Acts of Mutiny

by Derek Beaven

  ‘No. I’m afraid I haven’t,’ Penny said.

  ‘I couldn’t quite believe it at first when I saw her. Really no more than a skeleton in a dress. I didn’t know what to imagine. She looked … I don’t know … like someone who’d just come out of a POW camp.’

  The conversation lapsed. Penny worked at her coffee, adding a little more sugar, and sipping, with the saucer under the cup in case the gentle swell should catch her out and ruin her skirt. She sensed from the corner of her eye Clodagh tucking the stray wisps of her ash-toned hair back behind her ears. Penny said, ‘I’d like to know what to expect.’

  She turned round involuntarily to look behind her, and found herself staring at Robert Kettle who was standing at the bar. They both looked away immediately. Penny realised with a start that she had completely forgotten having danced once with him last night.

  16

  Much later the same morning, Penny was sitting in a different chair, reading – with her book in the lap of her slick, grey worsted skirt and her pince-nez on her nose – when Finlay Coote came in.

  ‘Have you seen either my mummy or my daddy?’

  ‘They left to do some shopping, Finlay. I think they’ve gone to buy a film for their camera, and maybe Mummy would look for some new sunglasses. Or have you tried the cabin?’

  ‘There’s a giant squid. We’ve seen a giant squid. I want them to come and see. Over the side. What have you got on your nose?’

  ‘They’re my glasses, Finlay. They belonged to my great-aunt.’ It suddenly occurred to Penny that the Cootes’ declaration of a little desultory shopping might have been merely a cover. They had exchanged looks. A form of words to screen the fact that they were taking advantage of the children’s daylight absence from their four-berth cabin. She pictured with horror little Finlay opening her parents’ cabin door to find Russell’s half-clothed body working at Clodagh’s flare of floral print across one of the bunks. Incomprehensible. The girl would be terrified. And it would all be Penny’s fault.

  Shocked at the violence of her own imagination, she spoke stupidly to the child. ‘I wear them to scare people away and make me look like an old woman. My boys say I look like a granny. Do you want to try them?’

  ‘You don’t scare me,’ said the girl, trying the glasses on her nose, torn between the fascination of looking through them, and the urgency of her story. ‘Which deck’s the shop on again, please, Penny?’ She tried out the familiarity of a name.

  Penny put the pince-nez on the arm of her chair. She could not but tell her. So Finlay slipped off after her parents. In any case they would be very foolish not to lock the cabin door; and, when she came to think of it, Clodagh was so ethereal and Russell so proper that the couple’s relations had probably been suspended entirely for the duration – that film and sunglasses were devices in no way rhetorical. If indeed their children had not been immaculately conceived in the first place.

  The news of the squid had stirred the occupants of the observation lounge. They were hastily finishing their coffee and tea, their Scotch, their old crosswords, and were fading off towards the decks in hope of viewing the monster. Penny found herself on the starboard part of A deck, where she had first encountered Robert. Nothing out of the ordinary. Except the sea had completely changed colour. It was a rich, nearly opaque green, tinged with pink, underslung with sienna. She looked towards the stern. The pink could be seen tapering to a bright streak behind them in the blue-black – where the wake severed it.

  There was no question, now, but that the ship was moving past a cable of coloured water thicker than any creature’s limb. Yet she could reconstruct how the children, standing on the white bars and looking down over the rail as they liked to do at the sheer of the bow wave, might have caught sight of the change and mistaken it for a long tentacle. And then from their desire of miracles created the squid. After all, they had already seen dolphins, and come in yesterday with a shark alert.

  But what was happening? How should the sea acquire this strange submerged patina? It was nothing to her; and yet she was frightened for a moment. She adjusted the straw bag over her shoulder on its long strap. The sun glittered off the water into her face. Further aft along the rail she saw Mrs Madeley, and moved to join her.

  ‘Apparently, so Douglas says, we’re entering the outfall of the Nile,’ Mrs Madeley explained. Penny stared out ahead, but could see no land yet.

  ‘This far out?’ she said.

  ‘Apparently. So Douglas tells me. He knows about these things.’

  Now the colour below them had all but faded out, and they were reassured; until, yes, after a minute or two another seeming rope of rich underwater mud writhed past.

  ‘It’s rather wonderful, isn’t it?’ said Penny. ‘We’re miles out and the river still hasn’t got mixed up with the sea.’

  ‘I suppose so,’ Mrs Madeley said.

  Poor soul, Penny thought. She sensed Mrs Madeley’s imprisonment in her pleated frock. She wanted to bring her out of herself.

  ‘It’s wonderful, really. If you told people the oddness of the sea they wouldn’t believe you. It’s like nothing one’s known. Hard for us to believe, don’t you think? We’re quite lucky, to see such things.’

  Mrs Madeley nodded.

  Penny continued, ‘It’s like a holiday. Suspended time. We’re floating. Well, of course we are.’ She laughed, childish and light-headed.

  Mrs Madeley looked at her uncertainly, and then back at the lovely, indescribable surface of the water. They stood side by side, seeing at last beyond England. And when she thought that she might have meant a holiday from Hugh, and that the journey’s end would involve a resumption of their intimacy, and the restriction of her relaxing vision, with all its newness of colour and space, the deliciousness, the complexity, the ambiguity of a Tropic zone which heralded itself with streamers of pink, brown, incredible, confusing, frightening mud, she shut and locked the door on that too, and thought: This is merely the passageway to Australia, and Australia has colours and newness of her own.

  And so the squid proved not to be itself at all. Still, who was to say positively there was no real squid, unthinkably giant, fathoms beneath the keel. It might have swum there, keeping pace, keeping an eye. On the impressionable deep it writes its absence with an ink jet. It prints and is gone – thankfully – Architeuthis, the ship-biter of legend. The sea, that is most of the planet, is unexplored. Only its fools have been dredged up. Who then but the very rash would expect no awkward surprises?

  Off Alexandria the sea was really quite thick with mud. Robert watched it from the boat deck. He had Penny’s crazy spectacles in his pocket and no idea where she was. She had thrown her book into her shoulder-bag and gone off to look for the squid. But from which deck? Now he had not seen her for some hours. She had not been at lunch – maybe had not felt like the formal thing but opted for a buffet, or a sandwich.

  How much less complicated it would be if Penny Kendrick were not on board, were not married, older than he was, experienced, and the mother of two boys. It would be much less complicated if he did not have her pince-nez in his pocket, and the need to explain why he had kept it for so long, now, rather than handing it in to the Chief Officer, or the cheery quartermaster, to give to her in her cabin. But then there was no reason why he should not wish to give it to her himself. People could simply deal with these matters, without having to go through minor officialdom. People could make a friendly gesture.

  It was, of course, no more than that.

  Now they were off Alexandria and he had Penny’s spectacles in his pocket. Narrowly avoiding Joe, he had come to the boats to see if by any chance she might be there. He paused under the towering yellow smokestack. It was deceptive up here. You climbed to gain a high station as if for an overview. But the vision was limited, completely blocked forward by the superstructure of the bridge, and interrupted to the side by the lines of boats.

  He stood between two of them and surveyed as much as he could of the promena
de decking below, hoping foolishly he might catch a glimpse of her. Behind him there were little shrieks, snatches of laughter, and shouts as two Air Force couples finished a mixed doubles of deck tennis. There were a number of relocating service families on board, officers with their capable wives, confident sons and daughters, acting as though America and Russia, poised to boil each other’s oceans, did not actually exist.

  Further away still, in the far corner, a group of five young men, all about the same age, and all wearing jumpers and exercise slops, were sprawled on the deck space amid a collection of bottles and glasses, mostly empty. He knew their nickname, but not its reason: they were ‘Barnwell’s aircrew’. It was some phrase that had been passed about, relating somehow to a grey-haired gentleman who went by that name.

  But Robert had no knowledge as to whether or not there really was any connection. It seemed unlikely. They were a joke; or an annoyance. Since coming aboard at Gibraltar they appeared always in training, or horseplay. Their loud comments were usually at variance with the general tone of the first class. And just now while they were moderately subdued he was careful not to attract their attentions. He found someone at his elbow.

  ‘Hullo, Bobby, sweetheart.’ It was Mrs Torboys.

  17

  The family were new arrivals: ‘Just call me Cheryl. I do so hate the stuffy English thing they have on these liners. We came up to Lisbon from Durban on a Portuguese boat and it was so relaxed and informal. They just adored the children.’ Cheryl Torboys had a drink in her hand, the kind she liked best. ‘It’s called a pussyfoot. Can’t think why, can you? I get them to spike it with vodka.’ She stood beside him, generous and corseted, in her pleated sailor-suit frock, wide hat, and heeled espadrilles.

  The Torboys family fitted in very well. Lucas, the husband, was jovial and outgoing, a slightly bald, rugged-faced man of about forty-five. Their girl and two boys injected the games of the ship’s children with new and noisier possibilities. And Cheryl, too, enjoyed getting things going. It was like a postcard, bright, glossy, cheeky sometimes; they broke down barriers.

  ‘Cheryl. How are you feeling?’

  Cheryl patted her abdomen just below the belt. ‘How are you down there in the engine-room, darling? You can tell Uncle Bobby. We’re not feeling too bad today, actually, dear.’ The fade of the final ‘g’ on some of her words was a colonial marker. Robert had noticed it in one or two other people before. It set her apart from the received speech of England without denoting her precisely as South African, or Australian, or Rhodesian, or anything, really.

  And perhaps that was it, Robert thought, working it out. They were joining the route at Gibraltar, and leaving – yes, how curiously apt – at Singapore; as if Cheryl’s world were English but permanently uprooted, and she must wander the intemperate climes.

  ‘What a relief to be warm in the sunshine at last.’ She swigged back her thick, blackberry-coloured drink, and held the swizzle stick for Robert to eat the cherry and orange pieces. ‘Naughty boy,’ she said, laughing and licking her lips.

  Robert liked her unconventional talk. He liked to be called sweetheart to his face. Her breath of alcohol, lipstick, and sexual candour was like his first hint of escape.

  ‘We’re quite the wild colonials, Lucas and I. You people at home don’t know half the story. But he always forgives me. I think it’s the sun. I love the sun. We had such parties in Pietsdorp – that was the name of our country house. We used to go up weekends from Jo’burg. It was so beautiful, lying out under the stars. I love it in the open air, nothing between you and the veldt, if you know what I mean. You do, don’t you? Rogue.’

  Robert lit a cigarette and exhaled through his nose.

  ‘I shall have to take you in hand, Bobby. I can see that.’ She raised her eyebrows extravagantly. ‘Now don’t get any ideas. Too much going on for that. Too bloody much going on. How are you?’ She caught his eye knowingly.

  Knowing what? Robert wondered. Knowing men looked at the top of the cleft between her breasts? It almost winked at him from inside the loose white lapels with their navy stripe, and was set off by a string of round, jet beads. He had Penny’s spectacles in his top pocket.

  ‘Oh, I’m fine.’

  ‘Come on. Let’s see where we’ve been.’ She led him towards the back of the boat deck.

  ‘Why?’ said Robert.

  ‘Safer to live in the past, darling.’ They strolled slowly on the scrubbed deckwork across the markings, avoiding the two or three rope quoits lying about. A pair of children were collecting them and stacking them up in preparation for a game of bull’s-eye near where the Air Force people had been.

  Their feet moved through pools of shadow from the long line of tarpaulined lifeboats. Cheryl bumped into him and clutched his arm. He reached to guard the pocket. Then she inclined her head on to his shoulder. After a moment or so she pulled herself upright. ‘Stability problems!’ She giggled. ‘The Armorica has stability problems!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Chappie at Gib said we were lucky to have missed the Atlantic on this boat. He said in a really bad sea the Armorica stands up like a performing seal.’ She laughed again, cheekily. ‘That’s why you had such a hard time. Wait a minute. Hold this for me a moment, will you?’ She stopped and placed her handbag into his upturned palms. Then she opened it to take out a tube of sun cream, unscrewed the cap and, managing the glass from hand to hand, smoothed it on to her arms. ‘Sorry about this.’ She finished and saved him from his awkwardness with the bag. They continued.

  ‘I think I’ve already spotted most of the potential romances on board. I can always tell, you know; who’s blowing smoke-rings at whom, darling. I’m infallible, like the Pope. I’ve got the absolute eye for it. Always have had. It’s a gift, a sixth sense.’

  They reached the far rail and looked over. The sun was to the side of their wake, flashing now and then in its far turbulence. ‘There are some dried-up old women on board who actually think I should be in my cabin, knitting.’

  Immediately below them was the first-class swimming-pool with the covers still on, although two of Barnwell’s aircrew were pretending to climb on them. Beyond the high rear wall of its square amphitheatre they could see the aft hatches and accumulation of venting shafts, like cowled gnomes in a mechanical garden. And beyond that, the euphemistically named tourist class, where seven hundred and twenty-two migrants occupied the final quarter of the ship. They were playing their part in a mass transit to be relieved, at least on the Armorica, by the square of their own little pool, for the moment also still covered.

  The rest of the steerage deck was filled with adults sitting out, standing out, children playing out, families looking out. Many of the men wore dark trousers and had rolled up the sleeves of their shirts; many of the women wore sleeveless frocks. Some had shorts with turn-ups. There was no difference; but to a practised eye there was every difference.

  Cheryl said, ‘We’re not really supposed to see them, are we? Ten pounds gets them to the promised land. Is it true they have to sleep segregated?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Robert. ‘Do they? Husbands and wives?’

  ‘Men to port, women to starboard. Heavens, Bobby. I could never endure it.’

  ‘I’m sure it isn’t like that. The man who shares my cabin says these folk are the lucky ones.’

  ‘But they have to give all their furniture away.’

  ‘Apparently Mr Menzies is still desperate for English blood …’

  ‘Like a vamp, Bobby.’ Cheryl bared her teeth and looked him in the eye.

  Robert laughed, enjoying her. ‘I mean English stock. He’s terrified of turning yellow. Or even black.’ He took out his cigarettes, offered her one, then lit them both.

  ‘Aren’t we all, darling. Aren’t we bloody all.’ She drew in her smoke.

  ‘So they’ll take almost anyone these days, he implies. Menzies. Doesn’t make any of us feel so good, does it. But on the assisted-passage scheme if they haven’t got a boss ou
t there to propose them, to speak for them to come out, then they go crammed in on something much more basic than this.’

  ‘White niggers, you mean? Oh dear.’ Looking at Robert’s face. ‘I’ve said something, haven’t I? Something I shouldn’t. Now you’re going to get all stuffy and holy poly.’

  ‘It’s all right.’ He did not want to lose her. ‘We’ll just agree to differ, shall we?’

  ‘Let’s. I want you to like me. I do really, Bobby. I know I’m … I say the things no one’s supposed to say. Any more. And I’m a frightful …’ She giggled into the glass. ‘Oh God. What am I saying? Too many of these, darling. A couple and I’m anybody’s.’ Then she grew cool. ‘That’s what they think, the old mems down there.’ She jerked her head to indicate the main lounge on the deck beneath them.

  Robert reflected on the set of retired home-and-colonials, who had colonised the area of the Armorican painting and were never seen to move. He had hardly thought of them before, apart from registering them as the financial lions of the trip. The stewards, of course, buzzed around their every whim, like flies. Robert thought them irrelevant – on the verge of extinction – but their valuations weighed heavily on Cheryl’s mind, it seemed.

  ‘Look, Bobby. Maybe I have been around a bit. Enjoyed myself. Life’s too short. But that doesn’t make me a bad person, Bobby. Does it?’

  ‘Of course it doesn’t.’

  ‘You like me, don’t you? Even if I’m … sometimes. I make myself … They hate me. The looks!’

  ‘Don’t be silly. Nobody hates you.’

  ‘I’m a perfect tart – in their eyes. And I need a friend, darling. Be my friend, Bobby. Will you?’