with you, Bob, is your mind’s not on the job. Come on. Three more moves and we’ll call it lights out. Fair goes?’
The ship’s struggle with the Atlantic grew into a fact of life, and Robert’s studious good intentions gave way to the effort of keeping his stomach and his spirit from exchanging acids.
There are different kinds of seasickness, and different ways of dealing with them. Only one is to lie down. As he had already explained to Penny, Robert saw the enormous seas as England’s long reach of spite. His contest with Joe, laid out on his bunk, felt pointless and irritating; but his battle with England was full of purpose. And so he would haunt the decks as long as the cold permitted. He had only the faintest notion that the possibility of happening upon Penny again was an underlying motive. They found themselves in no new friendly exchanges, though when they did meet they would smile, and nod, and briefly remark.
Perhaps it was fortunate, then, that he did not see her come out of one of the bathrooms on B deck on the second night of the storm. It was about nine-thirty. I was waiting outside in pyjamas and revolver. She almost crashed into me as the ship swung. She was unsteady on her feet, and unsteady in herself. I could see that. I had no idea who she was. She looked dreadful, pale, red-eyed, lank-haired. I stared at her. She passed me and then stalled as the floor rose.
‘Sorry,’ she muttered, her hand against her back, moving on down the corridor as soon as the angle allowed. Then she disappeared into a cabin I presumed her own.
Robert was on the deck above, in the small starboard bar quaintly called the Verandah – one they were keeping open. He was talking to a good-looking man who was always there. Or rather the man was talking to him, or to anyone. Dinner-suited, he had an accent and appearance that seemed BBC with a dash of receding fighter pilot. He was very drunk.
‘So when all’s said and done, what d’you think of the field?’ He swilled the brandy round in his glass.
‘Sorry?’
‘Totty. Seen anything you fancy? Quite a line-up from what I can make out. Members’ enclosure. Should be a good trip.’
‘Oh, I see.’
‘Starched petticoats. Now there’s a thought, eh? Starched petticoats. Your turn.’
Robert made his way across the drunken floor and clung soberly to the bar.
‘God,’ he said.
Protectively the barman handed him two brandies.
When he returned, his table-mate grunted confidentially. ‘Time and place, old chap. Not yet Too rough. But just wait for the Tropics. They go mad. Can’t get enough of it. Got to build ourselves up, eh? They go mad. English women, eh? Eh?’ His eyes closed. He slumped back in the chair. Robert watched the glass he had just signed for slip from the man’s hand, empty itself over his trousers and fall on to the carpet. The ship rolled it casually against the far partition, where it smashed.
‘Don’t worry, sir,’ the bar steward called. ‘Everything under control. It’s when the chairs go you’ve got to start worrying. Notorious this ship, but don’t let on I said so. Jumps about like a porpoise as soon as the wind blows. Mind you, this is a blow and a half and no mistake. But we learned our lesson a couple of years ago coming home.’
‘How was that?’ Robert struggled back to the bar rail and took hold of it again.
‘Shouldn’t really tell you this. It was here in the Bay, but all the other way round, if you see what I mean. We were caught by a following sea and had to lay ourselves across it.’
‘To miss Brittany?’
‘Exactly, sir. To miss Brittany. Armorica, so I’m told. The olden name.’
‘Really? I didn’t know.’
‘The company’s old route, sir. Started last century, running grain and guns to our various southern allies. Long tradition at sea. Trading nation.’ He winked at Robert and touched his nose. ‘We’ll carry anything. Every ship’s got a memory.’
‘You were going to tell me …?’
‘Oh, yes. Following sea; we got across it. Wallowing about like a whale, she was. The water came over the stern – the cabins in tourist class go right down under the water-line. They have an F deck, you know, and the stern’s like open balconies anyway. To give a bit of light and space. Did you know that? Very nice. But not funny when half the herring pond jumps in on you. And up here in the first class main lounge,’ he gestured in that direction, ‘the piano broke loose and went for a run. Caught a passenger against one of the pillars.’
‘Was he killed?’
‘Not quite. We dug him out from under a pile of tables and chairs.’
‘They were there with the piano?’
‘Exactly. Arrived simultaneously. But we learned our lesson. Four hundred items of furniture smashed, to say nothing of the glass and crockery. Passengers screaming and panicking. So we don’t think too much about it now. Plenty more where that came from.’
‘Furniture?’
‘Exactly. Or whatever you like. We keep calm, they keep calm. She may have the lines of a goddess, but she can be a hysterical cow sometimes, the Armorica. Don’t tell anyone I told you.’ He touched the side of his nose again. ‘There was one time as well when she developed a list to starboard. It wasn’t heavy weather or anything. Up goes the captain. “Those stabilisers got out of line? Let’s have ’em in. Switch off the gyros, please, Number One.” They’re all ex-RN, see. So off goes the gyros and in come the fins, and slowly, very slowly,’ he matched his gesture to the inclination of the ship, ‘the bloody thing starts to list a bit more. Then a bit more. Then a bit more.’ He chuckled and eyed Robert’s dormant drinking companion.
‘And then?’
‘He stuck the fins back out pretty sharpish.’ He polished a glass. ‘Heavy on fuel. She’s a seven-day ship. Her sisters are nine. It’s the liquid ballast. The more she uses up the lighter she gets. And the sillier. Now, I have it on good authority from someone who was there …’
‘On the bridge?’
‘… On the bridge; that the old man said it was only the fins keeping her from rolling right over.’
‘Turning turtle?’
‘Exactly.’
‘They’re not out at the moment.’
‘No. Can’t have them out at the moment. Too rough. They’d break off. Can I help you, sir?’ He moved away to attend to someone else who was fortifying himself against the night, leaving Robert to ponder further the differences between a ship at sea and a brochure on dry land.
But everyone has to sleep sometime. The trouble was, Robert only needed to enter the cabin to switch Joe on, no matter how ill he was claiming to be. It was as though there were a transistor in the door handle.
‘Ah, there you are, Bob. I think I’ve got an interesting little dilemma for your knight here.’ And: ‘There are heaps of folks about, Bob, who think the Japanese will never be able to make a really good camera. See this?’ He held up a twin-lens reflex he was cradling in his bedclothes. ‘Singapore. Fifteen quid. Professional goods, would you believe. Hold still, I’ll take your picture.’
‘How can I hold still?’ Robert demanded, petulantly.
‘Bloke I knew said it would fall to pieces. Watch the birdie, say I, Bob. Tell me mate, were you ever married?’
‘No, Joe. I’m afraid I haven’t had that good fortune yet.’ It was Joe’s sheer accuracy that Robert found so difficult. Joe was concerned