The Other Boat

1

“Cocoanut, come and play at soldiers.”

“I cannot, I am beesy.”

“But you must, Lion wants you.”

“Yes, come along, man,” said Lionel, running up with some paper cocked hats and a sash. It was long long ago, and little boys still went to their deaths stiffly, and dressed in as many clothes as they could find.

“I cannot, I am beesy,” repeated Cocoanut.

“But man, what are you busy about?”

“I have soh many things to arrange, man.”

“Let’s leave him and play by ourselves,” said Olive. “We’ve Joan and Noel and Baby and Lieutenant Bodkin. Who wants Cocoanut?”

“Oh, shut up! I want him. We must have him. He’s the only one who falls down when he’s killed. All you others go on fighting long too long. The battle this morning was a perfect fast. Mother said so.”

“Well, I’ll die.”

“So you say beforehand, but when it comes to the point you won’t. Noel won’t. Joan won’t. Baby doesn’t do anything properly—of course he’s too little—and you can’t expect Lieutenant Bodkin to fall down. Cocoanut, man, do.”

“I—weel—not.”

“Cocoanut cocoanut cocoanut cocoanut cocoanut cocoanut,” said Baby.

The little boy rolled on the deck screaming happily. He liked to be pressed by these handsome good-natured children. “I must go and see the

m’m m’m m’m,” he said.

“The what?”

“The m’m m’m m’m. They live—oh, so many of them—in the thin part of the ship.”

“He means in the bow,” said Olive. “Oh, come along, Lion. He’s hopeless.”

“What are m’m m’m m’m?”

“M’m.” He whirled his arms about, and chalked some marks on the planks.

“What are those?”

“M’m.”

“What’s their name?”

“They have no name.”

“What do they do?”

“They just go so and oh! and so—ever—always—”

“Flying fish?… Fairies?… Noughts and crosses?”

“They have no name.”

“Mother!” said Olive to a lady who was promenading with a gentleman,

“hasn’t everything a name?”

“I suppose so.”

“Who’s this?” asked the lady’s companion.

“He’s always hanging on to my children. I don’t know.”

“Touch of the tar-brush, eh?”

“Yes, but it doesn’t matter on a voyage home. I would never allow it going to India.” They passed on, Mrs March calling back, “Shout as much as you like, boys, but don’t scream, don’t scream.”

“They must have a name,” said Lionel, recollecting, “because Adam named all the animals when the Bible was beginning.”

“They weren’t in the Bible, m’m m’m m’m; they were all the time up in the thin part of the sheep, and when you pop out they pop in, so how could

Adam have?”

“Noah’s ark is what he’s got to now.”

Baby said “Noah’s ark, Noah’s ark, Noah’s ark,” and they all bounced up and down and roared. Then, without any compact, they drifted from the saloon deck onto the lower, and from the lower down the staircase that led to the forecastle, much as the weeds and jellies were drifting about outside in the tropical sea. Soldiering was forgotten, though Lionel said, “We may as well wear our cocked hats.” They played with a fox-terrier, who was in the charge of a sailor, and asked the sailor himself if a roving life was a happy one. Then, drifting forward again, they climbed into the bows, where the m’m m’m m’m were said to be.

Here opened a glorious country, much the best in the boat. None of the March children had explored there before, but Cocoanut, having few domesticities, knew it well. That bell that hung in the very peak—it was the ship’s bell and if you rang it the ship would stop. Those big ropes were tied into knots—twelve knots an hour. This paint was wet, but only as far as there. Up that hole was coming a Lascar. But of the m’m m’m he said nothing until asked. Then he explained in offhand tones that if you popped out they popped in, so that you couldn’t expect to see them.

What treachery! How disappointing! Yet so ill-balanced were the children’s minds that they never complained. Olive, in whom the instincts of a lady were already awaking, might have said a few well-chosen words, but when she saw her brothers happy she forgot too, and lifted Baby up onto a bollard because he asked her to. They all screamed. Into their midst came the Lascar and laid down a mat for his three-o’clock prayer. He prayed as if he was still in India, facing westward, not knowing that the ship had rounded Arabia so that his holy places now lay behind him. They continued to scream.

Mrs March and her escort remained on the saloon deck, inspecting the approach to Suez. Two continents were converging with great magnificence

of mountains and plain. At their junction, nobly placed, could be seen the smoke and the trees of the town. In addition to her more personal problems, she had become anxious about Pharaoh. “Where exactly was Pharaoh drowned?” she asked Captain Armstrong. “I shall have to show my boys.”

Captain Armstrong did not know, but he offered to ask Mr Hotblack, the Moravian missionary. Mr Hotblack knew—in fact he knew too much.

Somewhat snubbed by the military element in the earlier part of the voyage, he now bounced to the surface, became authoritative and officious, and undertook to wake Mrs March’s little ones when they were passing the exact spot. He spoke of the origins of Christianity in a way that made her look down her nose, saying that the Canal was one long genuine Bible picture gallery, that donkeys could still be seen going down into Egypt carrying Holy Families, and naked Arabs wading into the water to fish;

“Peter and Andrew by Galilee’s shore, why, it hits the truth plumb.” A clergyman’s daughter and a soldier’s wife, she could not admit that Christianity had ever been oriental. What good thing can come out of the Levant, and is it likely that the apostles ever had a touch of the tar-brush?

Still, she thanked Mr Hotblack (for, having asked a favour of him, she had contracted an obligation towards him), and she resigned herself to greeting him daily until Southampton, when their paths would part.

Then she observed, against the advancing land, her children playing in the bows without their topis on. The sun in those far-off days was a mighty power and hostile to the Ruling Race. Officers staggered at a touch of it, Tommies collapsed. When the regiment was under canvas, it wore helmets at tiffin, lest the rays penetrated the tent. She shouted at her doomed offspring, she gesticulated, Captain Armstrong and Mr Hotblack shouted, but the wind blew their cries backwards. Refusing company, she hurried forward alone; the children were far too excited and covered with paint.

“Lionel! Olive! Olive! What are you doing?”

“M’m m’m m’m, mummy—it’s a new game.”

“Go back and play properly under the awning at once—it’s far too hot.

You’ll have sunstroke every one of you. Come, Baby!”

“M’m m’m m’m.”

“Now, you won’t want me to carry a great boy like you, surely.”

Baby flung himself round the bollard and burst into tears.

“It always ends like this,” said Mrs March as she detached him. “You all behave foolishly and selfishly and then Baby cries. No, Olive—don’t help me. Mother would rather do everything herself.”

“Sorry,” said Lionel gruffly. Baby’s shrieks rent the air. Thoroughly naughty, he remained clasping an invisible bollard. As she bent him into a portable shape, another mishap occurred. A sailor—an Englishman—leapt out of the hatchway with a piece of chalk and drew a little circle round her where she stood. Cocoanut screamed, “He’s caught you. He’s come.”

“You’re on dangerous ground, lady,” said the sailor respectfully. “Men’s quarters. Of course we leave it to your generosity.”

Tired with the voyage and the noise of the children, worried by what she had left in India and might find in England, Mrs March fell into a sort of trance. She stared at the circle stupidly, unable to move out of it, while Cocoanut danced round her and gibbered.

“Men’s quarters—just to keep up the old custom.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Passengers are often kind enough to pay their footing,” he said, feeling awkward; though rapacious he was independent. “But of course there’s no compulsion, lady. Ladies and gentlemen do as they feel.”

“I will certainly do what is customary—Baby, be quiet.”

“Thank you, lady. We divide whatever you give among the crew. Of course not those chaps.” He indicated the Lascar.

“The money shall be sent to you. I have no purse.”

He touched his forelock cynically. He did not believe her. She stepped out of the circle and as she did so Cocoanut sprang into it and squatted

grinning.

“You’re a silly little boy and I shall complain to the stewardess about you,” she told him with unusual heat. “You never will play any game properly and you stop the others. You’re a silly idle useless unmanly little boy.”

2

S.S. Normannia

Red Sea

October, 191-

Hullo the Mater!

You may be thinking it is about time I wrote you a line, so here goes, however you should have got my wire sent before leaving Tilbury with the glad news that I got a last minute passage on this boat when it seemed quite impossible I should do so. The Arbuthnots are on it too all right, so is a Lady Manning who claims acquaintance with Olive, not to mention several remarkably cheery subalterns, poor devils, don’t know what they are in for in the tropics. We make up two Bridge tables every night besides hanging together at other times, and get called the Big Eight, which I suppose must be regarded as a compliment. How I got my passage is curious. I was coming away from the S.S. office after my final try in absolute despair when I ran into an individual whom you may or may not remember—he was a kid on that other boat when we cleared all out of India on that unlikely occasion over ten years ago—got called Cocoanut because of his peculiar shaped head. He has now turned into an equally weird youth, who has however managed to become influential in shipping circles, I can’t think how some people manage to do things. He duly recognized me—dagoes sometimes have marvellous memories—

and on learning my sad plight fixed me up with a (single berth) cabin, so all is well. He is on board too, but our paths seldom cross. He has more than a touch of the tar brush, so consorts with his own dusky fraternity, no doubt to their mutual satisfaction.

The heat is awful and I fear this is but a dull letter in consequence. Bridge I have already mentioned, and there are the usual deck games, betting on the ship’s log, etc., still I think everyone will be glad to reach Bombay and get into harness. Colonel and Mrs Arbuthnot are very friendly, and speaking confidentially I don’t think it will do my prospects any harm having got to know them better. Well I will now conclude this screed and I will write again when I have rejoined the regiment and contacted Isabel. Best love to all which naturally includes yourself from

Your affectionate first born,

Lionel March.

P.S. Lady Manning asks to be remembered to Olive, nearly forgot.

When Captain March had posted this epistle he rejoined the Big Eight.

Although he had spent the entire day with them they were happy to see him, for he exactly suited them. He was what any rising young officer ought to be—clean-cut, athletic, good-looking without being conspicuous. He had had wonderful professional luck, which no one grudged him: he had got into one of the little desert wars that were becoming too rare, had displayed dash and decision, had been wounded, and had been mentioned in despatches and got his captaincy early. Success had not spoiled him, nor was he vain of his personal appearance, although he must have known that thick fairish hair, blue eyes, glowing cheeks and strong white teeth constitute, when broad shoulders support them, a combination irresistible to the fair sex. His hands were clumsier than the rest of him, but bespoke hard honest work, and the springy gleaming hairs on them suggested virility. His voice was quiet, his demeanour assured, his temper equable. Like his brother officers he wore a mess uniform slightly too small for him, which accentuated his physique—the ladies accentuating theirs by wearing their second best frocks and reserving their best ones for India.

Bridge proceeded without a hitch, as his mother had been given to understand it might. She had not been told that on either side of the players, violet darkening into black, rushed the sea, nor would she have been interested. Her son gazed at it occasionally, his forehead furrowed. For despite his outstanding advantages he was a miserable cardplayer, and he was having wretched luck. As soon as the Normannia entered the Mediterranean he had begun to lose, and the “better luck after Port Said, always the case” that had been humorously promised him had never arrived. Here in the Red Sea he had lost the maximum the Big Eight’s moderate stakes allowed. He couldn’t afford it, he had no private means and he ought to be saving up for the future, also it was humiliating to let down his partner: Lady Manning herself. So he was thankful when play terminated and the usual drinks circulated. They sipped and gulped while

the lighthouses on the Arabian coast winked at them and slid northwards.

“Bedfordshire!” fell pregnantly from the lips of Mrs Arbuthnot. And they dispersed, with the certainty that the day which was approaching would exactly resemble the one that had died.

In this they were wrong.

Captain March waited until all was quiet, still frowning at the sea. Then with something alert and predatory about him, something disturbing and disturbed, he went down to his cabin.

“Come een,” said a sing-song voice.

For it was not a single cabin, as he had given his mother to understand.

There were two berths, and the lower one contained Cocoanut. Who was naked. A brightly coloured scarf lay across him and contrasted with his blackish-grayish skin, and an aromatic smell came off him, not at all unpleasant. In ten years he had developed into a personable adolescent, but still had the same funny-shaped head. He had been doing his accounts and now he laid them down and gazed at the British officer adoringly.

“Man, I thought you was never coming,” he said, and his eyes filled with tears.

“It’s only those bloody Arbuthnots and their blasted bridge,” replied Lionel and closed the cabin door.

“I thought you was dead.”

“Well, I’m not.”

“I thought I should die.”

“So you will.” He sat down on the berth, heavily and with deliberate heaviness. The end of the chase was in sight. It had not been a long one. He had always liked the kid, even on that other boat, and now he liked him more than ever. Champagne in an ice-bucket too. An excellent kid. They couldn’t associate on deck with that touch of the tar-brush, but it was a very different business down here, or soon would be. Lowering his voice, he said: “The trouble is we’re not supposed to do this sort of thing under any

circumstances whatsoever, which you never seem to understand. If we got caught there’d be absolute bloody hell to pay, yourself as well as me, so for God’s sake don’t make a noise.”

“Lionel, O Lion of the Night, love me.”

“All right. Stay where you are.” Then he confronted the magic that had been worrying him on and off the whole evening and had made him inattentive at cards. A tang of sweat spread as he stripped and a muscle thickened up out of gold. When he was ready he shook off old Cocoanut, who was now climbing about like a monkey, and put him where he had to be, and manhandled him, gently, for he feared his own strength and was always gentle, and closed on him, and they did what they both wanted to do.

Wonderful, wonnerful….

They lay entwined, Nordic warrior and subtle supple boy, who belonged to no race and always got what he wanted. All his life he had wanted a toy that would not break, and now he was planning how he would play with Lionel for ever. He had longed for him ever since their first meeting, embraced him in dreams when only that was possible, met him again as the omens foretold, and marked him down, spent money to catch him and lime him, and here he lay, caught, and did not know it.

There they lay caught, both of them, and did not know it, while the ship carried them inexorably towards Bombay.

3

It had not always been so wonderful, wonnerful. Indeed the start of the affair had been grotesque and nearly catastrophic. Lionel had stepped on board at Tilbury entirely the simple soldier man, without an inkling of his fate. He had thought it decent of a youth whom he had only known as a child to fix him up with a cabin, but had not expected to find the fellow on

board too—still less to have to share the cabin with him. This gave him a nasty shock. British officers are never stabled with dagoes, never, it was too damn awkward for words. However, he could not very well protest under the circumstances, nor did he in his heart want to, for his colour-prejudices were tribal rather than personal, and only worked when an observer was present. The first half-hour together went most pleasantly, they were unpacking and sorting things out before the ship started, he found his childhood’s acquaintance friendly and quaint, exchanged reminiscences, and even started teasing and bossing him as in the old days, and got him giggling delightedly. He sprang up to his berth and sat on its edge, swinging his legs. A hand touched them, and he thought no harm until it approached their junction. Then he became puzzled, scared and disgusted in quick succession, leapt down with a coarse barrackroom oath and a brow of thunder and went straight to the Master at Arms to report an offence against decency. Here he showed the dash and decision that had so advantaged him in desert warfare: in other words he did not know what he was doing.

The Master at Arms could not be found, and during the delay Lionel’s rage abated somewhat, and he reflected that if he lodged a formal complaint he would have to prove it, which he could not do, and might have to answer questions, at which he was never good. So he went to the Purser instead, and he demanded to be given alternative accommodation, without stating any reason for the change. The Purser stared: the boat was chockablock full already, as Captain March must have known. “Don’t speak to me like that,”

Lionel stormed, and shouldered his way to the gunwale to see England recede. Here was the worst thing in the world, the thing for which Tommies got given the maximum, and here was he bottled up with it for a fortnight.

What the hell was he to do? Go forward with the charge or blow his own brains out or what?

Onto him thus desperately situated the Arbuthnots descended. They were slight acquaintances, their presence calmed him, and before long his light

military guffaw rang out as if nothing had happened. They were pleased to see him, for they were hurriedly forming a group of sahibs who would hang together during the voyage and exclude outsiders. With his help the Big Eight came into being, soon to be the envy of less happy passengers; introductions; drinks; jokes; difficulties of securing a berth. At this point Lionel made a shrewd move: everything gets known on a boat and he had better anticipate discovery. “I got a passage all right,” he brayed, “but at the cost of sharing my cabin with a wog.” All condoled, and Colonel Arbuthnot in the merriest of moods exclaimed, “Let’s hope the blacks don’t come off on the sheets,” and Mrs Arbuthnot, wittier still, cried, “Of course they won’t, dear, if it’s a wog it’ll be the coffees.” Everyone shouted with laughter, the good lady basked in the applause, and Lionel could not understand why he suddenly wanted to throw himself into the sea. It was so unfair, he was the aggrieved party, yet he felt himself in the wrong and almost a cad. If only he had found out the fellow’s tastes in England he would never have touched him, no, not with tongs. But could he have found out? You couldn’t tell by just looking. Or could you? Dimly, after ten years’

forgetfulness, something stirred in that faraway boat of his childhood and he saw his mother…. Well, she was always objecting to something or other, the poor Mater. No, he couldn’t possibly have known.

The Big Eight promptly reserved tables for lunch and all future meals, and Cocoanut and his set were relegated to a second sitting—for it became evident that he too was in a set: the tagrag and coloured bobtail stuff that accumulates in corners and titters and whispers, and may well be influential, but who cares? Lionel regarded it with distaste and looked for a touch of the hangdog in his unspeakable cabinmate, but he was skipping and gibbering on the promenade deck as if nothing had occurred. He himself was safe for the moment, eating curry by the side of Lady Manning, and amusing her by his joke about the various names which the cook would give the same curry on successive days. Again something stabbed him and

he thought: “But what shall I do, do, when night comes? There will have to be some sort of showdown.” After lunch the weather deteriorated. England said farewell to her children with her choppiest seas, her gustiest winds, and the banging of invisible pots and pans in the empyrean. Lady Manning thought she might do better in a deckchair. He squired her to it and then collapsed and re-entered his cabin as rapidly as he had left it a couple of hours earlier.

It now seemed full of darkies, who rose to their feet as he retched, assisted him up to his berth and loosened his collar, after which the gong summoned them to their lunch. Presently Cocoanut and his elderly Parsee secretary looked in to inquire and were civil and helpful and he could not but thank them. The showdown must be postponed. Later in the day he felt better and less inclined for it, and the night did not bring its dreaded perils or indeed anything at all. It was almost as if nothing had happened—almost but not quite. Master Cocoanut had learned his lesson, for he pestered no more, yet he skilfully implied that the lesson was an unimportant one. He was like someone who has been refused a loan and indicates that he will not apply again. He seemed positively not to mind his disgrace—

incomprehensibly to Lionel, who expected either repentance or terror.

Could it be that he himself had made too much fuss?

In this uneventful atmosphere the voyage across the Bay of Biscay proceeded. It was clear that his favours would not again be asked, and he could not help wondering what would have happened if he had granted them. Propriety was re-established, almost monotonously; if he and Cocoanut ever overlapped in the cabin and had to settle (for instance) who should wash first, they solved the problem with mutual tact.

And then the ship entered the Mediterranean.

Resistance weakened under the balmier sky, curiosity increased. It was an exquisite afternoon—their first decent weather. Cocoanut was leaning out of the porthole to see the sunlit rock of Gibraltar. Lionel leant against him to

look too and permitted a slight, a very slight familiarity with his person.

The ship did not sink nor did the heavens fall. The contact started something whirling about inside his head and all over him, he could not concentrate on after-dinner bridge, he felt excited, frightened and powerful all at once and kept looking at the stars. Cocoa, who said weird things sometimes, declared that the stars were moving into a good place and could be kept there.

That night champagne appeared in the cabin, and he was seduced. He never could resist champagne. Curse, oh curse! How on earth had it happened? Never again. More happened off the coast of Sicily, more, much more at Port Said, and here in the Red Sea they slept together as a matter of course.

4

And this particular night they lay motionless for longer than usual, as though something in the fall of their bodies had enchanted them. They had never been so content with each other before, and only one of them realized that nothing lasts, that they might be more happy or less happy in the future, but would never again be exactly thus. He tried not to stir, not to breathe, not to live even, but life was too strong for him and he sighed.

“All right?” whispered Lionel.

“Yes.”

“Did I hurt?”

“Yes.”

“Sorry.”

“Why?”

“Can I have a drink?”

“You can have the whole world.”

“Lie still and I’ll get you one too, not that you deserve it after making such a noise.”

“Was I again a noise?”

“You were indeed. Never mind, you shall have a nice drink.” Half Ganymede, half Goth, he jerked a bottle out of the ice-bucket. Pop went a cork and hit the partition wall. Sounds of feminine protest became audible, and they both laughed. “Here, hurry up, scuttle up and drink.” He offered the goblet, received it back, drained it, refilled. His eyes shone, any depths through which he might have passed were forgotten. “Let’s make a night of it,” he suggested. For he was of the conventional type who once the conventions are broken breaks them into little pieces, and for an hour or two there was nothing he wouldn’t say or do.

Meanwhile the other one, the deep one, watched. To him the moment of ecstasy was sometimes the moment of vision, and his cry of delight when they closed had wavered into fear. The fear passed before he could understand what it meant or against what it warned him, against nothing perhaps. Still, it seemed wiser to watch. As in business, so in love, precautions are desirable, insurances must be effected. “Man, shall we now perhaps have our cigarette?” he asked.

This was an established ritual, an assertion deeper than speech that they belonged to each other and in their own way. Lionel assented and lit the thing, pushed it between dusky lips, pulled it out, pulled at it, replaced it, and they smoked it alternately with their faces touching. When it was finished Cocoa refused to extinguish the butt in an ashtray but consigned it through the porthole into the flying waters with incomprehensible words.

He thought the words might protect them, though he could not explain how, or what they were.

“That reminds me…” said Lionel, and stopped. He had been reminded, and for no reason, of his mother. He did not want to mention her in his

present state, the poor old Mater, especially after all the lies she had been told.

“Yes, of what did it remind you, our cigarette? Yes and please? I should know.”

“Nothing.” And he stretched himself, flawless except for a scar down in the groin.

“Who gave you that?”

“One of your fuzzy-wuzzy cousins.”

“Does it hurt?”

“No.” It was a trophy from the little desert war. An assegai had nearly unmanned him, nearly but not quite, which Cocoa said was a good thing. A dervish, a very holy man, had once told him that what nearly destroys may bring strength and can be summoned in the hour of revenge. “I’ve no use for revenge,” Lionel said.

“Oh Lion, why not when it can be so sweet?”

He shook his head and reached up for his pyjamas, a sultan’s gift. It was presents all the time in these days. His gambling debts were settled through the secretary, and if he needed anything, or was thought to need it, something or other appeared. He had ceased to protest and now accepted indiscriminately. He could trade away the worst of the junk later on—some impossible jewelry for instance which one couldn’t be seen dead in. He did wish, though, that he could have given presents in return, for he was anything but a sponger. He had made an attempt two nights previously, with dubious results. “I seem always taking and never giving,” he had said. “Is there nothing of mine you’d fancy? I’d be so glad if there was.” To receive the reply: “Yes. Your hairbrush”—“My hairbrush?”—and he was not keen on parting with this particular object, for it had been a coming-of-age gift from Isabel. His hesitation brought tears to the eyes, so he had to give in.

“You’re welcome to my humble brush if you want it, of course. I’ll just comb it out for you first”—“No, no, as it is uncombed,” and it was snatched

away fanatically. Almost like a vulture snatching. Odd little things like this did happen occasionally, m’m m’m m’ms he called them, for they reminded him of oddities on the other boat. They did no one any harm, so why worry?

Enjoy yourself while you can. He lolled at his ease and let the gifts rain on him as they would—a Viking at a Byzantine court, spoiled, adored and not yet bored.

This was certainly the life, and sitting on one chair with his feet on another he prepared for their usual talk, which might be long or short but was certainly the life. When Cocoanut got going it was fascinating. For all the day he had slipped around the ship, discovering people’s weaknesses.

More than that, he and his cronies were cognizant of financial possibilities that do not appear in the City columns, and could teach one how to get rich if one thought it worth while. More than that, he had a vein of fantasy. In the midst of something ribald and scandalous—the discovery of Lady Manning, for instance: Lady Manning of all people in the cabin of the Second Engineer—he imagined the discovery being made by a flying fish who had popped through the Engineer’s porthole, and he indicated the expression on the fish’s face.

Yes, this was the life, and one that he had never experienced in his austere apprenticeship: luxury, gaiety, kindness, unusualness, and delicacy that did not exclude brutal pleasure. Hitherto he had been ashamed of being built like a brute: his preceptors had condemned carnality or had dismissed it as a waste of time, and his mother had ignored its existence in him and all her children; being hers, they had to be pure.

What to talk about this pleasurable evening? How about the passport scandal? For Cocoanut possessed two passports, not one like most people, and they confirmed a growing suspicion that he might not be altogether straight. In England Lionel would have sheered off at once from such a subject, but since Gibraltar they had become so intimate and morally so relaxed that he experienced nothing but friendly curiosity. The information

on the passports was conflicting, so that it was impossible to tell the twister’s age, or where he had been born or indeed what his name was.

“You could get into serious trouble over this,” Lionel had warned him, to be answered by irresponsible giggles. “You could, you know. However, you’re no better than a monkey, and I suppose a monkey can’t be expected to know its own name.” To which the reply had been “Lion, he don’t know nothing at all. Monkey’s got to come along to tell a Lion he’s alive.” It was never easy to score. He had picked up his education, if that was the word for it, in London, and his financial beginnings in Amsterdam, one of the passports was Portuguese, the other Danish, and half the blood must be Asiatic, unless a drop was Negro.

“Now come along, tell me the truth and nothing but the truth for a change,” he began. “Ah, that reminds me I’ve at last got off that letter to the Mater. She adores news. It was a bit difficult to think of anything to interest her, however I filled it up with tripe about the Arbuthnots, and threw you in at the end as a sort of makeweight.”

“To make what sort of weight?”

“Well, naturally I didn’t say what we do. I’m not stark staring raving mad. I merely mentioned I’d run into you in the London office, and got a cabin through you, that is to say single-berth one. I threw dust in her eyes all right.”

“Dear Lionel, you don’t know how to throw dust or even where it is. Of mud you know a little, good, but not dust. Why bring me into the matter at all?”

“Oh, for the sake of something to say.”

“Did you say I too was on board?”

“I did in passing,” he said irritably, for he now realized he had better not have. “I was writing that damned epistle, not you, and I had to fill it up.

Don’t worry—she’s forgotten your very existence by this time.”

The other was certain she hadn’t. If he had foreseen this meeting and had worked towards it through dreams, why should not an anxious parent have foreseen it too? She had valid reasons for anxiety, for things had actually started on that other boat. A trivial collision between children had alerted them towards each other as men. Thence had their present happiness sprung, thither might it wither, for the children had been disturbed. That vengeful onswishing of skirts…! “What trick can I think of this time that will keep him from her? I love him, I am clever, I have money. I will try.”

The first step was to contrive his exit from the Army. The second step was to dispose of that English girl in India, called Isabel, about whom too little was known. Marriage or virginity or concubinage for Isabel? He had no scruples at perverting Lionel’s instincts in order to gratify his own, or at endangering his prospects of paternity. All that mattered was their happiness, and he thought he knew what that was. Much depended on the next few days: he had to work hard and to work with the stars. His mind played round approaching problems, combining them, retreating from them, and aware all the time of a further problem, of something in the beloved which he did not understand. He half-closed his eyes and watched, and listened through half-closed ears. By not being too much on the spot and sacrificing shrewdness to vision he sometimes opened a door. And sure enough Lionel said, “As a matter of fact the Mater never liked you,” and a door opened, slowly.

“Man, how should she? Oh, when the chalk went from the hand of the sailor round the feet of the lady and she could not move and we all knew it, and oh man how we mocked her.”

“I don’t remember—well, I do a little. It begins to come back to me and does sound like the sort of thing that would put her off. She certainly went on about you after we landed, and complained that you made things interesting when they weren’t, funny thing to say, still the Mater is pretty funny. So we put our heads together as children sometimes do—”

“Do they? Oh yes.”

“—and Olive who’s pretty bossy herself decreed we shouldn’t mention you again as it seemed to worry her extra and she had just had a lot of worry. He actually—I hadn’t meant to tell you this, it’s a dead secret.”

“It shall be. I swear. By all that is without me and within me I swear.” He became incomprehensible in his excitement and uttered words in that unknown tongue. Nearly all tongues were unknown to Lionel, and he was impressed.

“Well, he actually—”

“Man, of whom do you now speak?”

“Oh yes, the Mater’s husband, my Dad. He was in the Army too, in fact he attained the rank of major, but a quite unspeakable thing happened—he went native somewhere out East and got cashiered—deserted his wife and left her with five young children to bring up, and no money. She was taking us all away from him when you met us and still had a faint hope that he might pull himself together and follow her. Not he. He never even wrote—

remember, this is absolutely secret.”

“Yes, yes,” but he thought the secret a very tame one: how else should a middle-aged husband behave? “But, Lionel, one question to you the more.

For whom did the Major desert the Mater?”

“He went native.”

“With a girl or with a boy?”

“A boy? Good God! Well, I mean to say, with a girl, naturally—I mean, it was somewhere right away in the depths of Burma.”

“Even in Burma there are boys. At least I once heard so. But the Dad went native with a girl. Ver’ well. Might not therefore there be offspring?”

“If there were, they’d be half-castes. Pretty depressing prospect. Well, you know what I mean. My family—Dad’s, that’s to say—can trace itself back nearly two hundred years, and the Mater’s goes back to the War of the Roses. It’s really pretty awful, Cocoa.”

The half-caste smiled as the warrior floundered. Indeed he valued him most when he fell full length. And the whole conversation—so unimportant in itself—gave him a sense of approaching victory which he had not so far entertained. He had a feeling that Lionel knew that he was in the net or almost in it, and did not mind. Cross-question him further! Quick! Rattle him! “Is Dad dead?” he snapped.

“I couldn’t very well come East if he wasn’t. He has made our name stink in these parts. As it is I’ve had to change my name, or rather drop half of it. He called himself Major Corrie March. We were all proud of the

‘Corrie’ and had reason to be. Try saying ‘Corrie March’ to the Big Eight here, and watch the effect.”

“You must get two passports, must you not, one with and one without a

‘Corrie’ on it. I will fix it, yes? At Bombay?”

“So as I can cheat like you? No, thank you. My name is Lionel March and that’s my name.” He poured out some more champagne.

“Are you like him?”

“I should hope not. I hope I’m not cruel and remorseless and selfish and self-indulgent and a liar as he was.”

“I don’t mean unimportant things like that. I mean are you like him to look at?”

“You have the strangest ideas of what is important.”

“Was his body like yours?”

“How should I know?”—and he was suddenly shy. “I was only a kid and the Mater’s torn up every photograph of him she could lay her hands on. He was a hundred per cent Aryan all right, and there was plenty of him as there certainly is of me—indeed there’ll be too much of me if I continue swilling at this rate. Suppose we talk about your passports for a change.”

“Was he one in whom those who sought rest found fire, and fire rest?”

“I’ve not the least idea what you’re talking about. Do you mean I’m such a one myself?”

“I do.”

“I’ve not the least idea—” Then he hesitated. “Unless… no, you’re daft as usual, and in any case we’ve spent more than enough time in dissecting my unfortunate parent. I brought him up to show you how much the Mater has to put up with, one has to make endless allowances for her and you mustn’t take it amiss if she’s unreasonable about you. She’d probably like you if she got the chance. There was something else that upset her at the time… I seem bringing out all the family skeletons in a bunch, still they won’t go any further, and I feel like chattering to someone about everything, once in a way. I’ve never had anyone to talk to like you. Never, and don’t suppose I ever shall. Do you happen to remember the youngest of us all, the one we called Baby?”

“Ah, that pretty Baby!”

“Well, a fortnight after we landed and while we were up at my grandfather’s looking for a house, that poor kid died.”

“Die what of?” he exclaimed, suddenly agitated. He raised his knees and rested his chin on them. With his nudity and his polished duskiness and his strange-shaped head, he suggested an image crouched outside a tomb.

“Influenza, quite straightforward. It was going through the parish and he caught it. But the worst of it was the Mater wouldn’t be reasonable. She would insist that it was sunstroke, and that he got it running about with no topi on when she wasn’t looking after him properly in this very same Red Sea.”

“Her poor pretty Baby. So I killed him for her.”

“Cocoa! How ever did you guess that? It’s exactly what she twisted it round to. We had quite a time with her. Olive argued, grandfather prayed…

and I could only hang around and do the wrong thing, as I generally do.”

“But she—she saw me only, running in the sun with my devil’s head, and m’m m’m m’m all you follow me till the last one the tiny one dies, and she,

she talking to an officer, a handsome one, oh to sleep in his arms as I shall in yours, so she forgets the sun and it strikes the tiny one. I see.”

“Yes, you see in a wrong sort of way”; every now and then came these outbursts which ought to be rubbish yet weren’t. Wrong of course about his mother, who was the very soul of purity, and over Captain Armstrong, who had become their valued family adviser. But right over Baby’s death: she actually had declared that the idle unmanly imp had killed him, and designedly. Of recent years she had not referred to the disaster, and might have forgotten it. He was more than ever vexed with himself for mentioning Cocoanut in the letter he had recently posted to her.

“Did I kill him for you also?”

“For me? Of course not. I know the difference between influenza and sunstroke, and you don’t develop the last-named after a three weeks’

interval.”

“Did I kill him for anyone—or for anything?”

Lionel gazed into eyes that gazed through him and through cabin walls into the sea. A few days ago he would have ridiculed the question, but tonight he was respectful. This was because his affection, having struck earthward, was just trying to flower. “Something’s worrying you? Why not tell me about it?” he said.

“Did you love pretty Baby?”

“No, I was accustomed to see him around but he was too small to get interested in and I haven’t given him a thought for years. So all’s well.”

“There is nothing between us then?”

“Why should there be?”

“Lionel—dare I ask you one more question?”

“Yes, of course.”

“It is about blood. It is the last of all the questions. Have you ever shed blood?”

“No—oh, sorry, I should have said yes. I forgot that little war of mine. It goes clean out of my head between times. A battle’s such a mess-up, you wouldn’t believe, and this one had a miniature sandstorm raging to make confusion more confounded. Yes, I shed blood all right, or so the official report says. I didn’t know at the time.” He was suddenly silent. Vividly and unexpectedly the desert surged up, and he saw it as a cameo, from outside.

The central figure—a grotesque one—was himself going berserk, and close to him was a dying savage who had managed to wound him and was trying to speak.

“I hope I never shed blood,” the other said. “I do not blame others, but for me never.”

“I don’t expect you ever will. You’re not exactly cut out for a man of war.

All the same, I’ve fallen for you.”

He had not expected to say this, and it was the unexpectedness that so delighted the boy. He turned away his face. It was distorted with joy and suffused with the odd purplish tint that denoted violent emotion. Everything had gone fairly right for a long time. Each step in the stumbling confession had brought him nearer to knowing what the beloved was like. But an open avowal—he had not hoped for so much. “Before morning I shall have enslaved him,” he thought, “and he will begin doing whatever I put into his mind.” Even now he did not exult, for he knew by experience that though he always got what he wanted he seldom kept it, also that too much adoration can develop a flaw in the jewel. He remained impassive, crouched like a statue, chin on knees, hands round ankles, waiting for words to which he could safely reply.

“It seemed just a bit of foolery at first,” he went on. “I woke up properly ashamed of myself after Gib, I don’t mind telling you. Since then it’s been getting so different, and now it’s nothing but us. I tell you one thing though, one silly mistake I’ve made. I ought never to have mentioned you in that letter to the Mater. There’s no advantage in putting her on the scent of

something she can’t understand; it’s all right what we do, I don’t mean that.”

“So you want the letter back?”

“But it’s posted! Not much use wanting it.”

“Posted?” He was back to his normal and laughed gaily, his sharp teeth gleaming. “What is posting? Nothing at all, even in a red English pillar-box.

Even thence you can get most things out, and here is a boat. No! My secretary comes to you tomorrow morning: ‘Excuse me, Captain March, sir, did you perhaps drop this unposted letter upon the deck?’ You thank secretary, you take letter, you write Mater a better letter. Does anything trouble you now?”

“Not really. Except—”

“Except what?”

“Except I’m—I don’t know. I’m fonder of you than I know how to say.”

“Should that trouble you?”

O calm mutual night, to one of them triumphant and promising both of them peace! O silence except for the boat throbbing gently! Lionel sighed, with a happiness he couldn’t understand. “You ought to have someone to look after you,” he said tenderly. Had he said this before to a woman and had she responded? No such recollection disturbed him, he did not even know that he was falling in love. “I wish I could stay with you myself, but of course that’s out of the question. If only things were a little different I—

Come along, let’s get our sleep.”

“You shall sleep and you shall awake.” For the moment was upon them at last, the flower opened to receive them, the appointed star mounted the sky, the beloved leaned against him to switch off the light over by the door. He closed his eyes to anticipate divine darkness. He was going to win. All was happening as he had planned, and when morning came and practical life had to be re-entered he would have won.

“Damn!”

The ugly stupid little word rattled out. “Damn and blast,” Lionel muttered. As he stretched towards the switch, he had noticed the bolt close to it, and he discovered that he had left the door unbolted. The consequences could have been awkward. “Pretty careless of me,” he reflected, suddenly wide awake. He looked round the cabin as a general might at a battlefield nearly lost by his own folly. The crouched figure was only a unit in it, and no longer the centre of desire. “Cocoa, I’m awfully sorry,” he went on. “As a rule it’s you who take the risks, this time it’s me. I apologize.”

The other roused himself from the twilight where he had hoped to be joined, and tried to follow the meaningless words. Something must have miscarried, but what? The sound of an apology was odious. He had always loathed the English trick of saying “It’s all my fault”; and if he encountered it in business it provided an extra incentive to cheat, and it was contemptible on the lips of a hero. When he grasped what the little trouble was and what the empty “damns” signified, he closed his eyes again and said, “Bolt the door therefore.”

“I have.”

“Turn out the light therefore.”

“I will. But a mistake like this makes one feel all insecure. It could have meant a courtmartial.”

“Could it, man?” he said sadly—sad because the moment towards which they were moving might be passing, because the chances of their convergence might be lost. What could he safely say? “You was not to blame over the door, dear Lion,” he said. “I mean we was both to blame. I knew it was unlocked all the time.” He said this hoping to console the beloved and to recall him to the entrance of night. He could not have made a more disastrous remark.

“You knew. But why didn’t you say?”

“I had not the time.”

“Not the time to say ‘Bolt the door’?”

“No, I had not the time. I did not speak because there was no moment for such a speech.”

“No moment when I’ve been here for ages?”

“And when in that hour? When you come in first? Then? When you embrace me and summon my heart’s blood. Is that the moment to speak?

When I rest in your arms and you in mine, when our cigarette burns us, when we drink from one glass? When you are smiling? Do I interrupt then?

Do I then say, ‘Captain March, sir, you have however forgotten to bolt the cabin door?’ And when we talk of our faraway boat and of poor pretty Baby whom I never killed and I did not want to kill, and I never dreamt to kill—

of what should we talk but of things far away? Lionel, no, no. Lion of the Night, come back to me before our hearts cool. Here is our place and we have so far no other and only we can guard each other. The door shut, the door unshut, is nothing, and is the same.”

“It wouldn’t be nothing if the steward had come in,” said Lionel grimly.

“What harm if he did come in?”

“Give him the shock of his life, to say the least of it.”

“No shock at all. Such men are accustomed to far worse. He would be sure of a larger tip and therefore pleased. ‘Excuse me, gentlemen….’ Then he goes and tomorrow my secretary tips him.”

“Cocoa, for God’s sake, the things you sometimes say…” The cynicism repelled him. He noticed that it sometimes came after a bout of high faluting. It was a sort of backwash. “You never seem to realize the risks we run, either. Suppose I got fired from the Army through this.”

“Yes, suppose?”

“Well, what else could I do?”

“You could be my assistant manager at Basra.”

“Not a very attractive alternative.” He was not sure whether he was being laughed at or not, which always rattled him, and the incident of the unbolted

door increased in importance. He apologized again “for my share in it” and added, “You’ve not told that scruffy Parsee of yours about us, I do trust.”

“No. Oh no no no no and oh no. Satisfied?”

“Nor the Goanese steward?”

“Not told. Only tipped. Tip all. Of what other use is money?”

“I shall think you’ve tipped me next.”

“So I have.”

“That’s not a pretty thing to say.”

“I am not pretty. I am not like you.” And he burst into tears. Lionel knew that nerves were on edge, but the suggestion that he was a hireling hurt him badly. He whose pride and duty it was to be independent and command!

Had he been regarded as a male prostitute? “What’s upset you?” he said as kindly as possible. “Don’t take on so, Cocoa, there’s no occasion for it.”

The sobs continued. He was weeping because he had planned wrongly.

Rage rather than grief convulsed him. The bolt unbolted, the little snake not driven back into its hole—he had foreseen everything else and ignored the enemy at the gate. Bolt and double-bolt now—they would never complete the movement of love. As sometimes happened to him when he was unhinged, he could foretell the immediate future, and he knew before Lionel spoke exactly what he was going to say.

“I think I’ll go on deck for a smoke.”

“Go.”

“I’ve a bit of a headache with this stupid misunderstanding, plus too much booze. I want a breath of fresh air. Then I’ll come back.”

“When you come back you will not be you. And I may not be I.”

Further tears. Snivellings. “We’re both to blame,” said Lionel patiently, taking up the cigarette-case. “I’m not letting myself off. I was careless. But why you didn’t tell me at once I shall never understand, not if you talk till you’re blue. I’ve explained to you repeatedly that this game we’ve been playing’s a risky one, and honestly I think we’d better never have started it.

However, we’ll talk about that when you’re not so upset.” Here he remembered that the cigarette-case was one of his patron’s presents to him, so he substituted for it a favourite old pipe. The change was observed and it caused a fresh paroxysm. Like many men of the warm-blooded type, he was sympathetic to a few tears but exasperated when they persisted. Fellow crying and not trying to stop. Fellow crying as if he had the right to cry.

Repeating “I’ll come back” as cordially as he could, he went up on deck to think the whole situation over. For there were several things about it he didn’t like at all.

Cocoanut stopped weeping as soon as he was alone. Tears were a method of appeal which had failed, and he must seek comfort for his misery and desolation elsewhere. What he longed to do was to climb up into Lionel’s berth above him and snuggle down there and dream that he might be joined.

He dared not. Whatever else he ventured, it must not be that. It was forbidden to him, although nothing had ever been said. It was the secret place, the sacred place whence strength issued, as he had learned during the first half-hour of the voyage. It was the lair of a beast who might retaliate.

So he remained down in his own berth, the safe one, where his lover would certainly never return. It was wiser to work and make money, and he did so for a time. It was still wiser to sleep, and presently he put his ledger aside and lay motionless. His eyes closed. His nostrils occasionally twitched as if responding to something which the rest of his body ignored. The scarf covered him. For it was one of his many superstitions that it is dangerous to lie unclad when alone. Jealous of what she sees, the hag comes with her scimitar, and she…. Or she lifts up a man when he feels lighter than air.

5

Up on deck, alone with his pipe, Lionel began to recover his poise and his sense of leadership. Not that he and his pipe were really alone, for the deck

was covered with passengers who had had their bedding carried up and now slept under the stars. They lay prone in every direction, and he had to step carefully between them on his way to the railing. He had forgotten that this migration happened nightly as soon as a boat entered the Red Sea; his nights had passed otherwise and elsewhere. Here lay a guileless subaltern, cherry-cheeked; there lay Colonel Arbuthnot, his bottom turned. Mrs Arbuthnot lay parted from her lord in the ladies’ section. In the morning, very early, the Goanese stewards would awake the sahibs and carry their bedding back to their cabins. It was an old ritual—not practised in the English Channel or the Bay of Biscay or even in the Mediterranean—and on previous voyages he had taken part in it.

How decent and reliable they looked, the folk to whom he belonged! He had been born one of them, he had his work with them, he meant to marry into their caste. If he forfeited their companionship he would become nobody and nothing. The widened expanse of the sea, the winking lighthouse, helped to compose him, but what really recalled him to sanity was this quiet sleeping company of his peers. He liked his profession, and was rising in it thanks to that little war; it would be mad to jeopardize it, which he had been doing ever since he drank too much champagne at Gibraltar.

Not that he had ever been a saint. No—he had occasionally joined a brothel expedition, so as not to seem better than his fellow officers. But he had not been so much bothered by sex as were some of them. He hadn’t had the time, what with his soldiering duties and his obligations at home as eldest son, and the doc said an occasional wet dream was nothing to worry about. Don’t sleep on your back, though. On this simple routine he had proceeded since puberty. And during the past few months he had proceeded even further. Learning that he was to be posted to India, where he would contact Isabel, he had disciplined himself more severely and practised chastity even in thought. It was the least he could do for the girl he hoped to

marry. Sex had entirely receded—only to come charging back like a bull.

That infernal Cocoa—the mischief he had done. He had woken up so much that might have slept.

For Isabel’s sake, as for his profession’s, their foolish relationship must stop at once. He could not think how he had yielded to it, or why it had involved him so deeply. It would have ended at Bombay, it would have to end now, and Cocoanut must cry his eyes out if he thought it worth while.

So far all was clear. But behind Isabel, behind the Army, was another power, whom he could not consider calmly: his mother, blind-eyed in the midst of the enormous web she had spun—filaments drifting everywhere, strands catching. There was no reasoning with her or about her, she understood nothing and controlled everything. She had suffered too much and was too high-minded to be judged like other people, she was outside carnality and incapable of pardoning it. Earlier in the evening, when Cocoa mentioned her, he had tried to imagine her with his father, enjoying the sensations he was beginning to find so pleasant, but the attempt was sacrilegious and he was shocked at himself. From the great blank country she inhabited came a voice condemning him and all her children for sin, but condemning him most. There was no parleying with her—she was a voice.

God had not granted her ears—nor could she see, mercifully: the sight of him stripping1 would have killed her. He, her first-born, set apart for the redemption of the family name. His surviving brother was too much a bookworm to be of any use, and the other two were girls.

He spat into the sea. He promised her “Never again”. The words went out into the night like other enchantments. He said them aloud, and Colonel Arbuthnot, who was a light sleeper, woke up and switched on his torch.

“Hullo, who’s that, what’s there?”

“March, sir, Lionel March. I’m afraid I’ve disturbed you.”

“No, no, Lionel, that’s all right, I wasn’t asleep. Ye gods, what gorgeous pyjamas the fellow’s wearing. What’s he going about like a lone wolf for?

Eh?”

“Too hot in my cabin, sir. Nothing sinister.”

“How goes the resident wog?”

“The resident wog he sleeps.”

“By the way, what’s his name?”

“Moraes, I believe.”

“Exactly. Mr Moraes is in for trouble.”

“Oh. What for, sir?”

“For being on board. Lady Manning has just heard the story. It turns out that he gave someone in the London office a fat bribe to get him a passage though the boat was full, and as an easy way out they put him into your cabin. I don’t care who gives or takes bribes. Doesn’t interest me. But if the Company thinks it can treat a British officer like that it’s very much mistaken. I’m going to raise hell at Bombay.”

“He’s not been any particular nuisance,” said Lionel after a pause.

“I daresay not. It’s the question of our prestige in the East, and it is also very hard luck on you, very hard. Why don’t you come and sleep on deck like the rest of the gang?”

“Sound idea, I will.”

“We’ve managed to cordon off this section of the deck, and woe betide anything black that walks this way, if it’s only a beetle. Good night.”

“Good night, sir.” Then something snapped and he heard himself shouting, “Bloody rubbish, leave the kid alone.”

“Wh—what’s that, didn’t catch,” said the puzzled Colonel.

“Nothing sir, sorry sir.” And he was back in the cabin.

Why on earth had he nearly betrayed himself just as everything was going right? There seemed a sort of devil around. At the beginning of the voyage he had tempted him to throw himself overboard for no reason, but this was something more serious. “When you come back to the cabin you will not be you,” Cocoa had said; and was it so?

However, the lower berth was empty, that was something, the boy must have gone to the lav, and he slipped out of his effeminate pyjamas and prepared to finish the night where he belonged—a good sleep there would steady him. His forearm was already along the rail, his foot poised for the upspring, when he saw what had happened.

“Hullo, Cocoanut, up in my berth for a change?” he said in clipped officer-tones, for it was dangerous to get angry. “Stay there if you want to, I’ve just decided to sleep on deck.” There was no reply, but his own remarks pleased him and he decided to go further. “As a matter of fact I shan’t be using our cabin again except when it is absolutely necessary,” he continued. “It’s scarcely three days to Bombay, so I can easily manage, and I shan’t, we shan’t be meeting again after disembarkation. As I said earlier on, the whole thing has been a bit of a mistake. I wish we…” He stopped. If only it wasn’t so difficult to be kind! But his talk with the Colonel and his communion with the Mater prevented it. He must keep with his own people, or he would perish. He added, “Sorry to have to say all this.”

“Kiss me.”

The words fell quietly after his brassiness and vulgarity and he could not answer them. The face was close to his now, the body curved away seductively into darkness.

“Kiss me.”

“No.”

“Noah? No? Then I kiss you.” And he lowered his mouth onto the muscular forearm and bit it.

Lionel yelped with the pain.

“Bloody bitch, wait till I…” Blood oozed between the gold-bright hairs.

“You wait….” And the scar in his groin reopened. The cabin vanished. He was back in a desert fighting savages. One of them asked for mercy, stumbled, and found none.

The sweet act of vengeance followed, sweeter than ever for both of them, and as ecstasy hardened into agony his hands twisted the throat. Neither of them knew when the end came, and he when he realized it felt no sadness, no remorse. It was part of a curve that had long been declining, and had nothing to do with death. He covered again with his warmth and kissed the closed eyelids tenderly and spread the bright-coloured scarf. Then he burst out of the stupid cabin onto the deck, and naked and with the seeds of love on him he dived into the sea.

The scandal was appalling. The Big Eight did their best, but it was soon all over the boat that a British officer had committed suicide after murdering a half-caste. Some of the passengers recoiled from such news.

Others snuffled for more. The secretary of Moraes was induced to gossip and hint at proclivities, the cabin steward proved to have been over-tipped, the Master at Arms had had complaints which he had managed to stifle, the Purser had been suspicious throughout, and the doctor who examined the injuries divulged that strangulation was only one of them, and that March had been a monster in human form, of whom the earth was well rid. The cabin was sealed up for further examination later, and the place where the two boys had made love and the tokens they had exchanged in their love went on without them to Bombay. For Lionel had been only a boy.

His body was never recovered—the blood on it quickly attracted the sharks. The body of his victim was consigned to the deep with all possible speed. There was a slight disturbance at the funeral. The native crew had become interested in it, no one understood why, and when the corpse was lowered were heard betting which way it would float. It moved northwards

—contrary to the prevailing current—and there were clappings of hands and some smiles.

Finally Mrs March had to be informed. Colonel Arbuthnot and Lady Manning were deputed for the thankless task. Colonel Arbuthnot assured her that her son’s death had been accidental, whatever she heard to the

contrary; that he had stumbled overboard in the darkness during a friendly talk they had had together on deck. Lady Manning spoke with warmth and affection of his good looks and good manners and his patience “with us old fogies at our Bridge”. Mrs March thanked them for writing but made no comment. She also received a letter from Lionel himself—the one that should have been intercepted in the post—and she never mentioned his name again.

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