Pelham Wodehouse - The Girl on the Boat

The exhibit was lying on his back, staring at the roof of the berth. By lying absolutely still and forcing himself to think of purely inland scenes and objects, he had contrived to reduce the green in his complexion to a mere tinge. But it would be paltering with the truth to say that he felt debonair. He received Sam with a wan austerity.

"Sit down!" he said. "Don't stand there swaying like that. I can't bear it."

"Why, we aren't out of the harbour yet. Surely you aren't going to be sea-sick already."

"I can issue no positive guarantee. Perhaps if I can keep my mind off it.... I have had good results for the last ten minutes by thinking steadily of the Sahara. There," said Eustace Hignett with enthusiasm, "is a place for you! That is something like a spot. Miles and miles of sand and not a drop of water anywhere!"

Sam sat down on the lounge.

"You're quite right. The great thing is to concentrate your mind on other topics. Why not, for instance, tell me some more about your unfortunate affair with that girl—Billie Bennett I think you said her name was."

"Wilhelmina Bennett. Where on earth did you get the idea that her name was Billie?"

"I had a notion that girls called Wilhelmina were sometimes Billie to their friends."

"I never called her anything but Wilhelmina. But I really cannot talk about it. The recollection tortures me."

"That's just what you want. It's the counter-irritation principle. Persevere, and you'll soon forget that you're on board ship at all."

"There's something in that," admitted Eustace reflectively. "It's very good of you to be so sympathetic and interested."

"My dear fellow ... anything that I can do ... where did you meet her first, for instance?"

"At a dinner...." Eustace Hignett broke off abruptly. He had a good memory and he had just recollected the fish they had served at that dinner—a flabby and exhausted looking fish half sunk beneath the surface of a thick white sauce.

"And what struck you most forcibly about her at first? Her lovely hair, I suppose?"

"How did you know she had lovely hair?"

"My dear chap, I naturally assumed that any girl with whom you fell in love would have nice hair."

"Well, you are perfectly right, as it happens. Her hair was remarkably beautiful. It was red...."

"Like autumn leaves with the sun on them!" said Marlowe ecstatically.

Hignett started.

"What an extraordinary thing! That is an absolutely exact description. Her eyes were a deep blue...."

"Or, rather, green."

"Blue."

"Green. There is a shade of green that looks blue."

"What the devil do you know about the colour of her eyes?" demanded Eustace heatedly. "Am I telling you about her, or are you telling me?"

"My dear old man, don't get excited. Don't you see I am trying to construct this girl in my imagination, to visualise her? I don't pretend to doubt your special knowledge, but after all green eyes generally do go with red hair and there are all shades of green. There is the bright green of meadow grass, the dull green of the uncut emerald, the faint yellowish green of your face at the present moment...."

"Don't talk about the colour of my face! Now you've gone and reminded me just when I was beginning to forget."

"Awfully sorry. Stupid of me. Get your mind off it again—quick. What were we saying? Oh, yes, this girl. I always think it helps one to form a mental picture of people if one knows something about their tastes—what sort of things they are interested in, their favourite topics of conversation, and so on. This Miss Bennett now, what did she like talking about?"

"Oh, all sorts of things."

"Yes, but what?"

"Well, for one thing she was very fond of poetry. It was that which first drew us together."

"Poetry!" Sam's heart sank a little. He had read a certain amount of poetry at school, and once he had won a prize of three shillings and sixpence for the last line of a Limerick in a competition in a weekly paper; but he was self-critic enough to know that poetry was not his long suit. Still there was a library on board the ship, and no doubt it would be possible to borrow the works of some standard bard and bone them up from time to time. "Any special poet?"

"Well, she seemed to like my stuff. You never read my sonnet-sequence on Spring, did you?"

"No. What other poets did she like besides you?"

"Tennyson principally," said Eustace Hignett with a reminiscent quiver in his voice. "The hours we have spent together reading the Idylls of the King!"

"The which of what?" inquired Sam, taking a pencil from his pocket and shooting out a cuff.

"'The Idylls of the King.' My good man, I know you have a soul which would be considered inadequate by a common earthworm but you have surely heard of Tennyson's 'Idylls of the King?'"

"Oh, those ! Why, my dear old chap! Tennyson's 'Idylls of the King?' Well, I should say! Have I heard of Tennyson's 'Idylls of the King?' Well, really? I suppose you haven't a copy with you on board by any chance?"

"There is a copy in my kit bag. The very one we used to read together. Take it and keep it or throw it overboard. I don't want to see it again."

Sam prospected among the shirts, collars, and trousers in the bag and presently came upon a morocco-bound volume. He laid it beside him on the lounge.

"Little by little, bit by bit," he said, "I am beginning to form a sort of picture of this girl, this—what was her name again? Bennett—this Miss Bennett. You have a wonderful knack of description. You make her seem so real and vivid. Tell me some more about her. She wasn't keen on golf, by any chance, I suppose?"

"I believe she did play. The subject came up once and she seemed rather enthusiastic. Why?"

"Well, I'd much sooner talk to a girl about golf than poetry."

"You are hardly likely to be in a position to have to talk to Wilhelmina Bennett about either, I should imagine."

"No, there's that, of course. I was thinking of girls in general. Some girls bar golf, and then it's rather difficult to know how to start the conversation. But, tell me, were there any topics which got on this Miss Bennett's nerves, if you know what I mean? It seems to me that at one time or another you may have said something that offended her. I mean, it seems curious that she should have broken off the engagement if you had never disagreed or quarrelled about anything."

"Well, of course, there was always the matter of that dog of hers. She had a dog, you know, a snappy brute of a Pekinese. If there was ever any shadow of disagreement between us, it had to do with that dog. I made rather a point of it that I would not have it about the home after we were married."

"I see!" said Sam. He shot his cuff once more and wrote on it: "Dog—conciliate." "Yes, of course, that must have wounded her."

"Not half so much as he wounded me. He pinned me by the ankle the day before we—Wilhelmina and I, I mean—were to have been married. It is some satisfaction to me in my broken state to remember that I got home on the little beast with considerable juiciness and lifted him clean over the Chesterfield."

Sam shook his head reprovingly.

"You shouldn't have done that," he said. He extended his cuff and added the words "Vitally Important" to what he had just written. "It was probably that which decided her."

"Well, I hate dogs," said Eustace Hignett querulously. "I remember Wilhelmina once getting quite annoyed with me because I refused to step in and separate a couple of the brutes, absolute strangers to me, who were fighting in the street. I reminded her that we were all fighters nowadays, that life itself was in a sense a fight; but she wouldn't be reasonable about it. She said that Sir Galahad would have done it like a shot. I thought not. We have no evidence whatsoever that Sir Galahad was ever called upon to do anything half as dangerous. And, anyway, he wore armour. Give me a suit of mail, reaching well down over the ankles, and I will willingly intervene in a hundred dog fights. But in thin flannel trousers, no!"