Concerning the Inhibitions

Short Story: Concerning the Inhibitions of Miss Blair

By Judy Tudor

rIS was the night of the Ball. A perfect night, outside, where a soft tropical breeze whispered in the palm-fronds and a large silver moon, theatrical in its appropriateness, hung low over a calm sea.

But, in her little, stuffy hotel room, tiny beads of perspiration stood out along the long line of Miss Ellen Blair’s upper lip and along the hair-line of her frown ing brow. Her body, unused to the tropics, was already so clammy that she lifted her good blue gown from the bed for the fourth time, and for the fourth time re placed it —wondering if she dared delay donning it longer. If she put it on and had to wait too long in that hot-box of a room, its freshness would already be wilted before she got to the Ball.

She clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth in exasperation. From the distance of safe Suburbia this whole trip had seemed the romantic answer to a spinster’s prayer; in reality it was full of complexities which disturbed her routine mind.

Miss Blair was past her thirtieth birth day and left to herself, would have pre ferred the quiet, untroubled existence of a lady on a shelf. Her heart delighted in little, gossipy tea-shop meals with women friends, or an evening at a show in the same company. She took a vicarious de light in other people’s babies and homes and, if she could have gained either re spectably without the necessity of also taking a husband, she would have been very happy. For the few men who had made passes had filled her with alarm and—in her inner being she admitted it —disgust. She was one of that strange army of women who, without any great biological urge, yet crave the panopoly of marriage. But even In this enlightened age there was still a stigma attached to being unwed (and presumably unsought) at thirty. Urged by the unspoken thoughts of her friends, she had there fore grasped at the idea of a trip into the glamorous South Seas, labelling it in her sub-conscious as “my last chance.”

She had on one occasion said to her brother, facetiously arch, but with a de sire to hear his reactions: “I might get myself a rich planter husband!”

Her brother had lived for long years in New Guinea before the war, and he look ed her up and down in silent appraisal before committing himself. “H’m! I’ve seen worse go off, up there. Not alto gether a matter of supply and demand, either. Women seem to lose their in hibitions in the Islands.”

SHE mopped carefully around her make up with a bath towel, pulled the blue silk frock over her head, shook out the folds of the skirt and pinned a long trail of cream frangipanni from her left shoulder across the not unshapely curve of her firmly controlled breasts.

She combed out the freshly-set waves of her hair, dabbed perfume behind her ears; then, throwing the window even wider, turned out the light and sat down in the wisp of breeze that found its way in from the night, to await her friends.

The Beales had been good to her. She dubbed them, in her mind, real Islands people. They were full of bright gossip

and local prejudices and, if they lacked knowledge of or interest in the world of affairs outside, Miss Blair was disposed to accept that as part of their charm— their elevation above the plane of the sordid reality of civilisation.

They had asked her to dine, had in troduced her to their friends and had taken her, all within one week, to three cocktail parties, the town’s most popular form of entertaining. Miss Blair had tried to find these parties exciting, but she knew that they cut into her dinner hour at the hotel, so that she missed that meal, and then left her high and dry for the rest of the evening. By the end of the week she would gladly have ex changed half a dozen of these social affairs for one really hearty, informal: “Come out and see us and stay to dinner!”

Miss Blair was no drinker. Apart from the fact that it made her feel a little bit of a devil, she got no kick from imbibing alcohol, and she considered it bad for the health. On the morning after each of these mild debauches, she dosed her self freely with Epsom Salts, in order to remove the last traces of alcohol from her system.

The Beales had also arranged her part ner for that night. It was a blind date, but she had heard all about him: good English family, Colonial Service, an African appointment before the Pacific.

As Miss Blair ran idly through the ad vantages of being a Colonial Service wife with a change of environment every few years—anywhere from the West Indies to West Africa—the screech of a car horn came from below. The Beales had arrived ♦ * ♦ MISS BLAIR’S partner was a plump young man of maybe 32 who looked too large for his clothes. He ad mitted to this early in the evening. “I’ve not worn these pants,” he said, “since before the War, and I could scarcely get into them.”

Miss Blair looked at his lower extremi ties, which stretched below the regula tion mess-jacket of the particular Col onial Service branch to which he belong ed. The pants were, she decided, a cross between dress trousers and a pair of jodphurs. They fitted his shanks tightly, and on his feet were boots—boots, equip ped with spurs.

Spurs! She was an inveterate movie goer and the line of a song leapt into her mind, turning over and over among the whole brew of ideas conceived in the past week: “I’ve got sours that jingle, jangle, jingle ...” went the ditty. She giggled and turned to Mrs. Beale. “Why spurs, for pity’s sake?”

Mrs. Beale rested an arched and feline paw on Miss Blair’s lap. “Dennis Ffrench- Brown’s? But they are part of the uni form. Don’t you think they are cute?”

“I think they would be a menace on a crowded dance floor. But perhaps he knows how to manage them.” Time prov ed that she was right. The band had been playing the last few bars of a waltz as the party moved on to the floor, and Miss Blair and her spurred cavalier had time to perform no more than five stiff-legged steps before the music drooled

to an easy finish. They returned to their seats and the men, with single purpose, drifted resolutely away in the direction of the bar.

And here, in this happy sanctuary, Mr.

Dennis Ffrench-Brown managed his spurs very well, and remained for the rest of the evening.

The other male members of the party made fleeting visits to the ladies who, on the whole, seemed content enough to amuse themselves circulating among their friends, taking a drink here and another there, and occasionally dancing.

Miss Blair followed in their wake, de terminedly bright as were they, and throwing her contribution into the giddy conversational pool, yet all the while conscious that disillusion gnawed at her vitals, that the soft music, the palm trees, the social whirl, and above all the im portunate suitors of her romantic dreams were withering away to dust and ashes.

Worst of all, her inhibitions were still with her, sitting like a hard lump under her breast bone.

Between bright facial contortions, she watched the dancers. “I should have thought the Americans would have taught them better than this,” she commented to herself. “Why, people don’t dance this way any more.”

The dancers were grim, there was no other word for it. Their performance might have been dictated by the Colonial Office itself, and had only one visible purpose: the annihilation of distance.

And this thev did well, throwing out their legs before them and marching around the room to the dance music without regard to rhythm and without any outward and visible signs of enjoy ment.

But, apart from her general feeling of frustration, it was those inhibitions that worried her most. Why could she not feel that this was all worth while? Why must her second self be forever detached, spying upon her reactions; weighing pros and cons? In desperation. Miss Blair reached for the whisky bottle that some one, in passing, had left upon the table and poured herself half a tumbler of the raw liquor. * * * OUT of Miss Blair’s haze and the tropic night came a large Government car, driven bv a native chauffeur and into it. with varying degrees of difficulty, got Mr. Ffrench-Brown and Miss Blair and two other couoles, whose existence is out side the scope of this story.

Miss Blair was not exactly tight, but she felt singularly free from care. Her inhibitions, for once, floated freely above her head, like an almost visible aura.

When Mr. Ffrench-Brown. who had ap peared, still complete with spurs, while the band played the Anthem, squeezed his damp person in beside her and gave an order to the chauffeur, she sighed deeply and allowed her blue-clad form to relax against him.

To make more room for the others, Mr.

Ffrench-Brown slid an arm around Miss Blair; and, possibly as a reflex action to finding himself in such a position after a night of hilarity at the Ball of the season, but certainly not from passion, he stroked her bare arm.

When the other couples had been de livered, they remained in the same posi tion—he passively, it is true. Then the night, and the occasion and the whisky combined in Miss Blair, and there arose in her a great desire to unburden her self “This is what I have always dream ed about,” she said, perhaps a little thickly, but with intensity.

Ffrench-Brown roused himself. He was

English and possibly his inhibitions were more firmly fixed than were hers. He was also more used to alcohol. He said, “Really? Er—what do you mean, exact ly?”

“The moonlight! And the sea! Just the atmosphere—it feels so different. At home I’m a very quiet person, but, here and now, I feel that nothing really mat ters but living! I feel so free I could take wings and soar to the moon —if I only had someone to soar with. I wonder if you know what I mean?’* Ffrench-Brown was a man of simple and uncomplicated mind and he thought that he did see. He ran a finger around his damp collar, his blue eyes bulged a fraction more than usual and he com mented to himself, “You certainly never can tell from outside appearances.”

Aloud he said: “Ah! The glamour of the tropics.” And squeezed her arm a little harder.

“Oh, dear, don’t let’s go home yet,” cried Miss Blair, placing a hand briefly but persuasively upon his knee. “Let’s get out and sit on the beach for a while.

The sea is like beaten silver there in the moonlight, and this is a moment I will treasure for a long time to come.”

The idea turned over for some seconds in his fume-filled brain, but then Ffrench-Brown caught on. He was not enthusiastic; he felt somehow that he was unequal to taking the lady cruising around the moon as she wished, but he was, he hoped by gad, a gentleman. He told the driver to stop.

Once out of the car, Miss Blair threw her arms wide and her head back, the better to drink in the tropic breeze, then holding her skirts high she ran a few yards down the beach like an ungainly bird Ffrench-Brown followed more sedately, the cool breeze striking cold against his sweat-drenched clothes, his uniform pants creaking with each heavy step in the sand, and the exhilaration of the bar suddenly departing from him.

It was unfortunate that in this playful mood Miss Blair should espy, riding on her sea of beaten silver, a native boat tied to a small jutting pile of rocks. She called back over her shoulder: “A little boat! Oh. Dennis—l hope I may call you Dennis—do let’s sit here a while.”

But her voice blew away on the breeze and Dennis, still lumbering over the sands, heard nothing, while Miss Blair, putting her words into action, crossed the rocks and clambered unsteadily into the small boat. She turned and called again to Ffrench-Brown. “Do come on!”

By this time he had reached the water’s edge, and stood watching in some emazement. “Where are you going?” he asked at last.

“Going?” Miss Blair, startled by some thing in his voice, looked suddenly for the pier, now alas a dozen yards away, and fast receding as the small boat was sucked further and further out on the falling tide. No longer was it tied to tne jetty of rocks.

Then Miss Blair, realising that she must have unloosed the painter, stood up and shrieked: “I’m drifting! I’m drift ing!”

“The paddles! The paddles!” yelled Ffrench-Brown in reply, making paddling motions with his arms.

Miss Blair fell on her knees immedi ately but one swift look convinced her that ’ there were no paddles. “None!

None!” she wailed across the widening gulf between them. “Do something, for pity’s sake! I can’t swim. Help! Help!

Ffrench-Brown was nothing if not a gentleman. There was only one thing to

do and he did it—he plunged into the tide, uniform pants, boots, spurs and all.

He made swift progress through the shallows, but when the water had reached his waist, with his pants shrinking around his plump person and threatening to em balm him, the boat, carrying the weeping and now strictly sober Miss Blair, still bobbed defiantly a good two yards from his outstretched hands.

At last Ffrench-Brown submerged alto gether and, when he surfaced, blowing and spurting water like a whale, the weight of his clothes and other appurten ances, designed by the Colonial Office, not for swimming, but in order that their young officers might cut a dash in Col onial society, threatened to strangle him entirely.

With a super-human effort, born of the knowledge that the moment might well be his last, he struck out frantically and by luck his fingers closed on the stern of the boat.

“Help me in,” he gasped, trying to pull himself up. The small cockle-shell rocked alarmingly.

“You’ll upset it,” cried the lady, but something in the intensity of her squire’s voice impelled her to do her best and due to their combined efforts Ffrench- Brown finally flopped over the stern of the boat and lay panting in a pool of water.

Miss Blair again collapsed in the bows, her blue frock a pulp, the trail of now mangled frangipanni rising and falling with her agitated sobs and a hard lump settling back beneath her breast bone.

Her inhibitions had returned. * * * 1 BELIEVE your Miss Blair is catching the next boat back to Sydney?”

Mrs. Beale looked at her visitor from under knit brows. It was, she realised, a lead-in, but it was on a subject which in terested her profoundly and as such was too good to pass up.

“Yes,” she said. “She says that she is thoroughly disillusioned with the Islands.

Of course, its the outcome of that un fortunate boat business. Ellen is such a quiet girl and I shouldn’t have believed it at all. if my husband hadn’t seen them come ashore himself. He was go ing to work on the morning after the Ball, and when he was passing the wharf he was attracted by a large crowd. Some fishermen had just towed Ellen and Dennis Ffrench-Brown in.

“I can’t get any sense out of Ellen, but it appears that they parked the car out along the beach road and went for a sail in this boat. They seem to have spent the whole night in it. out near the reef.

Anyhow that’s where the natives found them at dawn. My husband said that he’d never seen such wrecks. Both of them must have been soaking wet at some time; their clothes were in a ter rible state and those tight pants of Dennis’ were split right down the back.

Dennis got a taxi and my husband took Ellen right back to her hotel. He says that she was quite worn out!

“She swears nothing happened—that it was onlv an accident. But you can’t fool me People don’t go cruising in boats in the moonlight for nothing. I should have thought that Dennis was too much of a stick to try anything like that. But there you are, you never can tell.”

Mrs. Beale looked thoughtful. “I have always maintained,” she said, that too long in the tropics is bad for any man.

It gives them unexpected kinks. I shall be glad when Ellen gets away Poor girl, whatever happened that night has affect ed her deeply. She says it will be a long, long time before she can ever forget.