Going Solo (3 page)

Suddenly I was fully alert. What on earth was the man up to? I didn’t want him to know I’d seen, so I closed my eyes and pretended to be asleep. This is a rum business, I thought. Why in the world would U. N. Savory want to sprinkle white stuff on to the shoulders of his dinner-jacket? And what
was
it, anyway? Could it be some subtle perfume or a magic aphrodisiac? I waited until he had left the cabin, then, feeling only slightly guilty, I hopped down from my bunk and opened his sponge-bag.
EPSOM SALTS,
it said on the little carton! And Epsom salts it was! Now what good could Epsom salts possibly do him sprinkled on his shoulders? I had always thought of him as a queer fish, a man with secrets, though I hadn’t discovered what they were. Under his bunk he kept a tin trunk and a black leather case. There was nothing odd about the tin trunk, but the case puzzled me. It was roughly the size of a violin case but the lid didn’t bulge as the lid of a violin case does, and it wasn’t tapered. It was simply a three-foot-long rectangular leather box with two very strong brass locks on it.

‘Do you play the violin?’ I had once said to him.

‘Don’t be daft,’ he had answered. ‘I don’t even play the gramophone.’

Perhaps it contained a sawn-off shotgun then, I told myself. It was about the right size.

I put the carton of Epsom salts back in his sponge-bag, then I took a shower, dressed and went upstairs to have a drink before dinner. There was one stool vacant at the bar so I sat down and ordered a glass of beer. There were eight sinewy sunburnt gophers including U. N. Savory sitting on high stools at the bar. The stools were screwed to the floor. The bar was semi-circular so that everyone could talk across to everyone else. U. N. Savory was sitting about five places away from me. He was drinking a gimlet, which was the Empire-builder’s name for a gin with lime juice in it. I sat there listening to the small talk about pig-sticking and polo and how curry will cure constipation. I felt a total outsider. There was nothing I could contribute to the conversation so I stopped listening and concentrated on trying to solve the riddle of the Epsom salts. I glanced at U. N. Savory. From where I sat, I could actually see the tiny white crystals on his shoulders.

Then a funny thing happened.

U. N. Savory suddenly began brushing the Epsom salts off one of his shoulders with his hand. He did it ostentatiously, slapping the shoulder quite hard and saying at the same time in a rather loud voice, ‘Ruddy dandruff! I’m fed up with it! Do any of you fellers know a good cure?’

‘Try coconut oil,’ one said.

‘Bay rum and cantharides,’ another said.

A tea-planter from Assam called Unsworth said, ‘Take my word for it, old man, you’ve got to stimulate the circulation in the scalp. And the way to do that is to dunk your hair in ice-cold water every morning and keep it
there for five minutes. Then dry vigorously. You’ve got a fine head of hair at the moment, but you’ll be as bald as a coot in no time if you don’t cure that dandruff. You do as I say, old man.’

U. N. Savory did indeed have a fine head of black hair, so why in the world should he have wanted to pretend he had dandruff when he hadn’t?

‘Thanks a lot, old man,’ U. N. Savory said. ‘I’ll give it a go. See if it works.’

‘It’ll work,’ Unsworth told him. ‘My grandmother cured her dandruff that way.’

‘Your
grandmother
?’ someone said. ‘Did
she
have dandruff?’

‘When she combed her hair’, Unsworth said, ‘it looked like it was snowing.’

For the hundredth time, I told myself that they were all totally and incurably dotty, every one of them, but I was beginning to think now that U. N. Savory might beat them all to it. I sat there staring into my beer and trying to figure out why he should go around trying to kid everyone he had dandruff. Three days later I had the answer.

It was early evening. We were moving slowly through the Suez Canal and it was hotter than ever. It was my turn to dress first for dinner. While I showered and put on my clothes, U. N. Savory lay on his bunk staring into space. ‘It’s all yours,’ I said at last as I opened the door and went out. ‘See you upstairs.’

As usual, I seated myself at the bar and began sipping a beer. By gosh, it was hot. The big slowly-revolving fan in the ceiling seemed to be blowing
steam
out of its blades. Sweat trickled down my neck and under my stiff butterfly
collar. I could feel the starch in the collar going soggy around the back. The sinewy sunburnt ones around me didn’t seem to notice the heat. I decided to go out on deck and smoke a pipe before dinner. It would be cooler there. I felt for my pipe. Damnation, I had left it behind. I stood up and made my way downstairs to the cabin and opened the door. There was a strange man sitting in shirtsleeves on U. N. Savory’s bunk and as I stepped inside, the man
gave a queer little yelp and jumped to his feet as though a cracker had gone off in the seat of his pants.

The stranger was totally bald and that is why it took me a second or two to realize that he was in fact none other than U. N. Savory himself. It is extraordinary how hair on the head or the lack of it will completely change a person’s appearance. U. N. Savory looked like a different man. To start with, he looked fifteen years older, and in some subtle way he seemed also to have diminished, grown much shorter and smaller. As I said, he was almost totally bald, and the dome of his head was as pink and shiny as a ripe peach. He was standing up now and holding in his two hands the wig he had been about to put on as I walked in. ‘You had no right to come back!’ he shouted. ‘You said you’d finished!’ Little sparks of fury were flashing in his eyes.

‘I’m … I’m most awfully sorry,’ I stammered. ‘I forgot my pipe.’

He stood there glaring at me with that dark malevolent glint in his eye and I could see little droplets of perspiration oozing out of the pores on his bald head. I felt very bad. I didn’t know what to say next. ‘Just let me get my pipe and I’ll clear out,’ I mumbled.

‘Oh no you don’t!’ he shouted. ‘You’ve seen it now and you’re not leaving this room until you’ve made me a promise! You’ve got to promise me you won’t tell a soul! Promise me that!’

Behind him I could see that curious black leather ‘violin case’ lying open on his bunk, and in it, nestling alongside each other like three large black hairy hedgehogs, lay three more wigs.

‘There’s nothing wrong with being bald,’ I said.

‘I didn’t ask for your opinion,’ he shouted. He was still very angry. ‘I just want your promise.’

‘I won’t tell anyone,’ I said. ‘I give you my word.’

‘And you’d better keep it,’ he said.

I reached out and took hold of the pipe that was lying on my bunk. Then I began rummaging round in various places for my tobacco pouch. U. N. Savory sat down on the lower bunk. ‘I suppose you think I’m crazy,’ he said. Suddenly all the bark had gone out of his voice.

I said nothing. I could think of nothing to say.

‘You do, don’t you?’ he said. ‘You think I’m crazy.’

‘Not at all,’ I answered. ‘A man can do as he likes.’

‘I’ll bet you think it’s just vanity,’ he said. ‘But it’s not vanity. It’s nothing to do with vanity.’

‘It’s OK,’ I said. ‘Really it is.’

‘It’s business,’ he said. ‘I do it purely for business reasons. I work in Amritsar, in the Punjab. That is the homeland of the Sikhs. To a Sikh, hair is a sort of religion. A Sikh never cuts his hair. He either rolls it up on the top of his head or in a turban. A Sikh doesn’t respect a bald man.’

‘In that case I think it’s very clever of you to wear a wig,’ I said. I had to live in this cabin with U. N. Savory for several days yet and I didn’t want a row. ‘It’s quite brilliant,’ I added.

‘Do you honestly think so?’ he said, melting.

‘It’s a stroke of genius.’

‘I go to a lot of trouble to convince all those Sikh wallahs it’s my own hair,’ he went on.

‘You mean the dandruff bit?’

‘You saw it, then?’

‘Of course I saw it. It was brilliant.’

‘It’s just
one
of my little ruses,’ he said. He was getting just a trifle smug now. ‘No one’s going to suspect me of wearing a wig if I’ve got dandruff, are they?’

‘Certainly not. It’s quite brilliant. But why bother doing it here? There aren’t any Sikhs on this ship.’

‘You never know,’ he said darkly. ‘You never can tell who might be lurking around the corner.’

The man was as potty as a pilchard.

‘I see you have more than one,’ I said, pointing to the black leather case.

‘One’s no good,’ he said, ‘not if you’re going to do it properly like me. I always carry four, and they’re all slightly different. You are forgetting that hair
grows
, old man, aren’t you? Each one of these is longer than the other. I put on a longer one every week.’

‘What happens after you’ve worn the longest one and you can’t go any further?’ I asked.

‘Ah,’ he said. ‘That’s the clincher.’

‘I don’t quite follow you.’

‘I simply say, “Does anyone know of a good barber round here?” And the next day I start all over again with the shortest one.’

‘But you said Sikhs didn’t approve of cutting hair.’

‘I only do that with Europeans,’ he said.

I stared at him. The man was stark raving barmy. I felt I would go barmy myself if I went on talking to him much longer. I edged towards the door. ‘I think you’re amazing,’ I said. ‘You’re quite brilliant. And don’t worry about a thing. My lips are sealed.’

‘Thanks old man,’ U. N. Savory said. ‘Good lad.’

I flew out of the cabin and shut the door.

And that is the story of U. N. Savory.

You don’t believe it?

Listen, I could hardly believe it myself as I staggered upstairs to the bar.

I kept my promise though. I told no one. Today it no longer matters. The man was at least thirty years older than me, so by now his soul is at rest and his wigs are probably being used by his nephews and nieces for playing charades.

SS Mantola
4 October 1938

 

Dear Mama,

We’re now in the Red Sea, and it is
hot
. The wind is behind us and going at exactly the same speed as the boat so there is not a breath of air on board. Three times they have turned the ship round against the wind to get some air into the cabins and into the engine room. Fans merely blow hot air into your face.

 

The deck is strewn with a lot of limp wet things for all the world like a lot of wet towels steaming over the kitchen boiler. They just smoke cigarettes & shout, ‘Boy – another iced lager.’

 

I don’t feel the heat much – probably because I’m thin. In fact as soon as I’ve finished this letter I’m going off to have a vigorous game of deck tennis with another thin man – a government vet called Hammond. We play with our shirts off, throwing the coit as hard as we can – & when we have to stop for fear of drowning in our own sweat we just jump into the swimming bath.

 

The temperature in the shade was around 120ºF on board the SS
Mantola
as she crept southwards down the Red Sea towards Port Sudan. The breeze was behind us and it blew at exactly the same speed as the ship. There was, therefore, no movement of air at all on board. Three times during the first day they turned the ship around and sailed against the wind to blow some air through the port-holes and over the decks. This made little difference and even the sinewy sunburnt gophers and their tough bony little wives became silent and exhausted. Like me, they sprawled in deck-chairs under the awning, gasping for breath while the sweat ran down their faces and necks and arms and dripped from their elbows on to the wooden deck. It was even too hot to read.

During the second day in the Red Sea, the
Mantola
passed very close to an Italian ship which, like us, was going south. She wasn’t more than 200 yards away from us and her decks were crowded with women! There must have been several thousand of them all over the ship and not a man in sight. I couldn’t believe my eyes.

‘What’s going on?’ I asked one of the ship’s officers, who was standing near me on the rail. ‘Why all the girls?’

‘They’re for the Italian soldiers,’ he said.

‘What Italian soldiers?’

‘The ones in Abyssinia,’ he said. ‘Mussolini is trying to
conquer Abyssinia and he’s got a hundred thousand troops in there. Now they are shipping out Italian girls to keep the soldiers happy.’

‘You’re pulling my leg.’

‘They’re going out in boatloads,’ the officer said. ‘One girl for every soldier in the ranks, two for each Colonel and three for a General.’

‘Be serious,’ I said.

‘They really
are
for the soldiers,’ he said. ‘It is such a rotten pointless war and the soldiers all hate it and they are fed up with massacring the wretched Abyssinians. So Mussolini is sending out thousands of girls to boost their morale.’