the sunshine. Then you’ll see ’em. You can look over the end of the boat deck and see the whole steerage full of broiling Pommy skin, like chicken under a grill. Christ, it hurts your eyes to look at them. They think they’re at bloody Blackpool.’
‘That’s all right, isn’t it?’
‘Surely. Like our two gentlemanly governments struck a knock-down deal on Leeds and Manchester for a tenner a head. Two would-be lairds over a dram, Bob, what do you reckon: Menzies and Macmillan. “I’ll take any number of your Northern Whites, Harold. Any number.” “Good show. On the hoof, or carcass?” Or those folk who got bombed out of London and live in those little concrete sheds, what d’you call ’em?’
‘Prefabs,’ said Robert.
‘Yes, those things. Macmillan says, “Take ’em away. At last the invisible solution again.”’
‘What to?’
‘Poverty. Crime. Housing. The whole bloody class. Transportation, Bob. Only you cut out the cost of the irons. What do you think of that?’ He chuckled. ‘Men, women and children, done to a turn. You’d think they’d know better by now.’
‘By now?’
‘The poor never learn when they’re being done over.’
Robert found himself riled. ‘Why are they being done over? It’s a good deal, isn’t it? They’re not stupid.’ His own trip was company paid. ‘Just because people are working class doesn’t mean they’re any different from anyone else. I’m working class myself, Joe’ – whatever that meant – ‘I’m just lucky enough to … People think about it, talk about it. They know it’s bound to be a bit of a sweat that cheap. No one would expect a luxury cruise for ten quid, would they? Come on. But they’re prepared to put up with it for a month or so. Why not? For the chance. For the sake of a new … crack of the whip.’
‘That’s a good one. A new crack of the whip. Do you know anything about Australia, Bob?’
‘I’ve read what I can.’
‘Glad to hear it.’
Robert had tried to set himself a schedule of study, intending to put enforced idleness to good use, and to allay his anxieties about the job he was going to. When the voyage was new, before the storm swell began to develop, he divided up his day. He was full of good resolutions. For him, leaving England was supposed to be a cleansing. England felt soiled, fake, and Gothic. He did not know why.
He came clean at coffee one evening. People getting to know each other – sitting casually in little chance groupings under the frosted shell lamps, amid a strange, sea-borne, luxurious smell of coffee and fruit and wood dipped in spice dipped in salt dipped in alcohol. He spoke nervously about himself, possibly a little too loud: of the fake Gothic of the London grammar school he had gone to. Of the genuine Gothic of the Oxford college he had won an exhibition to and eventually joined. Then industry. ‘Gothic and square,’ he said. ‘Like an order at a transport cafe.’ They laughed politely. He did not know how angry he was.
‘What’s the square?’ she wanted to know. Then whispering: ‘Do you mean you’re a Freemason?’ The young woman whose name he now had, Penny Kendrick.
‘Oh, God, no. Square and functional. I call it laboratory architecture. And then I’m not sure whether it shouldn’t be lavatory architecture.’ He blurted the phrase.
A look of disapproval crossed her face. Other heads turned, and then turned away.
‘Science has to strip away the decorative, doesn’t it? The ornamental. Where I’ve been working it was all corners and wiring. Can you imagine? Metal chassis – what’s the plural? Chassises? Well, those; things with valves in. Wirelesses without the cabinet.’ He was relieved to see her smile again. ‘And instruments oddly piped together. Half neat and precise; half shambles. Strange, really. I suppose I’m not used to … all this.’ He indicated the fineness of the ship, was it? Or the sea? Or the ragged, low-bellied clouds brewing out of sight in the dark beyond the windows of the main lounge.
Anyway, as far as he was concerned a pall of post-war vileness had settled over England; much like the pre-war variety, though that was no more than the vague drift of a half-forgotten London childhood now. No, after the war, he had done his national service. ‘Barracks? I try not to remember that. Square in excelsis. Square even without the wires. Square bash!’ And had then gone to university together with older men, some still the returned servicemen, stragglers, showing up out of their experiences.
He had qualified quickly, working hard and barely noticing; and found himself ‘in industry’, helping to develop, eventually, the new field of radio-telescopy. It was in an enormous, and poisonously drab, factory complex near Hounslow. From the window of his shared laboratory a sad, soaked, unrelieved vista of sub-industrial housing stretched as far as the eye could see. It still looked battle weary. But he did not say this out loud. Nor did he quite acknowledge, even privately, that while the company he worked for ostensibly made radio receivers and recorded the latest pop singers, the project he was involved in was funded by the War Office.
But his feelings on England were untypical among his fellow scientists – who seemed rarely, if ever, to have opinions about anything – and his feelings were now especially untypical on board the Armorica. He knew that, at least. And why could he not be generous, or at least patient? He was not willingly subversive.
Later, in his top bunk, Robert found himself plagued by the notion that in his new life he had already made a social gaffe and offended her, them all, by his reference to the lavatory. It was exactly the sort of line that brought screeches of laughter on Workers’ Playtime or Midday Music-hall. It was exactly the smoky, faded smuttiness he wanted to put behind him.
Robert entered the voyage as if it were a novitiate. It was the last thing he would have admitted.
And for the last thing at night his self-imposed rigour required him, from the beginning of the trip, to digest a technical manual they had sent him from Australia relating to the circuitry of the equipment he would be using. It was also designed to protect him from Joe, who seemed by magic in those first days to appear, ready to turn in, just at the same moment as Robert.
From the lower bunk would come: ‘OK, I’ve moved. Your go. Can you make an atom bomb, yet?’
Despite the technical manual, Robert had from the very first found himself engaged in a series of chess games which he began to fear would continue even beyond the journey’s end. Maybe even at the tracking station, under the night sky, there would come in, mixed with the abstract hiss and jargon of the stars, Joe’s voice from the crackly transmitter of some sheep-run to which he would insist on driving, late and often, ‘Pawn to queen’s bishop five, Bob.’ He had constantly to break off from his reading, or even from composing himself for sleep, peer down from his bunk on to the exquisite board, and bluff out a convincing move.
He must fight back: but that was to enter a kind of strategic meta-chess. And even as Robert began to plot tactics, Joe went down with seasickness.
‘I really appreciate this, Bob. It really helps take my mind off feeling so rough. Jeez, I envy blokes who can call themselves good sailors. I’ll be all right in the Med, mind. It was the same in that bloody troop-ship when I was in the Army. Anyway, Nelson was always crook when he first put to sea, so I hear. Are you sure you want to move there; you’re just walking into big trouble? The big trouble with you, Bob, is your mind’s
