S.O.S.

by Joseph Connolly

  ‘Maybe,’ is what Jennifer is thinking aloud now (and why don’t I let this kid Earl in on it, where’s the harm? It’s not as if he’s going to come up with anything sensible, is it? They’re exciting, very young men – but they don’t seem ever, do they, capable of actually doing anything – well do they? Except, of course, for the obvious – which is, if only he could see it, the stupid little boy, the whole bloody point, here). ‘Maybe, yes – we could get under it, could we?’

  ‘Oh yeah sure!’ came back Earl (and he really had to shout it out, now: wind was booming, and his feet were having to be splayed out ever wider, just to keep him upright). ‘Under is neat. What – like make like a limbo dancer, huh Jennifer? We got what here? Six inches? Look – let’s get outta here, man! Why you doing this?’

  ‘OK, then – over it. We’ll go over it. Give me a leg up, Earl. Oh come on, God’s sake – just do it, can’t you? Here – kneel … not there – oh Jesus, not there – there! There! yes – just there. Now put your hand – ’

  ‘Soaked, Jennifer – I’m like soaked, you know? My knee – it’s on some kinda metal plate and I’m hurting, Jennifer and – ’

  ‘Oh shut up, God’s sake, Earl. OK, now – I’m going to grab hold of this pole thing, right? And when I say so – ’

  ‘And my balls – my balls are freezing right off, I tell you Jennifer – !’

  ‘When I say so, you push – OK? Push me up, right? But not till I say so.’

  Earl just caught a hold of her goddam foot and wagged his head in a black despair – and with such force that he clipped the side of it on some other wet and hard bit of fucking metal boat sticking out at him, and this made him feel, Jesus, just great. OK, Jennifer – you got it your way: I’m holding this foot of yours, and I’m waiting for instructions – I’ll push it, pull it, swing it around like a lariat or serve it sunny side up with southern fried onion rings on a sesame bun: any which way, you fucking crazy bitch – you got it.

  Jennifer’s hands were cold (OK yes sure: it’s cold, I’m not denying – but so what, actually? It’s not the bloody end of the world, is it? These young people – they make such a fuss); but the real problem here was the slippery wetness of everything she tried to brace herself against or even get a hold of. This sort of gatepost thing had looked fine from a purchase point of view, but I’m getting absolutely nowhere, frankly.

  ‘OK, Earl – hear me, Earl? Yeh? OK – now push up as hard as you can when I say so – I think I’ll have to make a sort of a jump for it.’

  Yeh yeh, thought Earl – jump for it. We could be in bed, right? Fucking our brains out. Stead of that, we’re turning to ice on the deck of a ship in the middle of the fucking ocean and Jennifer, she’s gonna jump up and grab the steps, is she? And I’m pushing her up and over a gate and then what? I’m gonna follow, right? Jeez. How in hell I get into this?

  ‘OK, Earl: now!’

  And he pushed – he pushed, hoisted, got kicked in the face – put his other hand up to her hips as he slowly rose to take the full weight of her … and then the weight was gone from him and all he could see was nothing. So what is this? Somehow I don’t know my own strength and I flipped her up into the sky and down into the Atlantic? While not great nooze, at least it would mean I could quit right now and recall what it is to be warm and dry and back with people who ain’t gone mad.

  ‘I’m over, Earl – I’m over. There’s this staircase thing – I’ve just been up it. It goes down the other side and then we’re there! The whole of the pointy bit is just waiting for us, Earl! It’s all there and empty and waiting just for us!’

  Earl was already, at Jennifer’s urging, clambering up and over the gate. How happy does this make me? I get over this thing and guess what? There’s a whole lot more wet and cold and empty boat, and I slip and slide on up there with the ditz they call Jennifer on account of she’s told me to: I’m this side of crazy about it.

  OK so I’m pretty much over and she’s holding me up, pulling loose that final ankle. I cracked a couple bones along the way, and once I crashed right down over the top of the gate and right hard on into my crotch: I don’t got one ice pack up there, it maybe couldda hurt. Up this steep and real oily, feels to me, pretty much ladder – and now, sweet Jesus, I’m scared: this new shiver and real bad taste is fear, baby – believe it. There’s hardly a rail I can cling on to – and all I can see is one dim light, seems like miles off, and then these hissing ripples of foaming grey to the left and right of me, they remind me I’m teetering just over thousands of miles of deep black ocean – and the wind, the wind, it’s sucking me off, sedoocing me into it. She’s pulling me down the other side (her hand is like a small dead fish – or maybe, I dunno, that’s mine) and now I’m skittering about on a like outta here and empty, slick-wet deck. Her eyes, though, I see – her eyes are alive, and hot is back there. Well OK – if going nuts turns her on, sure: I’m cool with that.

  And it seemed like, now, Jennifer was dancing. This whole mess of black and oiled and gleaming deck, it sure is kinda like some nightmare and satanic ballroom (Jeez – how’d I thinka that?) so I guess sure, OK, why not? Her arms – way out again and straight to each side of her, you know? Eyes seem pretty much closed, and now she’s going around and around – real slow and loving it, seems to me; almost like she’s swimming, or just about to swim no more. And hey, man – I thought I, you know, knew this ship like backward? But I ain’t never seen no expanse like this one here – it’s just like, kinda vast? So wide – just so plain open. But she’s moving too like I ain’t never known before; not Jennifer – she’s still spinning in her spaced-out thing, oh yeh sure, but it’s the ship I’m talking, here. I’m used to she goes just side to side, yeah? But oh, this baby, she’s pitching now – I’m real aware of the slow, slow rise of that sheer great nose on her, and now here’s the heavy dive back down again, leaving a part of your stomach flying above (and while it’s still floating, you kinda swallow it back?). Jennifer, she’s – Jeez, where in hell she now? Ah there, there she is – I see her now, yeah; well what I see is that long and feathery neckscarf just catching what little gleam of light there is, so I guess I’ll just follow that, will I? Yeah? Follow it right on up to the – Jesus Christ, she’s really going for it: she’s going all the way forward to the very pointed switchblade end of this great and heaving monster. And I’m coming, I’m coming (sure I’m coming – here I don’t wanna be left all alone), but every step I’m taking I’m, like, slipsliding two, three backward and I’m not doing too good, you know? We are talking ice rink, here, and the further I go, the nearer to catching up with that flickering and just faint yellow lick of her neckscarf, the more we’re going up, way up – rearing right up into this black mother of a sky – and now like a rollercoaster, we’re coming down fast: diving not just into the blacker sea, but maybe right under it and endlessly further on down into hell (and I ain’t never before even thought like this).

  Now it’s like I’m climbing up a well-greased chute – on my hands and knees: I gotta be. My insides is all, like, outside of me – I’m clambering forward and I’m rolling around. It was just when I fell right over, there, that I saw – oh, way in back of us – a broad and just hardly glowing band of light from someways over us. What’s this slimy thing I’m feeling? It’s a hand, it’s her hand – and I turn away and see her face and her lips are real twisted up with the strain of hollering out something right at me, and I ain’t even hearing one single word: I lie here, heavy and wet and filled with booming sound and the movement all around of me. She’s hauling me up and I’m right behind her; jammed up real tight she is, now, right up into the probing point of this fucking great ship and I’m rammed up tight in back of her and now her arms are splayed right out wide again and she looks back at me and all I can see in that tangle of sea-whipped hair and her drenched and glistening face is the hit of sex as bright as fire in each of her eyes and I know I can’t hear her but she’s screaming at me, yeah, just one word, again and again: Titanic �
�� I know that for sure, and I’m right there with her – really going for it now, I guess I truly am, and hot through the killing cold with a coiled up excitement and I’m tugging and ripping at her bunched up sodden goddam clothes but I’m numb and like useless and the flesh of hers I’m clutching, I don’t even know which part of her it is, but it is cold, so cold – as cold as dead women maybe must be. But our spirits are fucking and refucking hard – like the crashing all around of me is making me rattle, and if brains can come, well then I guess ours have peaked and shot their load, now – and like some kinda shuddering jelly subsided back into a white hot state of shock, now all froze up.

  Arsem.

  *

  ‘Come along, Nobby,’ Aggie chided gently. ‘It’s so late. You and your Sylvie! Honestly – sometimes I wonder if you notice me at all.’

  ‘Daft, love …’ whispered Nobby – hugging his knees as he sat on the floor of their cabin, captivated as ever by the flickering vision before him.

  ‘I know you love it, Nobby, but you can’t watch it for the whole of the night, can you? It’s what we agreed last time.’

  Nobby looked over to her – all snug in bed, she was (curls pressed hard and flattened between a battery of kirby-grips, a scaled-down trawling net protecting the whole like a porous helmet and stoutly defying any stray wisp to even so much as think about breaking for the border). But even as he smiled and reassured her – ‘You’re right, you’re dead right there, my Captain Honeybunch’ – even as he said that, his eyes were very surely responding to the irresistible lure, and as they were dragged away and back to the television screen, his head and shoulders could do little but fall in with it.

  Aggie sighed. He always said early to Bedfordshire – always said it, yes, but just look at him. Nearly two-thirty in the morning it was, now – but what could she do? That man of mine – honestly! It’s like one of those, what are they? Ménage, is it? When there are three of you? Him and me and Sylvie – always has been. I don’t really mind, of course – understand completely. But we’re on board, aren’t we? We can hardly be closer to her than on board, for goodness sake … I mean – can we? But my Nobby – he’s just so utterly fascinated by the sight of her – us – ploughing on through the great ocean. He wants to witness each white breaking wave, and every up and down. He tried to explain it to me, one time. Said it was a bit like dancing with her, all through the night and on until dawn. Which I thought at the time was very poetic, and I told him so, and that seemed to please him. But enough is enough is what I say (you have to know where to draw the line). This time of night, you want to be all tucked up (shipshape, and Bristol fashion – Nobby’ll tell you) so’s to be ready for morning and another blissy day. And he knows this, Nobby – he understands it well; it’s just that when there’s no other distraction (and me, no – I don’t really compete) well then all he’s interested in is watching our progress: steady as she goes, and half speed ahead.

  Last time we were on board, I caught him making enquiries to Stewart … do you know Stewart? Assistant Cruise Director? Lovely man – can’t do enough for you. Anyway, there was Nobby, bold as you like, saying to Stewart: The video, yes? The video that you make from the bridge, are you with me? And as Stewart was nodding, he goes: Any chance of buying a copy, maybe? And Stewart sort of gave him a look – and who can really blame him? But Nobby, he started explaining – it’s about a hundred and thirty hours long …! And Nobby (his eyes were so huge: excited, to my mind) just said Yes, So – What’s Your Point, Exactly? There: that’s my Nobby for you. And I must say that even if the video had been forthcoming, I would have had to put my foot down. I mean, back at home, what would be my chances of him slipping down the shops or fetching my prescription or cashing the Giro? Let alone seeing to the gate or taking the car in. No no no – all it would have been is this endless, silent film – twenty-four hours a day: because that’s what it is with real-life footage, of course: twenty-four hours, each and every day.

  ‘We haven’t,’ pouted Aggie now, ‘even finished our quiz. Have we, Nobby, hm? We always do five questions each, Nobby, before we go to dreamland. You know that. It’s a tradition. Turn it off now, Nobby – hm? Ask me another question.’

  Nobby nodded; didn’t stop watching, though.

  ‘Right, then,’ he said. ‘Name me one great female writer who has voyaged on this great and fine ship of ours.’

  Aggie smiled quite girlishly as she set about the business of encouraging her brow to go through its gamut of furrows: she knew this one.

  ‘Marjorie Proops,’ she eventually released.

  ‘Correct, Captain Honeybunch.’

  ‘Turn off the telly, Nobby. Please? Ask me another.’

  ‘In a minute, love. In a minute. Name me a comedian who has travelled on Sylvie from Southampton to New York.’ And then he added on, more softly, ‘Blimey … that’s very funny … I thought I saw … no. No.’

  ‘Dickie Henderson, Nobby,’ Aggie came back brightly. ‘What, Nobby? What did you see?’

  ‘Mm? Oh nothing. Reckon it was shadows. You said Dickie Henderson last time.’

  ‘Did I? Oh. All right, then. Paul Daniels.’

  ‘Is Paul Daniels classed as a comedian? Here – what’s all this …?’

  ‘Well he makes me laugh … what are you on about, Nobby?’

  ‘Can’t quite make it out … OK, Aggie: last question. Give me a prominent Royal who has made the crossing.’

  ‘Easy,’ beamed Aggie. ‘Queen Mother.’

  ‘Ah! Alas no, my Captain! The dear Queen Mother has visited the ship, toured her, yes – but never actually travelled. What a shame, Aggie: you nearly made a clean sweep, there.’

  Aggie was biting her lip, really quite vexed with herself.

  ‘Blow. I knew that. Oh blow. I knew that… but ‘Clean Sweep’, yes? Yes, Nobby? Nautical term. Do I get a point if I tell you? A ‘clean sweep’ is when a truly mountainous sea sweeps everything off the deck – sometimes even the masts and things. Am I right, Nobby? Nobby? I am, aren’t I? Do I get a point? Nobby …? Why aren’t you…? What is it, Nobby?’

  Nobby was right up close to the screen, now, his eyes screwed narrow with concentration.

  ‘Just as well there ain’t no ‘clean sweep’ tonight… else our young friends here would have truly had it…’

  Aggie was out of bed, and beside him.

  ‘Goodness – it is, isn’t it…? People – right up at the bows!’

  Nobby just stared.

  ‘But Nobby they can’t be, can they? I mean – it’s not allowed. Everyone knows that – it’s just not allowed. There’s a sign, and everything … what on earth do you suppose they’re doing? Must be absolutely freezing.’

  ‘What they are doing, looks like,’ said Nobby – very slowly, and with a stab at the gravitas he judged it deserved – ‘is making the beast with two backs.’

  And in the silence, Aggie peered again.

  ‘Nautical term, is that, Nobby?’

  And Nobby, who gazed on, said No. No, Aggie. It isn’t.

  *

  Jennifer, now, had found the right deck. It seemed to be about half a mile further down from the opulence of Earl’s (each time she skittered quite playfully down yet another broad and leather-nosed carpeted staircase, she expected to encounter a sort of service lift, maybe, or just a dumb waiter connecting her directly with the sea bed beneath them). The increasingly sullen droning of the ship as Jennifer went on down, lower and lower, served to point up and highlight the practically tangible silence: how could so vast a crock, chock-full of people, appear to be so utterly void?

  I feel, thought Jennifer, as she tried to walk straight the length of this joke of a corridor (the floor is moving, fairly distinctly, but also I’m still really quite a lot drunk) … I feel, yes – no, I don’t feel: feel is not what I mean. I think, yes – I think this looks like one of those childish essays in perspective we all did – when all your railway lines vanished to a point, and then you started in on the tel
egraph poles. I feel (now I’m feeling) … mmm, just fine. Totally charged, and thoroughly fine. Felt close to death, though, if I’m honest, by the time we, Christ, finally reached the door of Earl’s cabin. We didn’t meet a single soul along the way, which was really just as well because Jesus only knows what in God’s name we could have looked like. Until I got into the warm, I didn’t really realize how thoroughly chilled I had been; it was just like they say – right to the bone, you know? I really thought those bones of mine had actually turned blue, and throughout my veins were skulking just icicles, barely dripping. And Earl! Oh God – poor bloody Earl! His clothes were all soaked and with big black patches of gunk all over them, some reason or another (oh yeh – when he was rolling around on the deck, I suppose, mm, it must have been), and the first thing he did was crouch down to this really quite smart little fridge he’s got there and break open a couple of those very dinky bottles of Scotch, or something – and the shock of that lot suddenly charging all through me was, oh God – pretty much electrifying, in a consequently rather sag-making sort of a way. Then he started running a really hot shower – twisting at the big chrome taps as if he truly loathed them – and just that first hit of thick fug felt good to me, very. And I adored the way that Earl was peeling off his wet and stinking clothes, neither shyly nor posing, and just stepped forward into the steam and stood there with his back towards me, letting all those blazing needles sting him, and then course on down the gleaming length of all his planes and flanks in a languid, yes, and streaming wash. And then he turned to me, full at me, and smiled his fabulous boyish and American smile and I took off all of my stuff and joined him there, yes – my arms just resting high up on his shoulders, my eyelids batting madly so that I could see him through the jets of warmth that were urging us back into human again – first turning us rosy, then making us hot.