Scoop-Evelyn-Waugh [16]
At Marseilles he observed, but was too much occupied to speculate upon the fact, that his companion of the evening before had also left the train. He saw the dapper, slightly rotund figure slip past the barrier a few paces ahead of the valet, but immediately the stupendous responsibilities of his registered baggage pressed all other concerns from his mind.
chapter 5
The ships which William had missed had been modern and commodious and swift; not so the Francma� in which he was eventually obliged to sail. She had been built at an earlier epoch in the history of steam navigation and furnished in the style of the day, for service among the high waves and icy winds of the North Atlantic. Late June in the Gulf of Suez was not her proper place or season. There was no space on her decks for long chairs; her cabins, devoid of fans, were aired only by tiny portholes, built to resist the buffeting of an angrier sea. The passengers sprawled listlessly on the crimson plush settees of the lounge. Carved mahogany panels shut them in; a heraldic ceiling hung threateningly overhead; light came to them, dimly, from behind the imitation windows of stained, armorial glass, and, blinding white, from the open door � whence too came the sounds of the winch, the smell of cargo and hot iron, the patter of bare feet, and the hoarse, scolding voice of the second officer. William sat in a hot, soft chair, a map of Ishmaelia open upon his knees, his eyes shut, his head lolling forwards on his chest, fast asleep, dreaming about his private school � now, he noted without surprise, peopled by Negroes and governed by his grandmother. An appalling brass percussion crashed and sang an inch or two from his ear. A soft voice said, "Lunce pliss." The Javanese with the gong proceeded on his apocalyptic mission, leaving William hot and wet, without appetite, very sorry to be awake. The French colonial administrator, who had been nursing his two children in the next armchair to William's, rose briskly. It was the first time that day they had met face to face, so they shook hands and commented on the heat. Every morning, William found, it was necessary to shake hands with all the passengers. "And madame?" "She suffers. You are still studying the map of Ishmaelia..." They turned together and descended the staircase towards the dining saloon, the functionary leading a tottering child by either hand. "... It is a country of no interest." "No." "It is not rich at all. If it were rich it would already belong to England. Why do you wish to take it?" "But I do not wish to." "There is no oil, there is no tin, no gold, no iron � positively none," said the functionary, growing vexed at such unreasonable rapacity. "What do you want with it?" "I am going as a journalist." "Ah well, to the journalist every country is rich." They were alone at their table. The functionary arranged his napkin about his open throat, tucked the lowest corner into his cummerbund and lifted a child onto either knee. It was always thus that he sat at meals, feeding them to repletion, to surfeit, alternately, from his own plate. He wiped his glass on the tablecloth, put ice into it, and filled it with the harsh, blue-red wine that was included free in the menu. The little girl took a deep draught. "It is excellent for their stomachs," he explained, refilling for his son. There were three empty places at their table. The administrator's wife's, the Captain's, and the Captain's wife's. The last two were on the bridge directing the discharge of cargo. The Captain led a life of somewhat blatant domesticity; half the boat deck was given up to his quarters, where a vast brass bedstead was visible through the portholes, and a variety of unseamanlike furniture. The Captain's wife had hedged off a little verandah for herself with pots of palm and strings of newly laundered underclothes. Here she passed the day stitching, ironing, flopping in and out of the deckhouse in heelless slippers, armed with a feather brush, often emerging in a dense aura of Asiatic perfume to dine in the saloon; a tiny, hairless dog capered about her feet. But in port she was always at her husband's side, exchanging civilities with the company's agents and the quarantine inspectors, and arranging, in a small way, for the transfer of contraband. "Even supposing there is oil in Ishmaelia," said the administrator, resuming the conversation which had occupied him ever since, on the first night of the voyage, William had disclosed his destination, "how are you going to get it out?" "But I have no interest in commerce. I am going to report the war." "War is all commerce." William's command of French, just adequate, inaccurately, for the exchange of general information and the bare courtesies of daily intercourse, was not strong enough for sustained argument, so now, as at every meal, he left the Frenchman victorious, saying "Peut-