Chapter 16 Death of a Cad part 2
“Game of billiards, Armitage? Can you bend enough for that?” asked Freddy.
“I’d like to try. If I have to cede it half way through, will you forgive me?” said Alexander.
“Willingly. It seemed less frenetic than ping pong,” said Freddy.
“I might be up for a short game of ping pong,” said Alexander. “I have to start doing things sometime. I’d be more able if that dratted préfet de police hadn’t been a damn crook who was going to have me murdered by natural causes for uncovering how he was smuggling opium.”
“How many of your clients try to kill you?” asked Eric. “Strikes me that policing is a dangerous job if you have that happen often.”
“Most coppers go through life without a single attempt to do more than take a swing at him and hope to leg it,” said Alexander. “I appear to attract particularly vicious crooks; either that, or I charge in like a bull in a china shop to crimes most people miss.”
“Nobody else would have considered exhuming Grandmama, I wager,” said Freddy. “Or interpreted a maid’s tale of witchcraft to be chemistry .”
“Barrett – my boss – calls it my knack of falling into trouble,” said Alexander. “I just connect things most people don’t think of as things.”
“I’m all for it,” said Freddy. “If Eric can learn from you, he’ll do well.”
Alexander sniggered.
“And Inspector Morrel will have another copper who dresses well and isn’t on the take,” he said. “Poor chap was convinced I must be taking bribes – it’s one reason I got so knacky with you. It took dumping him down with my accountant to convince him. Poor devil is still envious but now he falls over himself to make up for his accusations.”
“Poor devil, and too proud for you to help him out?”
“Yes, indeed,” sighed Alexander. “But he did agree to let me help if he needed any medical bills taken care of.”[1]
“Well, lets try that knock about; actually, you should be the right height in your chair, without having to bend.”
“Good point,” said Alexander.
They had an audience playing billiards. A young man about Eric’s age came to watch, and a man with the sort of moustache which Alexander thought could only be considered stylish by its originator. The blond man had long, clever fingers which shuffled a pack of cards one-handedly, and Alexander nodded to Freddy.
“Tell Eric not to play cards with the nose-tentacled fellow,” he said, quietly. “If I don’t miss my guess, he’s a professional, here to win money from the passengers.”
“He cheats?”
“I don’t know, and I don’t want to take away his character, but if he doesn’t, he’ll be skilled at card-counting and doing probability calculations in his head,” said Alexander.
Captain James Thwaite was meanwhile forgetting having been routed by Penelope, and was busy trying to ingratiate himself with the ladies.
“These civilians know nothing,” he said. “Why, a soldier knows that burning human flesh smells like roast pork!”
Ida stepped forward.
“You are a… a pig,” she said, and hit him.
He went down.
The other women applauded, except Alma who grabbed Ida and hugged her, while the girl burst into tears.
The captain hurried over.
“I say! Can’t have that sort of behaviour….”
“That fellow taunted my young friend about her brother’s injuries at the front,” said Alma, firmly. “Her brother’s feet were burned off when his Sopwith Camel crashed and burned, and this… creature… taunted her about the smell of burning human flesh. If he comes near any of us, he can expect the same, or to be poked with knitting needles. I’d like him put ashore.”
“Can’t do that, ladies, we are already under way,” said the captain.
Thwaite came to.
“What was that for?” he demanded.
“Oh, don’t you pretend you don’t know,” said Ida. “Making fun of me because of my brother’s injuries! And don’t assume that just because my fiancé is currently in a wheelchair that he can’t make your life very difficult. Because he can.”
“Well, he talked about it,” said Thwaite, sullenly.
“And doubtless as one military man to another,” said Alma, tartly. “How you can call yourself an officer and a gentleman when you have the manners of the gutter, and the sensitivity of a vacuum-cleaner salesman I don’t know. Stay away.”
“But ladies like military anecdotes…,” said Thwaite.
“I can counter any of your stories with tales of inserting catheters as my military anecdotes,” said Penelope. “I’ve assisted in the removal of gallstones too. You know, they go in between your tackle and your back passage, and run a tube all the way up….”
Thwaite fled.
“Heroine of the hour,” said Ida, with a grateful smile.
Thwaite kept his distance, as requested, and when he bellyached about it to the men, Alexander hit him too.
He hit him harder than Ida.
“You will meet me!” cried Thwaite.
“Item; you can’t call out a senior rank,” said Alexander, coldly. “Item; I only duel men. I chastise worms. Making a verbal attack on a young girl is morally indefensible.”
“But you were speaking about it!”
“To make a point to you, that you know nothing; and not talking about it to Ida, who adored her brother and is on this cruise to help her overcome the unpleasantness around his death. I am sick of gross, insensitive arseholes reminding her. If I had my way, you’d be thrown to the crocodiles; but I suppose the Egyptian government is bound to protect them, and the poor innocent creatures have done nothing to deserve it.”
Thwaite relapsed into offended silence, and might be found thereafter playing cards with Reginald Langburne, he of the offensive moustaches.
The days were for sightseeing, and there would be stops to that end; and the company hired entertainers for the long evenings, as well as the games rooms being available. The cabins were small, not to say, cramped; but with shore trips most days, this was not too much of a problem, although Imogen Worthington complained in her frail tones, making it an assault upon her sensibilities.
“The wretched woman saw that some of us have double cabins and is angling for one of us to give up our room to her,” said Alma. “And I don’t care how aristocratic she is, even in a double, Ida and I scarcely have room to swing a cat.”
“As I paid for a double for you, I will be very displeased if you did,” said Alexander. “I promised your husband that I would take care of you, and I won’t have you nagged out of your proper apartment by that hypochondriac. She should have paid for her own double room if she wanted one.”
“I agree,” said Alma. “We aren’t going to cave in to her sighs and heavy, covetous glances. She descended on us early and went on and on, so Ida winked at me, and said, ‘Come on, Alma, we don’t want to miss it,’ and turned to the Worthington woman and asked if she wanted to be locked into our cabin as we were leaving, and intended locking the door.”
Alexander sniggered.
“You appear to have her under control. I am sorry, ladies, that this trip is spoiled by the likes of Thwaite and this Ampelopsis of a woman.”
“What’s an ampelopsis?” asked Ida.
“It’s a vine, also called china-berry, which is a pretty enough plant, but needs continual support, and if given enough soon encroaches on the whole room,” said Alexander.
“Most appropriate,” approved Alma. “And the irritating qualities of some of our fellow passengers can scarcely be blamed on you, Mr. Armitage. I dare say whichever trip we booked there would be some irritant.”
“At least the Beauchamps are a known quantity,” said Ida.
“Yes, and improved no end over when I first knew them,” said Alexander. “I just have a bad feeling about this voyage.”
“We put in at Cairo overnight, we could always disembark, and wait for another,” said Ida.
“No, don’t worry; I’m just being gloomy,” said Alexander. “Besides, it’s nice to get to know the Beauchamps socially rather than professionally.”
“And Penelope is a delightful lady,” said Alma. Ida smiled. Penelope was no lady, but Ida preferred her to some of those of her own class, because Penelope was at least pleasant.
Alexander noticed that his own party were not the only ones to dislike Captain Thwaite. Miss Grant, the lady who seemed to be a schoolmarm, actively shrank back when he stared at her.
“Sure I’ve met you before,” he said. “I seem to think of you with relation to the Western Front.”
“I think that highly unlikely,” said Miss Grant.
“Well, maybe it will come back to me,” said Thwaite. “Maybe you’ll stop wasting your time with The Steel Statue, which is what they call the Pettit woman. Unless she’s frigid because you’re both those funny women, haw! Haw!” he brayed a laugh.
“We merely have interests of literature in common, which I doubt you comprehend, since I suspect that filling in your B4 is about the most complex you can manage.”
Thwaite went red, then white. That was the form to request leave of absence for an officer.
“You tell him, Anne,” said Violet Pettit. She had looked hurt at the nickname by which he had called her.
It was with some relief that the number of passengers increased in Cairo, taking on a couple of officers on short leave, who promptly gravitated towards the fragile Mrs. Worthington, and a couple so plainly on honeymoon they scarcely noticed anyone else.
Alexander extracted the information that the officers were lieutenants named Pierce and Michaels, and that Mr. and Mrs. Freeman were Christie and Dougie; or at least, that was what they called each other. They spent a lot of time in their own double cabin, and fed each other at meals.
Alexander was faintly amused; he could not see such behaviour from Ida and him, but then, they already knew more about each other than he suspected Christie and Dougie had to know, in what appeared rather shallow lives.
They seemed happy, anyway.
They danced the Geechie dance[2] with enthusiasm and athleticism, when the ship’s band played, showing off its strange and ugly lines in the lithe, angular leg kicking.
They also made snide comments about people who were too old and banged up to dance. Alexander smiled cynically.
If they only knew his usual morning routines with the Cossack hopak dance. He was starting again to get a grip with the starting exercises, with Campbell standing by.
oOoOo
Doug Freeman came on deck early in the morning for a smoke, and noted ‘wheelchair bloke’ and his man on deck performing some odd callisthenics.
Callisthenics Doug did not think he could do. And as ‘wheelchair bloke’ was wearing only shorts, Doug could see an ugly, livid scar across his belly, which was no way any ordinary appendectomy. It looked as if someone had tried to gut him.
He had strapping on one side over his ribs too.
And yet, he was moving from kneeling to squatting in one move, and into a handstand, and balancing on his feet with his arms crossed balancing on one foot at a time.
“Careful, Major,” said his servant. “You don’t want to open anything.”
“I’m sick of needing the ruddy chair,” said Alexander. “I’d have been shot of it by now but for having to sneak around Algiers avoiding being killed. I wonder if Maigret has rounded up all the drug smugglers?”
“He’ll let you know, sir, I’m sure,” said Campbell. “Oh, now, be careful.”
“It’s my arse and leg muscles, not so much the belly,” said Alexander. “I had to laugh at that young puppy and his flapper last night, pitying me just because they can handle the Geechie dance.”
“Gladdie and me won the Geechie prize in the steerage competition,” volunteered Campbell. “She’s an inspiration.”
“So I should hope; a wife should always be an inspiration,” said Alexander severely. “And well done; what was it, grace, or stamina?”
“Stamina, sir; we was the last ones standing,” said Campbell. “I wager we wouldn’t of done it but for joining in your Hopak.”
“Well, don’t let me hold you back on your own exercises,” said Alexander. “The women are confined by what they can do in their cabins.”
Campbell went through his own routine, and Doug Freeman quietly crept away, impressed.
His wife stared at him trying to replicate what he had seen, and failing badly.
“What are you doing?”
“Trying to manage the moves wheelchair bloke is doing in his bid to regain fitness,” said Doug. “I say, Christie, I’d rather you didn’t make remarks about him again; judging by his wounds, he’s actually outside our league when he’s fit.”
“Really?” said Christie, sceptically.
“Totally,” said Doug. He had something to think about!
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