Stepping Westward

by Malcolm Bradbury

  ‘Yes, buy you a drink later,’ said Walker, relieved. She went back through the doors and a moment later Julie Snowflake came back up the stairs.

  ‘Hi, again, all set,’ she said; she was wearing an unzipped ski-jacket over her suit. Walker pushed open the outside door. ‘Hey, this is some wind blowing,’ said Miss Snowflake. A fine wet spray had made the planks of the deck greasy. Deck-lamps picked out the white of the rails and the lifeboats, and the funnel, high above, was floodlit, so that its bluster of smoke was picked out from the darkness.

  ‘Let’s go toward the stern,’ said Walker. ‘Maybe we can get out of the wind.’

  ‘No, I like being out in the wind,’ said Miss Snowflake, leaning against the rail and looking out into the darkness; all that could be seen was the bow-wave’s faint luminosity. ‘We must be way out to sea now. Hey, just look at that illuminated funnel. It’s like Coney Island on a lonely night. Nobody around but us. You know something, Mr Walker? You should try zen.’

  ‘Pardon?’ said Walker, looking out too.

  ‘Be a Buddhist. Take these yellow socks. No, there are a lot of very fine books on zen. All these great stories about masters slapping their pupils in the ear. I think you acquire a sense of reality. You have a good sense of reality?’

  Walker said, ‘Well, I don’t have much to measure it against. I think what I really lack is a sense of unreality.’

  ‘Yes, that figures. Well, that’s the thing with zen. You get both. I must tell you about this course at Hillesley called Poise and Co-ordination.’

  ‘Where you lift suitcases off racks?’

  ‘Yes, and how to get out of cars without showing your inner thighs and all. Inner thighs, Miss Snowflake, look to the inner thighs. But the thing is, I use the course a different way. I learned how to relax. It’s marvellous. A kind of, well, transmogrification of self. Now you, you don’t relax.’

  A strand of Julie Snowflake’s hair blew against his face, and he felt far from relaxed. ‘No,’ he said.

  ‘You’re trying too hard, you’re all screwed up,’ said Miss Snowflake. ‘So you have problems, we all have problems. Look, let me show you. Try relaxing. Let your arms go all limp. No, go ahead, I’m holding you up. Now, I’m going to lift your arms in the air and let go of them. Let them ooze down. Okay?’ She had lifted Walker’s arms into the air; she let them go. The knuckles of his wrists smacked him on top of his head.

  ‘Christ,’ he said.

  ‘You all right?’ asked Miss Snowflake. ‘No, Mr Walker, that was way off. You have to ooze down sinuously like a sna-ake, you know? You weren’t controlling your relaxation. One time at Hillesley a girl broke a ten thousand-dollar wristwatch doing what you just did. She was all tensed up like you.’

  ‘Was she?’

  ‘Now come on, no fooling, try to cultivate detachment from your body. Let each bit of it live for itself. Look, I’m holding you. Now, just sag.’

  ‘Right down?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Walker sagged and they both fell heavily to the deck. ‘Oh, boy, you’re heavy, you brought me down too,’ said Miss Snowflake, in whose lap his head had somehow landed. ‘I guess you’re really far gone. Let me up.’

  ‘I like it down here,’ said Walker.

  ‘No, cut that out, come on, get up. Let go my foot, Mr Walker. Give me my shoe back. Thanks. Now, come on, up.’

  They got up and went and stood by the rail. ‘Just take a look at the back of my skirt,’ said Miss Snowflake. ‘Is it stained on the, you know, fanny? That deck’s greasy.’

  Walker, still breathing hard, took out his handkerchief and rubbed for a moment. ‘That’s fine now,’ he said. ‘Well, so it looks as though I’ll never make it, then?’

  ‘Relaxing? Oh, I don’t know. I’m not expert. I was only fooling, I guess. You all right? You’re puffing like a bloodhound. You’re not going to have a coronary or anything?’

  ‘No, I’m fine,’ said Walker.

  ‘Come out from back there and lean on the rail. Sniff this fresh air. Good, no? They call this course at Hillesley Beanbag.’

  ‘They do?’ said Walker. ‘Why?’

  ‘Oh, because in the final you have to make a beanbag, and the instructor throws it against the wall. If it bursts you flunk and if it doesn’t you pass.’

  ‘What’s a beanbag?’

  ‘A bag full of beans that you play with like a ball.’

  ‘I see,’ said Walker.

  ‘Of course,’ said Julie, reaching in a pocket in her shirt placed square on her left breast, and taking out a pack of American cigarettes, ‘there’s another great way to relax.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Creative writing. We have this great course. Did you ever try it? It’s really therapeutic. That’s what I like about writers. They’re all such relaxed people, in tune with it all.’

  ‘Well, I have tried that, as a matter of fact.’

  ‘You keep trying, Mr Walker,’ said Miss Snowflake, knocking a cigarette out of the pack and hitting it on her thumbnail. ‘Cigarette? You ever publish anything?’ She cupped her hands round her Zippo lighter and lit both their cigarettes. Their hair touched.

  Walker said, ‘As a matter of fact, yes.’

  ‘As a matter of fact, are you kidding?’

  ‘No, not at all.’

  ‘What did you publish?’

  ‘Three novels,’ said Walker.

  ‘No, come on, tell me the truth. I know a lot of men like to tell girls they’re writers because they think girls will go further with writers. But I bless the truth.’

  ‘No, really, it is the truth.’

  Miss Snowflake puffed hard on her cigarette and shook her head. ‘Well, you’re a writer,’ she said. ‘What was the name again? James Walker? Not the James Walker who wrote The Last of the Old Lords?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Well, this is fantastic, and you know why? I’m writing a term paper about the English novel since the war and you’re in it?’

  ‘Well,’ said Walker, ‘I can’t think why.’

  ‘Now listen, cut that out.’

  ‘I wasn’t doing anything.’

  ‘Yes, you were, that modesty bit,’ said Miss Snowflake. ‘You’re an important writer and you just behave like one. Why, you could be anybody. All that “as a matter of fact” and “I can’t think why”. You should just hear yourself saying it. It sounds like some phoney hack writer for the comics. You mustn’t be artificial and embarrassed. You must be what you are. A real human being.’

  ‘Possess elevation, be able to sag?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘I’d like to,’ said Walker, ‘but isn’t being a real human being acting the way you are?’

  ‘I don’t believe so. A writer shouldn’t be ordinary. He has to try. He has to feel more, understand more, see more. You have to be able to know the future, to sense moods, to take truth out of the air. Artists are the antennae of the race, Mr Walker.’

  ‘I can’t even sag properly,’ said Walker. ‘I just have to do what I can with what I am. Which is what everyone has to do. A lot of writers finished themselves by trying to do more.’

  ‘No, I don’t think so,’ said Julie Snowflake. ‘You know, you’re a disappointment, Mr Walker. You don’t believe in yourself, so why should I believe in you? I don’t believe you wrote those books you wrote.’

  ‘But I did.’

  ‘No, you didn’t.’

  ‘I did, Julie.’

  ‘You’re holding my arm,’ said Julie. ‘You don’t know how to feel properly, so how can you have made me feel things?’

  ‘Well, I wrote them,’ said Walker petulantly.

  ‘Sure you did,’ said Julie. ‘Take no notice. I’m crazy. Everyone says so. You mustn’t think I don’t admire you. I do. But be better, Mr Walker, be better. Christ, I just threw my cigarette over the side. I’ve probably set the whole goddam ship on fire. Can you see it?’

  Walker looked over. ‘It’s going into the water,’ he said.


  ‘Thank goodness. I ought not to be roaming free really. Well, well, well, so I met my term paper. Why are you coming to the States?’

  ‘Well,’ said Walker, still looking over. ‘I’m going to be a creative writer on a campus somewhere out west.’

  ‘Oh, you should come to Hillesley. I wish you were coming to Hillesley. We have a whole bunch of writers there. A lot of girls like to sleep with them because it’s honorific. For the record, though, it’s not a view I share.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ said Walker.

  ‘Hey,’ said Julie Snowflake. ‘Well, where out west?’

  ‘A place called Benedict Arnold.’

  ‘Oh no, not Benedict Arnold.’

  ‘Why, is there something wrong with it?’

  ‘No, not really. It’s just they’re a bunch of ski-bums out there. They won’t appreciate you. I know because I have a brother out there.’

  ‘I hope I meet him.’

  ‘Well, maybe, he’s training to be a veterinarian. No, it’s quite a good school really.’

  ‘Do you ever go there?’

  ‘Once in a while.’

  ‘Maybe we’ll meet again.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Julie. ‘You want to?’

  ‘I think you’re a very fascinating person.’

  ‘Sure you do.’

  ‘I do,’ said Walker. ‘Are all American girls like you?’

  ‘Yes, but I think about it more. I told you. Well, what about that dancing? We’re just sitters by the wall. I suppose that’s how you met Dr Jochum.’

  ‘What’s how I met Dr Jochum?’

  ‘Well, going to Benedict Arnold. He teaches there.’

  ‘No!’ said Walker. ‘Really?’

  ‘Moment of truth,’ said Julie. ‘Isn’t that what Aristotle calls a perpety?’

  ‘No, I didn’t know that. I met him on the Pullman. I thought just now he taught at Hillesley.’

  ‘He did once,’ said Miss Snowflake, resting both elbows on the rail and wriggling her behind till she had gained equilibrium.

  ‘But they fired him because he talked funny?’

  ‘No, he just didn’t have tenure. He left at the end of his term. You know . . . I like him. Because he’s so sad. Like all the émigrés. All these restless people who drift around from place to place looking for Europe in America. You mustn’t get that way.’

  ‘I’ll try not to,’ said Walker.

  ‘He makes me sad too. He’s a bit lost intellectually, too, and because he’s sad and drifting and lost no one wants to give him tenure. Well, I’ll tell you, if I ran Hillesley I’d give him tenure.’

  ‘That’s very kind.’

  ‘Well, I am,’ said Julie. ‘Now what about that dancing?’

  She had turned round to look at him, stretching her legs out and putting her backside against the rail. Walker looked at her; he said, ‘Oh let’s wait a minute.’

  ‘You trying to figure out a way to get to kiss me?’ she asked, looking at him.

  ‘I suppose I am,’ said Walker, feeling a thumping in his heart.

  ‘Well,’ said Miss Snowflake, ‘be my guest. Politely now.’

  Walker’s heart seemed now to be thumping so violently that it must, he was sure, be shaking the buttons off his shirt. He came near and put his mouth to Julie Snowflake’s. Her hand touched the back of his neck, a touch of sophistication he appreciated. On her lips he could taste lipstick and Manhattans. The kiss continued for a while until she pursed her lips and wriggled her head.

  ‘Well,’ she said, withdrawing from the suction.

  ‘Well,’ said Walker, breathing hard.

  ‘Cigarette?’ said Miss Snowflake, taking out her pack of Chesterfields and her Zippo. ‘You know, that’s the first time I’ve ever been kissed by my term paper.’

  ‘What did you write the last one on?’ asked Walker, subsiding only a little.

  ‘Tolstoy,’ said Julie, ‘and I’m no necrophiliac.’

  Walker had not taken his arms from around her and he put his lips to her forehead. ‘You know?’ she said. ‘We ought to go back. We’re party poopers.’

  ‘We’re what?’

  ‘We’re pooping the party downstairs. Come on. I’ll drag you back. Just let yourself go limp. Okay?’

  Walker, being dragged backwards along the deck, was more depressed at leaving Miss Snowflake and at the faults she had discovered in him than he cared to be. There was no doubt about it – Miss Snowflake was an all-round education, and that, it seemed, was what he wanted. If he was educable at all.

  ‘You’re improving,’ said Miss Snowflake. ‘Still, that’s my limit. You’ll have to walk the rest.’

  He followed her along the deck and inside, out of the wind.

  ‘Well, it’s been nice,’ said Miss Snowflake. ‘Now I have to go and tidy up. Come to think of it, it looks as though you’d better go to the john yourself. You have my lipstick smeared around your mouth and on the end of your nose.’

  He went into the lavatory and when he came out Miss Snowflake had disappeared and the girl with the red hair was waiting for him.

  ‘You said you’d buy me a drink,’ she said.

  ‘And I will,’ said Walker. He opened the glass door and let her through, casting a last look back for Julie. She wasn’t there. Inside, the lights had been dimmed and a number of people appeared to have fallen in love with one another.

  ‘I’d like a whisky sour,’ said the girl. ‘I’ve never had them before tonight. I do like them.’

  At the bar Walker found himself standing beside Jochum. His cummerbund had come undone and hung down behind him like a tail. People kept treading on it and Jochum had a look of profound confusion on his face; he couldn’t think what was pulling at him.

  ‘I hear you’re at Benedict Arnold too,’ said Walker.

  ‘That’s true. You mean, you also?’

  ‘Yes, I’m going there for a year.’

  ‘Oh, that is splendid news, splendid. You must come and see me often.’

  ‘In spite of your comments on the danger of shipboard friendships?’

  ‘Oh, present company is always excepted,’ said Jochum, ‘except, of course, for our old lady. I shall extend no invitations to her.’

  ‘I wonder,’ said Walker, ‘if you see the American girl I danced with, Julie Snowflake, would you tell her that I’m rather stuck with someone but I’ll see her again.’

  ‘Oh, our other table companion has caught up with you. I thought she had succumbed to your charms. Vell, you must be firm.’

  ‘I find it so hard,’ said Walker.

  ‘Vell, it is an old liberal weakness, helping lame dogs over stiles. Be strong.’

  ‘I would if I could. May I buy you a drink?’

  ‘I am buying twenty-four Manhattans,’ said Jochum. ‘You may if you wish . . . but to tell the truth I am not paying either. These young ladies have made a kitty this evening to buy their drinks. We must spend all this tonight’ – he produced a wad of American notes from his pocket – ‘even if we drown in Manhattans. So I will treat you instead.’

  ‘Well, it’s a whisky sour and a Tom Collins,’ said Walker.

  ‘All these weird drinks.’

  When Walker got back to the red-haired girl, she had claimed a bowl of crisps from one of the tables and was eating them with some gusto. ‘I thought we’d lost you again,’ she said.

  ‘Oh, no,’ said Walker.

  ‘I don’t know your name,’ she said, hitching up her black stole.

  ‘It’s Walker,’ said Walker.

  ‘Walker the porker,’ said the girl. ‘My name’s Miss Marrow. Like the vegetable. Aren’t you going to ask me to dance?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Walker. ‘I thought you wanted to finish your drink.’

  ‘I will, look,’ said Miss Marrow, emptying her glass at one gulp. ‘There.’

  ‘Be careful,’ said Walker, ‘you’ll fall down.’

  ‘I don’t care,’ said Miss Marrow. They went on to t
he floor; Miss Marrow danced in a way that Walker thought of as ‘divinely’, covering the floor with those great languorous sweeps that he recalled from old films. In this way they dislodged a lot of people and caused several dancing accidents. ‘You’re not terribly good at this, are you?’ said Miss Marrow after a while.

  ‘No,’ said Walker, ‘I did woodwork instead.’

  ‘What do you mean, Porker?’ cried Miss Marrow.

  ‘At school we had to choose between woodwork and dancing. I may not be much good at the foxtrot, but you should see me make a pipe-rack.’

  As they swung about, and Walker grew short of breath, he noticed over Miss Marrow’s shoulder that Julie Snowflake had come back into the room. She stood by the door and looked around; then she went over to the table where the bagpipers sat, and Jochum must have told her his excuses, for she stared at him for a moment and then turned away. If only he could leave Miss Marrow in the middle of the floor, dancing on her own, while he joined Julie; Miss Marrow, since she kept shutting her eyes and was setting the pace entirely, would probably not notice his absence for at least five minutes. But gallantry won out, gallantry to the kind of girl that Walker used to make assignations with on the corner of the street where his parents’ home was. She was entirely and provincially familiar; Walker knew a thousand versions of her; but precisely because of that he felt she had a claim. ‘Oh, Porker,’ she said suddenly, opening her eyes, ‘you’ve laddered my stocking, you beast.’

  ‘I am sorry,’ said Walker, ‘stockings cost a packet, don’t they?’

  ‘I think I can stop it running; I’ve got some nail varnish in my bag. Come outside and wait for me.’ She went into the toilet, exactly the sort of girl Walker had always waited outside ladies’ toilets for; he waited a moment and then sidled off towards Miss Snowflake. ‘Porker!’ said a voice; the girl had come back. ‘It’s no use. Want to dance some more?’

  ‘I don’t mind,’ said Walker, though he did.

  ‘I’m a bit tired of it, actually,’ said Miss Marrow. ‘What’s it like on deck?’

  ‘Oh, rather windy,’ said Walker.

  ‘I knew that’s where you went!’ said Miss Marrow. ‘Well, show me around up there.’

  A moment later he was on the sports deck again. ‘This wind’s doing awful things to my hairdo,’ said Miss Marrow, ‘I suppose I look a fright.’