The Ecliptic (24 page)

The talk in the first-class lounge was all about ‘this business’. Five men in dark flannel suits, whose faces were so similarly tapered I expected they were
brothers, were constellated on the club chairs near by, turning through
The Ocean Times
and debating the articles of the day. Their wives were elsewhere on the ship (I heard mention of a
bridge game somewhere on the promenade deck, a concert happening in the cocktail bar) and the five of them, it seemed, were damned if they were going to pass up the opportunity to converse about
men’s matters over afternoon Tom Collinses
.

First, there was the bantering about ‘this business with the Pioneer satellite’ and how it proved that the American space programme would be nowhere without the help of British
engineering. Then it was ‘this business with the train crash’ and how, in their glib assessment of the tragedy, such accidents ought hardly to be possible in a place as vast as
California, where surely there was enough land for rail and road to never intersect. I could not decide what bothered me more: the ignorance of these men or their total lack of courtesy towards
other passengers. Even the drone of the ship’s engines—that incessant rumble I had still not learned the skill of tuning out—was preferable to their chirruping and complaining:
‘You’d think they’d have laid on something better than the Archie West Trio, wouldn’t you?’ one of them said. ‘We heard all the same acts last year,’ said
another. ‘Getting a bit tired of the Verandah, too.’ ‘That whole place is looking tired.’ ‘Oh, absolutely.’ ‘I wish they’d stop trying to foist that
onion soup on us at breakfast, as if it’s such a bloody wonder of creation.’ ‘Oh, good heavens, yes.’ ‘Probably the same batch they’ve been feeding us since
’55!’ ‘Certainly tastes like it.’ ‘Ha-ha-ha.’

I hoped the purser or a steward might come along to quiet them, but the lounge was fairly empty and the crew were otherwise engaged. It was easier to move to a different spot. There were plenty
of other rooms where I could sit and finish my book. And if I could not find the peace to lose myself in reading, I had a brochure’s worth of ‘on-board facilities’ to distract me
from my troubles: swimming pools and restaurants and a cinema showing
Gidget
, all of which I would have traded for a single hour of painting in my dingy Kilburn studio.

I had already tried the smoking room: too much chatter in there, and not much oxygen. The library had suited me just fine, until the pitching of the ship began to make the books slide fore and
aft along the shelves, giving me a dose of seasickness. I had gone to ward it off in the salon before the crew manager arrived to direct the preparations for the evening’s cabaret dance and
everything got noisy again. The ship was over a thousand feet long—‘a floating city’, according to Dulcie. It had thirteen decks and enough cargo space to hold the luggage of two
thousand passengers. So how was it that I could not find a single place on board where I felt comfortable?

It did not help that Dulcie had arranged a suite for me, when I had asked for a much simpler room in cabin class. We were sailing to New York because she was terrified of aircraft (‘A
hangover from the Blitz,’ she said) and I agreed to go with her because I did not trust myself to fly alone. The gallery was covering our expenses. Dulcie claimed that she would only sail
first-class on someone else’s shilling, so she booked two of the dearest rooms the
Queen Elizabeth
had available. Thanks to her, I was committed to spending the entire voyage in the
company of wealthy cruisers I would never have spoken to by choice: tiresome New Yorkers returning from family weddings in ‘charming little towns’; well-dressed London couples with an
appetite for exaggerating the splendours of the ship’s decoration (‘We haven’t seen another tapestry quite like it—and so many exotic woods! We’ve been bowled
over!’); obnoxious men of industry who slurped their gimlets and left shrimp-tails on the tabletops. Everywhere I turned, I saw haughtiness and self-absorption, and heard the sneering tones
of people who reminded me of Wilfred Searle.

I had found no respite at all since leaving Southampton. My suite was the only place on board where I had total privacy, but this presented its own problems. The room was dwarfing and
elaborate—so grand that the bedcovers were made of a fabric more decorous than the evening gowns Dulcie had loaned me for the trip—and, although I slept well enough each night, I could
not settle there in the daytime. It was not that I pined to be down in tourist class where I belonged, because sailing the Atlantic was a much less poetic experience than Melville had led me to
believe, and I was very glad to be away from the cramped quarters of the lower decks. In fact, the suite afforded so much shelter from the goings-on about the ship that it made me jittery,
vulnerable to my own thoughts.

If I could not see the movements of the other passengers, or sense the quiet workings of the crew around me, it was hard to maintain perspective. Alone, my problems smothered me and I grew so
dismayed with myself that I could not pass my own reflection in the mirror without wanting to destroy it. I drank cups of pennyroyal tea with honey, and soaked for hours in a bathtub that never
quite got hot enough, silently composing telegrams I did not have the courage to wire back to England:

Leaving the men to scrutinise
The Ocean Times
, I went out to stretch my legs awhile, going up and down the promenade deck until I got weary. It proved difficult to go ten yards without
having to side-step a meandering old lady, or skirt around a steward undertaking some fresh errand. I stopped at the guardrail for a moment to breathe in the air. The grey Atlantic swathed the
hull. The soft seam of the horizon was too vast to comprehend. It occurred to me that I was as far from Clydebank as I had ever been in my life, that I was sailing first-class on a ship my own
father had helped to build in the John Brown & Company yard. He would have smiled at the thought of me now, being kept afloat by joints he and his friends had caulked, but I did not feel proud.
I wanted the ocean to swallow me whole.

A part of me believed I would find Jim Culvers hiding in New York. I tried to tell myself that I would have made this trip regardless, and that any dreams I had of chancing upon Jim and his
sister in Washington Square Park were not a factor in my decision. When people on board asked my reasons for travelling, I said that I was going to meet the owners of the art gallery that
represented me. Invariably, this would lead to the question of how much money my paintings sold for, as though it were the defining credential of any real artist. Dulcie would often interject at
this point; but, in her absence, I would say, ‘Enough to travel first-class,’ and this would prompt them to confess they were embarrassed not to know my name. People would have been
less enamoured of the truth, I suspect, which is why I never told it. The fact was, I had not finished a single piece of work since that awful night I spent with Wilfred at the Connaught, and had
felt so anxious about painting since his
Statesman
piece was published; therefore, an exhibition of new work—be it in London or the depths of Siberia—was a very distant
prospect.

I had only made the trip on Dulcie’s insistence. ‘You need a change of scenery,’ she had told me. ‘Go and travel round Europe for a month, see some things, take a few
pictures, meet a few men. Get that imbecile out of your mind. Or better still—’ One of the founders of the Roxborough, Leonard Hines, was looking at potential sites for a sister gallery
in Manhattan. ‘Len’s got some ridiculous idea that I should run the place for him. I keep saying I don’t have time to gallivant across Midtown, sizing up locations, but he’s
been getting rather adamant lately. We should go together—I need a good sailing companion, and he needs to get better acquainted with your face. It’ll do us both some good.’ I
would not have considered going anywhere with her except New York; the faint hope that Jim was lurking in its midst had never left me. And I knew that seeing him was the only thing that could rid
my heart of Wilfred’s strangle-marks.

Desperate now for peace and quiet, I took the stairs up to the sun deck. It was a warm day and the cheerful wives of first-class were out on the terrace. As I scouted for a table, passing
sunhats and bare shoulders, I realised there was no comfort to be found amongst these women either. I could not sit listening to their appraisal of the entertainments bulletin: ‘Gordon Cane
and his Orchestra—quarter to four in the lounge. I’m game for it if you are, Lucy. Unless you’ve other plans?’ I did not even interrupt my stride, just walked a perfect loop
around the terrace, back downstairs, gripping my damp copy of
Below the Salt
.

There was nothing left to do but head up to the racquet court. For the past three afternoons, Dulcie had been competing in the ship’s squash tournament. She was an avid player—a fact
she had surprised me with early in the voyage, when she had come to my door wearing a bright white tracksuit with a towel tucked inside the collar. She claimed that everyone had to have a reliable
form of exercise unless they wanted ‘to stroke out in their fifties’, and explained that squash was ‘sort of an art form in itself—the only one I’m any good at,
anyway’. The standard of the competition on board was low by all accounts, and Dulcie had advanced through the early rounds with ease, giving me a shot-by-shot report of every set she played
in the Verandah Grill at dinnertime. Today’s match, however, was a tricky semi-final (her words) against a woman she knew from her old racquet club in Mayfair. ‘Amanda
Yail’—she had announced the name with a slight tremor. ‘Beat me last year at the Open, second round, then got smashed off court by Heather McKay in the next. I must have missed
her on the passenger list. It’s going to be a long old match.’ I had never heard Dulcie sound so unconfident, which led me to suspect that she did not want me there to cheer her on.

As I went up the steps to the viewing gallery, I could hear the rhythmic pop of rubber against walls, the skid of sports shoes. I had never seen a squash match in my life and did not understand
how one was played, or how to follow it as a spectator. When Dulcie used phrases like ‘the nick’ and ‘counter drop’ and ‘short line’ in her summaries, I would
nod as if I knew exactly what she meant. She had a certain skill for describing the to-and-fro of her matches and it seemed rude to interrupt her. I envied this gift of Dulcie’s, in
fact—she could find enthusiasm for the most tedious of things and bestow it unto others through sheer force of will.

The viewing gallery was empty, but for one man standing at the railing with his son. I was going to ask for the score, but then it struck me that the proper etiquette might be to wait for a
break in play, so I held back. ‘Daddy,’ the child said, staring at me. ‘Do we have to move our things now?’ He was not quite tall enough to see over the top rail—a boy
of seven or thereabouts, all buttoned up in a stiff Oxford shirt and trousers pulled too high over his waist. The balcony was smeared with his handprints; he was in the throes of driving his Dinky
cars over the glass in slow figures-of-eight. His father hummed. ‘Huh, what?’

‘For the lady. She wants to sit down.’

‘Which lady?’

The man turned. He was what Dulcie liked to call ‘a studious fellow’, meaning he was bearded and bespectacled and not especially handsome. He had hair that thinned on top and greyed
around the edges. His jacket was slung over his left arm like a waiter’s cloth. It had not been apparent right away, but now I could see that his attention was on something other than the
court. He was wiping a leaky fountain pen with a handkerchief. Blue ink marred the fabric of his shirt—a jagged island right below his nipple. ‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘just a
moment.’ He finished cleaning off the pen and carried it to the chairs behind me.

I told him not to worry. ‘Really, I’m better off standing.’ But he seemed intent on clearing his belongings, as though they were in some way humiliating. There was a briefcase
full of dog-eared folders and a few of the child’s toys were scattered on the seat—plastic soldiers, horses and artillery; a tin rocket with chipped-off paint. The man snapped the case
shut and began to collect the toys rather hurriedly. ‘Come and help,’ he told the boy. ‘Put them in your pockets.’

‘It’s fine,’ I said. ‘Don’t move anything on my account.’

‘No, no, we shouldn’t be acting like we own the place.’ He carried on gathering the soldiers. ‘Jonathan—come here! Excuse all this,’ he said. ‘My wife
hates it when I do paperwork on holiday. Have to steal these moments when I can.’ His son just drove his little car along the glass, ignoring him. ‘Don’t pretend you didn’t
hear me, son. Do you want that cream soda we talked about or not?’

The boy came trudging over. Before he could reach his father, though, a cry rose up from the court. Dulcie was stretched out on her side, having lunged to reach a dropping ball, and her opponent
was exalting in the glory of a shot well hit. Dulcie kept slapping the floor with her palm. The man rushed back to the railing. ‘What happened? Did you see?’