But it resulted in a change in the watch list and Rupe put me on with Prudence Mathews.
I had always liked Pru without paying much attention to her. You had to look twice to know that she was pretty. But she had a way of looking up at you that made you feel important. Up to the time I started standing watches with her I had more or less left the girls alone; I guess I was “being true to Maudie.” But by then I was writing this confession story for Doe Devereaux; somehow writing things down gives them finality. I said to myself, “Why not? Tom, old boy, Maudie is as definitely out of your life as if one of you were dead. But life goes on, right here in this bucket of wind.”
I didn’t do anything drastic; I just enjoyed Pru’s company as much as possible… which turned out to be a lot.
I’ve heard that when the animals came aboard the Ark two by two, Noah separated them port and starboard. The Elsie isn’t run that way. Chet and Mei-Ling had found it possible to get well enough acquainted to want to make it permanent. A little less than half of the crew had come aboard as married couples; the rest of us didn’t have any obstacles put in our way if we had such things on our minds.
But somehow without its ever showing we were better chaperoned than is usual back dirtside. It didn’t seem organized … and yet it must have been. If somebody was saying good night a little too long in a passageway after the lights were dimmed, it would just happen that Uncle Alfred had to get up about then and shuffle down the passageway. Or maybe it would be Mama O’Toole, going to make herself a cup of chocolate “to help her get to sleep.”
Or it might be the Captain. I think he had eyes in the hack of his head for everything that went on in the ship. I’m convinced that Mama O’Toole had. Or maybe Unc was actually one of those hypothetical wide-range telepaths but was too polite and too shrewd to let anybody know it.
Or maybe Doe Devereaux had us all so well analyzed those punched cards of his that he always knew which way the rabbit would jump and could send his dogs to head him off. I wouldn’t put it past him.
But it was always just enough and not too much. Nobody objected to a kiss or two if somebody wanted to check on the taste; on the other hand we never had any of the scandals that pop up every now and then in almost any community. I’m sure we didn’t; you can’t keep such things quiet in a ship. But nobody seemed to see a little low-pressure lalligagging.
Certainly Pru and I never did anything that would arouse criticism.
Nevertheless we were taking up more and more of each other’s time, both on and off watch. I wasn’t serious, not in the sense of thinking about getting married; but I was serious in that it was becoming important. She began to look at me privately and a bit possessively, or maybe our hands would touch in passing over a stack of traffic and we could feel the sparks jump.
I felt fine and alive and I didn’t have time to write in these memoirs. I gained four pounds and I certainly wasn’t homesick.
Pru and I got in the habit of stopping off and raiding the pantry whenever we came off a night watch together. Mama O’Toole didn’t mind; she left it unlocked so that anyone who wanted a snack could find one-she said this was our home, not a jail. Pru and I would make a sandwich, or concoct a creative mess, and eat and talk before we turned in. It didn’t matter what we talked about; what mattered was the warm glow we shared.
We came off watch at midnight one night and the mess room was deserted; the poker players had broken up early and there wasn’t even a late chess game. Pru and I went into the pantry and were just getting set to grill a yeast-cheese sandwich. The pantry is rather cramped; when Pru turned to switch on the small grill, she brushed against me: