and various kinds of cruises. While she was reading these a man in shirt sleeves, looking larger than life in the confined space, edged his way towards the window and attached to its surface with sticky paper, a freshly-written card.
He caught sight of her, gave her a tentative smile and backed out of the window.
She read the card.
‘M.V. Zodiac. Last minute cancellation.
A single-berth cabin is available for
this day’s sailing. Apply within.’
Placed about the window were photographs of M.V. Zodiac in transit and of the places she visited. In the background hung a map of the river and the canals that articulated with it: Ramsdyke. Bullsdyke. Crossdyke. A five day cruise from Norminster to Longminster and back was offered. Passengers slept and ate on board. The countryside, said a pamphlet that lay on the floor, was rich in historical associations. Someone with a taste for fanciful phrases had added: ‘For Five Days you Step out of Time.’
She had had a gruelling summer, working for her one-man show and was due in a few weeks to see it launched in Paris and afterwards New York. Her husband was in America and her son was taking a course at Grenoble. She thought of the long train journey south, the gritty arrival, the summer stifle of London and the empty stuffy house. It seemed to her, afterwards, that she behaved like a child in a fairytale. She opened the door and as she did so she heard something say within her head: ‘For five days I step out of time.’
II
‘There is,’ wrote Miss Rickerby-Carrick, ‘no bottom, none, to my unquenchable infamy.’
She glanced absently at the tip of her propelling pencil and, in falsetto, cleared her throat.
‘For instance,’ she wrote, ‘let us examine my philanthropy. Or rather, since I have no distaste for colloquialism, my dogoodery. No!’ she exclaimed aloud, ‘That won’t wash. That is a vile phrase, Dogoodery is a vile phrase.’ She paused again, greatly put out by the suspicion that these observations were not entirely original. She stared about her and caught the eye of a thin lady in dark blue linen who, like herself, sat on her own suitcase.
‘“Dogoodery”,’ Miss Rickerby-Carrick repeated. ‘Is that a facetious word? Do you find it so?’
‘Well – it depends, I suppose, on the context.’
‘You look startled.’
‘Do I?’ said Troy Alleyn, looking startled indeed. ‘Sorry. I was a thousand miles away.’
‘I wish I were. Or no,’ amended Miss Rickerby-Carrick. ‘Wrong again. Correction. I wish I were a thousand miles away from me. From myself. No kidding,’ she added. ‘To try out another colloquialism.’
She wrote again in her book.
Her companion looked attentively at her and might have been said, after her own fashion, also to make notes. She saw a figure, not exactly of fun, but of confusion. There was no co-ordination. The claret-coloured suit, the disheartened jumper, above all the knitted jockey-cap, all looked to have been thrown at their wearer and fortuitously to have stuck. She had a strange trick with her mouth, letting it fly apart over her teeth and turn up at the corners so that she seemed to grin when in fact she did nothing of the sort. The hand that clutched her propelling pencil was arthritic.
Overhead, clouds bowled slowly across a midsummer sky. A light wind fiddled with the river and one or two small boats bumped at their moorings. The pleasure craft Zodiac had not appeared but was due at noon.
‘My name,’ said Miss Rickerby-Carrick, ‘is Rickerby-Carrick. Hazel. “Spinster of this parish”. What’s yours?’
‘Alleyn.’
‘Mrs?’
‘Yes.’ After a moment’s hesitation Troy, since it was obviously expected of her, uncomfortably added her first name. ‘Agatha,’ she mumbled.
‘Agatharallen,’ said Miss Rickerby-Carrick sharply. ‘That’s funny. I thought you must be K. G. Z. Andropulos, Cabin 7.’
‘The cabin was taken by somebody called Andropulos, I believe, but the booking was cancelled at the last moment. This morning, in fact. I happened to be here on – on business and I saw it advertised in the Company’s window, so I took it,’ said Troy, ‘on impulse.’
‘Just like that. Fancy.’ A longish pause followed. ‘So we’re ship-mates? “Water-wanderers?”’ Miss Rickerby-Carrick concluded, quoting the brochure.
‘In the Zodiac? Yes,’ Troy agreed and hoped she sounded friendly enough. Miss Rickerby-Carrick crinkled her eyes and stripped her teeth. ‘Jolly good show,’ she said. She gazed at Troy for some time and then returned to her writing. An affluent-looking car drove half-way down the cobbled passage. Its uniformed driver got out, walked to the quay, looked superciliously at nothing in particular, returned, spoke through the rear window to an indistinguishable occupant and resumed his place at the wheel.
‘When I examine in depth the motives by which I am activated,’ wrote Miss Rickerby-Carrick in her book. ‘I am appalled. For instance. I have a reputation, within my circle (admittedly a limited one) for niceness, for kindness, for charity. I adore my reputation. People come to me in their trouble. They cast themselves upon my bosom and weep. I love it. I’m awfully good at being good. I think to myself that they must all tell each other how good I am. “Hay Rickerby-Carrick,” I know they say, “She’s so good.” And so I am. I am. I put myself out in order to keep up my reputation. I make sacrifices. I am unselfish in buses, upstanding in tubes and I relinquish my places in queues. I visit the aged, I comfort the bereaved and if they don’t like it they can lump it. I am filled with amazement when I think about my niceness. O misery, misery, misery me,’ she wrote with enormous relish.
Two drops fell upon her open notebook. She gave a loud, succulent and complacent sniff.
Troy thought: ‘Will she go on like this for five days? Is she dotty? O God, has she got a cold!’
‘Sorry,’ said Miss Rickerby-Carrick. ‘I’ve god a bid of cold. Dur,’ she added making a catarrhal clicking sound and allowing her mouth to fall slightly open. Troy began to wonder if there was a good train to London before evening.
‘You wonder,’ said Miss Rickerby-Carrick in a thick voice, ‘why I sit on my suitcase and write. I have lately taken to a diary. My self-propelling confessional, I call it.’
‘Do you?’ Troy said helplessly.
Down the cobbled lane walked a pleasant-looking man in an ancient knickerbocker suit of Donegal tweed and a cloth cap. He carried, beside a rucksack, a square box on a shoulder-strap and a canvas-covered object that might, Troy thought, almost be a grossly misshapen tennis racquet. He took off his cap when he saw the ladies and kept it off. He was of a sandy complexion with a not unattractive cast in one of his blue eyes, a freckled countenance and a tentative smile.
‘Good morning,’ he said. ‘We must be fellow-travellers.’
Troy agreed. Miss Rickerby-Carrick, blurred about the eyes and nose, nodded, smiled and sniffed. She was an industrious nodder.
‘No
