by Mary Wesley
Flora Trevelyan, remote and adult in her new clothes, was indifferent to the excitement of boarding. Her lack of appreciation maddened Miss Gillespie. She would leave her now, get back into London and spend the evening with her married sister. They’d go to the cinema, perhaps see Ronald Colman. “Shall you be all right if I leave you now?” she enquired. She had fulfilled her duty.
“Yes, thank you, Miss Gillespie, I shall be all right,” said Flora.
“I have asked the Purser to keep an eye on you, and the Captain knows you are travelling alone. I think you will be comfortable in that cabin.” (Why must she repeat everything? I was with her when she spoke to the Purser and with her when she gave him the letter for the Captain. She was with me to inspect the cabin. I wish she would go.)
“You seem to have a nice steward. A family man, he will keep an eye on you.” (All these eyes!) “He said your cabin is on the starboard side, but it does not matter at this time of year. He will have your trunk brought out of the hold at Bombay and see that you meet your father’s bearer.” (I was there, I heard you.) “You will remember how much to tip the steward, won’t you, dear? Not too little and not too much; one must keep their respect. And you will mind, won’t you, how you behave in front of the crew; they are all natives. It’s so important.”
“I wish, if you are going, Miss Gillespie, that you’d go,” said Flora pleasantly.
“Flora Trevelyan! Your manners! I shall have to tell—”
“The headmistress? I’ve left school, Miss Gillespie. You don’t have to do anything any more.”
“Flora.”
“I am sorry, Miss Gillespie, but you repeat yourself. People get bored. I’ve longed to tell you for seven years,” said Flora kindly, “that if we’d had to strain to hear what you said just once, we would all have learned a lot more.” Oh hell, I’ve hurt her feelings, reduced her to huff.
“Ungrateful, after all I—”
“Very sorry, Miss Gillespie.” Flora walked fast along the deck towards the gangway with Miss Gillespie keeping up. “I hope you have a nice evening with your sister and Ronald Colman,” she said. Miss Gillespie did not reply; she had often suspected Flora’s tone, never exactly pinned it. “Do you write to Ronald Colman?” asked Flora, who knew from the school grapevine that she did. “Next time you write, do ask him to shave off that moustache. None of the girls believe Beau Geste would have been allowed it in the Legion.” Flora felt, as she walked along the deck, that in spite of her parents waiting to trap her in India she could at least shake off school. She would be wonderfully, luxuriously alone on the ship for three weeks.
Awkwardly they said goodbye. Miss Gillespie hesitated before kissing Flora, but it was best to part on good terms and ignore her hurtful speech. Flora might some day have children, as other old girls had, and need a school for them. “I wish I was going to India,” she said mournfully.
“Oh, Miss Gillespie, go instead of me! I’ll give you my ticket, just say the word,” cried Flora. “Swop.”
“What an idea,” said Miss Gillespie. “What a fanciful girl you are, but generous. What would your parents say?” She had misjudged Flora.
“They’d find you a husband and fix you up,” said Flora, undoing her small good.
She watched Miss Gillespie’s back, in her respectable coat and skirt, as she made her way down the gangplank and walked away to find a taxi. The exact price of the taxi would be put on the bill and sent to her father c/o Cox & Kings, Pall Mall, SW1. She leaned over the rail and peered down the ship’s side into the murky water of the dock. Far below in the filthy water she could see a rat painstakingly breasting through the rubbish, paper, straw, orange peel, cigarette stubs. Someone threw a bucket of soapy water from a porthole and swamped the rat. As Flora watched, its head bobbed up; she imagined its whiskers and desperate paws. Oh, courageous rat. She craned her neck to see better.
“There she is! Flora! Flora! We’ve come to see you off. Isn’t this fun? Aren’t you thrilled, off on the long voyage into adulthood, fun and wickedness?” Joyce, Cosmo and Hubert were bearing down on her. Joyce strode forward, showing her teeth in her big smile, holding out expansive hands to grasp Flora. Cosmo followed, looking English and sheepish. Hubert looked angry.
Surrendering her hands, Flora recollected that Joyce had American connections which would account for this enthusiasm. She said, “Hello.”
“Aren’t you pleased to see us? You look surprised.” Joyce squeezed Flora’s hands. “We heard you were off from Mabs, who heard it from Tash. You are a funny one. Why didn’t you tell us? Why did you never come and stay? We’ve brought a bottle of champagne to drink you on your way. Oh, you’ve got it, Hubert. Let’s ask a steward for glasses. I suppose you are travelling first class?”
“Second.”
“Much more fun. The old and married travel first; all the young and lovely men will be in the second. You’re going to have such a marvellous time, Flora. I wish I was coming too. Shall we join the ship? Wouldn’t that be a joke?” Joyce slipped her arm through Cosmo’s, drawing him close.
Flora supposed later that she had said the right things. They had moved from the deck, where porters were still bringing on board trunks and suitcases banded with regimental colours, their owners’ names painted large: Major this, Colonel that, Lieut, something else. In the saloon a steward brought glasses, uncorked the bottle and poured. Joyce sat close to Cosmo. “My goodness, Flora, what a choice of appetising men! Look at them! I bet you get engaged by the time you reach Bombay.”
Cosmo looked about at passengers milling to and fro, seasoned travellers. “I suppose it’s all army and civil service.”
“There will be some boxwallahs too, bound to be,” said Joyce. “They’ve got more money so they’ll join the ship at Marseilles. So don’t lose your heart before Marseilles, Flora, keep some room for those—”
“Joyce knows it all,” said Cosmo drily.
“In two days she’ll know everybody. She’s by far the prettiest girl,” said Joyce.
“When does the ship reach Marseilles?” Hubert asked. It was the first time he had spoken.
“In a week, I think. Then Malta, Alexandria and Aden.”
“I see.” He watched her, frowning.
Cosmo and Joyce drank and refilled their glasses. Flora thought of the rat. Had it reached safety? “What a beautiful suit.” She remembered at Coppermalt the girls always complimented one another on their clothes. Joyce’s suit was banana yellow, nipped in at the waist.
Joyce sipped her drink and stretched her long legs. “I had it made for Felix’s wedding,” she said. “I like yours. Did la Tarasova make it?”
It wasn’t a mistake; she had heard right. “I didn’t see it in The Times.” She kept her voice flat. Felix married?
“It would not have been in The Times,” said Hubert. “They were married in Holland.”
“Naturally.” Flora gulped champagne. It fizzed in her nose and made her eyes water. She put her glass down with a steady hand.
“Oh gosh, there’s the bell, they want us to go ashore.” Sitting arm in arm with Cosmo, Joyce showed little sign of moving.
Hubert stood up. “We’d better get a move on,” he said.
Cosmo pulled Joyce to her feet. People who had come to see friends off were making for the gangway.
Hubert walked beside Flora. “You don’t want to go to India, do you?”
“Yes, I do.”
“We had rather a lot to drink at lunch, that’s why we are inept,” he said.
“I don’t find you inept,” said Flora. “Just ordinary.” He would hate to be called ordinary. Behind them Joyce and Cosmo strolled arm in arm; were they engaged? Who had Felix married? She must not, could not ask. “There was a rat,” she said, “swimming in the dock.”
“Rats are brave animals.”
“Someone threw a bucket of dirty water onto it.”
“It will survive.”
“Miss Gillespie, the English mistress, brought me to the
ship. She asked the Purser and the steward and the Captain to keep an eye on me.”
“In case someone throws a bucket of slops over you.”
“Metaphorically.”
“Mind you survive.”
“There you are, we got separated. We must go, they are shooing us. Write to us, Flora, won’t you? Give us a kiss. There. Come on, you two. They want to pull up the gangway.” Joyce kissed Flora; she smelt delicious. “You know Mabs and Tash would have come if they could, and Ernest?”
“Who is Ernest?”
“My husband, silly. Didn’t you know I was married? It was in all the papers. Come on, you two, we are being a nuisance.”
“You are drunk,” said Hubert, pushing Joyce along.
Cosmo said, “Flora—” and bent awkwardly to kiss her cheek. “Goodbye.” He hurried after Joyce.
Hubert took Flora’s face between his hands, squeezing it, forcing her mouth open and kissed her so that she gasped. Half-way down the gangway he turned and came back.
“You don’t want to go. Come ashore with me.”
“I must. I do. I can’t.”
“You look like a caged bird.”
“For the moment I am free.”
“Not for long.”
“For the voyage, three weeks.”
“Sir—last visitors—visitors ashore, sir—please sir—”
Bells clanged and under her feet the deck vibrated. The wind coming up the Thames estuary smelled of the sea. Squawking gulls circled a giant crane. The ship’s siren let out a blast. There was a gap between the ship and the dock as the ship’s propellers churned the brown water, but no sign of the rat.
THIRTY-SIX
PACING ALONG THE DOCK Hubert looked up at the ship, black, shiny and dimly lit by harbour and dockyard lights. It would be dark for another hour; it was far too early to go on board. He was hungry. He turned about to find a café open for night workers, stevedores and police. As he moved away a taxi came along the dock and drew up by the gangway. A girl got out. In the half-light Hubert recognised Flora. She was in evening dress, a shawl held tightly round her shoulders.
Flora said to the driver: “I have no francs. Will you take English money? I will give you more than your fare is worth in francs.”
Leaning from the cab, the driver said something Hubert could not hear. Flora stamped her foot and said, “You must,” in a strained voice.
The driver replied to the effect that he was not in the habit of transporting seafaring English prostitutes back to their ships from respectable French bordellos; it was taking the food from the mouths of hard-working French girls. This was not the sort of thing he had fought for, up to his waist in mud from 1914 to 1918. Mademoiselle must pay in francs or he would go to the police.
Hubert stood at Flora’s elbow. “How much does the lady owe you?”
The driver, startled, named the price. Hubert stood tall in the half-light, his shoulders broad, his eyebrows meeting darkly above black eyes. “You will wait,” he said, “while this lady and I fetch some things she must collect from her cabin. Then you will drive us back into town. We shall not be long.”
Flora noted the driver’s meek response. “Oui, monsieur, d’accord.”
Hubert took Flora’s arm. “Where’s your cabin? You can’t travel in that dress. While you change and pack a suitcase, I’ll write a note for the Purser to give the Captain. You are coming,” Hubert said, walking her up the gangway, “with me.”
Mimicking the taxi driver, Flora said, “Oui, monsieur, d’accord,” but her voice quavered.
Hubert said: “Don’t try to talk; plenty of time later. And buck up, I am hungry and want my breakfast.” She had had some sort of shock, he thought, which was useful. It delayed prevarication.
In her cabin Flora changed into day clothes, filled a case with necessities and various garments which Hubert handed her. When the case was full he shut it and helped her into her coat, saying, “Come on, then.” Carrying her case, he led her off the ship to where the taxi was waiting. “Get in,” he said, and gave the driver directions. As he was about to join Flora in the cab a second taxi drove up to the gangway and disgorged three men, young, jolly, drunk and English. Flora shrank back into a corner. “I left them there, I—”
Hubert said: “Would you like me to chuck them into the dock? Better not, it would delay our breakfast. Drive on,” he said to the driver. “You will feel better,” he said to Flora, crouched in the corner seat, “when you have had some hot coffee and croissants.” It would be folly to touch her, he thought; she had not kicked his shins or bitten him yet.
As the taxi drove away Hubert, looking back, noted that an altercation had broken out between the second taxi driver and his fares. With luck, he thought, watching the three men staggering about, one or more would trip and fall into the dock. “You keep charming company,” he said.
Flora did not answer. She turned away and looked out of her window.
Half-way into Marseilles Hubert stopped the taxi to buy a newspaper. “I need to read the news,” he said, getting back in the cab. “D’you remember frog-faced Miss Green trying to interest General Leigh in Hitler? He’s much in the news now. She was ahead of her time; Hitler is Chancellor of Germany. Let’s see what the French have to say.”
Flora said: “I read The Times.” She continued to look out of the window.
“So you are au fait.” Hubert folded the paper, stretched his legs and glanced at the headline. “But you are probably not aware—” he risked a glance at her profile—“of what Hitler plans. He is a tidy fellow.”
“Tidy?” She was only half-listening.
Keep up the chat, thought Hubert. “If one ploughs through Mein Kampf the tidiness becomes apparent; he plans a perfect Germany, no less. He will eliminate blots like the Jews, gypsies, Jehovahs, half-wits, cripples and communists. Germany will become a nation of tall, blond, obedient Nordic giants.”
“An awful lot of Germans are dark,” said Flora, looking out of her side of the taxi.
“Indeed yes, as are French, English, Dutch and Belgians. Even General Leigh, who, by the way, has become an ardent supporter of the Nazis, remarked on that. He listed an array of dark Germans and pointed out that Felix, a representative Dutchman of high calibre’ is dark.” (Did she not have a crush on Felix?) “The master race, the General thinks, is a bit of a pipe dream, but since the Führer is anti-communist, he’s pro.”
Flora said, “Oh,” keeping interest out of her voice. “Is he?”
“Oh yes, the General is scared stiff of the Bolshies, of communist rot among the working class; apparently in the General Strike in 1926 he thought there might be a revolution. He armed himself with a revolver to travel north to Coppermalt.”
“I remember.” Recollecting the man in the gunsmith’s at St. Malo, Flora winced.
How did she know? Her profile told him nothing. “The General’s anti-Bolshiness so turned his butler’s stomach he gave notice and joined the Party. Mrs. Leigh keeps on that Gage was ‘such a good butler.’ Cosmo, saying ‘Ceci n’empêche cela,’ only gets his head bitten off.”
Flora laughed.
Hubert glanced at her with relief. “We’ll have breakfast in that café,” he said. “This street is called the Cannabiere. All Marseilles passes through it.” He told the driver to stop.
Flora drank scalding coffee sitting at a pavement table while Hubert hungrily demolished oeufs au plat and croissants and watched Flora’s face grow less pale.
Between mouthfuls he continued his desultory chat, telling her about his time and Cosmo’s at Oxford, about trips abroad with Cosmo and other friends. “We sent you postcards.” About London theatre, cinema, concerts. The rooms he had shared with a friend until he found a place of his own, it being more agreeable to be independent. That Cosmo, having opted for the law, would become a barrister; that he rarely saw Mabs and Tashie these days, their lives being so different from his, but that in the course of work he came across Nigel and Henry. Did she perhaps
remember the great scene Mabs had made, breaking off her engagement? She was now the most devoted of wives. Since she had persuaded Nigel to change his tailor his legs appeared appreciably longer. It’s all in the cut of the trousers. He was grateful, said Hubert, to that lot for showing him the sort of future he could expect if he remained with his merchant bank. It might well, he said, suit Nigel and Henry but the life was not for him. Glancing at Flora he thought she barely listened; her look of strain was less, but she looked exhausted. He did not tell her that he had been approached by some chucklehead trying to recruit him into secret intelligence, that this had climaxed his discontent. He had walked out of his job four days after seeing her off at Tilbury and caught the train to Dover. “I stopped for a night in Paris,” he said, “played a few rubbers of bridge, made us a few francs.” (A slip to say “us.”) “You might remember,” he went on, “Alexis Tarasov? Married to the Russian Armenian dressmaker, the backgammon fiend? In the summer he stops driving his taxi and plays in bridge tournaments at Le Touquet and Biarritz. I play for money when I’m short, but I can’t take it seriously like Alexis. There is nothing more boring than a bridge fiend, my mother’s one and my step-father, and Joyce, who you saw with us the other day, is turning into another. She took to it when she married her tycoon Ernest, had to find something to do, I suppose.” (Besides fucking with Cosmo and me and all and sundry.) “Jolly girl, Joyce,” said Hubert. “Flits from flower to flower, brightens people’s lives.”
Flora had finished her coffee and eaten a croissant. She sat now almost relaxed, watching the passers-by. She barely listened, Hubert thought, to his burbling; she was not ready to talk. “Well,” he said, “right, then. We’ll be on our way.” He signalled the waiter and paid the bill. “I left my bag at the station,” he said. “We’ll collect it and catch the bus. It’s only a short way, we can walk.” He picked up Flora’s case.
Walking beside Hubert, Flora did not ask where they were going. At the station Hubert retrieved his bag and led her to a waiting bus. Looking up at the station clock, Flora noted the time. “The ship will have sailed,” she said. “They will be gone.”