Improvisato

by David Crossman

  He swung again, a little harder, and again, a little harder. Finally, a neat, modest “V”, no more than a quarter inch in depth, tore open at the top of the strap. He aimed his next blow at that, and the next, and each time the “V” grew, and the strap complained more loudly, until, with all his remaining strength, he raised the ax and let it drop on the strap.

  What to do when the strap broke—with a thunderous crack releasing an avalanche of several hundred tons of frozen food and dry goods in crates together with barrels of oil, and canisters of flammable material that began tumbling off the bow—he hadn’t taken time to wonder. And now it was too late; he tumbled with them.

  It was suddenly very quiet, and cool, and wet. He was looking up at the underside of the crates, barrels, and canisters that were now floating above him. Some, as they took on water, began a slow, almost balletic descent into the dark blue depths.

  The thoughts that began to occur to Albert, in quick succession, were thoughts he had never thought before, and would be best represented by a series of exclamation points of ascending size. His limbs interpreted these as calls to action, to which—however poorly articulated—they responded immediately.

  Albert, who had never swum in his life, was swimming! He broke the surface at the same instant his last gasp of breath exploded from his lungs. His arms, acting on their own initiative, began flailing wildly and, in the process, his fingertips seized on the first solid object with which they came in contact—a life preserver. This, he soon became aware, was attached to a rope, the upper extremity of which was attached to the hands of several people—1st Mate Clarence Cuthberson and Frenchie among them. There were others, but they were a blur. All of them were shouting at him and, though their words were equally indistinct, the gist seemed to be that he should hold on to the life preserver with both hands.

  Albert did so and, moments later, those hands were grasped by other hands—strong, rough hands—and he was hauled aboard the Sea Queen which seemed to have shrugged off its ordeal and righted itself. Before he knew what was happening, he was planted on deckand Frenchie and the crew were all but dancing around him—in the manner, no doubt, of a coven of Masons in their midnight revels—cheering and slapping him on the back.

  He nearly lost his glasses. He punched them back up his nose, several times and, through them, drew the world slowly into focus.

  “Is everyone okay?” he said.

  “O bloody K?” said 1st Mate Clarence Cuthbertson, his vocabulary diminished by the immediacy of his emotions. “I’ve never bloody seen any bloody thing like it, mate!” He punched Albert’s shoulder. “Put us all to shame, is all!”

  Albert was unable to decipher much of this but, inferring from the tones in which it was delivered, gathered that everyone was okay.

  “I’m sorry about . . . your boxes,” he said apologetically.

  “Insured, mate!” said someone he hadn’t seen before, but a quick glance at the helpful name tag, which Albert thought, in passing, everyone in the world should have, was Captain Walter “Wart” Martin. He had taken Albert’s hand in both of his and was shaking it so violently that, had he kept it up another few seconds, Albert would have been air-dried.

  One thing, at least, seemed to have survived the tsunami—a bottle of cognac. This was being passed around and Albert, finding it in his mouth without knowing how it got there, took a gulp as some unseen hand upended some of its contents down his throat. He choked and spat and sputtered, as would anyone who had just ingested undiluted lava, and the crew laughed, and clapped him on the back some more.

  Meanwhile, his esophagus seemed to have caught fire. He attempted to indicate as much with sign language, for he’d been rendered incapable of speech. Rather than producing water, as he’d hoped, however, the crew just laughed all the more, and continued passing the bottle.

  “Here’s to you, mate!” said the 2nd mate. “Good on ya!”

  If he was referring to the beverage with which he’d been assaulted, Albert thought, he’d have preferred that it had been on him, rather than in.

  Impromptu celebrations, of which he formed an involuntary vortex, continued for several minutes, at the conclusion of which he found himself in the cabin.Frenchie was taking his clothes off, as casually as if she’d done it every day of her life. “We’ll get these things down in the engine room,” she was saying, as he watched her in the mirror. “They’ll dry down there by the time we get back to port.”

  “We’re going back?” said Albert, steadying himself on Frenchie’s shoulder as he stepped out of his trousers.

  “Have to resupply,” said Frenchie. “All that lot you loosed overboard was meant to outfit the island for the next three months.”

  Albert felt terrible. “I’m sorry.”

  “Sorry?! Sorry for what? You saved the bloody ship! Saved us all, as far as that goes – the deck crane smashed a bloody great hole in the lifeboat!We owe you. Company owes you. Island owes you. Insurance company owes you. You’re a bloody hero!”

  Albert had never heard those words spoken in relation to himself. If heroes, in general, went around in soggy underwear feeling like he did, well, he would go out of his way to avoid being one in the future.

  As events unfolded via ship-to-shore radio, the epicenter of the earthquake had been Edgecumbe, a small town not far to the south, and it had been a big one. Much of the country for miles had been reduced to rubble, and the devastation extended as far as Auckland. “Nobody dead there, though,” Frenchie assured him, “far as anyone knows.”

  That meant Jeremy Ash and Angela were okay. That was good.

  “We’ll be putting in at Napier, farther south. Everything should be dockside by the time we arrive in the morning. Company’s taking it on the chin ’til the insurance comes in, which could be months. Needs must, though. We’ll restock there and strike off. Day after tomorrow at the earliest, they say.” She was helping him back into his clothes, for which he was grateful, modesty having confined him to his bunk for the better part of the afternoon.

  “What does that mean?”

  “What does what mean, my cherub?”

  “'Taking it on the chin'.” Albert tightened his belt. The dowsing had shrunk it, so he was unable to use the hole that had been enlarged by long habit. A new one, further along, would have to be pressed into service.

  “Oh, is that not an expression in America?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “Well, it means they’re footing the bill out of their own pocket ’til the insurance company coughs up great steaming wads of the old smoke and ash.”

  “Cash.” said Albert. He’d become aware of, if not familiar with, Cockney rhyming slang while in London and, for some reason, it made sense to him.

  “As makes the world go ’round. The very thing.”

  He had a thought. “Should I pay for it?”

  It was Frenchie’s turn to be inquisitive. “Pay for what, ducks?”

  “Ducks” was a term of endearment. He’d learned that, too, while in England. “For all the boxes . . . and things.” He made a gesture symbolizing the freight falling off the bow.

  “Oh, my goodness, no! You’d be talking hundreds of thousands of dollars!”

  “That’s okay.”

  “What’s okay, Albert?” said Frenchie. She’d finished dressing him to her satisfaction and, for reasons of her own, was running her fingers through his hair. The effect had nothing in common with that produced when Angela had done the same thing. He wondered why.

  “That money. I can pay that money.”

  Frenchie stopped combing his hair. “What? You mean you’ll cover the cost of the lost freight until the insurance comes through?”

  Albert hadn’t thought ahead that far. He nodded the circular, non-committal nod he’d patented for times when either “yes” or “no”, or neither, was an option.

  “You have that kind of money?”

  Albert patted his pockets. “Not with me.”

  Frenchie laughed her trademark five-note des
cending scale. “Of course not. What I mean is, you’re actually that . . . you have that much money?”

  “You mean New Zealand money?” said Albert. That could complicate things. He wasn’t sure if Mrs. Bridges had kept international currencies.

  “Dubloons, pounds sterling, yuan, Australian dollars, New Zealand dollars, gold bullion—makes no difference, my love. What I mean to say is, piano players—concert pianists—make that much?”

  He guessed they must. “The captain can call Mrs. Bridges and she’ll send him the money.”

  “And Mrs. Bridges is?”

  Albert wasn’t exactly sure what Mrs. Bridges title was. “She takes care of that.”

  “Money?”

  “Yes.”

  “She’s your banker?”

  Mrs. Bridges had left the bank to work exclusively for him—Jeremy Ash’s idea—but she had been a woman before she left and was one still. She had been a certain height, weight, eye- and hair-color before she left, and was still. Before she left the bank, she’d worn bras with the days of the week sewn on the bulgy parts and presumably did so still. So, it stood to reason that if she was a banker before, she must still be one. Why not? “Yes.”

  “Well, I’m blowed.”

  Albert fought his brain’s impulse to attach any kind of mental image to that statement.

  “I don’t think you’d get much resistance from the owners if you made the proposal,” said Frenchie. “I don’t imagine they have much of a margin, financially speaking.”

  The next morning, the Sea Queen was tied to the docks at Napier, looking as much as if she hadn’t nearly sunk not twenty hours earlier, and as complacent as an albatross. The crew, as they loaded stacks of freight in boxes, barrels, crates, and canisters almost the exact replicas of those now adorning the ocean floor north-northeast of Edegcumbe, mocked the terror of their near-escape with epithets of bravura that rang false even in Albert’s untrained ears.

  Frenchie was at his side, watching the mechanical ballet as the crane swung one container after the other aboard the ship. Having not the least understanding of what it took to equip a place like the Fishermen’s Friend, he had no appreciation of what she’d gone through in the course of the last few hours to secure from various suppliers about town that portion of the tonnage containing her new equipment.

  He was equally unaware that it was his signature on the line of credit that had engendered the willingness—even eagerness—of local businesses to fulfill orders issuing forth from the Sea Queen.

  Someone addressed him by name. He turned to find man who was holding his hand out. “Hollister,” said the man. “With the Company.”

  Frenchie interpreted. “Albert, this is James Hollister. He’s with the Cavendish Lines. They own the Sea Queen. . . the ship.”

  Albert allowed his hand to be pumped by the energetic and beaming James Hollister for a moment or two, then retrieved it, mid-shake. “Can’t tell you how much your . . . investment. Your support . . . financial support. . . means to us. To me. To the company.”

  “To be repaid when the insurance comes through,” Frenchie intervened.

  “Of course! Of course, with the customary interest. Yes. Of course. But meantime, I don’t mind telling you, your . . . your actions, were nothing short of . . . well, heroic would, I think, not be too strong a term. As a matter of fact, there is a television news crew on their way to interview. . . “

  “How soon can we leave?” said Albert.

  “I think, Mr. Hollister,” said Frenchie, “the Maestro would rather avoid the publicity.” With that comment, she sealed Albert’s conviction that she could read his mind and, in this instance, he was glad of it.

  “Yes,” he said.

  Hollister stammered. He hadn’t been expecting this depth of modesty, especially from an American. “Well, of course, yes . . . I suppose we can . . . well. Yes. Of course. I don’t know what I’ll tell them, but . . . well, as you wish. But, isn’t there anything we can do for . . .?” As he spoke, his attention pivoted to Frenchie. Clearly he had arrived at the conclusion, correctly, that she had become Albert’s de facto agent.

  “What about it, Al?” said Frenchie. “Anything you want from the Company?”

  In consideration of the upcoming voyage, Albert had no trouble coming up with a request. “I’d like them to fix your cabin.”

  If Frenchie was nonplussed, she didn’t show it as she relayed the request together with its expository back-story.

  “Consider it done!” said Mr. Hollister enthusiastically. “You won’t be able to tell it from a cabin on the promenade deck of the QEII within the hour.”

  “If your lot of misfits and monkeys can manage ‘habitable’, you’ll get no complaint from me,” said Frenchie.

  Hollister ignored her. “Anything else?”

  “I’d like to let my . . . my . . ., Jeremy Ash and Angela, know . . .”

  “No sooner said,” said Mr. Hollister, settling into his role of jinn to Albert’s Aladdin. “Where might I find them?”

  “Auckland.”

  “Yes. Right. Any particular place in Auckland?” Pause. “It’s a fairly big city.” Hollister smiled.

  Albert sighed. How many Jeremy Ashes could there be in Auckland, even if it was a big city? “At our hotel—on Parliament Row.”

  “I’m sure Mr. Hollister will be able to track them down and give them your assurances. Won’t you, Jim?”

  “Of course. Consider it done.”

  “Anything else?”

  Three wishes.

  “Grapes,” said Albert, because that’s what came to mind, and he felt Mr. Hollister was one of those types who would keep on insisting on doing something for you until you ended up with something you didn’t want.

  “Grapes?”

  “Purple grapes,” Albert clarified. He knew there were several kinds.

  “Between your cabin and a bacchanal there shall soon be no distinction in the matter of grapes.”

  Frenchie looked from Hollister to Albert. “He means he might be able to scrape together a box of raisins.”

  Albert liked raisins. “Thank you.”

  Albert had once heard the word “festooned”. He hadn’t attached much meaning to it at the time. He liked the sound of it. Nevertheless, it was the word that sprang to mind when—once the ship was reloaded and the five-minute horn had sounded—he reentered his cabin. It was festooned. There was no other word for it. Festooned with flowers. Festooned with fresh grapes and raisins, festooned with chocolates, which is something else he’d have asked for, if he’d had time to think about it. It must be Frenchie, being a mind-reader, he had to thank for taking care of his oversight.

  The room smelled like Angela, with overtones of fruit. He glanced quickly at the bunk to make sure she hadn’t somehow boarded the ship, and was relieved that she wasn’t there. Doubly so because, added to Angela’s absence, was that of Frenchie, who also, and in great abundance, wasn’t there.

  Over the next three days, Albert spent most of his time on the little parapet in the bow, smoking, and watching the ship consume the ocean. He liked the cool, great-grandmotherly fingers of the wind tousling his hair. He liked the occasional spray of salt on his face. He liked the rhythmic thrum of the ship’s engines, to which everything aboard, himself included, vibrated in exact cadence. He liked alternating deep breaths of pure air with lung-scorching drags on his cigarettes.

  Frenchie, her mind-reading apparatus fully operational, had, for the most part, left him to himself, the only real exception being dinner, which was attended by everyone aboard—even the captain—and with which—Frenchie’s critique aside—Albert found no objection.

  Not that his gastronomic standards were that high.

  At first, Albert had wondered who was steering at these times but, as no one else seemed to think it worthy of remark, kept his concern to himself.

  The chief topic of conversation during these communal times, early on, had been Albert’s heroism, making him wish he didn�
��t understand English. Eventually the crew—not characteristically an oversensitive group—took the hint and turned to topics near and dear to their hearts, primarily the All Blacks—whatever they might be—and sheilas, of whom, it would seem, New Zealand abounded. Probably something like a kiwi, Albert surmised, though why mention of native fauna should precipitate generally lascivious comments—à la Tewksbury—he couldn’t fathom.

  Nor did he try.

  “You’d think I didn’t exist,” said Frenchie, leaning toward Albert’s ear. “Or, worse yet, that they don’t reckon I’m a woman.”

  These remarks, proceeding, as far as Albert was concerned, from some deep, unexplored but manifestly feminine region of space, drew from him the only response his expression could manufacture on short notice: very much that of a puppy being interrogated about the nature of space-time. That seemed to satisfy Frenchie.

  “I don’t know what to say,” Albert confessed.

  “My thoughts exactly!” said Frenchie.

  Albert blinked a couple of times.

  “Tonight’s the last night,” said Frenchie. “We dock about 8 o’clock in the morning.” She looked at him meaningfully. “We’ll have to get you sorted. I’ve radioed ahead to make sure Milly has a room ready for you at the inn. Got a piano up there, too! Probably not in tune, but folks bang away at it now and then—usually when they’ve had enough liquid refreshment to imagine they can play. Anyway, something to keep your fingers agitated.” She laughed.

  Albert always slept well, except on those rare occasions when the ghosts of Spanish women crept into his bed, which hadn’t happened since England. However, he’d never slept as deeply as on the Sea Queen. By that final night, the cabin—the flowers having found their way to Frenchie’s—had become so cocoon-ish and embracing that he hated the thought of leaving it.

  He slept so well, in fact, that Frenchie had to shake him awake in the morning. “We’ll be pulling up to the dock in ten minutes, Al,” she said. “Might want to get yourself together.”