THE SIREN SOUNDED AGAIN; a spacious, impatient sound. The great ship looked as fixed as the stone to which its gang-planks joined it; one could it seemed, expect movement as easily from a chain of hotels. But its voice—the voice of a sea beast, pitched to huge distances—convinced. At the sound of it farewells grew tongue-tied, or garrulous, in realization. Some of the travellers sought relief in little panics over books and cases and bags; an escape denied to Janet, who abhorred any form of public inefficiency. She and Kit stood near the gangway, making conversation assiduously, like callers in a drawing room, while both wondered what the essential thing was that they ought to say.
Kit was concentrated in a last effort to convince himself that this was real. Up till a fortnight ago he had not believed that she meant it; up till a week ago he had been certain she would change her mind. She had made so many gestures, all sterile, all leaving everything as it had been before. When she had got back from the Group house-party and told him her plans—to go with the Group party to the Cape, and while she was there spend a few months with her married sister in Durban—it had not occurred to him that they were considering an approaching event. He had simply wondered, rather anxiously, what cue he was being given; whether agreement or opposition was likely to offend her more. He had struck a careful balance between the two, and had been relieved when she seemed satisfied. A little later another thought had occurred to him; but when he asked she had said no, Bill and Shirley weren’t going, nor any one else in the neighbourhood. He was more sure than ever, then, that when the mood had spent itself, or the gesture taken effect; nothing more would be heard of it; and could not shake himself into realization even when she began buying tropical clothes.
Now here they were: and even now he could not believe that she was doing something real, with effect in space and time. If she meant to draw back now, she would have to make up her mind to it almost at once; already some of the visitors were leaving the ship.
“I suppose I’ll have to go in a moment,” he said. It was still at the back of his mind that she couldn’t have realized, that it was only fair to warn her.
“Yes. But they tell you when they’re going to raise the gangways.” She did not look at him. “I hope Mrs. Hackett will make you comfortable. I told you, didn’t I, she was with a doctor before?”
“Oh, I’ll be all right. Take care of yourself. I hope the Bay behaves properly.” He could produce this sort of thing, he thought; for hours, sooner than throw a real question across the widening silence between their minds. “You’ve got the seasick capsules, haven’t you? They generally work.”
“Yes, in my bag. But I shan’t need them unless it’s very rough.” It had been very rough, she remembered, crossing to the Channel Islands the day after they were married; he had wanted to stay with her, and had seemed unable to understand her horror at the idea of his seeing her indignity. “But, darling, you can’t mind me. I’ve seen thousands of people vomit and thought no worse of them. And anyway I love you.” She had wondered how he could be so coarsely insensitive, and, before she escaped below, had rallied her forces sufficiently to indicate it with a look. Now, as she recalled it, she could only remember how young he had been.
All round them, Groupers were being seen off by other Groupers. Their youth, their crude enthusiasm, their certainty, gathered power in this windy place full of sunlight and salt air, ringing with sounds of action and of purpose. Their voices drifted to Janet, charged with reassurance and hope. For months, for as long as she could think ahead, their liking and admiration and belief would be a film of bright flattering colour between her and herself. In the safety and freedom of new places, she would watch all that she wanted to believe of herself taking on reality in their minds. She looked at the May sunlight; it would be winter before she was back again. “I’ll write from Madeira.”
Not far away, two South African business men were greeting one another as they waved to receding friends. One said, “Yes, had a great trip. It only goes to show you—my wife was all out to stop me leaving. Thought I’d get caught up in a war. Not much get done in the world, I said, if we all waited for that.”
“You’ve said it. Look at last autumn. ’Bye, Stella! ’Bye, Peter! Well, that’s over. Come on below and have a drink.”
Kit was looking at the Groupers, feeling envy mingle in him with compassion. He had felt the same sometimes when McKinnon, his dark eyes glowing with defiant faith, was using the words Capitalist and Proletarian as if they were definitions of moral values. He wondered how it felt to be one of these dedicated creatures in their birdlike skimmings over the dull, dull surface of human inertia, so joyfully certain that the heavy mass was rising in their wake. When one worked, as he did, knee-deep in the stuff itself, their effects seemed covetably quick and easy. They could seal a soul to the elect in a couple of afternoons, whereas it might take him months to effect a fine adjustment in the same human being’s blood-sugar, and then his work would only be begun. A physician himself by temperament, he had felt a similar unease in the company of brisk and optimistic surgeons. Well, they seemed happy, and there was room for more of it. Perhaps Janet was a surgical case. At any rate, he wished her luck.
“It’s queer,” she was saying, “to think that when I get back it will be nearly Christmas time. Oh, by the way, did you manage to get me a paper?”
“Yes, of course. I’ve got it somewhere.” He dug into the pocket of his driving-coat. “Lilliput—Digest—will those do? And a picture-paper.” He pulled it out, looking absently at the headline. “German Press Attacks Poland.” “Here you are. Nothing much in it.”
More people were leaving the ship. A party of Groupers further along the deck seemed to have shed all theirs already; they were all waving over the side. Kit followed the direction of their eyes. He saw, conspicuous by his ginger hair, Timmie Curtis close to the edge of the dock. A qualm assailed him; had the unhappy boy meant to see Janet off, expecting her to be alone? He calculated the chances—and the ultimate kindness—of affording a last-minute opportunity by making himself scarce, but decided against it, because Timmie did not look particularly dejected. Next moment Kit perceived that the brown-skinned girl on Timmie’s right was not, as he had supposed, pressed against his side by the denseness of the crowd. She was clinging, with both hands, to his arm.
“Have you seen some one we know?” Janet asked. But already, before he thought about it, he had shifted himself between her and the group on shore. To be her buffer against truth had been his function for so long that, even in this latest minute, he fulfilled it by instinct.
“You wouldn’t know him. He used to be a patient of mine.”