The Widow's Cruise
Page 5
To Nigel, who even as an undergraduate had never been conspicuous for attendance at lectures, this sounded far too much like work. So he and Clare settled down in deck-chairs aft, thereby missing another scene of the drama which was gradually unfolding on the Menelaos.
They sat in companionable silence, thinking their own thoughts while the ship rolled in a moderate sea raised by the strong wind which so often, Mr Bentinck-Jones had informed them, got up in these parts at nightfall. Clare was still brooding over her lion. Nigel fell to speculating about Melissa Blaydon. Pliant, charmingly acquiescent on the surface, she had, he suspected, a very tough core. Like Ianthe, she could be a ruthless remover of obstacles. Perhaps a more skilful and practised one, too. But she had her contradictions: just after dinner Nigel had heard her say to Ianthe, “But, darling, it really isn’t my thing at all. Why can’t you go by yourself?” Ianthe had made some reply, inaudible to him; and then, a few minutes later, he had seen the sisters going into the seminar together. Melissa did seem capable of disinterested affection, of some unselfishness.
He was reminded now of something else she had told him on the hillside. Ianthe had always been an independent character, going her own way; and the sisters had corresponded little, over the years when Melissa was abroad. But, since Ianthe’s breakdown, she had become dependent upon her sister. It was not merely that she hated letting Melissa out of her sight for long: she also never tired of asking Melissa about her life abroad, her marriage, her travels.
“Well,” Nigel had said, “I suppose she gets a vicarious satisfaction out of it—the stay-at-home sister revelling in the romantic life of——”
“Of the Prodigal Daughter?” Melissa had cut in, with her lop-sided smile. “I wonder. You see, Ianthe always despised the sort of life I’ve lived. She thinks I’m a feather-wit. I can’t imagine why she should suddenly be so interested in it.”
“Wouldn’t that be an effect of her illness? and of losing her job? She feels there’s a void that needs filling up: and even more, the need of a close relationship with someone. Isn’t she just trying to recreate the bond between herself and you?”
At which, Melissa Blaydon had looked sceptical. . .
Three quarters of an hour later, the seminar being over, Clare and Nigel strolled into the A lounge forward, to be met by that particular kind of high-pitched buzzing which is given off by a beehive or a human community when it has been disturbed. Nigel got drinks at the crowded bar, then carried them over to a corner where Mrs Hale was beckoning.
“My dear,” exclaimed the good lady, “what you have missed!”
“The seminar was interesting?” said Clare.
“Interesting! It was a riot.” Mrs Hale’s eyes opened wide with shocked glee. “Miss Ambrose and Mr Street pretty well had a stand-up fight.”
“Oh, come now, my dear,” the Bishop of Solway mumbled. “A bit of controversy, let’s call it.”
“Oh, I dare say it’s nothing to the shindies that go on in Convocation. But to me it looked like an all-in intellectual wrestling match.”
“But what happened?”
“Miss Ambrose got up and asked a question. Mr Street answered it. She whipped in another; and before you could say ‘Artemis’, they were at it hammer-and-tongs—something to do with Linear B. What on earth is Linear B? Sounds like trigonometry to me.”
“It’s a Greek script,” said the Bishop. “Blegen found tablets at Pylos inscribed in Linear B, just before the war. Wace found others at Mycenæ in 1952—the same year the script was deciphered as being in the Greek language. The discoveries proved Wace’s theory that Mycenaean civilisation was Greek, and that there was strong Mycenæan influence in the last phase at Knossos. Schliemann, of course——”
“My dear Edwin, do stick to the point,” interrupted his wife. “The point is that Miss Ambrose was unforgivably rude to poor Mr Street. She tried to humiliate him, in public, and——”
“I’m afraid she succeeded,” said the Bishop to Nigel, in a grave tone. “She exposed some bad gaps in his knowledge—well, made him look like a badly-taught schoolboy, in fact. It really was most unpleasant.”
“And quite irrelevant?” asked Nigel.
“Irrelevant to a discussion on Delos, certainly. It looked to me regrettably like a piece of pure mischief on Miss Ambrose’s part. I felt there was some personal animosity at work.”
“Her sister was terribly embarrassed. Quite furious with Ianthe. In fact, she dragged her out of the seminar before she’d finished——”
“You mean, physically dragged her out?”
“Well, not quite. But Miss Ambrose was shaking all over, and—here comes the other duellist.”
Jeremy Street, accompanied by Faith Trubody and her father, entered the lounge. There was a moment’s silence; then everyone started talking, louder and faster, it seemed, than before. Faith, moving closer to Jeremy, looked round in a challenging way. The man’s face flushed a little: the lips were tightly compressed. After getting their drinks, he and the Trubodys came across to a vacant group of chairs next to the Bishop’s party.
“Well!” Mrs Hale said without preamble. “I should think you need a drink after that. What a battle!”
Nigel gave her full marks for the genuine and unexpected tact she was showing by this open reference to the scene.
Jeremy Street gave a tight smile, which did not relax his face. “She’s rather a pest, I’m afraid.”
“It was absolutely typical of the Bross,” put in Faith Trubody. “There’s nothing she likes so much as showing up—” she broke off, flushing scarlet, and looking miserable at the gaffe. “Of course, I don’t mean you—I mean, she’s naturally a bloody-minded old schoolmarm and—” the girl floundered again. Jeremy Street made no attempt to help her out, Nigel noticed. Bad mark to him.
“My daughter was taught for a while by Miss Ambrose,” said Mr Trubody, a pleasant-faced man with grey hair and a manner of easy authority.
“And I was taught by Miss Ambrose’s father—oh, some thirty years ago,” said Jeremy Street. “He was my tutor at Cambridge. A very able man. She gets her talent from him. And—” Street made one of those delicate yet commanding gestures which had graced his lecture at Delos—“and her rather cantankerous disposition.”
Jeremy Street’s smile was calm, almost Olympian. He spoke without any trace of resentment. Is he quite invulnerable in his self-esteem, wondered Nigel, or is he putting on an act? Jeremy was, at any rate, one of those men whose public persona encases them so completely that the private self is invisible. What would one find underneath if the carapace were removed?
Nigel studied Faith Trubody, who in her turn was gazing raptly at Street as he talked, her mouth half open. The small, irregular teeth gave her a sly, vixenish look in profile. She was prettier than Nigel had thought, though: still quite unsure of herself: temperamentally erratic, he judged: and working up a full-blown crush on the handsome Jeremy Street. Or was it a crush? Did she perhaps hope to enlist him in her brother’s campaign against Ianthe Ambrose? And then, of course, there was the problem of Faith’s expulsion from school. Peter Trubody, in Clare’s hearing, had given one account of this, Miss Ambrose another: Nigel was by no means disposed to accept the former without question. Faith too, he thought, was quite capable of making false charges.
On an impulse, he asked the girl if she knew why Miss Ambrose had had to leave Summerton. Faith seemed rather taken aback, but replied,
“Well, I don’t know—I mean, she had a nervous breakdown last term, but a friend of mine who’s still there told me it was because the Bross was a failure as a teacher.”
“But she’s a first-rate scholar, I thought.”
“Oh yes, but she can’t sort of put it over. We weren’t getting the university scholarships we should have been.” Faith’s green eyes flickered at Nigel. “And she wasn’t popular, you know. She, well, had favourites, and ignored everyone else. And of course she was terribly sarcastic.”
“Were you a
favourite of hers?” Nigel asked, smiling.
“She got me sacked from the place.”
It was no answer, but Nigel did not press the question. Their conversation had been conducted in low tones, while Jeremy Street and the Bishop talked about Cambridge. The pair made an interesting contrast: the Bishop, with his neat, Vandyke beard, his rumpled grey alpaca suit, his Viking-blue eyes; Jeremy Street, dressed dandyishly, talking with the conscious stylishness of a belle-lettrist, smoothing the golden hair which curled up at the nape of his neck. A rumbling bass voice: a resonant tenor.
Faith Trubody was gazing at Street now with open adulation. What most disquieted Nigel was that the man appeared to be unembarrassed by it—to accept it as his natural and rightful due. It might have been better for him, if not for Faith, that he should be a straightforward womaniser. But Jeremy Street was cold, Nigel feared—as cold as Narcissus.
Soon after ten o’clock, Clare feeling sleepy, she and Nigel took a turn round the deck before going to their cabins. The promenade-deck was lined with deck-chairs, nearly all of them occupied. As they passed, a woman’s voice called,
“Oh, Miss Massinger, have you seen my sister anywhere?”
“No, Mrs Blaydon. She’s not in the big lounge, anyway.” Clare moved closer to the figure huddled in the deck-chair. “Oh, I’m sorry, Miss Ambrose. I mistook you for your sister. Shall I tell her you want her, if I see her.”
“Thank you.”
In the stern of the Menelaos, very close together at the rail, Nigel presently noticed two figures. The broad back and black oiled hair of Nikki was unmistakable. The woman so close at his side was Melissa Blaydon.
“What do we do about it?” Clare whispered.
“Better tell her.”
“Mrs Blaydon. Your sister was asking for you. She’s back there on the promenade-deck.”
Melissa swung round. Her eyes gradually focused, as if she were coming out of an anæsthetic. Her nostrils were distended.
“What? Oh, thank you. I’d better go, Nikki.”
She gave the man a quick, deep glance, then hurried away.
Nikki gazed after her with frank admiration. “What a woman!” he then exclaimed, shining his teeth at Nigel and Clare. “It is sad that she has—what does your poet call it?—an albatross round her neck.”
V
The next morning, they landed on Patmos. Led by Nikki the main party straggled from the quay, past groups of children holding up flowers, to a tree-lined square on the inland side of the little port. Here the mules were congregated which would convey them up to the monastery of St. John the Divine.
Here, Ivor Bentinck-Jones was in his element. He helped the women on to their mounts, fussed over the harness, got in the way of the muleteers, and encouraged the departing riders with cries of ‘Up and at ’em!’ ‘Canyons to left of them, canyons to right of them!’ ‘She’ll be coming up the mountain when she comes!’ and other appropriate slogans of the day.
Nigel, who had seen Clare and Mrs Hale jog off, found himself at the end of the cavalcade. He eyed his own animal with considerable misgiving. It seemed several sizes too small for him, and it had a distrait yet purposeful look in its rolling eye which reminded him of the wrong kind of society hostess. On mounting, he found his misgivings only too well justified. The stirrups were so short that he could only keep his feet in them by bending his legs backward, so that he was trussed like a chicken, while two pieces of metal, projecting from the ancient saddle, drove viciously into his thighs if he attempted to grip with them. For reins, the animal had a single rope, so that, in order to change direction, Nigel must lean forward and pass the rope over the brute’s muzzle to the other side of its head.
As well as these handicaps, Nigel discovered, when the muleteer gave his bloodcurdling cry and thumped the animal on its hind quarters, that it had a bias like a bowl; or else an inveterate feud with Bentinck-Jones’s mule. As they went side by side up the stony track, Nigel’s mule kept boring into his companion’s, as if determined to force it over the edge.
Bentinck-Jones, however, was unruffled. “Sure-footed animals, mules. Just leave them to find their own way,” he brightly remarked as his own beast, driven by Nigel’s into the shallow ditch at the side of the track, stumbled over a heap of stones. And a minute later, his pudgy face pink and sweating, “I say, Strangeways, talking about mules, what about Miss Ambrose, eh?”
“Well, what about her?”
“Obstinate. Nikki and her sister both tried to persuade her not to come up to the monastery. Rough journey. Very exposed to the sun. But no, she would do it.”
“She’s paid to see the monastery, so——”
“Mrs Blaydon’s paid, you mean. She’s footing the bill, you know. Quite inseparable, aren’t they?”
“Who?” asked Nigel, holding on to the saddle for dear life as the mules suddenly decided to gallop.
“Ah-ha! Who indeed?” panted Mr Bentinck-Jones, giving him a disagreeable wink. Clashing together in mid-track, the mules slowed again to a walk. The muleteer howled at them, and they broke into a bone-jolting jog-trot.
“Handsome fellow, Nikki. Virile, eh?” said Ivor Bentinck-Jones. “Quite the lady-killer. Rather a bad show, though, don’t you think?”
“What’s a bad show?” Nigel was deliberately obtuse.
“Well, he’s in an official position. Cruise-manager. Looks bad. Do you think he’s made her yet?”
Appalled by this sudden vulgarity, Nigel said nothing. Ivor seemed undeterred, however. Beaming benignly, he cooed,
“Ah well, these shipboard romances. Ships that pass in the night. But of course they’re not the only unmarried couple on board.”
Conscious of the man’s sharp, sideways glance, Nigel pretended confusion. “What do you mean by that?” he asked jerkily.
“Well, there’s young Miss Trubody and our distinguished lecturer, Jeremy Street.”
Nigel feigned indignation, and relief. “Oh, come! He’s old enough to be her——”
“It’s a case,” Ivor jovially proclaimed. “That girl’s just ripe to fall off the bough, mark my words. But that sort of thing is dangerous for a man in a public position. Or,” he added, “a woman.”
“But Miss Trubody isn’t a public figure.”
“I wasn’t thinking of la Trubody, old man,” said Bentinck-Jones in his cosiest way.
A pandemonium of muleteers’ cries and clattering hooves broke out from above, where the track zig-zagged down the hillside from the fortress-like monastery and the ruff of white houses around its base, now only quarter of a mile away. The muleteers, having deposited their first customers, were racing the mules down the hill to pick up more. The track was narrow, and it was impossible to get off it on either side at this point.
The avalanche of mules poured down, bringing with them a cloud of dust and a torrent of stones, cannoning against Nigel and his companion as they pressed to the side of the track. Stimulated by the general excitement, Nigel’s mule suddenly swerved against its old enemy, and Bentinck-Jones was thrown off and went rolling down the slope. This, fortunately, was not steep here. A rock arrested his descent and, clambering up on to the track, he was remounted by the muleteer. He wore on his face the pertinaciously cheerful expression of the butt of the party determined to show that he takes horse-play in good part.
As they moved on again, Nigel said to him mildly,
“Pride, it seems, is not the only thing that goes before a fall.”
“What’s that? Don’t get you, old man.” Ivor’s eyes had lost their habitual twinkle.
“Never mind. Sorry about the bumping and boring. I simply can’t steer this animal with one rope.”
“Oh, that’s all right, Strangeways. I shan’t need to sue for compensation, I hope.” There was the faintest stress on the word ‘sue’. “I always prefer friendly arrangements, don’t you?”
“Fall heavily, but let off lightly? That sort of thing?”
“Could be. It all depends.”
“On how much there is, shall we say, to lose.” Bentinck-Jones pointed to a group standing at the foot of the steps leading up through the village. “Ah, there’s Miss Massinger. Charming woman. Great talent. Genius. I hear there’s talk of her being commissioned to do a portrait-bust of Royalty. Damn good show!”
“And there’s the Chalmers child,” said Nigel, his pale blue eyes fastened non-committally on Ivor Bentinck-Jones’ small grey ones. “She reminds me of Wordsworth.”
“Wordsworth? Good Lord!”
“You remember the lines?—‘A primrose by the river’s brim A simple sucker was to him.’”
For once, Mr Bentinck-Jones appeared to find himself at a loss for words; and when they had dismounted, he moved away, looking thoughtful. Primrose Chalmers glanced at his retreating back, her face deadpan under the Venetian gondolier’s hat.
In the courtyard of the monastery, the Bishop spoke for twenty minutes on the Orthodox Church. The Greek guides then took parties to view the dark and opulent chapel, the library with its 735 Byzantine MSS., and other features of the establishment. Nigel noticed that he and Clare were being shadowed everywhere by Primrose. No doubt the child was expecting him to hold some sinister communication with one of the monks: there were many of them—handsome, bronzed men, who smiled engagingly at their visitors, and with their beards, tall hats and cassocks might have been doubles of Bishop Makarios. Primrose, judged Nigel, was a good deal more harmless following him round than spying on some of his fellow-travellers. Still, the child was a nuisance; and when they had emerged on to the monastery roof, to look at the incredible panorama of sea. and islands spread out below them, Nigel moved over to her.
“How’s the Elephant’s Child to-day?” he asked.
“Do you mean me?”
“Yes. The Elephant’s Child was possessed of insatiable curiosity.”
“Oh?”
The Just-So Stories were evidently not required reading in the Chalmers household: undesirable to encourage animal fetishism.