by Paul Gallico
Scott said, 'You needn't be afraid, Mrs Rogo. We're going to pull you up.'
Linda cursed him.
Whitefaced with anger, Jane Shelby turned upon her, 'Why don't you behave yourself, you little idiot? Can't you see we're all trying to keep control of ourselves? That we may all be drowned any minute? That he's the only one trying to do anything for us?'
Richard Shelby looked at her in surprise; satisfaction mixed with a certain chagrin. What hurt was the 'Can't you see he's the only one trying to do anything for us?' because it was true. He had submitted so easily to Scott's leadership, even though he was only half convinced anything would come of it.
Rogo said, 'You'll be all right, baby doll. See, Mrs Shelby here says she'll look after you.' When he wanted to, he had a wonderful capacity for neither seeing nor hearing. He slung the tablecloth around his shoulders, seized the rope and without a break in the movement of his powerful arms and shoulders, pulled himself to the top.
The Beamer went next. It was a struggle, but he made it to the edge and Scott pulled him to safety.
From below Pamela called, 'May I come up the rope? We had to climb them in gym.'
'So did we,' said Susan.
'Race you!' Pam challenged.
'You're on!' Susan replied.
Pam seized the rope, and shouted up, 'Time me!' In a moment her strong shoulders were pumping, her stocky legs bracing as she hauled herself aloft.
Robin called off, 'Sixteen seconds! Come on, Sis!'
Susan was more graceful but not as strong. When she reached the top, she laughed, 'You've won!'
The Beamer cried, 'Up Britannia!' reached over and felt Pamela's arm muscles and muttered, 'Crikey!'
The little contest had cheered everyone.
Muller was standing at the bottom, looking at his hands. Rogo muttered, 'We'll never get this guy up. He's soft. Let's pull him and get it over with.'
The Beamer said, 'Shouldn't he at least be allowed to have a go?'
Rogo looked at him with contempt, 'Oh, I say! Pip pip, sporting what?' He did not like Englishmen any more than he liked queers or cream puffs.
Muller started but weakened a third of the way. He broke into a sweat, his face turned beet red and he pulled desperately at the rope. Half-way up, his feet went out from under him.
Rogo said, 'Let's get that panty-waist out of there before he hurts himself.'
The Beamer said, 'He'll hurt himself more if he lets go.'
Scott watched the struggle dispassionately for a moment and then suggested, 'Turn around and push up with your feet and rump.'
Muller managed to scramble around on to his back and find sufficient purchase to take some of the strain off his arms and began to gain on the slope. Laboriously he heaved himself to the top where Scott was able to seize his wrists and haul him in. He collapsed onto his knees gasping for breath and gazing at his hands, which had come up in blisters.
Rogo looked over his shoulder and said, 'Boy, those are some blisters! You want to watch out with them things.' But there was no sympathy in his voice.
During the struggle Rosen had been holding a whispered conference with Shelby. The latter called up to Scott, 'Frank, Mr Rosen doesn't think he will be able to make it. What's your idea for the girls?'
Scott replied, 'Sling. Haul them up.'
'With the rope?'
'No, the tablecloths. It won't hurt them. All right, leave Rosen down and we'll pull him up after the women. Come up here yourself, then, and bring his tablecloth. Rosen can help them as well as you.'
Shelby wondered if like Muller he would make a half botch of getting to the top. He had heard Rogo's contemptuous 'soft', and thought how ill prepared one was to face any kind of emergency that called for physical strength. Just before he gripped the rope he was struck with the utter absurdity, in danger of immediate death, worrying whether he was going to look good or bad before Scott, his family, and a New York police detective.
He went up in fair enough style to be approved by his son, 'Attaboy, Dad!' The others were already rolling and knotting the tablecloths together. Scott attached rope to the ends of these so that they formed a curved loop which they let down to the bottom of the incline.
Rosen asked, 'What do you want they should do?'
'Ride it,' Scott directed, 'one leg over. Hold on at each side. Mrs Rogo, will you be the first to come up?'
Linda with her hands resting on her hips said insolently, 'Not on your life! Get another guinea-pig to see if it works.'
Nonnie said, 'I'll go.' She had an overwhelming sense of loneliness and wanted to reach the safety of the man whose arms had first sheltered her and who had been kind to her. She tucked up the pink dressing-gown to pad herself and thrust one bare, dancer's leg over the curve of the cloth.
'That's it,' Scott coached. 'Now hang on and turn your back to the slope. All right, boys, pull! Slowly, until we see whether everything is holding.'
With even the girls taking a hand on the ropes, she came up easily and smoothly to the landing, where she was helped to her feet. Her gown fell open and showed one small, pointed breast such as one might expect to find on a fifteen-year-old child. Rogo, The Beamer and Martin all tried to look elsewhere. Scott did not bother.
At the bottom of the slope Linda said to Miss Kinsale, 'Did you see that? Preacher boy had a good look.'
She replied evenly, 'I don't know what you're talking about,' and prepared herself for the cloth loop descending again.
Miss Kinsale managed to endow her ascent with the curious kind of restrained dignity that always seemed to envelop her, as though she were quite used to doing that sort of thing. Linda on the other band called as much attention to herself as possible in settling the loop between her legs. Before giving the signal, she donned Rogo's jacket, which had been about her shoulders, and buttoned it saying, 'He isn't getting any look at my tits.'
After Jane Shelby had followed without incident, there were only the Rosens left at the bottom. Manny said to his wife, 'Mamma, I'm so ashamed.'
She replied, 'For what?'
'That I couldn't go up the rope like them other guys.'
His wife said, 'So what are you, Manny Rosen? An acrobat or a retired delicatessen store owner? You shouldn't have to go up ropes. Let 'em pull you.'
Rosen held the cloth steady while his wife thrust a leg through it, settled herself, and took a grip upon the two pieces that came up fore and aft. She said, 'Diapers, at my age I should be needing yet!'
Rosen said, 'Mamma, how can you joke?'
'What else is there to do?' she replied. He was aware of a wave of admiration and affection for her. He himself was sick at heart and frightened.
He said 'Mamma, you're great,' then called up, 'Okay!'
'I bet I break the elevator,' Belle Rosen said.
'I'll bet you don't!' replied Scott, but whispered, 'Slow, and not too much strain. She's a load.'
She came up majesticaIly, swaying from side to side. The eyes behind the thick spectacles were mischievous again, almost as though she were enjoying the ride. They reached for her and pulled her in, and a small cheer went up from the group as they crowded around her to make sure that she had suffered no harm.
She said, 'Thank you, thank you! If I didn't do it, I wouldn't have believed it.'
From below came Manny Rosen's voice, 'Hey, hey, hey, up there! Don't forget me!'
Rogo went to the edge of the platform and said, 'Keep your hair on, Manny.'
Linda said to her husband without bothering to drop her voice, 'Let him get himself up. I can't stand Jews.'
Everyone froze except Belle Rosen who kidded, 'You can't? That's out of fashion today -- unless you're an Arab. I didn't know you was an Arab.'
Susan Shelby giggled and Linda turned on her and said, 'I hate all of you! I know you're snickering and sneering at me! You all think you're better than I am!'
Rogo soothed her, 'Now, baby doll,' and then to the others, 'You mustn't mind her. It's nerves. I guess she's got a
right to have 'em. We're in a hell of a spot, ain't we?'
Rosen came sailing up into their midst and was aware of the stiffening and the tension in the group. 'I'm here!' he said. 'Something wrong? Why is everybody looking?'
Belle Rosen said with a straight face, 'Mrs Rogo was saying how she was glad you got here, wasn't you dear?'
Linda's pursed mouth formed for reply but Jane Shelby intervened before she could let go. She said, 'We're all glad you're here, Mr Rosen. We're glad everyone's here, thanks to Mr Scott.'
Scott seemed not to have beard or to have been aware of the exchange. His mind was already coping with the next stage of their ascent. He said, 'Let's have a look at where we have got to go now.'
CHAPTER VIII
Madam Must Have Her Postiche
Robin Shelby cried, 'I think I know where we are! The photographer works down here.'
They were in a second long, narrow, deserted corridor very much like the one from which they had just come, except less luxurious. Here were the cheapest inside, below-decks cabins, tolerable enough for a swift transatlantic passage but not sold for a sunshine, warm weather cruise in the heat of the tropics.
Here were located as well the photographer's laboratory and the print shop that produced the daily menus and shipboard newspaper, the men's barber's shop and farther along, the ladies' hairdressing parlour.
The corridor appeared to run the full length of the midships first-class section of the Poseidon. Astern, the lights were not functioning and it vanished into darkness. The going underfoot was more difficult; more pipes and conduits lined what had been the ceiling. They became aware of noises and scuffling and trampling and the ring of shoes on metal from overhead.
The Beamer said, 'Hello! There are chaps alive up there.'
Shelby added, 'That must be the alley for the crew Peters called Broadway.'
Rogo gave Scott a look out of his small eyes with their curiously turned~down-at-the-corner lids and said 'Okay, coach, which way?'
Martin whispered to Rosen, 'What is this coach stuff?'
Rosen replied, 'He's a tough cop. He don't like college boys.'
Martin's thin lips parted in what was half a gag, half a grin. He said, 'Seems to me he don't like nobody, except that bitch of his who keeps rubbing his nose in the dirt.' It was unusual for him to make such a remark. He did it only as a distraction from the torment he was undergoing.
They heard a noise. A few yards down the corridor a woman had appeared, climbing laboriously over the high threshold of one of the upside-down doorways. She halted, blinking and half dazed when she saw the party. She was clad in a white overall tied at the waist and her arms were bare, but over her right fist held in front of her she was carrying a lady's brown shoulder-length wig which had been set and combed out. In her other hand she had a hairbrush.
The woman said, 'Excuse me, Mrs Gleeson. I'm sorry I'm late. I'll have it all right for you in just a minute. I don't know what happened, but it got knocked about somehow.' She peered from one to another in the party and they could see that her eyes were glazed and her face white with shock. She said to Jane Shelby, 'Oh, you're not Mrs Gleeson! I thought you were her, coming for her wig and would be angry with me.'
Nonnie cried, 'Why, it's the hairdresser! The one I was going to see,' and then, 'Oi, Marie, love! Where are you going? Don't you know what's happened? Nobody cares about wigs any more.'
The hairdresser was unable to bend her mind from the article. She gave it three automatic dabs with the brush so that some loose ends came back into place and curled upwards. 'It looks all right now, doesn't it? I had it all nicely finished when it fell over, the wig-stand and everything.' Surprise came into her voice, 'I must have, too. I get dizzy spells sometimes. I haven't been feeling well since we started rolling like that.' She continued to brush the postiche murmuring, 'I can't see very well. Why have all the lights gone out? Is it me?'
Nonnie whispered to Muller, 'Try to make her understand. She doesn't know.'
He said, 'Look here, you'd better stay here with us.'
The hairdresser drew back in alarm as though she expected them to try to detain her. 'Stay with you? Why?' she cried. She regarded the wig again, turning it this way and that and from the rear it looked so startlingly like the back of a woman's head that for a moment Muller found himself questioning his own sanity.
'She said nine o'clock. She won't half cut up if she doesn't get it. She's always ticking me off anyway, when she comes here. Nothing's ever right. One of them. I'd better go.'
Before anyone could move to stop her she was off, running, stumbling and tripping down the passageway towards the stern, holding the ridiculous article before her.
The absurd incongruity of her concern took them so by surprise that she had all but vanished into the darkness at the end of the corridor before Nonnie called after her, 'Wait, Marie! Come back! They say there's nobody there any more. Please, Marie, come back!'
She would have run after her, but Hubie Muller held her back. He said, 'It's no use, Nonnie, you'd never catch her.' Indeed the hairdresser had disappeared. 'You might hurt yourself. She'll come back when she sees what's happened.'
From above there resounded another trampling of feet which distracted them momentarily. But Jane Shelby clutched her husband's arm. 'Dick! I heard a scream -- from down there, where that poor woman went. She was out of her mind. We should have made her stay.'
Nonnie cried, 'Oh, why didn't you let me go after her? Something's happened to her. Marie was sweet to all of us.'
Muller said, 'I'll go and have a look. Wait here. It might have been something else Mrs Shelby heard.'
He felt a responsibility towards Nonnie because he had prevented her from going.
Scott said, 'Be careful, Hubie.'
And Rogo added, 'Yeah, don't get yourself hurt.' It was difficult to tell from his tone whether or not he meant it.
But Rogo's world and his were such miles apart that Muller did not even bother to think about it. He walked down the corridor until he came to the patch where there was no longer any light. He was uneasy now, wished he had not volunteered and wondered why he had. Was it because Nonnie had entrusted herself to him? And why should he feel responsible?
He went down on to his hands and knees and inched forward, clinging to the piping, aware that the floor had begun to slant downwards. When the angle suddenly took a sharper turn, he stopped.
He took the lighter from his pocket, lit it and held it above his head. He knew now why she had screamed. He turned away, crawling on his stomach and did not climb to his feet until he was within the safety of the lighted area again. Then he walked slowly back, fighting off nausea. He had been too long away from destruction, horror and sudden death. Rogo's contempt for him was probably well-founded. He had gone soft.
When he rejoined the party, they waited silently for him to speak. He said, 'Well, now we know which way we're to go. The poor creature has decided for us.' He shuddered and said, 'If we'd gone there, it might have happened to some or even all of us.'
Shelby asked, 'What might have happened?'
Muller replied, 'it's all blown to bits but you wouldn't have seen it in the dark until it was too late. She didn't either. Some machinery or something must have come down. There's nothing but a great big hole, one or maybe a couple of decks down, filled with oil and water. That damn wig was floating in the middle of it. I couldn't see anything of her.'
Nonnie said, 'She didn't know what she was doing, did she? Oh, why didn't I hold on to her!' Her little face screwed up to cry.
Her distress moved even Rogo, who turned to her and put his hand on her arm and said, 'Never mind, miss, you done the best you could. None of us was any smarter.'
Linda said to her husband, 'You keep away from that little tart!'
Nonnie flicked half shed tears from her eyes and turned on her with waspish fury. 'Who are you calling a tart, you bitch!'
Curiously, at the same time that he was disgusted by the vulgari
ty of the brawl, Muller felt an anger matching that of Nonnie rising in him.
Belle Rosen said, 'Now, now!' to which Manny quickly interposed, 'Mamma, don't mix in.'
Mike Rogo's eyes went hard. He said to Nonnie, 'Relax, sister. No one's calling anyone anything. You didn't hear right. We got enough trouble already, ain't we?' and to his wife he let slip out of the side of his mouth, 'Ixnay! Ixnay! Cut it out!'
With the skill of a lifetime police officer breaking up a disturbance, he placed himself so that there was distance between them. Hubie Muller was standing protectively over the dancer, who was still venomously angry, her mouth pinched and tight. She had a redhead's temper and had not yet finished.