S.O.S.

by Joseph Connolly

  But even since … I was sort of assuming that I’d track her down, fuck her briefly and then set about giving her hell or pleading for my life, whatever seemed right at the time. But no. Don’t want to fuck her. Not a bit. And maybe it’s been brewing for a while, this, you know: not sure. But whenever I went over to her place lately she always wanted me to comment on the music and swoon over the candles (and the scent from some of them, telling you – put you in a coma); and then I was meant to eat some sort of gourmet meal when I was already full to bursting with peanuts and crisps and Scotch and Scotch – and then she wanted us to share a bath. Well I mean – God’s sake. Look – I did it once (quiet life) and honestly. It’s not as if she’s got one of these big marble sunken Roman efforts or anything – it’s only a bleeding bath, Christ’s sake. Yeah – and guess whose bloody spine was jammed up hard against the taps? Yes indeed; with the plug and chain snuggling up quite cosily into the cleft between my buttocks. Isn’t this, she sighed – romantic? I frankly thought she was unhinged. Anyway – what I’m really driving at here is that it got to the stage where there was just so much to be got through before I could even see a glimmer of the business end of things that I started thinking Oh Christ is it really bloody worth it? All this? I mean – just a basic blow-job would be, oh – so much more convenient. (Put it to her once: she said she just couldn’t go through with it – not with a straight face. What are you supposed to think? I ask you. She didn’t believe, she carried on – perfectly deadpan – she didn’t honestly believe that she could pull it off. Dear Christ.)

  Right. Anyway – this is the last bloody deck she can possibly be on. Unless, of course, she’s been busy going downstairs as I’ve been going up. Or she’s with Nicole. Or sick. Or dead. Oh Christ let’s face it – she needn’t at all be on this deck, need she? Bloody woman. How are you supposed to actually find anyone on this fucking ship, hey? I mean – how are you? Case in point: every single face I have stared at briefly and instantly discarded as being the wrong bloody one – every single one of them was entirely new to me. Amazing. I mean – even in London, Christ’s sake, you time to time bump into someone you’ve met before. So where is she? Tried her cabin, of course – buzzed her four times now, so I’m sure she’s not there, anyway (yeh yeh – unless she’s sick or dead, I know, I know). She certainly can’t be outside – that’d kill her for sure (maybe worth bearing in mind). So quite possibly at this very moment, Nicole is hunting for me – mad, and wholly set on cutting me up and out of her life. Do I want that? do I? I do, maybe – I think I very possibly do, yes, think so. But not this way, no. No no – my way (that’s the way I want it).

  I wish I could go and lie down. But it wouldn’t be any good. It’s not as if I’d get my rest, or anything. Just got to sort this out, you see. But hang on, hang on – how do I actually think that confronting Trish is in fact going to sort out anything? Hey? I mean no matter what I say or do the bottom line is she’s going to spill her, oh God – guts out to Nicole, isn’t she? Always assuming – no, I haven’t forgotten – she hasn’t already done so. So why do I chase the wild goose? Maybe I should instead find Suki: lie down beside her and feel her young fingers roaming and then stirring me up and have a very quick bout of mutual cherishing, why not? Think that’s maybe what I might … wait … wait: look. Over there. Half behind that sort of pillar-type thing with the motley mirror: in that shop. Her, isn’t it? Pretty sure, yes … hang on – get a bit closer (kick this old woman out of my way) and let’s just see … yes. Yes. That’s Trish. She’s there. Shopping. Would be.

  ‘Look, you – !’

  ‘David. Morning. I’m feeling much better, thank you. Sorry about your – you know: clothes, and everything. I find that the higher I am in the ship, the less sort of wobbly I feel. Which is why my cabin’s such a perfect pain, quite frankly – the lowest of the low. Which was actually quite kind of me, David – you should thank me. Because I charged it to your credit card and I could easily have got a much, much nicer cabin. Closer to you and your bloody wife. What do you think of this sweatshirt?’

  David gazed at the blue thing she was holding out to him. There was red and gold at its centre and it said Transylvania in white.

  ‘Too obvious, do you think, David? Maybe one of these pastel ones …?’

  ‘You charged the – you charged the –?! Oh my God Almighty, Trish – you know I’m absolutely … how in hell did you charge it to my –?!’

  ‘Oh don’t be so silly, David. You just read out the numbers over the telephone, it’s terribly easy … pink one’s quite nice – wonder if they’ve got it in medium … oh don’t look like that – honestly, David: I’ve done it loads of times. Things like food and wine and candles do cost money, you know. I think I’ll maybe just get the set of shot glasses. You like? Sweet, aren’t they?’

  And do you know – even as I’m yammering away at Trish (I’m going: We’ve got to talk we’ve got to talk we’ve got to talk) all I’m now actually thinking about is money. I just haven’t, oh Christ – got any. Why can’t people see that? It’s got so that the very word money just scares all sorts of hell out of me. And finance – oh my God, that’s even worse. Every morning when I go into work and I see those words Corporate Financial Consultant on my desk, oh Jesus – I practically pass out. And it’s not as if I know even the first thing about it – Christ, I’ve been winging it for years (and how long can it go on? Hey? How long?). I tried to mug up on all those supplements – you know, at the weekend, all those newspaper bits with names like You And Your Money (aargh!). Not the proper grown-up business sections, no – not them: too scary. Also – couldn’t make head or tail of them. And even the colour of the FT brings me out in a rash. But it got to the stage where I’d just be feebly fumbling and groping my way through all these pictures of smug married couples (and how the budget affected them) and Dinky Toy collectors (Mint and Boxed: Cash In Now On That Fortune In Your Attic) and then some damn bitch who’d started up a, oh Christ I don’t know – start-up company, or something (can that really be possible?) and then all those ads with Richard Branson’s fucking face plastered right across them and I’d just freeze up and glaze over, quite frankly. And once – and yes yes, I freely admit this, even for me, this was one of my more frenzied moments, seriously inclining towards the deranged – I actually thought of writing to him: Branson. Dropping him a line. I was going to say, Dear Mister Branson … or is he a Sir? Or a Lord now, maybe? Possibly just jammed at demigod level. Anyway – Dear Whatever Branson: I read a piece lately in something or other that said you are worth two billion. Good show. Jolly well done. Now look – even if you gave away just one little million of your pounds, you’d still have, um … (and buggered if I could do the bloody sum) … oh – lots left, heaps and heaps – but the beauty of this, you see, is that I’m not asking for that much, no. No no – not by a long chalk. Not even half that. Just say – what? Ten grand? Not much, is it? To ask. Man such as yourself? Five? Settle for five? What say? How about it? Oh go on – pleeeeease …!

  Awful thing is – those days, five grand would just about have seen me square. Now … well: haven’t a clue, to be honest. Can’t look at the bits of paper, you see. Just can’t do it. I simply owe everybody – that’s all I know. And now I owe a bloody shipping line as well, apparently. Oh God oh God … I think I’ll lose my mind …

  ‘Talk about what, David. I’ll just pay for these.’

  ‘Hm? Oh yeh – talk, talk. We’ve got to talk. And yes – you pay for those, yes good. Because I can’t. Understand? Jesus, Trish – you know I’m absolutely – ! What on earth did you think you were –?!’

  ‘Actually, David – I seem to have left my purse …’

  And from out of nowhere there echoed around them the high-pitched screaming of a hysterical child – and David thought Jesus Christ: I’ve never before sounded quite like that …

  ‘What on earth’s wrong with you, David? Are you all right?’

  ‘No. Not. I’m not.’


  ‘David. I think we ought to talk.’

  ‘M’yes, Trish. I think you could be right.’

  *

  Stacy was keeping a low and steady eye on her mother, watching quite closely as she neatly sliced the teacake into four – this alone a very clear sign of Jennifer’s preoccupation: normally she’d just cram the whole bloody thing into her mouth, while reaching out for another.

  ‘Don’t let it get to you, Mum. It’s only a bloke …’

  ‘Too late. Already got to me. Aren’t you eating even one of these, Stacy? I do wish you would,’ said Jennifer. ‘Otherwise I think I might scoff the lot.’

  ‘Not hungry. I’ll wait for dinner.’

  ‘You see, Stacy – it’s perfectly all right for you. You’re young – you’re young and fresh and beautiful. It won’t happen to you for, oh – just decades. And the point is – this is, you know, really the most awfully good jam. I wonder where they get it… no no, you see the point is, it’d never happened to me before. I’m so terribly used to everyone saying how fantastically fab I look … I was very – unprepared. I mean admittedly I was egging him on – goading him, almost, into seeing quite clearly what was in front of his eyes. And, of course, telling him the absolute truth … don’t think that’s ever happened to me before either …’

  ‘Oh Mum …’

  ‘But seriously, Stacy – you just can’t conceive. When you actually see … repugnance in the eyes of another. When they practically shiver in disgust – ’

  ‘Oh God’s sake, Mum – you’re making yourself sound like some shrivelled-up old crone …’

  ‘Well maybe that’s exactly what I am. Maybe it’s time to wear chintzy frocks and take up bridge, or something – and buy a paperback that’ll tell me how to go about growing old gracefully …’

  ‘Not really you, though, is it Mum?’

  Jennifer eyed her – and consciously jollying both of them along, she drew herself up and said really very archly:

  ‘I very much hope not, no.’

  No, dear Stacy, grace has no part. What I shall not tell you – you maybe sense the nature of it, though: I think you might – are the words he actually said to me: ‘Look, Jennifer – see this. I ain’t saying you ain’t one special lady … but well – no hard feelings or nothing, but I just ain’t into screwing people’s moms – know what I’m saying? See – puts me in minda my Mom, Jennifer – and jeez, all this stuff you told me … just makes me wanna hurl.’

  It was time, now, for Jennifer to rally again: ‘But what about you, Stacy – hm? Why aren’t you … ooh look, there’s a man there, waiter – are we having more tea? Because the pot’s gone just a tiny bit cold …’

  ‘I’m OK. Really.’

  ‘Sure? Really sure? Well all right, then – we shan’t bother. I’ll just stick a bit of water into what’s left of it … but no listen to me, Stacy – why aren’t you spending any more time with your own little friend? Hm? I mean – you know I don’t ever pry, but …?’

  Stacy glanced up at her, not really surprised that Jennifer should know of the existence of what she very maddeningly chose to term her ‘own little friend’. It was always like this with Mum, somehow or other: it was true that she never pried (partly because she couldn’t be bothered – largely, in fact; and also because up until very recently indeed, I don’t think that she could have imagined that the ins and outs of anyone else’s life could possibly rival in colour nor mayhem the often alarming vicissitudes of her own thing). Nonetheless, she always seemed to know. Parental intuition, do we think? Some faintly spooky hypersensitivity – or maybe just a hunch? Well Jennifer, of course, would have laughingly blown asunder all of those: how on earth, Stacy, could I have had a ‘hunch’ that at the very moment I was careering back to our cabin in the very small hours of the morning (having stolen my way to the prow of the ship and made like a figurehead and then been warmed and fucked by my so-young American boy – in the days before he came to really see me) that you, dear Stacy, would be snogging some sweet and pretty little girl in the softly booming shadows?

  ‘Oh …’ threw away Stacy, idly: ‘that was just nothing.’

  ‘Nothing. Yes. I see.’

  ‘What I mean is … oh – look, I don’t know what you think you know …’

  ‘Me? I know nothing. Always best.’

  ‘Yes but you clearly know something or otherwise you wouldn’t have said, would you Mum? Anyway – quite new for me, I assure you. And quite nice. But it does turn out to be nothing, in fact. Yes.’

  Yes. Apparently it does. Because look – I don’t know exactly what I was expecting, but it was quite a – step, for me, all of that … and well – I just wasn’t prepared (and that’s what Mum said too, wasn’t it? Just a little while back there. That she just simply hadn’t been prepared) … so nor was I, for what Suki had said to me next:

  ‘C’mon – hell’s sake, Stace. Don’t lay this big number on me, kay?’

  ‘Why do you always say things like that? I’m just here – asking you a perfectly simple question and you make like it’s some fantastic scene.’

  ‘Cool it, Stace. Just cool it – kay? Look – I never went with a girl before, right? And it was neat. You’re a real hot chick, Stace – way to go. But, like – now I been there, and I’m kinda like: that’s all she wrote, you know what I’m saying? Now I’m into this older guy? And next – who knows? Whatever. Look, Stace – for you it’s kinda different?’

  ‘Why? Why is it different for me? It isn’t any – ’

  ‘It’s different, Stace, on account of you are living with Jennifer?’

  And Stacy just stared. Something had barged right into her, and she was knocked from her axis: all the many and clamouring things that had crowded into her brain and begged to be said were just sent sprawling all over the place in the face of this swift and unforeseen upheaval: her whole mind went white and blanked out at this impossibly irrelevant and very stupid thing, here.

  ‘But …’ was all she could do, for now. And then: ‘ … you live with Charlene …?’

  And it was Suki’s turn now to look as if some person both unknown and unseen had plucked from the ocean beneath them a very frisky and glisteningly wet and sinuous herring and set to with vigour slapping her around with it.

  ‘Get outta here, Stace! What’re you – nuts? Charlene is my mother …!’

  There was only a flicker that betrayed Stacy’s continued bemusement.

  ‘Yes … and …?’

  Suki narrowed her eyes and studied this Stacy before her. There was the beginning of dawning – a low glimmer of nearly light at the back of her glittering, black and just-not-into-this eyes – but then it was immediately damped back down. Suki now grinned at her own mad idea – she flipped her fingers and rolled up her eyes: it was as if she was subjecting herself to a mute but thorough carpeting for even so much as going there … but the suspicion returned, and was shining like a blade.

  ‘You are not telling me …? Oh my Gaad, I just can’t – ! You ain’t saying, Stace, that Jennifer is your, God – mother?’

  All Stacy did was nod: my mother, yes. Well of course she is: Jennifer’s my mother – everyone knows that. What else could she be …?

  ‘Christ …’ whispered Stacy, then. ‘You thought – did you think – ?’

  ‘Sure I did. And you know what now I think? I think yuck, Stace, is what I think. I mean, what? Before, Earl and me, we kinda figured, like, what the hell, you know? But you are telling me that my brother has been balling your mother?’ And Suki now was lightly clutching her temples, as if seeking a sign from the other side. ‘Like – we are in freaksville, here …!’

  The tear that Stacy had been denying quickly expanded and rolled away down, fluidly curling under her chin. She turned to go, and the last thing she heard from Suki came in the form of the sort of whine wailed out by those who feel they have been shabbily treated:

  ‘I didn’t even think you English were like that …’

  ‘So,’ resum
ed Jennifer. ‘Tea’s cold, cakes gone – what shall we do? Something exciting, yes? Let’s find Nobby and Aggie, and then we can kill them.’

  Stacy tried for a smile of indulgence, but her whole head was still filled with such a lot of … I think it’s sadness.

  ‘I have to see someone, Mum. What time dinner?’

  ‘Hardly matters, does it? Seems one eternal dinner, sometimes. Seven? Later? Eight? Then we can go to the disco thing. And no more toy boys, I promise you. Stick to nice old men who buy us lots of champagne and then go and do what they’re bloody well told.’

  Stacy stood and stretched herself (I often feel, here, like I’ve just got up: just another part of all the strangeness, I suppose).

  ‘Yes, eight’s fine. But I’ll come down earlier and change, and stuff. So see you, yes? And Mum? Please don’t let it get to you … Yes? Promise?’

  Jennifer was beaming. ‘I won’t. Promise. Now off you go. See you later.’

  And she felt a surge of quite simple, well – love, it was, must be, as she watched little Stacy, somehow so alone, walking away from her, slowly. And already I’ve broken my promise, sweet daughter – because it’s all just welled up and got to me again. The revulsion the boy felt for me … I almost feel it for myself. Maybe, once people cease to find me distasteful, I shall descend into being a figure of fun; I might end up like Disco Debbie – a marvel only in that after all this time, I linger on. Bopping till I drop.