Every Man for Himself - Beryl Bainbridge [28]
‘From that I gather he’s made his usual impression.’ He stared at me, as if trying to make up his mind. ‘I knew him many years ago in France,’ he said. ‘He’s an interesting man . . . if dangerous.’
‘Dangerous!’ I said.
‘I had reason to ask his advice and he gave it to me.’
‘It was bad advice?’
‘On the contrary,’ he said, ‘it was almost certainly good. But I failed to take it.’ With that, he wished me goodnight.
Melchett and Hopper had found George in the Veranda Café. He wasn’t coming with us but it was all right by him if we wanted a peek at the Lanchester.
‘Molly’s picked up some bounder who owns a canning factory in Chicago,’ explained Hopper. ‘George feels he ought to stay and keep an eye on her.’
Melchett was watching me like a hawk but I couldn’t help myself. ‘I would have thought either Wallis or Ida could do that.’
‘Ida would probably hand her over, if asked,’ Hopper said. ‘And Wallis isn’t there.’
We went first to the purser’s office and filled out a form authorising our entry into the hold. Hopper had to dash back and get George’s signature. Alighting from the elevator on the lower level of G deck we passed along the same route taken by Riley the day before. The heat was tremendous, more so than I remembered, and we walked to the constant vibrating thrum of those hidden, magnificent engines. There was nobody in the cubby hole that served as the baggage office, the man in charge having left his post. We hung on because the kettle on the stove was jiggling to the boil. When at last he did appear he seemed put out at our being there and even had the insolence to suggest we come back in the morning. Hopper put him in his place.
We had to clamber down vertical steps into the hold below. Though a dozen or more switches had been snapped on before our descent, the place was eerily lit, the electric filaments flickering like starlight. We were now below the water-line and the air was filled with ominous creaks and groans and an irregular pinging sound half-way between a tuning fork and the plucking of a violin string. There were two motors, tethered side by side, an ancient Wolseley which Hopper claimed belonged to old Seefax and Dodge’s spanking new Lanchester, the latter with its brass headlights, scarlet wheel spokes and dark blue upholstery infinitely superior to the former – at least in Hopper’s opinion. My uncle owned a Rolls Royce, as did Jack, but I’d never caught the craze. While Hopper and Charlie fussed round its bonnet discussing horsepower and compression ratios I amused myself inspecting the items nearby. I could see the use for the contents of two tea-chests, one stamped Hair nets, the other Ostrich plumes, but what was one to make of the several lengths of oak beams bearing the cautionary notice Not to be mistaken for Ballast? They were so massive in thickness and so crocheted with worm holes that they must surely have come from a man-of-war or else the roof of a medieval cathedral. Lying athwart them, bound in sacking, teetered a package labelled Portrait of Garibaldi, Property of C.D. Bernotti.
Hopper and Charlie had climbed into the Lanchester. Childishly, both began imitating the puttering of an engine and the grinding of gears. Charlie, who was at the wheel, leaned out and squeezed the horn, sending a frog-like honking reverberating round the hold. After a time, mercifully tiring of such foolery, they embarked on one of those fragmentary conversations, to do with women and the future, indulged in by young men late at night. I won’t go into what Hopper said about women; some of it was pretty indelicate. God knows what Charlie made of it, his knowledge of such matters extending little further than the pollination of orchids in his father’s glass houses. At any rate his contribution was minor, if poignant, mainly that he’d once touched the breast, by mistake, of a very nice girl in Dorset who had first run and told her mother and then vomited.
‘You should get yourself rooms of your own in London,’ Hopper