Singing in the Shrouds

‘Not true! Mr Dale, they’re being beastly to me!’

Dale said: ‘I’m on your side.’ It was a phrase with which he often reassured timid subjects on television. He was already talking to Mrs Dillington-Blick as if they were lifelong friends and yet with that touch of deference that lent such distinction to his programmes and filled Alleyn, together with eighty per cent of his male viewers, with a vague desire to kick him. There was a great deal of laughter at the Captain’s table. Mrs Cuddy was moved to stare at it so fixedly that at one moment she completely missed her mouth.

A kind of restlessness was engendered in the passengers, a sense of being done out of something and, in two of the women, of resentment. Miss Abbott felt angry with Mrs Dillington-Blick because she was being silly over three men. Mrs Cuddy felt angry with her because three men were being silly over her and also because of a certain expression that had crept into Mr Cuddy’s wide smile. Jemima Carmichael wondered how Mrs Dillington-Blick could be bothered and then took herself to task for being a humbug: the new passenger, she thought, was quite enough to make any girl do her stuff. She found that Dr Makepiece was looking at her and to her great annoyance she blushed. For the rest of luncheon she made polite conversation with the second mate who was Welsh and bashful and with the Wireless Officer who wore that wild and lonely air common to his species.

After luncheon Alleyn went to see his quarters. The pilot’s cabin had a door and porthole opening on to the bridge. He could look down on the bows of the ship, thrust arrow-like into the sea and at the sickle-shaped and watery world beyond. Under other circumstances, he thought, he would have enjoyed this trip. He unpacked his suitcases, winked at a photograph of his wife, went below and carried out a brief inspection of the passengers’ quarters. These were at the same level as the drawing-room and gave on to a passage that went through from port to starboard. The doors were all shut with the exception of that opening into the cabin aft of the passage on the port side. This was open and the cabin beyond resembled an overcrowded flower-shop. Here Dennis was discovered, sucking his thumb and lost in contemplation. Alleyn knew that Dennis, of whom this was his first glimpse, might very well become a person of importance. He paused by the door.

‘Afternoon,’ he said. ‘Are you the steward for the pilot’s cabin?’

Evidently Dennis had heard about Alleyn. He hurried to the door, smiled winsomely and said: ‘Not generally, but I’m going to have the pleasure of looking after you, Mr Broderick.’

Alleyn tipped him five pounds. Dennis said: ‘Oh, you shouldn’t sir, really,’ and pocketed the note. He indicated the flowers and said, ‘I just can’t make up my mind, sir: Mrs Dillington-Blick said I was to take some into the dining-room and lounge and as soon as I’ve finished in the bar I’m going to but I don’t know which to choose. Such an umberance-der-riches! What would you say for the lounge, sir? The décor’s dirty pink.’

Alleyn was so long answering that Dennis gave a little giggle. ‘Isn’t it diffy!’ he sympathized.

Alleyn pointed a long finger. ‘That,’ he said, ‘I should certainly make it that one,’ and went on his way to the passengers’ lounge.

III

It was a modest combination of bar, smoking-room and card-room and in it the passengers were assembled for coffee. Already by the curious mechanism of human attraction and repulsion they had begun to sort themselves into groups. Mr McAngus having found himself alongside the Cuddys at luncheon was reappropriated by them both and seemed to be not altogether at ease in their company, perhaps because Mrs Cuddy stared so very fixedly at his hair which, Alleyn noticed, was of an unexpected shade of nutbrown with no parting and a good deal of overhang at the back. He drew a packet of herbal cigarettes from his pocket and lit one, explaining that he suffered from asthma. They began to chat more cosily about diseases. Mr McAngus confided that he was but recently recovered from an operation and Mr Cuddy returned this lead with a lively account of a suspected duodenal ulcer.

Father Jourdain and Mr Merryman had discovered a common taste in crime fiction and smiled quite excitedly at each other over their coffee cups. Of all the men among the passengers, Alleyn thought, Father Jourdain had the most arresting appearance. He wondered what procession of events had led this man to become an Anglo-Catholic celibate priest. There was intelligence and liveliness in the face whose pallor, induced no doubt by the habit of his life, emphasized rather than concealed the opulence of the mouth and watchfulness of the dark eyes. His short white hands were muscular and his hair thick and glossy. He was infinitely more vivid than his companion, whose baby-faced petulance, Alleyn felt, was probably the outward wall of the conventional house-master. He caught himself up. ‘Conventional?’ Was Mr Merryman the too-familiar pedant who cultivates the eccentric to compensate himself for the deadly boredom of scholastic routine? A don manqué? Alleyn took himself mildly to task for indulgence in idle speculation and looked elsewhere.

Dr Timothy Makepiece stood over Jemima Carmichael with the slightly mulish air of a young Englishman in the early stages of an attraction. Alleyn noted the formidable lines of Dr Makepiece’s jaw and mouth and, being at the moment interested in hands, the unusual length of the fingers.

Miss Abbott sat by herself on a settee against the wall. She was reading. The hands that held her neatly-covered book were large and muscular. Her face, he reflected, would have been not unhandsome if it had been only slightly less inflexible and if there had not been the suggestion of – what was it? – harshness? – about the jaw.

As for Aubyn Dale, there he was, with Mrs Dillington-Blick who had set herself up with him hard-by the little bar. When she saw Alleyn she beckoned gaily to him. She was busy establishing a coterie. As Alleyn joined them Aubyn Dale laid a large beautifully tended hand over hers and burst into a peal of all-too-infectious laughter. ‘What a perfectly marvellous person you are!’ he cried boyishly and appealed to Alleyn. ‘Isn’t she wonderful?’

Alleyn agreed fervently and offered them liqueurs.

‘You take the words out of my mouth, dear boy,’ Dale exclaimed.

‘I oughtn’t to!’ Mrs Dillington-Blick protested. ‘I’m on an inquisitorial diet!’ She awarded her opulence a downward glance and Alleyn an upward one. She raised her eyebrows. ‘My dear!’ she cried. ‘You can see for yourself. I oughtn’t.’

‘But you’re going to,’ he rejoined and the drinks were served by the ubiquitous Dennis who had appeared behind the bar. Mrs Dillington-Blick, with a meaning look at Dale, said that if she put on another ounce she would never get into her Jolyon swimsuit and they began to talk about his famous session on commercial television. It appeared that when he visited America and did a specially sponsored half-hour, he had been supported by a great mass of superb models all wearing Jolyon swimsuits. His hands eloquently sketched their curves. He leant towards Mrs Dillington-Blick and whispered. Alleyn noticed the slight puffiness under his eyes and the blurring weight of flesh beneath the inconsiderable jaw which formerly his beard had hidden. ‘Is this the face,’ Alleyn asked himself, ‘that launched a thousand hips?’ and wondered why.