War Read online

  Dressing? Oh yes, indeed. We all dressed for dinner every single evening on board that ship. The male species of the Empire-builder, whether he is camping in the jungle or is at sea in a rowing-boat, always dresses for dinner, and by that I mean white shirt, black tie, dinner-jacket, black trousers and black patent-leather shoes, the full regalia, and to hell with the climate.

  I lay still on my bunk with my eyes half open. Below me, U. N. Savory was getting dressed. There wasn’t room in the cabin for two of us to change our clothes simultaneously, so we took it in turns to go first. It was his turn to dress first tonight. He had tied his bow-tie and now he was putting on his black dinner-jacket. I was watching him rather dreamily through half-closed eyes, and I saw him reaching into his sponge-bag and take out a small carton. He stationed himself in front of the washbasin mirror, took the lid off the carton and dipped his fingers into it. The fingers came out with a pinch of white powder or crystals, and this stuff he proceeded to sprinkle very carefully over the shoulders of his dinner-jacket. Then he replaced the lid on the carton and put it back in the sponge-bag.

  Suddenly I was fully alert. What on earth was the man up to? I didn’t want him to know I’d seen, so I closed my eyes and pretended to be asleep. This is a rum business, I thought. Why in the world would U. N. Savory want to sprinkle white stuff on to the shoulders of his dinner-jacket? And what was it, anyway? Could it be some subtle perfume or a magic aphrodisiac? I waited until he had left the cabin, then, feeling only slightly guilty, I hopped down from my bunk and opened his sponge-bag. EPSOM SALTS, it said on the little carton! And Epsom salts it was! Now what good could Epsom salts possibly do him sprinkled on his shoulders? I had always thought of him as a queer fish, a man with secrets, though I hadn’t discovered what they were. Under his bunk he kept a tin trunk and a black leather case. There was nothing odd about the tin trunk, but the case puzzled me. It was roughly the size of a violin case but the lid didn’t bulge as the lid of a violin case does, and it wasn’t tapered. It was simply a three-foot-long rectangular leather box with two very strong brass locks on it.

  ‘Do you play the violin?’ I had once said to him.

  ‘Don’t be daft,’ he had answered. ‘I don’t even play the gramophone.’

  Perhaps it contained a sawn-off shotgun then, I told myself. It was about the right size.

  I put the carton of Epsom salts back in his sponge-bag, then I took a shower, dressed and went upstairs to have a drink before dinner. There was one stool vacant at the bar so I sat down and ordered a glass of beer. There were eight sinewy sunburnt gophers including U. N. Savory sitting on high stools at the bar. The stools were screwed to the floor. The bar was semi-circular so that everyone could talk across to everyone else. U. N. Savory was sitting about five places away from me. He was drinking a gimlet, which was the Empire-builder’s name for a gin with lime juice in it. I sat there listening to the small talk about pig-sticking and polo and how curry will cure constipation. I felt a total outsider. There was nothing I could contribute to the conversation so I stopped listening and concentrated on trying to solve the riddle of the Epsom salts. I glanced at U. N. Savory. From where I sat, I could actually see the tiny white crystals on his shoulders.

  Then a funny thing happened.

  U. N. Savory suddenly began brushing the Epsom salts off one of his shoulders with his hand. He did it ostentatiously, slapping the shoulder quite hard and saying at the same time in a rather loud voice, ‘Ruddy dandruff! I’m fed up with it! Do any of you fellers know a good cure?’

  ‘Try coconut oil,’ one said.

  ‘Bay rum and cantharides,’ another said.

  A tea-planter from Assam called Unsworth said, ‘Take my word for it, old man, you’ve got to stimulate the circulation in the scalp. And the way to do that is to dunk your hair in ice-cold water every morning and keep it there for five minutes. Then dry vigorously. You’ve got a fine head of hair at the moment, but you’ll be as bald as a coot in no time if you don’t cure that dandruff. You do as I say, old man.’

  U. N. Savory did indeed have a fine head of black hair, so why in the world should he have wanted to pretend he had dandruff when he hadn’t?

  ‘Thanks a lot, old man,’ U. N. Savory said. ‘I’ll give it a go. See if it works.’

  ‘It’ll work,’ Unsworth told him. ‘My grandmother cured her dandruff that way.’

  ‘Your grandmother?’ someone said. ‘Did she have dandruff?’

  ‘When she combed her hair’, Unsworth said, ‘it looked like it was snowing.’

  For the hundredth time, I told myself that they were all totally and incurably dotty, every one of them, but I was beginning to think now that U. N. Savory might beat them all to it. I sat there staring into my beer and trying to figure out why he should go around trying to kid everyone he had dandruff. Three days later I had the answer.

  It was early evening. We were moving slowly through the Suez Canal and it was hotter than ever. It was my turn to dress first for dinner. While I showered and put on my clothes, U. N. Savory lay on his bunk staring into space. ‘It’s all yours,’ I said at last as I opened the door and went out. ‘See you upstairs.’

  As usual, I seated myself at the bar and began sipping a beer. By gosh, it was hot. The big slowly-revolving fan in the ceiling seemed to be blowing steam out of its blades. Sweat trickled down my neck and under my stiff butterfly collar. I could feel the starch in the collar going soggy around the back. The sinewy sunburnt ones around me didn’t seem to notice the heat. I decided to go out on deck and smoke a pipe before dinner. It would be cooler there. I felt for my pipe. Damnation, I had left it behind. I stood up and made my way downstairs to the cabin and opened the door. There was a strange man sitting in shirtsleeves on U. N. Savory’s bunk and as I stepped inside, the man gave a queer little yelp and jumped to his feet as though a cracker had gone off in the seat of his pants.

  The stranger was totally bald and that is why it took me a second or two to realize that he was in fact none other than U. N. Savory himself. It is extraordinary how hair on the head or the lack of it will completely change a person’s appearance. U. N. Savory looked like a different man. To start with, he looked fifteen years older, and in some subtle way he seemed also to have diminished, grown much shorter and smaller. As I said, he was almost totally bald, and the dome of his head was as pink and shiny as a ripe peach. He was standing up now and holding in his two hands the wig he had been about to put on as I walked in. ‘You had no right to come back!’ he shouted. ‘You said you’d finished!’ Little sparks of fury were flashing in his eyes.

  ‘I’m … I’m most awfully sorry,’ I stammered. ‘I forgot my pipe.’

  He stood there glaring at me with that dark malevolent glint in his eye and I could see little droplets of perspiration oozing out of the pores on his bald head. I felt very bad. I didn’t know what to say next. ‘Just let me get my pipe and I’ll clear out,’ I mumbled.

  ‘Oh no you don’t!’ he shouted. ‘You’ve seen it now and you’re not leaving this room until you’ve made me a promise! You’ve got to promise me you won’t tell a soul! Promise me that!’

  Behind him I could see that curious black leather ‘violin case’ lying open on his bunk, and in it, nestling alongside each other like three large black hairy hedgehogs, lay three more wigs.

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with being bald,’ I said.

  ‘I didn’t ask for your opinion,’ he shouted. He was still very angry. ‘I just want your promise.’

  ‘I won’t tell anyone,’ I said. ‘I give you my word.’

  ‘And you’d better keep it,’ he said.

  I reached out and took hold of the pipe that was lying on my bunk. Then I began rummaging round in various places for my tobacco pouch. U. N. Savory sat down on the lower bunk. ‘I suppose you think I’m crazy,’ he said. Suddenly all the bark had gone out of his voice.

  I said nothing. I could think of nothing to say.

  ‘You do, don’t you?’ he sa