‘Don’t like it here.’
‘Oh yes, you will, or I’ll knock you for six.’
He held her waist, fearful that she might fall, that she’d faint and never recover.
She hated him.
‘Why?’
And she hated him even more when he laughed, and said: ‘I owe you some sugar. I’ll repay every grain.’
Impossible to comprehend. He led her to the seat. She clutched the mug for warmth, and drank blackjack coffee, watching him. At the mirror he fastened cufflinks, adjusted his tie, and put on a jacket. A comb from his wallet went through hair around his head, though she didn’t see any.
‘A sailor likes to look spick and span.’
‘Sailor?’
‘First officer – but harmless. I only came on earth to stop you doing yourself a fatal injury. Thank God for what’s left of my sweet tooth.’ He spread a cloth, and opened sardines over the sink. Knives and forks were in order. Two plates of different shapes and colours drifted from a shelf. He cut bread, split cellophane from biscuits, and set the kettle wailing again. She forgot where she was, and what she’d done or had done to her. Why was she here, in another room? A man was putting a meal on the table in as quick and neat a way as she had ever been able to manage.
Rather mannish and thin-faced, there was something good-looking about her, except that her eyes were bloodshot and her face whitewashed. ‘Sorry there aren’t any flowers. No funeral today. Let’s go once more to the fresh-air box.’
She stood. ‘I don’t want to.’
But he led her. ‘After six good breaths, we’ll risk shutting it.’
He closed the door, slammed down the window. ‘Do you think you can sit at the table?’
She tried to speak while he lit the paraffin stove, but her chin rested on her chest, mouth open. ‘You’re not very good-looking like that, though.’
He gripped her arms and shook, held her up. She sat like a sack of onions, he said. ‘If you don’t feel well, let me know. Be a pity if you fell and broke an arm after all this – or chucked up over my best bed.’
She longed to sleep in her own room until death came, or the headache stopped. A fire rampaged behind her eyes. She sat upright, facing him. He fed her pieces of bread and butter. ‘Welcome aboard! The ship’s all yours – while we’re floating along.’
Coffee tasted like boiled straw. One minute she knew how she had got here, and the next she didn’t. She wanted to go to sleep and find out, and then to forget why she had. He’d prevent her because he liked tormenting people, as if she had done him harm (though if she had, she’d forgotten about any incident she’d been through with him in times gone past) and he wanted to make her pay. Like any man, he was unrelenting and unforgiving, and she resented him eating as if the effort of stopping her going to sleep when she wasn’t strong enough to fight back gave him an appetite. Then she remembered having lain down by the gas. Couldn’t say why. She bit into some bread. Wanted to go to sleep and find the answer, but would she get it?
He talked, seeing that she could not, and believing that silence would be the death of her. He told her who he was, and what he knew of his life. She wouldn’t remember. But he talked his snotty drivel, as if she were fully alert, to make her grey unseeing eyes stay open, to stop her head dropping into the borrowed sugar, and to help more food and coffee – however little – into her mouth.
When he handed her a corner of biscuit with cheese, she took it like someone with neither sense nor feeling, and ate as if she were made of glass and he could see the crumbs and flakes going down through her body, the ultimate state of shame and embarrassment like one of those dreams in which you were caught walking naked in the street. She wanted to hide from him who thought he could stare at her: just because she wasn’t able to respond for the moment. Didn’t like him. She floated as if she were drunk. She felt like a baby which, though hungry, wanted most of all to sleep.
Her nose ran. She couldn’t feel it. Her lips threatened to stop moving. He trembled for himself. How could a strong enough woman like this try to get off the world before it shot her loose in its own good time? There was no saying. Maybe only the strong ones did it. He wanted her to fasten her shirt but was too shy to do so or ask. There was gooseflesh on her white chest, and an odour of skin from the faintest swell which was visible. The only procedure he knew was to keep her going till she dropped. He felt he’d need more sleep himself after this, though supposed an hour’s dose of air in Holland Park would get him lively. The coffee and food fuelled his talk.
When her eyes flickered in acknowledgement of some half-lost phrase he wondered what was in her mind. ‘Are you feeling better now?’
‘Help me.’
He caught her before she fell. ‘You’ll be all right after a day or two.’
‘I shan’t.’
He wiped her face. ‘What’s your name?’
She leaned against him.
He was afraid. If she slept she would die. He’d been a fool in keeping her from a hospital. His instinct had guided him and had never let him down. But he wondered, and worried.
‘I want to sleep.’
‘I know you do.’
Her eyes flickered. For a moment she was awake. ‘What’s your name, though?’ he asked.
Her smile turned bitter by the downcurving of her lips. ‘Why do you want to know?’
‘Better and better.’ Perhaps knowledge goeth before a fall, but he wanted to hear her say it. That and everything else. ‘My name’s Tom, if it’ll make it easier for you. Everybody uses first names these days, no matter what the circumstances. I suppose we can do the same.’
He spoke now so as not to frighten her. She pushed him away. He threw coffee dregs in the sink. She watched him wash and dry the mugs. He’d forgotten her. He poured fresh coffee. If an unexpected wave hit the ship out of an apparently calm sea, the fact would register yet give no shock, but his hand twitched at the surprising clarity of her voice: ‘What’s in that box?’
He went to the table. ‘Drink some more. You must be bone-dry inside. I certainly am, and I only got a few whiffs.’
‘Beautiful box.’
He opened it and tilted it to show her. ‘A sextant.’
‘And the other?’
‘Drink something, and I’ll tell you.’
‘I’m not a baby.’
‘It’s a chronometer.’
She drank.
‘On a better sort of ship there’s what you call a Decca navigator. If you want to know where you are in the middle of the ocean you push a few pearly buttons, and get three lemons. Spot on, every time, though there’s no way to prove it. You take it on trust, like so much else. It’s like having God on tap. But I was lumbered with these magic boxes to work out my daily destiny. Six months more, and I’ll forget how I did it. You get your position by sun-stars-and-stripes across the firmament, up to your knees in books of tables and bits of paper. Sometimes there’s neither stars nor sun to be seen, and you can’t even get a position-line on Old Nick himself. You ask the radio operator what he can do, though every bearing costs the company a pound or two, so you can’t ask for too many. But he has a try, and you end up in a worse fix – unless like one of our blokes you believe in the God of Israel! We go by dead-reckoning, when we’re not dead drunk. O yes, it was a sailor’s life for me all right, but not any more. I’m fifty, fit, and out of it for good, with nowhere to go and nothing to do but enjoy every minute, if and when I can.’
She drank the mug dry. He passed a clean handkerchief. She could wipe her own mouth this time. His intention had been to walk the four parks to Trafalgar Square, then stroll along Piccadilly to look in the shops. But he couldn’t leave. He might tuck her cosily in bed, and no sooner was he out of the door than she would try the same stunt again. And he was in no mood to leave. He filled his pipe and lit it. ‘Feeling better?’