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WHEN EARLY SUMMER with its bright clear days has brought the academic year to a close, emptying chalky classrooms and leaving books at rest on library shelves, then academic folk long to go on pilgrimages. On both sides of the Atlantic they gather on the piers; their baggage is around them, their typewriters are handy, their card index is carefully packed in their stateroom luggage. They are off on mythological journeys in both directions. Floating in the harbours of New York and Southampton and Cherbourg, American professors going east stare across their ships’ rails at European professors going west. Learning and wisdom lie before them, isolated on the other side of the Atlantic. In America the numbers are large, the grants are generous. And so from Palo Alto and Boston they gather in their hundreds, professors and instructors and graduate students, to gather on the dock on the west side of New York. They go aboard the fat liners, their prows hard against the riverside expressways. There are those who have been before, those going for the first time, those who have just come down in the taxi and are to be left behind. The tugs go on, and they ease out, down past the Battery. Give us your poor, your tired, your huddled masses, says the Statue of Liberty as they pass it, and we will give them homogenized milk, send them to college, and return them to you on a Fulbright. They line the rail until, Nantucket light once past, they go below and the social life of liners gets under way. There are girls to pinch and write stories about, there are short-term acquaintances to be made in the lounge, there is orientation for wives and new boys. How many raincoats does one need for England? Is the milk safe in Paris? Does one need typhoid shots for the Edinburgh Festival, and are the mosquitoes in Vienna malarial? Thus, with a certain nervousness about prophylactics, an even greater nervousness about the prime European terror, servility, and a sense of acting in the great tradition of Franklin and Jefferson and James, the New World, clean, fresh, and decent, comes to captivate the Old.

It is a little later in the summer that the voyagers in the reverse direction convene, a smaller and altogether seedier band of pilgrims, altogether too few in number for the historians of race-migration to notice. They are worried about their errand, doubtful about the misfortunes that will befall them. Suppose they get ill in America, outside the sphere of the maternal National Health Service? Will the dog be all right with Mother? And does the milkman really understand that he isn’t to call for a whole year (think of all the bottles if he did)? Their clothes, on the whole, are thick and woolly; their suitcases have been in the family for twenty years. They tingle with silent, unassertive patriotism and with doubts about the value of what they are doing. Chance, new alignments of wealth and power, have pushed their journey in this direction, but they can’t help wondering whether they haven’t set a foot wrong and blighted their careers, their morals, their gastro-intestinal tracts. So they gather in the bright light of the Ocean Terminal and then go abroad – professors and lecturers who have fought all year for sabbaticals no one felt they deserved (surely going to America is a holiday?), bright young men fresh from graduation ceremonies carrying mint theses and X-ray photographs of their chests, and writers and editors hoping to produce another book about America without leaving the apartment they have borrowed in Greenwich Village. They compare notes, studying the relative merits of their scholarships (English-Speaking Union fellows get met on the boat; but Harkness fellows get the use of a rented car); they compare destinations and lists of exploitable friends. They are painfully aware that there is no real tradition in what they are doing, except that tradition, set up by Dickens and Matthew Arnold and Mrs Trollope, of going to America and disliking it.

It pleased Bernard Froelich, sitting on his patio in Party, drinking iced drinks and watching the sprinklers fizzing on his dried-out lawn, to consider that this year he was promoting a voyage in reverse. Party’s contribution to the Sabbatical Generation had already left town, but Froelich was not miserable to remain. For what he saw ahead of him was a good year, his year, the year when Europe came to America. He had lost to Europe the men he had wished to lose; he had gained from Europe the man he had wished to gain. It was a balance of power ideal enough to console him for the fact that his sabbatical wasn’t due for two more years, that the British Museum and the all-night Boots in Piccadilly were still twenty-four months ahead. The boats to Europe had taken away two of the men he had most detested in the faculty; the boat from Europe was now on the water bringing him the man he really wanted to meet. The heat sang on the house-roofs, he felt the sweat in his sneakers, he looked into the blue of the sky and found that this year there was none of the old yearning to be away. The future bloomed, a future without Wink and Leonov, a future with James Walker.

He happily spared his enemies. Dr Wink, the man from Business Administration who had opposed Walker’s appointment (‘Our aim in this business school is not to produce a narrow academic guy but to well-round his personality so he can sell himself to everyone he meets’), was off on a Guggenheim to Perugia, where he was loaned to well-round the Latin personality for a year. S. Leonov, another of Froelich’s bêtes noires, was also en route, leaving Froelich with a zestful sense of freedom. Leonov was a large, square-faced old man who had skilfully escaped Russia before the Bolshevik revolution and now graced Benedict Arnold, where he had charge of Russian History, teaching the only course in the university in which J. Edgar Hoover’s The FBI Story was a set text. He was an implacable enemy of Froelich, whom he had once denounced as a one-man protest movement undermining the fabric of this our life academical. He lived in a decaying house in Party where he gathered together a small émigré circle which met for pre-revolutionary evenings; they began (Froelich had been invited there in the early days of his tenure in Party, before hostilities began) with a dull two hours devoted to the eating of blinis and the telling of stories about Tolstoy talking to clods of earth, and ended with the condemnation of America’s softness toward present-day Russia. During the McCarthy period Leonov had helped to bring about the departure from the university of three men who had been members of timid left-wing groups in the thirties, though he had missed the one active communist on the staff, a man so cunning in concealment that it was virtually impossible for him actually to be actively active, so well camouflaged that he had been approached for funds by the John Birch Society (he had paid, of course). Yet another enemy of Froelich’s, Henry Leibtraub, a Jewish intellectual in the department of Theater Arts and Communication Skills, who took the advanced stand that what modern liberals had most to beware of were the compulsions in themselves that made them modern liberals, was off to England for one semester to supply one of his famous static productions of Hamlet in Reverse, which begins with the killing of Claudio and then goes backwards through the text looking for a motive. The forces of darkness, confusion, and reaction had dissipated; the sunlight shone through; the year was a year of possibilities and campaigns. All that remained was to await the arrival of the man who was to be ally and admirer, the man who would understand and applaud, the man who had taken the creative writing fellowship. Froelich drank his gin and tonic and looked across at his wife. ‘Hurry up, James Walker,’ he said.

‘It seems a very intellectual ship,’ said James Walker, as his three cabin-mates introduced themselves to him that evening just before dinner. He washed his face and watched them in the mirror, Julian, Richard, and Dr Millingham. They were bright, classless youths in tab-collars and suede jackets, with short hair and well-scrubbed faces. ‘I’m surprised they let anyone aboard with less than a first,’ he said, squeezing through as he made for the dining room. There he found his table for six and sat in lonely state, the first arrival, listening to two youths at the next table talking about The Faerie Queene. I never thought I’d be embarrassed about my ignorance on a ship, he thought.

‘Hullo then,’ said a grey-skinned, demoralized-looking steward who appeared from behind a pillar to flick away some crumbs from the table with a dirty cloth, ‘aren’t you going to put on the paper-hat?’

‘Is it compulsory?’ asked Walker, noticing the party items that lay beside each plate.

‘We always do this on the first night,’ said the steward. ‘Fun, you know. Be a sport, go on.’ Walker picked up a tiny black cardboard bowler, which stuck raffishly on his head, giving him the look, he could see in the pink wall mirror, of a rather tipsy civil servant. He sat like this for ten minutes, while nobody came. Finally a small round Indian came and sat at the far end of the table.

‘Good evening,’ he said, ‘I see you are having a party.’

‘Yes.’

‘It is always pleasant to wear such hats and enjoy oneself enormously,’ said the Indian, putting on a false nose. ‘I have met these customs before on P and O. That is Pacific and Orient. It is the ships that cross to India. India is my native land.’

‘Really?’ said Walker.

‘Hoho!’ said the Indian, pulling at his false nose to speak more clearly. ‘Already I am excited. I am looking at the menu for smoked salmon. That is a very fine dish. However, there does not appear to be any.’

‘Smoked salmon is first-class hors d’oeuvre,’ said the steward. ‘Down here it’s pickled herrings.’

‘Alas,’ said the Indian.

‘I say! Hats!’ said a voice at Walker’s side, and a girl of about thirty, with frizzy red hair and a large figure, attempted to sit down. She wore a black suit with an astrakhan collar.

‘Oh, please be careful,’ said the Indian, rising. ‘These chairs are fastened with hooks to the floor. It is a precaution against big gales. If you do not take your seat carefully you will certainly fall down. Has anyone here listened to the weather report?’

‘I’ll put mine on,’ said the girl, donning a tarboosh. ‘Why, is the weather going to be bad? I thought these ships were too big to be affected anyway.’

‘Oh, no,’ said the Indian, ‘sometimes the big ships are wery wery bad indeed.’

‘Lavender’s blue, dilly dilly, lavender’s green,’ said a croaking old voice on the opposite side of the table; the dowagerly lady Walker had noticed on the train was taking the seat opposite him.

‘Anybody here play shuffleboard?’ cried a man with a Brigade tie, sitting down across from the Indian. The sixth place, between the old lady and the Indian, opposite the frizzy-haired girl, remained vacant a moment longer, and then there came to it Dr Jochum, the European–American Walker had travelled down with in the Pullman, fully changed, dressed in dinner jacket.

‘Ah, hello there, my young friend!’ he cried.

‘Good evening,’ said Walker.

‘I say, that’s not fair,’ said the old lady. ‘Some people know people already.’

‘Are you, er, going to a university?’ Walker asked the frizzy-haired girl next to him.

‘Oh no, nothing so grand. I’m going to be a secretary in St Louis. That’s in Mo.’

‘I am going to a university,’ said the Indian. ‘It’s a wery big university. It is called Harward.’

‘All this education’s getting out of hand, isn’t it?’ said the old lady to no one in particular.

‘I suppose we are moving,’ said the frizzy-haired girl.

‘Yoho for the life of a tar,’ said the old lady.

‘You know,’ said Dr Jochum, ‘my experience of ships is that on them one makes an interesting discovery about the world. One finds one can do without it completely. Here we are, away from land, and we are totally content with ourselves. I have a theory, a very whimsical theory, that sea voyages are the only part of eighteenth-century life which have survived into the present. Here we have servants, we have leisure, we can cultivate conversation, we even have cheap gin. I want to go to the captain and say, Stop the ship! This is all we need for the rest of our lives!’

‘Mind,’ said the steward behind Walker, poking a bowl of soup at him, ‘or you’ll get this all over you.’

‘I am liking it all wery much,’ said the Indian.

‘You play it with a sort of long stick and those round wooden counters, I suppose you might call them,’ said the shuffleboard man.

‘Talk, talk, talk,’ said the old lady.

The ship suddenly dipped and trembled a little in the open sea. Laughing screams came from other tables, and the steward spilled a bowl of soup in the lap of the shuffleboard man. ‘Good God, man!’ he cried.

‘Oh lord,’ said the steward, ‘look at me.’

‘It’s going to be rough,’ said the girl next to Walker, looking at him with fright.

‘Please do not be afraid.’ said the Indian. ‘That was really not at all bad. I have been in a ship that turned itself over. But I do not think this ship will turn itself over.’

‘A good wipe and you won’t know there’s been anythink spilled at all,’ said the steward, wiping the lap of the shuffle-board man with his cloth.

‘The crew are all drunk,’ said the old lady, leaning forward and looking at Walker. ‘Let’s all pray.’

‘And it is so very much safer here than to fly,’ said the Indian. ‘I have been on an aeroplane that crashed and burned many people to death on the side of a mountain.’

‘I bet you have,’ said the old lady.

The ship seemed to have steadied again, but it had disquieted all the less sophisticated passengers, of whom Walker was one.

‘I don’t know, I think I’d rather fly,’ said the girl next to him, turning to face him, ‘wouldn’t you?’

‘My dear,’ said the dowagerly lady, ‘if God had intended people to fly, he would have given them wings, you know.’ She turned her stony blue eyes to look at Walker and added, ‘Isn’t that so, Mr Bigears?’

Walker said rather boldly, ‘Well, by that rule, if God had intended people to go from England to America at all, he would have joined the two continents together.’

The dowagerly lady became haughty and declared to the shuffleboard man, ‘Mr Bigears knows no fear. Mr Bigears is absolutely fearless.’

‘My name isn’t Mr Bigears,’ said Walker delicately.

‘That’s my name for you,’ said the old lady, snatching up a cardboard dunce’s hat from beside her plate and putting it on her head. ‘I always have my own names for people. I call all my friends the most atrocious names. They hate me for it.’

At the other end of the table, Dr Jochum, who had donned a scholar’s cardboard mortar-board, was talking to the Indian about American schools. ‘Such places!’ he cried. ‘There are in existence many records of feral children, children who are abandoned in woods and parented by wolves or bears; of course, they cannot write or talk or reason logically but they are capable to catch a rabbit. So it is with these places, these high schools. We abandon our children there and when they grow up they cannot write or talk or reason logically but they know how to dance the quickstep. Always the minimum necessary for survival.’

‘I hope America’s nice,’ said the girl next to Walker. ‘Have you been there?’

‘No,’ said Walker. ‘I hope it is too.’

‘They all smoke between courses,’ said the old lady.

‘I never expected to go,’ said the girl. ‘It seems amazing, somehow, me here. I live in Rickmansworth, and I taught in a private school. Nothing ever happened to me. Then suddenly a friend of my father’s, who happens to be a London businessman, had to go over to America and he found they were terribly keen on having English secretaries over there. Apparently it’s a great status symbol to have people with English voices answering the telephone. So, well, this friend of my father’s told an industrialist in St Louis, Mo., that I had secretarial qualifications. And the next thing was, right out of the blue, such a surprise, I got a letter from him asking me to be his private secretary. Well, I weighed it up this way, and I weighed it up that way, and finally I decided to go. But I don’t know, I’m afraid it’s going to be very different over there, different from everything.’

‘I suppose it will be,’ said Walker.

‘I suppose that’s why people like us come. You can get so terribly bored with yourself, can’t you?’

‘Yes, indeed,’ said Walker.

‘I never do,’ said the old lady. ‘I find myself endlessly fascinating.’

Walker found himself gradually tempted to withdraw from the conversation. The gay concourse with wonderful people that he had rather expected on the voyage was hardly what he was getting, and in addition the swaying of the sea was upsetting him rather badly. The food struck him as rather less than magnificent, too, and all in all the bright light of new experience and great discoveries that he had expected to shine here on the ship was far from present. Some of his fellow travellers struck him as even duller people than himself. Then, suddenly, the old lady tapped on the table with a knife. ‘No more private talking please,’ she said. ‘This is not a good conversation. Not what I’m used to. We must have a simply brilliant conversation. Like people used to do. My mother used to say, No talking between meals. People thought she was terribly dull; then she would come down and be absolutely brilliant all through dinner. She was saving it up, you see; we must all save things up. As my mother said, the dinner table is for conversation: one can always snatch a scrap of something to eat between meals.’

‘Oh, very fine,’ said the Indian.

‘You push them along the deck into some marked squares, and that gives you your score,’ said the shuffleboard man.

The old lady looked at him indignantly, and then turned to Walker. ‘Think of something for us to talk about, Mr Bigears,’ she said. Walker felt uneasy, as victims who know they are in for misfortune often do, and he blushed and straightened his bowler hat.

‘I know,’ said the old lady, ‘let’s play “Who said it?” ’

‘Oho! Is this a game?’ cried the Indian. ‘I am always delighted by games.’

‘Yes, well, it’s a game about poetry. I don’t suppose you have any poetry in India.’

‘Oh, there you are quite wrong, there is much poetry in India.’

‘Well, don’t tell us any. I’ll start. Who said, who said, who said, “They also serve who only stand and wait”?’ There was a pause. ‘Do you know, Mr Bigears?’

Walker said grudgingly, ‘Well, yes I do, as a matter of fact.’

‘Well, say then. If you win it’s your go.’

‘Well, it was Milton.’

‘NO!’ cried the old lady. ‘You lose, I win. Now it’s my go again. Who said, who said . . .?’

‘It was Milton,’ said Walker.

‘Mr Bigears, it was Shakespeare.’

‘Well,’ said Walker, ‘we can look it up in the ship’s library after dinner. It’s the sonnet “When I consider how my light is spent . . .” ’

‘Shakespeare.’

‘I think you’ll find . . .’

‘Temper, Mr Bigears, temper,’ said the old lady. ‘Who said, who said . . .?’

The girl beside Walker had been growing bright red, and now she leaned forward and said, ‘But Mr Bigear . . . this gentleman’s quite right actually. It was Milton.’

‘My dear,’ said the old lady. ‘Don’t take so many potatoes, they’re bad for your spots.’

‘I learned that poem at school.’

‘My dear, of course it was Milton. But it’s my game. I want to win it.’

‘Oh, my word,’ said the Indian.

‘So let’s get on. Who said, “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” ’

‘Ah well, by the same logic,’ said Dr Jochum, ‘this must be Milton.’

‘No, you lose.’

‘Who did say it?’ asked the girl.

‘Omar Khayyam,’ said the old lady. ‘Well, now I’ve won twice, that’s enough of that game, isn’t it, Mr Bigears? Now you think of one.’

‘I suppose there will be many games at the dance tonight,’ said the Indian. ‘Also I am anticipating balloons.’

‘Fun and games,’ said the old lady. ‘I love them. At home I have little parties when my friends come and dust. We play dusting games. It’s terribly popular, quite a thing in the village.’

‘Do people dress up very much?’ asked the girl. ‘I mean, for these dances on the ship.’

‘I hope so,’ said Jochum.

‘The Get-Together Dance,’ said the girl. ‘It sounds great fun.’

‘Ah yes, getting together is great fun, but I have always found that the great difficulty is getting apart again. What impossible friendships one makes on these ships! What hateful people one loves! After all it is only for six days, so one doesn’t need to be so selective. It is all splendid at the time, but a year later the telephone is ringing and a voice tells, “Hullo, you remember me on that ship; you promised to be my host for three months in your house.” We must not take these things too seriously.’

‘I should never dream of doing so,’ said the old lady.

‘Cheese or fruit?’ said the steward breathing hard into the exposed entrance of Walker’s ear.

‘What kind of cheese?’ he asked.

‘Well, now,’ said the steward, ‘there’s ordinary, and what’s that one that begins with a g? We’ve got that.’

The old lady suddenly leaned forward and waved her purse. ‘Oh, Mr Steward,’ she said, ‘be a nice man and get me some figs, will you?’

‘Gorgonzola?’ asked Walker.

‘Figs is first-class fruit, madam,’ said the steward, putting his hand on Walker’s shoulder to lean over.

‘Oh come on, Mr Vasco da Gama, you go and tell the Chief Steward that Lady Hunt-Francis would like a few figs.’

‘Gouda?’ asked Walker.

‘I’ll see what I can do, my lady,’ said the steward, going off. Defeated by privilege, reduced by this apotheosis of England, Walker looked across at the old lady, tying a scarf across her pinched and ancient breast. He felt that he and she were participants in some old war which he was always in the habit of losing.

‘See you at the dance then,’ said the girl next to him.

‘I insist you don’t dance with me, Mr Bigears,’ said the old lady. ‘I looked under the table at your feet. They’re as big as your ears.’ The steward came back and set down two plates: for Walker a piece of ancient mousehole cheese, and for Lady Hunt-Francis a large plateful of gaily arranged figs.

‘Thank you,’ said Lady Hunt-Francis, and then looked up across the table to catch Walker’s eye. ‘Shakespeare,’ she murmured, as she tackled a fig.

Why voyage? thought Walker, standing on deck after dinner, a sadly aggrieved man. Such things are never what they are said to be. The water whirled, the thought of the Get-Together Dance saddened him, and the prospect of dancing with the red-haired girl, who before they had left table had secured a promise of several dances, was as exciting as going to the dentist’s. Why did I come? he wondered, looking down over the side. Detritus poured out of a hole in the ship into the water. I’ve condemned myself to miseries I could get more cheaply at home, he thought. He went inside and stumbled, in the rock of the ship, downstairs to his cabin. Richard, Julian and Dr Millingham were getting ready for the dance, taking up all the available space. They stood in line in front of the mirror, tying their ties and discussing whether Wordsworth’s ‘Immortality Ode’ was his farewell to departing powers or his invocation to new ones. Walker wanted to lie down, but the guitar was on his bunk.

‘I thought you’d got lost,’ said Dr Millingham, surveying him through the mirror. ‘Nearly sent out the lifeboat.’

‘I just went out on deck for a minute.’

‘See anything?’

‘No, we must be right away from shore. It’s a black night.’

‘Had a hard day in the City?’ asked Julian. Walker had forgotten about the bowler; he reached up and took it off, leaving a large piece of cardboard adhered to his brow with sweat.

‘Going to the dance?’ asked Dr Millingham.

‘I was thinking I’d go to bed, I don’t fancy it very much.’

‘Oh, come on, it’s going to be utterly wild. To my knowledge there are thirty balloons up there. And a banner saying “Welcome Aboard”. I’m expecting an orgy.’

‘Anybody seen my heather?’ asked Walker. ‘I left some heather in a toothglass on that chest of drawers, and it’s gone.’

‘Oh, was that yours?’ asked Millingham. ‘I put it out in the passageway. Actually it was eating all the oxygen in here.’

Walker went outside and brought it back in again. ‘It was from my wife,’ he said.

‘Oh, very sorry,’ said Dr Millingham. ‘Far be it from me to intervene between man and wife. Look, shove a bit of it in your lapel and then you’ll look a real cut.’

Walker stood passively while Millingham inserted the heather in his buttonhole. ‘Now you’re all set,’ said Millingham. ‘Come on, I’ll take you up there and buy you a drink.’ They went out into the passageway. ‘Look, everyone’s going,’ said Millingham. ‘Just listen to all those lavatories flushing. All getting ready to get together. Where did you say this dance was?’

‘In the bar on the sports deck.’

‘What’s all this in the Winter Garden Lounge, then?’

They peered through the glass doors; a fair-haired purser, perspiring and jolly, was standing up in the middle of a large crowd, seated at tables, and was shouting, ‘Clickety-click, soisant-six, sixty-six, Kelly’s eye, numero un, number one, and what do we do, folks, we . . .’

‘Shake the bag!’ cried the crowd.

‘Bloody bingo,’ said Dr Millingham. As they went up the next staircase the sound of the Hokey-Cokey grew audible. ‘You put your left ear out,’ said Dr Millingham. ‘All the modern dances.’

The bar was a small room, mildly decorated with streamers, and some of the tables had been moved for dancing. A few people, mostly English girls with round blunt bosoms, sweatily danced the Hokey-Cokey to the music of Jack Wilks and His Trio, a group of elderly patriarchs trapped together with their instruments in one corner. Along the bar sat a row of Australians, men and women, all over six feet tall. The men wore black shoes, the women white gloves. As they arrived, the man at the end flicked the ear of the girl next to him and said, ‘Pass it on.’

It was all rather like the public houses Walker went to in Nottingham, and ‘When will this sameness cease?’ he sighed to himself.

‘What’s it to be?’ asked Millingham, pushing up to the bar.

‘I’ll have a stout,’ said Walker, looking around and noting that the red-haired girl was not yet in sight.

‘That’s not drink, that’s food. No, come on, try something American, one of these Tom Collins things. They even give you a stick to poke people with.’

When they had been served, Millingham picked up the drinks and made for the tables. ‘This is the really nice thing about these ships, the cheap booze,’ he said. ‘That’s why people sentimentalize about travel. They do it in a permanent alcoholic haze.’ They passed a table where a group of English youths sat, throwing potato chips in the air and catching them in their mouths as they came down, and another where three close-cropped American boys in tennis shoes wooed a French girl with a high hairdo by mentioning in rapid succession the titles of books they had read. The third table was empty and they sat.

‘Well, here’s to God’s Own Country,’ said Millingham, raising his drink, ‘where the Elk and the Buffalo roam. Not to mention Rotary.’

‘Cheers!’ said Walker, tasting the concoction: it was nice, but not like stout.

‘Where are you going?’ asked Millingham.

‘I’m going to a university called Benedict Arnold University.’

‘Never heard of it. And I’ve heard of most of them.’

‘I hadn’t actually, until they wrote to me. It was headed writing paper, so I thought they must really exist.’

‘Where is it?’ asked Millingham.

‘I forgot to look, exactly. Somewhere in the middle.’

‘The cow country, the Bible Belt. Where raiding parties from the Chicago Tribune kill off Englishmen travelling alone. You’re a brave man, Mr Walker. I’m playing it safe, going to Yale. They’ve got a lot of books at Yale.’

There was a stir in the doorway. Smart, looking as though they had just been unwrapped from cellophane, in came seven or eight of the American girls Walker had seen on the Pullman. ‘What’s this?’ said Millingham.

‘Oh, they’re bagpipers,’ said Walker. ‘There’s a party of girls who have been touring Europe playing the bagpipes on board. From a girls’ college in New England.’

‘Why the bagpipes when they could squeeze me against their chests?’ said Millingham.

The girls, wearing either neat black dresses or cashmere sweaters and pleated skirts, sat down; one of them called over a steward and ordered drinks. ‘You know, it’s funny,’ said Millingham, ‘American girls always look like English men. Neat hair, suits, white raincoats, very straight bodies. I’m fascinated by them. Do you think that makes me a fairy?’

‘I don’t think so,’ said Walker. ‘I’m fascinated by them too.’

The steward came back with a tray laden with small brown drinks with cherries on sticks in them; each of the girls took one in turn and the one who had called the steward earlier opened her purse and paid. ‘Salt of the earth, American girls,’ said Millingham. ‘The only thing is, it’s like shopping in a supermarket. There are so many good brands with only marginal differences that you never know which to pick. An embarrassment of riches, that’s what that lot is.’

‘I know,’ said Walker. ‘At one time there there were only a few beautiful girls. Think of all the expense of spirit you went to to get near them. Pushing other people out of the way, stamping on their fingers. Now there are so many it’s enough to turn men passive. Not like it was in my day. I sometimes think I missed out on all the good things. I was a bohemian when the world was against them; I was a lecher when it was frowned upon. It makes me feel like a tired old pioneer.’

‘Well, speak for yourself,’ said Millingham. ‘It still is my day.’

‘I blame it on the orange juice,’ said Walker. The girls now all took out the cherries on the sticks and ate them first, while Jack Wilks played ‘Horsey, Keep Your Tail Up’.

‘Of course, these American girls are very demanding,’ said Millingham. ‘The thing is, they’re so inexhaustibly verbal. Take an English girl out and if she’s said “Ooo” three times that’s a good conversational evening. But American girls talk about everything. They’re like these American sports cars with a hundred clocks on the dashboard. They have to have a report on every area of sensation. And they want pleasure at all times. Stop amusing them for a minute and you’ve taken away one of their inalienable rights, the pursuit of happiness.’

Walker and Millingham sat and watched the girls, who were now all smoking filter cigarettes, which they put out after four puffs, until a voice interrupted them.

‘Ah, my old friend!’ said the voice; Dr Jochum, still in his dinner jacket, but now with a small scarlet cummerbund, stood over Walker.

‘Ah, join us,’ said Walker. ‘This is Dr Jochum, I met him on the train. Dr Millingham, my cabin-mate.’

‘We sound like a medical conference,’ said Jochum.

‘Oh well,’ said Millingham, ‘if this ship should sink, the world of learning would be set back two hundred years. Let me buy you a cheap drink.’

‘No, I came over to honour the arrangement I made with my young friend on the train. I said, Mr Walker, I would introduce you to the young bagpipe ladies.’

Walker went red and said, ‘Oh, I could hardly . . .’

‘But of course, I know them well, you see.’

‘You can’t miss a chance like that,’ said Millingham. ‘Go and establish a bridgehead.’

‘Oh dear,’ said Walker. He got up and Jochum put his arm around his shoulder and led him genially across the room. Walker felt blushes spreading all over his body, and it seemed to him as if his collar had popped open. ‘I don’t think I know your first name,’ said Jochum.

‘James,’ said Walker shrilly.

The girls looked up and one said, ‘Hi, Dr Jochum; what’s this?’

‘It’s a shy young English friend of mine. His name is James Walker. I will let the ladies introduce themselves.’

‘Hi, Jamie,’ said one of the girls.

Another felt his jacket and said, ‘Harris tweed, or I’m not Perry Mason.’

Walker said, ‘How do you do?’

‘Oh, you Yerpeans, so polite,’ said another of the girls.

‘Now you must make him entertain you,’ said Jochum, who was unhooking chairs and bringing them up to the table. Walker sat on one and looked with attentiveness at his knees.

‘Hot in here,’ he said after a moment.

The girl next to him said, ‘You know, I had a teacher in World Lit. talked exactly like you. He couldn’t understand why we couldn’t understand anything he said. The girls used to say, you know, this hall has bad acoustics, or, I’ve been deaf since I was three. They didn’t like to tell him he talked funny.’

‘No, quite,’ said Walker.

‘What happened to this man?’ asked Jochum, sitting down and lighting a small cigar.

‘That was Dr Jeffries, you know,’ said the girl.

‘Ah yes,’ said Jochum nodding.

‘What did happen?’ asked Walker.

‘They didn’t renew his contract,’ said Jochum, blowing cigar smoke blandly.

‘He was fired,’ said the girl.

‘Because he talked funny?’ asked Walker.

‘Oh no,’ said the girl, shocked. ‘That would be Prejudice. No, he didn’t like the course. He kept changing all the books and teaching what he called non-great books in the Great Books Course, because they were better. So they, you know, didn’t keep him on.’

‘It seems hard,’ said Walker.

‘Vell, we have another pattern of educational system in the United States, Mr Walker, as you vill see,’ said Jochum. ‘It is much easier to obtain a post, and much easier to lose one.’

‘Oh,’ said Walker, feeling uneasy.

‘Actually this man was a difficult fellow. He once flunked all the students in his course to show them all standards are arbitrary. That offended the administration. And in an American university you can offend everyone except administration and the football coach.’

Oh, can I last? asked Walker of himself, sweating.

‘Of course, he used to date a lot of his students and take them to the racetrack and all,’ said the girl.

‘I can see that must be a real temptation,’ said Walker.

‘I guess so,’ said the girl. ‘Of course, a lot of Hillesley girls don’t like dating their instructors.’

‘Because of their low social prestige,’ said another girl.

‘Oh,’ said Walker.

‘He looks sad,’ said Jochum.

On Walker’s other side, a girl who hadn’t so far spoken suddenly tapped him on the lapel. ‘I see you’re in leaf,’ she said.

‘Pardon?’

‘I see you have this bunch of heather in your buttonhole. Is this some English national holiday?’

Walker looked at her; she was fair-haired, wore a button-down Oxford shirt like a man’s, and a corduroy top and skirt. A small button pinned to the shirt said I LIKE BACH.

‘Oh no,’ said Walker, ‘my . . .’ A sudden access of male cunning interrupted what he was about to say; he reformulated. ‘A friend of mine sent a bunch of heather to the ship. By telegram. It’s amazing what you can do nowadays.’

‘Right,’ said the girl. ‘It is, fantastic.’

Walker cast a quick look around the room. His partner had still not appeared. ‘Would you like to dance?’ he said to the girl who liked Bach. The girl put a crisp into her mouth and then, without saying anything, stood up. Walker led her out on to the floor and opened his arms. She placed them carefully where she wanted them, meanwhile looking at him with cool, appraising eyes. Walker set his one dance-step into motion and they moved about the floor. The three Ivy League men danced by with the French girl.

‘Well,’ said the girl, ‘it’s kind of you to pick me out. It must have been quite a decision to have to make. Or was it because I was sitting nearest?’

‘I suppose it was because you spoke to me.’

‘Who didn’t?’ said the girl.

‘I don’t think I caught your name,’ said Walker.

‘No, that’s because nobody said it.’

‘Is it a secret?’

‘No,’ said the girl, after some thought, ‘it’s been bruited around. I’m Julie Snowflake.’

‘That’s charming.’

‘Now why is it charming?’

‘Oh, I don’t know, it’s just a fresh kind of name.’

‘Huh,’ said the girl.

Walker felt rebuffed and they danced silently for a moment; then the girl said, ‘Are you still with me?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, look, do try some more conversation.’

‘Well,’ said Walker, rather uneasily, ‘did you have a good vacation?’

‘Yes, I had a good vacation. Did you have a good vacation?’

‘Am I boring you?’

‘No, not exactly. I just don’t quite appreciate this Yerpean politeness. Do you all talk to one another this way?’

‘I suppose we do.’

‘Do you ever get to know one another?’

‘Probably not.’

‘Ah, well,’ said Julie, ‘okay, that’s Yerp, I guess.’

‘That’s what?’

‘Yerp. Yerp where you come from.’

‘You mean Europe?’

‘Yes, Yerp.’

‘Oh,’ said Walker, ‘I’m not European, I’m English.’

‘Isn’t England in Yerp?’

‘Yes, in a way.’

‘Well, then.’

Walker sneaked another look around the room; his red-haired partner still seemed not to have arrived. He said, ‘What are you studying at Hillesley?’

‘I’m an English major.’

‘I suppose I should salute.’

‘Yok, yok,’ said Miss Snowflake, looking at him coolly. Walker knew he must try harder. ‘Do you find it interesting?’ he asked.

‘Well,’ said Miss Snowflake, ‘last year I was popular and nearly flunked, but this year I’m going to shut myself away and really study. This summer I read Dickens and got him out of the way. Now I’m starting in on James. I find him a bit false, you know what I mean? Actually I can’t stand falsity and pretence; it offends me deeply, where I live. Do you read Kierkegaard?’

‘Well, I read him a few years back and got him out of the way.’

Miss Snowflake looked at Walker for the first time, raising her head, the top of which came level with his eyes, to do so.

‘Now that’s some kind of a reply,’ she said. ‘Well, you know that passage in Fear and Trembling about dancing? And he talks about two kinds of people?’

‘No, I don’t remember it.’

‘Well, it’s really very fine. Look it up. I wrote it down on a file-card and thumbtacked it in the john at home, that’s how fine it is. How does it go?’ Miss Snowflake screwed up her young grey eyes. ‘It’s something like this: “Most people live in worldly sorrow and joy, and sit around the walls, and they don’t join in the dance. But the knights of infinity” – this is the bit – “are dancers, and possess elevation. They rise up and fall, and this is no mean pastime, nor ungraceful to behold.” I think it’s marvellous. No mean pastime! Possess elevation!’

‘There’s a bit like that in Waugh’s Decline and Fall,’ said Walker.

‘But isn’t it good?’ said Miss Snowflake impatiently. ‘The question is, how do you get to be a knight of infinity?’

‘Who knows?’ said Walker. ‘I don’t think I do.’

‘Or,’ said Miss Snowflake, ‘to rephrase the question, why are Yerpeans so stiff?’

‘Sitters by the wall?’

‘You’re getting it.’

‘Oh, I see. Well, I don’t know. Maybe we’ve found our balance. Maybe we think we know what to expect. Maybe we’ve stopped looking.’

‘Could be,’ said Miss Snowflake.

‘And then,’ said Walker lightly, ‘we realize we’ve missed something, so we come to the States.’

‘To become knights of infinity? Well, you know, I don’t think you’re going to make it.’

‘Why not?’

‘Oh, I don’t know, that’s not fair. Let’s erase it from the record. I’m crazy, I talk too fast.’

The music stopped and they separated. Walker suddenly realized that he was enjoying himself a great deal and didn’t want to part from Miss Snowflake. He said, ‘They’ve stopped. Look, why don’t we go out on deck? It’s a nice night.’ Miss Snowflake looked at him speculatively. ‘Oh no, thanks,’ she said, ‘I think I’d prefer to stay right here, if you don’t mind, because I’ve been getting pretty low grades in judo. Why don’t we have another dance though? I was just starting to enjoy our conversation.’

‘So was I,’ said Walker.

Jack Wilks set his group in motion again and they began to dance once more. Walker said, ‘Tell me some more about Hillesley.’

‘Well, I don’t know that I can invest it with much interest. It’s a very shoe girl’s school in Connecticut where a lot of very expensive girls go.’

‘Like you?’

‘Yes, well, I guess I’m an expensive girl. Easy, you’re kicking me. But the communal IQ is terrific. It’s been a kind of proof to me that you can be rich and intelligent. A lot of people have questioned that, you know.’

‘Have they? I didn’t.’

‘Yes, socialists and all. Stick around, you can learn a lot. But conspicuous consumption is frowned on at Hillesley. Like a lot of girls have their own planes, but we don’t allow them on campus. The freshmen come with wardrobes full of mink-collared sweaters and vicuna coats, all that Miami Beach routine, you know, but we soon put them right. Well, for instance, there’s an informal rule among the student body that the only time you can wear a mink coat is going along the corridor to the shower.’

‘It sounds very exclusive.’

‘Well, maybe, but there are no favours at Hillesley. I can illustrate that. For instance, when there’s a prowler on campus, they turn off all the lights so no one knows who gets raped.’

‘That seems very fair,’ said Walker urbanely, ‘does it happen often?’

‘Oh, once in a while. But of course there’s lots more to Hillesley life than just getting raped. You know, you have to study as well?’

‘An all-round education, then.’

‘Exactly, you’ve got it exactly. An all-round education. A lot of the girls are geniuses – but they’re expected to be all-round geniuses. One of the problems of genius is the specialization.’

‘Well, I suppose there are a lot of problems with genius.’

‘Oh, boy, problems. Well, as you know, I guess, a lot of geniuses – I suppose it is geniuses not genii – are actually psychos. That’s really difficult. All our geniuses have this careful psychological testing so that we don’t have any really extreme types. For instance, if a girl seems unstable, she has to have a letter from her psychiatrist testifying that she won’t commit suicide during semester. In short,’ said Miss Snowflake ironically, ‘we allow some leeway during vacation. Actually I hope you won’t think because I’m describing this to you I’m approving it without reservation, will you?’

‘No, not at all,’ said Walker.

‘Actually I take a critical attitude towards Hillesley. What about you? What do you think?’

‘Well,’ said Walker, ‘I think my view would be that a college like that ought to take some bigger risks with genius. I have a weakness for genius myself.’

‘Well, that’s an interesting point of view and I probably agree with it, but just to take the rebuttal position for a minute, you have to protect the name of the school, and then there’s another thing. A lot of Hillesley girls marry really shoe Ivy League men, Yalies with balanced portfolios and unique retirement pensions, you know, and marriage for woman is a destiny. Well, for that kind of destiny you really require all-round development.’

‘Yes,’ said Walker, ‘I can see that.’

‘Like we have this course on lifting suitcases down from racks without showing our slip,’ said Julie.

‘I see, so we have to see Hillesley as a kind of marriage bureau as well.’

‘A very high-class one. Well, okay, now why not? No, I guess I can see why not, but you see the point. Boys these days are tricky. I mean, they don’t care if you’ve been ravished sixty times by sailors, which I guess is a major cultural breakthrough, but they do want a girl they can live graciously with, someone they can talk to. A girl with all-round cultural development. And so . . . well, you can be too intelligent.’

‘Are you too intelligent?’

‘Well, I think you’ve hit it . . . but not the way some girls are. You know, they wear their hair straight, and they’re philosophically opposed to charm and padded bras, and they don’t get any dates and this spurs them on to take their doctorate. I don’t think I’m like that, I don’t think I’m the doctorate type. No, Hillesley’s aim is to produce girls who are mature in all directions. This Yerpean . . . this Englishman we were talking about back there at the table, he used to say that Hillesley girls were just normal American girls, but they worried about it more. That seems about right.’

‘It sounds,’ said Walker, ‘more like a way of life than an education.’

‘Well, right, and of course the problem is what attitude to take toward it, when they’re trying to help you but maybe you can’t accept it wholesale. When I was a freshman I tried adolescent cynicism, and wore leotards, and joined SANE and all. But that was a dead end. Now I think I’ve attained a, well, cooler and more sophisticated irony. I guess it was that you found difficult when we first started conversing.’

‘It must have been,’ said Walker.

‘Cool without being offensive,’ said Julie. ‘That’s the style.’

‘And full of elevation.’

‘Right.’

Looking over Julie’s shoulder, Walker suddenly caught sight of the next couple; it was Dr Millingham, dancing with the red-haired girl. Millingham was facing him, and winked; the girl had her back to Walker. Walker steered Julie round, a complicated manoeuvre, and got behind the cover of two dons twisting with one another. He realized that desperate measures were in order, and said, ‘Look, sure you wouldn’t like to go on deck? I’m getting awfully hot.’

‘I don’t know,’ said Miss Snowflake, looking at him with a firm gaze. ‘You thinking of trying to maul me around a lot?’

‘Well, no, certainly not if you don’t want me to.’

‘No, I don’t,’ said Miss Snowflake. ‘Well, okay, look, I just have to go down to my cabin and get a coat. Why don’t you wait for me at the top of the stairway? I’ll be right back.’

‘Fine,’ said Walker, leading her off the floor. They went out beyond the glass doors, and Miss Snowflake left him and went down the stairs. Walker looked at a map of the Atlantic on which a little wooden ship had been moved to a point somewhere off Land’s End, and also read a notice about the daily competitions and the Fancy Hat Gala. There was also an advice telling him to set his watch back one hour at midnight. ‘Having a nice time?’ said a voice behind him, and there stood the red-haired girl. She was wearing a long shiny blue dress with a halter neck, and black gloves to the elbow. There were patches of powder on her collar-bones. ‘I’m sorry I was late,’ she went on. ‘That old lady caught me and asked me to help her to unpack. Still. I see you found someone to talk to.’

‘Yes,’ said Walker.

‘Perhaps I’ll see you later,’ said the girl.

‘Yes, buy you a drink later,’ said Walker, relieved. She went back through the doors and a moment later Julie Snowflake came back up the stairs.

‘Hi, again, all set,’ she said; she was wearing an unzipped ski-jacket over her suit. Walker pushed open the outside door. ‘Hey, this is some wind blowing,’ said Miss Snowflake. A fine wet spray had made the planks of the deck greasy. Deck-lamps picked out the white of the rails and the lifeboats, and the funnel, high above, was floodlit, so that its bluster of smoke was picked out from the darkness.

‘Let’s go toward the stern,’ said Walker. ‘Maybe we can get out of the wind.’

‘No, I like being out in the wind,’ said Miss Snowflake, leaning against the rail and looking out into the darkness; all that could be seen was the bow-wave’s faint luminosity. ‘We must be way out to sea now. Hey, just look at that illuminated funnel. It’s like Coney Island on a lonely night. Nobody around but us. You know something, Mr Walker? You should try zen.’

‘Pardon?’ said Walker, looking out too.

‘Be a Buddhist. Take these yellow socks. No, there are a lot of very fine books on zen. All these great stories about masters slapping their pupils in the ear. I think you acquire a sense of reality. You have a good sense of reality?’

Walker said, ‘Well, I don’t have much to measure it against. I think what I really lack is a sense of unreality.’

‘Yes, that figures. Well, that’s the thing with zen. You get both. I must tell you about this course at Hillesley called Poise and Co-ordination.’

‘Where you lift suitcases off racks?’

‘Yes, and how to get out of cars without showing your inner thighs and all. Inner thighs, Miss Snowflake, look to the inner thighs. But the thing is, I use the course a different way. I learned how to relax. It’s marvellous. A kind of, well, transmogrification of self. Now you, you don’t relax.’

A strand of Julie Snowflake’s hair blew against his face, and he felt far from relaxed. ‘No,’ he said.

‘You’re trying too hard, you’re all screwed up,’ said Miss Snowflake. ‘So you have problems, we all have problems. Look, let me show you. Try relaxing. Let your arms go all limp. No, go ahead, I’m holding you up. Now, I’m going to lift your arms in the air and let go of them. Let them ooze down. Okay?’ She had lifted Walker’s arms into the air; she let them go. The knuckles of his wrists smacked him on top of his head.

‘Christ,’ he said.

‘You all right?’ asked Miss Snowflake. ‘No, Mr Walker, that was way off. You have to ooze down sinuously like a sna-ake, you know? You weren’t controlling your relaxation. One time at Hillesley a girl broke a ten thousand-dollar wristwatch doing what you just did. She was all tensed up like you.’

‘Was she?’

‘Now come on, no fooling, try to cultivate detachment from your body. Let each bit of it live for itself. Look, I’m holding you. Now, just sag.’

‘Right down?’

‘Yes.’

Walker sagged and they both fell heavily to the deck. ‘Oh, boy, you’re heavy, you brought me down too,’ said Miss Snowflake, in whose lap his head had somehow landed. ‘I guess you’re really far gone. Let me up.’

‘I like it down here,’ said Walker.

‘No, cut that out, come on, get up. Let go my foot, Mr Walker. Give me my shoe back. Thanks. Now, come on, up.’

They got up and went and stood by the rail. ‘Just take a look at the back of my skirt,’ said Miss Snowflake. ‘Is it stained on the, you know, fanny? That deck’s greasy.’

Walker, still breathing hard, took out his handkerchief and rubbed for a moment. ‘That’s fine now,’ he said. ‘Well, so it looks as though I’ll never make it, then?’

‘Relaxing? Oh, I don’t know. I’m not expert. I was only fooling, I guess. You all right? You’re puffing like a bloodhound. You’re not going to have a coronary or anything?’

‘No, I’m fine,’ said Walker.

‘Come out from back there and lean on the rail. Sniff this fresh air. Good, no? They call this course at Hillesley Beanbag.’

‘They do?’ said Walker. ‘Why?’

‘Oh, because in the final you have to make a beanbag, and the instructor throws it against the wall. If it bursts you flunk and if it doesn’t you pass.’

‘What’s a beanbag?’

‘A bag full of beans that you play with like a ball.’

‘I see,’ said Walker.

‘Of course,’ said Julie, reaching in a pocket in her shirt placed square on her left breast, and taking out a pack of American cigarettes, ‘there’s another great way to relax.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Creative writing. We have this great course. Did you ever try it? It’s really therapeutic. That’s what I like about writers. They’re all such relaxed people, in tune with it all.’

‘Well, I have tried that, as a matter of fact.’

‘You keep trying, Mr Walker,’ said Miss Snowflake, knocking a cigarette out of the pack and hitting it on her thumbnail. ‘Cigarette? You ever publish anything?’ She cupped her hands round her Zippo lighter and lit both their cigarettes. Their hair touched.

Walker said, ‘As a matter of fact, yes.’

‘As a matter of fact, are you kidding?’

‘No, not at all.’

‘What did you publish?’

‘Three novels,’ said Walker.

‘No, come on, tell me the truth. I know a lot of men like to tell girls they’re writers because they think girls will go further with writers. But I bless the truth.’

‘No, really, it is the truth.’

Miss Snowflake puffed hard on her cigarette and shook her head. ‘Well, you’re a writer,’ she said. ‘What was the name again? James Walker? Not the James Walker who wrote The Last of the Old Lords?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Well, this is fantastic, and you know why? I’m writing a term paper about the English novel since the war and you’re in it?’

‘Well,’ said Walker, ‘I can’t think why.’

‘Now listen, cut that out.’

‘I wasn’t doing anything.’

‘Yes, you were, that modesty bit,’ said Miss Snowflake. ‘You’re an important writer and you just behave like one. Why, you could be anybody. All that “as a matter of fact” and “I can’t think why”. You should just hear yourself saying it. It sounds like some phoney hack writer for the comics. You mustn’t be artificial and embarrassed. You must be what you are. A real human being.’

‘Possess elevation, be able to sag?’

‘Right.’

‘I’d like to,’ said Walker, ‘but isn’t being a real human being acting the way you are?’

‘I don’t believe so. A writer shouldn’t be ordinary. He has to try. He has to feel more, understand more, see more. You have to be able to know the future, to sense moods, to take truth out of the air. Artists are the antennae of the race, Mr Walker.’

‘I can’t even sag properly,’ said Walker. ‘I just have to do what I can with what I am. Which is what everyone has to do. A lot of writers finished themselves by trying to do more.’

‘No, I don’t think so,’ said Julie Snowflake. ‘You know, you’re a disappointment, Mr Walker. You don’t believe in yourself, so why should I believe in you? I don’t believe you wrote those books you wrote.’

‘But I did.’

‘No, you didn’t.’

‘I did, Julie.’

‘You’re holding my arm,’ said Julie. ‘You don’t know how to feel properly, so how can you have made me feel things?’

‘Well, I wrote them,’ said Walker petulantly.

‘Sure you did,’ said Julie. ‘Take no notice. I’m crazy. Everyone says so. You mustn’t think I don’t admire you. I do. But be better, Mr Walker, be better. Christ, I just threw my cigarette over the side. I’ve probably set the whole goddam ship on fire. Can you see it?’

Walker looked over. ‘It’s going into the water,’ he said.

‘Thank goodness. I ought not to be roaming free really. Well, well, well, so I met my term paper. Why are you coming to the States?’

‘Well,’ said Walker, still looking over. ‘I’m going to be a creative writer on a campus somewhere out west.’

‘Oh, you should come to Hillesley. I wish you were coming to Hillesley. We have a whole bunch of writers there. A lot of girls like to sleep with them because it’s honorific. For the record, though, it’s not a view I share.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ said Walker.

‘Hey,’ said Julie Snowflake. ‘Well, where out west?’

‘A place called Benedict Arnold.’

‘Oh no, not Benedict Arnold.’

‘Why, is there something wrong with it?’

‘No, not really. It’s just they’re a bunch of ski-bums out there. They won’t appreciate you. I know because I have a brother out there.’

‘I hope I meet him.’

‘Well, maybe, he’s training to be a veterinarian. No, it’s quite a good school really.’

‘Do you ever go there?’

‘Once in a while.’

‘Maybe we’ll meet again.’

‘I don’t know,’ said Julie. ‘You want to?’

‘I think you’re a very fascinating person.’

‘Sure you do.’

‘I do,’ said Walker. ‘Are all American girls like you?’

‘Yes, but I think about it more. I told you. Well, what about that dancing? We’re just sitters by the wall. I suppose that’s how you met Dr Jochum.’

‘What’s how I met Dr Jochum?’

‘Well, going to Benedict Arnold. He teaches there.’

‘No!’ said Walker. ‘Really?’

‘Moment of truth,’ said Julie. ‘Isn’t that what Aristotle calls a perpety?’

‘No, I didn’t know that. I met him on the Pullman. I thought just now he taught at Hillesley.’

‘He did once,’ said Miss Snowflake, resting both elbows on the rail and wriggling her behind till she had gained equilibrium.

‘But they fired him because he talked funny?’

‘No, he just didn’t have tenure. He left at the end of his term. You know . . . I like him. Because he’s so sad. Like all the émigrés. All these restless people who drift around from place to place looking for Europe in America. You mustn’t get that way.’

‘I’ll try not to,’ said Walker.

‘He makes me sad too. He’s a bit lost intellectually, too, and because he’s sad and drifting and lost no one wants to give him tenure. Well, I’ll tell you, if I ran Hillesley I’d give him tenure.’

‘That’s very kind.’

‘Well, I am,’ said Julie. ‘Now what about that dancing?’

She had turned round to look at him, stretching her legs out and putting her backside against the rail. Walker looked at her; he said, ‘Oh let’s wait a minute.’

‘You trying to figure out a way to get to kiss me?’ she asked, looking at him.

‘I suppose I am,’ said Walker, feeling a thumping in his heart.

‘Well,’ said Miss Snowflake, ‘be my guest. Politely now.’

Walker’s heart seemed now to be thumping so violently that it must, he was sure, be shaking the buttons off his shirt. He came near and put his mouth to Julie Snowflake’s. Her hand touched the back of his neck, a touch of sophistication he appreciated. On her lips he could taste lipstick and Manhattans. The kiss continued for a while until she pursed her lips and wriggled her head.

‘Well,’ she said, withdrawing from the suction.

‘Well,’ said Walker, breathing hard.

‘Cigarette?’ said Miss Snowflake, taking out her pack of Chesterfields and her Zippo. ‘You know, that’s the first time I’ve ever been kissed by my term paper.’

‘What did you write the last one on?’ asked Walker, subsiding only a little.

‘Tolstoy,’ said Julie, ‘and I’m no necrophiliac.’

Walker had not taken his arms from around her and he put his lips to her forehead. ‘You know?’ she said. ‘We ought to go back. We’re party poopers.’

‘We’re what?’

‘We’re pooping the party downstairs. Come on. I’ll drag you back. Just let yourself go limp. Okay?’

Walker, being dragged backwards along the deck, was more depressed at leaving Miss Snowflake and at the faults she had discovered in him than he cared to be. There was no doubt about it – Miss Snowflake was an all-round education, and that, it seemed, was what he wanted. If he was educable at all.

‘You’re improving,’ said Miss Snowflake. ‘Still, that’s my limit. You’ll have to walk the rest.’

He followed her along the deck and inside, out of the wind.

‘Well, it’s been nice,’ said Miss Snowflake. ‘Now I have to go and tidy up. Come to think of it, it looks as though you’d better go to the john yourself. You have my lipstick smeared around your mouth and on the end of your nose.’

He went into the lavatory and when he came out Miss Snowflake had disappeared and the girl with the red hair was waiting for him.

‘You said you’d buy me a drink,’ she said.

‘And I will,’ said Walker. He opened the glass door and let her through, casting a last look back for Julie. She wasn’t there. Inside, the lights had been dimmed and a number of people appeared to have fallen in love with one another.

‘I’d like a whisky sour,’ said the girl. ‘I’ve never had them before tonight. I do like them.’

At the bar Walker found himself standing beside Jochum. His cummerbund had come undone and hung down behind him like a tail. People kept treading on it and Jochum had a look of profound confusion on his face; he couldn’t think what was pulling at him.

‘I hear you’re at Benedict Arnold too,’ said Walker.

‘That’s true. You mean, you also?’

‘Yes, I’m going there for a year.’

‘Oh, that is splendid news, splendid. You must come and see me often.’

‘In spite of your comments on the danger of shipboard friendships?’

‘Oh, present company is always excepted,’ said Jochum, ‘except, of course, for our old lady. I shall extend no invitations to her.’

‘I wonder,’ said Walker, ‘if you see the American girl I danced with, Julie Snowflake, would you tell her that I’m rather stuck with someone but I’ll see her again.’

‘Oh, our other table companion has caught up with you. I thought she had succumbed to your charms. Vell, you must be firm.’

‘I find it so hard,’ said Walker.

‘Vell, it is an old liberal weakness, helping lame dogs over stiles. Be strong.’

‘I would if I could. May I buy you a drink?’

‘I am buying twenty-four Manhattans,’ said Jochum. ‘You may if you wish . . . but to tell the truth I am not paying either. These young ladies have made a kitty this evening to buy their drinks. We must spend all this tonight’ – he produced a wad of American notes from his pocket – ‘even if we drown in Manhattans. So I will treat you instead.’

‘Well, it’s a whisky sour and a Tom Collins,’ said Walker.

‘All these weird drinks.’

When Walker got back to the red-haired girl, she had claimed a bowl of crisps from one of the tables and was eating them with some gusto. ‘I thought we’d lost you again,’ she said.

‘Oh, no,’ said Walker.

‘I don’t know your name,’ she said, hitching up her black stole.

‘It’s Walker,’ said Walker.

‘Walker the porker,’ said the girl. ‘My name’s Miss Marrow. Like the vegetable. Aren’t you going to ask me to dance?’

‘Oh yes,’ said Walker. ‘I thought you wanted to finish your drink.’

‘I will, look,’ said Miss Marrow, emptying her glass at one gulp. ‘There.’

‘Be careful,’ said Walker, ‘you’ll fall down.’

‘I don’t care,’ said Miss Marrow. They went on to the floor; Miss Marrow danced in a way that Walker thought of as ‘divinely’, covering the floor with those great languorous sweeps that he recalled from old films. In this way they dislodged a lot of people and caused several dancing accidents. ‘You’re not terribly good at this, are you?’ said Miss Marrow after a while.

‘No,’ said Walker, ‘I did woodwork instead.’

‘What do you mean, Porker?’ cried Miss Marrow.

‘At school we had to choose between woodwork and dancing. I may not be much good at the foxtrot, but you should see me make a pipe-rack.’

As they swung about, and Walker grew short of breath, he noticed over Miss Marrow’s shoulder that Julie Snowflake had come back into the room. She stood by the door and looked around; then she went over to the table where the bagpipers sat, and Jochum must have told her his excuses, for she stared at him for a moment and then turned away. If only he could leave Miss Marrow in the middle of the floor, dancing on her own, while he joined Julie; Miss Marrow, since she kept shutting her eyes and was setting the pace entirely, would probably not notice his absence for at least five minutes. But gallantry won out, gallantry to the kind of girl that Walker used to make assignations with on the corner of the street where his parents’ home was. She was entirely and provincially familiar; Walker knew a thousand versions of her; but precisely because of that he felt she had a claim. ‘Oh, Porker,’ she said suddenly, opening her eyes, ‘you’ve laddered my stocking, you beast.’

‘I am sorry,’ said Walker, ‘stockings cost a packet, don’t they?’

‘I think I can stop it running; I’ve got some nail varnish in my bag. Come outside and wait for me.’ She went into the toilet, exactly the sort of girl Walker had always waited outside ladies’ toilets for; he waited a moment and then sidled off towards Miss Snowflake. ‘Porker!’ said a voice; the girl had come back. ‘It’s no use. Want to dance some more?’

‘I don’t mind,’ said Walker, though he did.

‘I’m a bit tired of it, actually,’ said Miss Marrow. ‘What’s it like on deck?’

‘Oh, rather windy,’ said Walker.

‘I knew that’s where you went!’ said Miss Marrow. ‘Well, show me around up there.’

A moment later he was on the sports deck again. ‘This wind’s doing awful things to my hairdo,’ said Miss Marrow, ‘I suppose I look a fright.’

‘Well, no,’ said Walker.

‘Where’s England out there?’ asked Miss Marrow.

‘Oh, miles away in the darkness.’

‘You know, I don’t know whether you feel this sort of thing, but I must say I feel a bit mean, leaving it like that. I know fidelity and patriotism and loyalty are rather old-fashioned words these days, but I think when you’re doing something like this they suddenly mean something to you again. Don’t you?’

‘No, not really,’ said Walker. ‘In any case I’m only going for a year.’

‘If you can stick it.’

‘Oh, I’ll stick it.’

‘Well, I suppose you’re tougher than I am. I seem to care more about that sort of thing than most people. How many in your cabin?’

‘There are four of us.’

‘Beat you,’ said Miss Marrow. ‘Only two in mine.’

‘Lucky girl.’

‘Yes,’ said Miss Marrow, taking a cigarette out of her bag. ‘Have you a light?’

Walker took out his box of matches, on the back of which he had written half a chapter of a novel, and tried to strike one. The wind kept blowing them out. ‘I think that’s got it,’ said Miss Marrow at last. ‘Does your cabin have a pink mirror?’

‘Yes, it does.’

‘I thought they only had pink mirrors in brothels.’

‘Oh, do they?’

‘Haven’t you ever been in a brothel, Porker?’

‘No, I haven’t actually. Have you?’

‘What do you mean?’ asked Miss Marrow, with a change of tone.

‘Oh, I didn’t mean anything,’ said Walker, embarrassed, ‘I just wondered how you knew.’

‘I read about it.’

‘You don’t have to believe all you read.’

‘No, that’s very true. Damnation! My cig’s gone out. Come behind this ventilator, and light it properly this time.’

They retired behind the ventilator; Walker cupped his hands and struck a match within it, and Miss Marrow penetrated the circle with her cigarette and put it to the match. Once again hair blew against Walker’s cheek, and once again Walker’s heart thumped a little, though this time not with the cosmopolitan flourish that Julie Snowflake had caused, but with a provincial backstreet beat.

‘Ta,’ said Miss Marrow. ‘Well, isn’t all this exciting. I suppose we’re miles out to sea now.’

‘Off Start Point,’ said Walker.

‘And just think, there are grey-green icebergs glistening in the mist . . . covered with sleeping birds. And sunken hulks on the sea bottom,’ said Miss Marrow, sighing, and went on: ‘Are you imaginative, Porker?’

‘A bit, I suppose.’

‘I thought you were. I was always the imaginative one at home. Ever write any poetry?’

‘Nothing to speak of.’

‘I did. Lots of it. I thought you were sensitive, though. You have a sensitive mouth.’

Walker looked at Miss Marrow and realized that she wanted to be kissed. He looked down at his shoes.

‘Oh, my shoulders are getting so cold,’ said Miss Marrow.

Her dress didn’t fit very well, Walker noticed, and the straps stood inelegantly away from the shoulders. She sat down on a life-raft. ‘Have my jacket,’ said Walker.

‘Oh no, you’ll freeze,’ said Miss Marrow.

So Walker sat down, put his arm around her, and said, ‘Is that better?’

‘That’s rather nice,’ said Miss Marrow. ‘I say, do you think this bra I’ve got is too pointed? My mother thought so.’

‘Looks perfectly fine to me,’ said Walker.

‘That’s what I said. Don’t you think that old lady’s a terror? She’d have me running around for her all the time if she could.’

‘Matriarchal England, that’s what she is,’ said Walker. ‘Every man’s best reason for emigrating. And then she comes with you.’

‘Oh, I think that’s a bit hard on her. She’s very cultured, you know.’

‘Omar Khayyam,’ said Walker.

Miss Marrow laughed. ‘You’re a fool,’ she said.

‘I know,’ said Walker, leaning to kiss Miss Marrow lightly on the cheek. Miss Marrow saw the gesture and turned her face to meet the kiss with her lips. Collision ensued; the kiss went askew and landed in her hair; her nose struck his cheek; and the tip of her cigarette touched the lobe of Walker’s ear. ‘Bloody hell!’ said Walker, leaping up.

‘What’s wrong?’ cried Miss Marrow. ‘What is it?’

‘It’s just that I’ve burned my flaming ear.’

‘How?’ asked Miss Marrow.

‘Your cigarette.’

‘Sit down and let me look at it.’

Walker sat and Miss Marrow twisted his head to face a deck-light. ‘You’ll live,’ she said. ‘It’s just gone a bit red. You’ll have a blister in the morning.’

‘On my ear,’ said Walker. ‘I shall look a fool with a blistered ear.’

‘Kissing’s dangerous,’ said Miss Marrow.

‘Yes,’ said Walker. ‘So I discover.’

‘Did you kiss her too?’

‘Who?’

‘That attractive American girl you were going round with.’

‘You shouldn’t ask things like that.’

‘I think it’s a bit awful, kissing two girls in one evening.’

‘Why?’ said Walker. ‘Anyway, I missed you.’

‘You know why,’ said Miss Marrow.

‘You mean I should have picked just one.’

‘Well, if that’s how you look at it,’ said Miss Marrow, ‘I’ll get off to bed. Still, it was nice, those dances, and talking to you. I hope your ear doesn’t blister, Porker. Goodnight.’

‘Goodnight,’ said Walker.

Miss Marrow walked off down the deck, her long blue dress blowing in the wind. Walker sat for a moment and looked at the sea, his hand over his ear. The sea was dark and the birds were sleeping on the grey-green icebergs. He waited a moment, and then hurried downstairs to the bar. He found Jochum sitting at the table with some of the bagpipers, but Julie Snowflake had gone.

‘What happened to Julie?’ asked Walker.

‘Oh, she has gone to her cabin, I think,’ said Jochum.

‘I guess she thought you’d stood her up, you heel,’ said one of the bagpipers, ‘or else she thought she’d be a heel and stand you up. Either way you lost.’

‘Oh dear,’ said Walker.

‘Sticky wicket,’ said one of the girls.

‘Who shall we say called?’ asked another.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Walker, ‘I hope I’ll see her again.’

‘No, it’s all over,’ said the girl. ‘One of those beautiful fleeting things. She was having a great time with another guy, wasn’t she, Dr Jochum?’

‘Oh, two dances, that’s all,’ said Jochum.

‘Oh, well, goodnight,’ said Walker.

‘Stiff upper lip,’ said the bagpiper.

The days at sea passed easily by; the ship pushed westward through calm warm weather. And gradually Walker began to feel further and further away from home, more and more en route, going somewhere. The life of the ship grew perfectly customary. Each morning, Walker woke late and in confusion, missing the warm pressure of Elaine’s buttocks against his own. But the swaying of the ship, the sound of the wash-basin filling and draining, the lanoline smell of shaving-cream, reminded him where he was, in his underwater troglodytic cabin. Looking out from his high perch he could see the quiffs of his three cabin-mates as they moved round getting dressed. Someone had placed the ship’s newspaper and the daily quiz (already doubtless completed hours ago by someone over the rank of assistant professor) on his stomach. He aimlessly glanced through the paper, skimming through the vague unreal news it offered of disasters, wars, fires, and riots in the distant world. Then at last he got out of bed and washed himself, humming the Trout quintet, an old bathroom speciality. He shaved with Richard’s razor, dipped his fingers in Julian’s hair-cream, brushed his shoes quickly with Dr Millingham’s discarded undershorts, put on his suit and went to the dining room. His fellow-passengers had usually almost finished; they sat in holiday trim, beaming at him over the marmalade. Miss Marrow, in spotted blouse and blue linen shorts, usually hid his rolls or told him his breakfast had already been divided between the rest of them.

‘No talking between meals, Mr Bigears,’ the old lady would cry. ‘Is sloth the deadliest sin?’

‘It becomes desirable if it is called leisure,’ said Dr Jochum.

‘Oh, I hope it is the deadliest,’ said the old lady. ‘It’s the only one I haven’t got. My sins are better than yours, Mr Bigears.’

And in this fashion the days went by. The sea lolloped against the side of the ship, his toothpaste went down in the tube, and meal-times came and went, with Lady Hunt-Francis and later, when a slight swell came up, without her. Walker found himself spending his time at the cinema with Miss Marrow, or walking the deck with Dr Jochum, and he became modestly fond of them both. Miss Marrow was shrill, played jokes, and appeared in clothes that drew attention to the droopiness of her behind, the paucity of her bust or the dyed auburn of her hair. Her unfailing lack of art was positively appealing. Dr Jochum maintained a vein of heavy gallantry that brought with it the smell of all the lindens in old Europe. It was like being entertained at some minor palace, and one expected that at any moment the minuet would break forth and life would begin in earnest. Occasionally, across the deck or at a meal, he would glimpse Julie Snowflake, cool, calm and uncollected, unsquired. Aspirations grew in Walker’s heart, but Miss Marrow always wanted to see a film or Dr Jochum wanted to swim, and Julie remained in the corner of his eye, an unadopted opportunity. Sometimes he sat on deck and watched her. He had hired a deckchair, a cushion and a rug; each day he went up on to the sports deck, where his chair had been conveniently set out for him, and joined the crowd of sybarites who, wrapped and huddled and smelling of suntan lotion, waited in the breeze for the sun to appear so that they could cast off their clothes and expose themselves. The clouds blew by, the sea glowed green. Sitting stretched out in his blue blankets, looking like a patient being carried into a hospital, he lay on his chair and thought about himself.

It was an old subject with him. The wind whistled hard and strong across the ship; his hands turned blue and his body-fat, unused to all this, struggled to keep warm; but every day, in every way, he grew, so he felt, better and better. He started The Brothers Karamazov, which was a book he had started often before; he resolved this time to finish it. He accepted, in an absent way, his beef-tea, and often had to be reminded that it was time to go below for a meal. For suspended between the Mansfield Road flat, scented with dishcloths and Elaine’s Tweed perfume, and the imagined belfries and balconies of Benedict Arnold, he was looking at himself and wondering at what he found. What he seemed to find was nothing. His parents had always talked about people having good or bad characters; character, in that sense, he seemed to have none of at all. Nothing pushed him very hard. He believed himself to be a decent and rational man who, admittedly, always did indecent and irrational things. He had thought, however, that he was in charge of something. When he looked around, though, every corner of his mind seemed unfledged, and inadequate, and thoughtless, and he couldn’t find in himself any immediate machinery for improvement. He was too affable, too reasonable, too ordinary, too willing to drift, for anything like that to happen. His beliefs didn’t hold him to anything; they were rarely there when wanted. His body was as flabby as his mind. He was going to seed. His stomach was a great podge of flesh. He ought to get his weight down. He smoked too much. He had lost the power to be excited. Excitement, with him, was like the perfectly boiled egg that we feel we have had once, though when we can’t remember, and then spend the rest of our lives pursuing. What should he do? He lay on his back and thought of answers. He ought to look again at philosophy, religion, mysticism. He ought to read some energizing work. He ought to ask the world better questions. He ought to change his shirts more often. He ought to be spare. He was in the sere and yellow leaf; he needed insight and vision; he ought to possess elevation. But not, perhaps, yet.

For the voyage didn’t, after all, push him very hard. Everything was so utterly pleasant. He looked at the long, thin shelf of the horizon, the slit in the system behind which the world lay, where sea and sky were held apart, and found he missed absolutely nothing at all. This was equipoise. A little mist was all that was needed for the gap to be elided, and he had no wish to stop its happening. So he accepted the sun, and the wind, and The Brothers Karamazov, and the various distractions, and time went imperceptibly by. He had discovered on the first morning that by turning on his side, making a little hole in the deckchair blankets, and peering with his bright round eye through the wooden slats he could see Julie Snowflake and the other American charmers three rows of people back, talking about Yerp in contralto voices. Charmers they surely were, clad in Bermuda shorts of dashing olive twill that threw up the high-toned brownness of their tanned healthy legs, and in handsome sweaters with circle pins on the collar.

On the first morning, while engaged in this exercise, he had been caught and punished. His discoverer was Dr Jochum, now restored from his disorder of the previous night. He tapped Walker on the shoulder and said, ‘Oho!’ He was wearing white shorts and a sporty foulard shirt that blew away from him in the wind, exposing a round stomach and a deep black navel. He looked down on Walker, snug in his chair: ‘Come along, some exercise. Here we are, two fat men. Three times round the promenade deck and then a swim in the pool. That is my prescription.’

‘I was reading, actually,’ said Walker, holding up like a flag The Brothers Karamazov.

‘Vell,’ said Dr Jochum, ‘you are like all reformers. You like to reform the world because it is easier than trying to reform yourself. I have met such men.’ Walker’s expression showed some chagrin and Dr Jochum laughed heartily and at depth. ‘Oh,’ he said, wiping his eyes, ‘you are splendid as you are. But come on, we must take care of our boties. Let’s take a constitutional walk.’

Walker turned down the corner of his book and silently followed the man down the metal staircase which brought them to the closed-in promenade deck. It stretched endlessly before them, stern to bow, and was empty save for a few young Americans playing a fast game of table tennis and a member of the crew carrying a small metal bucket. Dr Jochum struck out at a brisk pace toward the stern and soon had Walker puffing. ‘Not so fast,’ he cried, and Jochum allowed his speed to drop slightly but refused to take his eyes off the road. Presently, when his breath was back, Walker said, ‘Am I going to like Benedict Arnold?’

‘Ah!’ said Jochum, ‘that depends what you expect of it. No doubt you expect America to set you free?’

‘I think I do, yes,’ said Walker.

‘Well, it is the duty of the young to go out and seek their misfortune. Perhaps you will find it; perhaps you will be set free.’

‘Is it a misfortune? Surely it’s a good thing for a man to set out and, well, find who he is?’

‘So you want to know who you are?’ said Jochum, laughing, face forward. ‘Well, I am a gypsy. I will tell you the answer. You will go out into the American desert. The air will be pure. There will be no one around. There will be silence, you and the sky. You will open your chest to the air, say, “Okay, shoot, who am I? What am I?” And the sky will say, “Buddy, you’re nobody. Now go back to the beginning and start over.” ’

Walker found this cynical, and protested. ‘Surely everything that happens to you changes you.’

‘Oh, I don’t say America won’t change you; I said it won’t help very much. The convert takes with him more of his old location than he thinks. Every man thinks he has only to go out of his environment. But there always stays with him this.’ He tapped, with a gold-ringed forefinger, his dark, intense head. In the desert a Nottingham head, thought Walker. Jochum strode on, his shirt flying out behind him, so that his little drill Bermuda shorts were all he could offer against total nudity. The sailor put down his bucket and watched them speed by in some alarm. ‘A nice day!’ said Jochum paternally.

‘That’s right, sir,’ said the sailor; ‘mind you don’t walk right off the end.’

‘How they look after you!’ cried Jochum. ‘Such peace, such contemplation, on a ship. You have leisure to do all you want. The mind works. It is like being in a monastery, without the basic disadvantage of those places.’

They turned sharply where the promenade deck encountered the stern, and began the journey back to the bow on the other side. The sea looked just the same. Nothing was in sight. Walker tried secretly to shake his shoelaces undone. He said, ‘It’s just the way a university ought to be.’ This casual remark caused Jochum’s confident step to falter. He looked, for the first time, at Walker, and shook his head sadly. ‘Oh, my dear young friend,’ he said, ‘I am afraid you are in for a sad disappointment. A fine day!’ This last was to the sailor, who had come through, by internal means, from the port side to take another look at them, and who remarked, ‘You’ll do for yourself, going about like that.’

‘I see,’ said Jochum, ‘that it is necessary to tell you about Benedict Arnold.’ He took Walker by the elbow and led him to the rail, and they leaned there together, watching the garbage coming out of the ship’s side far below. ‘My friend,’ began Jochum, ‘universities are not better than life. They are just life. It is not you and I who make them what they are. It is the students, and the administration, and the computer, and the alumni, and the football team. Universities are places where people go to get acquainted with one another. Benedict Arnold is very good for that. They can find parking space for their cars. They can date. They can join fraternities and sororities. They can go skiing. And then, oh yes, there is one little thing – they would all like a piece of paper to say they have a degree. In pursuit of this they will come to classes and attack you for higher grades at the end of the semester. If we were just to abolish that piece of paper . . . but no, I am dreaming again.’ Jochum looked out at the wide expanse of sea and shook his head at it.

‘Actually,’ said Walker, ‘I don’t even know where Benedict Arnold is. Is it in the Middle West?’

‘Vell,’ said Dr Jochum, ‘not really. It’s on the edge of the middle; it’s nearer than the far; it is north of the south. Do you think you can find it now?’ Dr Jochum put both hands on the rail and turned his large dark face to Walker to smile at him, screwing up his eyes against the wind.

‘Is it pleasant there?’ said Walker, trying again. ‘Do you like it?’

‘Vell, beggars can’t be choosers, you know the old story. One goes where one is taken in. I am a foreigner, a doubtful case, not a man to keep. Benedict Arnold is not the best of universities, but it took me in and up to now it has kept me. I can think of nothing better to say for it.’

‘What do you teach there?’

‘Oh, some courses in political science. It is not an easy subject. One has to try so hard to keep politics out of politics. But then I will teach anything. I am something of an all-round man. I have even taught pastry decoration in home economics. And what do you teach?’

‘I’m going as a sort of resident writer. Actually I’ve never taught before, not in a university.’

Jochum turned and looked at Walker in evident amazement. He said, ‘You are a writer?’

‘Yes.’

‘Oh, come now, you are much too nice to be a writer. We have had writers at Benedict Arnold before. While they were there they undressed themselves and their students and their colleagues’ wives. Then when they went away they undressed them all once more, in books. No, you are not like that.’

‘Oh,’ said Walker, smiling, ‘I have hidden capacities.’

‘Vell,’ said Jochum, taking out a cigarette, ‘that is more than the others had – all they hid was their incapacities!’ He lit his cigarette, inside his shirt, with a book-match.

‘Why do they have a writer?’ asked Walker.

‘That is a good question. Vell, for that you must look at the map. Party, that’s our town, is in good new country. Nearby is cattle country. In another direction there is oil country. All around is mineral country. There is even gold in them thar hills. So . . . there are a lot of rich people there. And they have a writer because they are rich.’

‘And a university?’ asked Walker.

‘Yes,’ said Jochum. ‘A hundred years ago there were buffalo and Indians. Now . . . a university. Don’t ask why; I suppose they think that universities are the proper things to have. They are new people; they want to do things right; they have three fundamental religions – Baptism, Americanism and Philanthropy. With Philanthropy comes a university. The problem is it sometimes violates the other two.’

‘Then why a university?’

‘I am not sure. I must try to guess. Let us say that in America it is hard to give money away. You never know when it is going to some organization that may in due course turn out to be subversive. With a university, one assumes, that is the end of it.’

‘A dangerous assumption,’ said Walker

‘Oh, very dangerous, but very nice. So . . . when Benedict Arnold has an argument about whether to buy a Gutenberg Bible or build a new laboratory for biological research, some man who ten years ago was hanging on the bottom of freight cars appears and tells, Be my guest, please, have both!’

‘Are they pleased when they get them?’ asked Walker.

‘I see, the question really is, will they be pleased with Mr Walker when they have him? Vell, they take care of what they have.’

‘That’s nice, anyway.’

‘Don’t misunderstand please. Benedict Arnold is not a bad place. The Animal Husbandry Department has revolutionized our thinking about the cattle tick . . . do you think about the cattle tick? The Physics Department may reach the moon before the US government. Dr Bourbon, the head of the English Department, is a Shakespeare authority and an eminent man. There is even me. You see, money is a power. It brings leisure and that may even bring wisdom. So . . . we must be optimistic about these things. I expect you to enjoy Benedict Arnold.’

‘I shall enjoy leisure,’ said Walker.

‘Too much. Vell, onward, fat men. More exercise!’

Walker heaved himself unwillingly off the rail and they set off along the deck again, their feet clopping on the boards. A puzzled look had appeared about Walker’s eyes, as he went over what Jochum had just told him and tried to link it with his destiny. But this was a world of incomprehensibles; the link would have to be forged on the spot.

‘I hope I have not depressed you,’ said Jochum, noticing his reaction.

‘No, I’m just mystified. I wonder how I shall take it. Of course I shall try to take it very well.’

‘I thought you were not simply an aimless rogue,’ said Jochum. ‘You cheer me.’

‘Oh, I’m a great believer in behaving right. All I ask is for the world to help me along a little.’

‘Ah, there is the problem,’ said Jochum.

They navigated the bow. The wind caught in Walker’s seedy hair and raked out the dandruff. Air poured deep into his lungs. The white paint of the deckworks shone at him. ‘I suppose,’ he said, ‘one has to believe that all that happens is for the best.’

‘Not at all, you must acquire some behaviour of your own.’

‘In that case,’ said Walker, ‘I haven’t been doing very well lately.’

‘Oh, really?’

‘I’ve been trying to leave room for the future, you see. I know what I ought to do. I know what my parents did. But what kind of guide is that, for a man who’s going to America?’

‘Ah, it is the old problem. Nobody wants to be what he is any more. Everyone hates himself. The priest says, “Ah, if it were not for my silly flock, what wouldn’t I be free to believe.” The duke says, “Please excuse me, no more duties, it’s not so nice to be a lord these days.” The writer says, “Culture! Who these days can believe in culture!” The rich man wants to be poor. The Englishman,’ he waved at Walker, ‘wants to be in America. Everyone wishes he didn’t exist! People say, “See my nice new picture! This is my style – this week!”, or “Look how I behave – these are my morals, until I get some more.” You know Karl Marx always talked about people’s interest? Vell, I will tell you a story about his grandmother. She said, “If our little Karl had made as much capital as he has written about, it would make more sense.” That old lady: she knew more about interest than the grandson!’

‘But there’s no fun in doing what you know you must do. It’s freedom that makes the world interesting.’

‘Are you so free?’ asked Jochum.

‘I try to be.’

‘Then why do you stay away from Miss Snowflake?’

‘Well, I had to talk to that English girl,’ said Walker, uncomfortably.

‘And why?’

‘Because I said I would and because she’s rather sad and lonely, I think.’

‘You see, Mr Walker, you are a liberal. You are tempted by pathos. I think a really free man would have followed the path of Miss Snowflake.’

Walker, who had been following the path of Miss Snowflake to corners behind the lifeboats and had already arranged to meet her for tea in the Winter Garden Lounge, found this very sharp, so sharp as to be disquieting. For the path was not a straight one. How free, really, was he? Walker, to try to suggest the enormity of the problem, said to Jochum, ‘How do you like this heather?’

‘Fine,’ said Jochum, glancing at it. ‘You look like a fertility god.’

‘It’s from my wife,’ said Walker.

‘Aaah!’ cried Jochum. ‘What a man! What a man! This is marvellous for a man who is not really interested in love at all! That is my diagnosis of you. You have left your wife?’

‘At home.’

‘So, you believe in homes too. I think you are in a very interesting position.’

The sailor with the bucket appeared again. Jochum, not noticing that it was the same man following their progress with fascination, said, ‘Beautiful day!’

‘Left right, left right,’ said the sailor.

‘How they look after you on this ship,’ said Jochum. ‘What a crew!’ Walker said, close to them, the stairway that led to the sports deck, all chairs and comfort. Dr Jochum said, ‘Now, I think, a swim.’

Walker took the occasion to excuse himself: ‘I can’t redeem my physique in one day,’ he said, ‘I’ve got pains from my visick to my gatch, as Miss Snowflake keeps saying.’

‘Tomorrow, same time, more weight off,’ said Jochum, watching Walker’s flabby, lazy body struggle up the stairway. Walker made his way through the chairs, filled with dozers and sleepers, until he found his own. The blankets rapidly warmed his bulk. The virtues of laziness instantly commended themselves to him. He knew he could hold off a while yet the summons of the future. He felt about in his wraps for his book.

‘Looking for this?’ said a voice above him. A tanned arm handed him the volume; it was attached to Julie Snowflake. ‘Jesus, it’s great,’ she said. ‘There’s some really fine despair in that book. I read it in Comparative Lit., but I could read it again a hundred times; it’s fantastic.’

‘It is,’ said Walker.

‘See you,’ said Miss Snowflake.

‘Rock-cakes for two at four,’ said Walker.

‘Thanks for the loan,’ said Miss Snowflake. He peered through the cushions until she disappeared into her own blankets. Then he riffled through the volume until he had found his place. The fine Russian despair was soon flooding into his lungs; he took it in in life-giving breaths.

The sea shimmered. A thin sun broke through and beat lightly on his pate. Someone brought him his bouillon and he drank it down and put the bowl on to the floor beside him. The rugs smelled of succour. The pages in front of him began to blur. The next thing he knew was that someone was slapping him savagely above one ear with a newspaper. The blows stung. He looked up to see Miss Marrow, clad in a bright orange lifejacket. ‘We’re sinking,’ she said.

‘I like your new bra,’ said Walker.

Miss Marrow seized his hand and tried to lift him, all dead weight, from his chair. She could not budge him an inch. ‘Come on, it’s lifeboat drill,’ she said. The ship’s siren shrilled a call to duty. The sun shone in his eyes; the day was peaceful; the calls to save himself had no weight at all. ‘Come on,’ said Miss Marrow. ‘We’re supposed to.’ But Walker turned on his side and before he knew it was asleep again.

On the fifth night, when they set their watches back an hour for the last time and the dinner-table conversation was entirely about the size of tips to be given to stewards in the morning, tourist class held its Farewell Dance. IT’S BEEN NICE TO KNOW YOU said the battered banner in the ship’s bar, and the sweat poured off Jack Wilks as he strove to cope with the spirit of the occasion. Already people felt they had known one another at least a lifetime. Tomorrow New York would come over the skyline, at earliest light, looking like a tall heap of packing cases. Old points of reference would have to be recovered. On ship an air of vague disappointment prevailed; people realized that they spent their daily lives under a kind of sedation. Now the mood was like that at the end of some salesmen’s conference, when all the fun was ending, friends were parting and everyone had to recollect how they managed to live, day in, day out, with their lives. In cabins people sorted their slides for the Luncheon Club, checked their card indices, filled in their immigration papers with sad, slow pens. In the bar, feet pounded harshly on the floor as the dancers got in their last shipboard whirls, their last cheap liquor. On deck, fresh-featured, short-haired Fulbright men said to fresh-featured, short-haired Fulbright girls, ‘You know, since I met you, I’ve really found direction.’ Everywhere offers of hospitality, proposals of matrimony, avowals of undying affection abounded. In her cabin, beside a full bottle of whisky bought that afternoon from the ship’s store, Miss Marrow sat on her bunk, talking seriously to James Walker. ‘Oh God,’ said Miss Marrow. ‘Oh God.’

‘Don’t be silly,’ said Walker consolingly, ‘you’ll really enjoy it.’

‘I’m dreading it,’ said Miss Marrow.

‘It’ll do you a world of good,’ said Walker, ‘make a man of you.’

‘I hope not,’ said Miss Marrow. She was afraid of America. They sat side by side on the bunk. This was the quiet party she had asked him to. He had his arm round her shoulder in a brotherly way, part of his consolatory role. At the end of the arm his hand held, in the toothmug she had asked him to bring along from his cabin, a half-glass of whisky. He was feeling very uncomfortable. Faintly he could hear through deck above deck the beat of the indefatigable Jack Wilks, calling him to a more attractive duty. Julie Snowflake was in the bar upstairs; he knew it, because he had arranged it. He thought about this and watched with horrid fascination as he saw that his other hand, his free hand, was doing something it had no business doing; it was sliding up under Miss Marrow’s skirt, and now it affectionately twanged the elastic of her suspenders, to reassure her and himself that nothing here was ill-meant. Miss Marrow said, ‘That’s all very well, but I just don’t trust you very much.’

Walker affected surprise. ‘What’s all very well?’ Miss Marrow patted his hand through her skirt vaguely, and seemed to go on thinking about the perils of America. Her face was woebegone, her eye-shadow was smudged. Hanging on the back of the cabin door Walker could see her shapeless woollen dressing gown, a nursery dressing gown, and he felt a deep indignation with himself, a deep pitying affection for her. A feeling of the hopelessness of all that was second rate ran through him, and he knew his pain was because in so many things, he, a man from the provinces, a man without elevation, a man who couldn’t sag, belonged with it. He was sorry for Miss Marrow. Miss Marrow was one of his kind, his level. And so he was also here, wasn’t he, because Miss Marrow didn’t frighten him and Julie Snowflake did. A throbbing mechanism inside him sent his head forward to kiss Miss Marrow on the cheek. She sighed, put her hand on his hair, and said, ‘Porker? Do you believe in love?’

‘It’s a difficult word,’ said Walker.

‘Yes, it’s very difficult,’ said Miss Marrow.

‘Do you believe in it?’ asked Walker.

‘Yes, I do,’ she said.

‘Tell me what it means then,’ said Walker.

‘Well,’ she said thoughtfully, ‘it means being tied or committed to a person. Feeling fidelity, duty, loyalty. Taking someone seriously. Respecting them.’

‘It sounds like the patriotism you talked about on the first night,’ said Walker.

‘Well, there is a connection,’ said Miss Marrow.

‘I don’t see it,’ said Walker, leaning forward and kissing Miss Marrow on the mouth. This tipped her back on her bunk, so that her upper body lay below him, her head on the pillow, his head above hers.

‘Whoops!’ said Miss Marrow. Her eyes looked tensely at him. She was afraid. The bunk was narrow and clearly not made for this sort of thing; it was probably made to prevent it. So Walker’s rump hung uncomfortably over the edge, sagging toward the floor, and a bar of wood, the edge of the cot at the top, stabbed sharply into his side. The glass of whisky and contents had disappeared somewhere. His trousers had rucked up to his knees. His heart was thumping. A heated machinery inside him stirred against pity, conscience and memory. He bit Miss Marrow’s ear. He looked at her face; it had grown flushed and blotchy. She was also breathing hard. Her eyes were closed and she murmured, ‘Porker?’

‘Yes?’ said Walker.

‘You are . . . you are just a bit serious, aren’t you, Porker?’

‘Yes, pretty serious,’ he said, kissing her eyelids.

‘But honestly?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Walker.

She opened her eyes. ‘Just tell me,’ she said, ‘is it just for fun? Will I ever see you again? When you’ve finished will you be off just as fast as your little legs can carry you?’

Walker’s lips were against hers. ‘I suppose I might,’ he murmured.

‘I thought you were a very decent person, Porker, I’ve come to think a lot of you.’

‘Yes,’ said Walker.

‘Would that be decent?’ murmured Miss Marrow.

‘I don’t know,’ said Walker.

‘Well, think about me, look at me,’ said Miss Marrow. ‘How old do you think I am?’

‘Let me guess,’ said Walker, stalling, looking at her teeth. ‘Twenty-five.’

‘Well, you see, I’m thirty-two. And I’m not very marvellous looking. And I’m not exactly the toast of Rickmansworth. And I’m a virgin, more or less through choice. I admit there hasn’t been any really great onslaught, though. So what do I do, Porker? Think about me, study me. What do I do? Are you just making me suffer? I’m good at it, but don’t give me more if you needn’t. And it’s time I got married . . .’ She breathed hard, turned her face away, and said, ‘But I don’t suppose you have anything like that in mind. Oh, Porker, can I trust you?’

‘For what?’

‘For anything?’

Walker looked perplexed and sat up. He reached out and poured himself another glass of whisky. Miss Marrow looked at him. ‘But I can’t be my own conscience, never mind yours,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what I’m doing. How can I think about you, how can I decide what’s for you? My own moral motive power’s only just enough to keep me from pinching apples from the greengrocer’s. I can’t give it big jobs like this.’

‘But you wanted to sleep with me.’

‘Yes, I know. That’s because I enjoy fornication and I think highly of it as a way of getting to know people. I have a relationship with you which involves me several ways. You’re nervous of going where you’re going and so am I. You don’t think too much of yourself and I think even less of me. I also feel sorry for you because like everyone going from a little place to a big one you find out all sorts of limitations in yourself; I’m in the same position.’

‘I reach you where your kindness meets your lechery,’ said Miss Marrow, taking the glass that Walker had poured for her and gulping it like a child. Globes of tears were pinned to her cheeks.

Excuses flooded his mind. I’m sorry for you, and because I’m sorry for you you can’t expect so very much. You’re a second-class citizen in the world of love, but I’ll come down to you and help. He said, ‘Look, I ought to go, Miss Marrow.’

As he looked the tears brimmed in her eyes. ‘You can’t go and leave me like this,’ she said. ‘You came to cheer me up, and I’m more depressed than ever.’

‘I’m not very good at cheer,’ said Walker.

Miss Marrow replied, ‘Look, please stay. You’re right, I’m to blame, I’m asking too much. I’m just a frigid little Rickmansworth spinster who got scared when you started doing what I wanted and tried to throw all the weight of her problems on to you. I’ll do it. I’ll decide.’ Walker watched with growing uneasiness as she leaned forward and took out of a drawer an enormous white male linen handkerchief. She blew her nose on it; the linen buffeted. ‘You’ve been kind. And you were right. I’m a mess. I ought to feel free. I ought to be able to act on my own account. There’s nothing much to me and my life is going spare.’

‘I wasn’t telling you that,’ said Walker.

‘You were,’ said Miss Marrow, ‘but it’s all right. Please come back and kiss me.’ Walker wanted to run away. The heated machinery had stopped beating and all that remained was the pity and the guilt. He leaned on top of Miss Marrow. A storm at sea, a collision with an iceberg; such were the things that seemed to be called for. Miss Marrow squeezed his head to her: ‘He’s a nice boy,’ she said, brushing his hair forward with her hand. ‘Now he’s Marlon Brando.’

She seemed somehow to have grown enormously bigger. ‘Porker, tell me something,’ she said. ‘Have you had a lot of girls?’

‘Well,’ said Walker, ‘there’s had and had.’

‘I mean, you know, made love to,’ said Miss Marrow.

‘A tolerable number,’ said Walker embarrassedly.

‘More than five?’

‘I don’t remember exactly,’ said Walker.

‘And were they all nicer than me?’

‘Nicer?’

‘Better-looking. Not so awful to you.’

‘Not at all,’ said Walker.

‘I compare favourably?’

‘It’s an impossible comparison.’

‘And as afraid?’

‘Some.’

‘What did you do to make them brave?’

‘It’s not a question of bravery,’ said Walker.

Miss Marrow said, ‘I want you to kiss me but I suppose I’ve been too nasty to you.’

‘I failed the interview,’ said Walker, ‘you can’t give me the job.’

The tears came up again. ‘Oh, Porker, be kind, be kind.’

‘No, but I treated you badly,’ said Walker. ‘You convinced me of it. I feel ashamed of myself. You mustn’t change now.’

‘But women always change their minds,’ said Miss Marrow. ‘Didn’t you know? He’s so experienced but it doesn’t seem to have taught him very much.’

‘We seem to have convinced each other, then,’ said Walker.

‘Oh no,’ said Miss Marrow, turning her face and looking at the wooden wall. ‘You’re destroying me. You’re telling me every way there is I’m not attractive, I don’t rouse you . . .’

‘Oh, I’m roused all right,’ said Walker, and he leaned over and kissed Miss Marrow ponderously on the lips, to purge this incredible situation. Miss Marrow’s kiss pressed him hard, her tongue touched his lips. Her bosom bounced beneath his chest. Her breath was warm and whisky-flavoured.

‘Oh, Porker,’ she said, ‘you’re so kind. And so gentle.’ She bit his ear. His hand moved under her sweater, over the shiny nylon, an expedition moving toward Everest to climb it because it was there. Blackness swarmed in his head as he came to the soft ascent. A wish for succour made him fire mental flares high into the air. They exploded and were answered. The door, suddenly, was tried; a firm, familiar voice said, ‘No talking between meals.’

Beneath him Miss Marrow tensed. The old lady said, ‘Open the door, dear, I want you to help me pack.’

‘What can I do? What shall I do?’ cried Miss Marrow. Walker sat up and scrabbled her sweater back into place. ‘She keeps on at me all the time.’

‘Tell her to go away.’

‘She put masses of her things in my wardrobe. She has the cabin next door. If I told her to go she’d probably walk along the outside of the ship and come in through the porthole or something.’

‘Actually if you open the porthole you sink the ship,’ said Walker.

‘Don’t tempt me,’ said Miss Marrow, her tears rolling again. ‘I’m coming, Lady Hunt-Francis.’ She went toward the door.

‘Don’t let her in,’ said Walker. ‘There are certain special reasons.’

‘Ah, my dear,’ said Lady Hunt-Francis when Miss Marrow had opened the door a crack, ‘having a party?’

‘A little one,’ said Miss Marrow. ‘Do you want your things?’

‘Parties,’ said Lady Hunt-Francis, ‘fun and games. I always loved them.’ She apparently then peered through the crack in the door, for she said, ‘Is that Mr Bigears?’

‘Yes,’ said Miss Marrow.

‘No talking between meals, Mr Bigears.’

‘No,’ said Walker.

‘Is there anyone else here?’ asked Lady Hunt-Francis.

‘No,’ said Miss Marrow.

‘A private party,’ said the old lady.

‘Quite.’

‘Such fun,’ said the old lady. ‘Did you know we can see beastly America? We must say our farewells and fill up our forms. I’ve given mine to the purser. Such a nice man. I call him Christopher Columbus. Are you excited by America, Mr Bigears?’

‘Well, yes, I am,’ said Walker, now back to normal shape. He allowed himself to come into view.

‘They all smoke between courses,’ said Lady Hunt-Francis. ‘I shan’t have that. No smoking at table. And they have large families by artificial means. It’s the English spring I shall miss, though. May I come in and get my things?’

Miss Marrow stepped aside, pulling her bra into shape as she did so, and Lady Hunt-Francis came in, her raddled face inquisitive. ‘We must all do our good deeds,’ she said. ‘Fern does hers. You must be kind to Fern.’

‘Who’s Fern?’ said Walker.

‘Me,’ said Miss Marrow.

‘Oh, haven’t you been introduced?’ said Lady Hunt-Francis. ‘How remiss.’ She looked at Walker and said, interestedly, ‘I see Mr Bigears has whisky splashed all over his clothes. Are you a Christmas pudding, Mr Bigears? Shall we set fire to you?’

‘I don’t think we should,’ said Fern Marrow.

Lady Hunt-Francis took some dresses from the inside of the wardrobe and said, ‘Do fasten your skirt, dear. In my day we always used to retire to the conservatory. They are such hot places, they always brought the young men on dreadfully. And those very sexual flowers. I remember once getting a proposal from a young man who turned out to be a private detective guarding the jewels. Quite improper. I always blamed it on the heat in the conservatory. We had tropicals, you see.’

Walker said, ‘Actually I must go. Many thanks for the party.’

‘Don’t forget your glass,’ said Miss Marrow.

‘Don’t you go,’ said Lady Hunt-Francis, ‘I need you to do lots of packing. Has he gone? I hope we haven’t driven him away.’

Walker was breathing hard as he backed into the passageway, and his feelings were almost hysterical. The ghost of Miss Marrow, in a blue woollen dressing gown, seemed to hang screaming in the air above him. His shirt had come out; he tucked it in as he dashed at speed along the corridor and up the stairway. He went into the ship’s bar, a disorderly figure, clothes doused in whisky, hair bedraggled. Jack Wilks stood on the podium, looking like the Venerable Bede, and the dancers pounded on the floor in a fug of smoke and streamers. Julie was nowhere in sight. At one of the tables, alone, sat Dr Jochum, his bow-tie undone and his eyes moist. He looked up at Walker’s approach. ‘Such a sad evening,’ he said.

‘Have you seen Julie Snowflake?’ asked Walker.

‘Always when I meet you you seem to be rushing from one assignation to another! For a very lazy man you are incredibly energetic. Take care, you vill give yourself a heart attack. Ah, there is an important lesson I learned when I was about your age. You cannot actually manage to sleep with all the women in the world. Always there vill be one you have missed.’

‘You don’t know where Julie is?’

‘Ah!’ said Jochum sadly. ‘Leave me, go on with your quest. I am miserable.’

‘But where is she?’

‘I don’t know. I believe she went away with a young man earlier in the evening. I’m afraid this has been a night of many dislocations. Two of the bagpipers have become engaged. One has been engaged and broken it off again. Four are under sedation in their cabins. One has not been seen for three days. Another claims to be pregnant. Another, who is, argues she is not. Another has thrown overboard her bagpipes. As for me, I am sad, maudlin and very bad company.’

‘Come on deck,’ said Walker, ‘and get some fresh air. They say America is in sight!’ This news did nothing for Dr Jochum.

‘Oh, this pity of yours!’ he said. ‘It vill stop you getting anywhere. Go after your young lady – leave me to my fate.’

‘Come on, it will do you good,’ said Walker.

‘No,’ said Dr Jochum, ‘no do-gooding, please.’ Walker set off through the dancers and went upstairs.

The sports deck was only thinly lit. The night was cold, clear and dark, and Walker breathed in to clear his head. His breath smelled of Miss Marrow’s whisky, his lapels of her perfume, a sour, guilty aftertaste hung in his soul. The ship’s lights rose and fell on the troughs of the greeny-black waves. The wake flowed luminously outward. A line of people stood by the rail, looking out, and suddenly Walker saw what the fuss was about, for in the windy darkness, far off, a flashing light sparked and faded. ‘Nantucket light,’ said someone; a scholar disagreed; but the very word struck a note. He waited for celebration, excitement, to strike, leaning on the rail to watch the beacon spell its message. ‘Hi!’ said the person next to him, and he turned. It was Julie Snowflake. She was wearing a red quilted jacket with the hood up over her head, out of which her face, a cool blur, peered speculatively at him. His heart went into gear; affection swarmed in him like bees.

‘How’s the elevation?’ he said.

‘Fine,’ she answered.

They leaned together on the rail and looked down at the sea, swaying with its now familiar motion. Further off, in the dark land mass, the beacon of light flashed at them. Behind lay a country one of them knew and the other didn’t. Below them the sickly sound of the fiddles rang; the dance still went on. ‘Hey, just look at that!’ she said suddenly. There were more lights; coming towards them out of the darkness was another liner, a great candelabrum of light, every deck illuminated. They could see the figures on deck looking back at them. The ship hung above the sea and was reflected in it, a great confusion of shimmering light to compare with his own mind.

‘Oh, Jesus, you know,’ said Julie, ‘I wish I was on that ship. I wish I was going back to Yerp.’

‘I thought you believed in the cool, clear future,’ said Walker.

‘Well, I do, but maybe your America is my Europe. Those things can work two ways around. A lot of Americans have thought that. And I’ll tell you something, going home is hell. There’s nothing so terrible as going home. Once out stay out, that’s what I say. Of course, I don’t do it. I’m going right back there to spend the next two weeks before semester starts with my parents. I can describe the whole thing exactly now. I don’t even have to go in through the door. “Julie, you’ve grown away from us. Julie, you hate us now you’re grown up. Julie, we can’t get through to you any more. What’s become of you? Are you still a nice girl? Are you still a virgin?” Oh boy, am I looking forward to the next few days! Personally I think parents should be assassinated before their kids grow up. I know that’s an extreme view, but it’s the main plank in my platform.’

‘Where is your home?’ asked Walker.

‘Why, are you thinking of coming along too? No, I couldn’t do a thing like that to my term paper.’

‘Well, I wondered whether I was likely to see you again. I wondered whether they lived anywhere near Benedict Arnold.’

‘No, it’s a little way from there,’ said Julie, not looking at him. ‘Actually it’s about two thousand miles away. In fact, it’s right here.’

‘Here?’ asked Walker.

‘New York City, that place right there across the water.’

‘I see,’ said Walker, waiting for Julie to speak. Nothing seemed forthcoming, but finally she said, ‘Are you spending any time in New York?’

‘Well,’ said Walker, ‘I have about five days here before I have to go out to Benedict Arnold.’

‘You mean the next five days? The five days from tomorrow?’

‘Yes,’ said Walker.

‘No, you’re crazy.’

‘Why?’

‘Well, don’t you know what day it is?’

‘No,’ said Walker.

‘Well, this is Labor Day Weekend. Don’t you have that?’

‘No.’

‘Well, actually you’ve really goofed. Labor Day Weekend everybody goes out of town. Half of them go to Yerp. You’ll be the only man in New York.’

‘Will you still be there?’

‘I don’t actually know. We have a place on Fire Island we go out to. I mean, my parents will have fixed something but I don’t know what it is yet. Anyway, there’ll be lots of things to do in New York. I suppose you’ll be staying at the Biltmore or some place?’

‘No, my agent, he did the booking, got me in at a little place somewhere in Brooklyn Heights, somewhere cheap.’

‘Wow!’ said Julie. ‘Still, it could be better than it sounds. Anyway, you can go to some of the places in the Village where they play jazz nights. And hear the folk-singers and the poets. There’s a really literary atmosphere in the Village. You’ll feel right at home. I’ll bet they fête you.’

‘I look forward to it,’ said Walker.

‘Or maybe you won’t like it, I’m forgetting you’re so normal.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Walker. ‘I can see it’s been disappointing.’

‘Well, no, in a way it gives me a kind of hope,’ said Miss Snowflake. ‘I’d always rejected writing because I didn’t think you could be a writer and a fulfilled person. Now I see that it’s all much easier than I thought.’

‘I wouldn’t want to say easy,’ said Walker. ‘And I’m not sure I like being called normal.’

‘Well, who would? But you’re, well, I guess the most innocent writer I’ve ever met. I told you, did I, I won this Mademoiselle short-story contest and thought I’d write?’

‘No.’

‘Oh, well, I did. But then I looked around at the writers at Hillesley. It’s like a meeting of Neurotics Anonymous. You know – “I owe my clear vision to the fact that when I was five I used to watch travelling salesmen laying my mommy” and “I’m a poet because even when I was a kid I carved up cats to see what was inside them.” Sometimes they seem convincing and you feel that the only way to live halfway decently in the modern world is to become really corrupt. I know a lot of people think that way. But sometimes I think why don’t I just reject my talent and get married and join the PTA and forget about the confrontation with the absurd. So that’s why I find you sort of encouraging. You haven’t exhausted normality yet.’

‘I’m just an old provincial,’ said Walker.

‘But do you know how to suffer? Do you know how to live? That’s the thing, Mr Walker. You know, when I’m with you I feel I’m more experienced than you are.’

‘Well, so much for Henry James.’

‘Oh, him! But do you hear what I’m saying to you? Well, one day you’ll think of it. Then you could write me, send a message.’

Someone appeared on the other side of her and took her by the arm. ‘Hello, ducky,’ said Dr Millingham. ‘Here I am, back. I’ve been spitting down the funnels of the tugs.’ Millingham, affable in a brown Italianate raincoat and a small floral paper hat, nodded genially at Walker. ‘You know, you did a nice thing, putting us on to these bagpipe lasses,’ he said, ‘they’re great girls. Richard wants to marry one of them.’

‘He’s crazy,’ said Julie.

‘Well, look, enjoy yourself in America, won’t you, Mr Walker. And I really was glad to meet you.’

‘And I was to meet you,’ said Walker.

‘And look,’ she added, shaking off Millingham’s hand on her arm, ‘why don’t you call me on the telephone, if you get some free time, just in case I’m around?’

‘I’d like to,’ said Walker.

‘Fine, write down my number.’

Walker took out his post-office book and biro and looked at Millingham, who said, ‘Or I could give it to you later.’

‘No, write it down,’ said Julie. Walker copied down the number, feeling disappointed and aggrieved and pleased and sad.

‘’Bye now,’ said Millingham.

So there was nothing for it but to go to bed; at least this would mean that he could get up early and stand on deck watching the ship come into New York Harbor in the morning. But, lying in his bunk, he slept scarcely at all. It reminded him that he was nearly there, and all night his head reeled with images and excitement. There were interludes of fear and interludes of pleasure; there were interludes when he lay awake, listening to the soughing of the sea, feeling the ship away, and wondering whether Dr Millingham was back in his bunk or whether he was still out on deck somewhere with Julie Snowflake. Then he slept fitfully, and saw images of a crazy city, all streets and traffic and high buildings, and this made him wake up and wonder about his competence there.

When his watch reached six o’clock, which might well be five or seven, he slid down from the bunk and dressed quietly. Not bothering to shave, he tiptoed from the cabin, its woodwork creaking, where Richard and Julian and, thank goodness, Dr Millingham snored dully into the air. On deck the day was golden, the sea soft and blue, and out of it, close ahead of the white bold bow, rose the high towers of Manhattan, light grey in the sunlight. It was many years since Walker had seen anything so close to the dawn, and he realized that he could have chosen no better occasion. It was distinguished, too complicated to allow a response. The air was fresh and vital. The ship eased in through the shoals and islands, looking much bigger now there was a world to compare it with. The harbour was crowded with sea traffic. The great bronze shape of the Statue of Liberty stood high on its island, little persons wandering about the crown on its head. Other small figures stood on the ferryboats scudding on the water, Americans who led American and mysterious lives. Planks and crates drifted in the dirty water. Red fireboats sailed, and great flat ferries laden with railway trucks, painted with Long Island Railroad and Chesapeake and Ohio and Tidewater Southern, drifted back and forth across the harbour waters. Beyond the Battery, the high wires of Brooklyn Bridge came into view and then, slowly, fell away behind the buildings. On the flat banks of the Hudson on the New Jersey side a vast advertisement for coffee appeared.

It was all totally pleasant, and Walker became a vast receptacle of sensation. Here was the country in which he was to remould his own decencies into a new form. Here was the shot in the arm, the new spring. Now they were sailing up the west side, past the piers; on one of them a helicopter buzzed like an angry bee. Behind the dark dirty sheds the expressway ran, with huge, shiny cars chasing back and forth. The high sharp top of the Chrysler building pointed up to a heaven also busy with aircraft. The tugs took them in on the last stretch, round the sharp curve into the dead water of the pier, where they joined the long line of vessels penned to the edge of the island. Inside the vast sheds foreign figures in bright jackets watched as the ship touched at the wharf-side and lodged its prow hard against the expressway. Hawsers were hooked, spectators waved, the gangplank went out, uniforms came aboard. America! He could see the taxicabs, yellow and big, swirling along the expressway, read the exhortations on the billboards, see along the cavernous streets that led into the centre of Manhattan. It was all heat and scurry, but there, promising. Sweat ran down inside Walker’s tweeds. The steward came along, sounding his chimes, and Walker made his way down below, through excited crowds of English persons jolted out of their national composure, to the dining room. The service seemed more haphazard even than usual, and at table Lady Hunt-Francis, her face flushed, was crying out, ‘We’re here, I understand! I’m sure it’s all a terrible mistake. Let’s stay on board and go back, all of us.’ Miss Marrow – Walker could think of his ugly duckling as no one else – took her place in the armchair next to Walker without looking at him; she looked down instead at the cloth, stained by five days of meals.

She said, ‘I’ve used up all the film in my camera, taking shots of it all. It’s wonderful, isn’t it?’

He said, ‘An incredible city. A marvellous day.’

‘I didn’t sleep a wink,’ said Miss Marrow.

‘I didn’t either, really,’ said Walker.

‘You’re too excited, my dear,’ said Lady Hunt-Francis, leaning across the table to his companion. ‘We may have to ask you to leave the table.’

‘Isn’t this luggage business awful?’ said Miss Marrow. ‘I went to the purser’s office and booked my trunks through to Pennsylvania Station by some awful trucking company and they charged me twenty dollars more. That’s seven pounds.’

‘Too much,’ said Lady Hunt-Francis. ‘Don’t pay it. They’re terrible people. Money-mad.’

‘You have to pay it,’ said Miss Marrow. ‘There’s no one else.’

‘Yes, terrible,’ said Dr Jochum, formal and firm as he used to be. ‘They are all cannibals in New York. But the rest of America, it is not like that.’

‘Thank goodness for that,’ said Miss Marrow.

‘I hear the immigration people are the worst,’ said Walker.

‘I know,’ said Lady Hunt-Francis, ‘they undressed a friend of mine and took away her knickers. She never saw them again.’

‘I hope you have filled up your immigration certificates and have all your visas?’ said Dr Jochum, looking around anxiously for the steward who, affected by the new mood of excitement that poured, like the New York heat, through the ship, had become even more neglectful than usual. ‘It would be a pity if they did not let you into the country, now we have all come so far.’

‘I haven’t,’ said Lady Hunt-Francis. ‘Never fill up forms That’s a rule. One must have rules.’

‘That, unfortunately, is what they say too.’

‘My rules are better than their rules,’ said Lady Hunt-Francis, drawing hard on generations of living. ‘I shall just tell them who I am. I hear they dearly love a title.’

‘Give your forms to me,’ said Dr Jochum, ‘I vill fill them up for you. If you don’t have a rule about that.’

‘Not at all,’ said Lady Hunt-Francis. ‘All one cares about is that one shouldn’t be known to have filled them in oneself.’

‘Also,’ said Dr Jochum, ‘they are very strict about plants and fruit. Did you know that when you drive into the state of California they take your oranges away?’

‘No!’ cried Miss Marrow.

‘Oh, yes,’ said Dr Jochum, ‘they are afraid of foreign pests, you see.’

‘That’s us,’ said Miss Marrow cheerfully.

‘Precisely,’ said Dr Jochum, and he leaned over in a jolly way toward’s Walker. ‘I’m afraid, my dear friend, they vill even confiscate your wife’s heather.’

‘The rotten devils,’ said Walker, equally cheerfully.

And then, without even looking, he knew that something was happening to Miss Marrow, beside him. She rose up, a terrifying figure in her red box-pleated shorts, and said, quietly, in a hiss, ‘You’re married?’

Walker turned russet and became afraid. He said nothing.

‘You were talking about honesty. Are you then? Are you?’

‘I suppose I am, really,’ he said, not looking up.

‘Honesty, decency,’ said Miss Marrow, turning in rage.

‘Mind, miss,’ said the steward; the bowl of porridge he was carrying left his grasp and came down, upturned, on Walker’s head. It sizzled on his pate; milk ran down his face in streams.

‘Christ!’ he said.

‘Serves you right,’ said Miss Marrow. Turning his head slightly, a painful motion, he saw through the veil of milk that Miss Marrow, arms threshing, was already striding through the dining room’s glass doors.

Dr Jochum said, ‘That was very foolish of me.’

‘An accident,’ said the steward, wiping ineffectually at Walker’s thatch with a very dirty towel. ‘We don’t get a lot of those.’

‘Oh, Mr Bigears,’ said Lady Hunt-Francis. ‘Oh, Mr Bigears, I think I see it all. You’ve done a wicked thing, haven’t you?’

‘I fear he has,’ said Dr Jochum, handing Walker his napkin.

The porridge began to settle round Walker’s neck. He applied the napkin to his red, furious skull and muttered sullenly, ‘Damn it all, damn it all!’ At surrounding tables conversation had stopped, faces had turned. ‘God knows I try to do my best,’ he said.

‘I should go and have a bath, Mr Bigears, before the bath-stewards go ashore. I hardly think it will come off like that.’

‘I fear she is right,’ said Dr Jochum, looking pained and helpless.

A bath, the last straw, the final indignity with him, turned Walker completely sour. ‘That cheeky bitch,’ he said, foggy in a world of embarrassment and conspicuousness, knowing he was being unfair; he turned from the table.

‘Farewell,’ said Dr Jochum, coming forward to shake hands.

‘Goodbye, Mr Bigears,’ said Lady Hunt-Francis, nodding regally, ‘and don’t forget to give the m-a-n his pennies. We must all do our bit for those less fortunate. I know. I’m one of them.’

Walker, surly, dipped in his pocket and tipped the steward with the pound he had thoughtfully placed there for the purpose. ‘Have a drink with me,’ he said.

‘Thank you, sir,’ said the man, ‘been nice to have you here and listen to your conversation. Always interesting, you know. I hope the porridge comes out of the hair. Nasty sticky stuff, porridge is.’

‘It had better,’ said Walker.

‘Never mind,’ said the steward. ‘If you ask me, it’ll bring you and the young lady closer together, if anything.’

The other breakfasters watched him as he went out of the room. Outside, heat buffeted through the public rooms and the ship had been transformed. Sweating in the hot air, Englishmen already stood in long lines, visas and X-ray photographs in their hands, waiting to go through the immigration in the first-class lounge. A day of queueing stood ahead of him, of treading on feet and suffering the trauma of not knowing whether America, for reasons best known to herself, would let him in. Churning, keening, Walker went down the steps towards his troglodyte’s cabin. Luggage now filled the passageways; new doors had opened here, old ones closed there; the crew seemed to have disappeared, all old safety gone. The public rooms were closed, the balloons had gone from the bar. A bevy of longshoremen in lumberjackets, smoking stogies, stood around the corridors, bringing a new and fearful atmosphere. They stopped bundling trunks to look at him with open curiosity, for porridge streamed about him still. ‘Take a look a’ dis kook,’ said one in a plaid shirt. ‘Whadya tink? That kind guy dey ouh ta sen hem ride back to Yerrup wit a hart kick up du fanny.’ Walker pushed by, to search in the corridors near his cabin for the bath-steward he’d so assiduously avoided all the voyage. Another tip; that was the hardest blow of all. ‘You would pick this time,’ said the steward, running the salt-water bath. Walker undressed and got in, splashing his head with the special dish of fresh water. Outside, in New York, cars hooted, traffic roared, civilization buzzed; another life pressed his ears and penetrated his distress. He was no longer at sea: new conduct and new penalties operated now; inquisition and anguish lay ahead. Travel turned from peace to strife, the world from necessity to contingency. Beyond the bathroom the ship’s life was dissolving. And they were even going to take the heather, sprouting in his buttonhole, away.