‘You haven’t shaved. You sure you’re OK?’
‘Yes, I am. Of course. And no, you’re right – I haven’t.’
No. Haven’t shaved. Went down to the cabin to change, very rapidly – and it’s a, Jesus! Small old world, isn’t it, really? I mean – did I for one minute imagine I’d wind up the evening not just sipping with Dwight but coated pretty much from head to toe in my mistress’s vomit? That is my mistress Trish, you see – who is actually back in London, isn’t she? Because I never ever take her anywhere, do I? So it can’t, can it, have really been her? Can it? Well yes it can, actually – yes indeed: it was, oh yes – no mistake. Which means, then (doesn’t it?), that she isn’t, is she, as we speak back, in fact, in London? Yes yes – these are, it would seem (and not just on the surface) very much the facts of the matter. Trish is in fact a happy little tripper on the Transylvania, along with me and my children and of course my bloody wife – and on board too is a rather lovely young American girl who I just must find a moment for when I’ve sorted through these little local difficulties because she craves, do you see, to be cherished. OK? Good. I’m glad we’ve got all that in order. Oh my God. Oh my God. I think I’ll lose my mind …
And shaving? No – didn’t linger for that, because Nicole, you see (still unaware of this latest little time bomb, far as I can tell – certainly she hasn’t knifed me yet), would have started up with her eternal commentaries interlarded with a more general and all-encompassing salvo of denigration, spiked by ridicule – and so what I had to do was peel off all these very deeply offensive and now quite crusty and gag-making clothes (and dump them where, exactly? Well – Nicole can see to that) and then have a very rapid shower and then I’ll just slip on this polo shirt, yes – this one will do – and these grey trousers, excellent, excellent, and deck shoes, yes fine, and now I’ll just ram all my stuff into a jacket, jacket, jacket – um, this jacket, yes, and – what? What did you say, Nicole? Not this jacket? Why, in fact, not this jacket, actually, Nicole? Oh I see. I see – yes. Yes I had failed to pick up on that point – you are perfectly correct. It is quite the wrong shade of blue for the trousers – yes, of course, I quite see that now, how very remiss of me: it’s almost as if I’ve got other things on my mind, isn’t it? Oh my God. Oh my God. What? What are you saying to me now, Nicole? The grey? The mid-grey tweed with the heathery flecks? No – didn’t bring that one along with me, actually. Why? Why didn’t I? Well no reason, really (well one reason, actually – I sold it, didn’t I? To person or persons unknown one loud and tanked-up hubbubby night in a hot and fetid pub just only a very few days ago, since you ask, my sweetness – but still years and years and years before I boarded this ship and found myself on Planet Lunatic, of course).
‘Well look, Dad – I’ve got to go. Seeing someone, OK? Bit late.’
David nodded quite wildly at that and was off and away, just vaguely trailing a hand in farewell. He nearly bustled and was rather peculiarly crouched – stooped over, it looked like to Marianne: as if he was either intent upon snuffling out and hauling to the light some deeply hidden thing, or else maybe ducking detection, and hell-bent on his lair. Well. That was Dad: she’d seen him weird before. Not maybe this particular variety of weird, it was true, but then he was rather known, wasn’t he – poor old Daddy – for not just the breadth and scope and abundant colour that his full and ample repertoire of weirdnesses afforded, but also the subtleties of nuance that blurred the fringes bordering on each of the incarnations, all of them gloriously combining to make up the whole of the selection on offer.
And no – I wasn’t wrong about Tom: as soon as I heaved open this great big heavy door, I saw him at the far end of the deck, full-length on a lounger and intent upon the sea – swaddled, he practically seemed, in what appeared to be far more than just the one coat and hat and scarf, but presumably that’s all there was. The air – the almost maddening rush of air has stung me and I love it! You really have to hunch yourself over (bit like Dad) to have any real hope of making some headway.
‘Tom. Hello. Sorry – bit late. God, what a fabulous morning …’
And no – Marianne saw it immediately, now: she had, in a sense, been wrong about Tom. He wasn’t just punctual: he had been here for very possibly hours. He shaded his eyes with the flat of his hand as he raised them up to meet her – a gesture that was almost a salute, thought Marianne suddenly – and she laughingly sprang to attention and clicked her heels.
‘Duce …’ she said.
‘Alas …’ was the whole of Tom’s rejoinder. And then, as she stood there, he came up with this: ‘Here – sit. Sit with me. I have something to tell you. Something I think you should know.’
So Marianne stretched herself out on the lounger alongside (well – she had been going to do that anyway) and of course was intrigued by what Tom had just murmured (and, she somehow thought, had been rehearsing and honing and paring right down since maybe dawn, who knew? And why did she actually think that?). But as well as merely a raw and justifiable curiosity, there pawed around her consciousness a need, she supposed, to be admitted to Tom – quite why this should be and to what end such a state might lead her, she honestly could not have told you – but it was a tolerant need that she had kept in check and certainly never allowed to blossom into anything like a hunger, because she had not once, ever, thought it might be even appeased, let alone fed. Her eagerness to hear him out, however, was tempered by the merest squeak of fear; if what he said came close to touching her, then there would be established between them a bond – and one whose potential had surely by now been frequently and loudly touting the shadow of its presence, but had not to date revealed a chance of being forged.
This new and protracted silence, then, was vexing, now – very.
‘Well … Tom? What is it? Hm?’
Tom glanced at her and nodded, as if to say Yes, he knew it was his cue, and thank you for the prompt, but wait – just wait, can you, for only a very few seconds longer – and then I’ll let you (if you want it) have it, yes, with pleasure.
The sun was at their backs, but still the light was blinding; Marianne put on her mid-blue tinted sunglasses, and settled down to wait. With Tom, it’s what you did. The sea and sky are a seamless royal and dazzling blue – the dancing spatters of gleaming, like millions upon millions of little silver fish, all swimming in formation and taking it in turns to leap up for attention, before diving back down to resume their rightful place in the vast and sparkling eternal scheme of things.
‘Do you see,’ he said quite suddenly – and maybe a little too quickly ‘ – this lifeboat above our heads?’ Marianne tilted back her head to trace this thing as Tom quite blithely continued. ‘Have you noticed them? You see? They’re strung up there the length of the deck. Same on the starboard side too, of course. I’ve checked.’
‘What about them? They’re quite pretty, aren’t they, actually? I wonder why some are red and some are white …? Yes – I saw them the other morning. What are you thinking, Tom? You think we’re going to sink …?’
‘No. No no … I feel very safe. Held, if you like. No – it simply occurred to me earlier this morning to do a little sum. Can you see from where you are sitting the lettering stencilled down the side, just there?’
Marianne slipped down the glasses to the bridge of her nose (contacts can cope with this, she thought) but no amount of socket contortion could compete with all the shimmering light, so she slid them back up again.
‘What does it say?’
‘It says: ‘Capacity – one hundred and thirty-nine persons’. Which I quite agree – seems a lot. Looks rather a small boat, from down here, doesn’t it?’
‘God – a hundred and thirty-nine. I wouldn’t fancy that much. Especially at night.’
‘You would – you would if you were in one, and other quite desperate souls were flailing in the sea, and screaming. Screaming.’
Marianne regarded him. ‘What’s your point, Tom?’
‘Hm? Point
? Oh – hardly have one. I simply multiplied the figure by the number of boats and yes, there’s adequate space for both passengers and crew. Which is a comfort. But only barely, mind – and one wonders, of course, whether in a state of emergency all could be successfully launched. Particularly if we were listing.’
‘But Tom – you said – !’
‘Oh and I meant it. No no. I see no danger. As I told you: I feel very safe. And of course there’s extra space, now, because there are thirteen fewer passengers, remember, since the commencement of the cruise … maybe that’s where they keep them. The dead ones. In the lifeboats. Quite a twist, that would be.’
And Marianne checked her impulse to laugh: is he making a joke? And also – do I find it funny?
‘Mary …’ said Tom, then. And stopped.
‘Yes, Tom: Mary. Your wife … what is it you want to say?’
‘I don’t suppose … no. No. I don’t suppose so for a minute.’
‘What, Tom? Suppose what? Say it. It’s OK. You can say it.’
‘Well, I was just wondering. I don’t suppose, Marianne – that anyone ever calls you Mary? Do they? I don’t suppose so, no.’
‘Well … no, Tom, no. They don’t. But if you want to …’
‘Hm? Oh no. Oh no. No no no. Don’t want to – oh Lord no. Should never presume. No – I was just enquiring, that’s all – just came into my mind to wonder whether anyone did.’
‘Well. They don’t.’
‘No. Well I didn’t suppose they would. No. Shall we walk a bit? Getting a wee bit stiff, just sitting here. It can get quite chilly, can’t it? If you don’t from time to time move around.’
But despite his stiffness, it was Marianne who seemed to be having the most trouble in extricating herself from this very low lounger (there’s nothing here much one can actually get a hold of) and Tom reached out a hand to her. When the two of them stood facing one another, he gently released it – but as they turned their faces into the padded punch of the buffeting wind, Marianne fluidly linked one of her arms into the crook of his elbow, and then crammed both her hands deep down into her pockets. They trudged quite doggedly to the very stern of the ship, the whiplash cracks and chafing of the wind making further communication impossible for now (Marianne had tried it once or twice, and no – hopeless). Soon they were leaning against the wet and oily wooden handrail, and staring wordlessly at the churned-up torrent of roaring white water that formed their perpetual wake.
‘I was here the other day!’ shouted Marianne – her thin little voice snatched from her mouth even before it could make its journey: it spun away from her and was screwed up and tossed with an easy contempt – over the side, and into infinity. ‘Where we are … it so terribly quickly becomes – where we have been …!’
And Tom now glanced at her sharply, before his expression quite slowly relaxed – and he nodded in silence for so very long that Marianne had to begin to wonder why. She turned away now from the coldly boiling sea and gasped in shock as each of the hairs on her head exerted a panicked and concerted tremendous pull on her scalp in their apparently vicious desperation to take flight, and be done with her. The terrible bulk of the black and red funnel filled her total vision: it soared far higher than even buildings need to – and it was sometimes the very vastness of just everything around her, massed and looming, suspended amid all this seemingly boundless blueness that made her cold and fearful. She wished her arm was still entwined, and warm around another.
Tom was pointing at a door and mouthing at her, she thought it could be: In! Going In! And yes … it was probably the time to do that, now. The warmth of inside was scalding immediately and Marianne’s ears were red and burning and full again now with so much sound.
‘Thirteen,’ said Tom.
‘My God! My whole face is hot and freezing!’ yelped out Marianne. ‘Sorry, Tom – what did you say?’
‘Thirteen,’ he repeated, in exactly the same flat tone. ‘Unlucky for some, we feel.’
And then he spun around to face her, quite alarmingly quickly, and this, Marianne realized, was the very first time he had truly beheld her.
‘I just want you to know,’ he said very softly. ‘About Mary. You see – I helped her. Helped her, yes. And now I have to go.’
And Marianne was surprised – just struck by surprise and nothing else yet as Tom just walked away from her. He made no gesture – and she had hesitated, now, for just too long to fall in step.
‘See you later …!’ she called out – and not much more than feebly, and feeling foolish as she did so. And yes – several knots of track suited people, clinking their coffee cups: they looked round, oh yes – but Tom walked on, regardless.
Marianne wandered in the direction of the staircase, and past the big green baize table filled with jigsaw, her mind now verging on so much thought, she couldn’t begin to even, oh – think … so I’ll look at the jigsaw instead. Work had been done since the last time, that much was plain to see. Yes, look – the balcony on the chalet was very nearly quite whole, and so was the chimney, with that lazy curl of smoke. And now from the clumps of completed sky, you could see that snow was falling.
*
The thing is, the thing is, the thing is is, um … oh God oh God oh God remind me: what’s the thing? What’s the thing? Oh please just help me a little bit, God, David was silently beseeching. At least he assumed it was silent, all this beseeching – but it needn’t have been, needn’t have been: certainly his lips were moving as he bustled down corridors and cannoned off walls and careered in and out of function rooms and bars – no not to get a drink, hell with drink, I’ll never ever, not me, drink again – but to find her, track her down, get to her before she has time to assail Nicole … oh but God, oh God – hang on, this is silly. This is mad, this – I’m doing it all wrong. I got out of our cabin, right, because what would I do if Trish just took it into her bloody little head to phone Nicole and spill the whole damn cassoulet and I was just standing there and affecting oblivion while happily going along with all the fun of the mix ’n’ match game, this to involve my toning separates? Or even turn up – quite capable, she’s perfectly capable, that woman, of just turning up at the cabin door and shouting her mouth off and watching me squirm and die. Because look – face it, face it: she did not book herself on to this trip – and how did she do that, actually? When did she do that? Even when she was begging me not to go, saying how much she’d miss me … she’d already bloody well got hold of her ticket, hadn’t she? Christ oh Christ – there’s no man, is there? There’s not one man on God’s earth who could dream of pulling a stunt like that. Women – oh God, women. Why do we do it? Hey? Why do we ever get involved, at all? Hey? Well – obvious, really: sex. Sex is why, yes – because I tell you one thing for free, amigo: all these people (and you hear it all the time, now – people are forever saying it) – all these people who go round telling you that such-and-such a thing is better than sex … well what exactly are they on about, someone please tell me? I mean – sometimes they’re joking, right? Like when they say Ah yes – a lovely cup of tea: better than sex. Joke, presumably (hope so, at least, or else God help them). But then you also hear people say that, I don’t know – pulling off some City business deal: better than sex. Driving like a fucking lunatic in a bloody Ferrari: better than sex. Eating sodding chocolate: better than sex. Coming up trumps in the Lottery – yep, you got it: better than sex. The phrase has completely taken over the ‘best since sliced bread’ thing and all I can say is they’re mad – nuts, completely loopy – because look, just look: anything on earth is better than sliced bloody bread, isn’t it? I mean – unsliced bread, for bloody starters. But sex, well – well the whole point is that there isn’t anything better than sex, not ever. That’s why sex is sex, Christ’s sake – that’s the whole bloody point of the thing. And that’s why we sniff it out and gulp it down and mortgage first and then sell wholesale our entire bloody life on earth for the sake of it and then when the hint of more and diffe
rent has us twitching and lustful, then we mess up, oh – everything we have and like a missile just go for it, like I do. Which is how I come to fuck up. As it were. And maybe women don’t feel like that, I don’t know. Mind you – the new breed probably do: the ones who drink pints of Sancerre and keep renewing their lipstick between fags and tankards – they probably do (frighten the life out of me, that type, quite frankly). But people like Nicole, well … I should think that winning a keyring in some competition that it took her twenty quidsworth of labels from, I don’t know – denture sterilizer to even amass the wherewithal to even enter (and yes, she did that once) … I should think that for her, that’d be better than sex. Or sex with me, anyway. And whether she knows what it’s like with anyone else, well … honestly couldn’t tell you.
But it’s Trish, all of a bloody sudden, who’s very much the point here. And that’s what I was saying, wasn’t it? Oh – about two or three decks and several staircases ago (I seem to have apologized to just about every single passenger twice for having barged into them, trodden upon their feet, caused their children to scream and bolt – and still I’m not close to tracking her down). But what I was saying is that no matter how she managed to get on this bloody ship she didn’t coldly plan to do so just by way of sorting out for herself a little bit of a break, did she? Touch of bracing ozone, few days’ rest? I don’t really think so. No – she came here because none of the players in this little drama has any chance whatever of escape: she’s got us, Christ – exactly where she wants us. And right now she’s elsewhere, oh yes – because she chooses to be. But when she thinks the time is right … oh God. Oh God oh God oh God – I think I’ll lose my mind. And now Nicole is alone in the cabin – so Jesus Jesus: that’s where Trish could be too. Right now. Or maybe she’s sick again – maybe it’s that. Because she hates boats, Trish – always has done, terrible sailor; and that alone shows the level of her determination, doesn’t it, really? So maybe she’s sick. Maybe she’s dead, yes? No – I really shouldn’t think like that. But I think I will anyway: maybe she’s dead. Yes? Because this is the thing: I don’t want her, you know. Not one thought of that nature has so much as crossed my mind for even one second. Now admittedly, it’s not much of a come-on when it’s late and you’re pretty well completely plastered and your wife is just hanging around and then your mistress saunters over and spews up her guts all down and over you – I mean it’s not exactly one of life’s Romeo and Juliet moments, is it? No – granted: fair enough. (And it’s not the first time something like this has happened to me, either. One time I was at a stag party – my allocated tart spent the whole of the evening cramming down eclairs. Turned out she was, what’s that thing? Bulimic. Only time I ever heard of where the bloody cake came leaping out of the girl. Telling you.)
S.O.S. Page 29
