William Gerhardie - The Polyglots

On Friday Mr. Cephas Speak took leave of us, for he was due elsewhere over the week-end, and he left his huge palatial house with its retinue of servants, stables, the garage holding his four cars, entirely at our disposal. ‘There,’ he said, handing Nora a box of sweets. ‘And give this to Harry.’ Berthe had been dispatched to spend the night on board the boat to superintend the loading of our luggage in the early morning; and she had taken Harry with her. ‘You had better take charge of my typewriter, Harry,’ I had said to him. When next morning Aunt Molly came down in her new travelling dress which she had ordered locally—‘Oh, mummy, you do look a sight!’ Nora exclaimed. ‘I want to—’

‘I have no time, darling.’

‘When will you have time to have time?’ Nora persisted. But she would not move, and when urged to put her hat on, she began to cry.

‘What are you crying for, Norkins?’

‘I want to stop for dinner — that’s the trouble!’ she whined. Natàsha, with her parasol in her gloved hands, walked like a little lady. Then we were sitting in the stately limousine, waiting for the chauffeur to move. The chauffeur had got out of his seat and was fiddling with the engine which was firing shots like a maxim. In the end, his efforts were rewarded. The machine obeyed. He switched in the gear, and the gigantic automobile leapt forward. The man put on speed. Aunt Molly, who was frightened of motor-cars when crossing a street, was no less frightened when sitting inside: lest the car should collide with another. Soon we were speeding down the Bund, hastening towards the docks. ‘What is that boat there?’ asked Aunt Teresa, pointing to a large three-funnelled liner.

‘That is our boat, the Rhinoceros , I think.’

The car stopped. We were at the water’s edge. Another ocean liner was receding steadily towards the sea, receding from the shore that hugged her towards the moody main, till she became a point on the horizon and then was lost to sight.

SO SOON AS SHE SAW HARRY, NORA BEGAN TO YELP from sheer joy. It was the first time in their lives that they had been parted for so long as a whole day. He stood on the deck and looked down at us — a little man in a big cap.

‘Aunt Berthe hasn’t touched your typewriter; it’s all right, nobody’s touched it,’ he said to me first thing I came on board.

Harry and Nora, meeting again after this their first parting, stood face to face and laughed quietly for a whole two minutes. Then they tore off together all round the deck.

‘And where’s that sweet for Harry from Mr. Speak?’ Aunt Molly asked Nora.

Nora had never once delivered a sweet to Harry since the time she was born.

‘You’ve eaten my Easter egg,’ she said lamely — though that was now over two years ago.

Harry said nothing. He now never smiled — he was so serious, as if the cares of the world were upon him; or if he did, it was more than ever the smile of a very old man — perfectly senile! Harry did not seem to grow, while Nora was fast catching up with him. He looked like a little old man — very wise, cynical, toothless.

Bubby approved of the ship, saying, ‘Thank goodness there are no motor-cars here, mummy’; while Nora spoke of it as ‘This slippery house’. She was blossoming out every day. ‘I don’t say any more “I ’hink”; I say “I th-th -think”.’ So pleased with herself.

It was a real long voyage — with children, with a shipload of luggage, a voyage destined to last many weeks; the ending of a life-period, a new beginning in time, of which the fate could not be foreseen. It made me think of that dreaded long voyage to America in Les Malheurs de Sophie . The children were delighted. They thought that they were setting out across the water, and that at the other end of the sea, called England, they would meet Daddy, who was waiting for them on the shore.

‘I writed, writed, writed to him — and he never wroted,’ said Nora.

Harry looked on demurely with his forget-me-not eyes. ‘He’ll come if we give him sumfink,’ said he.

‘Ah! little Norkin!’ Natàsha exclaimed. And almost at once, as we stood there, there passed down the deck the inevitable old seaman in a dark-blue blouse; and as he passed us he winked at Natàsha so merrily that it called forth from her a lingering outburst of gurgling delight. I have no special insight into seamen’s hearts — for that I must refer you to Joseph Conrad — but the old seaman struck me on the face of it — how shall I put it? — as ‘a bit of all right’. Natàsha made friends with him. ‘You just come from England?’ she asked. ‘Have you seen Princess Mary? Oh, how beauty! Oh, what a lovely!’

How she had blossomed out! She became a great favourite of his, and each time he passed her on deck he winked at her so merrily that she issued a gurgling sound of delight.

‘And what is your name?’ she asked.

‘Tom.’

‘And which is your cabin?’ He showed her.

She laughed. ‘Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! Uncle Tom’s cabin!’

He winked.

‘Oh! Oh! I so cried in Uncle Tom’s Cabin ! Eva — such — such— such —such a nice girl! Oh, such a lovely!’

From that moment on she called the old seaman in the dark-blue blouse ‘Uncle Tom’, and since to children everyone is either an uncle or aunt, they all called him now ‘Uncle Tom’. And he liked it.

The Rhinoceros was a transport, and presently troops came on board in charge of a sergeant major, who detailed them in two parties. ‘You fellows,’ he said, ‘go to the sharp end of the ship, and you here to the blunt end of the ship.’

The naval ratings looked sarcastic. Oh, they did look sarcastic! Even ‘Uncle Tom’ smiled into his chin. ‘They are a hignorant lot, those army chaps,’ he confided to me, shaking his head.

The sergeant major heard him. ‘You hignorant hass!’ he said. ‘You bloody well mind your own bloody business!’

We were moving. From the bows came the regular impassive beat of the piston-rod. We were moving. The land slanted aside, and we were gliding farther and farther away on the green mirror of the sea towards the breeze.

‘Oh, the green green sea!’ Natàsha exclaimed, her sea-green eyes sparkling in the sun. Everywhere there were visible signs that the War Office had suddenly lost interest in us. The transport provided for us was definitely top-heavy, and as she went, lurched now on this side, now on that.

At lunch I found sitting next to me a Russian major general with wild pale eyes and long black fingernails, who said he had got back to Shanghai from Hong-Kong, but now, on reflection, was going back again to Hong-Kong without leaving the boat. I recognized his face: it was the man who had once called on me on New Year’s Day and had sat in the waiting-room along with other lunatics. His eyes were almost mad, his conversation incoherent. At the outbreak of the Revolution he, a Tsarist general, had sided with the rebels, and assumed command of the revolutionary troops; then his nerves had given way, and now he was adrift in the wide world, without plan and without purpose. If he was mad, there was a little method in his madness. He lived, he said, by issuing I.O.U.s at every port of call. At one place, when nobody would take his I.O.U., he hired a grand piano and then sold it, using the money realized on getting out of mischief. In his view all means were justified by a great end. But after listening to him week after week it struck me that ‘the end’ with him was possibly the weakest portion of it all. Cross-examined by me, he admitted that he scorned programmes, but believed in living from day to day following the dictates of his complex personality. Asked how he reconciled this view with his declared ideal of public service, he answered that he scorned the public.