The Comedians

Piccadilly's alight - but all's well.

We'll use our ration of bread for toast,

For the blitzkrieg's dead in Pall Mall.'

Mr Baxter gave a blast on his whistle, came sharply to attention, and said,'The all-clear has sounded.'

'And none too soon,' Mrs Smith replied.

Mr Fernandez cried excitedly, 'No, no. Oh no, sir,' and I think with the exception of Mrs Smith there was general agreement that anything coming afterwards would be in the nature of an anti-climax.

'That calls for more champagne,' Jones said. 'Steward!'

The orchestra went back to the kitchen except for the conductor who stayed at Jones's request. 'The champagne's on me,' Jones said. 'You deserve a glass if any man did.'

Mr Baxter sat down suddenly beside me and began to tremble all over. His hand beat nervously on the table. 'Don't mind me,' he said, 'it's always been this way. I get my stage-fright afterwards. Would you say that I was well received?'

'Very,' I said. 'Where did you find the steel helmet?'

'It's just one of those things I carry around in the bottom of my trunk. Somehow I've never parted with it. I expect it's the same with you - there are things you keep …'

It was true enough: they were more portable objects than a steel helmet, but they were just as useless - photographs, an old postcard, a membership receipt long out of date for a nightclub off Regent Street, an entrance-ticket for one day to the casino at Monte Carlo. I was sure I could find half a dozen such if I turned out my pocket-book. 'The blue jeans I borrowed from the second officer - but they have a foreign cut.'

'Let me pour you out a glass. Your hand is still trembling.'

'You really liked the poem?'

'It was very vivid.'

'Then I'll tell you what I've never told anyone before. I was Post Warden X. I wrote it myself. After the May blitz in '41.'

'Have you written much else?' I asked.

'Nothing, sir. Oh, except once - about the funeral of a child.'

'And now, gentlemen,' the purser announced, 'if you will look at our programme you will see that we have come to very a special turn promised us by Mr Fernandez.'

And a very special turn it proved to be, for Mr Fernandez broke as suddenly into tears as Mr Baxter had broken into the trembles. Had he drunk too much champagne? Or had he been moved genuinely by Mr Baxter's recitation? I doubted that, for he seemed to have no words of English except his yes and no. But now he wept, sitting straight upright in his chair; he wept with great dignity, and I thought: 'I have never seen a coloured man weep before.' I had seen them laughing, angry, frightened, but never overcome like this man with inexplicable grief. We sat silent and watched him; there was nothing any of us could do, we couldn't communicate. His body shook slightly, just as the saloon shook with the vibration of the ship's engines, and I thought that this, after all, was a more suitable way than music and songs to approach the dark republic. There was plenty for all of us to weep for where we were going.

Then I saw the Smiths for the first time at their best. I had disliked the quick rap Mrs Smith had given poor Baxter - I suppose that any poem about war was offensive to her; but she was the only one of us now to move to Mr Fernandez' help. She sat down beside him, saying not a word, and took his hand in hers; with the other she stroked his pink palm. She might have been a mother comforting her child among strangers. Mr Smith followed her and sat down on Mr Fernandez' other side, so that they formed a little group apart. Mrs Smith made small clucking noises as she might have done to her child, and, as suddenly as he had begun, Mr Fernandez ceased to weep. He stood up, lifted Mrs Smith's old horny hand to his lips, and strode out of the saloon.

'Well,'

Baxter

exclaimed,

'What on earth do you suppose … ?'

'Very strange,' the purser said. 'Very strange indeed.'

'A bit of a damper,' Jones said. He held up the champagne bottle, but it was empty and he put it down again. The conductor picked up his toastingfork and returned to the kitchen.

'The poor man has troubles,' Mrs Smith said; it was all the explanation needed, and she looked at her hand as though she expected to see on the skin the impress of Mr Fernandez' full lips.

'A real damper,' Jones repeated.

Mr Smith said, 'If I may make a suggestion, perhaps we should bring the entertainment to a close now with Auld Lang Syne. Midnight is not far off. I wouldn't like Mr Fernandez, all alone down there, to think that we continued

- skylarking.' It was hardly the word I would have used to describe our celebrations so far, but I agreed with the principle. We had no orchestra now to accompany us, but Mr Jones sat down at the piano and picked out a fair rendering of the awful tune. Rather self-consciously we joined hands and sang. Without the cook and Jones and Mr Fernandez we made a very small circle. We had hardly yet experienced 'Old Acquaintance', and yet our cups were already exhausted.

7

It was well after midnight when Jones rapped on my cabin door. I was going through some papers with the idea of destroying anything which might be unfavourably interpreted by the authorities - for instance there had been an exchange of letters concerning the possible sale of my hotel and in some of them there were dangerous references to the political situation. I was sunk in my thoughts and I responded nervously to his knock as though I were already back in the republic and a Tonton Macoute might be at the door.

'I'm not keeping you awake?' he asked.

'I haven't started undressing.'

'I was sorry about tonight - it didn't go as well as I wished. Of course the material was limited. You know, I have a kind of thing about a last night on board - one may never see each other again. It's like New Year's Eve, when you want the old codger to go out well. Isn't there something they call a good death? I didn't like that black fellow crying that way. It was as though he saw things. In the future. Of course I'm not a religious man.' He looked at me shrewdly. 'You neither I would say.'

I had the impression he had come to my cabin for a purpose - not merely to express his disappointment at the entertainment, but perhaps to make a request or to ask a question. If he had been in a position to threaten me, I would even have suspected he had come for that. He wore his ambiguity like a loud suit and he seemed proud of it, like a man who says 'You must take me as you find me.' He continued, 'The purser says you really own that hotel …'

'Did you doubt it?'

'Not exactly. But you didn't seem the type. We don't always put the right descriptions on our passports,' he exclaimed in a tone sweetly reasonable.

'What have you got on yours?'

'Company director. And that's quite true - in a way,' he admitted.

'Anyway it's vague enough,' I said.

'And what's on yours?'

'Business

man.'

'That's even vaguer,' he exclaimed triumphantly.

Interrogation, partly concealed, was to be the basis of our relationship in the short time it lasted: we would snatch at small clues, though in great matters we would usually pretend to accept the other's story. I suppose those of us who spend a large part of our lives in dissembling, whether to a woman, to a partner, even to our own selves, begin to smell each other out. Jones and I learnt a lot about one another before the end, for one uses a little truth whenever one can. It is a form of economy.

He said, 'You've lived in Port-au-Prince. You must know some of the big boys there?'

'They come and go.'

'In the army, for example?'

'They've all gone. Papa Doc doesn't trust the army. The chief-of-staff, I believe, is hiding in the Venezuelan Embassy. The general's safe in Santo Domingo. There are some colonels left in the Dominican Embassy, and there are three colonels and two majors in prison - if they are alive. Did you have introductions to any of them?'

'Not exactly,' he said, but he looked uneasy.