Charles Beaumont - Selected Stories Part 11

Aorta's face.

He thought a moment, judged the whole situation, and began to climb. But the pains were too much and he fell, writhing.

The wind came again and more dirt was scattered down into the hole: soon the strange plant was being pushed to and fro against the soil, and dirt fell more and more heavily. More and more, more heavily and more heavily.

Mr. Aorta, who had never up to this point found occasion to scream, screamed. It was quite successful, despite the fact that no one heard it.

The dirt came down, and presently Mr. Aorta was to his knees in damp soil. He tried rising, and could not.

And the dirt came down from that big white plant flip-flopping in the moonlight and the wind.

After a while Mr. Aorta's screams took on a m.u.f.fled quality.

For a very good reason.

Then, some time later, the garden was just as still and quiet as it could be.

Mr. and Mrs. Joseph William Santucci found Mr. Aorta. He was lying on the floor in front of several tables. On the tables were many plates. The plates on the tables were clean and shining.

Mr. Aorta's stomach was distended past burst belt buckle, popped b.u.t.tons and forced zipper. It was not unlike the image of a great white whale rising curiously from placid, forlorn waters.

"Ate hisself to death," Mrs. Santucci said in the fashion of the concluding line of a complex joke.

Mr. Santucci reached down and plucked a tiny ball of soil from the fat man's dead lips. He studied it. And an idea came to him.

He tried to get rid of the idea, but when the doctors found Mr. Aorta's stomach to contain many pounds of dirt--and nothing else, to speak of--Mr. Santucci slept badly, for almost a week.

They carried Mr. Aorta's body through the weeded but otherwise empty and desolate back yard, past the mournful dead tree and the rock fence.

They gave him a decent funeral, out of the goodness of their hearts, since no provision had been made.

And then they laid him to rest in a place with a moldering green woodboard wall: the wall had a little sign nailed to it.

And the wind blew absolutely Free.

SONG FOR A LADY.

by Charles Beaumont

The travel agent had warned us. It was an old ship, very old, very tired. And slow. "In fact," said Mr. Spierto, who had been everywhere and knew all about travel, "there's nothing slower afloat. Thirteen days to Le Havre, fourteen to Southampton. Provided there are favorable winds, of course! No; I doubt that we'll spend our honeymoon on her. Besides, this will be her last crossing. They're going to sc.r.a.p the old relic in a month." And I think that's the reason we picked the _Lady Anne_ for our first trip abroad.

There was something appealing about taking part in a ship's last voyage, something, Eileen said, poignant and special.

Or maybe it was simply the agent's smirk. He might have been able to talk to us out of it otherwise, but he had to smirk--the veteran of Katmandu and the innocent untraveled Iowans--and that got us mad. Anyway, we made two first cla.s.s reservations, got married and caught a plane for New York.

What we saw at the dock surprised us. Spierto's horrified descriptions of the ship had led us to expect something between a kayak and The Flying Dutchman, whereas at first glance the _Lady Anne_ seemed to be a perfectly ordinary ocean liner. Not that either of us had ever actually seen an ocean liner, except in films; but we decided what one should look like, and this looked like one. A tall giant of a vessel, it was, with a bright orange hull and two regal smokestacks; and a feeling of lightness, of grace, almost, despite the twenty thousand tons.

Then we got a little closer. And the _Lady Anne_ turned into one of those welldressed women who look so fine a block away and then disintegrate as you approach them. The orange on the hull was bright, but it wasn't paint. It was rust. Rust, like fungus, infecting every inch, trailing down from every port hole. Eating through the iron.

We gazed at the old wreck for a moment, then resolutely made our way past some elderly people on the dock and, at the gangplank, stopped. There was nothing to say, so Eileen said: "It's beautiful."

I was about to respond when a voice snapped: "No!" An aged man with thin but fierce red hair was standing behind us, bags in hand. "Not 'it'," he said, angrily. "_She_. This ship is a lady."

"Oh, I'm sorry." My wife nodded respectfully. "Well, then, she's beautiful."

"Indeed she is!" The man continued to glare, not malevolently, not furiously, but with great suspicion. He stared up the plank, then paused. "You're seeing someone off?"

I told him no.

"Visitors, then."

"No," I said. "Pa.s.sengers."

The old man's eyes widened. "How's that?" he said, exactly as if I'd just admitted that we were Russian spies. "You're what?"

"Pa.s.sengers," I said again.

"Oh, no," he said, "no, no, I hardly think so. I hardly think that. This, you see, is the _Lady Anne_. There's been a mistake."

"Jack, please!" A small square woman with thick gla.s.ses shook her head reproach. fully.

"Be still," the old man snapped at her. His voice was becoming reedy with excitement. "If you'll consult your tickets, young fellow, I think you'll find that a serious error has occurred here. I repeat, this is the _Lady Anne_--"

"--and I repeat," I said, not too patiently, "that we're pa.s.sengers." However, he didn't move, so I fished the tickets out of my pockets and shoved them at him.

He stared at the papers for a long time; then, sighing, handed them back. "Private party," he muttered; "excursion, might say. Planned so long. Outsiders! I . . ." And without another word, he turned and marched stiffly up the gangplank. The small square woman followed him, giving us a thin, curious smile.

"Well!" Eileen grinned, after the slightest hesitation. "I guess that means 'Welcome Aboard' in British."

"Forget it." I took her hand and we went directly to the cabin. It was small, just as the friendly travel agent had prophesied: two bunks, an upper and lower, a sink, a crown-shaped _pot du chambre_.But it wasn't stark. Incredible fat cupids stared blindly from the ceiling, the door was encrusted with flaked gold paint, and there was a chipped chandelier. Grotesque, but cheerful, somehow. Of course, it would have been cheerful at half the size--with a few rats thrown in--because we'd gotten ourselves into this mess against everyone's advice and, one way or another, we were determined to prove that our instincts had been right.

"Nice," said Eileen, reaching up and patting a cupid's belly.

I kissed her and felt, then, that things wouldn't be too bad. It would take more than a grumpy old Englishman and a crazy stateroom to spoil our trip. A lot more.

Unfortunately, a lot more was fast in coming.

When we took our stroll out on deck, we noticed a surprisingly large number of elderly people standing at the rail; but, we were excited, and somehow this didn't register. We waved at the strangers on the dock, watched the pa.s.sengers still coming aboard, and began to feel the magic. Then I saw the old red-headed gentleman tottering toward us, still glaring and blinking. In a way he looked like the late C.

Aubrey Smith, only older and thinner. Just as straight, though, and just as bushy in the eyebrows.

"See here," he said, pointing at me with his cane, "you aren't really serious about this, are you?"

"About what?" I said.

"Traveling on the _Lady Anne_. That is, hate to sound cliqueish and all that, but--"

"We're serious," Eileen said, curtly.

"Dear me." The old man clucked his tongue. "Americans, too. British ship, y'know. Sort of reunion and--" He motioned toward another man in tweeds. "Burgess! Over here!" The man, if anything older than our friend, caned his way across the wooden planks. "Burgess, these are the ones I mean.

They've tickets!"

"No, no, no," said the man with the cane. "Whole thing obviously a ghastly blunder. Calm yourself, McKenzie: we've time yet. Now then." He gave us a crafty, crooked smile. "No doubt you young people aren't aware that this is rather a, how shall I put it, private, sort of, cruise; d'ye see? Very tight. Dear me, yes. Unquestionably a slip-up on the part of--"

"Look," I said, "I'm getting tired of this routine. There hasn't been any slip-up or anything else.

This is our ship and by G.o.d we're sailing to Europe on it. Her."

"That," said Burgess, "is bad news indeed."

I started to walk away, but the old man's fingers gripped my arm. "Please," he said. "I expect this may seem odd to you, quite odd, but we're actually trying to be of help."

"Exactly so," said the redheaded man, McKenzie. "There are," he whispered darkly, "things you don't know about this ship."

"For example," Burgess cut in, "she is over sixty-five years old. No ventilation, y'know; no modern conveniences whatever on her. And she takes forever to cross."

"And dangerous," said the redheaded man. "Dear me, yes."

The two old fellows pulled us along the deck, gesturing with their canes.

"Look at those deck chairs, just look at 'em. Absolute antiques. Falling to pieces. Wouldn't trust the best of 'em to hold a baby."

"And the blankets, as you see, are rags. Quite threadbare."

"And look at that staircase. Shameful! Shouldn't be at all surprised to see it collapse at any moment."

"Oh, we can tell you, the _Lady Anne_ is nothing but an ancient rust bucket."

"So you see, of course, how impractical the whole idea is."

They looked at us.

Eileen smiled her sweetest smile. "As a matter of fact," she said, "I think this is the most darling little boat I've ever seen. Don't you agree, Alan?"

"Definitely," I said.

The old men stared in disbelief; then Burgess said: "You'll get bored."

"We never get bored," Eileen said.

McKenzie said, "You'll get sick, then!""Never."

"Wait!" Burgess was frowning. "We're wasting time. Look here, why you are both so d.a.m.ned determined to travel on an outdated ship when there are dozens of fine modern vessels available, I shan't pretend to understand. Perhaps it is typical American stubbornness. Flying in the face of convention, that sort of thing. Eh? Admirable! However, we must insist that you overcome this determination."

Eileen opened her mouth, then shut it when she saw the roll of money clutched in the old man's fist.

"I am prepared," he said, in a firm voice, "to pay you double the amount you spent for your tickets, provided you will abandon your plan."

There was a short silence.

"Well?"

I glanced at Eileen. "Not a chance," I said.

"Triple the amount?"

"No."

"Very well. I am forced to extremes. If you will leave the _Lady Anne_ now, I will give you the equivalent of five thousand American dollars."

"Which," McKenzie said, "I will meet."

"Making it ten thousand dollars."

Eileen seemed almost on the edge of tears. "Not for a million," she said. "Now let me tell you gentlemen something. Ever since we picked this ship, people have been doing their best to discourage us.

I don't know why and I don't care. If you're so afraid the brash Americans are going to upset your British tea--"

"My good lady, we--"

"--you can forget it. We won't go near you. But we paid for our tickets and that gives us every bit as much right to the _Lady Anne_ as you have! Now just go away and leave us alone!"

The conversation ended. We walked back to the bow and waited, in silence, until the line had been cast off and the tugs had begun to pull us out to sea; then, still not mentioning the episode, we wandered around to the other side of the ship. I know now that there were elderly people there, too, and only elderly people, but again, we were too sore--and the adventure was too new--to notice this.

It wasn't, in fact, until the fire drill, with the corridor packed, that it first began to sink in. There weren't any young people to be seen. No students. No children. Only old men and old women, most of them walking, but several on canes and on crutches, a few in wheel chairs. And, judging from the number of tweed suits, pipes, mustaches, and woolen dresses, mostly all British.

I was thinking about the two weeks to Southampton and the ten thousand dollars, when Eileen said, "Look."

I looked. And ran into hundreds of unblinking eyes, turned directly on us. Staring as though we were a new species.

"Don't worry," I whispered, without much a.s.surance, "we'll find somebody our age on board. It stands to reason."

And it did stand to reason. But although we looked everywhere, everywhere it was the same: old men, old women. British. Silent. Staring.

Finally we got tired of the search and walked into the ship's single public room. It was called the Imperial Lounge: a big hall with hundreds of chairs and tables, a tiny dance floor, a podium for musicians, and a bar. All done in the rococo style you'd expect to find on the _t.i.tanic_: purples and greens, faded to gray, and chipped gold. People sat in the chairs, neither reading nor playing cards nor talking. Just sitting, with hands folded. We tiptoed across a frayed rug to the bar and asked the grandfather in charge for two double-Scotches; then we ordered two more.

"Housie-Housie tonight," Eileen said, gesturing toward a blackboard. "That's British bingo. But I suppose we won't be invited."

"Nuts to 'em," I said. We looked at each other, then out over the white-thatched balding sea of heads--some dropping in afternoon sleep already--and back at each other; and I'm proud to say thatneither of us wept.