The Game (6 page)

“You’re an American,” I said. If the accent hadn’t told me, the brashness would have.

“From Chicago. You ever been there?”

“I passed through once, when I was young.”

“It’s
got
to be the world’s stinkiest city,” she declared. “What’re you going to India for?”

“Er, my husband and I have business there.” Impossible to give the deflating retort a proper Englishwoman would have wielded at the importunity of the question; poor Sunny would have gone behind the clouds.

“Is that nifty old—er, older man your husband?” she asked in astonishment. “I mean to say, Mama and I noticed him earlier when you were on the deck.”

“That is my husband, yes,” I told her. And if she delivered a third rudeness, I would smack her. Verbally, of course. “And you, why are you going out?”

“I’m a little late for the ‘fishing fleet,’ aren’t I?” she said with a most disarming grin. “Actually, we had meant to come out in October, but Mama had a message from the spirits saying it was inauspicious, so we waited, which in the end was fantabulous, because I got to meet Ivor Novello at a party in London.”

“‘The spirits,’ ” I repeated carefully.

Sunny inclined her head towards me and confided, “Hokum, isn’t it? But Mama has had some powerful experiences in her time, and who’s to argue? That is to say, I did argue at the time, because who wants to come all the way here and have to skedaddle away after a few weeks as soon as the weather gets hot? But Mama chose her time, and we will at least have a month to sight-see before we go to see her Teacher.”

There was no mistaking the capital letter on the noun. Knowing I was going to regret it, I asked her which teacher that was.

“His name’s Kumaraswami Shivananda, have you heard of him? No, most people haven’t. Mama met him when he was on a lecture tour through the States, and came to Chicago. He’s absatively keen for an old man—has to be at least forty, but has those dark eyes that seem to look right through you. Anyhoo, he channels the spirits, especially one he calls The Vizier, who was something big in ancient Egypt. The Vizier sent Kumaraswami on his world tour, to gather pupils and then teach them all about enlightenment through the body. Ever so much nicer than all those skinny, unhealthy-looking characters who tell you to renounce all sensation, don’t you think?”

“Is, er, Kumaraswami Indian, then, or Egyptian?”

“Oh, no, he’s from Pittsburgh. But The Vizier spoke to him one day in a séance and told him to change his name and go to India, so that was that.”

Keeping my face straight was a struggle, but I agreed solemnly that enlightenment through the body did sound far nicer than some of the ascetic disciplines I had heard of. Sunny smiled, not knowing what I was talking about, but happy to have found what she took to be a kindred spirit.

“Have you ever been to a séance?” she asked.

“I, er, I know people who have.”

“They’re bunk, really, but tons of laughs. Everyone sitting so serious and then the channeller begins making all these squeals and groans, and you have to sit there fighting not to giggle.”

At least I shouldn’t have to warn the child not to be too gullible, I reflected, somewhat relieved.

“Come meet Mama and Tom?” she urged, jumping to her feet as if there could be no doubt that I would instantly agree.

“I should be getting back to w—” I started, but she pleaded.

“Oh, just for a jiffy! They’re right below us waiting for tea, it would be ever so nice to show Mama I’ve made a friend so that when I want to go off and flirt with those tasty young officers she won’t worry.”

Who was I to shackle a free spirit such as Sunny Goodheart? And if she had originally intended to join the “fishing fleet” of eligible young women travelling to India to hook a husband, she would need all the help she could get to make up for three months of lost time. “I’d love to meet your mother,” I said, causing her to give a little jump of pleasure before she seized my hand and led me down the deck towards the stairs. It was impossible not to smile at the creature; despite her dress and her cultivated worldly airs, she struck one as little more than a child.

Mama, on the other hand, was formidable, and I vowed not to venture into the heavy waters of theology with a woman possessed of that determined jaw. I offered her my hand, did not bother to correct Sunny’s introduction of me as “Mrs Russell,” and then shook the hand of the tall young man who had been seated at Mrs Goodheart’s side. He had placed a bookmark in his collection of the works of Marx (an English translation) before unfolding himself from the deck chair, a process rather like that of a standing camel or an unfolding crane. He was at least three inches over six feet, taller even than Holmes, and thin to the point of emaciation. One might think he’d been ill, except his colour was good and his movements, although languid, showed no discomfort.

“And this is Tom,” Sunny told me. “My brother. He finished at Harvard last June and has been taking the Tour in Europe. He decided to include India, since Mama wanted to go. Tommy’s a Communist,” she appended proudly.

Personally, I couldn’t see much to be proud of, either in the political stance or in the young man himself. Tom Goodheart’s features were pleasing enough, and he appeared to have some wiry muscle under his European-tailored jacket, but even seated, he looked down his nose at one—not openly, but behind an expression so bland, one immediately suspected it of being a mask. I decided that he was a member of the supercilious generation—no doubt he fancied himself an artist or a philosopher, or both—and the attitude as much as the clothes the three wore told me that Communist or no, money did not go wanting in the Goodheart family. The swami from Pittsburgh, I decided, was on to a good thing.

“How do you do?” I said, and before Sunny could drag up a chair (and it would be she who dragged it, not her brother) I glanced at my wrist and began to apologise. “I’m terribly sorry, I just remembered that I promised my husband I’d meet him a few minutes ago, it went right out of my head. Lovely to meet you, I look forward to seeing more of you all on the voyage.”

And made my escape.

But in the end,
there would be no escaping Mrs Goodheart. The following afternoon, the rapidly filling pouches of my brain threatening to burst and spill out all the verb forms and adjectives I had ruthlessly crammed inside, Holmes and I took a turn around the deck. It was, I found, very pleasant indeed, with a degree more warmth in the winter sun. As we strolled arm in arm, dodging nannies pushing perambulators and the marching khaki-shorts brigade, I was doubly grateful that our haste had forced us to bypass the inevitably heaving Bay of Biscay and pick up the boat in the relative calm of the Mediterranean. Had we boarded in Southampton, I should only now be recovering from sea-sickness.

Then I heard a voice from a shaded corner, and the biliousness threatened to return.

“Mrs Russell, how good to see you. Won’t you introduce us to your husband?”

Two-thirds of the Goodheart family, mother and son. I opened my mouth to correct the American matriarch, but despite her opening volley, she did not wait for introductions, merely thrust her many-ringed hand at Holmes and said, “Mr Russell, glad you could join us. We were just talking about you, wondering if you were going to hide out in your cabin the entire trip.”

“Actually,” I began, but this time Holmes broke in, taking a brisk step forward to grasp the woman’s hand.

“Mrs Goodheart, is it?” he said. “And this must be your son. Afternoon, young man, I hope you’re enjoying your voyage?”

Amused, I let my correction die unborn: It seemed that Holmes was to be “Mr Russell” for a time.

Mrs Goodheart ordered her son to find another chair; to my surprise, Holmes did not object. Instead, he settled into the deck chair at her side as if a leisurely contemplation of the sea in the company of a bossy American spiritualist was just the thing for a Sunday afternoon. Bemused, I subsided into the vacant chair on Mrs Goodheart’s other side and waited to see what Holmes was up to.

“Where is Sunny?” I asked the mother.

“She said she was going to try her hand at shovel-board. I would have stayed to watch, but I found the sun rather warm for my delicate complexion. She’ll be here in a while, I’m sure. And you, Mrs Russell—have you found some shipboard entertainment?”

Stuffing my head with Hindi verb forms and hurling tea-spoons back and forth at my husband, I thought, but said merely, “I’m not much of one for games, Mrs Goodheart.”

“Sunny will change that,” she said, with a somewhat alarming confidence. “Thomas my dear, tell the Russells what you’ve been doing in Europe.”

The languid young Marxist settled into the chair he had caused to be brought, and launched into a recitation of the Paris literary salons visited, the avant-garde artists met, the underworldly haunts flirted with, the firebrand politicians-in-exile drunk with. He had even met Lenin—well, not met, precisely, but they had been at a function in Moscow at the same time early the previous autumn, and had friends in common.

“And tell them about your maharaja,” Mrs Goodheart said, oozing with complacency.

“Oh, you mean Jimmy?” he said, magnificently casual. “Fellow I met last year—at the same party Lenin stopped by, in fact—turns out he’s a maharaja. Never know it by looking at the man, he’s as common as you or me” (Sherlock Holmes did not even blink at being dubbed “common”) “and interested in everything. We got to talking about the States, he wanted to know if I’d ever seen a herd of buffalo—he called them bison, turns out they already have a kind of buffalo there in India, very different animal, could get confusing. I had to tell him I’d personally only seen them in a zoo, but that I had a pal who lived out in the Plains and he had one he kept as a pet. Well, Jimmy—his name’s Jumalpandra, but that’s a bit of a mouthful—he got so excited, nothing would do but for me to cable my friend immediately and ask where Jimmy could get a few bison for himself.

“Turns out the fellow’s got a reputation as a sporting maharaja, travelled the world taking all sorts of big game, but he’s getting tired of the local varieties, the buffalos and tigers and such. So he’s started his own zoo, been buying up breeding stock of game animals from around the globe—lions from Africa, emus from Australia, panthers from South America. That’s why he was in Russia, to arrange for some wild boar to juice up the local variety. Any rate, he’d heard somewhere that bison were great sport. And as luck would have it, a friend of my pal could get his hands on three cows and a bull.”

Mrs Goodheart broke in. “And since Thomas here arranged it, the maharaja’s invited us to come and spend some time with him. In his kingdom,” she added, lest we think they were to be shelved in some Bombay hotel. “Khanpur is its name.”

A mild expression that might have been annoyance flitted across Tom Goodheart’s face, irritation at having the climax of his story snatched away, but before he could respond, a hugely contrasting swirl of pink and white merriment came dashing up the deck to confront us.

“Oh! Mrs Russell, how super! Have you ever played shovel-board? On a boat? You shove the little puck down the deck and it’s going perfectly and then the boat tilts a little and—oops! There goes your nice straight shot, so then you try to compensate on the next turn and the deck tilts the other way and there goes your shot to the other side. Oh, it’s ever so funny!”

“Sunny, this is Mr Russell,” her mother told her.

“Oh!” the girl squeaked. “So pleased to meet you. Your wife is such a darling, and such a sense of humour!”

“Oh yes,” Holmes agreed gravely. “Quite the joker is my wife.”

The girl turned to me again. “They’re going to have an egg race next. Wouldn’t you like to come and join?”

There was very little I would enjoy less than a shipboard egg race, but since one of those lesser pleasures was the idea of remaining within reach of Sunny’s mother and brother, I made haste to stand before we could be assigned some other task. “I won’t participate, but I shall come and cheer you on.”

Holmes would have to manufacture his own escape.

The old-fashioned egg race was every bit as fatuous as I had expected, the girls shrieking and giggling and bouncing on their toes for the benefit of the onlooking officers. One side of the deck had been roped off for the games, but the participants were somewhat thinner on the ground—or rather, on the boards—than they would have been during the autumn migration. Still, the girls made up for it in self-conscious enthusiasm during the first two heats of the P. & O.’s quaint idea of fun. After those, however, the paucity of numbers brought about a defiant change of house rules, and the relays became co-educational. The baritone voices were accompanied by a shift in the merriment to something resembling true competition, and if the men looked even more ridiculous than the women had in racing down the deck with spoon and teetering egg, everyone had a splendid time, and there was plenty of opportunity for jovial banter and a certain degree of innocent physical contact.

The change in noise, however, attracted the parental authorities of those girls young enough to view the game merely as pleasurable exercise linked with mild flirtation instead of early negotiations in the serious economic business of matrimony. Repressive suggestions were made, Mrs Goodheart decreeing that Sunny looked quite flushed and a rest might be in order before it came time to dress for dinner, and the egg-race orgy died a natural death. The young men straightened their collars and went back to their corners; the young women recalled their sophistication and lounged off for a cigarette, illicit or open, depending on the smoker’s age. Holmes and I seized the opportunity for retreat.