Brideshead Revisited(80)
‘I don’t.’
‘How about these very embarrassing roses?’
‘The barber did his work with extraordinary dexterity indeed, with agility, for he stood like a swordsman in a ballet sometimes on the point of one foot, sometimes on the other, lightly flicking the lather off his blade, and swooping back to my chin as the ship righted herself; I should not have dared use a safety razor on myself.
The telephone rang again.
It was my wife.
‘How are you Charles?’
‘Tired.’
‘Aren’t you coming to see me?’
‘I came once. I’ll be in again.’
I brought her the flowers from the sitting-room; they completed the atmosphere of a maternity ward which she had managed to create in the cabin; the stewardess had the air of a midwife, standing by the bed, a pillar of starched linen and composure. My wife turned her head on the pillow and smiled wanly; she stretched out a bare arm and caressed with the tips of her fingers the cellophane and silk ribbons of the largest bouquet. ‘How sweet people are,’ she said faintly, as though the gale were a private misfortune of her own for which the world in its love was condoling with her.
‘I take it you’re not getting up.’
‘Oh no, Mrs Clark is being so sweet’; she was always quick to get servants’ names. ‘Don’t bother. Come in sometimes and tell me what’s going on.’
‘Now, now, dear,’ said the stewardess, ‘the less we are disturbed today the better.’
My wife seemed to make a sacred, female rite even of seasickness.
Julia’s cabin, I knew, was somewhere below ours. I waited for her by the lift on the main deck; when she came we walked once round the promenade; I held the rail; she took my other arm. It was hard going; through the streaming glass we saw a distorted world of grey sky and black water. When the ship rolled heavily I swung her round so that she could hold the rail with her other hand; the howl of the wind was subdued, but the whole ship creaked with strain. We made the circuit once, then Julia said: ‘It’s no good. That woman beat hell out of me, and I feel limp, anyway. Let’s sit down.’
The great bronze doors of the lounge had torn away from their hooks and were swinging free with the roll of the ship; regularly and, it seemed, irresistibly, first one, then the other, opened and shut; they paused at the completion of each half circle, began to move slowly and finished fast with a resounding clash. There was no real risk in passing them, except of slipping and being caught by that swift, final blow; there was ample time to walk through unhurried but there was something forbidding in the sight of that great weight of uncontrolled metal, flapping to and fro, which might have made a timid man flinch or skip through too quickly; I rejoiced to feel Julia’s hand perfectly steady on my arm and know, as I walked beside her, that she was wholly undismayed.
‘Bravo,’ said a man sitting nearby. ‘I confess I went round the other way. I didn’t like the look of those doors somehow. They’ve been trying to fix them all the morning.’
There were few people about that day, and that few seemed bound together by a camaraderie of reciprocal esteem; they did nothing except sit rather glumly in their armchairs, drink occasionally, and exchange congratulations on not being seasick.
‘You’re the first lady I’ve seen,’ said the man.
‘I’m very lucky.’
‘We are very lucky,’ he said, with a movement which began as a bow and ended as a lurch forward to his knees, as the blotting-paper floor dipped steeply between us. The roll carried us away from him, clinging together but still on our feet, and we quickly sat where our dance led us, on the further side, in isolation; a web of lifelines had been stretched across the lounge, and we seemed like boxers, roped into the ring.
The steward approached. ‘Your usual, sir? Whisky and tepid water, I think. And for the lady? Might I suggest a nip of champagne?’
‘D’you know, the awful thing is I would like champagne very much,’ said Julia. ‘What a life of pleasure — roses, half an hour with a female pugilist, and now champagne!’
‘I wish you wouldn’t go on about the roses. It wasn’t my idea in the first place. Someone sent them to Celia.’
‘Oh, that’s quite different. It lets you out completely. But it makes my massage worse.’
‘I was shaved in bed.’
‘I’m glad about the roses,’ said Julia. ‘Frankly, they were a shock. They made me think we were starting the day on the wrong foot.’
I knew what she meant, and in that moment felt as though I had shaken off some of the dust and grit of ten dry years; then and always, however she spoke to me, in half sentences, single words, stock phrases of contemporary jargon, in scarcely perceptible movements of eyes or lips or hands, however inexpressible her thought, however quick and far it had glanced from the matter in hand, however deep it had plunged, as it often did, straight from the surface to the depths, I knew; even that day when I still stood on the extreme verge of love, I knew what she meant.
We drank our wine and soon our new friend came lurching towards us down the lifeline.
‘Mind if I join you? Nothing like a bit of rough weather for bringing people together. This is my tenth crossing, and I’ve never seen anything like it. I can see you are an experienced sailor, young lady.’