Free The Refuge by Kenneth Mackenzie Page A

certain objective, I made my way down the stair opposite the purser’s office to the second saloon deck, where the atmosphere was even more like used bath-water, slack with steam and the smell of oil, cigarette smoke, linoleum, soap and crowded humanity. Here the cabins, most of which had their doors hooked back as the stewards, in a sudden passion of attentive service, made ready to take up what they could seize of the fantastic assortment of luggage, were of four or six berths, according as they opened inwards, or out upon the second-class promenade deck. Much of the baggage had a cheap smartness about it, the
ersatz
smartness of poverty, or of wealth disguised as poverty, which characterized so many things—and people—arriving at these shores from Europe in those days of fear.
    I walked aimlessly aft along the starboard-side corridor, with the bathrooms and toilets and stewards’ offices on the right, the open cabin doorways on the left. There was a softly-vibrating silence and a noticeable smell of women passengers, their cosmetics and clothes and bodies, mingled with the steamy, astringent odour of hot sea-water and the smell of the imperfectly aseptic toilets. No doubt I noticed this atmosphere more than the passengers would. I was already beginning to find it intolerable, and hastened my steps towards the after companionway which would take me up to the air of the winter morning, when a glance inside one of the cabins made me pause; and so it was I first saw Irma.
    She was sitting on the deck of the cabin, on the bare linoleum, with her feet stretched out straight before her, her knees together and her face hidden in both hands. Her dark hair, cut so that it hung like a mediaeval page’s almost to her shoulders, fell forward over her fingers and wrists, and what made me pause, instead of passing on more hastily still, was that as she rocked back and forth she was moaning to herself like someone suffering the pain of a badly aching tooth. It was of toothache, in fact, that I immediately thought; and some impulse entirely foreign to my character, something I can still only describe and think of as a fatal prompting of chance, made me turn towards the doorway and say, ‘What is the matter, mademoiselle? Can I help you?’
    I was surprised at myself, and she too was surprised, as she showed by taking her hands from her face and springing easily to her feet in an uninterrupted single movement, like a dancer or an acrobat. Erect, she stood quite still.
    I saw she was wearing pyjamas. Later I learned that she wore pyjamas at all possible times of the day, hurriedly changing into them the moment she came in from the street, and sometimes even wearing them out of doors when she walked at night about Kings Cross, visiting friends. I have never considered them proper garments for a woman, even to sleep in; certainly not to wear, uncovered, by day, when they give a grotesque emphasis to whatever bodily beauty they affect to conceal; but her they suited unaccountably. It was not until the last evening of her life that I remarked on what seemed to me their impropriety, and that was only because the pyjama suit she had then put on—a new one added to her large collection only that day—went beyond all bounds of decency, being of completely transparent white nylon.
    This morning the pyjamas were wholly decent, and over them she wore a knee-length house coat of some thick warm stuff like felt, dark green and cut in the Chinese style with a high collar closely fastened by a gold button the size of a florin. I imagine she had been up on deck with the rest of the passengers, to observe by dawn’s light the end of the run up the coast past Botany Bay to the dramatic turn and entry into the huge harbour between the vertical cliffs of the Heads. Below decks in that atmosphere of fug such a coat was unnecessarily warm, even though these people from Europe feel the mild Australian cold more than they ever felt their own white icebound