Fellow Passenger by Geoffrey Household Page B

Bassoon’s bald head had to be dealt with right at the top. I suspected that they would send for orders if I refused to eat my pudding. However, I lost the trick in the end, and the hair had to come off my cheeks on to my head.
     
    As a hide-out for someone whom it was desired to treat, for the time being, with respect, the accommodation was admirable; on the other hand the solitary confinement was calculated to seek out any weakness of nerve. I assumed that I might be under observation even when alone and controlled my impatience. It was not difficult to pretend, even to myself, that I was a rescued and grateful spy. I was being given just what I had missed as Bassoon — good food and drink and comfort.
     
    My attendant would not give me the slightest indication of when I was likely to be put on a ship. It occurred to me that, when I was, I might not know very much about it. I caught myself tasting the first mouthful of every dish with exaggerated suspicion, until I decided it was folly; there was nothing whatever I could do to prevent myself being drugged or poisoned, so I might as well enjoy the only sensual pleasure I had.
     
    My guess at their methods was quite correct. I remember taking an afternoon nap after an excellent bottle of Roumanian wine. I woke up to find myself on the bunk in a long and very narrow cabin. My coat, brushed, was hanging on a hook. My shoes, cleaned, were on the floor. I was still wearing sweater and trousers. As a Very Important Personage, I could only admire the care which had been taken for my well-being. There was a nasty taste in my mouth but no headache. I might merely have fallen asleep in an easy chair after a rather too self-indulgent lunch.
     
    Discretion, however, seemed to have been overdone. The cabin was three feet wide and twelve long, built - to judge by its slight curve - against the side of the ship within a false double skin. It was ventilated from a shaft and lit by electric light.
     
    I climbed over the foot of the bunk - the only way in and out of it - and explored. A door at the far end led to a neat washbasin and lavatory, and in the middle of the long inner wall was a sliding door, which was locked. There was a very narrow settee, comfortably upholstered, and on the opposite wall a collapsible writing-table about large enough for making notes on Marx with the book open, or drafting one’s last will and testament.
     
    I could hear the ship’s derricks working, so we were evidently still in port. I had arrived where I wanted to be. But never had I envisaged such cold efficiency. Gone was my chance of vanishing overboard or of creating, at the chosen moment, such an embarrassing distraction that I could slip away to some other ship without anyone daring to use force or mention my name.
     
    The only comfort I could find was that Chris Emmassin might be right and nothing whatever would happen to me. After a searching interrogation I should be dismissed as loyal but a lunatic, and permitted to live out my life in some minor and respected employment. That cabin, however, that three-foot space between white-painted steel walls, was not conducive to optimism. I panicked. I greatly desired to press the bell-push above my bunk.
     
    After a wash and a severe reminder to myself that analysis was more fitted to the Latin mind than misty and Atlantean terrors, I did my best to analyse. With unreasoning pessimism cleared away - and all optimism going too - it became perfectly clear to me that I was bound to spend the best years of my life in confinement. Assuming that there was any choice, in what country was confinement preferable? If I had to choose between the over-scrubbed respectability of an English gaol and a prison camp in the tropics I should unhesitatingly choose the latter; but a prison camp within the Arctic Circle, ten thousand times no! Very well, then. The ship, under God and the Master, should reach her destination, but I, under God and in despite of the