Awakening Lucy

by Susan Bella Ikin

  When the ship started moving, I woke Mum up, and we sat out on the balcony together, watching as New York City slipped past. When the Statue of Liberty finally came into view, I took lots of photos for both Mum and myself. Although I had not been initially keen on this cruise, I was now beginning to enjoy myself – the newness of everything I was seeing was chipping away at some of the numbness that I normally carried around within myself, plus I really had to acknowledge that I had been bored with my routine for a long time, at least this was something different.

  I checked my watch and realized that there was only half an hour before dinner, so both Mum and I hurriedly selected clothes to wear, Mum still liked to dress for dinner, and although I didn’t normally bother at home, this was different. Mum and I had shopped for new outfits before we left home, as over the years my wardrobe had become just work clothes and some clothes for housework and shopping on the weekends. I really didn’t have suitable clothes for such a trip, as I usually didn’t go out much at home, so I had spent a lot of time choosing new outfits for the situations I imagined I would find myself in, as well as something suitable to wear at the wedding. As this was the first evening, I thought I would dress conservatively and chose a blue dress with cap sleeves and a mid length skirt. I dressed it up with some classic pieces of jewellery, and swept my hair back with some diamante combs. Luckily my hair was quite fair, so the few greys I had weren’t all that obvious.

  “Mmm, hot stuff”, gloated Mum, “You look really good tonight. Do you think we might be anywhere near the Captain’s table? Do you think he is single?” Mum asked.

  “Oh Mum, this isn’t the Love Boat, the Captain doesn’t eat with the passengers!” I exclaimed, “and stop trying to fix me up with every single man you meet! Remember, this is an American ship, remember all the American accents we heard this afternoon in the restaurant? Well, even if you were successful, you would probably fix me up with an American, and then where would you be without me?”

  Mum had the cheek to roll her eyes at this, and we headed off to dinner. We gave our names at the desk, and the waiter said he would show us to the table. As we approached, I saw Adam sitting at the table with Sarah, holding hands. He was seated where he could see people approaching, Sarah was deep in conversation with someone opposite Adam. All I could see was the back of a head, but as Adam rose to his feet at our approach, so did the person that Sarah was talking to. I found myself looking up into a pair of grey eyes that were familiar, but not familiar. While the logical part of my brain said that this must be Adam’s brother, Nick, some very long dormant part of my brain was clamouring for attention, saying that it was a pity that I was sharing a room with my mother. What? Where did that come from? I shook my head and took the hand that was offered to me. It was warm and large, and I must have held on to it for too long as the next thing I knew Mum was nudging me in the back, saying that an old lady like her needed to sit down and I should stop hogging the aisle. Flustered, I somehow found myself maneuvered to sit next to Nick, with Mum on his other side, next to the aisle. Nick had moved down one seat to make space for Mum.

  Nick turned to me, and spoke in a deep voice which sounded like molten chocolate to me: “You must be Lucy, Adam has told me a lot about you, and is this lovely woman on my left your mother, Rose?”

  I stared at him for a while and then found my voice. “Yes, I’m Lucy. I guess you are Nick? I can see the resemblance, you and Adam look a lot alike”.

  “Well, he likes to think so, but I’m the handsome one in the family”, he said with a smile. Smooth. Too smooth, too confident. I found his confidence off putting, in that respect he reminded me of a confident teenager, and the memories came flooding back.

  I must have given some sign that I was not interested in talking much, as his smile faltered, and after that he didn’t say much to me apart from the necessary pleasantries. The rest of the party filtered in, there were twelve of us on this cruise, Adam and Nick’s sister Amelia, her husband Robert and their children Josh and Lana came next, Amelia was tall like her brothers. I realized where they got their height from when their father Percy appeared, he was still very tall, despite being a little stooped with age. Rounding out the party were some friends that Adam and Sarah had made on the cruise where they met, Judy and Tom. Percy took the seat next to me and after some initial small talk, he asked for the name of the ‘grand lady’ sitting next to his son. With a start I realized he was talking about Mum, and told him her name. He repeated it quietly to himself. Well, this was an interesting development. I knew that Mum was secretly harbouring the hope that I might find romance on this cruise, but if I was interpreting the glances that Percy kept stealing in Mum’s direction correctly, it appeared that she had an admirer. At one stage Percy tried to lean forward and look past both myself and Nick to try to listen in on what Mum was saying to Sarah, and I happened to catch Nick’s eye. To my surprise, Nick winked at me, then turned to speak to Adam. It was an uncomfortable meal to say the least, and I was happy when it was over.

  Although Mum and I had planned to go to the show together, I found that Percy could move quite quickly for someone of his age, and before I realized what was going on, Mum was leaning on his arm, and they were walking toward the theatre together. Everyone else was paired up, or in a family group, and Nick and I found ourselves standing at the table as everyone else headed off to the theatre. I was about to make my excuses and leave when Nick took a little step towards me and said:

  “I don’t know what happened, but you and I appear to have gotten off on the wrong foot. We are going to be seeing each other a bit over the next week, would you like to go somewhere quiet and talk for a while, maybe start again, or do you want to go to the theatre?”

  I did want to go to the theatre, but what Nick said made sense too, and as I would have been sitting on my own in the theatre (thanks Mum, for deserting me so readily!) I decided to take Nick up on his offer. We walked through the ship together until we found a quiet bar and found a table near the window. Although it was now dark and there wasn’t much to see, occasionally you could glimpse the white cap of a wave as the ship sailed, so it was still pleasant. When the waiter approached, Nick asked what I liked to drink, and I quickly chose a cocktail from the menu. After our drinks had been delivered, Nick took a sip of his whisky, sat back, stared at me for a while and then asked:

  “Ok, what did I do?”

  4.

  I had prepared for this, as during our walk to the bar I had reasoned that Nick might follow up on his correct assumption that we had gotten off on the wrong foot. I had also told myself that I had overreacted, Nick had seemed perfectly pleasant at dinner, and I had probably been quite rude. So I responded:

  “You didn’t do anything. It has just been a tiring day, the time difference meant we had to fly from Los Angeles on a late night flight to book in this morning, and came straight here from the airport. Mum can be hard work when she is tired, so I was probably not my sparkling best at dinner. I should have probably given dinner a miss and gone to bed early, but it was the first night so I thought it would be rude. I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable”.

  “A long day you say”, Nick smiled, “and yet your mother seems to be full of energy”.

  “She had a nap”, I said tersely, “while I unpacked our bags. Perhaps if I had taken a nap too I would be full of energy as well”.

  “Sorry”, Nick said then, “I obviously overstepped a line there. Ok, you say you’re tired, that’s fair enough. Lucky we have two days of sailing ahead of us, you will be nice and rested before we get to Bermuda. That’s important, because in case you haven’t noticed, everyone else is paired up except for you and I. Even our parents seem to have made friends with each other. So the way I see it, we’ll probably be spending a bit of time with each other, and I would rather spend that time not misunderstanding each other, ok?”

  I nodded. He was right. If Mum kept spending time with Percy, and it was only natural for her to want to spend ti
me with someone her own age, I was going to be left to my own devices a lot. Although I was used to that, I really didn’t want to be on my own all the time on this cruise. It would probably be good for Mum and I to spend time with other people, and not each other, this week anyway, we spent a lot of time together normally.

  As we had been talking, we hadn’t noticed the band setting up in the corner, but when they started playing, we noticed that a few more people had filtered into the bar. By mutual agreement, we decided to stay in our seats, and listen to the band. The problem with that was, the cocktails were very tasty, and I had three or four of them. While this might not be much for most people, as I very rarely drank, it was a lot for me. When the band finished and we stood to leave, I was a bit unsteady on my feet. Nick look surprised for a minute, then stepped over and took my arm, managing to behave as if I wasn’t wavering and in need of support, but that we always walked this way. He enquired as to where my room was, and escorted me there.

  At my door, he waited while I took the room card off the lanyard which I wore around my neck. While I was looking down, the ship swayed a little more than I was used to, and I lurched towards Nick, and grabbed his chest for support. As I looked up at him, about to apologise, Nick gazed into my eyes, and then slowly lowered his head to mine and kissed me so gently, his lips felt as if they were just touching mine. That felt nice, it had been so long since I had kissed anybody. Unfortunately, Nick then spoilt the mood.

  “That was nice. I might buy you a couple of drinks tomorrow night too”.

  Nick might have though he was being funny, but it reminded me of that other time, when a couple of drinks had been enough for my hormones to win the battle over my brain, and I gasped in shock. I whirled around, swiped the card in my door lock angrily, flung open the door and then slammed it behind me, leaving Nick outside staring at a closed door.

  5.

  Of course, in popular fiction, I would have been able to give vent to my feelings alone in my room. In real life however, my Mum was already in the room, as our curtains were open, I could see her form in the bed from the small amount of light that was coming in through the glass doors. Hoping that I hadn’t woken her, as I wasn’t up to any questions right now, I wrenched open the door to the bathroom, and shut myself in, turning on the light and looking at myself in the mirror. My eyes looked a little smaller, whether that was from the strong overhead light, or whether it was because I had drunk too much alcohol, I wasn’t sure.

  I brought my fingers up to my lips and traced the line of my lips with my index finger. It had been a nice kiss. Why had Nick not just left then, instead of saying what he had said? Of course he didn’t know my history, no-one but Mum knew about the baby, and I had never told her the circumstances of its conception of course. But Nick had picked at an old sore, and again, I had probably overreacted. After all, he had not made any move to try to get into my room, it was just a good night kiss. Sighing at my uncharacteristic moods tonight, I started getting ready for bed – brushing my teeth and cleaning all the makeup off my face. I left the light on while I opened the door, so that I had enough light to find my nightie and change into it, then turned off the light, shut the bathroom door and headed for my bed.

  If I had thought I had gotten away with anything, I hadn’t. No sooner had my head hit the pillow, than I heard Mum’s voice.

  “Did you have a nice night? We looked for you after the show, and couldn’t see you. Strange thing, Nick was missing too. He is a nice man, I’m glad you’ll have some company your own age instead of having to spend all of your free time with your mother. Good night now, I hope they have a nice breakfast on this ship. Some pancakes would be lovely”.

  After delivering this little speech, she yawned and started to snore softly. I pulled the pillow out from under my head, put it over my face and groaned into it. Now Mum was already jumping to conclusions about Nick. She could be so frustrating sometimes!

  The next morning when I woke up, I had a pounding headache. Too long a day the day before, combined with some unaccustomed alcohol perhaps. Mum was just coming out of the bathroom, looking way too chirpy and energetic for someone her age, and she smiled at me and told me to hurry up or we would miss breakfast. I threw back the covers, selected some clothes and headed into the bathroom for a quick shower.

  Before long we were heading down the hallway to the restaurant. We didn’t have any plans to meet up with anyone, or at least I thought we didn’t, but Mum whispered to the waiter, and then we were following them to a table for four, where Nick and Percy were already sitting. They rose at our approach. I couldn’t meet Nick’s eyes, and was wondering what Mum was up to. Did she just want to spend time with Percy, or was she trying to match me up with Nick? We were going to have to have a serious talk after breakfast.

  I was so lost in my thoughts that I didn’t hear the waiter speaking to me, and Nick tapped me gently on the hand, causing me to start. I realized that I was being asked what I would like to drink, and asked for some coffee and some orange juice. I then turned my attention to the menu and started looking for what to choose. Nick leaned over the table and quietly said:

  “If you aren’t feeling good, perhaps you should avoid fatty fried foods. Maybe something bland like some toast, or a fruit plate might be good this morning?”

  At this I looked up at him, expecting to see some mirth in his eyes, but only saw gentle concern. Just as quietly I said:

  “Good idea. I owe you an apology too. I must have been a little tipsy last night and I think I might have left you abruptly without thanking you for seeing me safely to my cabin”.

  Nick regarded me for a moment and then said: “Think nothing of it. Although if I had realized you weren’t a social drinker I would have suggested you have less. I didn’t think you have very much, but then you are quite tiny”.

  I bristled at this. Although I knew I was at least a head shorter than Nick, that was because he was so tall, I was certainly not petite. Then I realized he was offering me a way to reduce embarrassment, and I nodded.

  During this whole conversation, Mum and Percy had been engrossed in whatever they were discussing, and I don’t think they even noticed that Nick and I were there. This continued throughout breakfast, our two parents discovered that they had a lot of personal tastes in common, and were deep in discussion about old movies and some long dead movie stars when I noticed that the dining room appeared to be almost empty. When I asked Mum what she wanted to do for the rest of the morning she looked at me in surprise and said:

  “I thought you knew, dear. There’s bridge on until one o’clock. Percy and I were going to go and see if we could find someone to make up a table with us. What are you going to do?”

  Well, I had just been dumped by my own mother. What was I going to do? I cast about for some ideas, then realized that I hadn’t visited the shops yet. When I mentioned this, Nick offered to go with me. As we all stood, he said that he wanted to go and stock up on some duty free whisky, and winked broadly at me. I took a deep breath, plastered a smile on my face and said I wanted to look at the perfumes.

  As we walked, Nick said quietly: “I didn’t mean to upset you last night. I realize it was presumptuous of me to kiss you, we had just met after all, but it just seemed like a good idea at the time. This time, don’t tell me I didn’t do anything wrong, because I am sure that I upset you. I’m really sorry about that, because I know Adam thinks a lot about you, he has told me a lot about you over the years, and I was looking forward to meeting you. I know Adam thinks the world of you, and I really regret offending you, please accept my apology”.

  I stopped and looked at Nick in surprise.

  “Adam talks about me? Why? What does he say?”

  “Didn’t you know? Nothing bad of course, like I said, Adam thinks the world of you. He says you are gentle with all the sick and injured animals, even the grouchy ones, and have a way of soothing upset people too. He says he never has to worry about the administrative side of the bu
siness, that you are amazingly efficient, and he also appreciates the patience you showed him when he must have been hard to work with when he was going through his rough patch with Sarah. I know Sarah likes you too – she says she has you to thank for pushing Adam into getting back in touch with her again. She also tells me you didn’t like Lisa, so that alone is enough to win you a spot in all of our hearts. None of us ever knew what Adam saw in her, I guess he was just lonely and she took advantage of that. So as far as I know, if you didn’t like Lisa, then I knew I would like you before I even met you”.

  I was stunned at this. Adam talked about me like that? I knew that he valued my work, but I didn’t realize how much. I suppose I should have realized that he might, as we spent so much time together we often talked about things outside work, such as our families. I knew that his sister worked with her husband in their family business, and how their children were going in school. I even knew about Nick, even though I had never met him. I knew that he had been married many years ago, but that his wife had died when she was quite young and that they hadn’t had children. Adam often lamented the fact that he only got to play uncle to two children. At the thought of Adam I smiled softly. He was so caring, he was going to make such a wonderful father for his and Sarah’s child. Again, thinking about a baby made me remember what I had lost, and the smile disappeared from my face.

  “You have a wonderfully expressive face”, said Nick just then, starting me out of my reverie, “I would love to know what you’re thinking, I could see the play of emotions over your face. I have to say, I would prefer to see you happy than sad though, you have a lovely smile, but your eyes can be quite sad when you think no-one is looking. Ah, here we are. The Promenade shops. So I am going to go in here, where the the bottles of alcohol are, I can see the perfumes and cosmetics in that shop next door, what do you say that whoever finishes first goes looking for the other?”