The Bancrofts and the Gersons came from the same smart suburb of Chicago; if they had been told that, as married couples, they were as unique and as distinguishable from each other as two pairs of hard-boiled eggs, they would have laughed the idea to scorn, but it was depressingly true. The men were both bald, fat, and talkative; the women were smart, grey-haired, blue-rinsed, community-minded. Back home, the Bancrofts and the Gersons lived a half-mile from each other in identical split-level, ranch-type homes, built on commodious estates of acres each; the Gersons boasted a luminous sundial, the Bancrofts a barbecue-pit with terrazzo-style tiling; in both their two-car garages, a 1958 Cadillac nuzzled a 1960 Ford station-wagon. The Bancrofts went for hi-fi, the Gersons for home-movies. They all went for vodka martinis, the higher reaches of country club life, and marathon sessions of bridge.
The men were much given to the kind of self-conscious "joshing" which took the place of conversation over large tracts of America. Mr. Gerson was in oil—"though not very deep" was Mr. Bancroft's reiterated comment. Mr. Bancroft manufactured a well-known brand of bar supplies, including ornamental bone-handled corkscrews. ("Even the products are crooked," said Mr. Gerson, on every possible occasion.) Their invariable greeting to each other was: "Putting on a little weight, eh?" Then Mr. Bancroft would tell the story about Mr. Gerson and the oilmen's convention at Edmonton, Alberta, in 1951 ("They sold him the drilling rights, all right—he was in the wrong hall—they were dentists") and Mr. Gerson countered with the one about Mr. Bancroft and the two male cabaret dancers in Paris in 1948 ("You know, there's something queer here."). Then, with luck, they got drunk, and quarrelled, and their wives hauled them off to bed, while they made wild backward threats to kick each other's teeth in. In the morning they would say, almost simultaneously: "Boy, you certainly tied one on, last night."
At the moment, to a listless audience of nine at Tiptree-Jones's table, Mr. Bancroft was trying to get Mr. Gerson to admit that he had been drunk at a certain party in New York about three years previously.
"Boy, you certainly tied one on, that night."
"I was cold sober," said Mr. Gerson. "I drove home."
"You drove home! That doorman had to pour you into the back seat. Millie drove home. Didn't you, Millie?"
"I don't remember," said Mrs. Gerson.
"I'll bet Jack doesn't remember, either."
"I remember every little thing," said Mr. Gerson. "Including you and that hat-check girl."
"It wasn't a hat-check girl, it was a cigarette girl," said Mr. Bancroft triumphantly. "That's how much you remember. I told you, Jack, you shouldn't have switched to Bourbon. You can't take it." He turned to Tiptree-Jones. "That was his trouble, see? He switched to Bourbon."
"Really?" said Tiptree-Jones, laughing heartily. "It sounds rather unwise."
"I can switch to Bourbon, any time," proclaimed Mr. Gerson.
"He thinks," said Mr. Bancroft, with heavy sarcasm. "But boy, you should have seen him that night!"
"Well, who picked up the check, anyway?"
"The waiter picked up the check. It was on the floor." Mr. Bancroft bellowed with sudden laughter. "You knocked it on to the floor, and the waiter had to pick it up. Boy, you certainly tied one on, that night."
"I was cold sober," said Mr. Gerson. "It was you that tied one on."
"In a pig's ear!" said Mr. Bancroft. "You tied one on, Jack, and you might as well admit it."
"I drove home," said Mr. Gerson. "All the way from that crummy joint to that crummy hotel on 56th Street."
"And all the way into the fire hydrant," said Mr. Bancroft. "Boy, you certainly had a skinful, that night."
Silence fell all around the table; the topic, significant, absorbing, seemed to have been exhausted. The Bancrofts and the Gersons, smiling reminiscently on one side, scowling slightly on the other, went on with their meal; Bernice Beddington continued to stare straight ahead, rapt in some interior dream from which her spectacles kept the prying world; Mrs. van Dooren, weaving slightly, fished for her lost shoes under the table. Mrs. Consolini might have helped things out, but she had, in a relatively charming way, turned sulky. She had expected to be seated at the Captain's table; she did not like the one she was at; the fact that her long-term rival, Mrs. Stewart-Bates, was only at the Purser's table did little to assuage a feeling of time wasted, opportunity lost, indifference and cowardice in high places. She was prepared to smile if need be, but no words, no contribution. . . . Tiptree-Jones finally broke the silence, addressing himself bravely to the most forlorn quadrant of all, the Beddingtons.
"I expect," he said to Mr. Beddington, with exceptional brightness, "that you've been looking forward to this trip?"
Mr. Beddington, a stolid man who gave the impression that he was smoking a pipe even when this was not the case, considered the question at a comfortable length. Then he nodded ponderously, and said:
"I reckon that's a fair statement of the facts."
"What about you, Miss Beddington?" inquired Tiptree-Jones, when it was clear that Mr. Beddington was not going to add to this pronouncement.
Bernice Beddington, who was sitting directly opposite to him, continued to stare at a nearby pillar as if it had some compelling symbolism which a girl of her age ought to appreciate. She had eaten well of lobster cocktail, soup, fish, and saddle of lamb; she was waiting now for a choice ofBombe Surprise, meringues a la glace, or Cherries Jubilee, and after that for release, or Alka-Seltzer, or something—anything—whatever came next. In her huge myopic world, she was content, or at least reconciled. She was certainly not listening.
Her mother, who had for years worn the guilty, beaten look of a very small woman with a six-foot daughter, nudged her unobtrusively.
"Bernice."
Bernice Beddington broke surface slowly, like a suet dumpling coaxed towards the boil.
"Yes, Mother?"
"Mr. Tiptree-Jones was speaking to you, dear."
Bernice Beddington looked at him, blinking. Then she turned to her mother. "What did he say?"
Mrs. Beddington searched her memory, which was unreliable. Finally she asked: "What was it you said, Mr. Jones?"
Tiptree-Jones smiled manfully, caught in a lunatic realm of reported speech. "I said, was she looking forward to the trip?"
Mrs. Beddington turned back to her daughter, waiting. The rest of the table waited also, staring at the girl as if willing her to formulate a reply. Finally it came, accompanied by a scarlet blush which might have been the onset of indigestion.
"I don't know," she said.
Tiptree-Jones tried again. "I hope you enjoyed it last time, anyway."
"Oh, she did!" said Mrs. Beddington, filling another lengthy pause.
"I'm so glad," said Tiptree-Jones. "It makes a lot of difference to us, you know."
Mr. Beddington took the spectral pipe out of his mouth. "What does?"
"If people enjoy it," said Tiptree-Jones. "It makes a difference."
A disturbance by his side resolved itself into Mrs. van Dooren who, having reclaimed her shoes, was finding difficulty in putting them on again. But presently, having won this private wrestling match, she straightened up, and asked:
"What makes a difference to what?"
Tiptree-Jones felt he could not go through it all again. "Ar. you all right, Mrs. van Dooren?" he asked, by way of a change of pace.