‘Tragic nothing,’ said Belinda crossly. ‘And Sandra nothing, too. You can see people more clearly when you’re away from them. Sandra looking lovely in black, as she thinks. Did you ever notice the dandruff? And I’ve got a new idea about Sandra. I think Sandra killed (ouch) Robert. I don’t think it was heart failure at all.’
Paul smiled indulgently. Fundamentally women didn’t really like one another; it always came out sooner or later. But of course there was this rash. ‘Such nonsense,’ he soothed. ‘You’ll feel better soon, pipkin.’ He stroked her forearm, smooth and tepid as a new-laid brown egg. The loveliness of so many women had breakfast connotations. Sandra’s hair, for instance: the faintest tang of distant frying smoked bacon, very choice. And this rash of Belinda’s (an appetizing word, somehow: rash, rasher, a rash for Russia), no better despite the painting or because of the painting, had a look of angry oatmeal.
‘I’ve been thinking a lot about Sandra,’ said Belinda, ‘lying awake with this pain. I don’t think it’s nonsense at all.’ Because it took her mind off the rash, Paul let her have her head, smiling. She sat up, her face vivid. ‘There was no post mortem or autopsy or whatever it is they have. Fit as a fiddle the night before, laughing in the pub, then—ouch.’ The jab of agony fitted in well there. ‘She takes him up a cup of tea in the morning, and then—ouch ouch.’
‘Perhaps the pain means it’s getting better, sweetest,’ said Paul. ‘Darkest before dawn.’ Here in the Baltic summer there was no real dark. Pushkin had written beautifully about the white nights of northern Russia; Paul had tried to read Pushkin on that RAF course.
‘It’s when it itches,’ said Belinda. ‘It will all come out some day. I’ve been thinking a lot about that, being away from it. Everybody comforting poor little sweet weepy kitteny Sandra, late war widow (ouch), her husband with his DFC and dicky heart after ten days in a dinghy or whatever it was. Cardiac failure, and nobody thinks to examine the dregs in the tea-cup.’
‘She called you in right away,’ said Paul. ‘You could have.’
‘I never thought,’ said Belinda. ‘One doesn’t do that sort of thing. She’d probably washed it, anyway. Very quickly. And, besides, she was supposed to be my friend.’
‘Still is. Surely. What can have gone wrong?’
‘She swore she’d send a postcard or something. She wrote it all down so carefully, the name of the boat and the addresses of the agencies and everything.’
‘But all that’s so minor, isn’t it? It isn’t as though we’re going to be away all that long.’
‘She’s a false friend,’ said Belinda. ‘And also a murderess.’
Paul couldn’t help smiling. Women were really such delicious creatures, and Belinda, pouting, her blue eyes wide, looked especially delicious. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘if she did murder him it wasn’t for his money. That’s quite certain. If he’d had any to leave we wouldn’t be doing this.’ Robert had done it the year before. A cinch, he’d said. Twenty dozen chemical fabric dresses bought wholesale at thirty shillings each, sold at fifteen roubles each to a certain P. V. Mizinchikov. Fifteen roubles at the unrealistic Gosbank rate was, say, six pounds. Total gross profit for Robert, say, one thousand and eighty pounds; net profit (deduct fare, subsistence, drinks and smokes) about one thousand. Mizinchikov’s own profit in that country bloated with cosmonauts, starved of consumer goods—well, that was his own affair. But a thousand clear profit wasn’t bad. The risks were nugatory; Russia was far more free and easy than, say, police-happy Britain. He was going to do it again this year. He’d died instead, in a bedroom full of drilon dresses. ‘Poor Robert,’ said Paul. ‘His heart was very bad. Nobody wanted to know, getting ready for the next bloody lot. The RAF,’ he said, with sudden English nastiness. ‘That wasn’t just something for British war films. It kept God’s Own Country safe for a couple of years to sell us ersatz pig-meat.’ The brief conventional anger whetted his desire.
Belinda, through long habit, let that slide over; Anglo-American bitching was really nothing but love-bites. ‘Sandra could get round anybody,’ she said. ‘Dear Sandra with her thweet lithp and that so cute finger in her mouth. I wouldn’t be lying here suffering if it wasn’t for Sandra.’
‘You’re far more attractive than Sandra,’ said Paul breathily. ‘She just isn’t in your class, pipkin. You’ve nothing to worry about there at all, my dearest sweetest angelic pumpkin-pie.’ Tumescence had become as easy as filling a fountain-pen. There the image ended. One got out of the habit. Ask any thirty-seven-year-old antique-dealer. One needed, say, a Saturday afternoon or Sunday morning to effect the necessary rehabilitation. But Saturday afternoon was a busy time—young married couples looking for door-knockers, older ones wanting warming-pans. And on Sunday morning Belinda and Sandra went to church together. Such good friends in a mere year of knowing each other, weekly church somehow sanctifying the friendship. It had been so nice, an old flying pal of Paul’s coming to live in the same town, starting his unsuccessful radio-and-television shop in the next street. They’d had such good fun, harmless Saturday-night larks in one car or the other, country-pub bitter (even gin occasionally, if one or other had had a good week) and kisses and cuddles with swapped partners, the sort of thing considered only decent among people of their class, educated shopkeepers. And now Robert’s war had caught up with him and he was dead and cremated; Sandra needed more than friendship.
‘This rash is a mess,’ snivelled Belinda. ‘I think it’s spreading. It isn’t the pain that worries me so much. Ouch. It looks so terrible.’ There it was again: Amherst, some Emily Dickinson girlhood nightmare. ‘What are we going to do if it goes on? We’re so far away from home.’ (‘Home’ too: nasalized, columbine.) She went on snivelling. ‘I’m sorry I ever came. And it’s all for her.’
‘It’s your bit of a holiday,’ said Paul firmly. His too. But they’d both been sea-sick while the ship was pointing north to Skagerrak. ‘Didn’t you enjoy Copenhagen?’ he asked. A gritty wind in the Tivoli Gardens, the noon cold, the Carlsberg warm. ‘Stockholm?’ A becalmed Lutheran Sunday, a sea-gull torpid on the head of Gustavus Adolphus. But now he had her, in her bunk with a rash. ‘My turkey,’ he said. ‘My living Thanksgiving.’ But he was shy. He said, ‘I think I’ll take a shower.’ They shared one, and a toilet, with the passengers next door, lugubrious Ukrainians given to midnight singing. Paul undressed very quickly and stood an instant, Western Sensual Man, in the porthole’s eye. Two Swedish blonde kittens passed, exquisitely clean, giggling; they did not look in. ‘Right,’ said Paul, bolder now. ‘The shower can wait till after. Make room.’
‘Isn’t that just typical of you? All these months, and then just when I’ve got this rash——’
‘That’s showbiz,’ said Paul flippantly. ‘That’s the way the cookie crumbles. Move over.’
‘But my rash. It hurts so.’
‘I won’t go near your rash. Pumpkin. Jumbo malt,’ said trembling Paul. ‘American beauty.’ They had not so litanized Opiskin. And then he remembered why he had shouted up for Opiskin. It had something to do with Robert. But now was not the time for following up that thought.
She said, lying there passive, ‘Right. You asked for it. Now then, I’ll show you what I want.’ She showed him.
‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Good God.’ It was something so acroamatical, so exotically tortuous a refinement, so remote from his liberal enough conception of a decently and considerately embellished (for he had taken trouble to learn; he had read the available literature) escalier to venerean ecstasy, that he took immediate fright. More, the vodka, the lemon tea, the rocky zephyr, asserted themselves in a new rôle; he didn’t feel at all well. Where had she got all this from? It couldn’t be from books, she didn’t read books, not even the erotica that sometimes appeared in job-lots at auctions. It could hardly be from mere talk. A fish of hardly conceivable size and ugliness shot up from the whirlpool and swam into his home waters to wallow. (Ugliness? But the fish had Robert’s face. No, that was wrong, that was st
upid.) He said, ‘Incredible.’ She said:
‘Oh, go away. Go on, get out. Beat it. Leave me alone.’ And she rolled on to her side away from him, groaning, trying to burrow into the bulkhead.
He sat naked on the edge of the bunk, shocked, puzzled, amused, shocked, intrigued, puzzled, jealous, disgusted, abashed. And for some reason the voice of a stranger came into his mind (a customer; he’d bought an ivory back-scratcher) saying, ‘A first-hand knowledge of the more efficacious modes of erotic stimulation.’ He turned to Belinda, full of wonder, but she’d pulled the sheet over her head.
He patted, wondering, the warm sheeted bundle at an arbitrarily selected spot and she shrieked, muffled, ‘Ouch!’ Then she appeared, naked and blazing, sitting up. ‘My rash, you goddamned idiot! Men are the clumsiest, most insensitive——’
The cabin-door, which Paul had forgotten to lock, swung open breezily and Yegor Ilyich stomped in. He was in charge of the first-class dining saloon but seemed to have no rank in the mercantile marine. Forbidden by the régime to be servile, he found a family relationship the only one possible with his passengers. So he could come bouncing in now without ceremony, grin with pleasure at his Uncle Pavel’s total nakedness, raise a finger at Belinda’s glowing torso and go ‘Aha’ as she disappeared under the sheet. He was babyishly handsome with a very red Stuart nether lip, his hair sleek with Brylcreem, smelling of Max Factor after-shave, his evening dinner jacket (he had one also for mornings) a well-cut Burton or John Collier. He was far too smart to be a good advertisement for Soviet Russia. As for the system, he seemed not really to understand it. He had shown Dyadya Pavel a photograph of his family round a Christmas crib; he had once performed, in the dining saloon, an obscene mime of Khrushchev, whom he called Bolshoi Zhevot or ‘Big Belly’; he thought sputniks and vostoks a waste of public money; the most notable achievements of the West he considered to be Gordon’s Gin, Princess Margaret, drip-dry shirts, stock-car racing, Mr Harold Macmillan. He now said, ‘Dinner ten minute. You dress quick,’ coming over to slap Dyadya Pavel’s bare thigh. He pulled the sheet down as far as Belinda’s shoulders and said, ‘You stay here doctor say. I bring you in cabin. What I bring? I bring red caviar, tin crab, oguryets in sour cream, black bread.’ While Paul drew on his underpants, Yegor Ilyich, very much a member of the family, opened up the clothes-cupboard and took from among the dresses a bottle of Soviet cognac. A couple of glasses he considered his visitor’s due. He poured generous slugs for himself and Paul, saying, ‘Your wife not drink. Doctor say always, “Nye kurit’ i nye pit’”: not smoke not drink. Us only.’ He clinked with Paul and toasted, ‘Za vashe zdorovye.’ Down it went, all of it.
‘Za vashe zdorovye,’ responded Paul.
‘Paul,’ said Belinda sharply. ‘I’m not having this.’
‘You not have. We have,’ said Yegor Ilyich with ready wit, refilling the glasses.
‘Za vashe zdorovye,’ toasted Paul. Down it went, all of it.
‘Za vashe zdorovye,’ responded Yegor Ilyich.
‘It’s the same every day,’ complained Belinda. ‘Just tipping it down. Do they think we’re made of money? Ouch.’
‘They do, they do,’ said Paul. ‘Za vashe zdorovye.’
‘Za vashe zdorovye.’ Three-quarters of the bottle had gone. Yegor Ilyich’s red nether lip shone brilliantly. He said, ‘We finish now,’ and drained the rest of the cognac into the two tooth-glasses, examining them with serious closeness to be sure the measures were equal.
‘A goddamn liberty,’ Belinda was saying. Yegor Ilyich beamed at that, fraternally handing Paul his portion, chucking the empty bottle into the wastebasket. He said:
‘Za vashe zdorovye. Bloody peace to world.’ He tipped it back and went, ‘Aaaah.’ His lower lip was a red wet fury.
‘Mir bloody miru,’ responded Paul. He felt an apocalyptical drunkenness climbing down by ropes from the roof to leap upon him, a team of heraldic apes.
Belinda was scolding, saying, ‘Utter disgrace.’
Yegor Ilyich began to box Dyadya Pavel vigorously but gently, dancing in nimble shining pumps. Paul said:
‘I’m not going to dinner. In one hour’s time bring dinner in here. Borshch. Cold sturgeon. Pancakes with sour cream.’
Yegor Ilyich winked grossly, performed a bar or two of his mime of Khrushchev-with-little-girls, leapt up in an entre-chat, touched up, humming, the wings of his bow-tie in the mirror, blew a fat smack at Belinda, then danced out.
Paul turned to Belinda and said, ‘Right. You’re going to have it my way. The roast beef of Old England for you, you effete Yankee bastard.’
3
HEIGHT THIRTY-FIVE THOUSAND. FIFTEEN MILES OFF TARGET area enemy night-fighters reported. A beam attack. Starboard engine on fire. Flak cut away a big chunk of port wing. Out of control (intercom dead, said rear gunner). Paul woke up startled to find himself naked and sweating on the red leather settee by the forward bulkhead. But they got home, Robert got home. And then he played his gramophone records (great heavy short-playing plates) lying fully clothed, his eyes glassy, on his bed: Brahms, Schubert, Schoenberg, Prokoviev, Opiskin, Holst, Bach, anonymous ancient plain-chant.
A measly utility ration of ship’s lighting was coming in from outside. The cabin was dim and sinister (it must be very late). Paul squinted at his wrist-watch, his only stitch of clothing (no matter how intense and parachronic the abandon, he never took it off. Had there been abandon? He couldn’t remember at all.) It was ten minutes to midnight. Good God. He looked across at the lower bunk and saw Belinda sleeping deeply, cosy in blankets, her face turned towards him. On the table was an untouched dinner: unleavened bread, red caviar, glazed hunks of sturgeon flanked by ranks of sour-creamed cucumber-wheels. Paul realized his grotesque thirst, then some knife-thrower saw that he was awake and threw dyspepsia at him. He craved something long, cold and gassy; the first-class bar closed promptly at midnight; he wiped himself down with a towel, dressed, combed his hair by touch, then left the cabin.
He need not have troubled to dress, he thought muzzily. The ship must have gone mad. Down the corridor a girl was mincing in high heels and nothing else. No, wait, she had some kind of white head-dress on. He followed her wagging bottom, hypnotized, to the end of the corridor. A fuller light broke on him there—the rococo stairhead, the wall-map with a snake of flame showing the ship’s route, the bar-entrance to starboard, to port the library (at present a shrine to Major Gagarin). Paul now saw that the girl wore a pink plastic skin from neck to toe and, with shock, that the head-dress was an improvised nun’s coif; round her wrist she swung rosary-beads, her other hand on her hip; she twitched and pouted. Laughter. Bewildered, Paul tried to take in the rest of the youth that stood around drinking, crowded out of the bar. It was a fancy-dress dance (of course; this was the last night of the voyage) and the motif of the costumes seemed to be anti-clerical—sheets for soutanes, blankets for monk’s habits, back-to-front collars above nightshirts and dirty pyjamas. The men mostly showed bare leg, one or two wore athletic supporters, faces were burnt-corked and lipsticked clownishly. Paul, excusing himself, fought his way through (girl-angels in underwear with wings of cardboard, now much battered; more obscene nuns; an austere mother superior with habit slit to the thigh; a drunken young man with his own beard and a wire halo, stigmata on hands that held a glass and a bottle). He pushed into the bar (a card said: ‘TONIGHT OPEN TILL ONE’) and to the counter. There was not one first-class passenger to be seen anywhere; the steerage-travelling students had taken possession. He crushed in between a youth with a cross painted on his bare back and a friar naturally greasy and mean-looking, saying, ‘Forgive me. A matter of urgency.’
The friar said, ‘Piss off, Opiskin.’
‘I beg your pardon,’ said Paul. ‘I didn’t quite …’
‘We was there,’ said the friar, in a Staffordshire accent. ‘We heard you sticking up for that bastard.’
‘Look,’ said Paul, ‘I only want——’
‘Yes?’ said the ba
rman, a large morose Mongol in shirt-sleeves. ‘What you want?’
‘Budvar beer,’ said Paul. ‘Very cold.’ The barman frowned. ‘Ochin kholodno,’ Paul translated. The students laughed. Paul was given a warmish bottle.
The barman said, ‘No glass,’ and shrugged.
‘Damn it,’ said Paul, ‘I’m a first-class passenger. I have certain rights….’
The students laughed. The student with a cross on his back said, ‘You’re just not with it, dad. This is the classless society.’
‘Is it?’ Paul emerged breathless from a warm but lifesaving swig. ‘That doesn’t seem to be reflected in the fare differentials.’ The healing aeration was (arrrrr) at its work; he smiled nervously; there were a lot of these atheistical louts around; he would buy another bottle, but this time to take away. The Staffordshire friar-lout said:
‘Them fooking bourgeois jaw-breakers.’ And then, to someone behind Paul’s back, ‘Miss Travers, here’s this pal of Opiskin’s.’
Paul wiped from his cheek the wash of the two powerful plosives, then turned to see a scrawny woman in very late youth (a lecturer, presumably) who was ready for him, a mad eagerness behind her glasses. Here was real obscenity: the thin bare mottled pimpled legs, hairy on the inside, not the man’s dirty shirt pied with smears of lipstick, the panel of a mock soap-powder carton slung from her neck with a string, its legend: ‘LAMZBLUD, Wonder Washer, 3d off Large Pkt’—that was just pathetic and vieux jeu. In a Manchester accent Miss Travers said:
‘So it’s you, is it? Comrade Korovkin was really upset. He had to lie down after dinner. He couldn’t come and play the piano for the dance. He took a lot out of himself. The feeling is’ (students in blasphemous dress were crowding behind her, their mouths open; she evidently had a large reputation for something) ‘that that sort of thing doesn’t really help to foster good relations. They are, after all, our hosts.’