Every Man for Himself

by Beryl Bainbridge

  I went to sit with Lady Duff Gordon and her party, where we were presently joined by a triumphant Rosenfelder and Adele, the latter still in costume. On my murmuring to Rosenfelder that it was a pity his dress hadn’t been shown he assured me it would be worn on Sunday night at dinner. ‘Scurra has fixed it,’ he whispered. ‘I am a made man. She is now the cynosure of all eyes and will receive the attention due to an Empress.’

  Adele was perfectly at ease in our company, sipping champagne and dabbing at the corners of her plum-coloured lips with a scarlet sleeve peppered with moth-holes. She said she had been disconcerted at first by the brisk tempo set by the violinist. When she had last sung the aria – it was at a concert given by the staff of Fenwicks – it had gone slower. She had also held a fan which had been used to some effect to signify the motion of the waves fluttering towards the harbour. We agreed this was a masterly touch and tut-tutted our regret at having missed it.

  Lady Duff Gordon asked whether she would be appearing at a concert hall in New York. If she was it would be simplicity itself to arrange a supper party afterwards.

  ‘That would be kind,’ Adele said, ‘but I have decided to retire from the stage. My voice is not in any way remarkable.’

  ‘But you have such presence,’ cried Lady Duff Gordon, ‘such charisma. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Cio-Cio-San portrayed better, and I include the great Madame Krusceniski.’ She was so anxious to convey the sincerity of her praise that she leaned across and seized Adele by the wrist. ‘My dear,’ she insisted, ‘you have a stroke of genius.’

  ‘I don’t wish to sing any more,’ Adele said. ‘I no longer feel the finger stroke of love.’

  I was puzzling over this pretentious phrase when Rosenfelder demanded matches for his cigar; he had used up his own in lighting the candles. Digging into my pocket I spilled the contents on to the table. The snapshot thrust upon me in Manchester Square fell face down beside the keys to Princes Gate. On the back was written in pencil, To G.R. from A.B, 1909. Rosenfelder was reaching out for the matches – I caught the glint of his signet ring – when Adele roughly pushed his hand away. Stabbing at the square of card with her finger, she asked, ‘How did you come by this?’ Her colourless eyes, outlined in black, stared into my soul.

  ‘It’s a curious story,’ I replied, somewhat startled, and told it, after which Adele picked up the snapshot, stood, swayed, clutched at the table, dislodging a glass in the process, and drifted backwards to the floor.

  Scurra appeared out of nowhere and knelt at her side. He touched her neck with the back of his hand and felt the pulse in her wrist. That wretched dog trotted over to see what was up and he kicked it away like a man getting rid of mud on his shoe.

  Adele recovered quickly. She apologised for alarming Lady Duff Gordon and was led away by Scurra who seated her in a far corner of the room and fanned her with a napkin. Lady Duff Gordon told everyone within hearing that Adele was a sensitive artiste. Her husband frowned and seemed offended by the whole business, but then, it was his glass Adele had knocked over. Rosenfelder was mystified. ‘I thought it was you who would faint,’ he told me. ‘Your face was as white as hers. What was on the photograph? Who is this man who died on the pavement?’

  I might have enlightened him if Scurra hadn’t beckoned. Adele was smiling. As I sat down beside her she cried out, ‘Thank you, thank you, my dear friend;’ seizing my hand she kissed it. She begged to hear the whole story again, and interrupted constantly. What had happened to his coat? Had the police removed it from the railings? Did he utter her name? Had he suffered? Heart attacks were painful, were they not? To this last question Scurra answered that strokes were worse. A cardiac arrest such as her lover appeared to have had would cause no more than a few seconds of discomfort. She asked me what the children had been singing.

  ‘What children?’

  ‘The ones going into the park over the road.’

  ‘I don’t think they were singing,’ I faltered. ‘It was just the way their voices sounded at a distance.’

  ‘Like bells,’ she remarked. ‘Like tinkling bells.’ She thanked me once more and said she was tired and would like to talk further in the morning. Scurra offered to accompany her below decks but she refused; it was easy to bypass the barriers if one took the Captain’s route. Giving a perfectly radiant smile, she left.

  ‘I don’t understand why she’s so cheerful,’ I burst out. ‘I expected her to leap for the ocean again. Is it possible she didn’t love him after all?’

  ‘You don’t understand women,’ he said, which was true enough. ‘Given the choice, desertion or bereavement, a woman will pick the latter every time. A sensible enough preference, don’t you agree? At least she knows where he is.’

  And then, of course, his shoulders heaved with laughter, in which I joined because I couldn’t help myself. I guess it was his way of puncturing false concern. It’s bunkum to suppose we can be touched by tragedies other than our own.

  I suggested a stroll together on deck before bed. He hesitated and then agreed. As we rose from the table Wallis approached. She wanted to know if Miss Baines had recovered from her fainting fit. Scurra answered that she had.

  ‘We’re just going out to take the air,’ he said. ‘I shouldn’t think we’ll be long.’

  ‘What is the time?’ she asked, and without consulting his watch Scurra told her it was ten forty-five, which was incorrect, because when we mounted the stairs the hands of the clock on the main landing stood at no more than fifteen minutes past the hour.

  It was cold on deck and the few people about had sensibly put on coats and scarves. We walked to the dull roar of the ship as it waded the leaden sea. The night was moonless, windless; rags of dance music floated up from the deck below. ‘It’s parky,’ I exclaimed, the word rising from my subconscious like a fish from the deep.

  ‘A curious adjective,’ Scurra pondered. ‘It can mean both inclement weather and a sharpness of tongue. It’s intriguing, don’t you agree, the flotsam we allow to surface from the past?’

  ‘The toy horse remains submerged,’ I said.

  We continued our walk in silence; it was too cold to stand at the rail. I had the feeling Scurra was abstracted and tried to think of an interesting topic for discussion, something that would return his thoughts to me. I wondered if it would be impolite to ask what advice he had given Bruce Ismay all those years ago.

  ‘I’ve been mulling over our conversation of yesterday,’ I said at last, ‘with regards to the division of capital. Perhaps I was wrong . . . there is always another way . . .’

  ‘Dear God,’ he groaned. ‘How easy it is to shake convictions.’

  ‘All I meant,’ I protested, ‘is that possibly I would be better employed in fighting inequalities from a position of strength. Some of comrade Tuohy’s ideas . . . I approve of them, of course . . . I mean, they’re sound enough in theory . . .’

  ‘But it might be more advantageous to join the system rather than oppose it,’ Scurra prompted.

  I nodded.

  ‘From the highest of motives, of course.’

  ‘Yes, indeed—’

  ‘No doubt you plan to improve working conditions. Perhaps you envisage recreational halls, cricket pavilions—’

  ‘Yes,’ I replied enthusiastically. ‘Yes, exactly,’ though until that moment such things hadn’t crossed my mind. A vision of a garden city came into my head – thatched cottages, a hospital, playing fields, a cemetery with angels spreading plaster wings above tended graves.

  ‘If you ever did get that far,’ Scurra retorted, ‘you’d be damned disappointed at the outcome. It would soon be brought home to you that the profit motive, which you now consider so venal, is no more than common sense—’

  ‘Never,’ I cried out.

  ‘After you’ve paid for the doctor’s surgery . . . the school . . . naturally, you’ll want to endow an orphanage . . . and the buildings have become fixed in time . . . the planting of ivy against the foundations is of great help
in the fostering of this deceit . . . you’ll come face to face with ingratitude . . . hostility even . . . murmurings of discontent amongst the very people you’ve endeavoured to help. Inevitably there’ll be a demand for higher wages . . . and why not, seeing it will have become apparent to all that you have money to burn—’

  ‘It won’t be like that,’ I shouted.

  ‘At best your generosity will be thought of as patronising and at worst no more than a rich man’s attempt to enter the kingdom of heaven. A reasonable assumption, don’t you think?’

  ‘I don’t believe in heaven,’ I muttered. ‘Only justice.’

  He was still chuckling when a figure emerged from the underhang of the life-boats. It was Riley. He thanked me, belatedly, for the tip I had sent him via McKinlay. ‘Civil of you, sir,’ he said, ‘but then, you’re a real gentleman.’ The sarcasm was ill-concealed.

  Scurra asked if it was true we wouldn’t now dock in New York until Wednesday morning. ‘I gather our speed is below what was expected,’ he said. Riley replied this was so. He wasn’t sure whether it was on account of conserving coal or because the ship had logged six ice warnings in the last twenty-four hours.

  We went indoors shortly afterwards. The bone above my eye had begun to throb. Scurra’s handshake was not quite steady when we parted for the night. I put it down to the cold.

  FOUR

  Saturday, 13th April

  It was something Rosenfelder said, and the diatribe that followed, that further brought home to me the confusion of my life and necessity for change. I had known it all along, of course, but had decided time or circumstance, such as my experiences in Belfast, would nudge it into order. It was as though the tailor had prior knowledge of the disaster about to overtake me.

  At daybreak I had woken feeling distinctly uneasy. I had slept without dreams or none that I remembered, yet something troubled me. After mulling over the events of the previous day I reasoned it was no more than to be expected considering the turmoil of my thoughts since meeting Scurra. I dressed and went up on deck. The sun had climbed above the slate-flat sea and streaked the sky with rose. It was bitterly cold and deadly calm; even the huge ship beneath my feet seemed but a plank of driftwood inert upon the unfathomable depths of that vast and silent ocean. I felt more uneasy than ever, which made me melancholy. Thinking that exercise would cure me, I went down to the swimming baths and found Rosenfelder kicking his heels in the passageway. We were forced to wait until the attendant arrived with keys a half-hour later.

  The conversation turned to Scurra and the attraction he held for us. He was such a stimulating fellow, deep without being obscure, cultured yet devoid of cant. Neither of us were sure of his profession. I plumped for his being a lawyer but conceded that with his range of acquaintances and his knowledge of pictures, economics and politics he could be any one of a number of things. We remembered the way he had so adroitly dealt with Adele’s fainting fit. Possibly he was a medical man, and then again he might be the proprietor of a newspaper. Rosenfelder had seen him dining with Mr Stead in the a` la carte restaurant.

  It was after we had swum three or four lengths and were temporarily beached on the tiled steps, Rosenfelder exhaling like a whale, that I remembered the several explanations given for Scurra’s scarred mouth.

  ‘That first time we spoke,’ I said, ‘when you took hold of my arm and asked who Scurra was . . . you seemed to think he’d been in a duel.’ ‘So he had. It accounts for his lip.’

  ‘He told me he was bitten by a parrot in South Africa. And Archie Ginsberg thinks it was a blow from a rifle.’

  ‘Bird, gun . . . who cares?’ said Rosenfelder. ‘It makes for interest,’ and he plunged into the water and sank upright, the bulge of his bathing cap bobbing like a lily-pad. Thrashing to the surface again, he asked, ‘The people you mix with . . . you find them amusing?’

  ‘Some more so than others.’

  It was then he said, ‘Does it not occur to you that none of them are normal?’

  At first I put up a defence, mostly because I feared I was included in their number, but soon fell silent. Nothing he said could be disputed. My friends, he argued, were not living in the proper world. Their wealth, their poorly nurtured childhoods, their narrow education, their lack of morals separated them from reality. Some, those with more intelligence, might struggle to break away, and succeed for a short time, but in the end, like the action of a boomerang, it was inevitable they would return to the starting point.

  ‘Then there’s little hope for me,’ I said.

  ‘You are different. You have a conscience. The others will remain perched on a dunghill of money piled up by those who climbed out of the gutters of Europe.’

  ‘You sound like Scurra,’ I told him.

  ‘I sound like any man who is no longer young,’ he retorted. ‘They are unworthy companions. I advise you to remove yourself from their influence. Among better people, you may find happiness.’

  We didn’t breakfast together. Mrs Duff was taking him to meet Mr Harris, the theatrical producer. I didn’t bother going back to my room but went straight into the restaurant. I was full of good intentions. Wallis was there with Ida and they called me to sit with them. Rosenfelder hadn’t mentioned women among his list of undesirables. No sooner had I done so than Wallis leaned across and smoothed the damp hair back from my forehead. It was an intimate gesture, not in the least motherly. Then, drooping a little in her chair, she confessed to feeling sad.

  ‘Why?’ I asked.

  ‘Because you go out of your way to avoid me, Morgan. Which is a pity since I so enjoy being with you.’ She sounded absolutely sincere. She was wearing a blue dress fastened at the shoulder by a glass button which she played with while continuing to gaze at me steadfastly; she didn’t once look away to the door. The expression in her eyes could best be described as both fond and subservient.

  I didn’t believe I was fooling myself. Even dear old Ida appeared conscious of undertones; I knew she didn’t take sugar yet twice she stirred her tea so violently that it slopped into the saucer. I didn’t give in immediately; Wallis had raised my hopes before and dashed them just as quickly.

  ‘I was feeling pretty blue myself earlier on,’ I said. ‘It’s so empty out there.’ I looked towards the windows that cut the now bright day into squares of glittering light; already I could scarcely remember why the world had seemed so dark.

  Wallis said, ‘It’s confusing, isn’t it? We long to go home and once there ache to get away.’

  ‘But to what?’ I countered. Talking to Wallis was not unlike sparring with Scurra. It occurred to me that he’d infected the ship.

  ‘In your case,’ she said, ‘I imagine you have it mapped out,’ and again she touched me, this time the merest brush of her fingertips against the bruised skin above my eye.

  ‘If I’ve been avoiding you,’ I lied, ‘it’s because I have a lot on my mind. My future . . . that sort of thing. It’s different for you girls.’

  ‘Different, certainly,’ she replied, ‘yet no less hard. Not unless, like Sissy, one falls into marriage.’

  ‘Not falls,’ I protested. ‘It was a love match.’

  She said she was glad to hear it and that I must have felt lonely once Sissy had gone off with Whitney and set up an establishment of her own. We had always been so close. It couldn’t be easy for me living with my aunt . . . now that she was deaf and often out of her mind.

  ‘I love my aunt,’ I said stiffly, ‘and have any number of friends. Too many, I often think.’ I didn’t need Wallis to feel sorry for me and found her reference to my aunt’s nervous disposition offensive, that is until I remembered the cross she bore on her own mad mother’s behalf. It’s true, I thought. We are none of us normal.

  ‘Hopper complains I avoid him too,’ I told her. ‘I guess I’m a fair-weather friend.’ She appeared to think this over, staring at me still and twirling that glass button round and round. Poor Ida didn’t know where to put herself; she started to hum Adele�
��s aria of the night before.

  ‘We played a game at tea the other day,’ Wallis said. ‘Hopper, Charlie, Archie Ginsberg, the usual crowd. Who would one choose to throw out of a balloon if it was in danger of crashing?’

  ‘I thought it was an open boat in danger of sinking—’

  ‘It’s the same principle,’ she said. ‘You’d be surprised who was the first to go.’

  ‘It’s a cruel game,’ I said. ‘And I expect it was Ginsberg.’

  ‘No,’ cried Ida. ‘It was Charlie. He was quite upset. We did choose Ginsberg but then he told us he knew all about balloons and that he was the one person likely to get us down safely.’

  ‘Ida went next,’ Wallis said. ‘Then you.’

  ‘Me,’ I exclaimed, and tried not to sound surprised.

  ‘Yes, you,’ she said. ‘Because we all agreed you wouldn’t bother to argue your case. You wouldn’t, would you?’

  I shrugged and admitted it was probably so. ‘Do you suppose,’ I asked, ‘that if one went up in a balloon the earth would appear to drop rather than the balloon to lift?’

  ‘You don’t have much in common with Van Hopper, do you?’ said Wallis. ‘Or with Charlie? You don’t skim the surface.’

  It was the second time that morning I had been singled out as different. It rather went to my head, though naturally I protested I was a fairly average sort of fellow. She would have none of it. In her opinion I was special. I had a quality of aloofness both tantalising and touching.

  ‘Tantalising?’ I said.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Very.’

  Needless to say I picked at my food and was beside myself with excitement. It was obvious I had only to say the word and she would consent to an assignation. I shall dream no more, I thought, crushing my toast into fragments.