Sail Away

by Celia Imrie

  Suzy stood in the glare of the spotlight and looked down. She could see her own shadow shaking. She didn’t think she had ever been this nervous on any stage in her life. But then neither had she ever been this unrehearsed.

  When the scene was over, Jason took a bow, and left the stage through the red curtains.

  Suzy walked down towards the audience.

  ‘Oscar Wilde famously said “I have nothing to declare but my genius”, and that genius led him to become the most celebrated man in London, but at the height of his success, events took such a terrible turn that he died in exile, shunned by the society which had once worshipped him, existing in abject poverty, his famous name so toxic that he chose to live under an alias.’ She looked down at the script in the folder, grasping for the name he had gone under. The pages were in the wrong order. If that wasn’t bad enough, the lights were dazzlingly bright and Jason’s handwriting so spidery she could barely make out one in three words.

  ‘Erm …’ She paused, flipping the pages, trying to find the bit about Wilde’s mother and early life. ‘It’s in here somewhere …’

  She looked up to smile and caught eyes with Mike. A smug smirk was playing on his lips.

  Suzy walked towards the wings. She decided to dump the script on the lectern and make up as much as she could remember, from now on, not relying on the notes at all.

  She took centre stage again.

  ‘Jane Francesca Agnes, Lady Wilde, went under the fanciful nom de plume, Speranza. But Lady Wilde was no flibbertigibbet. A renowned supporter of women’s rights and Irish nationalism, her life in many ways predicted her son’s. She too was involved in a sex scandal, and sued for libel by a girl who accused her husband, Oscar’s father, Sir William Wilde, of seducing her. After the libel suit, when Sir William died, they discovered that he had squandered all the family money and they were left broke.’

  Suzy wasn’t sure why, but the audience seemed to be growing uncomfortable. She could hear people rustling and murmuring.

  While she continued about Lady Wilde’s career, how she wrote and sold folk tales to make ends meet, someone in the audience edged out of their row, ran up the aisle and left. Two others followed.

  Her talk was obviously a disaster.

  Panicked, Suzy moved downstage to talk about the reception of Oscar’s first plays. ‘A Woman of No Importance …’ Suddenly she could not remember the names of any other plays. She went back to the lectern and flicked frantically through the pages. She could hear the audience getting more and more edgy. People were talking now, standing up and leaving – they seemed not to be strolling up the aisles, but running.

  As she stammered more truisms about Wilde, the lights changed and behind her she heard a commotion. Suzy turned and saw a man wearing a velvet jacket holding a microphone walking out on to the stage. He held up his hand, requesting Suzy to stop talking.

  She couldn’t believe this was happening to her.

  The audience must think that she was so bad she was being taken off.

  The man, a kind of compère, walked past her to the front of the stage.

  ‘Can we have houselights right up, now, Andy!’

  As the lights in the auditorium came up Suzy saw that nearly all the audience was standing, many people shuffling along the rows, trying to get out.

  ‘Thank you, Suzy. Sorry to stop your talk, but we have a bit of a medical emergency on our hands.’ The man turned to the audience. ‘I know you’ll bear with me when I ask you to clear some space.’ He then waved to the medical team who were heading down the aisles, with large bags and a stretcher.

  ‘I’m afraid tonight’s show is over, folks. Suzy’s talk was fascinating but right now we need to give the sick gentleman urgent care. Could you please leave as briskly as possible through the doors to the right so that the medical team can make full use of the left aisle.’

  As everyone made their way out, the man with the microphone came over to Suzy and whispered in her ear. ‘It looks like a heart attack. So sorry to interrupt. I’m Blake, by the way. The entertainment manager.’

  One of the medics looked up to the stage and shook his head.

  Blake lifted his microphone again, calling out to the stragglers who were lingering in the aisle trying to look back to see what was going on. ‘That’s it, ladies and gentlemen. Show over. Plenty of other things to do – there’s the casino, the cinema, dancing in the ballroom. You’ll have another chance to hear Suzy’s brilliant talk soon. Just read your Daily Programme. We’ll reschedule.’

  As the last of the audience left the auditorium, Suzy looked down at the medical team. They had laid the person out in the aisle and were giving him mouth to mouth.

  It was only then that she realised the man whose heart they were pumping was Mike Turner.

  Taking Suzy by the arm, Blake walked her from the stage.

  ‘What happens now?’ she asked.

  ‘I need to get down to the office and get the schedule reordered. There’s nothing we can do here. He’ll be taken down to the infirmary.’

  ‘Poor man,’ said Suzy.

  ‘Not really,’ said Blake. ‘He’s a bitter man who makes life hell for everyone onboard. I wonder how many people will believe his lectures on living a healthy lifestyle now?’

  Despite herself, Suzy laughed.

  ‘I don’t think you’ve much reason to laugh, Miss Marshall. That man saved your bacon,’ said Blake. ‘You were floundering up there. Not enough preparation, I fear.’

  Backstage, while she had her microphone removed, Suzy stayed silent. What could she say after that slap in the face? She felt like a naughty schoolgirl waiting to be given a black mark.

  ‘As for Mike,’ Blake continued, ‘the Medical Centre will take good care of him. We’ve a first-rate team onboard. Proper medicine, unlike the silly guff in his talks.’ Blake laid his handheld microphone in a basket on the stage manager’s console and walked Suzy out of the stage door. ‘Andy tells me that Mike went for you earlier at the tech meeting.’

  ‘He was just being tough on the newbie.’ As they strolled together along the red-carpeted corridors, Suzy was afraid to admit how much Mike had terrified her. ‘And as it turns out, he was right. What will happen to him now?’

  ‘Depends how it goes. We may chopper him to the mainland, or if he’s well enough to keep going a few days he’ll be offloaded when we get to Southampton. Are you finishing your stint in Southampton too?’

  Suzy nodded.

  ‘Heading off to do some glamorous film job, I suppose.’

  ‘Hardly!’ Suzy laughed. ‘I’ll be getting off to sit at home and wait for the phone to ring. The usual actor’s life.’

  Blake peeled off and opened an unmarked door, just behind the purser’s office. ‘Go and enjoy yourself,’ he said. ‘What happened tonight is unfortunate, but not your responsibility. But before you get back on to one of our stages, Miss Marshall, please make sure you know what you’re doing.’

  She returned to her cabin to gather her thoughts. She felt like an idiot. Had she been that awful? She knew that Blake was right when he said she was unprepared but how could she prepare when she hadn’t even known that she was doing the bloody thing?

  She flopped down on the bed, feeling utterly depressed.

  Now that she was onboard doing this job, she really wanted to make it work, and yet it appeared by the end of day one she had already failed.

  How come she spent her life yearning for work and now that it had arrived everything had gone so wrong? The Importance should have been good for her, in one way or another. Either because the audiences enjoyed it and she’d have the thrill of the laughs and the applause, or at the very worst she’d have some money coming in.

  But neither had happened.

  And now this further failure.

  She was bewildered.

  Her mind went back to Zurich.

  Why would a producer cancel a whole show simply because one of the actors resisted his advances? And Reg seemed
to have taken the whole business too calmly, as though it was normal for a show to rehearse, go to Zurich and get cancelled, while no one got paid, and all their return flights got annulled, leaving the actors to get themselves home.

  She wondered if she was right to trust Jason.

  Something huge was missing in this equation. She had not been told the whole story. Whichever way you looked at it, the individual pieces didn’t add up at all.

  Suzy decided she should phone Barbara. She felt that, with the insouciance she had shown in Zurich, the stage manager must have a sane outlook; plus, by now, she might know more of the facts. Perhaps she even knew the truth. In which case, her opinions might help Suzy to stop having these panics.

  Suzy picked up her mobile phone but then saw that there was no signal.

  As she touched up her make-up she looked into her eyes in the mirror. Her face still showed the anxiety of the last twenty-four hours. What a day! Still, at least she was on her way home. And she felt that, once she was safely in London, this whole escapade would take on the same properties as a dream – it would become an anecdote, she hoped, a conversation to have with fellow actors, another disaster story about a job which went wrong, something to laugh about.

  Nonetheless, as Suzy fastened her necklace, brushed herself down and left her cabin, she still felt a dark niggling worry, a worry which was not going to go away.

  She wanted to talk to Jason, to have a debrief.

  She looked at her watch and realised that now he would be at work, strutting his stuff as a dance host. She left the cabin and made her way to the ballroom.

  As she walked down the central corridor, a couple in evening dress strolled past her.

  ‘Such a pity your talk was cut short,’ said the lady. ‘We were really enjoying it.’

  Suzy smiled, astonished. After Blake’s acerbic response she could only remember the audience’s disturbance, so she couldn’t imagine that anyone had found it entertaining.

  ‘I look forward to the repeat event,’ said the gentleman. ‘I gather the poor man in the audience had a heart attack.’

  ‘I’m afraid so,’ said Suzy.

  ‘Life goes on,’ said the lady. ‘We need to make the most of it, you know. These moments are a sharp reminder.’

  ‘We’ll look out for you in the Programme tomorrow.’ The gentleman took his partner’s arm and they drifted away.

  Suzy found the ballroom with ease. You could hear the dance band reverberating along the corridors leading to it.

  She found a table near the back of the room and ordered a stiff drink. Once her eyes became accustomed to the light she could make out Jason working on the dance floor. He was in the centre of the room, waltzing, smiling, charming the pants off some middle-aged woman.

  He looked so at ease, and yet, this time last night, he had apparently been in the middle of some drama terrible enough to get the whole run of a show cancelled. Apart from the forty winks they’d both taken on the train journey, Jason couldn’t have got much sleep in the last twenty-four hours, yet he still looked so fresh.

  Suzy felt her mobile phone vibrating in her handbag. She was confused that suddenly there was magically a signal when she had assumed there was no hope of one onboard. She fumbled about and answered. It was her agent.

  Holding a finger to one ear to drown out the dance music, Suzy scurried to the entrance so that she might hear better.

  ‘Are you sitting comfortably?’ he said. ‘Good news. Lecturer on health dropped out at the last minute. So, anyway, they’ve offered to extend your trip, if you’d fancy it.’

  Suzy thought he must have been mistaken. The entertainment manager had all but told her she was rubbish, and, on top of that, having a heart attack wasn’t exactly what she would call “dropping out”.

  ‘I was there, Max. It was horrible.’

  ‘It wasn’t your fault … or was it?’ Max laughed again. ‘A Miss Marple plot.’

  ‘Stop kidding about it all, Max. Please.’

  ‘I’m sorry. Insensitive. But how about it, Suze? Sail on to New York and back? Or if you like you can do to New York and then fly back. They have a vacancy. What do you think?’

  Suzy was tempted, but after Blake’s comments she felt terrified and, anyway, lecturing was not really her métier.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know, Max. Wouldn’t I be better off back in town, hanging out for a TV role?’

  ‘It’s dead over here, darling. Not a squeak of work anywhere. We’re all fingering prayer beads, pleading for the phones to ring. Absolutely nothing new is starting up now till Christmas is over. You’d only be coming back to nothing.’

  Suzy was torn.

  ‘I don’t think the entertainment manager likes me. It could be difficult.’

  ‘Well someone onboard called Blake was just on the blower, raving about you to me. Truly, Suze,’ said Max in his best persuasive manner, ‘I can think of worse places to be employed in December than a luxury cruise ship.’

  Suzy couldn’t take this in.

  ‘Blake?’

  ‘Yes, it was Blake who just phoned me.’

  Suzy was mystified but always willing to take her agent’s advice.

  ‘What would I have to do, though, Max? I don’t know that I can come up with many more lectures.’

  ‘Morning acting classes four days of the transatlantic crossing, plus two talks, and they can be the same ones you’re doing on this leg.’

  In the adjacent ballroom, the band struck up a quickstep tempo version of ‘Let’s Do It’.

  It was a sign.

  ‘You’re on, Max darling,’ she said. ‘Let’s do it.’

  As she re-entered the ballroom, Suzy found herself doing steps from the charleston, which she remembered from playing Maisie in a production of The Boyfriend in her younger days, at Worthing Rep.

  She noticed that the woman who Jason had been dancing with was back at the table now, swigging champagne and smiling.

  It certainly was the life, here onboard. Like being in a bouncing bubble of Fairyland.

  And if Suzy worked this Atlantic trip it would give her a little money in time for Christmas.

  She took a seat at the empty table beside Jason’s recent dance partner, waved down a waiter and ordered another glass of whisky.

  Jason swept off the floor and stood before a flamboyant elderly lady wearing a tangerine frou-frou top and huge gathered 1950s-style skirt. He held out one hand, offering her a turn at the Gay Gordons. The lady gave a coy smile and went with him. As he marched past her, Jason gave Suzy a surreptitious wink.

  She was certain he was not telling her the truth about what happened last night in Zurich.

  But now that she was here doing another job, did Zurich really matter?

  She had not been paid for the weeks of rehearsal and had lost the money she had spent on lodgings in Zurich. But Max would chase all that up as best he could and, now that she was set up here onboard the Blue Mermaid, surely it would be better to forget the whole escapade and put it down to experience. ‘Cancel and continue’, as one of her favourite actresses had once said, after a particularly bad onstage experience. Cancel and continue. That was the way forward.

  Jason would be getting off the ship in two days and the entire business would be old news.

  Suzy realised she must still be looking worried. She lifted her head and put on a smile. How did that song go? Something about wearing your frown upside down.

  And another old adage: if you look forward instead of looking back, things will start looking up.

  She sipped her whisky.

  Simultaneously the woman at the next table raised her champagne glass and smiled at Suzy.

  The current dance ended and Jason prowled the tables scanning for lonely females. He stopped in front of Suzy, held out his hand and whispered in her ear. ‘What are you doing here? Is your talk over already?’

  ‘Long story,’ she said. ‘But I won’t dance just now.’

  ‘Guess what?’ Jason pressed
his face closer to her ear. ‘They’ve asked me to stay on.’

  ‘I thought you were in trouble for being the wrong age.’

  ‘Max is in trouble for dissembling. But the man who was going to replace me at Southampton has just taken a tumble and broken a hip. They may want mature men, but these old geezers come with their liabilities. Anyhow, now they need me as far as New York.’

  He spun away from her and asked the elderly lady behind him if she’d like to dance.

  Suzy watched as the boy led her to the dance floor.

  Now that Jason was staying on, Suzy knew that she couldn’t let the whole Zurich saga drop. If she did it would always hang in the air between the two of them.

  ‘Are you travelling alone too?’ asked the woman at the next table, leaning over the side of her chair.

  ‘Kind of,’ Suzy replied.

  ‘He’s a right little charmer, that boy. I danced with him earlier. I’ve only just realised they are all employees of the ship. At first I thought my luck was in!’ The woman scrutinised Suzy’s face and added, ‘Have we met before?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Suzy.

  ‘Oh wait! I know! You’re an actress. Sorry if I’m wrong, but weren’t you in that wonderful old legal TV series, Dahlias?’

  ‘That’s me!’ Suzy took another sip of her drink. ‘Suzy Marshall.’ She extended a hand.

  ‘Amanda Herbert.’ Amanda lifted her glass. ‘They should bring that show back. I loved it.’

  ‘Fashions change, I’m afraid, Amanda. It was a little too gentle for today’s taste. Plus, we’re all a bit past it now.’

  ‘I always forget that.’ Amanda laughed. ‘I feel as though I’m still twenty-six.’

  ‘Do you cruise a lot?’

  ‘No,’ said Amanda. ‘It’s all a fluke. My first time. I got on at Genoa. But I’m heading to New York.’

  ‘Me too,’ said Suzy.

  They both turned to watch the dancers.

  Two women of an age, sitting at adjacent tables, simultaneously raising a toast. Two passing strangers, on a ship in the night.

  Little did these two women know that, thanks to the eventful turns of the last few days, they had something in common.