Every Man for Himself - Beryl Bainbridge [48]
‘Then there’s little hope for me,’ I said.
‘You are different. You have a conscience. The others will remain perched on a dunghill of money piled up by those who climbed out of the gutters of Europe.’
‘You sound like Scurra,’ I told him.
‘I sound like any man who is no longer young,’ he retorted. ‘They are unworthy companions. I advise you to remove yourself from their influence. Among better people, you may find happiness.’
We didn’t breakfast together. Mrs Duff was taking him to meet Mr Harris, the theatrical producer. I didn’t bother going back to my room but went straight into the restaurant. I was full of good intentions. Wallis was there with Ida and they called me to sit with them. Rosenfelder hadn’t mentioned women among his list of undesirables. No sooner had I done so than Wallis leaned across and smoothed the damp hair back from my forehead. It was an intimate gesture, not in the least motherly. Then, drooping a little in her chair, she confessed to feeling sad.
‘Why?’ I asked.
‘Because you go out of your way to avoid me, Morgan. Which is a pity since I so enjoy being with you.’ She sounded absolutely sincere. She was wearing a blue dress fastened at the shoulder by a glass button which she played with while continuing to gaze at me steadfastly; she didn’t once look away to the door. The expression in her eyes could best be described as both fond and subservient.
I didn’t believe I was fooling myself. Even dear old Ida appeared conscious of undertones; I knew she didn’t take sugar yet twice she stirred her tea so violently that it slopped into the saucer. I didn’t give in immediately; Wallis had raised my hopes before and dashed them just as quickly.
‘I was feeling pretty blue myself earlier on,’ I said. ‘It’s so empty out there.’ I looked towards the windows that cut the now bright day into squares of glittering light; already I could scarcely remember why the world had seemed so dark.
Wallis said, ‘It’s confusing, isn’t it? We long to go home and once there ache to get away.’
‘But to what?’ I countered. Talking to Wallis was not unlike sparring with Scurra. It occurred to me that he’d infected the ship.
‘In your case,’ she said, ‘I imagine you have it mapped out,’ and again she touched me, this time the merest brush of her fingertips against the bruised skin above my eye.
‘If I’ve been avoiding you,’ I lied, ‘it’s because I have a lot on my mind. My future . . . that sort of thing. It’s different for you girls.’
‘Different, certainly,’ she replied, ‘yet no less hard. Not unless, like Sissy, one falls into marriage.’
‘Not falls,’ I protested. ‘It was a love match.’
She said she was glad to hear it and that I must have felt lonely once Sissy had gone off with Whitney and set up an establishment of her own. We had always been so close. It couldn’t be easy for me living with my aunt . . . now that she was deaf and often out of her mind.
‘I love my aunt,’ I said stiffly, ‘and have any number of friends. Too many, I often think.’ I didn’t need Wallis to feel sorry for me and found her reference to my aunt’s nervous disposition offensive, that is until I remembered the cross she bore on her own mad mother’s behalf. It’s true, I thought. We are none of us normal.
‘Hopper complains I avoid him too,’ I told her. ‘I guess I’m a fair-weather friend.’ She appeared to think this over, staring at me still and twirling that glass button round and round. Poor Ida didn’t know where to put herself; she started to hum Adele’s aria of the night before.
‘We played a game at tea the other day,’ Wallis said. ‘Hopper, Charlie, Archie Ginsberg, the usual crowd. Who would one choose to throw out of a balloon if it was in danger of crashing?’
‘I thought it was an open boat in danger of sinking—’
‘It’s the same principle,’ she said. ‘You’d be surprised who was the first to go.’