William Gerhardie - The Polyglots

Uncle Tom passed and winked. She gurgled in ecstatic delight. The lessons over, she would run after him and plead: ‘Play with me; oh, play with me!’ She told him all about Little Lord ‘Fountainpen’. Uncle Tom’s finger-joints cracked when he bent them, which, he said, was because he had rheumatism. ‘Oh, Uncle Tom, you are so funny!’ And she had a new name for him—‘Uncle Romatism’, because, she explained, ‘his bones were all crackling’. Harry and Nora, too, were extremely interested in this ‘crackling’ on the part of ‘Uncle Romatism’; and the children would listen in hushed awe to the cracking of the seaman’s joints. He had to do it over and over again for their amusement.

The nearer west we moved, the duskier became the yellow, Chinky faces; the more regularly featured, Hindu-looking, more and more like my lean friends from India whom I had known at Oxford. It was a gradually changing panorama noticeable at each port of call, a stimulating subject for reflection, as the big ocean liner, rendered miniature in my imagination, struggled on the troubled ocean somewhere between the Malay coast and the island of Ceylon.

The sea had calmed down, the sun came out, radiant as a smile. I closed my eyes, and the breeze, full of that vigour of the sea, swept across my face; and I slumbered in the keen delight. I dreamt that Captain Negodyaev asked me for a loan of £50—and I woke up.

At Colombo, the General with the mad eyes was again confined on board as a dangerous revolutionary. The staff officer, who had come up in a cutter with the orders, placed his craft at the disposal of the English General, and in the morning we all went ashore. Ah, the Ceylon sea. Ah, the tropical night. The early morning rickshaw ride down to the green roaring ocean which rushed at one and receded, rushed and receded, sparkling in the sun. The dance at the Galle Face Hotel. Again the tropical night with the big pale moon, and the palm-tree forest leering at us from behind, and the lighted ship in midstream keeping watch, faithfully waiting. What were we waiting for? Death? Crouching on all fours, it will creep up and — snap—! take us away, one by one.

We were gathered on the upper deck of the Rhinoceros , as she steamed away carefully past the bright foam-washed breakwaters of Colombo’s sun-lit coast, and bulged into the open sea. The ocean rose in green mountains, with glints of light on the crests; the gulls wheeling and crying now soared in the sun, now rocked on the waves. Sylvia stood at my side, looked at me. ‘With that old, dilapidated bow of yours you look like a minor poet. Come, I’ll tie it for you.’ I felt the touch of her tender fingers on my neck; and I smelt the fragrance of her hair, and it reminded me of the dances I had danced with her the night before at the hotel, and that brought back to me a swarm of delicate sensations, of tropic nights, of thwarted rivalries, of love, which had transfigured for me, like nothing else, that strange journey round the world; and I felt that we should yet be long together, and that the flower of our happiness was still to come.

The boat began to roll.

The General with the mad eyes had no more plans. — Anyway, he would go on to Egypt — see what happened at Port Said. ‘I think,’ he confided to me, ‘that Churchill and Lloyd George are conferring as to what is to become of me, and I think they will place a residence at my disposal — probably in London, in which case I would apply for your services as my A.D.C.’

On Thursday night there was to be a fancy-dress ball on board, and my idea was to appear as a scarecrow. Nora was mildly amused at my rehearsal of this part, Natàsha wildly so — she even clapped her hands. ‘Ooh! Ooh! Look! Scarecrow! Look! Scarecrow!’ she cried, while Harry disdained my whole performance. ‘Silly,’ he said. But on Tuesday Captain Negodyaev had another persecution scare, and he made his wife and daughter dress for flight at a moment’s notice, and they sat all dressed up in their furs, in the saloon. Mme Negodyaev looked as though she were loyally performing a necessary act, the necessity of which she did not question, while Natàsha looked confused in our presence, a little ashamed that by virtue of belonging to her Daddy she was in honour bound to participate in this strange rite. The vast, green-coloured ocean was calm, without a ripple. The liner glided noiselessly between the foam. All the long day we lay in deck-chairs and looked out on the sea that stretched everywhere around us. We had not been in sight of land for days and days, and we would not be in sight of land for days and days to come. Natàsha and Nora played nicely together, while Bubby always played by herself. But Harry, who strode as if disdainfully aloof, his hands in his breeches-pockets and with no show of interest in their game, now and then made a sudden unprovoked attack on their hoardings and upset their belongings; and then anguished cries of ‘Harry! Harry!’ resounded on the quiet mirror of the Indian Ocean.

‘Where’s that sword?’—he came to me.

‘What do you want it for?’

‘I want to chop Nora’s head off. I’m sick of her!’

‘You can’t have it.’

‘Why?’

‘I want it myself.’

‘Yes, kill uncle with it. And Auntie Terry. And Nora. And Mummy. And Natàsha. And Aunt Berthe.’

‘Uncle Romatism’, old and toothless, came along the deck whistling ‘I’m for ever blowing bubbles’. And passing Natàsha, he winked at her again so merrily that she gurgled with delight.

‘Harry! Harry! What for you doing?’

‘Harry, leave me alone! Shu p up!’

‘Whatever is the matter?’ Aunt Molly hastened on the scene.

‘Harry kicked me,’ Natàsha cried.

‘No, s’e kicked me first.’

Natàsha was slapped by her father and put in the corner; she cried. And Harry, out of courtesy to the foreigner, was slapped on the head by Aunt Molly: ‘Oh, you naughty boy!’—she slapped him.

‘Why are you slapping me?’ And he cried out of the bitterness of his heart. But presently he ran away round the deck as though all was well and nothing was the matter. The hatch opened, and Natàsha, stealing up from behind, covered my eyes with her cool slender hands; and though by her tender touch, her peculiar breathing, by the rustle of her frock you knew it could only be Natàsha, she said in her ecstatic way: ‘Guess! Guess, who is it!’ And there followed upon the correct recognition her bubbling, gurgling laugh. ‘Shut your eyes and open your mouth!’

Natàsha had grown very tall, slender, a little bashful and reserved. I gave the children some nuts; the rebels took them greedily and asked for more. But Natàsha said each time she had some—‘Thank you.’

What a nice young girl was growing up, what an observant, graceful little girl, what a sensitive plant. And we were educating her crescendo, forte, fortissimo! Her hair, plaited on account of the extreme heat, exposed the tenderest of white necks. In all creation there is not a more tender, more responsive, soulful, exquisitely graceful thing than a girl-child of nine!

‘Tomorrow,’ she said, ‘there will be fancy-dress ball. I am “Night”.’

Next morning, however, Natàsha had a headache. Whether it was from the excessive heat, or whether because we were educating her at top-speed, but already since breakfast she drooped; she sat still. ‘Headache,’ she said. ‘Headache.’

I was standing with Sylvia at the stern, watching the foam trail behind us and loose itself asunder.

‘Look!’

I looked. At first I saw a black surface emerging from the waves. It rose and vanished. The beast emerged once more and flashed its white belly in the sun, and then was gone.

In the afternoon we saw him again. A black head emerging and submerging at intervals — a shark, like an enormous black dog in the water, with a pair of wicked black eyes, coursing his way in our trail. Then he was gone.