Here Come the Girls

by Milly Johnson

  Chapter 37

  There was an outdoor theatre performance that evening around the Topaz pool, which had been set up for the occasion with huge fake palm trees and pirate decorations. But the four of them were more in the mood for a quiet night in Beluga – the champagne-and-caviar bar on deck eight.

  ‘Look at us old farts,’ said Ven. ‘We could be out raving and we’re sitting here in big leather armchairs.’

  ‘We’re sitting here drinking champagne and eating chocolate truffles though,’ corrected Frankie. ‘And I, for one, have still got all my own teeth to bite into them. So less of the old, Venice Smith.’

  ‘I’ve never had caviar,’ said Olive, looking at the menu.

  ‘Get some ordered,’ said Ven.

  ‘Are you kidding?’ said Olive. ‘After all I’ve eaten tonight? There’s no room in here.’ And she patted her tummy.

  ‘Well, before the end of the cruise we’ll come back and have some,’ said Ven.

  ‘On your birthday,’ suggested Roz. ‘Only three more sleeps!’

  ‘Fab idea, Rozzy,’ said Frankie, taking a long sip of her Kir Royale and wondering if Vaughan was at the pirate show.

  Roz seethed quietly. Rozzy. How dare she be so bloody familiar again? Frankie seemed to be under the impression they were all best buddies now, just because Roz was keeping a cork in it for Ven’s sake. The cow.

  Ven went for a walk up on the top deck before turning in. It was so easy not to think about anything beyond life on the ship – something else she would have found impossible to believe. She stood there for a while, looking out and letting her mind drift until she began to yawn. Ah well, Corfu tomorrow. Bedtime, she said to herself. As she headed back towards the door, she glanced over the balcony and saw an old couple dancing on the deserted deck at the back of the ship. It was Florence and Dennis. She recognised the black shimmery dress, or it could have been a similar one – goodness knows, her mother used to have forty variations on a theme for everything she wore. The old couple were waltzing slowly, smiling at each other and talking softly together. Ven waved but they didn’t see her, they were too wrapped up in each other. Just like the way Ven’s parents used to look at each other. They loved to dance too. Ven wondered if that would be her one day, dancing in the moonlight with a man she had grown old with. Or if she would simply be a lonely old lady hanging over a balcony looking at the rest of the world paired up in couples.

  How lovely it must be, still to be dancing with each other at that age. They looked so in love. She had married Ian never doubting that they would grow old together too. She could never have imagined that he’d turn out to be such a greedy and selfish person. In the end, he was no longer recognisable as the sweet guy she had exchanged vows with ten years ago. Who would have thought that a change in career would have altered everything about him? He didn’t even look like the same man she had married, with all those overstuffed muscles.

  Revisiting it all started to stir up angry feelings inside her, then she remembered what had happened to her recently – what she had told no one yet. Maybe it was a case that, in life, some paths seemed hard to travel but they didn’t half lead on to the best gardens.

  DAY 7: CORFU

  Dress Code: Smart Casual

  Chapter 38

  Corfu was a pretty and lush green island, and in the distance the hills looked like a Japanese watercolour painting. The sky was impossibly blue that day, as if God had decided it wasn’t quite deep enough and added some extra pigment. It looked very, very hot – and it was. As soon as the four girlies stepped out of the ship, the heat smacked them full on.

  ‘Blimey,’ said Ven. ‘I think I’d be overdressed if I was naked in this heat.’

  ‘Don’t test out the theory,’ said Roz. ‘You might give some of these old ’uns a heart-attack.’

  Roz adjusted the tie on her shorts, loosening it a touch. She needed to throttle back on some calories or she’d be a dead ringer for Clive the bus driver by the time she got home. They walked to the bus terminal, passing a monster of a private yacht, apparently owned by a Russian oligarch.

  It was even more boiling in the shuttle bus, until the driver switched on the engine and the aircon revved up. The whole bus sighed with such orgasmic relief that it was like being part of a giant orgy.

  It was only about a twenty-minute journey to the edge of Corfu Town. On the road between the steeply rising city walls, motorcycles zipped and weaved around the buses and the grid-locked cars. Roz took a long drink from her bottle of water, fresh from the fridge in her room, to find that it was almost warm enough to make a cup of tea with.

  The bus crawled along the road past fresh-fish markets and pastry shops, but eventually made it to the drop-off point. From there it was just a short walk to the thick of the shops. Roz saw one selling bottles of Limoncello. Manus loved it. She’d buy him a couple of bottles when they were heading back to the ship. Or should she?

  ‘Anyone fancy an ice cream?’ asked Olive, spotting a man by a Mr Whippy-type machine twisting out the biggest cornets she’d ever seen.

  ‘What flavours does it say he sells?’ asked Ven.

  ‘Dunno, it’s all Greek to me,’ said Roz, laughing at her own joke.

  ‘I don’t care if it’s tripe, shite and onion-flavoured – if it’s cold, I’m having it,’ said Frankie, who was on the verge of selling her soul for something to cool her down.

  But she needn’t have worried about making herself understood. The waiter spoke perfect English and soon the women were all walking off with four half-chocolate half-vanilla icecream turrets. Ven had to abandon hers halfway through – her stomach felt a bit unsettled that morning. She hoped to goodness she wasn’t coming down with something. Not so close to her big day.

  It was so hot the ice cream was melting all over their hands faster than they could eat it. They were in such a mess at the end that they went into a café and bought three lagers and a coffee for Ven, just so they could use the cloakroom.

  ‘I’d forgotten the delights of a Greek bog,’ said Roz, exiting with her fingers pegging her nose.

  ‘Hope you remembered to put your toilet paper in the bin at the side and not flush it away,’ reminded Olive.

  ‘I did unfortunately,’ said Roz. She took a long gulp of lager which made her gasp with delight as it splashed against the back of her throat. ‘My, that’s good. There’s nothing like a pure German beer for hitting the spot.’

  The Barnsley honeymooners passed holding hands and looking very young and golden. A few other people whom they recognised from the ship waved and shared a little witticism like, ‘Terrible this global warming, isn’t it?’ or, ‘It really makes you appreciate the British weather, being in a hellhole like this, doesn’t it?’

  Apparently back home today it was raining and chilly. No one managed to read news like that in the Mermaidia Times without a smug smile.

  ‘Nothing urgent,’ said Ven, trying to underplay things, ‘but if you see a chemist, let me know, will you? Better to be safe than sorry.’

  ‘Oh no, are you okay?’ said Olive.

  ‘I’m perfectly fine,’ lied Ven with an attempt at breezy. ‘But I think I’ll get some stomach-settling stuff just in case.’

  The Greek coffee was strong and tarry and Ven would probably have been better off having a beer with the others. When she went to pay the bill, she collared the ancient café-owner and asked him where the nearest pharmacy was. He didn’t speak a lot of English and Ven wasn’t particularly keen on playing out diarrhoea in charades. She did a mock-vomit instead, which the café-owner seemed to understand. He grabbed her by the shoulder and pointed up the steps of the alley outside.

  ‘What was all that about?’ said Frankie.

  ‘I just asked him if there was a chemist nearby,’ said Ven. She didn’t want to spoil anyone’s day by wimping out and going back to the ship; she knew her friends wouldn’t have let her return by herself. But boy, her stomach really was starting to feel dodgy.

  �
��Come on then, let’s go and sort you out,’ said Olive, pushing her gently out of the café.

  They wouldn’t have known it was a pharmacy, had there not been a big green cross outside a serving hatch set in the wall. In the absence of a door or a doorbell, Ven rapped tentatively on the wooden shutters. They snapped apart to reveal a very short woman with a scarily unsmiling demeanour.

  ‘Er . . . I have stomach pain,’ said Ven in her best staccato Granglais, rubbing an imaginary circle over her tum. ‘I need medicine.’ In a tourist town like this, how come she had met the only two people who didn’t speak any English?

  Frankie and Olive turned quickly away, on the brink of a fit of giggles. Frankie wasn’t much help on the translating front in Greece, alas.

  The woman came out with a flurry of Greek that Ven, with a totally blank expression, shook her head at. Then the woman rethought and mimed stuff coming out of her mouth.

  ‘Oui ja,’ said Ven enthusiastically. The woman appeared to understand. She disappeared for a moment, then came back with a white box which she proceeded to open and show Ven the brightly dual-coloured capsules. She pointed to one of them, then a second.

  ‘She means take two,’ said Roz.

  ‘How often though?’

  ‘HOW MANY TIME?’ asked Roz, in loud fluent pidgin Greek, her palms tilted upwards in a gesture of questioning. Then she had a brainwave and tapped her watch.

  The woman held up two fingers in V formation.

  ‘I think she means every two hours,’ said Roz.

  ‘Either that or she’s telling you to bugger off, you bladdy Eeenglish tourist,’ said Frankie, giggling with Olive.

  The woman feigned some more vomiting then clamped her hand over her mouth.

  ‘I think she means that will stop any vomiting,’ said Roz, pleased with herself. Who needed language?

  Then the woman waved a slow warning hand in front of her mouth and did the two-finger thing again. Then she held up four fingers and waved her hand back and forwards.

  ‘What the heck does that bit mean?’ asked Ven. ‘It’s like watching an old Vision On with the sound off!’

  ‘Haven’t a clue,’ said Roz, deciding that maybe you did need language, after all.

  Ven handed over a ten-euro note, hoping that was enough. The woman didn’t volunteer any change.

  ‘Veystron,’ said the woman. She held up her two fingers again and tapped them with the other hand, making a definite point about the number two which Ven took as being that she needed to take two. Easy enough to understand.

  ‘Veystron,’ repeated Ven, presuming that was Greek for thank you.

  As they turned back towards the town, Ven dry swallowed two of the capsules until Roz handed over her bottle of now horribly warm water. But Ven was only glad that she had medicine in her system now and was going to be all right.

  They headed then for a handbag heaven shop. The leather smelled gorgeous and the shop-owner didn’t pester them. He was rewarded with a sale of six handbags, four purses and two belts.

  ‘Fancy a spot of lunch?’ asked Olive, after they’d all bought cowboy hats to shield themselves from the sun.

  ‘We can’t come here and not have a Greek salad,’ said Roz. Ven nodded, but knew she couldn’t face any food. She would get something and poke around in it, hoping the others didn’t notice that she wasn’t eating much.

  Around the corner, who should they see sitting at a pretty pavement table under a sheltering awning bearing the lettering Restaurant Rex but Royston and Stella, also wearing cowboy hats. Royston was in a bright purple vest, looking twelve degrees more tanned than he was the previous night – and knee-length flowery shorts.

  ‘Yassou,’ he called out. ‘Hello, girls. Isn’t this awful, all this sunshine?’

  ‘Terrible,’ said Roz. ‘What’s the food like here?’

  ‘Let me tell you,’ began Royston, ‘this is the oldest restaurant in Corfu. We’ve been coming here for years. Beautiful. Best Dolmades in Greece and shrimp the size of lobsters. My Stella has the Greek salad and it’s superb, isn’t it, boss?’

  ‘It’s divine,’ endorsed Stella, finishing off the last of her coffee before waving her immaculate golden nails at them. ‘Just had these done in the spa. Ask for Roxanne, she’s the best. Here, you have our table if you want. We’re going to get a taxi now to Paleokastritsa. Lovely little bay to swim in.’

  ‘Thanks, Stella,’ said Roz, sitting in the seat which Stella had just vacated. An army of waiters arrived and began changing the tablecloth whilst Stella and Royston gathered up their bags.

  They really were a sweet couple, Roz decided. Okay, he might have been a bit of a naughty boy once, but anyone could see they butted together like a dovetail joint. So he made a mistake once. The irony in her thinking bypassed her.

  ‘Oh, and if you’re going to buy any local liqueurs, turn left at the top of this street and you’ll see a shop with a swinging sign saying “Yamas!” on it. Go there.’

  ‘Thank you,’ waved Roz.

  ‘See you at dinner,’ said Royston loudly. ‘Casual tonight, I do believe. Yassou.’

  ‘Yassou!’ they all returned.

  ‘Yannis,’ called Royston to a rotund man with a huge moustache who came out to wave also, ‘these ladies are friends of ours. Be nice to them.’

  Royston was right about the fare in Restaurant Rex. Yannis brought out a basket of bread big enough to feed the five thousand – even without the fish – and a huge dish of fat oily black olives to nibble on whilst they perused the menu, but they couldn’t find anything they wanted more than Greek salad. The tomatoes were big and beefy and tasted divine, the feta cheese was creamy and on the right side of salty. Ven ate because her mum always said she shouldn’t take medication on an empty stomach but even she was surprised at how much she put away. Olive’s huge burp at the end of it summed it up perfectly.

  ‘How nice was that,’ said Roz, popping the last of her feta cubes into her mouth and rolling it around to savour it.

  ‘Very,’ said Ven.

  ‘I don’t want to move,’ said Roz. ‘I want to sit here for ever and watch the world go by.’

  So they didn’t move for another half-hour. They ordered coffees which came with an accompaniment of sticky dates and cubes of nougat. Then Ven paid the bill, once again insisting she would claim it back, and after a visit to the loo, they set off for the ‘Yamas!’ shop.

  They didn’t want to venture into the new part of Corfu Town; the quaint labyrinth of shops in this quarter was enough for them. And they reckoned after exhausting every leather shop in the place, that they had built up enough appetite for a dainty cream tea back on the ship. Ven nodded along with the idea but was just glad that she would soon be on board again. The medicine had stopped her from throwing up, but the effect wouldn’t last for ever.

  Laden with bags, the four of them set off for the shuttle bus stop. The queue was long, but two buses turned up one after the other and they were soon being driven out of Corfu Town.

  ‘Show me the way to the scones,’ sang Frankie.

  ‘And me,’ chorused Roz.

  Ven just smiled. There was no way she was going to do anything but have a lie-down for half an hour. She decided she would pick up a port and brandy from one of the bars to take to her cabin as well. Her dad always said that was a surefire way to settle a stomach.

  ‘I’m going for a jog on the top deck first,’ said Olive, as she loaded her shopping bags onto the ship’s security X-ray machine.

  ‘You are joking,’ said Roz.

  ‘Course I’m bloody joking!’ Olive told her. ‘I’m going for the full cream and jam shebang. Thank God for shorts with Lycra in them!’

  When the others went up to the Buttery, Ven took a double port and brandy to her room. She felt a fabulous relief as she pushed open the door and found her cabin totally Jesus-ified. It was like coming home, with its big soft bed and non-Greek loo.

  She ran a bath and sank into it whilst she sipped at half of
her port and brandy. Minutes after she had got out of the water, she was asleep on top of her bed, naked and still damp. She was awoken an hour and a half later by the noise of children running down the corridor. There was three-quarters of an hour until dinner – she had better rouse herself, but boy, she really didn’t feel 100 per cent at all. She drained the rest of the port and brandy whilst she got herself dressed in her favourite buy, a sweet blue dress with frothy cap sleeves. She didn’t apply much make-up because her hand was a bit shaky. Her lipstick took three attempts to get right.

  Thirty seconds before the others called for her, she threw a second lot of the Greek tablets into her mouth and washed them down with some mineral water. Hadn’t the pharmacist said something about her needing four tablets – presumably for full effect? She felt quite spaced, slightly removed from herself. She obviously needed food, but she really didn’t want any. She pasted on a smile of normality and opened the cabin door.

  ‘Your eyes look a bit glassy, Ven – are you okay?’ asked Frankie, as the bing-bong call to dinner sounded through the loudspeakers. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, dinner is now being served in the Olympia and the Ambrosia restaurants. Do have an enjoyable evening.’

  ‘I’m fine,’ insisted Ven, in a slightly slurry voice. ‘I’ve not long woken up so I’m a bit groggy. I’ll be great after I’ve had something to eat. I’m starving now,’ she lied.

  ‘Good, let’s go and get some food inside you then,’ said Olive, taking her arm. It was a good job she did too, because Ven was having difficulty seeing the ship as it was. The walls looked as if they were twisted out of shape and she doubted she could have negotiated the staircase. She made them take the lift down to the Olympia, then thought she had better go to the loo again before going to the table.

  ‘I’ll come with you,’ said Olive. ‘Roz, Frankie – we’ll meet you inside.’

  Eric, Irene, Royston and Stella were already at the table when Frankie and Roz reached it – they were all beaming. An extra place had been laid at the table.