Maiden Voyage

THIRTY-TWO

Monty Willowby found Harry Pakenow in the corner of the third-class bar, still nursing his glass of lemonade, his face as grey as a crumpled-up copy of the Daily Mirror. Beside him, her cheek resting on the sticky surface of the table, snoring harshly, was a cheap and pretty young college girl, with blotted lipstick. It was Philly, exhausted by seasickness and French brandy and a whole night of enthusiastic sex. She was dreaming that her next-door neighbour from back home in Minnesota, bald and fifty-five, was scooping vanilla ice-cream between her naked thighs. She often had dreams like that.

Harry, however, was dreaming of nothing. He was beyond seasickness, beyond exhaustion, beyond the class struggle and the international rights of the oppressed proletariat. He was staring at a framed photograph of Their Majesties on the opposite bulkhead, and waiting for the voyage to end. By whatever gods to whom it was necessary for a Marxist revolutionary to pray, please let it end.

"Hullo, it's Mr Pakemoff, isn't it?' said Monty, trying to be cheery. "Enjoying the ups and the downs, are we? Having a sociable time?"

Harry adjusted his spectacles and frowned at Monty blearily. "Oh, great," he said, in an accent that was far more Liverpudlian than New Jersey. "I can't remember when I've ever liked throwing up quite so much. Really great."

Six or seven third-class passengers were crowded around the bar, singing intermittent choruses of "Yesh, Shir, That'sh My Baby" in that strangled off-key warbling of the hopelessly drunk. One of them, with the collar of his green tweed jacket turned up, was trying to tell the others what his wife had said when they had bought their new three-piece sitting-room suite on "easy payments"—which was the latest and most popular way for working-class people to furnish their homes.

"She said—do you know what she said—she said, 'Do you know something, Wally? Only two more payments and the furniture's ours. Then we can throw it out and get some new stuff'!"

Nobody laughed much. Everybody had heard the joke before on the wireless. They had also heard the one about the new parents who had been paying their doctor's bill on the "never-never". "Only one more payment, dear, and baby belongs to us!"

Monty said to Harry Pakenow, "Do you mind if I sit down, squire? You see, I've got a bit of a problem."

"What's that? Piles?" asked Harry expressionlessly.

Monty managed a twitchy little smile. "We had a bit of a misunderstanding, you and me, the other day. Over that doll business."

"Oh. Misunderstanding, was it?"

"Well," grunted Monty, easing himself down on the settle next to Harry, and tugging at his cuffs, "the truth is that I have to stick to company regulations, even when I don't particularly feel they're necessary. One rule for everybody, don't you know? Otherwise, there'd be chaos."

"You told me. Regulations like, keep the champagne and the caviar of sight of the steerage, or they might start to get restless, and take over the ship."

"Well, squire, just my little joke," said Monty. "But the truth is, we need a bit of help."

"You need help from me?" asked Harry, running his hand through his prickly hair.

"Not me personally, you understand," Monty told him. "But it's that little girl Lucille Foster. She's stuck up a crane, you see, and she won't come down."

"She's stuck up a what?"

"A crane. You know the ones I mean. The ones we use for winching stuff on board. It seems like she climbed up, for some reason or another, and now she won't come down. And in this kind of weather, we can't reach her."

"Has she said why she's up there?' asked Harry, concerned, but still confused by his sickness.

Monty shook his jowls. "Too windy. Can't hear. Besides, I don't think she'd tell us in any case."

"Well," said Harry, "what do you want me to do?"

"You've made a friend of her, haven't you? Saved her doll, and all that. And didn't I see you talking to her just this morning on the after poopdeck?"

"We've talked, yes," admitted Harry. "But that's about all. I don't know whether she thinks that I'm a friend of hers or not. All she wanted to do this morning was pay me a fiver for rescuing Margaret, and ask me what my politics were. I think she finds poor people like me to be a curiosity."

"But you'll come and help us to get her down?"

"I suppose I'll have to."

"No suppose about it, squire. If we don't get her down soon, she's is going to fall down. She might have fallen down already, while you're sitting here discussing it and making up your mind."

Harry rubbed his unshaven chin. He hadn't been back to his cabin to wash or change since the German salesman in the bunk below had vomited porridge and half-chewed bratwurst all over his own chest. Harry thought that his own seasickness was disgusting enough. Other people's was stunning. It was only during a storm at sea that you realised that there had to be limits to human comradeship, even for enthusiastic Communists.

"We'd better hurry, then," he said, and squeezed out from behind the table.

"Your young lady's all right?" asked Monty, nodding at Philly.

"Oh, sure," said Harry. "She just had a little bit too much of everything.'

Monty buttoned up his coat, and pulled a face. "Don't know what's the matter with young girls today. Wasn't like that in my day, and I can tell you that for nothing. In my day, a chap at least had to ask."

"Times change," muttered Harry, and then said, "Which way?"

"Up the stairs, I'm afraid. Lifts aren't used in bad weather, in case they jam."

They reached the second-class promenade deck, where a steward bustled Harry into a black oilskin and a black waterproof hat. Then Monty Willowby pushed him out through the door into the storm, and across to the rail where Derek Holdsworth, Mark Beeney, and Catriona were all trying to shout and wave encouragement to Lucille.

Harry was completely unprepared for the noise and the violence of the sea. He stood for a moment rigidly clutching the rail, the brim of his hat lowered against the splattering spray, his shoulders hunched against the wind. He had never seen nature in such a catastrophic temper, and for the first time in his life he actually felt frightened. It was the feeling of helplessness that alarmed him so much: the feeling that, no matter how important and historical he considered himself to be, the wind and the sea would pluck him off the Arcadia's deck and drown him just as contemptuously as anyone else.

"Is this the man?" Mark Beeney yelled at Monty Willowby.

"That's right, Mr Beeney, sir! Mr Pakemoff!"

"Pakenow!" Harry shouted out.

"What?" asked Mark.

"Never mind," said Harry. "Where's the girl?"

Mark gripped his shoulder and pointed to the far end of the crane's jib. "You see her?" Harry stared and blinked and then nodded.

Mark shouted, "We have to coax her down to the lower end of the jib. We should be able to reach her then."

Harry was conscious of someone else standing beside him, and turned around. It was a tall girl in wet oilskins and boots. Even through the wind and the spray he could catch that faint whiff of expensive perfume that means money, and heaps of it. Under her drooping sou'wester the girl was remarkably pretty, with slightly slanted eyes and a full-lipped mouth. It took a very rare beauty to be able to look feminine and desirable in an oversized oilskin.

"Tell her we understand how she's feeling," said the girl. "Tell her she mustn't give up."

Harry looked questioningly at Mark, who said, "Oh, this is Miss Keys. Catriona, this is Mr. Pakemoff."

"I'm glad you could come up,' said Catriona in her clipped London accent. "We don't know how much longer she can hold on."

"You're Miss Keys of Keys Shipping?" asked Harry.

Catriona nodded.

"Right, then," said Harry. He couldn't think what else to say, especially to such young and exalted capitalists as these. He knew Mark Beeney, of course; he had seen his photograph in the newspaper dozens of times. But the few pictures he had seen of Catriona hadn't prepared him for anyone so pretty and alluring. He felt suddenly shabby and out of place, and he wished he had been able to shave. And yet, damn it, why should he? He was just as good as either of these two; and whatever monuments to selfish wealth they could build up, he could just as readily tear down again.

"Can you get me a loud-hailer, please," he asked, wiping rain and snot away from his face with the back of his hand.

"A loud-hailer, Mr. Holdsworth!" called Mark Beeney.

Catriona said, quite sharply, "How did you manage to get to know someone like Lucille Foster?"

"Is it so surprising that I should have done?" asked Harry. Then he shrugged, and said, "Yes, well, I suppose it is. Different walks of life, and all that."

"Mr. Willowby said something about you saving her doll."

"That's right. It, er—well, it blew off the deck. I caught it and brought it back to her, that's all. Well, I tried to bring it back, but you know what the rules are. I wasn't allowed past the third-class entrance. No cross-fertilisation, by order."

Catriona looked at him carefully. He was good-looking in a scruffy, boyish way, and he reminded her of some of the young actors she had met when she was living with Nigel. Awkward, sarcastic, talented young men in their early twenties; already bitter about the unfairness of a world which seemed to be indifferent to their abilities, and yet still energetic enough to keep on railing against it, and keep on trying. Harry Pakenow hadn't yet reached the brink of the waterfall, where aggressive bitterness tips over into unrelieved defeat.

She thought she rather liked him. In those spray-speckled glasses, he looked studious and cute. The kind of boy you take home to meet your parents and who makes a tremendous hit with your mother, although your father doesn't care for the potatoes in his socks and the way he refers so disparagingly to Stanley Baldwin.

"Hey, Catriona, look!" shouted Mark. "The girl's waving! Look, she's waving!"

Everybody looked up towards the jib of the crane, shielding their eyes against the wind. And sure enough, like the flapping arm of a rag doll, Lucille Foster's arm was waving slowly backwards and forwards. Over the doleful moaning of the wires, Catriona could hear the word "Harry," and then again, still faint, but more distinctive than before, "Harry."

"Harry?" she asked Harry. "Is that your name?"

Harry swallowed. For some ridiculous reason, he felt suddenly drowned in sentimental feelings. He wiped his nose again, and cleared his throat, and then gave Lucille a wave with both of his arms, and shouted, in a voice which caught in the middle, "Lucille! It's me! Come down!"

Lucille kept on waving, and then they heard the snatched-away word "Can't." And then, "Can't come down."

Harry turned to Catriona. "She's stuck up there," he said, seriously. "Someone's going to have to climb right up there and get her."

Derek Holdsworth arrived with the loud-hailer. Mark said, "Mr. Pakemoff here says the girl's stuck. We're going to have to climb up and get her loose."

"Pakenow," said Harry.

Mark said, "What?"

Derek Holdsworth looked unhappy. "I was hoping she could climb down by herself," he said. He had a thin triangular face, and a large nose, under which a small moustache clung like a smudge of coal dust. He could have been a very young Eugene O'Neill. He certainly shared O'Neill's intense and worried expressions.

Harry took off his sou'wester. His spiky hair was already wet, and stuck to his scalp. "The sooner we get started, the sooner we'll get her down," he said. "That line you've tied round the lower end of the jib there, can you get the other end up here, onto this deck?"

"Well, sure," said Mark. "But we've already tried to swing across to the crane from here. In fact, it was Douglas Fairbanks who tried, and if Douglas Fairbanks can't do it—"

Harry sniffed and took off his glasses. "Do you think you could just, you know, do it?" he asked.

Mark stared at him and then at Catriona and then at Derek Holdsworth. "All right," he said, "if that's what you want. Mr Holdsworth?"

"If that's what he wants," shrugged Derek Holdsworth.

"By the way," said Harry, lifting up his oilskin so that he could wipe his spectacles on his trousers. "The name is Pakenow, pronounced Pak-eh-nov. All right? Not Pack 'em off."

"Sure," said Mark, distractedly. He was used to dealing with employees.

The line which Douglas Fairbanks had used for his ill-fated attempt to swing across to the crane's upright was hurled up from the deck below to the second-class promenade. Harry told Derek Holdsworth to lash it fast to the railing; and then without any posing or delays, he climbed over the railing and started to monkey-swing, hand over hand, from the promenade to the crane.

Several times, the Arcadia heeled over so violently that he had to hold on tight, and wait until the roll was over. But it took him less than a minute to reach the crane, and once he was there, he fastened his legs around its wet steel upright, waited for a moment to catch his breath, and then started to climb up to the joint where the jib connected with the main pillar. Catriona watched him in fascination. It seemed as if his determination that something had to be done to rescue Lucille Foster had completely overcome the fact that it was impossible. He hadn't even asked how they had tried to rescue her before. He didn't need to learn by anybody else's mistakes.

Soon Harry was astride the jib, and working his way up to the pulleys where Lucille was crouching. He was soaked, and he was sweating, but as he shuffled his way up the twenty-degree angle of the precarious jib, he felt more determined and more excited than he had for years. And there, clinging to the tip of the crane, drenched in spray, shivering with cold, was this unhappy little rich girl who hadn't been able to befriend anybody on board the Arcadia except him. It took him about ten minutes to climb right up to her. She was wet and bedraggled, and her lips were mackerel-blue with cold. When he reached out for her, and grasped her chilly little hand, she shuddered and shook and burst into tears.

"Lucille," he shouted, in the gentlest shout he could manage. "Lucille, I love you."

She sobbed and she shivered and she couldn't stop. Harry hadn't seen a face so vulnerable, a face so injured, since the funeral of a labour leader in Queens, in 1919, when the dead man's daughter had knelt by his coffin and silently expended her grief in half an hour of tears. Grief, dammit, was classless. Because this girl Lucille, who was richer than anybody he had ever known, richer than all hell, was as desolate and as lonesome as that labour leader's daughter, and younger, too. And for the first time in his life, Harry began to wonder what the hell it all meant, all this class struggle, all this bombastic oppression, and all this talk of revolution. The repudiation of both capitalism and Communism was right here, to be caught in the open palm of an understanding hand. The answer to them both was tears.

"Lucille," said Harry, clutching her tight. "What the hell are you doing up here?"

"I climbed," she bleated.

"In a storm like this, you climbed?"

"It wasn't so bad when I first climbed up. But then it got worse, and I was frightened."

"I'm not surprised," said Harry. "I'm frightened now. Do you see that sea out there? That's rough!"

"I wanted to die," said Lucille, miserably. "I was going to throw myself off into the ocean."

"Are you really as sad as all that?"

Lucille's shoulders, in Harry's arms, seemed as frail and bony as an injured bird's. "I don't know," she said. "I thought that if Mommy and Daddy were in Heaven, I could join them. I can't bear being left behind."

Harry said, "Lucille, there isn't any Heaven. Your mommy and daddy are gone. They lived their lives, they enjoyed themselves, and they loved each other. But now they're gone. Do you see what I'm getting at? That's why we don't want you to throw yourself into the ocean, because then you'd be gone too, and you wouldn't have lived even half the life your mommy lived, would you?"

Lucille said, "I'm so unhappy."

"Of course you're unhappy," Harry told her. 'You've lost your mommy and your daddy, and that's absolutely the unhappiest thing that could have happened to you. But what do you think your mommy would have said if she could have seen you now? 'Lucille!', she would have said, 'come down off that ridiculous crane at once!' Your mommy loved you, Lucille. Your mommy was Gala Jones, and she was famous. She wouldn't want you to die, not for anything. How is anybody ever going to remember how beautiful and how nice she was, if you don't stay alive to tell them?"

There was a long silence between them, two or three minutes. Lucille clutched Harry tight, and the spray blew around them as they sat on their precarious perch, like flecks of snow. Harry thought of the words he had read in Bootle Public Library, one rainy afternoon when Janice had gone to see her mother. "And we forget because we must, and not because we will." He didn't know who had written them. Someone who had been obliged to cling on to the realities of real life, like he had.

"Are you going to come down now, chuck?" Harry asked Lucille, in that soft encouraging tone that fathers in Liverpool could use with their daughters.

Lucille said, "My dress is caught in the wires."