"Carl, why don't we leave the ship, anyway? Why don't we get off at Durban?"
He answered her instantly. "That is without exception the most stupid remark I have heard in the last twenty-four hours. And I've heard plenty. . . . You might as well ask why we don't all become priests and nuns." But it became clear that he must, at least, have considered the point she had raised, when he added: "For one simple reason—that wasn't the way we planned it, when we started out."
"I know that, Carl." She pressed his arm. "But what does that matter? We've had a wonderful trip, we've made a little money. Why don't you write it off as a free holiday?"
"Because I'm a professional."
Kathy smiled. It was a remark she had heard on countless occasions, to justify anything from poker-marathons to the necessity of flirting with old ladies on the Italian Riviera. "You used to say that at San Sebastian," she recalled, "when I tried to persuade you that the Chief of Police wasn't fooling about that tourist visa. ... I still don't believe it."
But he was not to be charmed, either by memory or by manner. "I didn't think you would believe it, in your present mood. The fact remains that we are committed to a certain programme, and I have invested a great deal of money in it. I am not going to change all my plans, and take a loss on the deal, just because a few uniformed nonentities get in my way. That isn't how I operate. You know that by now."
"But even you and I can't operate for ever."
Though she had made the remark naturally, it came from a deep inner compulsion; it did not surprise her when Carl seized upon it as if she had suddenly produced, between them, some naked emblem of the truth.
"Now that," he said, slowly, rather theatrically, "is a very interesting observation. Explain it."
"I only meant that sooner or later—"
"Explain it!"
"All right." It was a fine and sunny morning; why should she be afraid? "I've had six years of this kind of life, Carl, and you've had—well, lots more. But how long is it going on for? How will I finish up? How will you? We've had some wonderful times together—" her pressure on his arm was strong and sincere, "—but they must come to an end, some day. This could be the end."
He went straight to the heart of her dilemma when he asked: "What do you want to do instead?"
"I don't know at all. But I know what I don't want to do—and that's to finish up as a sort of gangster's moll, like in the late-night movies, getting older and older and crabbier and crabbier. I want a different sort of life, a different sort of future. In fact, I must have it."
He turned away, and stared at the ceiling, and said, with complete finality: "You will be nothing without me."
A few months earlier, she would have agreed; now she could argue the point, with passionate conviction.
"Carl, I am nothing with you! Don't you see that?"
"But you have been."
"Less and less. Every year less, everyday less. You made me into something, and then—and then—" she felt ready for the tears of frustration, but she thrust them back, "—somehow I was out of date, or you were out of date, and it didn't make sense any more. . . . Carl, please let's leave the ship at Durban, and do something else!"
There was a silence; the Alcestis rocked slightly, disturbing the benevolent sunbeams; a harmonious gong sounded from down the corridor—the first call for lunch. Carl waited until the tinkling echoes had faded, and then he said:
"This is the only thing I can do."
"That can't be true."
"I've made it true!" His voice was strong, even proud; he was not excusing anything, he had nothing to mourn. "Good God, do you think all this happened by accident? I like being a crook! It's the only thing to be!" He suddenly snatched his arm away, and brought it down with a sharp smack on the coverlets. "I'm going to tell you something, Kathy, and after that we won't have any more discussion about the moral aspects of being a criminal in a criminal world. In fact, we won't have any more discussion about anything. . . . When I was your age—and that's a long time ago, as we both know—my younger brother was shot in New York. You didn't even know that I had a younger brother, did you? I do not blame you—he does not figure in my normal conversation —he has been a paralysed idiot, lying flat on his back in hospital, for more than thirty years. . . . You know who shot him? A cop— an honest cop, one of New York's finest. You know why? My brother was lent a car by a friend, and it was a stolen car, and he didn't stop quickly enough when a zealous policeman held up his hand at a road-block. A warning shot, the zealous man said—he doubtless got a reprimand for it—only the warning shot missed the wind-shield or the tyre or whatever it was meant to warn, and just scraped a little nerve at the back of my brother's head." Horrified, Kathy watched as Carl's hand moved up to touch the back of his own head, fingering a spot which he must have fingered a thousand times in the past, which she herself must often have caressed.
"He was sixteen and a half," said Carl, "and he never spoke again, he never moved again, except by the law of gravity. He just became an expensive lump of meat—in the interests of reducing the numbers of cars driven away without the owner's consent in the city of New York in 1930. ... I used to go and see him in hospital—with the priest, with the policeman, by myself—and then pretty soon I didn't go any more. What can you say to a lump of meat that has to have a nurse to shut its mouth when the mouth falls open? Do you say you're sorry, like the policeman? Do you cry, like the priest? . . . I used to cry, when I saw my brother—he once played the Spirit of Self-indulgence, in our school play at Christmas—but by God I didn't cry for long! I went home, and I swore a very simple oath. I swore that if they could make an idiot out of my brother, I would make an idiot out of them."
He lay back, staring hard into the loathed past; she could not have interrupted him, even if she had had the words to do it with.
"I have made a very large-scale success out of that oath," said Carl. Where before there had been hatred in his voice, now there crept back a sullen and unmistakable threat. "I will continue to do so until I die, and so will anyone connected with me. We have had some setbacks on the present trip, but there aren't going to be any more. . . ." There was now an absolutely hypnotic quality in his voice; she had no choice in the world except to listen to it. "Louis has left us," he went on, silkily. "Diane is out of action. The Professor has proved useless. But this is as far as this particular roll of honour goes. There aren't going to be any more deserters, there aren't going to be any more flops or failures." He turned towards her, and grasped her hand with terrifying intensity. "I hope I have succeeded in convincing you, Kathy, because that is positively my last word on the subject. ... I am staying, and you are staying. . . . Now, if you will please press the bell," he broke off, obscenely polite, "1 think we have earned our lunch-time martinis, don't you?"
9
Diane was bored, for the best of all reasons. She sat on a bar stool in the Tapestry Room, late after dinner, and, between occasional small-talk with Edgar the head-barman, mused on the dullness of life. The ship was passing East London, so Edgar had informed her; for all the gaiety involved, it might have been East Lynne. There were other obvious drawbacks to this part of the world. The Indian Ocean climate was intolerable, even at sea; wafts of steamy air circled and recircled through the ventilation system; at meal-times, the butter melted at the table, and ran to yellow ooze; people lay about in attitudes of sweating boredom, too lazy even to look at the sharks which followed the ship in large-scale, faithful attendance. There was nothing to do, especially for Diane. . . . All that was open to her was to sit at bars, and, while waiting for her clearance-papers, to day-dream on the traditional preoccupations for a small but dirty mind.