History of a Pleasure Seeker (32 page)

Just when it seemed impossible that these sensations could improve further, Jay pulled Piet’s buttocks apart and flicked his tongue over his arsehole. This piece of daring lit a deeply buried circuit in the young man’s pleasure sensors. He opened his eyes. Rose-scented darkness and the outlines of two square pillows confronted him. He tried to speak but could find no words. Jay’s tongue pressed farther and the electric connection between them, so far transmitted by knuckles and elbows, blazed through this new synapse. Piet thought of all he had done for Jacobina, without thought of reward. It seemed he was to be repaid after all.

He was. As the orange moon sank into the sea and the sun extinguished the stars, Jay Gruneberger’s tongue overthrew the last of their mutual inhibitions and explored the unvisited places of Piet’s body to its owner’s full satisfaction. Both men, at once intimately joined and quite alone, alive in their own beings, entered into a state of rapture more profound than either had ever known.

It was light when Piet could bear it no longer, and the violence of his ejaculation was most satisfying to Jay Gruneberger. He wiped Piet down with a towel and rejoiced in what he had accomplished. Then he took off his uniform and lay down beside him.

Without exchanging a single word they fell asleep.

J
ay’s cabin steward kept an extensive record of the preferences of the hundred or so passengers who requested him personally on each voyage they took and knew not to bring Mr. Gruneberger’s breakfast until rung for. Jay was woken by the heat of the sun, and for a moment his exploits hung in his consciousness like a marvelous dream. He opened his eyes. Beside him, fast asleep on his side, lay Piet Barol.

Jay got up and put on a dressing gown. The sound disturbed his companion, who stretched to his fullest extent, yawned loudly, scratched himself, and woke.

Jay’s stomach tightened. He could not bear to betray all they had shared by parting awkwardly. “Morning, Barol,” he said cheerfully. “Sleep all right?”

There was a moment’s silence. Then they both smiled and all uncertainty evaporated. Jay handed Piet a dressing gown and poured him a bath. Piet took it while breakfast was ordered and emerged to find a linen suit laid out for him beside a table set for two. He was taller than Jay, and the trousers were too short, but with a belt to hold them at the top of his hips and a sweater to disguise this arrangement he looked every inch a first-class passenger dressed for a day of elegant lounging.

“We’ll have you back in your cabin before lunch, with no one the wiser.” Jay lit a cigar. “But what of your life plans, Barol? Do you have connections in Cape Town?”

“None, I’m afraid.”

“So what will you do?”

“That question weighs on me.”

“What are you good at?”

“I can draw. It’s not much of an accomplishment.”

“That depends on how well you do it.” Jay was looking at Piet’s hands. He wanted to see them at work before they parted. “Sketch something for me.”

“What would you like?”

“A memento of our evening together.”

Piet thought for a moment, then took a sheet of ship’s notepaper and in ten minutes had caught the mahogany bed with its twisted sheets and the wily prelate who surveyed them. He signed it and gave it to his host.

“You should be an artist.”

“No money in it.”

“Then sell people things. There aren’t many who can express themselves in words and pictures, as you can. What would you like to make, or have made, that other people might like to buy?”

“Furniture, perhaps.”

“Then that’s settled. If you do it right, you can make a fortune. My wife’s decorator certainly does. Let me tell you how to make a name for yourself.”

P
ercy Shabrill was lying on his bunk when Piet returned to their cabin, locked in a violent interior tussle between curiosity and resentment. Resentment prevailed. He forbore from asking Piet where he had been in case this should give him an opportunity to boast of an enviable adventure. Instead he told him with studied unconcern that he had secured a further three orders for his refrigeration system. “We’ll be within sight of St. Helena by teatime,” he remarked when he had finished. “Miss Prince tells me there was a prison full of filthy Boers there during the South African War.”

“And now there’s to be a party.”

“Not for us. Harbor’s too small to dock at apparently. I’m just about sick of this bloody ship.” He yawned. “It’s only first class who’re getting off at all. Should be a jolly view if it’s not too rough.”

“Wake me to see it.” Piet turned to the wall and closed his eyes.

P
iet woke just before sunset, dressed and went on deck. Percy had spent the afternoon with Miss Prince and had not thought to rouse him. Nervous with envy, clumps of tourist-class passengers were talking over the frail sound of a string quartet sent to console them. Frau Stettin had worn her best dress, which was pink and white and altogether too young for her. “Ah, the memories of my youth!” She gripped Piet’s arm to steady herself. She appeared to have drunk a quantity of champagne.

A flotilla of small white boats, each identical, was making for the ship from a long, low piece of volcanic rock floating in an endless ocean. Above it a sky shot with amber and vermilion swirled like a toreador. “Oh look!” cried Miss Prince, as the first of the sloops approached.

Jay Gruneberger gave his wife his arm. He was intensely proud of her. The spectacle of the white crafts bobbing on the sea with the sunset behind them would live on in the memory of every witness. The cheers from the third-class and steerage decks made this as plain as the sullen silence of tourist class. Even the first-class passengers, well versed in worldly delights, felt pleasant tingles of anticipation at this tantalizing overture.

Rose had interpreted
la Gloire
altogether originally and come as Water: glory itself, the giver of life. Her dress was a bewitching blue, deep and shifting against the expanse of the ocean with pearls sewn like bubbles in its folds. Together the Grunebergers stood out emphatically from the throng of gaudy empresses and Napoleonic generals.

Jay had long since ceased to savor the privileges of his life, but the risks Piet Barol had run in order to sample them made him appreciate them afresh. It was, after all, agreeable to be invited to a party that the world would discuss for weeks. It was agreeable always to have one’s name remembered, to be made way for, and included, and flattered, and quoted. To dance under the stars with Rose tonight and exert himself on her behalf would be splendid. He felt profoundly calm and happy.

He was turning his attention to Elizabeth Schermerhorn when he saw the blond steward who had been Piet’s constant companion. Didier was operating the tiller of a nearby cutter, his features taut and controlled. In his eyes Jay recognized at once the anguish of rejection. He was familiar with unrequited adoration and it was clear Piet might inspire it. The question was: had he returned it in this case? He thought of the young men’s familiar intimacy with each other; then of the ease with which he had persuaded Piet to spend the night in his cabin.

Jay Gruneberger had a fine instinct for human motivation, but it was obvious from Piet Barol’s stories that his matched it.

Who had been playing the more convincing game?

He had promised himself he would not look for him, but the fireworks exploding above the ship gave him the excuse to turn and he could not resist. Piet was at the very front of the crowd on the tourist-class promenade deck, between a rather plain young woman and an old lady in a bizarre confection of pink and white. He waved.

Everyone on the little white yachts was scrupulously ignoring the two thousand people watching them and Jay could not return this greeting. For a moment their eyes saluted one another. Then Jay poked his tongue an inch through parted lips and turned away.

P
iet was woken at first light by the laughter of revelers returning to the ship. At once he thought of Didier. He dressed and went to the trellised barrier where they had first met. His friend was often on early duty at the veranda café, which opened onto the first-class promenade deck. He would find him and behave quite naturally.

Not a soul appeared. Verignan’s party had gone off exceedingly well and none of his guests had gone to bed before dawn. Piet waited an hour by the barrier, to no purpose. He was about to go to breakfast when a woman in a floaty white dress appeared and sank gracefully onto a lounger on the other side.

It was Stacey Meadows.

The heightened sensuality of the last few days roared over him. She was staring out to sea, superbly self-possessed. He watched her furtively, having no means of reaching her. As he contemplated the defiant set of her chin against the vast ocean he thought of Don José’s fatal mistake: to bind himself to a person who did not understand him and never would. It was the same error his mother had made. He considered his amorous adventures thus far, not one of which was worth a lifetime’s devotion. Then he thought of the note Miss Meadows had sent him, which suggested an intelligence as self-determining and imaginative as his own.

He went to breakfast beset by an insistent desire that nothing—not Frau Stettin’s conversation nor the amorousness of Percy Shabrill and Miss Prince—could tame.

T
he last days of the voyage passed with agonizing slowness, the physical imperatives of Piet’s body competing with a mounting anxiety to which he had no answer. His sleep was fitful and he barely ate. What on earth would he do in Cape Town? He could think no further than his encounter with Miss Meadows, in which alone of all the uncertainties he faced he had the utmost faith.

On the morning of the final day, Table Mountain came into view through swirling mists. Despite the earliness of the hour the decks were crowded. Percy had proposed to Miss Prince the evening before and been accepted. He had kept Piet up all night talking of rings and houses and the style in which he intended to keep his wife.

Piet avoided them as best he could, having offered his congratulations over breakfast. The mountain ahead humbled him. It seemed the altar of a god or a deity itself: above the impudence of human contemplation. He returned to his cabin to find his bill waiting. Since his expulsion from first class he had found its habits hard to break and had resisted less and less the insidious pressure to buy things. Now he saw that he had been persuaded to consume eight cocktails and four brandies. He had had his tailcoat laundered in anticipation of its sale, and the amount charged for this service was many times greater than any sum he could hope to raise on it. He took from the safe the black steel box he had brought with him from Amsterdam and found its wad of notes far thinner than he remembered. At first he thought he had been robbed, but a few minutes with a pencil and a scrap of notepaper confirmed otherwise.

He recalled Didier telling him that a stroke of luck is not the same thing as being rich. The extravagance of his ticket, a night at the Karseboom, the sleeper to Paris, his hotel there, taxis to transport his wretched trunk, and now his wasteful expenditure on the ship had drastically depleted Maarten Vermeulen-Sickerts’ gifts. For a horrifying moment Piet thought he might not be able to pay the account. What ignominy to have to borrow from Percy! He counted the notes with dread, and when he had separated what he owed only three remained.

He went on deck again. A blazing heat had incinerated the mist. Ahead of him was a chaotic port—foreign and energetic and wholly indifferent to him. He could barely survive a fortnight on his remaining reserves. What then? He did not know and could not think.

He found a deck chair and sat heavily in it, hiding from the daunting view. He heard the anchor break the water and a bell ring. With a shudder that made the ladies sway, the engines went into reverse and the boat stopped. His anxiety intensified. He knew that confidence alone could save him, but his capacity to manufacture it had deserted him. The band began to play “La Marseillaise.”

“At long bloody last. Land!” Percy Shabrill was upon him, absurdly dressed in a tweed suit and plus fours—as if for a golfing holiday in the north of England. Having sold eighteen refrigeration systems and seduced a woman right beneath his cabinmate’s nose, he was inclined to be generous with Piet Barol. “As soon as Dotty and I are settled, you must visit us.”

Piet knew that this might be his only refuge from the doss-house and the realization was bitter indeed. Nevertheless he thanked Percy and took down his brother’s address in Johannesburg.

“Just look at all those darkies. Enough to give you nightmares.”

And with that Percy was gone.

The decks began to clear. Heat and fear made Piet dizzy. At length he went below. A steward appeared. “Letter for you, sir. Stand by for disembarkation.”

Piet did not wait. He felt that another encounter with Percy Shabrill would break him. He pushed his way to the vestibule doors, glad that Didier had written to him. He was badly in need of a friend. As he stepped onto the gangway he saw Didier standing on the quay, directing the first-class passengers towards the customs shed. “Loubat!” His voice carried over the swell of noise.

Didier recognized it and turned deliberately towards its source, as if putting his hand into a flame. Years of training allowed him to keep his face absolutely expressionless as he looked for the last time at Piet Barol. Then he shook his head and went into the shed.

The swell of the crowd could not be restrained. It carried Piet to the end of the gangway and onto land that rocked disconcertingly after nearly three weeks at sea. Only the alchemy of friendship might have transformed this disaster into an adventure. The sudden revocation of Didier’s was crushing. Piet joined the throng at the passport window and took the letter from his pocket. Perhaps Didier had explained. But the note inside the vellum envelope was not from Didier Loubat. It read:
Find elegant premises in the best district. Take a room at the Mount Nelson hotel and introduce yourself widely. Exploit your European glamour. Good luck. J.G.
and was accompanied by a check for a thousand pounds.