The Comedians Read online

  ‘What do you think of Mr Jones?’ the purser asked.

  ‘Major Jones? I leave such questions to you and the captain.’ It was obvious that he had been consulted as well as I. Perhaps the fact that my name was Brown made me more sensitive to the comedy of Jones.

  I picked up one of the great sausages of fish-skin and said, ‘Do you ever put one of these to a proper use?’

  The purser sighed. ‘Alas, no. I have reached an age . . . Inevitably I get a crise de foie. Whenever my emotions are upset.’

  The purser had admitted me to an intimacy and now he required an intimacy in return, or perhaps the captain had demanded information on me too and the purser saw an opportunity of providing it. He asked me, ‘How did a man like you ever come to settle in Port-au-Prince? How did you ever become an hôtelier. You don’t look like an hôtelier. You look like – like . . .’ but his imagination failed him.

  I laughed. He had asked the pertinent question all right, but the answer was one I preferred to keep to myself.

  VI

  The captain honoured us the next night with his presence at dinner, and so did the chief engineer. I suppose there must always be a rivalry between captain and chief, as their responsibilities are equal. So long as the captain had taken his meals alone the chief had done the same. Now one at the head of the table and the other at the foot, they sat with equality under the dubious balloons. There was an extra course in honour of our last night at sea, and, with the exception of the Smiths, the passengers drank champagne.

  The purser was unusually restrained in the presence of his superior officers (I think he would have liked to join the first officer on the bridge in the freedom of the windy dark), and the captain and chief were a little bowed under the sense of occasion, like priests serving at a major feast. Mrs Smith sat on the captain’s right and I on his left, and the mere presence of Jones precluded easy conversation. Even the menu was an added difficulty, for on this occasion the Dutch feeling for heavy meat dishes was given full rein and Mrs Smith’s plate too often reproached us with its bareness. The Smiths, however, had carried with them from the States a number of cartons and bottles which like buoys always marked their places, and perhaps because they felt they had surrendered their principles in drinking something as doubtful in its ingredients as Coca-Cola, they mixed their own beverages tonight with the aid of hot water.

  ‘I understand,’ the captain said gloomily, ‘that after dinner there is to be an entertainment.’

  ‘We’re only a small company,’ the purser said, ‘but Major Jones and I felt that something must be done on our last night together. There is the kitchen-orchestra, of course, and Mr Baxter is going to give us something very special . . .’ I exchanged a puzzled glance with Mrs Smith. Neither of us knew who Mr Baxter could be. Had we a stowaway on board?

  ‘I have asked Mr Fernandez to help us in his own way, and he has gladly consented,’ the purser went happily on. ‘We shall end by singing Auld Lang Syne for the sake of our Anglo-Saxon passengers.’ The duck went past a second time, and the Smiths to keep us company helped themselves from their packets and bottles.

  ‘Excuse me, Mrs Smith,’ the captain said, ‘but what is that you are drinking?’

  ‘A little Barmene with hot water,’ Mrs Smith told him. ‘My husband prefers Yeastrel in the evening. Or sometimes Vecon. Barmene, he thinks, excites him.’

  The captain gave a scared look at Mrs Smith’s plate and cut himself a wedge of duck. I said, ‘And what are you eating, Mrs Smith?’ I wanted the captain to taste the full extravagance of the situation.

  ‘I don’t know why you should ask, Mr Brown. You have seen me eat it every evening at the same hour. Slippery Elm Food,’ she explained to the captain. He put down his knife and fork, pushed away his plate and sat with his head bowed. I thought at first that he was saying a grace, but I think in fact he had been overcome with a feeling of nausea.

  ‘I shall finish up with some Nuttoline,’ Mrs Smith said, ‘if you cannot supply a yoghourt.’

  The captain cleared his throat harshly and looked away from her down the table, flinched a little at the sight of Mr Smith, who was shovelling some dry brown grains across his plate, and fixed his eyes on harmless Mr Fernandez, as though he might be in some way responsible. Then he announced in a duty voice, ‘Tomorrow afternoon we arrive, I hope, by four o’clock. I would advise you to be prompt at the customs as the lights in the town generally go out around six-thirty.’

  ‘Why?’ Mrs Smith demanded. ‘It must be very inconvenient for everyone.’

  ‘For economy,’ the captain said. He added, ‘The news on the radio tonight is not good. Rebels are said to have attacked across the Dominican border. The government claims that all is quiet in Port-au-Prince, but I would advise those of you who are stopping here to keep in close touch with your consulates. I have received orders to land passengers promptly and proceed at once to Santo Domingo. I am not to delay for cargo.’

  ‘We seem to be hitting a spot of trouble, dear,’ Mr Smith said from his end of the table and he took another spoonful of what I took to be Froment – a dish he had explained to me at lunch.

  ‘Not for the first time,’ Mrs Smith replied with grim satisfaction.

  A sailor came in, bringing a message for the captain, and as he opened the door a breeze set the French letters asway; they whined where they touched. The captain said, ‘You must excuse me. My duty. I have to go now. I wish you all a convivial evening,’ but I wondered whether the message had been pre-arranged – he was not a sociable man and he had found Mrs Smith hard to accept. The chief rose too as though he feared to leave the ship alone in the captain’s hands.

  Now that the officers had gone, the purser became his old self again and he egged us on to eat more and drink more. (Even the Smiths after a good deal of hesitation – ‘I am not a true gourmand,’ Mrs Smith said – gave themselves a second helping of Nuttoline.) A sweet liqueur was served which the purser explained was ‘on’ the company, and the thought of a free liqueur mesmerized us all – except, of course, the Smiths – into further drinking, even the pharmaceutical traveller, though he looked at his glass with apprehension as though green was the colour for danger. When eventually we reached the saloon a programme was lying on every chair.

  The purser said gaily, ‘Chins up,’ and began to beat his hands softly on his plump knees as the orchestra entered, led by the cook, a cadaverous young man, with cheeks flushed by the heat of stoves, wearing his chef’s hat. His companions carried pots, pans, knives, spoons: a mincer was there to add a grinding note, and the chef held a toasting-fork as a baton. In the programme the piece they played was called Nocturne, and it was followed by a Chanson d’Amour, sung by the chef himself, sweetly and uncertainly. Automne, tendresse, feuilles mortes, I could catch only a few of the melancholy words between the hollow crash of spoon on pot. Mr and Mrs Smith sat hand-in-hand on the couch, the rug spread over her knees, and the traveller in pharmaceutical products leant earnestly forward, watching the thin singer; perhaps with a professional eye he was considering whether any of his drugs might be of use. As for Mr Fernandez he sat apart, every now and then writing something down in a notebook. Jones hovered behind the purser’s chair, occasionally leaning down and whispering in his ear. He seemed in the throes of a private enjoyment, as if the whole affair were his own invention, and when he applauded it was with a self-congratulatory glee. He looked at me and winked as much as to say, ‘Just you wait. My imagination doesn’t stop here. There are better things yet to come.’

  I had meant to go to my cabin when the song was over, but Jones’s manner awoke my curiosity. The pharmaceutical traveller had already disappeared, but I remembered it was past his usual bedtime. Jones now called the leader of the orchestra into conference: the chief drummer joined them with his big copper saucepan under his arm. I looked at my programme and saw that the next item was a Dramatic Monologue by Mr J. Baxter. ‘That was a very interesting performance,’ Mr Smith said. ‘Didn’t you
find it so, my dear?’

  ‘The pots were serving a better purpose than cooking an unfortunate duck,’ Mrs Smith replied. Her passions had not been perceptibly weakened by the removal of acidity.

  ‘Very nicely sung, wasn’t it, Mr Fernandez?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Mr Fernandez and sucked the end of his pencil.

  The pharmaceutical traveller entered wearing a steel helmet – he had not gone to bed, but had changed into a pair of blue jeans and had a whistle clenched between his teeth.

  ‘So that’s Mr Baxter,’ Mrs Smith said in a tone of relief. I think she disliked mysteries; she wanted all ingredients of the human comedy marked as precisely as one of Mr Baxter’s drugs or the label on the bottle of Barmene. The pharmaceutical traveller could easily have borrowed the blue jeans from a member of the crew, but I wondered how he had obtained his steel helmet.

  Now he gave a blast of his whistle to silence us, though only Mrs Smith had spoken, and announced: ‘A Dramatic Monologue entitled “The Warden’s Patrol”.’ To his obvious dismay a member of the orchestra reproduced an air-raid siren.

  ‘Bravo,’ Jones said.

  ‘You should have warned me,’ Mr Baxter said. ‘Now I’m off my cue.’

  He was interrupted again by a roll of distant gunfire produced on the bottom of a frying-pan.

  ‘What’s that supposed to be?’ Mr Baxter demanded angrily.

  ‘The guns in the estuary.’

  ‘You are interfering with my script, Mr Jones.’

  ‘Proceed,’ Jones said. ‘The overture is over. The atmosphere is set. London 1940.’ Mr Baxter gave him a sad hurt look and announced again, ‘A Dramatic Monologue entitled “The Warden’s Patrol” composed by Post Warden X.’ Holding his palm over his eyes, as though to ward off falling glass, he began to recite.

  ‘The flares came down over Euston, St Pancras,

  And dear old Tottenham Road,

  And the warden walking his lonely beat

  Saw his shadow like a cloud.

  ‘Guns in Hyde Park were blasting away

  When the cry of the first bomb came,

  And the warden shook his fist at the sky

  As he mocked at Hitler’s fame.

  ‘London will stand, St Paul’s will stand,

  And for every death we have here,

  A curse will arise from a German heart

  Against their devilish Fuhrer.

  ‘Maples is hit, Gower Street’s a ghost,

  Piccadilly’s alight – but all’s well.

  We’ll use our ration of bread for toast,

  For the blitzkrieg’s dead in Pall Mall.’

  Mr Baxter gave a blast on his whistle, came sharply to attention, and said, ‘The all-clear has sounded.’

  ‘And none too soon,’ Mrs Smith replied.

  Mr Fernandez cried excitedly, ‘No, no. Oh no, sir,’ and I think with the exception of Mrs Smith there was general agreement that anything coming afterwards would be in the nature of an anti-climax.

  ‘That calls for more champagne,’ Jones said. ‘Steward!’

  The orchestra went back to the kitchen except for the conductor who stayed at Jones’s request. ‘The champagne’s on me,’ Jones said. ‘You deserve a glass if any man did.’

  Mr Baxter sat down suddenly beside me and began to tremble all over. His hand beat nervously on the table. ‘Don’t mind me,’ he said, ‘it’s always been this way. I get my stage-fright afterwards. Would you say that I was well received?’

  ‘Very,’ I said. ‘Where did you find the steel helmet?’

  ‘It’s just one of those things I carry around in the bottom of my trunk. Somehow I’ve never parted with it. I expect it’s the same with you – there are things you keep . . .’

  It was true enough: they were more portable objects than a steel helmet, but they were just as useless – photographs, an old postcard, a membership receipt long out of date for a nightclub off Regent Street, an entrance-ticket for one day to the casino at Monte Carlo. I was sure I could find half a dozen such if I turned out my pocket-book. ‘The blue jeans I borrowed from the second officer – but they have a foreign cut.’

  ‘Let me pour you out a glass. Your hand is still trembling.

  ‘You really liked the poem?’

  ‘It was very vivid.’

  ‘Then I’ll tell you what I’ve never told anyone before. I was Post Warden X. I wrote it myself. After the May blitz in ’41.’

  ‘Have you written much else?’ I asked.

  ‘Nothing, sir. Oh, except once – about the funeral of a child.’

  ‘And now, gentlemen,’ the purser announced, ‘if you will look at our programme you will see that we have come to a very special turn promised us by Mr Fernandez.’

  And a very special turn it proved to be, for Mr Fernandez broke as suddenly into tears as Mr Baxter had broken into the trembles. Had he drunk too much champagne? Or had he been moved genuinely by Mr Baxter’s recitation? I doubted that, for he seemed to have no words of English except his yes and no. But now he wept, sitting straight upright in his chair; he wept with great dignity, and I thought: ‘I have never seen a coloured man weep before.’ I had seen them laughing, angry, frightened, but never overcome like this man with inexplicable grief. We sat silent and watched him; there was nothing any of us could do, we couldn’t communicate. His body shook slightly, just as the saloon shook with the vibration of the ship’s engines, and I thought that this, after all, was a more suitable way than music and songs to approach the dark republic. There was plenty for all of us to weep for where we were going.

  Then I saw the Smiths for the first time at their best. I had disliked the quick rap Mrs Smith had given poor Baxter – I suppose that any poem about war was offensive to her; but she was the only one of us now to move to Mr Fernandez’ help. She sat down beside him, saying not a word, and took his hand in hers; with the other she stroked his pink palm. She might have been a mother comforting her child among strangers. Mr Smith followed her and sat down on Mr Fernandez’ other side, so that they formed a little group apart. Mrs Smith made small clucking noises as she might have done to her child, and, as suddenly as he had begun, Mr Fernandez ceased to weep. He stood up, lifted Mrs Smith’s old horny hand to his lips, and strode out of the saloon.

  ‘Well,’ Baxter exclaimed, ‘what on earth do you suppose . . . ?’

  ‘Very strange,’ the purser said. ‘Very strange indeed.’

  ‘A bit of a damper,’ Jones said. He held up the champagne bottle, but it was empty and he put it down again. The conductor picked up his toasting-fork and returned to the kitchen.

  ‘The poor man has troubles,’ Mrs Smith said; it was all the explanation needed, and she looked at her hand as though she expected to see on the skin the impress of Mr Fernandez’ full lips.

  ‘A real damper,’ Jones repeated.

  Mr Smith said, ‘If I may make a suggestion, perhaps we should bring the entertainment to a close now with Auld Lang Syne. Midnight is not far off. I wouldn’t like Mr Fernandez, all alone down there, to think that we continued – skylarking.’ It was hardly the word I would have used to describe our celebrations so far, but I agreed with the principle. We had no orchestra now to accompany us, but Mr Jones sat down at the piano and picked out a fair rendering of the awful tune. Rather self-consciously we joined hands and sang. Without the cook and Jones and Mr Fernandez we made a very small circle. We had hardly yet experienced ‘Old Acquaintance’, and yet our cups were already exhausted.

  VII

  It was well after midnight when Jones rapped on my cabin door. I was going through some papers with the idea of destroying anything which might be unfavourably interpreted by the authorities – for instance there had been an exchange of letters concerning the possible sale of my hotel and in some of them there were dangerous references to the political situation. I was sunk in my thoughts and I responded nervously to his knock as though I were already back in the republic and a Tonton Macoute might be at the door.
/>   ‘I’m not keeping you awake?’ he asked.

  ‘I haven’t started undressing.’

  ‘I was sorry about tonight – it didn’t go as well as I wished. Of course the material was limited. You know, I have a kind of thing about a last night on board – one may never see each other again. It’s like New Year’s Eve, when you want the old codger to go out well. Isn’t there something they call a good death? I didn’t like that black fellow crying that way. It was as though he saw things. In the future. Of course I’m not a religious man.’ He looked at me shrewdly. ‘You neither I would say.’

  I had the impression he had come to my cabin for a purpose – not merely to express his disappointment at the entertainment, but perhaps to make a request or to ask a question. If he had been in a position to threaten me, I would even have suspected he had come for that. He wore his ambiguity like a loud suit and he seemed proud of it, like a man who says ‘You must take me as you find me.’ He continued, ‘The purser says you really own that hotel . . .’

  ‘Did you doubt it?’

  ‘Not exactly. But you didn’t seem the type. We don’t always put the right descriptions on our passports,’ he exclaimed in a tone sweetly reasonable.

  ‘What have you got on yours?’

  ‘Company director. And that’s quite true – in a way,’ he admitted.

  ‘Anyway it’s vague enough,’ I said.

  ‘And what’s on yours?’

  ‘Business man.’

  ‘That’s even vaguer,’ he exclaimed triumphantly.

  Interrogation, partly concealed, was to be the basis of our relationship in the short time it lasted: we would snatch at small clues, though in great matters we would usually pretend to accept the other’s story. I suppose those of us who spend a large part of our lives in dissembling, whether to a woman, to a partner, even to our own selves, begin to smell each other out. Jones and I learnt a lot about one another before the end, for one uses a little truth whenever one can. It is a form of economy.