by Denton Welch
Robert smiled at the stewardess and took the soup proudly. He felt rather ashamed of deceiving her over the reading, but decided that the deception was worth it, if it gave him this comfortable, proud feeling.
He began to drink the hot peppered soup and to crumble the hard water-biscuits. He could never understand why biscuits of this extreme dullness were made. ‘Even grown-ups can’t really like them,’ he thought, although he knew how perverse and disgusting their taste in food could be sometimes.
When he had finished the soup and made sucking noises against the lip of the cup in imitation of some voracious animal, he went down to the cabin. He was always annoyed when Americans called cabins ‘staterooms’. It reminded him of palaces, of death, of politics, of candles round a coffin in a cathedral. It was showing-off and pretence. Rooms on boats were cabins.
His and his mother’s cabin on ‘A’ deck had really been designed as a drawing-room to a suite, but it had been partitioned off for this particular trip across the Atlantic and two beds had been put in. The walls were covered with dull panels of grey and rose tapestry. There were cane work and gilt chairs and nothing much else, except a rather smelly little washstand which had been hurriedly installed. The mixture of commercial luxury and improvisation was surprising. Robert was both impressed and depressed by this particular cabin, different to any he had shared with his mother before. She, as an American with her older sons at school in England, was always travelling backwards and forwards; and wherever she went she took Robert.
There she lay on the bed, still in her nightdress. She did not feel very well and had decided not to get up till lunchtime. She was reading Science and Health, with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy, but when she saw Robert, she raised her head and smiled. Robert thought for the thousandth time ‘My mother is young and pretty, most people’s mothers look old and ugly.’ Always he felt this when he looked at her; especially if, as now, she were a little bedraggled and unwell. When in the morning she asked him to kiss her before she was absolutely awake, when her eyes were still heavy and she felt almost damp from the warmth of the bed, he would have the curious proud feeling mixed with distaste. And sometimes he would not kiss her until she was quite awake and smiling, with her curly, fried-bread-crumb-coloured hair fluffed out and pretty.
‘Darling,’ she said now, ‘which dress shall I wear? You choose and put it out with nice stockings and shoes.’
Robert thought swiftly and methodically. He knew his mother’s clothes well; not her underclothes—he did not understand them and did not want to, they seemed too fragmentary and bitty—but her day dresses, her coats and skirts and especially her evening clothes interested him deeply. He would often tell her that something did not suit her. He had even used violence on things of his mother’s that he did not like. Once he had pulled off and mauled a mustard-yellow hat with a velvet bow which he could not bear.
This being the period of the late 1920s, the dress which Robert chose for his mother to wear at lunch was extremely short. It was of light soft beige wool and had a very broad shiny black belt that looked as if it were made of creased American cloth. He put out cobweb-thin flesh-coloured stockings and a pair of snub-nosed snake-skin shoes with very high heels.
His mother looked at what he had laid out.
‘Darling, do you think snake-skin goes with that wool?’ she asked tentatively.
‘Yes, why not? It’s just right,’ he answered with matter-of-fact emphasis.
‘Oh well—if you think it looks nice. Tell me, what have you been doing on deck all morning?’
There was a slight pause, then Robert said rather desperately, ‘I—I’ve been reading.’ His voice grew bolder, more brutal towards the end, as if he were daring his mother to gainsay him.
‘Reading!’ she echoed incredulously. ‘You reading! Why, Miss Hawethorne told me that she could only get you to spell the simplest words out; and whenever I’ve tried to get you interested, you’ve always become sulky or implored me to read to you myself. Darling, you mustn’t pretend you can read when you can’t; and you must learn to read so that you needn’t pretend. It’s terrible; you’re really quite old now. Perhaps it’s my fault for taking you about so much, but you really must try to get hold of it, then you’ll love sitting all alone and reading the most wonderful things; Shakespeare and the Bible and Science and Health, and Alice in Wonderland and Michael Arlen.’
‘I can read,’ said Robert obstinately, his cheeks burning with shame. ‘The stewardess thought I could anyhow,’ he added. It was a poor little spark of defiance and bravado.
‘You are not to pretend and you’re not to lie. You can’t read and you know it and you’re ashamed of it. Don’t let Mortal Mind get hold of you and keep you back; know that as God’s child nothing can stop you from learning.’
‘I can read!’ Robert almost screamed at his mother. He was on the verge of tears. She leant forward in the bed and smacked his face hard.
‘You are not to lie. No gentleman lies,’ she said with icy contempt. This change from the religious to the social field was startling and disconcerting. The hardness in her voice frightened Robert. It was so much more difficult to follow her now that she was not talking about realities. God was real. Wickedness was real (in spite of what his mother and Mrs Eddy said), but gentlemen didn’t seem real at all. He knew that gentlemen lied; the very fact that they called themselves ‘gentlemen’ was a lie.
He looked down on his mother on the bed. He had not cried when she smacked his face, although her hand had stung, and he had been shocked and startled. If he had cried, she would have been more victorious. He wondered what to do to regain his integrity and pride. He thought of smacking his mother’s face in return, but he didn’t quite dare do so, for the heat was leaving him. He thought of discomforting her by pulling back the bedclothes or by some hurting remark, but suddenly another idea came to him and he quietly went over to the clothes he had laid out and began to put them away again.
‘Robert, don’t put them away; I’m just going to get up and bath,’ his mother called, but he took no notice. When he had shut the huge wardrobe-trunk again, he left the cabin, without another word.
He wandered about the deck, then went into the writing-room and began an imaginary letter on the elaborately hideous ship’s note-paper. The letter was to begin in English, but there were to be long passages in French and Italian, and there was even to be a snippet of Russian. He had it all planned. He began legibly enough, ‘Dear Friend, Here I am at sea,’ but as his small stock of real words gave out, he began to invent ones, and when he came to the sections which were to be in foreign languages, he twirled and twisted and jabbed with the pen until he had made an extraordinary pattern on the paper.
‘That ought to do,’ he said to himself at last, having covered several pages. He looked at the elaborate scribble carefully, as if he were reading an important document through and checking it; then he took an envelope and licked it portentously. He sealed it down and wrote a most imposing address. The flourishes and capital letters were grand enough for a royal proclamation.
He took this letter out with him on deck again; and when he thought no one was looking, he posted it in one of the enormous open-mouthed ventilators. He threw it up in the air. He saw it hover, then disappear down the black throat. He wondered where it would go. He associated the bowels of the ship with the bowels of the earth, and thought of ugly black demons seizing on his scholarly letter and reading it with interest and delight.
The gong for lunch sounded. Robert went to wash his hands. He smeared down his hair with his wet hands, as this always proved to his mother that he had washed. He wondered again why it was considered so despicable not to wash before meals.
He went into the dining-saloon and saw his mother already at their table. She had on the dress he had chosen, the stockings and the shoes. She was smiling and talking to a friend over her shoulder. She looked well and happy. There would be no more talk of gentlemen and lies.
‘Darling,’ she said, ‘you were naughty to put all my clothes away again, but now don’t sulk any more. Come and have minced chicken and rice. You know you love minced chicken and rice.’
Robert did not smile, but was immediately submissive to his mother, at least in spirit if not in words.
‘Can’t I have curry and all those things to put on top?’ he asked with very little hope:
‘Darling, the chicken and rice will be so much nicer. They don’t really know how to make curry well on this ship.’
Robert allowed his mother to order the whole meal with no more resistance. He looked about him and saw the woman at a nearby table whose looks he so admired. She was utterly different from his mother; cold-coloured, not warm; tall, not small and childish; graceful and studied and rigid, not gay and spontaneous and completely unselfconscious. She held her back so straight when she bent forward. The effect was overpoweringly impressive to Robert. It was like a marble goddess leaning down from a cloud. When she put her elbow on the table and turned and twisted her wrist, the poised utterly careful mannerism bewitched Robert. He found himself imitating her, both consciously and unconsciously He tried leaning towards his mother in the same rigid way. He held up his napkin with the drooping, fallen-bird posture of the left hand. He wiped his mouth as if it were made of precious porcelain.
He did not love this woman at all. Something about her was even repellent to him; but his admiration for her knew no bounds. The ceremoniousness of her disciplined Diana-like body fascinated him. She was with a handsome young Jewish man, who morning and evening showed a great deal of cuff and the most beautiful emerald and diamond links. She spoke to him slowly, graciously, coldly smiling now and then with her archaic Greek-sculpture smile.
‘Darling, stop staring and eat your chicken,’ his mother said, recalling him:
After lunch they went out into the vestibule and sat down in deep chairs and had coffee. Robert poured out and passed a cup silently to his mother; then he saw his mother’s new friend Mr Barron approaching. He turned his back a little more and pretended to be occupied with the coffee-pots. He opened the lids and looked inside, even pretending that the skin off the boiled milk had stuck in the spout. Mr Barron, so delicate and spectacled and poor and gentlemanly looking, clapped him on the back heartily and said, ‘Aha, looking after your mother well? I like to see a chap looking after his mother.’
Mr Barron smiled as broadly as he could, but, owing to the refinement of his features, he only managed to look like a skeleton. Robert’s mother smiled back at him gaily and said, ‘Come and sit down and have coffee with us. Robert will pour you some out and get another cup for himself.’
Robert looked at Mr Barron and said, ‘I wasn’t looking after my mother, I was only pouring out because I like playing.’
There was a slight pause. Robert’s seemed such an unnecessary childish contradiction, yet it held in it a deep antagonism. Mr Barron was embarrassed and so grew even more unnaturally hearty.
‘Come, come,’ he said boisterously, ‘this’ll never do. We all know that you’d do anything for your mother. And quite right too. I don’t think any fellow could wish for a more charming one.’ Here he made an awkward, deeply sincere bow towards Robert’s mother, and immediately grew red at this foreign gallantry.
Robert watched the pantomime with cynical, taunting eyes; then he said something preposterous to shock and terrify Mr Barron into retreat for ever.
‘I wouldn’t let them put a red-hot poker into my behind, as they did to King Edward II; so you see I wouldn’t do anything in the world for her.’
‘Darling!’ his mother said in shocked and laughing surprise. ‘Whoever told you of such a thing?’
‘Miss Hawethorne,’ said Robert flatly. ‘I asked her what they did to him in the dungeon and she told me. She doesn’t think people should beat about the bush, and she says I’m old enough to know the truth.’
‘Yes, Robert, but if you’re old enough to know the truth, you’re old enough to know when to mention things and when not to mention things. It’s not right to say things like that just to be surprising. Talk about them seriously, not in a silly way.’
Mr Barron was now so nonplussed by Robert’s dislike that he was pressing cigarettes on Robert’s mother when he knew that she did not smoke because she was a Christian Scientist. He looked at her with deep admiration and respect.
‘I’ve asked a few people to tea in my cabin, won’t you come too and dance to the gramophone afterwards?’ he asked at last, still gazing at her rather too reverently. Robert was not conscious of feeling jealous of Mr Barron, he only wished that his mother would not waste time in his company. There was so much for them to do together. His mother was teaching him how to do her petit-point, and now he had nearly done all the left ear of the squirrel in her beautiful embroidery. He was getting so good that they could silently work at each end of the canvas. Only sometimes did he have to ask her to match wool or thread the needle when the wool came unravelled. It was a joyful time, doing the embroidery with his mother.
His mother was half accepting, half refusing the invitation.
‘We were going to do some more work together and I was going to paint you one of those weeny little pictures you liked, and you said I had to learn to read properly,’ Robert burst out in a torrent.
‘Yes, darling, but we’ve got plenty of time to do all that. It’s very nice of Mr Barron to ask me and I’d like to go.’
‘What am I going to do then!’ Robert screamed, betrayed. ‘I can’t sit eating too many little cakes. I can’t go dancing! And afterwards you’ll drink cocktails. They’ll make you drink cocktails, and you know what Mrs Eddy says. She says Scientists don’t need such false stimulants; she even thinks tea and coffee are wrong.’
Robert looked at his mother in a broken-hearted way.
‘Mummy,’ he burst out in a sudden strangled melodramatic voice; ‘don’t go dancing in his stuffy cabin and drinking cocktails. It’s Error trying to get hold of you.’
Mr Barron’s extreme discomfort made him lift himself on his hands and waggle from side to side uneasily.
‘I think I—er—’ he began.
Robert’s mother was furious with her child for being so uncontrolled and primitive.
‘Robert, stop talking nonsense and go away, if you can’t be civilised. Leave Mr Barron and myself alone; you’ve bored us quite long enough with your pretentiousness and your tantrums.’
She turned towards Mr Barron with the most engaging of smiles and seemed to snuggle down to a long cosy talk.
Robert got up. He was torn with horrible pangs of shame and frustration.
As he passed Mr Barron he made the vulgar whorish gesture of lifting his foot and displaying the whole sole in contempt, at the same time looking over his shoulder with a sneer on his face. He had seen two schoolgirls doing this in America and it had impressed him. The showy insolence of the unsuitable gesture comforted him for a moment.
He saw Mr Barron’s skeleton, hearty, terrified smile grow from ear to ear.
‘Please overlook his impossible behaviour,’ he heard his mother say. ‘He must be left alone at the moment, but when he recovers I shall see that he apologises to you. Where on earth did he learn that disgusting trick!’ Then she laughed, quite genuinely amused through her anger. And this was the worst thing of all, her refusal to take his protest seriously.
He went up to the ‘winter garden’ which was always more or less deserted until tea-time. Here the large palms stood about between panels of elaborate Edwardian latticework. Trellis roses were painted dimly and delicately on the lattice. There were large gloomy mirrors.
In one corner he saw smoke rising from behind a cane-work chair. He went up and found the woman he and his mother privately called Princess Bonbon. She was reading and smoking a fat Egyptian cigarette. She was indeed some Bourbon princess, but was of English birth. She seemed to have no husband, at least not on the boat. When Robert’s mother first told him who she
was, he was thrilled. He knew all about Marie Antoinette from Miss Hawethorne and was always longing to ask the Princess Bonbon how her husband’s ancestors linked up with this fascinating queen, but he never dared. He knew it was wrong to appear even to notice that she was a princess. But he felt that she must be different. You couldn’t be ordinary with Marie Antoinette tacked on somewhere behind.
He looked at the Princess Bonbon carefully once again. Again he saw a smear on her teeth of the cerise lipstick which she always wore. He had never seen her without this rather frightening ornamentation. It was as if the teeth had become delicately bloodshot. She was an awkward, lanky, very English woman, whose clothes were too brightly coloured and artistic to be smart. Her face was plain and flat, as if the bone structure had fallen in slightly. The bright cerise lipstick made her pale skin look grey-white and uneven in pigmentation, almost blotched. In spite of magenta chiffon scarf, diamond clip, peacock and mustard jerkin and bag, she looked colourless and effaced, tired, angry, wasted.
‘Hullo, Robert,’ she said; ‘come and talk to me. I’m all alone here.’
He went directly up to her and stood very straight with his head bowed respectfully. At that moment his manners were perfect. He was ready to treat any woman, but his mother, with the most extreme chivalry. He waited for the Princess to ask him to sit down. She patted the stool where she had put up her feet and he sat down beside her not very attractive shoes. She had chocolates in her lap and she held out a big pistachio nut one and he, although he did not care for this sort, opened his mouth dutifully and let her thrust it a little too far in. He munched, making as little noise as possible. He became awkward and uneasy, not knowing what to talk about after the tumultuous scene with his mother and Mr Barron.
‘Would you like to come and see Joey?’ asked the Princess suddenly. Joey was her liver and white spaniel which was kept in a special kennel at the farthest end of the boat deck. She was always talking of Joey, bemoaning the fact that he would have to be left in quarantine for six months as soon as they reached Southampton.