by Derek Beaven
The night had set in to amaze. On the horizon there was a falling moon. The Armorica was drenched in a soft silveriness; the nightbreath of India pressed upon its mirror, the ocean.
He brushed his lips with his wrist. They had kissed.
His footsteps drifted him yards aft towards the rear staircase; beyond the dance space even. He had simply not registered how, inside, the smug little band was knocking out a quickstep. He had not noticed the sounds, though the strains were quite loud; nor noticed through the screens the couples swaying.
His body shook with pent-up nervousness. Here at the rail, he saw how the Arabian swell of the last few days had fallen back; the wave tops were as if beaten faintly with strings of pearl. He breathed in the warm air. Right beside the hull, the water sweeping along had a milky transparency; there might have been the subtlest of lights from below as well as above.
When he finally allowed himself to look up and recall that starlit understanding with Penny by the boats an hour or two ago, he was awestruck once more. The sky was a tree and the stars nothing but hand-high fruits of burning metal. By them, dull, blighted, horn-rimmed and cabbage-smelling England was annulled: its rain, its milk bars, its sinister gangs of Teds on street corners … and he remembered as a child tracing the picture of an enchantment with his finger, until he was certain he would step inside the book of it – as surely now he had. It was a fact. Nothing was trivial.
He turned and stepped so much the closer to the aft stairs. A few couples he did not know were standing out. The odd smoker. The voices of Barry and Queenie Parsons carried from somewhere. He saw Joe’s back on the other side of a stanchion, and crept past in the shadows lest he should have to account for himself.
It was just as he had made the full length of the first class deck, that the boy Pom – the one Penny had pointed out in Aden – appeared from the darkness by the turn into the pool area.
‘How’s the sunburn?’ A breathy, almost hissing voice.
‘Much better now, thank you.’ The familiarity took him aback; the boy might have been waiting for him. But his manner was not rude.
‘I saw you come down the deck.’
‘Oh yes?’
‘You’re going to see Penny.’ It was a statement; there was only the merest interrogatory note.
‘Yes.’ Caught by the truth, he blurted it out.
‘Then I shan’t go myself. Only …’
‘Only what?’
‘Do you believe in God?’
‘No, I don’t actually. Sorry, but there it is. Hope I haven’t disillusioned you.’
‘It’s all right. My family doesn’t either. Makes you feel a bit left out, though, doesn’t it. D’you ever worry about the hydrogen bomb?’
‘What’s the use of worrying?’
‘Space. That’s what I’m interested in. Ray guns that paralyse you. And gadgets. I’ve got a book of gadgets. D’you think there’s life on Mars, or anything? Have you ever seen a flying saucer?’
‘No. I haven’t actually. But who knows?’
‘I’ve got a book. It says it’s impossible to get people off the earth. It would be like being crushed by a steam hammer. But the Russians got a dog up there, didn’t they? Do you think sharks are following us?’
‘They may be, I suppose. Look, old chap …’
‘It said on the news they were going to stop letting off all the H-bombs all the time.’
‘There’s supposed to be a complete ban in the pipeline.’
‘In the pipeline?’
‘Coming along soon. Look, I’m actually …’
‘There’s strontium-90 in the milk. I know what that is. My dad told me. It’s fall-out. It’s the same thing as when you’re in the shoe shop and you put your feet under that big thing with the binoculars and you can see all the bones in your toes. They look all green inside the shoes, don’t they?’
‘Yes.’
‘Only there’s something down there. In the hold, sort of. It’s not that I’m frightened for myself. But I’m not to tell. It told me not to speak of it. Couple of days ago. I think.’
He was like a Litlte talking shadow, with his solemn tones. The starlight made that ridiculous shirt he wore glow grey.
‘It wants me to let it out. To let it off. It might go off any time. So I thought to tell Mr Chaunteyman. Only they were busy. I was nearly going to tell Penny. Now I’ve told you and I shouldn’t have said anything. But I had to tell someone.’
‘You’re a bit bothered aren’t you, old chap?’
‘No.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘It’s just that it might go off. In the hold. Can a person turn into metal? A stowaway? I don’t mind for myself, but someone ought to be told. For the ship. It might … I might … It’s the ship I’m worried about. Tell Penny. She’ll know what to do.’
Some of it sounded like a rehearsed speech, as if he had manipulated the conversation round to his subject. Penny was right – Pom was odd.
‘All right. Then I’ll notify the authorities. Is that sufficient?’
‘I suppose it would be. Yes, I suppose that would be … all right. It wouldn’t be me told them. Thanks. I thought you were dead.’ The boy grinned suddenly. The starlight caught his teeth. ‘Sorry.’
And as Pom slipped past him and vanished along the decking, Robert found himself facing the aft door which would take him back into the ship’s interior, and, if he chose, down the staircase to Penny’s cabin.
He could not go. The boy’s appearance like that was disconcerting. His fear hung in the balance with desire. Just a kid. Children these days had never known a world before the wretched bomb. All that and space rockets had got right inside their minds. Television was presumably to blame. From the experiences of his own generation they were completely cut off. They must live in a dream world. They would question nothing either, poor little wretches. The children were always inventing.
He would go now to Penny; he must. She was expecting him.
He plunged inside to the lit stairhead and, with her door number drumming in his head, made his way down by the mahogany panelling, like a diver seeking a pearl.
41
They stood like two mannequins, as though the cabin walls were shop glass and they were on show to the night outside. Penny moved to draw the curtain across the porthole, then laughed.
‘As if the dolphins would jump up and see us.’
‘I don’t think anyone … I checked to see the corridor was empty.’
‘Well, good. But what does it matter? It’s nobody’s business but our own.’
‘I’m glad. I was worried for you.’ Robert shifted his feet awkwardly.
‘How so?’
‘In case you … In case people …’
‘It doesn’t matter. I’m prepared for that. Do you know somebody has already written to my husband? I saw the letter on the purser’s counter.’
‘Have they really? And there’s no one who’d have ordinary cause?’
She shook her head.
‘How people like to interfere. Have you an idea who?’
‘No idea at all. I don’t care; not if you don’t. I threw it out. But I shall have to tell my husband sooner or later. You do understand that, don’t you? You do understand what it is we’re doing?’
‘Yes. I think so. I believe I do.’
‘And are you scared?’
‘Terrified.’
‘That’s a good sign, isn’t it? So am I. Scared … but, strangely, not the least embarrassed.’
‘But you have so much to lose.’ Robert looked around and fixed on the dressing-table for a moment. ‘Whereas I …’
‘Maybe Hugh could get you sacked. Have you thought of that?’
He had not.
‘You want us to go on?’ She held his gaze, quite level and determined.
‘I do. I want that. I want us to go on.’ The words came out of their own accord, before he could deliberate. He was pleased; he knew it was himself that spoke.
<
br /> There was a pause.
‘Perhaps you should sit down. We can’t simply leap into bed together.’
He sat in the wicker chair, flooded with relief, and a little disappointment.
She went on. ‘Just like that. After all, we hardly know each other. I should get you a drink. Will you take coffee? Or tea? Oh, but then the steward … I could go out and get you something?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t matter. It’s all right.’
She smiled and perched on the edge of the lower bunk. He noticed what she was wearing at last: a very dark purple frock, wired and fitted above a full skirt. She had put a loose white cardigan over it. Its folded edge brushed at the artificial posy stitched to a corner of her neckline. There was a string of deep green stones against the skin of her breast.
‘To tell you the truth, I feel out of my depth. I haven’t even called you by your name.’
‘Call me Penny. Do please call me Penny’ She kicked off her high evening shoes and pulled her feet up on to the mattress; side on to him, hugging her knees, she laid her head down on them so as to fit neatly in the bunk space. The skirt hung behind her arm and over the bedside like a drape.
‘Penny,’ he said in a whisper. He felt his heart turn over. ‘But you know I’ve never been married … or anything.’
‘I’m sure I’ve been married enough for at least two of us.’
‘But … I’m younger than you.’
‘So what if you are. Do you think it matters to me precisely how many times we have gone around the sun since you were born? Oh, but you’re an astronomer. It will matter terribly to you. I’d forgotten.’
‘It doesn’t matter in the slightest to me.’
‘You promise?’
‘Of course.’
‘Then we’ll say no more about that! Robert Kettle! Well.’ She stood up and came the one step towards him, to the centre of the cabin. ‘And how is your sunburn?’
He started. ‘The boy, Pom, or whatever his name is. He spoke to me. Just as I was plucking up courage to come down and knock at your door.’
‘Ha! And what did the ubiquitous Pom want, to be keeping you from your destiny?’ She fixed his eye again with hers.
Robert felt it was a test, wrapped up in joking, in dramatics – of his commitment. ‘He knew I was coming to see you.’
‘Did he? Wretched Lite monkey’
‘He wanted me to tell you about something. Some nonsense. I’ve forgotten already. No: he said there was something in the hold. I said I’d inform the authorities. That appeared to satisfy him. He went off along the deck. He gives me the shivers, to be honest.’
‘Oh, Pom’s all right. He noticed you were burning.’ Penny dropped her gaze, picked up a hairbrush from the dressing-table and, bending her knees, touched at her hair very briefly in the mirror.
‘Is it obvious?’
She turned back, laughing. ‘In the sun that day. He was the one who realised.’
‘I should be grateful then. But …’
‘Perhaps he’s looking after us.’
‘He was worried about the ship. He’s strange. Penny, I …’ There was something he wished he could say, though he did not know what it was, and the words would not form. Instead some sour tone came out: ‘Wretched kid should have been in bed. Little toad.’
‘Don’t.’
‘What?’
‘Sorry. It’s nothing. Foolish of me. The mention of a toad. It brought something back. But I’ll tell you another time. It’s all right. It’s all right, honestly. Darling.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘It’s nothing. It’s nothing, Robert.’ She leaned forward and placed her hand on his shoulder. ‘Your skin. I couldn’t forget it.’
And he caught her hand, passionately, yet his voice still came out wrongly – prosaic. ‘It’s been peeling. I’m a mess. Though it’s stopped hurting. Almost.’
‘It will be all right. You’ll see. And you understand, don’t you, Robert Kettle, that from now on I shall be the judge of whether you’re a mess? You do realise this, don’t you?’
Robert nodded. He felt his face cover over with a wide, unstoppable and childlike smile.
‘Then we must say no more at all, I mink, until you’ve held me in your arms. There aren’t prying eyes in here.’
He stood to embrace her for the second time in his life. Her back, her sides in the dark purple dress, felt softer than they had under the stars on the boat deck, as if, on stockinged feet in the privacy she had thrown about them at last, she could let her body speak plainly. From the pressure of her mouth on his, he read what he wanted.
42
‘There. The Southern Cross. Crux, we call it.’ From the black horizon the cross had risen. It lay slightly on its side, wearing its bright interior star like a beauty spot.
‘How lovely,’ she said. ‘How unimaginably lovely it is.’
They had come back to the boat deck. It was long past midnight. Not a soul was astir; there was no sound more than the murmur of the engines and of the sea against the side. Off to the right, beyond the equally deserted steerage, the wake stretched behind them in a double line of muted white; mixing, and then tapering off into an exquisitely extended dark curve that ended at the sky. Everything was quite clear and absolutely visible. There was light of a different kind; light, you would say, with the lightest of touches.
‘It is so new.’ Penny gazed upwards. ‘They’ve become, well, intimate, the stars. But these, the ones I could never have seen back in England. So familiar.’ She turned to him. ‘And still so new.’
He smiled. ‘How must sailors have felt when they first came here? On the brim of the southern seas. Where are your bearings if the stars change? Everything is different.’
‘Everything is quite different.’ She smoothed her fingers over the side of his neck, tracing the turn of the chin down and then back, where he shaved. A minute regrowth of bristles was detectable even from four hours ago. ‘I’m just learning you. Can you imagine that?’ She pressed upwards to kiss the place, grazing her lips on him, back and forth.
And in return he pressed her tightly against him, and, boldly, opened the zip of her dress to feel the route down her spine where her body narrowed and then filled out again to her hips.
‘Do all lovers feel like this?’ she whispered.
‘Of course they don’t,’ he said. ‘There are no lovers but us.’
The confident words surprised him. Perhaps they came a touch too sharply.
But she did not mind. ‘Oh yes. Of course. None in the world. I was quite forgetting. I still had the foolish impression, darling, that under the decks there were a thousand real people all asleep. But they’re not real at all, are they. I was forgetting.’
They explored again the little wave motion they had discovered, where their bodies fitted all along. The arousal bathed them in a sudden heat that sprang up like the flavours in the breeze.
‘And can you seriously believe Stella Madeley is real?’ Robert said, gently now, after a moment.
‘I thought she would cling on to the bitter end. I thought they were never going to let us be. As if the world depended on it.’
‘As if it’s their business. Nobody real would mind. Surely.’
She laughed. That was it, absolutely. Nobody real would mind. She pictured Stella Madeley – a perpetual head prefect, her grey hair still trapped in some undefinable school ‘shape’. No, neither she nor her fussy, diffident Group Captain of a husband could ever be real. This was real.
She looked up again. A meteor shower speared out of the zenith.
‘I love your neck,’ Robert said. ‘Your shoulders.’
‘You may have them, then.’
They laughed again together, at their childlike lovers’ discourse, laughing in the same murmur as their speech.
‘I shall. I want nothing more – except the rest of you.’ Again the roughness of tone. It was as though his body spoke for him, while his head hardly coped.
/> ‘You shall. For Stella Madeley and all those other frightened souls are absolutely not real.’ And as she felt herself melt together again with him the thought struck her: then neither was Hugh.
A sharp, painful incident came to mind. Hugh had tried to get her to discuss which of the rooms they should set aside as the ‘fall-out room’ – that Civil Defence leaflet. She had been panicked, and made a stupid scene. Irrational. While he and the boys had played hiding under a table in the spare room, she had just cried. He accused her of mental cowardice. She had felt stupid all the time, living with a clever man like Hugh.
But she was not stupid, and had never considered herself so until marriage. This thought was like the lifting of a great weight. She had permission to be happy, and it was all right.
‘This is a most absorbing topic you’ve raised. Darling. Robert. But I should really rather replace it with kissing. How naked my back feels.’
And so the subject of Stella and all the rest of them was put aside. And they gave themselves over to exploration.
There is a difference between exploration and any other kind of seagoing enterprise. Exploration is the making of charts with the finest of lines. It is never the whole picture – it leaves gaps, intriguing, full of delight. There is fear and danger: it coasts what is perpetually strange. Map-making demands all hands; all intelligence. It is a matter for the most absolute concentration – steering is paramount. It is the act of meeting, of love. I believe so.
‘No,’ Penny said. ‘I have to tell you. I … It was during the storm. I lost … You see, I was going to have a child. Another baby. I must tell you. I was pregnant. I … Do you know, in some extraordinary way I hardly knew. Can you believe that? Something going on inside and you can’t bring yourself to face it. So you don’t. Face it, I mean. I knew somewhere. Do you understand? But at the same time I didn’t know. My body knew, but my brain didn’t. Wouldn’t. Robert. Have I spoiled everything? Do you hate me?’
‘Why should I hate anything about you? I love you.’
‘I don’t know. It’s so vile and messy. And another man’s child. I’m ashamed. You must think of me now with all that mess. I was upset. I was so upset. And do you know part of the thing I was upset about was that I was glad. It’s awful. I must be horrible.’