One was always scheduled to avoid Christmas, a festivity he disliked so vehemently that he talked about founding a society dedicated to its abolition (this was also a popular Shavian theme). Despite the explosion of commercial air travel, he was never tempted to fly to a fixed holiday destination. Cruising suited a single man like Cherry: everything was laid on, and it was easy to find a dinner companion in the smoking lounge or over a friendly game of deck quoits. His favoured route was through the Mediterranean. He would disembark in Marseilles or Palermo and walk over the ridges of sand and among the fish goggling on the early morning slabs along the jetty, or sketch the milky sea at sunset from under a plane tree. But mostly he liked to be on board. Surrounded by the sea, that most ancient symbol of the unconscious, he was able to make peace with himself, and with the ageless dead friends embalmed in his memory. When he walked the decks at night and held up his binoculars to look at Jupiter, he saw the familiar guide that had shown the way to Crozier.
