The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold

by Evelyn Waugh

  There was a pause while this proposition was considered. The first officer at length spoke: “It might work, skipper.”

  “It must work.”

  “What do you suppose will happen to him?”

  “Can’t say. I suppose they’ll hold him under arrest while they investigate. They won’t let him communicate with our embassy, of course. When they find out their mistake, if they ever do, they’ll be in rather a jam. They may let him out or they may find it more convenient just to let him disappear.”

  “I see.”

  It was the general who voiced the thought uppermost in Mr. Pinfold’s mind. “Why Pinfold?” he asked.

  “It was a painful choice,” said Captain Steerforth, “but not a difficult one. He is the obvious man, really. No one else on board would take them in for a moment. He looks like a secret agent. I think he was one during the war. He’s a sick man and therefore expendable. And, of course, he’s a Roman Catholic. That ought to make things a little easier for him in Spain.”

  “Yes,” said the general, “yes. I see all that. But all the same I think it’s pretty sporting of him to agree. In his place I must own I’d think twice before taking it on.”

  “Oh, he doesn’t know anything about it.”

  “The devil he doesn’t?”

  “No, that would be quite fatal to security. Besides he might not agree. He has a wife, you know, and a large family. You can’t really blame a man who thinks of domestic responsibilities before volunteering for hazardous service. No, Captain Pinfold must be kept quite in the dark. That’s the reason for the counter-plan, the diversion. There’s got to be a schemozzle on the gangway so that Captain Pinfold can be pushed into the corvette. You, number one, will be responsible for hauling him out of his cabin and planting the papers on him.”

  “Aye, aye, sir.”

  “That boy of mine will laugh,” said the general. “He took against Pinfold from the start. Now he hears he’s deserted to the enemy…”

  The voices ceased. For a long time Mr. Pinfold sat paralyzed with horror and rage. When at length he looked at his watch he found that it was nearly half past nine. Then he took off his evening clothes and put on his tweeds. Whatever outrage the night brought forth should find him suitably dressed. He pocketed his passport and his traveler’s checks. Then, blackthorn in hand, he sat down again and began patiently and painfully, as he had learned in the army, to “appreciate the situation.” He was alone, without hope of reinforcement. His sole advantage was that he knew, and they did not know he knew their plan of action. He examined the Captain’s plan in the light of the quite considerable experience he had acquired in small-scale night operations and he found it derisory. The result of a scuffle in the dark on a gangway was quite unpredictable but he was confident that, forewarned, he could easily evade or repulse any attempt to put him into the corvette against his will. Even if they succeeded and the Caliban attempted to sail away, the corvette, of course, would open fire and, of course, would sink or disable her long before the Spaniards began examining the forged papers that were to be planted on him.

  And here Mr. Pinfold experienced scruples. He was not what is generally meant by the appellation a “philanthropic” man; he totally lacked what was now called a “social conscience.” But apart from his love of family and friends he had a certain basic kindliness to those who refrained from active annoyance. And in an old-fashioned way he was patriotic. These sentiments sometimes did service for what are generally regarded as the higher loyalties and affections. This was such an occasion. He rather liked Mrs. Scarfield, Mrs. Cockson, Mrs. Benson, Glover, and all those simple, chatting, knitting, dozing passengers. For the unseen, enigmatic Margaret he felt tender curiosity. It would be a pity for all these to be precipitated into a watery bier by the ineptitude of Captain Steerforth. For himself he had little concern, but he knew that his disappearance, and possible disgrace, would grieve his wife and family. It was intolerable that this booby Captain should handle so many lives so clumsily. But there was also the question of the secret agent. If this man, as seemed likely, was really of vital importance to his country, he must be protected. Mr. Pinfold felt responsible for his protection. He had been chosen as victim. That doom was inescapable. But he would go to the sacrifice a garlanded hero. He would not be tricked into it.

  No precise tactical plan could be made. Whatever his action, it would be improvised. But the intention was plain. He would, if necessary, consent to impersonate the agent, but Captain Steerforth and his cronies must understand that he went voluntarily as a man of honor and Mrs. Pinfold must be fully informed of the circumstances. That established, he would consent to his arrest.

  As he pondered all this, he was barely conscious of the voices that came to him. He waited.

  At a quarter to twelve there was a hail from the bridge answered from the sea in Spanish. The corvette was coming alongside and at once the ship came to life with a multitude of voices. This, Mr. Pinfold decided, was his moment to act. He must deliver his terms to the Captain before the Spaniards came on board. Gripping his blackthorn he left the cabin.

  Immediately his communications were cut. The lighted corridor was empty and completely silent. He strode down it to the stairway, mounted to the main deck. No one was about. There was no ship near or anywhere in sight; not a light anywhere on the dark horizon; not a sound from the bridge; only the rush and slap of the waves along the ship’s side, and the keen sea wind. Mr. Pinfold stood confounded, the only troubled thing in a world at peace.

  He had been dauntless a minute before in the face of his enemies. Now he was struck with real fear, something totally different from the superficial alarms he had once or twice known in moments of danger, something he had quite often read about and dismissed as over-writing. He was possessed from outside himself with atavistic panic. “O let me not be mad, not mad, sweet heaven,” he cried.

  And in that moment of agony there broke not far from him in the darkness peal upon rising peal of mocking laughter—Goneril’s, It was not an emollient sound. It was devoid of mirth, an obscene cacophony of pure hatred. But it fell on Mr. Pinfold’s ears at that moment like a nursery lullaby.

  “A hoax,” he said to himself.

  It was all a hoax on the part of the hooligans. He understood all. They had learned the secret of the defective wiring in his cabin. Somehow they had devised a means of controlling it, somehow they had staged this whole charade to tease him. It was spiteful and offensive, no doubt; it must not happen again. But Mr. Pinfold felt nothing but gratitude in his discovery. He might be unpopular; he might be ridiculous; but he was not mad.

  He returned to his cabin. He had been awake now for thirty or forty hours. He lay down at once in his clothes and fell into a deep, natural sleep. He lay motionless and unconscious for six hours.

  When he next went on deck the sun was up, directly over the bows. Square on the port beam rose the unmistakable peak of the Rock. The Caliban was steaming into the calm Mediterranean.

  Six

  The Human Touch

  While Mr. Pinfold was shaving, he heard Margaret say: “It was an absolutely beastly joke and I’m glad it fell flat.”

  It came off very nicely,” said her brother. “Old Peinfeld was jibbering with funk.”

  “He wasn’t—and he isn’t called Peinfeld. He was a hero. When I saw him standing there alone on deck I thought of Nelson.”

  “He was drunk.”

  “He says it’s not drink, dear,” said their mother, gently uncommitted to either side. “He says it’s some medicine he has to take.”

  “Medicine from a brandy bottle.”

  “I know you’re wrong,” said Margaret. “You see it just happens I know what he’s thinking, and you don’t.”

  Then Goneril’s steely voice cut in: “I can tell you what he was doing on deck. He was screwing up his courage to jump overboard. He longs to kill himself, don’t you, Gilbert. All right, I know you’re listening down there. You can hear me, can’t you,
Gilbert? You wish you were dead, don’t you, Gilbert? And a very good idea, too. Why don’t you do it, Gilbert? Why not? Perfectly easy. It would save us all—you too, Gilbert—a great deal of trouble.”

  “Beast,” said Margaret and broke into weeping.

  “Oh, God,” said her brother, “now you’ve turned on the water-works again.”

  Mr. Pinfold was fortified by his six hours’ sleep. He went above, leaving the nagging voices of the cabin for the silent and empty decks for an hour. The Rock had dropped below the horizon and there was no land in sight. The sea might have been any sea by the look of it, but he knew it was the Mediterranean, that splendid enclosure which held all the world’s history and half the happiest memories of his own life; of work and rest and battle, of aesthetic adventure, and of young love.

  After breakfast he took a book to the lounge, not to his listening post in the paneled corner, but to an isolated chair in the center, and read, undisturbed. He must get out of that haunted cabin, he thought; but not yet; later, in his own time.

  Presently he rose and began once more to walk the decks. They were thronged now. All the passengers seemed to be there, occupied as before in reading, knitting, dozing, or strolling like himself, but that morning he found a kind of paschal novelty in the scene and rejoiced in it until he was rudely disturbed in his benevolence.

  The passengers, too, seemed aware of change. They must all at one time or another in the last few days have caught sight of Mr. Pinfold. Now, however, it was as though he were a noteworthy, unaccompanied female, newly appearing in the evening promenade of some stagnant South American town. He had been witness of such an event on many a dusty plaza; he had seen the sickly faces of the men brighten, their lassitude take sudden life; he had observed the little flourishes of seedy dandyism; he had heard the jungle whistles and, without fully understanding them, the frank, anatomical appraisals; had seen the sly following and pinching of the unwary tourist. In just that way Mr. Pinfold, wherever he went that day, found himself to be such a cynosure; everyone was talking about him, loudly and unashamedly, but not in his praise.

  “That’s Gilbert Pinfold, the writer.”

  “That common little man? It can’t be.”

  “Have you read his books? He has a very peculiar sense of humor, you know.”

  “He is very peculiar altogether. His hair is very long.”

  “He’s wearing lipstick.”

  “He’s painted up to the eyes.”

  “But he’s so shabby. I thought people like that were always smart.”

  “There are different types of homosexual, you know. What are called “poufs” and “nancies”—that is the dressy kind. Then there are the others they call “butch”. I read a book about it. Pinfold is a “butch”.”

  That was the first conversation Mr. Pinfold overheard. He stopped, turned, and tried to stare out of countenance the little group of middle-aged women who were speaking. One of them smiled at him and then, turning, said: “I believe he’s trying to get to know us.”

  “How disgusting.”

  Mr. Pinfold walked on but wherever he went he was the topic.

  “… Lord of the Manor of Lychpole.”

  “Anyone can be that. It’s often a title that goes with some tumbledown farmhouse these days.”

  “Oh, Pinfold lives in great style I can tell you. Footmen in livery.”

  “I can guess what he does with the footmen.”

  “Not any more. He’s been impotent for years, you know. That’s why he’s always thinking of death.”

  “Is he always thinking of death?”

  “Yes. He’ll commit suicide one of these days, you’ll see.”

  “I thought he was a Catholic. They aren’t allowed to commit suicide, are they?”

  “That wouldn’t stop Pinfold. He doesn’t really believe in his religion, you know. He just pretends to because he thinks it aristocratic. It goes with being Lord of the Manor.”

  “There’s only one Lychpole in the world, he told the wireless man.”

  “Only one Lychpole and Pinfold is its Lord…”

  *

  “… There he is, drunk again.”

  “He looks ghastly.”

  “A dying man, if ever I saw one.”

  “Why doesn’t he kill himself?”

  “Give him time. He’s doing his best. Drink and drugs. He daren’t go to a doctor, of course, for fear he’d be put in a home.”

  “Best place for him, I should have thought.”

  “Best place for him would be over the side.”

  “Rather a nuisance for poor Captain Steerforth.”

  “It’s a great nuisance for Captain Steerforth having him on board.”

  “And at his own table.”

  “That’s being taken care of. Haven’t you heard? There’s going to be a petition.”

  *

  “… Yes, I’ve signed. Everyone has, I believe.”

  “Except those actually at the table. The Scarfields wouldn’t, or Glover.”

  “I see it might be a little awkward for them.”

  “It’s a very well-worded petition.”

  “Yes. The general did that. It makes no specific accusation, you see, that might be libelous. Simply: “We the undersigned, for reasons which we are prepared to state in confidence, consider it to be an insult to us, as passengers in the Caliban, that Mr. Gilbert Pinfold should sit at the Captain’s table, a position of honor for which he is notoriously unsuitable.” That’s very neatly put.”

  *

  “… the Captain ought to lock him up. He has full authority.”

  “But he hasn’t actually done anything yet, on board.”

  This was a pair of genial business men with whom and the Scarfields Mr. Pinfold had spent half an hour one evening.

  “For his own protection. It was a very near thing the other night that those boys didn’t beat him up.”

  “They were drunk.”

  “They may get drunk again. It would be most unpleasant for everyone if there was a police court case.”

  “Couldn’t something be put in our petition about that?”

  “It was discussed. The generals thought it could best be left to the interview. The Captain is bound to ask them to give their reasons.”

  “Not in writing.”

  “Exactly. They don’t suggest putting him in the cell. Simply confining him to his cabin.”

  “He probably has certain legal rights, having paid his fare, to his cabin and his meals.”

  “But not to his meals at the Captain’s table.”

  “There you have the crux.”

  *

  “… No,” the Norwegian was saying, “I did not sign anything. It is a British matter. All I know is that he is a fascist. I have heard him speak ill of democracy. We had a few such men in the time of Quisling. We knew what to do with them. But I will not mix in these British affairs.”

  “I’ve got a photograph of him in a black shirt taken at one of those Albert Hall meetings before the war.”

  “That might be useful.”

  “He was up to his eyes in it. He’d have been locked up under 18B but he escaped by joining the army.”

  “He did pretty badly there, I suppose?”

  “Very badly. There was a scandal in Cairo that had to be hushed up when his brigade-major shot himself.”

  “Blackmail?”

  “The next best thing.”

  “I see he’s wearing the Guards tie.”

  “He wears any kind of tie—old Etonian usually.”

  “Was he ever at Eton?”

  “He says he was,” said Glover.

  “Don’t you believe it. Board-school through and through.”

  “Or at Oxford?”

  “No, no. His whole account of his early life is a lie. No one had ever heard of him until a year or two ago. He’s one of a lot of nasty people who crept into prominence during the war…”

  *

  “… I don’t say he’s an
actual card-carrying member of the communist party, but he’s certainly mixed up with them.”

  “Most Jews are.”

  “Exactly. And those “missing diplomats”. They were friends of his.”

  “He doesn’t know enough to make it worth the Russians’ while to take him to Moscow.”

  “Even the Russians wouldn’t want Pinfold.”

  *

  The most curious encounter of that morning was with Mrs. Cockson and Mrs. Benson. They were sitting as usual on the verandah of the deck-bar, each with her glass, and they were talking French with what seemed to Mr. Pinfold, who spoke the language clumsily, pure accent and idiom. Mrs. Cockson said: “Ce Monsieur Pinfold essaye toujours de pénétrer chez moi, et il a essayé de se faire présenter à moi par plusieurs de mes amis. Naturellement j’ ai refusé.”

  “Connaissez-vous un seul de ses amis? Il me semble qu’il a des relations très ordinaires.”

  “On peut toujours se tromper dans le premier temps sur une relation étrangère. On a fini par s’apercevoir à Paris qu’il n’est pas de notre société…”

  *

  It was a put-up job, Mr. Pinfold decided. People did not normally behave in this way.

  When Mr. Pinfold first joined Bellamy’s there was an old earl who had sat alone all day and every day in the corner of the stairs wearing an odd, hard hat and talking loudly to himself. He had one theme, the passing procession of his fellow members. Sometimes he dozed, but in his long waking hours he maintained a running commentary—“That fellow’s chin is too big; dreadful-looking fellow. Never saw him before. Who let him in?… Pick your feet up, you. Wearing the carpets out… Dreadfully fat young Crambo’s getting. Don’t eat, don’t drink, it’s just he’s hard up. Nothing fattens a man like getting hard up… Poor old Nailsworth, his mother was a whore, so’s his wife. They say his daughter’s going the same way…” and so on.