Maiden Voyage

FOURTEEN

A half-hour before the coastline of Ireland came into view, Harry Pakenow was sitting on the end of a crowded bench on shelter deck C, trying to compose a letter to Janice. In the note that he had left her on the kitchen table in Bootle, he had been blunt to the point a of cruelty. But he knew that if he had written what he truly felt for her, he would have found it five times more painful to go. When the Arcadia had sailed clear of Liverpool Bay, and the long hazy shores of England had finally merged into the sea, Harry had understood with a deep wave of unexpected grief how much he had actually loved Janice, and how much he was going to miss her. He had faced out to sea with tears clinging to the lenses of his spectacles, and his throat so tight with unhappiness that he could scarcely swallow.

Now he tried to write down what he had always failed to tell her, but it was more difficult than he could have imagined. "I love you" wasn't enough. What he needed was some way of expressing his gratitude for every one of her silly little jokes, and her childish kisses, and every plate of black pudding and bacon she had brought him. What could he tell her about those rainy Sunday walks through the cobbled streets of Bootle? What could he tell her about the evening she had danced the Charleston naked in the bedroom, little breasts bouncing, bead necklace swinging, bare toes stubbing on the threadbare rug?

Ordinary Janice Bignor. England was crowded with girls like Janice Bignor. Yet in her very ordinariness she had been cute and trusting and more lovable than Harry could have told anyone, ever.

He wrote,"... never in my whole life ..." but the wind snapped down the corner of his page, as if it didn't want him to attempt any more. Next to him on the hard varnished bench a grossly fat Estonian woman with a worn-out carpet-bag on her lap was steadfastly devouring a whole salami sausage as if it were an act of penance. Three Hungarian Jews with beards and long curly payess were playing violins and singing. But few of the third-class passengers were as poverty-stricken nor as ethnically colourful as they had been in the past, in the days of open immigration. This year's Johnson-Reed Act had cut America's immigration quota, already restricted, down to two per cent of the foreign-born population of the United States according to the census of 1890. The raised rear deck was promenaded not by Poles and Lithuanians but by college students, schoolteachers, priests, shop assistants, and members of the South Wales Glee Club.

Harry, as he sat on deck in his shabby tweed jacket and his tweed cap, his pants tucked into his Fair Isle socks, had the look of a typical steerage passenger. Like everyone else in third-class, he had paid 40 pounds return Liverpool-New York-Liverpool, although in his case he had only purchased a round-trip ticket as part of his alibi. Like everyone else in third-class, he shared a cabin with five others, enjoying the facilities of an upright foldaway wash-stand, two clean towels a day, and use of the third-class bathrooms at anytime at all. There were fifteen different foods on the third-class breakfast menu, including porridge, chopped chicken livers, and kippers. The days when the third-class steward of the Lusitania had reported to his head office in consternation that "quite a number of the third-class passengers ... inquired for sheets for the beds" were long gone.

Standing up against the freshening wind, Harry crammed the pages of his half-written letter into his jacket pocket. He was about to go inside for a drink when, as if in an odd dream, a small figure in a pink dress came sailing through the air from the rail of the first-class promenade deck above him, and landed on the white-scrubbed boards. He bent over and picked it up. It was a doll, with blonde ringlets and a rather sulky-looking china face.

Harry squinted up against the sun. Up by the first-class rail was a girl of about twelve or thirteen, in a pink cloche hat and an expensive pink coat with a fur collar. She waved to him, and he lifted the doll up in his hand. "I'll bring it back up to you!" he called.

He went inside, to the linoleum-covered stairway that led up to the second-class deck. A fat man was sitting halfway up smoking a pipe and reading My Golfing Life by the golf queen Glenna Collett. He shifted his bottom over as Harry came up the stairs, without once taking his eyes off his book. But Harry was just about to step through the open door that would have taken him onto the second-class deck when a snappy little steward with a clipped moustache blocked his way.

"Sorry, mate, you can't come up here. This is second-class."

Harry held up the doll. "A little girl dropped this from the first-class deck. I was only going to give it back to her."

"You're not allowed up here, I'm sorry. If you give the doll to me, I'll make sure she gets it."

Harry licked his lips. He felt that familiar breathlessness in his chest, the feeling he had felt when he had stowed the dynamite in Mark Beeney's limousine. And the same feeling he had felt when he had driven that horse-drawn wagon four years ago right up to the corner of Wall Street.

"I'd prefer to give it back personally, if you don't mind," he said.

"I'm not going to stay up there, and I'm not going to get in anybody's way. Now, will you let me through?"

"Not a chance," said the steward. "You think those folks in cabin class pay two thousand quid a trip to mix with riff-raff like you?"

Harry, furious, grabbed the steward by the lapels of his beige Keys jacket, and shook him. "You think you're any better than me, just because you're serving on a second-class deck? What's the matter with you?"

"You let go of me!" panted the steward, frightened. He swung his arms around like a windmill, and hit Harry on the shoulder, but both of them were too scared and excited to hurt each other much. They were still shoving and pulling at each other's clothes when Mr. Willowby appeared, a stately vessel in his own right, all watch chain and glittering vest buttons. He was leading by the hand the small pink-coated girl from the first-class deck.

"Anything amiss here, gentlemen?" he asked.

The second-class steward straightened his necktie. Harry, panting with anger, leaned back against the bulkhead, still clutching the doll.

"This bloody madman tried to force his way into second-class," gasped the steward. "He's mad! He shook me about all over the place!"

"Well, perhaps you deserved it," said Mr Willowby warmly. Then, to Harry, "You do realize, squire, that your third-class ticket does not entitle you to access to the second- or first-class accommodation? I mean, you do understand that?"

"I wanted to return this doll to the little girl," said Harry breathlessly. "That was all. Nothing more. And I object to being treated like some kind of sub-human species, just because I paid forty pounds for my ticket instead of two thousand pounds."

"The rules, squire, are the rules," said Mr Willowby. "And much as I sympathise with what you say, there is a rhyme and reason behind the rules. This shipping line aims to satisfy every one of its passengers, from first-class to third; and if we were to let the third-class passengers stray on to the first-class decks, then, well, they might glimpse more than they ought to of first-class life, mightn't they not, squire? And that would-hardly leave them satisfied, would it? Not having caviar and private bathrooms, for instance? So the things the third-class can't stretch to, we keep out of their sight, for their own well-being, don't you see?"

Harry slowly took off his spectacles. "Did I hear you right?" he asked incredulously. "Did you actually say what I thought you said?"

But the argument didn't go any further. The little girl in the pink coat was tugging at Mr Willowby's hand and pointing to the doll. "That's Margaret," she said excitedly. "He's got Margaret."

"Ah, yes," said Mr Willowby, staring at Harry with one of those official looks that meant, I'll know you again, chum, you just watch it. "The delightful Margaret who nearly got herself lost at sea." He held out his hand for the doll, and said, "Thank you, squire. The little girl's very grateful."

But Harry hunkered down in the doorway, on the dividing line between third- and second-class, and held the doll up so that the little girl could come and get it for herself. Mr. Willowby hesitated for a moment, but then released her hand and let her go.

She was petite and delicate, this little girl, with dark fashionably cut hair and brown eyes that were wide and solemn and almost too large for her oval, fine-boned face. She would either grow up plain or stunningly beautiful. But right now she still had that fey flirtatious magic that made some girls of her age seem to know things that they shouldn't, and started men thinking ridiculously forbidden thoughts.

She wore a three-strand pearl necklace and pearl earrings, and her fingernails were manicured and painted. Her pink velvet shoes had probably cost more than Harry had earned in three months with the Mersey Port Authority, and her perfume was light and flowery and eight guineas an ounce.

"Margaret hit her head when she fell," said Harry, gently. "I think you should maybe take her to the ship's infirmary, and have them put a plaster on it." He glanced up at Mr. Willowby, who rolled his eyes up in ill-disguised disgust.

The little girl took the doll and clutched it tight. "Thank you for saving her," she said, seriously. She had a strong Texas accent. "I'll ask Mrs. Hall to see that you're rewarded."

"Rewarded?" smiled Harry. "I don't want a reward."

"Well, maybe I could stand you a drink," said the little girl.

"You don't have to do that, either," Harry told her. "I'm just happy to see you and Margaret reunited. Will you tell me your name?"

"Yours first," the little girl demanded.

"No, yours first. You're the one who owes me the favour, remember?"

"Oh. Well, okay then. I'm Lucille Theodora Foster."

Harry took her hand and gently squeezed it. "Good to meet you. My name's Harold Janeck Pakenow. Are you from Texas?"

Lucille nodded, gravely. "My daddy was Winthrop Foster the Third. My mommy was Gala Jones."

Harry attempted an answer but couldn't. If he thought that leaving Janice was a tragedy, this little girl's loss by comparison was cataclysmic. It had been front-page news for almost a week during May, and it was still a hot item in some of the gossip sheets. He said, at last, "I'm sorry. It was dumb of me not to realise."

Winthrop Foster the Third had been one of the richest oilmen in the United States, his fortune challenging the Rockefellers and the Mellons. Last year, 1923, he had sent his beautiful wife Gala Jones, the one-time toast of Broadway, to spend eighteen months in Europe, taking their daughter Lucille with her. Gala was going to visit London, Paris, Vienna, and Rome, buying clothes, jewellery, and whatever antiques might suit the Foster houses in Houston, Chicago, and New York.

In May, however, Winthrop Foster had decided on the spur of the moment to leave the oil business in the hands of his deputies and join his wife and child for a two-week vacation. He had travelled incognito on the Mauretania, and planned his visit as a surprise. It was a greater surprise for both of them than he could have anticipated. He flung open the double-doors of Gala's suite at the Paris Ritz to discover her copulating on the carpet with the famous Italian racing-driver Giorgio Manciano.

Manciano had fled through the lobby of the Ritz in his white silk shirttails, but Winthrop Foster, after an initial argument, had appeared to take his wife's faithlessness as a model of stony acceptance. He hadn't beaten her, or even raised his voice to her, and for three days he had escorted her around Paris as if nothing at all were amiss.

On the fourth day, while Lucille stayed in the care of their American maids, Winthrop had taken Gala for a drive in the huge cherry-coloured Hispano-Suiza convertible which he had borrowed for his vacation from King Manuel of Portugal; and he had driven it at eighty miles an hour into the granite base of the statue of Emile Decize, an obscure French politician whose major claim to fame had been the invention of an unworkable tax system. Gala had been smartly guillotined by the Hispano's hood-cover, and Winthrop Foster the Third had died of internal haemhorrage.

So here was their ten-year-old daughter Lucille, a victim of her parents" fierce and unfaithful passions, travelling back to the United States to be cared for by trust funds and attorneys and reluctant relatives. So poised, and so sophisticated. A child brought up in the overheated atmosphere of wealth, fashion and celebrated affairs. A child to whom the aroma of real hide automobile seats and costly perfumes was more familiar than that of cotton candy.

Harry laid a hand on Lucille's shoulder, although he was conscious that Mr. Willowby was growing restless now, and about as short-tempered as the company rules would ever allow him to get.

"I read about your parents," he told her. "I guess you must miss them a whole lot."

"Mrs. Hall said it was fate."

"Fate? Is that what she called it? Do you know what that means?"

Lucille said, "Sure I do," but then she frowned in uncertainty.

Harry said softly, "Fate means when something was always going happen, whether you wanted it to or not. But you know something? People can change their own fate, whichever way they want to. I did when I was your age. I was poor, not like you. My mother had a hard time finding us enough to eat. But when I was your age, I promised myself that my life was never going to be like that."

"You're still poor, though, aren't you?" asked Lucille innocently. 1 "I mean, you're travelling steerage. Daddy used to say that steerage was the cattle market."

Harry wiped his face with his hand. Mr. Willowby said, "Come along, now, Miss Foster," but Harry kept his grip on her shoulder and said, "Money doesn't really matter, you know? It's not money that makes your life happy or unhappy. I'm happier than your daddy was, right? And that's because I know what I am, what kind of a person I am, and I know what my future is going to be. But your daddy and your mommy, they were in control of everything except themselves. They didn't take care of the most important thing in the whole world, which was themselves."

"I think that's enough, squire," said Mr Willowby, with no pretence at courtesy. He took Lucille's hand and tugged her away. Harry got to his feet, and tried to follow, but the thin-moustached steward barred his way with his arm.

"Just remember." Harry called. "Whatever you do from here on in, it's up to you. You take charge of your life. Don't let anyone else try to do it. And that goes for Margaret, too."

"Margaret?" asked Lucille.

"Sure," said Harry. "You and Margaret, you both have to decide for yourselves. And listen, if you want to talk some more, just lean over the rail and whistle."

"That's enough," said the steward roughly, and pushed Harry back with the heels of both hands. Harry, still smiling, all prickly hair and eye-glasses, jabbed the steward with two stiffened fingers, deep into his crotch. The steward exhaled loudly, and then stepped back a pace or two, panting, his face white.

"Never push me, all right?" said Harry, and made his way back down the stairway. The fat man with the pipe moved aside for him again without even lifting his eyes.

"Do you know something?" he said, as Harry reached the foot of the stairs. "That Glenna Collett was fantastic. A natural athlete. Yet she was licked by a grandmother—a sixty-year-old grandmother. Can you believe that?"

Harry paused. Then he said, "Yes, I think I can. I mean, today I saw a man trying to return a lost doll to a young girl, and being refused that small pleasure because he was short of 1,960 pounds."

The fat man didn't reply, but went back to his book as if it were the greatest revelation since the Book of Mormon. "Bobby Jones would've licked her," he muttered to himself.

Back on the third-class deck, Harry went to the rail and stared for a long time at the sea. Now and then, he turned around, shielding his eyes from the sun, to see if Lucille Foster was looking down from the first-class promenade. But there was no sign of her pink cloche hat, nor her pink coat, nor her pale sad face. Whoever Mrs. Hall was, she must have taken her charge further along the deck, out of sight of the riff-raff, or inside to her cabin.

He had no idea why he had felt such immediate liking for Lucille. She was wealthy, after all—a child of the filthy rich. She had blandly referred to the Arcadia's third-class passengers as cattle. But her social attitudes weren't really her fault: they were the only attitudes she knew. He supposed that if he had been brought up in swanky hotels in fashionable European cities, and never had to worry about money, then he might have grown to think the same way.

Maybe it was her aura of tragedy that moved him to respond to Lucille so immediately. Maybe it was the fact that, in the face of a lonely child, he had seen something that he had never quite wanted to believe before now: that the rich were human, too.

While he was leaning on the rail, a girl in a turban hat, a short blue skin and rolled-down stockings came up to him with an unlit cigarette perched in her fingers. Without a word, Harry took a box of Ship matches out of his pocket, struck one, and cupped his hands to protect the flame from the wind while the girl lit up.

"My name's Philly," the girl said, blowing out smoke. She was quite pretty, but she wore far too much make-up around her eyes, so that they looked like two bright blue marbles dropped into pots of black shoe cream. Even in the afternoon wind, Harry could smell her strong perfume.

"Philly from Philly?" he asked her. He couldn't help smiling at her; she was trying so hard to be a Scott Fitzgerald-type "vamp'.

"Philomena from the University of Minnesota," she said. She had a cute lisp which belied all her posturing as a campus vamp. "I'm just on my way back from fifty-five days in Europe."

"Good to meet you," said Harry, clasping her hand. "Did you learn anything?"

"I learned how abandoned the Europeans are. And I mean, abandoned."

" "Don't you think it's pretty abandoned coming up and asking a strange man for a light for your cigarette?"

Philly blinked. "What's abandoned about that? You're an American, aren't you?"

"I guess I am," said Harry. "My name's Harry, by the way."

"I think I'm tired of Europeans," said Philly. She kept her cigarette dangling between her lips while she took out her powder compact, bent down, and enthusiastically powdered her bare knees. "You can only take so much decadence, if you know what I mean. In fifty-five days, I've had decadence up to here. And I'm gasping for a decent malted milk. Not that I'm stuck on dairy produce, of course. I'd rather have a shot of giggle water any day. That's why we came back on a British ship. At least you can drink on a British ship."

"We?" asked Harry. He took off his spectacles and wiped them on his handkerchief. The salt in the wind kept misting them up.

"Hey, you look much nicer without your cheaters," said Philly, with a smile. "Mind you, I've always been a sucker for guys in glasses."

Slightly embarrassed, Harry put them back on again. "You said "we"," he repeated.

"Oh, yes—me and my girlfriend Lydia. She's gone back to the cabin right now to throw up. Lydia and the ocean never did get on."

"Poor Lydia."

"Hey," said Philly, "I could use a walk around the deck. Do you want to take me for a walk around the deck?

Harry shrugged, and then took her arm. "Okay. Which way round do you want to go? Clockwise or anticlockwise?"

Philly snuggled close to Harry's side as they crossed the shelter deck to the stairway which led up to the stern deck. She giggled, "Did you hear the one about the girl who said to her date, "Do you consider my legs long?" and do you know what he said, "Yes," he said, "whenever possible"."

Together, they circled around the stern deck, while the Red Ensign flapped and rumbled from its mast, and Philly chattered and pranced and told endless collegiate jokes. "Did you hear about the girl who was so dumb she always used to wonder how they got electric light poles to grow in a straight line?"

As they came around the deck for the third time, Harry glanced up at the rail of the first-class promenade, and there stood Lucille Foster in her pink fur-collared coat. She seemed to be searching for him amongst the crowd on the stern; and when she eventually caught sight of him, she gave him a quick and happy little wave. Harry, discreetly, waved back.

"Who are you waving at?" demanded Philly.

Harry squeezed her hand. "Just a friend," he told her.