” said Goneril without conviction.

  “He’s dead,” said the Captain.

  “Well,” said Goneril. “What are you going to do about it?”

  “Untie him.”

  “I’m not going to touch him. I never touched him. It was all you.”

  Mr. Pinfold stood in his cabin, just as, no doubt, the Captain was standing in his, uncertain what to do, and as he hesitated, he realized through his horror that the pains in his legs had suddenly entirely ceased. He rose on his toes; he bent his knees. He was cured. It was the way in which these attacks of his always came and went, quite unpredictably. In spite of his agitation he had room in his mind to consider
whether perhaps they were nervous in origin, whether the shock he had just endured might not have succeeded where the gray pills had failed; whether he had not been healed by the steward’s agony. It was a hypothesis which momentarily distracted him from the murderer above.

  Presently he turned to listen to them.

  “As master of the ship I shall make out a death-certificate and have him put overboard after dark.”

  “How about the surgeon?”

  “He must sign too. The first thing is to get the body into the sick-bay. We don’t want any more trouble with the men. Get Margaret.”

  The situation as Mr. Pinfold saw it was appalling but it did not call for action.

  Whatever had to be done need not be done now. He could not burst alone into the Captain’s cabin and denounce him. What was the proper procedure, if any existed, for putting a Captain in irons in his own ship? He would have to take advice. The military men, that sage, authoritative couple, were the obvious people. He would find them and explain the situation. They would know what to do. A report must be made, he assumed, depositions taken. Where? At the first consulate they came to, at Port Said; or should they wait until they reached a British port? Those old campaigners would know.

  Meanwhile Margaret, the kind nurse, a sort of Cordelia, seemed to have charge of the body, “Poor boy, poor boy,” she was saying. “Look at these ghastly marks. You can’t say these are “natural causes”.”

  “That’s what the Captain says,” said a new voice, the ship’s surgeon presumably. “I take my orders from him. There’s a lot goes on aboard this ship that I don’t like. The best you can do, young lady, is to see nothing, hear nothing, and say nothing.”

  “But the poor boy. He must have suffered so.”

  “Natural causes,” said the doctor. And then there was silence.

  Mr. Pinfold removed his soft boots and put on shoes. He propped his two sticks in a corner of the wardrobe. “I shan’t need those again,” he reflected, little knowing what the coming days had in store, and walked almost blithely to the main deck.

  No one was about except two lascars, slung overhead, painting the davits. It was half past three, a time when all the passengers were in their cabins. Like a lark on a battlefield Mr. Pinfold’s spirits rose, free and singing. He rejoiced in his power to walk. He walked round the ship, again and again, up and down. Was it possible, in this bright and peaceful scene, to believe in the abomination that lurked up there, just overhead, behind the sparkling paint? Could he possibly be mistaken? He had never seen Goneril. He barely knew the Captain’s voice. Could he really identify it? Was it not possible that what he had heard was a piece of acting—a charade of the bright young peoples? a broadcast from London?