It was as if he could not explain fast enough, nor dig deep enough for the degrading truth; it was as if he had not spoken this truth, nor even glanced secretly in its direction, for as long as he could remember. She sat down, compelled to let the torrent of words swamp her.
"You don't know what it's like, being dependent on a woman like that." His voice was a gabble, but a clear gabble none the less. "She doesn't let me forget it for a single second. ... It was all right at the beginning, but that was twelve years ago. I was thirty-six. . . . She gave me everything when we were first married; clothes, cars, horses, a wonderful house, jewellery, travel. The title was new to her, and she loved it, and she loved me. . . . Then it all changed, I don't know why. She saw that I'd got used to all the luxuries, all the money, and that I couldn't do without them, and she started to ration me. . . . Then she began making a fool of me in public—no, not quite making a fool of me, but using me to run endless ridiculous errands. There was one embassy party in London when I had to stand beside her with an ashtray. Oh God!" he exclaimed suddenly, as if he could stand the contemplation no longer, "give me a drink, for Christ's sake!"
She rose, without a word, and poured out some brandy, and gave it to him. The recital was disgusting, but beyond disgust was an appalled sense of pity; Beckwith was all the bad words—sponger, parasite, fake—but he was reduced now to a simpler emblem— total defeat. The haughty façade of the years, the self-deception; the armour of arrogance, all were melting away. She had a frightening suspicion that, when all was gone, there might not even be a man left.
He gulped his drink, raising his head only a fraction to do so. "You don't know what it's like," he said again. "Fetching things, finding things she's lost, buying things and bringing back the change. . . . Being sent on errands. Being interrupted, told to keep quiet. And making love to order. Getting ten dollars when she was pleased.... Once we were in Paris, and I lost a watch she'd given me, and she wouldn't believe I'd lost it, she said I'd sold it and kept the money, and she took away all my clothes and called the police. They must have thought we were both crazy. . . ." He raised his head at last; there were tears glistening in his eyes. "Let me go," he said suddenly, humbly. "I've nothing to give you. You can see that, can't you?"
She could indeed see it, and she was prepared to let him go; but remembering his manner of the past, his purse-proud, title-proud disdain, she could not control her wish to hurt. He was going to get off easily, but not as easily as that.
"Sure you can go," she said contemptuously. "Who wants you?"
"Thank you," he said, with the same humility, and stood up, his shoulders slack.
"Are you really a man?"
"I—I don't know."
Suddenly the revenge was nothing. In an absurd reversal of roles, she felt herself softening, to the point where she wanted to build him up again, to restore something of manhood. Anything was better than this cringing spaniel, in naked fear of losing his meal-ticket.
"Why not get out of it altogether?" she asked.
"How do you mean?" "Leave her. Beat it. Find some work. Do anything. You must have been something before. Be it again."
"I was nothing before." She felt that she was now listening to an entirely natural man, stripped of all the pretence, all the shoddy gilding. "I never had any money. Just the title. There were three lots of death-duties in ten years. . . . This is all I can do."
"Why?"
"I just know it is."
It was as she had suspected and feared; the natural man was nothing, just as the fake man was nothing. She took the key from behind the magazines, and unlocked the door. Then she stood aside.
"Beat it," she said.
Awkwardly he advanced. "Thank you very much. I'm sorry about the misunderstanding."
"There wasn't any misunderstanding."
"Good night, then."
She did not answer, and when she was alone she stood for a long time in thought, staring at the closed door. Then she began to laugh, silently at first, and then aloud. So much for the first attempt at piracy. She thought of her accounting at the next meeting. "Sir Hubert Beckwith—Nothing." Most accurate. . . . She was still laughing when Carl came in, but the laughter was nearer to tears— tears for her own failure, tears for all the failures in the world. She was overwrought by the degrading tug-of-war; in such a contest, who was the victor, who the vanquished?
"What happened?" asked Carl, watching her with some concern. "I just came down—I was next door—I heard him go. How much did he give you?"
"Not a dollar, not a cent." And as he looked puzzled: "You know those Christmas-present ads—'For the man who has everything'?" Her voice began to shake uncontrollably. "There should be another line of goods, for the man who has nothing. Beckwith would be a real candidate."
"Are you all right, Kathy?"
"Oh yes, I'm wonderful!" Suddenly she threw herself on the bed, and turned her face away; it seemed the most pitiable and evil moment of her life. "I'm wonderful," she repeated, her eyes now scalding. "But only by comparison."
6
East by south from Rio, the Alcestis ploughed her brave and steady furrow across the South Atlantic, traversing as quickly as possible the long haul to Cape Town. The Captain, personally, was in no hurry; he would have preferred to stay in these indulgent latitudes for ever, with only the dolphins and the flying-fish for company, and two thousand fathoms of blue water to play with. But he had other responsibilities; chiefly, to see that his passengers crossed three thousand miles of ocean, and made their landfall in South Africa, without coming to blows or sending priority cables ahead for plane reservations to New York. Since, at their best speed of fifteen knots, the journey could not take less than nine days, their best speed it had to be, to minimize the chances of disaster. In the meantime, his officers put forth prodigious efforts to keep the customers amused.
Competitions multiplied, games were stepped up; there was a succession of tournaments—ping-pong, deck-tennis, shuffle-board, swimming, diving, horse-racing—to take the main edge off the day; and in the evenings, fancy-dress dances, film shows, bingo sessions, and gala dinners varied the monotony of a landless passage. Above all, the passengers were encouraged, by example and by stealthy hint, to give parties themselves. The fact that the same people came *o all of them could not be helped, and was, perforce, taken for granted.
The Zuccos gave a "historical characters" costume-party; there were eight Napoleons, eleven Helens of Troy, and endless bickering about the prizes. The Bancrofts gave a champagne party, and the Gersons, not to be outdone, an oyster supper. Carl gave a smaller party in his suite; it was amusing for the entirely private reason that the majority of their guests were connected by adultery. The Beddingtons gave a moonlight dance, virtually in pitch darkness, up on the boat-deck; it was in such circumstances, people said unkindly, that Bernice Beddington looked at her best. Mr. Walham, in spite of the broadest encouragement, failed to give a party; Mrs. van Dooren gave one, and didn't even show up.
But there were quarrels none the less; feuds sprang up, remarks were taken the wrong way, carelessly passed drinks seemed, later, to have been spilt on purpose. There was one glorious row, which reached as far as the Captain's cabin—and stopped there—when Mrs. Kincaid told a select circle of friends, not more than ten or twelve, that the blonde girl who called herself Mrs. Burrell had better get married fast, because she was undoubtedly pregnant; whereupon Mr. Burrell, a proud husband in fact and a prouder father in embryo, countered with the comment that he would sue the Kincaids for a million dollars—the exact amount, he affirmed, missing from the public treasury in the Kincaids' home-town. (Captain Harmer dealt with this affair so sternly and scathingly that the contestants, cowed, came together and swore eternal enmity .—towards him.) But there was no row to match the row which developed after the ship's concert. That, as Mrs. van Dooren put it, was a real honey. She added her own obscure superlative; it had, she said, everything but pink lemonade.