The New Collected Short Stories (37 page)

‘Hullo, who’s that, what’s there?’

‘March, sir, Lionel March. I’m afraid I’ve disturbed you.’

‘No, no, Lionel, that’s all right, I wasn’t asleep. Ye gods, what gorgeous pyjamas the fellow’s wearing. What’s he going about like a lone wolf for? Eh?’

‘Too hot in my cabin, sir. Nothing sinister.’

‘How goes the resident wog?’

‘The resident wog he sleeps.’

‘By the way, what’s his name?’

‘Moraes, I believe.’

‘Exactly. Mr Moraes is in for trouble.’

‘Oh. What for, sir?’

‘For being on board. Lady Manning has just heard the story. It turns out that he gave someone in the London office a fat bribe to get him a passage though the boat was full, and as an easy way out they put him into your cabin. I don’t care who gives or takes bribes. Doesn’t interest me. But if the Company thinks it can treat a British officer like that it’s very much mistaken. I’m going to raise hell at Bombay.’

‘He’s not been any particular nuisance,’ said Lionel after a pause.

‘I daresay not. It’s the question of our prestige in the East, and it is also very hard luck on you, very hard. Why don’t you come and sleep on deck like the rest of the gang?’

‘Sound idea, I will.’

‘We’ve managed to cordon off this section of the deck, and woe betide anything black that walks this way, if it’s only a beetle. Good night.’

‘Good night, sir.’ Then something snapped and he heard himself shouting, ‘Bloody rubbish, leave the kid alone.’

‘Wh – what’s that, didn’t catch,’ said the puzzled Colonel.

‘Nothing sir, sorry sir.’ And he was back in the cabin.

Why on earth had he nearly betrayed himself just as everything was going right? There seemed a sort of devil around. At the beginning of the voyage he had tempted him to throw himself overboard for no reason, but this was something more serious. ‘When you come back to the cabin you will not be you,’ Cocoa had said; and was it so?

However, the lower berth was empty, that was something, the boy must have gone to the lav, and he slipped out of his effeminate pyjamas and prepared to finish the night where he belonged – a good sleep there would steady him. His forearm was already along the rail, his foot poised for the upspring, when he saw what had happened.

‘Hullo, Cocoanut, up in my berth for a change?’ he said in clipped officer-tones, for it was dangerous to get angry. ‘Stay there if you want to, I’ve just decided to sleep on deck.’ There was no reply, but his own remarks pleased him and he decided to go further. ‘As a matter of fact I shan’t be using our cabin again excerpt when it is absolutely necessary,’ he continued. ‘It’s scarcely three days to Bombay, so I can easily manage, and I shan’t, we shan’t be meeting again after disembarkation. As I said earlier on, the whole thing has been a bit of a mistake. I wish we . . .’ He stopped. If only it wasn’t so difficult to be kind! But his talk with the Colonel and his communion with the Mater prevented it. He must keep with his own people, or he would perish. He added, ‘Sorry to have to say all this.’

‘Kiss me.’

‘No’

The words fell quietly after his brassiness and vulgarity and he could not answer them. The face was close to his now, the body curved away seductively into darkness.

‘Kiss me.’

‘No.’

‘Noah? No? Then I kiss you.’ And he lowered his mouth on to the muscular forearm and bit it.

Lionel yelped with the pain.

‘Bloody bitch, wait till I . . . ‘ Blood oozed between the gold-bright hairs. ‘You wait . . .’ And the scar in his groin reopened. The cabin vanished. He was back in a desert fighting savages. One of them asked for mercy, stumbled, and found none.

The sweet act of vengeance followed, sweeter than ever for both of them, and as ecstasy hardened into agony his hands twisted the throat. Neither of them knew when the end came, and he when he realized it felt no sadness, no remorse. It was part of a curve that had long been declining, and had nothing to do with death. He covered again with his warmth and kissed the closed eyelids tenderly and spread the bright-coloured scarf. Then he burst out of the stupid cabin on to the deck, and naked and with the seeds of love on him he dived into the sea.

The scandal was appalling. The Big Eight did their best, but it was soon all over the boat that a British officer had committed suicide after murdering a half-caste. Some of the passengers recoiled from such news. Others snuffled for more. The secretary of Moraes was induced to gossip and hint at proclivities, the cabin steward proved to have been over-tipped, the Master at Arms had had complaints which he had managed to stifle, the Purser had been suspicious throughout, and the doctor who examined the injuries divulged that strangulation was only one of them, and that March had been a monster in human form, of whom the earth was well rid. The cabin was sealed up for further examination later, and the place where the two boys had made love and the tokens they had exchanged in their love went on without them to Bombay. For Lionel had been only a boy.

His body was never recovered – the blood on it quickly attracted the sharks. The body of his victim was consigned to the deep with all possible speed. There was a slight disturbance at the funeral. The native crew had become interested in it, no one understood why, and when the corpse was lowered were heard betting which way it would float. It moved northwards 
– 
contrary to the prevailing current – and there were clapping of hands and some smiles.

Finally Mrs March had to be informed. Colonel Arbuthnot and Lady Manning were deputed for the thankless task. Colonel Arbuthnot assured her that her son’s death had been accidental, whatever she heard to the contrary; that he had stumbled overboard in the darkness during a friendly talk they had had together on deck. Lady Manning spoke with warmth and affection of his good looks and good manners and his patience ‘with us old fogies at our Bridge’. Mrs Marsh thanked them for writing but made no comment. She also received a letter from Lionel himself – the one that should have been intercepted in the post – and she never mentioned his name again.

Forster's short stories are amusing, profound, lighthearted, mysterious, wise and witty. He was a master of the art. This new collection of his stories is the most comprehensive collection available. Besides the classic anthologies originally published as
The Celestial Omnibus
and
The Eternal Moment
, it includes the three most important stories published after Forster's death: ‘Dr Woolacott’, ‘The Life to Come’ and ‘The Other Boat’.

‘These fantasies . . .’ said E.M. Forster in his introduction to the first edition of 
Collected Short Stories
in 1947, ‘. . . represent all that I have accomplished in a particular line.’ This was true in its way, but there was a parallel, hidden line of fiction-writing, on the theme of homosexual love, which Forster kept private during his lifetime, showing his work only to selected friends. T.E. Lawrence, for instance, wrote to Forster that ‘Dr Woolacott’ was the ‘most powerful thing I ever read . . . more charged with the real high explosive than anything I've ever met yet.’

P.N. Furbank, Reader in Literature at the Open University and author of
E.M. Forster: A Life
, has written a valuable introduction to this new edition which evaluates the short stories in the context of Forster's life and his other writing.

Jacket design: Bartholomew Wilkins and Partners

Front cover illustration:
E.M. Forster
by Dora Carrington

(National Portrait Gallery)

ISBN 0-283-99195-X

Sidgwick & Jackson Limited

1 Tavistock Chambers, Bloomsbury Way,

London WC1A 2SG