Every Man for Himself - Beryl Bainbridge [67]
Scurra sat below in the Palm Court, sprawled at a table with his legs stretched out. He was discussing the Peloponnesian War with Stead, the journalist. Neither of them took any notice of me. Mr Stead was neatly dressed for a windy morning on Wall Street. His life-preserver lay draped across his knee. Scurra wore a long black overcoat beneath which dangled the hem of my purple dressing-gown.
I was forced to interrupt their conversation. ‘Look here,’ I said, ‘it’s important I find Wallis. Ida won’t get into the boats without her.’
‘She’s somewhere around,’ Scurra said. ‘She was rather tied up when the call came.’
I couldn’t fight him. I slumped into a chair and fought my own demons, calculating in my head how long I might survive in that icy water, should it come to it, while Scurra debated whether Thucydides’ account of the destruction of the Athenian fleet was truthful or not. He dwelt particularly on the drowning incidents, arguing that as the Greeks were half fish by nature and as the temperature of the sea off the harbour was generally high, it was surprising so many had perished. My mind drifted, until I swam with Hopper in that lazy lake at Warm Springs.
Presently, the journalist stood and shook us both by the hand. ‘It’s been an interesting trip,’ he observed. ‘I doubt we’ll see another one like it.’
‘Quite,’ said Scurra.
When Stead had gone, the room became deathly quiet. Save for a man at a table in the far corner, a full bottle of Gordon’s gin at his elbow, we were alone. The orchestra had decamped to the deck outside. Scurra appeared lost in thought; one finger tapped at his gouged lip. The silence lay like a weight. Clearing my throat, I considered asking how he had really come by his scarred mouth, then changed my mind. For all it mattered, God himself could have taken a bite out of him.
At last, Scurra said, ‘I was in the Turkish baths earlier. How very exhausting it is lying on an Egyptian couch with the perspiration collecting in the folds of one’s belly. The only thing missing was a plate of grapes.’ I didn’t reply, knowing him for a liar; the baths were closed on a Sunday. He looked at me quizzically. ‘You appear angry,’ he said. ‘Or is it your way of preparing for the ordeal to come?’
‘Something like that,’ I muttered.
‘Apparently the liner Carpathia is on its way to us.’
‘Is it?’ My heart leapt in my breast.
‘So Ismay tells me. Unfortunately she won’t reach us in time.’
‘I don’t intend to throw in the towel,’ I told him.
‘I should think not. Still, it’s curious, don’t you think, how we cling to life when everything profound exhorts us to let go?’
‘I’m not aware of it,’ I said. I was tired of his philosophising. All I wanted was for Sissy to come through the swing doors and take me by the hand.
‘Think of music,’ he said. ‘Why is it that we are most moved by those works composed in a minor key? Or disturbed to tears by the phrase . . . “half in love with easeful death”?’
‘I’m not,’ I replied brusquely, and got to my feet.
‘You mustn’t worry about Wallis,’ he called after me. ‘She and Molly Dodge are in the care of Ginsberg. He took them up top ten minutes ago.’
On the promenade of A deck a handful of passengers strolled sedately back and forth. I was astonished to see Mrs Brown and Mrs Carter among them, having imagined they had got away some time before. Mrs Brown said it was over seventy feet down to the water and that the language used by one of the crew members was too foul to repeat. He had insisted on smoking, she said, and threw spent matches among them. She and Mrs Carter and young Mrs Astor had all got out again, though Ida had stayed. She’d attempted to clamber out, but her foot had caught in a rope. Mrs Carter had torn her coat prising herself through