Voyage of Innocence

Vee went slowly down the wide, mirrored staircase that linked the upper and lower decks. She attracted a good deal of attention; the junior officer on his way to the radio room with a sheaf of telegrams; the florist going the other way with an armful of flowers; the lady’s maid hurrying to the beauty salon to acquire some essential forgotten item; passengers, anxious to find their cabins; all of them noticed to some degree the particular allure that Vee had. Some noticed with only a fraction of their attention, some admired, some envied.

Vee herself was oblivious both to her surroundings and her fellow human beings. Her ability to attract the attention – and the affections and desires, it had to be said – of those around her was an old story, and one that no longer interested her.

A stewardess was hovering at the end of her corridor. ‘Mrs Hotspur? Cabin sixty-seven? It’s on the left, I’ll show you. Are you travelling with your maid?’

She was not. A smile, a douceur, and this ungainly but kindly-looking woman would be her slave for the voyage. A maid! That was the last person she needed on this journey.

It was a single cabin, spacious for a liner, with a dressing table and neatly fitted cupboards and drawers, an outside cabin, with a rectangular window looking out on to a secluded deck. No strollers or nosy-joes were allowed along this stretch of deck, this was a reserved area for the lucky occupants of cabins sixty-five to seventy-seven. Her luggage was already in the cabin, strapped and labelled with a large round H for Hotspur, First Class passenger to Bombay.

She sat down at the dressing table, and took off her scarlet hat, laying it carelessly down on the glass top. The stewardess, hovering in the doorway, came forward and took it. Vee smiled at her. ‘What’s your name?’

‘Pigeon, madam.’

‘Thank you, Pigeon.’

‘Shall I unpack for you now, madam?’

‘Later, if you don’t mind.’

Still Pigeon lingered. ‘We were expecting a Mr Howard to have this cabin.’

‘Mine was a late booking, a cancellation.’

It had been a risk, leaving it so late, but the clerk at the shipping line had murmured confidentially that there was usually a cabin available at the last minute. It didn’t trouble the company, because there was always a waiting list, especially for a vessel like the SS Gloriana, and at this time of year.

A smile, a note, and Mrs Hotspur moved to the top of the waiting list. What had happened to Mr Howard? she wondered for an idle moment. An elderly gentleman, struck down with apoplexy? A prosperous businessman with urgent business to attend to, that prevented him from sailing? A man of substance, undoubtedly, to travel in this type of cabin. A young man in disgrace, being sent out to the East by a distressed family? Did young men still get sent out to India to keep them out of harm’s way? What if her parents had sent Hugh out to India? No, she wasn’t going to think about Hugh. The list of people and things she didn’t want to think about was alarmingly long. Back to Mr Howard. ‘I dare say he was a family man, escaping to a new life,’ she said out loud.

‘I beg your pardon, madam?’ said a startled Pigeon.

Vee laughed. ‘Oh, nothing. I was just thinking aloud.’ She got up, smoothing out the wrinkles from her slim-fitting skirt. ‘I’m going to look around, so you can see to my things while I’m gone. There’s a wine-coloured dress in that big suitcase, the one on its side. That’ll do for this evening.’

‘Best go and see the purser about your place in the dining room, madam,’ said Pigeon as she made a dive for the suitcase. ‘You’ll want to be at a good table at the second sitting.’

One look at Mrs Hotspur, a fashionable woman and a real lady, you could see that at a glance, thought Pigeon as she held out her hands for the keys, and the purser would be delighted for her to sit wherever she wanted. Which wouldn’t be at the captain’s table, if she, Pigeon were any judge of a passenger. Too dull for such a smart and lively lady. She was sure she’d seen her picture in the Tatler more than once. It pleased her, she much preferred upper-class passengers to some of the riff-raff you got on board these days.

TWO

Peter Messenger loved ocean liners with all the enthusiasm of his ten years. He loved catching the boat train and arriving at the docks where the great sleek white liners were moored with unbelievably huge cables stretching far up into the bows. He loved the oily briny smell and the gulls and the gloomy customs shed and the piles of trunks, all labelled and waiting to be trundled up into the ship, some to disappear into the hold, that mysterious place where the Not Wanted on Voyage went, or to appear in your cabin, waiting to be unpacked and then stowed away by the baggage steward until the end of the voyage, three weeks in the future.

The first time he’d been on a boat, he’d been overwhelmed by the size of it, by the notion that anything that big could sail without sinking. This time, he’d led the way up the gangway with jaunty steps, ahead of his stepmother, Lally, with that Miss Tyrell bringing up the rear.

Miss Tyrell was the one blot on his happiness. What had possessed his mother to bring her?

‘Darling, I’m not bringing her. She’s on her way out to India in any case, to look after her brother and her nephews and nieces. Her sister-in-law died recently, so sad, a tropical disease she said.’

Peter wished Miss Tyrell could be struck down by a tropical disease, right now, before they were even on board. ‘She’s a nanny.’

‘Not any more, and she’s coming to look after me as much as you. My clothes and so on. I shan’t be taking a maid, your father says an English maid is always a nuisance in India, they don’t adapt. Miss Tyrell will be very helpful, and you’ll grow to like her.’

‘I’m far too old for a nanny.’

‘You’re not too old to need some extra looking after, you’ve been so ill, darling. It’ll make me feel much happier when I’m not there to know that Miss Tyrell has you under her eye.’

‘Why won’t you be there?’

‘Well, there’s a social life on board ship, you know that. Bridge and games, and then dancing and so on in the evenings. I don’t want to have to worry about you all the time.’

‘I can look after myself.’

‘Of course you can. You’re the man of the family while Daddy isn’t here, but even so, we’ll be glad of Miss Tyrell. I don’t think she’s a fusser. She seems very practical and down-to-earth.’

Lally kept her own doubts to herself. Miss Tyrell had, although she wouldn’t say so to Peter, been wished on her. Claudia’s sister-in-law had telephoned her.

‘Mrs Messenger? My name is Monica Sake. We met once, in London, when you were staying with Claudia, but I don’t expect you to remember me.’

‘Oh, of course …’

‘I hear from Agnes that you’re going out to India.’

Lally’s heart sank, as it always did when her mother-in-law was mentioned.

‘On the Gloriana.’

‘Yes.’

‘Then I’d like you to take our old nanny with you.’

Visions of some decrepit family retainer sprang to Lally’s astonished mind. ‘Oh, no, really, I don’t think –’ And why was their old nanny going out to India in any case?

‘We’re desolated to lose her, she’s the best nanny imaginable, been with the family since she was a nursery maid, she was my husband’s nanny. And Claudia’s of course, she was nanny to all of them.’

Monica Sake was Lucius’s wife, that was it; she was the Countess of Sake. And the nanny Lady Sake wanted to foist on her had looked after Claudia, and Lucius, whom Claudia and Vee said was – what was the word they used? Bonkers.

Monica’s voice was quacking away. ‘We’ve tried to persuade her to stay. However, her brother’s wife died a little while ago, some foreign illness, and Nanny Tyrell feels she owes it to her brother to go and keep house for him. It isn’t a particularly convenient time for us, she was due to go to Henrietta and take care of the baby. But I suppose she must be allowed to do what she thinks best.’

Lally began to warm towards this unknown Miss Tyrell.

‘She wants to work her passage out. She’s a thrifty soul. I heard you’d be taking your stepson – sickly, isn’t he, and so not yet up to school? She’ll be perfect, she can take the boy off your hands. You won’t want to be bothered with a boy that age when you’re on board. Or are you taking your own nanny?’

‘Well, no.’

‘Or your maid?’

‘No.’

‘She can do that for you as well. She’s extremely competent, she’ll be a great help to you. That’s settled then.’

And it was, to Lally’s dismay. She still hadn’t told Henry that she was bringing Peter with her, and she hoped that news about the sickly boy didn’t reach her husband through the letters that his officious family wrote to him whenever they had an idle moment. Fortunately, Henry rarely read private letters; she suspected the only ones he looked at with any attention were the ones from her, and she took care to keep them brief.

‘Official correspondence is enough for any man,’ he would say, opening a long screed from his mother, flicking through the pages and crumpling the letter into a ball before tossing it into the waste-paper basket.

This wasn’t Miss Tyrell’s first voyage. She’d crossed the Atlantic more than once, had accompanied the Veres out to Hong Kong – now, there was a strange country – and had spent six months in Bombay. She liked India. She liked the heat and the people and the energy, although the shocking poverty and the skinny animals made her uncomfortable.

She was pleased for the chance to work her passage rather than pay for it herself. For one thing, it meant she would be travelling first class, which was what she was accustomed to. If she’d had to pay, it would have been tourist class, and a shared cabin down in the bowels of the ship, and not at all the kind of company she was used to. She wasn’t sure about this Mrs Messenger, though. Lady Sake had spoken of her in the pitying tone her employers used about half-wits, cripples and social outsiders.

‘Of course Harry is absolutely one of us, the Messengers go back for ever, but Lally, as they call her, I believe her name is actually Lavender, is not. She’s American, well that’s another world, don’t you think? Headstrong, I’d say, by the look of her, but then you’d need strength of character to cope with Harry, I never knew a man with so much energy. Her father’s a politician, from Chicago of all places. He was a doctor before he went into the Senate, Irish, of course, her name was Fitzpatrick. And she’s Catholic. Will that bother you, Nanny?’

Having no religious convictions of her own, merely subscribing to the conventional Anglicanism of her employers, Miss Tyrell said no, in the tone of voice that made Lady Sake feel for a moment that she had committed a solecism by even mentioning religion.

‘I do hope you don’t suffer from seasickness, Miss Tyrell. It can be very bad in the Bay of Biscay at that time of year.’

Seasick? Not her. As the SS Gloriana sailed into what her crew called a dirty night, her stomach was perfectly in order. She gave Peter a dose of tonic, though, just in case there should be any inclination to collywobbles, as she called any kind of stomach upset, and it would help to keep him regular, so important when a child was convalescent. Peter was the nervy sort, you could see that, although that might be due to his having been so ill. And Mrs Messenger? Miss Tyrell felt sorry for her. She didn’t care to see a young woman with those tired eyes and that look of haunted care to her. The child had been in danger, yes, but he was better now, and he was a stepson, not one of her own. Perhaps that was the problem. But here she was, on her way back to India, to be reunited with her husband. This was a time for happiness, not for fretting.

And not a good sailor by the look of her.

‘Run along, Peter, Mummy’s not feeling very well and isn’t in the mood for your chatter.’

‘I was only telling her about some people she knows on board, that’s all.’ It wasn’t for Miss Tyrell to keep him away from his mother. Then he understood. ‘She’s seasick,’ he said with scorn.

THREE

Perdita Richardson looked around her narrow cabin. She liked the round porthole, it had a distinctly nautical air that was pleasing; if you were going to be shunted off on a sea voyage, then you might as well feel you were on board a ship, and not merely in some floating hotel. She’d seen her friend Tish and her new husband off last year after their wedding. They’d had a stateroom on the Queen Mary – they’d been going to spend their honeymoon with her husband’s family in New England – and Perdita had been disappointed to see how ordinary it was. Plush, but it could have been a hotel anywhere.

This, however, was unquestionably shipshape; fitted lockers beneath the bunk, everything in its place. She took off the shapeless brown felt hat she’d crammed on her head for want of anything better being immediately to hand, and gave her hair a vigorous ruffle. Curly and unmanageable, she kept it in place when she could be bothered with a fearsome array of pins and fixative. Usually, she left it in its natural state; that was one good thing about being a student of music, appearances went for very little. Most of her fellow students at the Royal Academy of Music were young and hard-up and had minds above mundane items of clothing or the nice arrangement of hair.

She’d tried cutting her thick curls short, but in her opinion it made her look like one of the woolly sheep that chewed the grass around her home in Westmoreland, and there was some hope of elegance, just every now and then, if you had hair long enough to be pinned up. She rummaged in her bag for a hairbrush and tugged it through the disorder. It made little difference to her appearance, but she felt she had made an effort.

Not evening dress the first night out, everyone knew that. So she’d wear – what? Despite the small cabin and the untidy hair, Perdita was far from being a poor student, or a poor anything. Her family were wealthy and she had money of her own; she could buy all the clothes she wanted, but found it difficult to find much ready-made that fitted her tall, rangy frame, and had a dislike of the fussing around at the dressmakers, as she put it. So her clothes were an odd collection of what she’d found that fitted her, including some pairs of men’s slacks, which she found comfortable and which fitted her long legs. No one made anything of them at college, but now, throwing open the lid of her suitcase, she did wonder whether they were quite right for a sea voyage.

I expect lots of people will be frightfully posh, she said to herself. Well, they’ll have to be satisfied with their own poshness, how I look can’t affect them at all. She took out a favourite green dress, gave it a shake, and opened the narrow cupboard to find a coat hanger.

A woman in uniform appeared at the door as though by magic. Small and shrewish, she cast a disapproving look at Perdita’s open suitcase and stepped inside the cabin, making Perdita retreat until she had her back against the washbasin, the green dress held in front of her like a shield.

‘I’ll unpack for you, miss. I’m your stewardess. My name’s Merkin.’

‘Oh, thank you. Only, I can do it myself.’

Merkin paid no attention. ‘You go along to the dining room and put your name down for the second sitting. Not the first, mind, that’s for kiddies and people who don’t care for the social side. My passengers always take the second sitting.’

Such was Merkin’s moral force that Perdita found herself outside her cabin and following the arrows guiding her to G-deck.

‘Boat drill half an hour after we sail, miss,’ Merkin called after her. ‘You’re muster station twenty-three, and you’ll need to have your life-jacket with you.’

Boat drill? Lifejacket? This was Perdita’s first voyage, and she was mystified. Not to worry, someone would explain it to her, and say where she had to be and what she had to do. People always were keen to put you on the right path, especially when it came to anything as institutional-sounding as boat drill. Like fire drill at school, only not shinning down ladders in the dead of night and usually in the rain, it was to be hoped.

A sudden tiredness swept over her, irritating her with her weakness. She was completely well, they all said she was fully recovered, only needed time to get her strength back. Hence the voyage, a round trip to India, with a month or so staying with friends in Delhi; it would do her the world of good, the doctors had assured her. She hadn’t been interested, wasn’t interested in going on a voyage, had never wanted to go to India, they were her grandfather’s friends in Delhi, not her friends, she didn’t want to stay with a lot of strangers, and in what she knew would be a very strange country.

Only Grandpapa had been so keen on the idea, and he hadn’t been well himself, and she hated to disappoint him; it would be churlish and unkind to refuse his generous offer of a ticket and all expenses paid.

Not for the first time, she wondered if he was so urgent for her to go, not because of her recent illness, but because of the coming war. If war broke out soon, she could be stuck for the duration in India. Which might suit Grandpapa, but didn’t suit her at all. What music was there for her in India? Besides, if there was a war, she wanted to be where she belonged, in England, not away from all the bombs and terror on some distant verandah. The last war had gone on for four years; she couldn’t imagine not seeing Westmoreland for four whole years.

No, to be fair, Grandpapa would have sent her to America if he were concerned for her safety and wanted her out of England in time of war. He must think that the war he was so sure was on its way wasn’t going to start for a few months yet.

Her friends weren’t much interested in talk of war, but those who talked about it mostly reckoned that it was necessary to do something about Hitler and the Nazis. Others, cynical arrivals from Austria and Germany, Jewish refugees with music in their souls that made the English students sigh and give up hope, said that Britain and France wouldn’t fight for Czechoslovakia or for anyone else, it was all just words. Hitler got what he wanted, always would get what he wanted, and what he didn’t want was to fight England.

Perdita’s mind turned to the here and now, and to her music. The first thing she had to do was find a piano. There were several on board; that was one thing she had insisted on. ‘Grandpapa, I can’t go if I can’t work. I’m hopelessly out of practice, and more weeks with no playing will just be a disaster. If I can work on the voyages out and back, and if your friends have a piano, something at least halfway decent, I’ll be able to practise there.’ Weren’t things like pianos liable to be eaten by giant ants or inclined to warp and go out of tune for ever in the moist heat of the unimaginable east?

The friends did indeed have a piano, a good one, they had assured her in a courteous letter. So possibly not yet eaten by ants. And Grandpapa had spoken to the chairman of the shipping line, an old chum, needless to say, and had been assured that Perdita would be able to practise in one of the lounges whenever she wanted.

Perdita knew about practice and doing it whenever you wanted. That meant, when no one else was around; well, that was all right with her. She was an early waker, distressingly so since she’d been ill, so if she could get a couple of hours in first thing, no one would be about to bother her or to be bothered by an hour of scales and arpeggios. The dining room forgotten, she set off on a piano hunt.

FOUR

Vee held the white, round box in her hand, hesitating. She lifted the lid, and shook two pills on to her palm.

Recently, these pills had begun to have a strange effect on her, in some mysterious way causing her to relive, in the utmost clarity, scenes from her life. Not truly dreams, for there was nothing in the sequences that rolled through her mind that hadn’t happened. The past was simply playing over again, as though she were watching a film.

When she woke, tired and thick-headed, for she always had alcohol to help the sleeping pills work, she could remember only a little of these waking dreams, the re-enactments of her former life, but the memories and images they left in her mind disturbed her profoundly throughout the ensuing day, until the evening came, and her mind cleared, and she could numb herself once more with a drink and companionship. She never drank to excess. She couldn’t risk losing control, the alcohol was merely a crutch, not a wiper-out of the emotions and dilemmas she longed to be free of.

She had been tempted, over the last few months, to try some of Mildred’s remedy for keeping the world at bay, but it wasn’t for her, she didn’t want a sense of heightened excitement, she had that on her own account. What she wanted was the cessation of feeling, then she could be happy.

Better to relive scenes of her past than to be caught in more nightmares.

She sat down and brushed her hair, long firm strokes to soothe her fears away. Then she climbed into bed, between stiff sheets, smelling of ironing and starch. She left the light on, a glowing blue night-light. Like on a train, she thought drowsily, as the pills began to take effect. Sweet dreams, she muttered to herself, as her eyelids closed. Sweet dreams, or bitter dreams, to match her thoughts.

Tonight, she was back in the Deanery. She was eighteen years old, she knew that, because there was a birthday just past, and a card on the fireplace of her room, wishing her a happy birthday from Hugh. He’d drawn a caricature of her and her cat, a brilliant sketch, both the cat and the chair it was on decorated with bows. Hugh was as gifted with his pen as he was with words.

She was sure that it wasn’t going to work. It was worth a try, it was always worth a try, but she, and the mistresses at school, and Hugh, who had been as encouraging as he knew how, had all known that Grandfather would forbid her to go to university.

‘No chance of a scholarship, Vee, I suppose?’ Hugh asked her as they sat, legs outstretched, on the white window seat in their sitting room on the top floor. The window was open, although the day was cold, since they were enjoying an illicit cigarette. Smoking, like alcohol, was banned in the Deanery.

‘There’s a chap I know at the House, he gets two hundred and fifty a year. Twice what his father earns, actually.’

‘What does his father do?’ Vee asked.

‘He’s a carpenter, I think.’

‘Only Daddy isn’t a carpenter, unfortunately, so I doubt if I count as a deserving case.’

‘Should have had Jesus for a father,’ said Hugh irreverently. ‘After all, God the Father, one substance with the Son, so … All right, I’m not really being frivolous, I’m trying to help.’

‘Irreligious rather than frivolous, don’t you think?’ She tapped the ash from the end of her cigarette carefully on to the outside ledge of the window. ‘Women’s colleges aren’t rich, and the scholarship girls are all poor.’

‘You’ll be poor, if Daddy and Grandfather cut off your allowance.’

‘It isn’t the same. Besides, you have to be brilliant to get a major scholarship, as well as being deserving, and I’m neither.’

‘True. Joel Ibbotson is brilliant, no doubt about it.’

It was all very well for Hugh, but however compassionate he was, his was a different situation. He was a man, he didn’t have to earn or justify or sweat for his place at university. It was the next natural thing for him.

‘Whereas for me, the next natural thing is getting married and starting a family.’

‘I pity the poor husband,’ said Hugh, tossing the butt of cigarette out of the window.

‘You are an ass, Hugh, now we’ll have to go down and find it before the gardener does.’

The gardener, a dour ancient of even more puritanical inclinations than the Dean, deeply disapproved of smoking, and had been known to harangue tourists with a stream of Old Testament prophecy about where those who smoked would end up.