The World and Other Places Read Free Page A

argue theology with a youngwoman I had never met. I thought about the bunk and the Scotch and started feeling sorry for myself. I decided to go and tackle the Purser.
    ‘You stay here until I get back,’ I commanded, ‘I’ll straighten it out.’
    I didn’t straighten it out. The ship was crammed to the lifeboats. The Purser, like me, like any normal person guided by Bible basics, had assumed Gabriel was a man’s name. That’s why we had been yoked together. Second Class ticket holders can’t be choosy. I had to explain all this to her but she didn’t flinch. Either she was as innocent as she looked or she was an old hand. Some of these girls have been milking men since breast-swell. I didn’t want any trouble.
    ‘Top or bottom?’ I asked, getting ready to move my stuff.
    ‘Top,’ she said. ‘I like heights.’
    She climbed up and lay down and I eased myself below, keeping my shoes on, in case my feet smelled. I was disappointed. I had expected to share but I had hoped for some tough guy who wanted late night Scotch and a pack of cards. When you dig under the surface, past the necessities, men and women don’t mix.
    Her head came dipping over the side of the bunk.
    ‘Are you asleep?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘So am I.’
    There was a pause, then she asked me what I did for a living.
    ‘I’m a business man. I do business.’
    She was looking at me upside down, like a big brown bat. She was making me feel sea-sick.
    ‘What about you?’ I said, not caring.
    ‘I’m an aviator.’
    Eight days at sea. One day longer than God needed to invent the whole world, including its holiday pattern. Two days longer than he took to make her Grandmother Eve and my Grandfather Adam. This time I am not falling for the apple.
    We sat up on deck today, Gabriel Angel and myself. She told me she was born in 1937, the day that Amelia Earhart had become the first woman to complete the Atlantic crossing, solo flight. Her granddaddy, as she calls him, told her it was an omen, and that’s why they called her Gabriel, ‘bringer of Good News,’ a bright flying thing.
    Her granddaddy taught her to fly in the mail planes he ran between the islands. He told her she had to be smarter than life, find a way of beating gravity, and to believe in herself as angels do, their bodies bright as dragonflies, great gold wings cut across the sun.
    I’m not against anyone fastening their life to an event of some significance and that way making themselves significant. God knows, we need what footholds we can find on the glass mountain of our existence. Trouble is, you climb and climb, and around middle age, you discover you have spent all the time in the same spot. You thought you were going to be somebody until you slip down into the nobody that you are. I’m telling you because I know.
    She said, ‘I am poor but even the poorest inherit something, their daddy’s eyes, their mother’s courage. I inherited the dreams.’
    I leaned back. I could see in her a piece of the bright hope I once had in myself and it made me sour and angry. It made me feel sorry for her too. I wanted to take both her hands in mine, look her in the eye, and let her see that the world isn’t interested in a little black girl’s dreams.
    She said, ‘Mr Stewart, have you ever been in love?’ She was leaning over the side, watching the ocean. I watched the curve of her spine, the slender tracings of her hips beneath her dress. I wanted to touch her. I don’t know why. She’s too young for me.
    Before I could answer, although I don’t know how I would have answered, she started talking about a man with stars in his hair and arms stretched out like wings to hold her.
    I moved away as soon as I could.

    What is there to say about love? You could sweep up all the words and stack them in the gutter and love wouldn’t be any different, wouldn’t feel any different, the hurt in the heart, the headachy desire that hardly submits to language. What we can’t tame we talk about.