Voyage of Innocence. Elizabeth Edmondson
need to have your life-jacket with you.’
Boat drill? Lifejacket? This was Perdita’s first voyage, and she was mystified. Not to worry, someone would explain it to her, and say where she had to be and what she had to do. People always were keen to put you on the right path, especially when it came to anything as institutional-sounding as boat drill. Like fire drill at school, only not shinning down ladders in the dead of night and usually in the rain, it was to be hoped.
A sudden tiredness swept over her, irritating her with her weakness. She was completely well, they all said she was fully recovered, only needed time to get her strength back. Hence the voyage, a round trip to India, with a month or so staying with friends in Delhi; it would do her the world of good, the doctors had assured her. She hadn’t been interested, wasn’t interested in going on a voyage, had never wanted to go to India, they were her grandfather’s friends in Delhi, not her friends, she didn’t want to stay with a lot of strangers, and in what she knew would be a very strange country.
Only Grandpapa had been so keen on the idea, and he hadn’t been well himself, and she hated to disappoint him; it would be churlish and unkind to refuse his generous offer of a ticket and all expenses paid.
Not for the first time, she wondered if he was so urgent for her to go, not because of her recent illness, but because of the coming war. If war broke out soon, she could be stuck for the duration in India. Which might suit Grandpapa, but didn’t suit her at all. What music was there for her in India? Besides, if there was a war, she wanted to be where she belonged, in England, not away from all the bombs and terror on some distant verandah. The last war had gone on for four years; she couldn’t imagine not seeing Westmoreland for four whole years.
No, to be fair, Grandpapa would have sent her to America if he were concerned for her safety and wanted her out of England in time of war. He must think that the war he was so sure was on its way wasn’t going to start for a few months yet.
Her friends weren’t much interested in talk of war, but those who talked about it mostly reckoned that it was necessary to do something about Hitler and the Nazis. Others, cynical arrivals from Austria and Germany, Jewish refugees with music in their souls that made the English students sigh and give up hope, said that Britain and France wouldn’t fight for Czechoslovakia or for anyone else, it was all just words. Hitler got what he wanted, always would get what he wanted, and what he didn’t want was to fight England.
Perdita’s mind turned to the here and now, and to her music. The first thing she had to do was find a piano. There were several on board; that was one thing she had insisted on. ‘Grandpapa, I can’t go if I can’t work. I’m hopelessly out of practice, and more weeks with no playing will just be a disaster. If I can work on the voyages out and back, and if your friends have a piano, something at least halfway decent, I’ll be able to practise there.’ Weren’t things like pianos liable to be eaten by giant ants or inclined to warp and go out of tune for ever in the moist heat of the unimaginable east?
The friends did indeed have a piano, a good one, they had assured her in a courteous letter. So possibly not yet eaten by ants. And Grandpapa had spoken to the chairman of the shipping line, an old chum, needless to say, and had been assured that Perdita would be able to practise in one of the lounges whenever she wanted.
Perdita knew about practice and doing it whenever you wanted. That meant, when no one else was around; well, that was all right with her. She was an early waker, distressingly so since she’d been ill, so if she could get a couple of hours in first thing, no one would be about to bother her or to be bothered by an hour of scales and arpeggios. The dining room forgotten, she set off on a piano hunt.
Vee held the white, round box in her hand, hesitating. She lifted the lid, and shook two pills on to her palm.
Recently, these pills had begun to have a strange effect on her, in some mysterious way causing her to relive, in the utmost clarity, scenes from her life. Not truly dreams, for there was nothing in the sequences that rolled through her mind that hadn’t happened. The past was simply playing over again, as though she were watching a film.
When she woke, tired and thick-headed, for she always had alcohol to help the sleeping pills work, she could remember only a little of these waking dreams, the re-enactments of her former life, but the memories and images they left in her mind disturbed her profoundly throughout the ensuing day, until the evening came, and her mind cleared, and she could numb herself once more with a drink and companionship. She never drank to excess. She couldn’t risk losing control, the alcohol was merely a crutch, not a wiper-out of the emotions and dilemmas she longed to be free of.
She had been tempted, over the last few months, to try some of Mildred’s remedy for keeping the world at bay, but it wasn’t for her, she didn’t want a sense of heightened excitement, she had that on her own account. What she wanted was the cessation of feeling, then she could be happy.
Better to relive scenes of her past than to be caught in more nightmares.
She sat down and brushed her hair, long firm strokes to soothe her fears away. Then she climbed into bed, between stiff sheets, smelling of ironing and starch. She left the light on, a glowing blue night-light. Like on a train, she thought drowsily, as the pills began to take effect. Sweet dreams, she muttered to herself, as her eyelids closed. Sweet dreams, or bitter dreams, to match her thoughts.
Tonight, she was back in the Deanery. She was eighteen years old, she knew that, because there was a birthday just past, and a card on the fireplace of her room, wishing her a happy birthday from Hugh. He’d drawn a caricature of her and her cat, a brilliant sketch, both the cat and the chair it was on decorated with bows. Hugh was as gifted with his pen as he was with words.
She was sure that it wasn’t going to work. It was worth a try, it was always worth a try, but she, and the mistresses at school, and Hugh, who had been as encouraging as he knew how, had all known that Grandfather would forbid her to go to university.
‘No chance of a scholarship, Vee, I suppose?’ Hugh asked her as they sat, legs outstretched, on the white window seat in their sitting room on the top floor. The window was open, although the day was cold, since they were enjoying an illicit cigarette. Smoking, like alcohol, was banned in the Deanery.
‘There’s a chap I know at the House, he gets two hundred and fifty a year. Twice what his father earns, actually.’
‘What does his father do?’ Vee asked.
‘He’s a carpenter, I think.’
‘Only Daddy isn’t a carpenter, unfortunately, so I doubt if I count as a deserving case.’
‘Should have had Jesus for a father,’ said Hugh irreverently. ‘After all, God the Father, one substance with the Son, so … All right, I’m not really being frivolous, I’m trying to help.’
‘Irreligious rather than frivolous, don’t you think?’ She tapped the ash from the end of her cigarette carefully on to the outside ledge of the window. ‘Women’s colleges aren’t rich, and the scholarship girls are all poor.’
‘You’ll be poor, if Daddy and Grandfather cut off your allowance.’
‘It isn’t the same. Besides, you have to be brilliant to get a major scholarship, as well as being deserving, and I’m neither.’
‘True. Joel Ibbotson is brilliant, no doubt about it.’
It was all very well for Hugh, but however compassionate he was, his was a different situation. He was a man, he didn’t have to earn or justify or sweat for his place at university. It was the next natural thing for him.
‘Whereas for me, the next natural thing is getting married and starting a family.’
‘I pity the poor husband,’ said Hugh, tossing the butt of cigarette out of the window.
‘You are an ass, Hugh,