They brought me a basin, and cold weak tea with sugar but no milk. Richard said I should drink champagne because it was the best cure, but I didn't want to take the risk. He was more or less considerate, but also more or less annoyed, though he did say what a shame I was feeling ill. I said I didn't want to ruin his evening and he should go off and socialise, and so he did. The benefit to my seasickness was that Richard showed no inclination to climb into bed with me. Sex may go nicely with many things, but vomit isn't one of them.
The next morning Richard said I should make an effort to appear at breakfast, as having the right attitude was the war half won. I sat at our table and nibbled bread and drank water, and tried to ignore the cooking smells. I felt bodiless and flaccid and crepey-skinned, like a deflating balloon. Richard tended me intermittently, but he knew people, or seemed to know them, and people knew him. He got up, shook hands, sat down again. Sometimes he introduced me, sometimes not. He did not however know all of the people he wanted to know. This was clear by the way he was always gazing around, past me, past those he was talking with-over their heads.
I made a gradual recovery during the day. I drank ginger ale, which helped. I did not eat dinner, but I attended it. In the evening there was a cabaret. I wore the dress Winifred had chosen for such an event, dove grey with a chiffon cape in lilac. There were lilac sandals with high heels and open toes to match. I had not yet quite got the hang of such high heels: I teetered slightly. Richard said the sea air must have agreed with me; he said I had just the right amount of colour, a faint schoolgirl blush. He said I looked marvellous. He steered me to the table he'd reserved, and ordered a martini for me and one for himself. He said the martini would fix me up in no time flat.
I drank some of it, and after that Richard was no longer beside me, and there was a singer who stood in a blue spotlight. She had her black hair waved down over one eye, and was wearing a tubular black dress covered with big scaly sequins, which clung to her firm but prominent bottom and was held up by what looked like twisted string. I stared at her with fascination. I'd never been to a cabaret, or even to a nightclub. She wiggled her shoulders and sang "Stormy Weather" in a voice like a sultry groan. You could see halfway down her front.
People sat at their tables watching her and listening to her, and having opinions about her-free to like or dislike her, to be seduced by her or not, to approve or disapprove of her performance, of her dress, of her bottom. She however was not free. She had to go through with it-to sing, to wiggle. I wondered what she was paid for doing this, and whether it was worth it. Only if you were poor, I decided. The phrasein the spotlight has seemed to me ever since to denote a precise form of humiliation. The spotlight was something you should evidently stay out of, if you could.
After the singer, there was a man who played a white piano, very fast, and after him a couple, two professional dancers: a tango act. They were in black, like the singer. Their hair shone like patent leather in the spotlight, which was now an acid green. The woman had one dark curl glued to her forehead, and a large red flower behind one ear. Her dress gored out from mid-thigh but was otherwise like a stocking. The music was jagged, hobbled-like a four-legged animal lurching on three legs. A crippled bull with its head down, lunging.
As for the dance, it was more like a battle than a dance. The faces of the dancers were set, impassive; they eyed each other glitteringly, waiting for a chance to bite. I knew it was an act, I could see that it was expertly done; nonetheless, both of them looked wounded.
The third day came. In the early afternoon I walked on the deck, for the fresh air. Richard didn't come with me: he was expecting some important telegrams, he said. He'd had a lot of telegrams already; he would slit the envelopes with a silver paper knife, read the contents, then tear them up or tuck them away in his briefcase, which he kept locked.
I didn't especially want him to be there with me on the deck, but nonetheless I felt alone. Alone and therefore neglected, neglected and therefore unsuccessful. As if I'd been stood up, jilted; as if I had a broken heart. A group of English people in cream-coloured linen stared at me. It wasn't a hostile stare; it was bland, remote, faintly curious. No one can stare like the English. I felt rumpled and grubby, and of minor interest.
The sky was overcast; the clouds were a dingy grey, and sagged down in clumps like the stuffing from a saturated mattress. It was drizzling lightly. I wasn't wearing a hat, for fear it might blow off; I had only a silk scarf, knotted under my chin. I stood at the railing, looking over and down, at the slate-coloured waves rolling and rolling, at the ship's white wake scrawling its brief meaningless message. Like the clue to a hidden mishap: a trail of torn chiffon. Soot from the funnels blew down over me; my hair came unpinned and stuck to my cheeks in wet strands.
So this is the ocean, I thought It did not seem as profound as it should. I tried to remember something I might have read about it, some poem or other, but could not Break, break, break Something began that way. It had cold grey stones in it Oh Sea I wanted to throw something overboard I felt it was called for. In the end I threw a copper penny, but I didn't make a wish.
Six
The houndstooth suit
He turns the key. It's a bolt lock, a small mercy. He's in luck this time, he has the loan of a whole flat. A bachelorette, only one large room with a narrow kitchen counter, but its own bathroom, with a claw-footed tub and pink towels in it. Ritzy doings. It belongs to the girlfriend of a friend of a friend, out of town for a funeral. Four whole days of safety, or the illusion of it.
The drapes match the bedspread; they're a heavy nubbled silk, cherry-coloured, over wispy undercurtains. Keeping a little back from the window, he looks out. The view-what he can see through the yellowing leaves-is of Allan Gardens. A couple of drunks or hobos are passed out under the trees, one with his face under a newspaper. He himself has slept like that. Newspapers dampened by your breath smell like poverty, like defeat, like mildewed upholstery with dog hairs on it. There's a scattering of cardboard signs and crumpled papers on the grass, from last night-a rally, the comrades hammering away at their dogma and the ears of their listeners, making hay while the sun don't shine. Two disconsolate men picking up after them now, with steel-tipped sticks and burlap bags. At least it's work for the poor buggers.
She'll walk diagonally across the park. She'll stop, look too obviously around her to see if there's anyone watching. By the time she's done that, there will be.
On the epicene white-and-gold desk there's a radio the size and shape of half a loaf of bread. He turns it on: a Mexican trio, the voices like liquid rope, hard, soft, intertwining. That's where he should go, Mexico. Drink tequila. Go to the dogs, or go more to the dogs. Go to the wolves. Become a desperado. He sets his portable typewriter on the desk, unlocks it, takes off the lid, rolls paper in. He's running out of carbons. He has time for a few pages before she arrives, if she arrives. She sometimes gets hung up, or intercepted. Or so she claims.
He'd like to lift her into the ritzy bathtub, cover her with suds. Wallow around in there with her, pigs in pink bubbles. Maybe he will.
What he's been working on is an idea, or the idea of an idea. It's about a race of extraterrestrials who send a spaceship to explore Earth. They're composed of crystals in a high state of organisation, and they attempt to establish communications with those Earth beings they've assumed are like themselves: eyeglasses, windowpanes, Venetian paperweights, wine goblets, diamond rings. In this they fail. They send back a report to their homeland: This planet contains many interesting relics of a once-flourishing but now-defunct civilization, which must have been of a superior order. We cannot tell what catastrophe has caused all intelligent life to become extinct. The planet currently harbours only a variety of viscous green filigree and a large number of eccentrically shaped globules of semi-liquid mud, which are tumbled hither and thither by the erratic, currents of the light, transparent fluid that covers the planet's surface. The shrill squeaks and resonant groans produced by these must be ascribed to fractional vibration, and should not be mistaken for speech.