The Ginger Tree Read online

  In the morning I felt uneasy about our quarrel and worried that she really would write Mama, which I did not want because things like I am a fast woman would be terribly hurtful. Mama is proper, too, though not nearly so strict in her thinking as Mrs C, to whom breathing is almost a sin. I wonder what she would think of her own snoring if she knew about it? Perhaps Mr Carswell has always been afraid to tell her?

  I got up and washed and so on with the curtains on the lower berth still drawn but with the feeling that I was being watched from behind them. Well if Mrs C was doing that now she knows about my corsets. However, she can’t say anything because if she does I will know she was peeping. It would be a little like someone watching to see if you close your eyes through prayers, if they see you don’t they haven’t closed their own, so they are unable to mention the matter. I only close mine when I am serious about my prayers, but not for the Minister’s prayers. In our church there were some people who kept their eyes shut for the blessing on King Edward and all the members of the Royal Family, but after that opened them.

  I could see the Island of Ceylon from the deck before I went down to breakfast but I wasn’t very interested in it. At the table I did not speak one word to the Malacca Judge and I think he knows why. I ate a good breakfast, for I am very hungry these days, the porridge lumpy, but excellent bacon and eggs, and they make lovely crisp hot rolls on board. I had three. Before I was finished Mrs C came in. We all said good-morning very politely. Afterwards I went up on deck and sat in my chair, on the side away from Ceylon. Mrs C came to me there and said she thought we had both been a little hasty last night and I said yes we had, and for a minute I thought she was going to bend down to kiss me, but she didn’t, maybe because she does not care to bend too much with her figure. Anyway, it was a reconciliation and I decided to do what she wanted in Colombo in spite of what Mr Davies had said about going down the coast a little way to a place called Mount Lavinia. He didn’t actually make this an invitation, perhaps because he knew he would have to take Mrs C with us in the train, or carriage, or whatever it is.

  SS Mooldera

  January 18th, 1903

  Well, we have now seen all we are going to of ‘India’s coral strand’. Perhaps Ceylon is not really India, I have never been very good at geography, though I am becoming more interested in it now. I have taken to carrying this notebook in my workbag and writing in it when I am pretending to write letters. I did try to write a letter to Margaret Blair in Aviemore, but I wanted more to write in this book so ended up with a postcard to her showing the harbour of Ceylon. That is about all I saw. I went ashore with Mrs C and we had to wait for her friends’ carriage in a very hot shed with a tin roof. When it came the carriage was a rattly old four-wheeler with a black hood up that was smelly, I suppose to keep off the sun, though we had our parasols. The horse was all skin and bones. We drove through streets with white buildings and lots of dark-skinned people in variegated clothes that were quite pretty if too plain for my taste, the women draped like Greek statues in museums, only better covered of course. After that we came to a part with gardens, very thick plantings, but not much colour, or at least not that I saw, mostly some kind of lily. Then the horse pulled us slowly up a sloping drive with palms on each side that reminded me of the pineapples with their tops left on you see in that expensive Princes Street fruit shop sometimes.

  Mrs C’s friends were waiting for us on the steps of a white bungalow with huge verandahs furnished like rooms. Their name was Johnson. Mr Johnson didn’t speak much, but his wife did, all the time, mostly to Mrs C. She wasn’t interested in me except to ask Mrs C about whom I was marrying, and she seemed quite surprised when she heard, staring at me rather rudely, I thought. Luncheon took a very long time. Whenever she wanted service Mrs Johnson didn’t ring a bell, she clapped her hands and a manservant came in. I think there must have been plenty of servants in that house, I saw three men working in the garden. I wondered if I would soon be clapping my hands when I wanted anything to have people come running. It is rather a strange thought. At home we have only Cook and Jessie, though of course quite a lot of people in South Edinburgh have a good many servants. One of Mama’s friends has a page who wears a uniform when he opens the door to ladies on the ‘At Home’ Thursdays, but the page is really the under gardener. We had tea at the Johnsons’, then drove back to the jetty for the last launch out to the Mooldera and that was all I saw of Colombo. Mr Davies had not gone to Mount Lavinia alone, he was waiting at the top of the gangway.

  SS Mooldera

  January 19th, 1903

  There has been terrible trouble. Tonight at dinner the dessert was very good because the ship had taken on a lot of fresh fruit and we had to taste many strange things, though most of them seemed insipid to me. The stewards brought us finger bowls for the first time on this voyage, perhaps because in this calm sea there was no danger of them spilling. Even Mrs C tried a fruit, though she had said when she saw the selection that they might be poison to Western stomachs. In Hong Kong she does not touch anything raw that comes from China, only vegetables which must be cooked. She was talking of servant trouble when the Judge, rather suddenly, leaned over the table to say to me that there was to be a concert that night in the men’s smoking-room and that Mrs Price had agreed to sing, but she had no one to accompany her on the piano, and would I oblige? Before I could say anything Mrs C spoke for me, saying: ‘Miss Mackenzie has never been in the smoking-room since we left Tilbury docks and she has no intention of entering it.’ The Judge was looking at me as though he had not heard Mrs C at all. I took a deep breath, then said yes I would certainly accompany Mrs Price if she had the sheet music for her songs. The Judge thanked me, never looking at Mrs C, and then added that it would be quite a large attendance because an invitation had been issued to the Second Class passengers to attend. At this Mrs C put down her napkin, stood, and without giving any of us a glance, went out of the dining-room. The news that the Second Class would be at the concert made me a little uneasy. I had thought they were only allowed up on our deck for Divine Service, which only three or four of them attend. This is a Church of England service read from a book by the First Officer. They say the Captain is without God. The responses from the congregation are very poor and the singing dreadful, and usually I don’t really take part for the Church of England service is strange to me, though I suppose I shall have to get used to it when I marry Richard. After the service they serve beef tea on deck if it is calm, and in the hallway if it is rough.

  On the stairs up from the dining-room I decided that if I was to accompany Mrs Price before a lot of people I could not do it in the brown dress but would wear the voile with spots which needs a special petticoat. Mrs C always goes to the ladies’ drawing-room after dinner for a time before going to bed at half-past nine, but this time she was in the cabin, sitting very straight on the little sofa. As soon as I went in she said in a very loud voice: ‘Mary Mackenzie, do you consider yourself a true Christian?’ I was quite shocked. Even our Minister had not asked me that when I was accepted into the South Morningside Church after Infant Baptism. She went on to a lot more, about her duty as my chaperone which was a sacred trust to my dear mother and whose wishes with regard to me Mrs C knew very well indeed. From what she said and the way she said it the men’s smoking-room could have been a place of special wickedness, but I have looked in quite often through the glass doors and all there was to be seen was men reading with cigars in their mouths, or sometimes playing cards or chess. When I spoke I was a little surprised at the way my own voice sounded. I asked Mrs C if she would kindly go up to the drawing-room as usual because I had to dress for the concert and would like the cabin to myself. I thought for a minute she was going to refuse, but she got up and went through the curtain into the passage. A few seconds later she came back to say: ‘It may interest you to know that I have available, should I wish, the means by which to send a message to your intended husband.’ When she had gone I was shaking and had to sit down.


  At quarter to nine, still feeling upset, I went up the stairs to the main deck and though I had a feeling that Mrs C would be watching from the drawing-room I did not look in there to see if she was. The doors to the smoking-room had been fastened back, the chairs arranged in rows as for Divine Service in the drawing-room. The piano was in a very bright light. Some of the chairs were already occupied and there were small tables to hold glasses, with two stewards already serving alcoholic drinks. The Judge was in charge and came over to me at once, calling on Mrs Price to join us. She was wearing a dress I had not seen before, green silk, very plain, but a good colour with her hair which is quite bright, not auburn, but with orange-seeming glints through it. Somehow I wasn’t so pleased with my voile, there is perhaps too much detail with those ruffles and the colour not quite right, a sort of blue-mauve, the spots white. I couldn’t help thinking that with my face flushed pink, as I could feel it was, I was not looking my best. Usually my skin is like ivory, and I have never been threatened by rosy cheeks.

  The Judge introduced me to Mrs Price to whom I had not spoken before and she smiled quite sweetly while we exchanged politenesses, after which she gave me her music. On top was ‘Pale Hands I Loved Beside the Shalimar’, something of a surprise because when I have heard it once or twice it had always been a man’s song and I remember that at one Edinburgh musical evening some of the ladies said that it was rather unpleasantly suggestive. Her other song was the ‘Londonderry Air’ with the Danny Boy words, and her encore ‘Where the Mountains of Mourne’ etc., which made me wonder if she has Irish connections.

  The Judge led us to seats which were not with the others but at an angle to them, so that the audience could look at us even while we were not performing, which I didn’t like. It was a surprise to see that one of the other performers was the First Officer who reads the Divine Service, a rather solemn-looking man who does not seem to preside over a very cheerful table in the dining saloon. There was also the ship’s doctor who sat down on the other side of me from Mrs Price and we spoke for the first time. He asked me if I was going to sing and I said I was just an accompanist and he told me that for his sins he gave humorous recitations, but did not have a large repertoire because there was no need to increase it, his audiences changing on every voyage. He is a gingery sort of man with almost greenish eyes and doesn’t look old when he smiles. Also, he has no moustache, which is a good thing, because I don’t like ginger moustaches. I think I would find it very embarrassing to go to him as a doctor, he has a way of looking that is too bold. His name is Dr Waterford. Perhaps Mrs C is right about something in his past, but if that is the case it seems to sit lightly on him.

  While I was talking to the doctor the lady with the two children from the Second Class came in. She was wearing a white dress that was quite pretty and had her hair dressed very well in a simple style. She stood in the doorway looking more frightened than I had felt, and if I had not been a performer I think I would have gone over to welcome her. Fortunately the Judge turned and saw her and he did that, very pleasantly in a nice old-gentlemanly manner. When he wishes to, the Judge can be very agreeable, and I think it is quite wrong of him to goad me in connection with Mrs C, which is what I am beginning to see he is doing. Why? While the lady from the Second Class was being shown to her seat I saw the wife of the Consul in Swatow staring at her. For once I agree with Mrs C. I do not care for that woman. She had on yet another new dress of cream-coloured Shantung silk cut very low in front with a lace collar that was boned to stand up all around her neck almost like the collars you see in pictures of Queen Elizabeth. The collar seemed to me to call attention to her face, which is very hard, and certainly not young. I think she uses paint. Perhaps she smokes in private? Mrs C says that in these times of lax morals there are ladies who do, though this might just be one of her exaggerations.

  Perhaps because I was looking at her the lady from Swatow looked at me, only she was staring. Suddenly I realised that I should have worn my corset under the voile and that she suspected I wasn’t, and was just waiting for me to walk over to the piano to make sure, perhaps preparing to say something to the people around her, who were men. I wanted to run from the smoking-room and down to the cabin and I was very hot, and could feel the flush coming again which would make me look dreadful. I wondered for a minute if I might escape by saying that I felt faint and must go out on deck, but put away this idea because it would be running from something I had said I would do. It seemed as though everyone in those other seats was staring at us and from the burning I felt in my face I was sure it was now bright red. Suddenly Dr Waterford leaned towards me and said: ‘No one seems to be thinking about refreshment for the entertainers. I feel the need of some Dutch courage myself, and how would you fancy a lemon squash, Miss Mackenzie?’

  Though I was sure he only made the suggestion because I looked as if I might burst into flames, I was very grateful for his consideration and thanked him. He went off to the hatch himself instead of calling one of the Goanese stewards, and while he was away the Judge announced the first item which was to be general singing of a song he said we all knew that had been made famous by none other than Miss Marie Lloyd. I did not know the song. I had heard of Miss Lloyd, of course, but Mama does not approve of music halls, so I never saw her on the stage. I have only been to the theatre three times, once to see a Shakespeare play, The Tempest and twice to Gilbert and Sullivan operas. The Judge led the singing in a voice that must have been quite good when he was young, a baritone, and it was mostly the men in the audience who took up the chorus, I did not hear any ladies’ voices at all, though the Swatow Consul’s wife was waving time with her ivory fan. I knew that Mrs C, if she was listening, would be shocked by the words, which were something about how a little of what you fancy does you good.

  The men were still roaring that chorus when Dr Waterford came back with the refreshment, and I thought the lemon squash had rather a queer taste, not as sweet as I had been expecting, but I was grateful for it, and after even a few sips began to feel a little better. The doctor seemed to be enjoying his Dutch courage, and had been long enough at the hatch to empty a glass before the one in his hand. I noticed that the Swatow lady was drinking what looked very like whisky, too. I knew by then that Mrs C had been right about one thing, Mama would not have wished me to be at this drinking concert, let alone have me perform. Already some of the men, and they were not from the Second Class, were making loud jokes in one corner and the Judge was forced to call for silence before he announced the next item which was the First Officer reciting ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’ by Lord Tennyson. It is not a piece I care for. During it I sat thinking that I hated the voile dress and would never wear it again.

  The next performer was a man who must be more than forty whom I have watched playing shuffleboard, but not spoken to. The Judge said he was a tin mine engineer from somewhere in Malaya, and the man explained before he sang, unaccompanied, that his is quite a lonely life and that he has entertained himself by collecting native songs, the one that he was going to sing being from his Chinese coolies. It was a very strange little tune, if you could call it that, and sung in native language, quite meaningless, but I rather liked it, and I clapped quite hard for an encore which he must have heard, for he looked at me, then smiled and said he would give us a Malay song, this time about a lover lamenting his faithless sweetheart. I had the feeling he looked at me quite often while singing, which made me uncomfortable and some of the men, who perhaps understood the Malaya language, were laughing at the words as though they were suggestive. I didn’t like the Malaya song at all. Also, I was beginning to become very nervous again about when it would be the turn of Mrs Price and me, so I didn’t pay a great deal of attention to Dr Waterford’s performance. It was an extract from The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens and spoken in low-class English accents with ‘welly’ for ‘very’ and such things which meant I didn’t understand a lot of it. During the recitation I finished my glass of lemon squash
quite quickly and though I was no cooler from it, I did feel less jumpy.

  Though I should have been expecting it, I was still startled to hear the Judge say that now Mrs Price would sing accompanied by Miss Mackenzie at the piano. As I stood up I realised that I had not really looked at the music and also that I hadn’t heard the piano played this evening. For all I knew there might be dead keys. When I sat down the stool was so low it was like trying to reach up to a shelf and the audience, seeing this, began to laugh. I had to get up again and spin the stool almost as high as it would go, and then I could not push it back far enough because, like all the furniture on the ship, it was fastened to the floor against rolling. From the way Mrs Price was looking at me it was plain she did not like people to laugh before she started to sing.

  I played the introductory bars, the sound like an Italian barrel organ. I was too fast, Mrs Price likes to take her time. She sounded as though a bag of small stones were being jiggled on a string in her throat, and no one could have made out one word that she was singing. One of the hooks at the back of my dress gave way. I could feel the gap, but had to play on wondering how many others would go. The Swatow lady was probably wondering that, too. And maybe the men. I was sure that everyone was watching those hooks and eyes, and not Mrs Price.

  The Indian song by Mrs Finden was slow enough but ‘Danny Boy’ crawled. I thought we would never finish. I felt I should have been grinding the piano slowly with a crank, not trying to get sound from the keys. The worst thing happened then; while there were two stanzas of ‘Danny Boy’ to go, I became suddenly dizzy. For a moment I thought it might be the ship, then I knew it was not, for the smoking-room was moving around me. I could scarcely read the music and if there had been any new notes I could not have finished the piece. I just managed. Then, during the applause and calls for an encore, I knew I was going to be sick in one minute, or two at the most. I got up and walked past all those faces towards the door. I was swaying. I have never walked like that before in my life, as though my feet were going down on cotton wool, not the carpet. I just kept looking at the doors. I got out into the hallway and just managed to reach the deck, but the railing was too far. I had to stop and bend over.