by Mark Rice
“I don’t own a gun or rifle if that’s what you mean.”
“No, it doesn’t have to be a gun or rifle,” he persisted, his eyes never blinking for a moment.
“Then I can answer this one for him,” said Margaret laughing “He’s dangerous enough with a tennis racquet! Playing doubles last year he caught me in the face with a backhand shot. He missed the ball entirely!”
The moment had passed and, within minutes, conversation had moved on. Well done Margaret.
Tonight we caught Dean Rock’s second show at the Gaiety Theatre. He delivered the goods, packing the show with hits from across the decades.
We walked down towards the Pacific Lounge but Margaret felt tired and diverted to the cabin.
I sat in a largely empty theatre watching the Azara's Talent show. No performer was younger than seventy-five years of age. The contestants included several singers, a woman playing a Chopin piano concerto, a performance poet and the SS Azara tap dance class in their entirety.
An act called The Performance Poet was a curiosity, as he came on stage with a table covered with props and a rolled-up poem which he read aloud in Ye Olde English, delivered with a thick Geordie accent. He recounted the battle of Hastings in 1066 when King Harold II was defeated by the Saxon invaders led by William the Conqueror. Frankly, he really tried to do too much. He had too many props, tried to play too many characters and frequently lost his way in the monologue but this all added to the charm of his act.
No winner was announced at the end of the ninety-minute show but then how can you judge a winner between such diverse acts? I think they were all just happy to perform and the contest outcome itself was irrelevant.
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Day 23
Wednesday 25th January.
Montego Bay, Jamaica.
The next morning, we docked in the harbour, tied up by the jetty. There was no need for the lowering of boats to act as shuttles, moving people ashore, as was the original plan. However, the dock area is very commercial with little of interest for the tourist in the immediate vicinity.
We ate breakfast and then played three games of short tennis during which time the newly commissioned addition to the Octavian fleet, Blade, arrived and docked to our right. It’s a much larger ship than the SS Azara and has many more balcony rooms.
We finished the tennis in 25 degrees heat, Margaret snatching victory and both of us dripping with sweat. We weighed ourselves on the gym's scales and I was up six pounds while Margaret was five pounds. Not so bad considering twenty-five days and nights of eating and drinking and making merry. It was back to the cabin for a shower and a complete change of clothes.
Eventually, we were ready to exit the ship and made our way to the gangplank. It was while we were en route to exiting the ship that we met a couple of returning passengers.
"You're not thinking of going ashore?" the guy said.
"Yes. We were."
"It’s a complete waste of time," he said. “The free shuttle drops you at the harbour gates and its chaos there. Taxi and shuttle drivers are charging $7 each per trip so $28 return to the town and there's nothing there."
He turned and climbed the stairs. We decided to press on and, stepping out of the lift with the gangplank in sight, we met a stream of returning passengers. They included Jimmy, our bridge partner, wheeling his wife along in her wheelchair.
"Save yourself the bother, Luke," he said. "It's just not worth it."
I looked at Margaret who had harboured security worries about Jamaica before we had even docked. In fact, Octavian Cruises had dropped a security notice regarding the island in our cabin door some days ago.
Margaret looked glum but her mind was made up. We returned to our cabin and locked our passports and dollars away. It was Jamaica's loss as much as ours.
Around the ship there were plenty of passengers who had come to the same conclusion. We sat in good locations on sun loungers by the pool at the stern, the baking heat making me drip sweat even when I had moved into the shade.
In front of us loomed a bank of green mountains visible through a hazy white light. Around us was the crash, bang wallop of an industrial harbour. I traversed the ships upper decks taking pictures before rejoining Margaret. We treated ourselves to two British beers. Then it was into the freezing waters of the pool before retreating to our cabin for a change of clothes.
We returned to the open deck, refreshed from showers, to find that the Sail Away Party had finished and we had already set sail, yet a coach load of passengers on an Octavian Cruise excursion had missed the sailing!
SS Azara sat half a mile outside Montego Bay and launched a boat to go back to the harbour and pick up the passengers.
Our docking slot had expired at 22:00 and forty minutes later, an MSC cruise ship called Opera had arrived to claim her berth. We waved to her as she passed by and we knew it would be another hour before we would set sail for Amber Cove in the Dominican Republic.
Captain Cox assured us that the delayed departure would not cause a late arrival at Amber Cove. Eventually, the ship's boat appeared exiting the safety of the harbour and battling across a stretch of open sea to reach us. Ladders were lowered and the passengers were taken on board and the boat raised to its storage location, outside a cabin on deck 7.
We just had time to visit the cabin once more and effect a change of clothes for dinner. Burns Night, the Scottish celebration was tonight’s theme, and, in keeping with tradition, the ship's cook paraded the haggis into the restaurant, escorted by a waiter carrying two bottles of Scottish whiskey and to piped bagpipe music.
Arriving at the centre of the room, everybody stood as a Scottish crew member, dressed in tartan, recited a Robbie Burn's poem in a thick Edinburgh brogue. Then it was on with the meal and haggis was served as a starter. It tasted much like Irish black pudding to me.
Apparently, in years of old, Octavian Cruises provided free tots of whiskey to passengers, but that tradition is long gone and none materialised tonight.
Day 24
Thursday 26th January.
At Sea heading for Amber Cove, Dominican Republic.
We went straight onto the tennis court and got three good games in before breakfast. Then it was off to the beginner’s bridge class where Brendan actually set us loose with a pack of cards.
Each table got identical hands and the challenge was to ascertain what to bid and by whom. It was a game of unbalanced cards so the bidding was competitive and took longer than actually playing the game. Then he addressed the homework from the previous class and cracked through the questions.
Brendan finished a few minutes early and still the intermediate people flooded in ahead of time and pestered us to get us out of our seats. I felt angry about their rudeness.
Angry enough to take another few out? I asked myself. I surveyed the old and decrepit pests that made up their class. If there were just a few key offenders I could select it wouldn’t be too bad, but each one seems as bad as the other. As the chatter reached a crescendo and Brendan struggled to be heard I realised the only solution was to wipe out the entire class. With nine tables in use and four people to a table that’s thirty-six to kill.
The earlier killings went well I thought. If there was a suspicion of anything other than food poisoning then I’m unaware of it. Have my earlier victim’s deaths just been explained as tragic accidents, allergic reactions, food poisoning, old age or issues springing from existing medical conditions?
This is the whole problem with operating in a vacuum. I just don’t know what the ship's officers know and what they are up to. Is anyone looking for a killer on this ship? Is anyone watching me now?
I think I’d know if I was being watched. A quick glance around the room showed that no one was paying me the slightest bit of attention. I have occasionally glanced over my shoulder in recent days but I never caught anyone watching me or suddenly darting out of sight when I turned around.
Taking out the whole class is a step beyond what I
have tried to date. I’d have to purchase some more chemicals at our next port of call. I have had to endure twenty-four days of a cruise with this crowd of elderly gangsters who intimidate me and my classmates and try to disrupt our learning of the black art of playing bridge. I can see their motive so clearly. It’s so we can’t be a threat to them. They don’t want any more card players in their class and the best way to keep the status quo is to suppress the beginner class and ensure they never advance in their learning.
But murdering the entire class? I’d have to think about this one further. It markedly ups the ante and the risk of detection. It may be a step too far.
We ate elevenses in the Palace restaurant and Margaret split for our room and a return to sunbathing, while I read the bridge notes in the warm and bright restaurant, before joining the choir for our final practice session.
Lorcan Bond, our choirmaster, shared his running order with us. Fourteen songs were listed starting with There’s No Business like Show Business and finishing with Do You Hear the People Sing? The session covered ten songs but there were poor versions of two sung today that will need revisiting. He set up a technical rehearsal on the 28th and then walked through our entrance onto the stage for the afternoon show in the Gaiety Theatre. Getting one hundred people with varying degrees of mobility on the stage in a particular order is no mean feat.
"The choir on this cruise was a strange one," Lorcan said to me. "We started on day one with fifty singers and now we’re almost at one hundred. Normally the numbers go in the opposite direction as the ship enters tropical waters and the arrival of strong sunshine." Today he introduced his replacements as choirmasters for the second half of the cruise. Forward stepped Tony and Alanna both singers and dancers from the Topstars troupe. They will assume responsibilities after the public performance on the 28th of January. I really doubt that many passengers will attend given the public performance as we are now in the tropics and it’s a mid-afternoon performance.
Anyway, we dispersed and I caught up with Margaret on deck, spread out on a sun lounger. The heat must have been in the high twenties and we took a light lunch from the buffet with several glasses of water. I sunbathed for a bit, removing my T-shirt for the first time and exposing pure white skin to the sun’s rays.
This evening Roger and Rose absented themselves. The rest of us attended the dinner and I enjoyed the tiger prawns on offer while Margaret licked her lips and polished off the lamb cutlets with some relish, leaving a plate so clean the dog couldn’t have got a sniff of gravy off it.
We then attended the Gaiety Theatre, taking seats in the front row of the performance of Andrew Shaw, a world-renowned cellist, supported by the SS Azara Orchestra. Together they put on a great show. I keep having to remind myself during this cruise that in my ordinary life back home I could go a year without attending a live musical or theatrical. The ability to go out one night out after another is still a wonderful novelty I attach to cruising and don’t think I will ever get over.
We decided to join the Lorcan Bond trio in the Hawks Inn for some soft jazz before quitting for bed before midnight.
Day 25
Friday 27th January.
Tied up in Amber Cove, Dominican Republic.
Amber Cove is a purpose-built port by the cruise line company Cunard and is twenty minutes from the nearest town, Puerto Plata and fifteen kilometres from a beach, by design. It's primarily a shopping centre, secondly, a base for ship organised excursions and thirdly has a water sports complex, which you pay extra to access. It has a sun lounger section where you can relax for free.
There is one beach at Amber Cove but there is also a low concrete wall, multiple large boulders, a mile of barbed wire fencing and a man in a lookout tower to prevent you using it. Signs saying No Trespassing, add to the clear and unambiguous message to travellers. It reminded me of the Berlin Wall.
“All that’s missing is a minefield” added Margaret as we walked towards the shopping complex.
We have now been travelling for twenty-five days and have yet to set foot on a beach where the water lapping up to the shore is warm.
The Amber Cove complex provided Bic-Taxis, which are bicycles, two passenger carrying taxis who for a donation carried us both from the gangplank, for a distance of three hundred yards, to the entrance to the shopping complex. Once in the complex, we found a large number of well-stocked shops and bars selling all the gifts, alcohol and cigarettes we could wish to buy.
We walked along the white cement pier and enjoyed watching the dappled sparkling sunlight bouncing off the waves and creating a magical effect. Behind the Amber Cove complex, a Jurassic Park mix of vegetation and trees grew over the rolling mountains. Margaret thought of the invisible monster that moved through the forests of the Lost TV series from a few years ago and that had been compulsive viewing. There was no sign of the monster today but as he’s invisible maybe I shouldn’t be surprised.
In the open square area within the complex, a Tours kiosk stood and I approached it with trepidation, but I needn't have worried. By chance, they were selling a tour, leaving in ten minutes that visited Puerta Plata's town square, its Catholic cathedral and a gift shop, before taking travellers to the beach for two hours and all for £15 each.
The first view of the country from the coach as we drew away from the Amber Cover complex was a large refuse tip that covered several acres and sat butted up to the road, a stinking mound of putrid rubbish. Peter, our guide, gave us a smattering of the history of the Dominican Republic and of life in the country today, which is still below acceptable standards, but of course that’s not what he said.
We were on the beach by lunchtime and were able to stay swimming and lazing around on sun loungers for roughly an hour and a half. There was a restaurant which supplied food and drinks, and beyond it, about twenty beach shops. We took a stroll along the clean soft white sand.
Margaret was finally granted her wish and we strode out into the water and rode the waves together in a warm Atlantic sea. Margaret pronounced herself in heaven and we shared a daiquiri sitting on a lounger before slipping back into the sea for another swim.
We arrived back at Amber Cove by forty minutes ahead of the ships departure time.
We attended the Sail Away party which boasted music and cocktails. Margaret had her third swim of the day and we hurriedly changed for a casual dinner. All the team were there and everyone seemed to have enjoyed their various outings.
Day 26
Saturday 28th January.
At sea heading for Guadeloupe.
I ate alone this morning and didn't play tennis. I must have cut a lonely figure in the Palace restaurant, gazing out on the waves that stretched to the distant skyline. Margaret is unwell.
She was bitten several times on the legs yesterday, mostly behind the knees and on her feet. Last night she took the tablets purchased in the New Orleans chemist but they failed to address the itchy swollen bites. Worse still they turned her into a zombie. Having slept badly she’d stayed on in bed reading her book.
For peace of mind, I double checked my Talcum Powder container which still had the lid firmly in place, my hidden clear seal undisturbed. Fortunately, she’s not suffering from any accidental poisoning, which I do constantly worry about, but not sufficiently to dispose of my crutch for life.
The full passenger muster, a safety routine required by maritime law, will take place at 10:30 this morning and she must show up for that one. After that, a day of lying by the pool seems to fit the bill.
Today is the choir’s big day, their one and only public performance. In truth, I'm not looking forward to it. I'd be happy to rehearse forever. I worried that, as a short person, I may be pushed out to the front of the stage whereas, a position, just behind the curtains, in the wings, would suit me just fine.
Margaret visited the medical centre and the doctor who gave her some medication to address the swelling and itchy bites.
The passenger muster exercise went smoothly and at
no time was any loss of passengers mentioned.
I attended the bridge class alone which left our table, one short. Brendan, our teacher, chose to spend this class explaining Rubber Bridge, and Jimmy, my erstwhile partner, rose up and left halfway through the class, in disgust.
“I want to play cards, not just listen to him prattling on,” said Jimmy, loud enough for a few tables of players to catch his words.
That just left Jennifer and me to soldier on. We have played very few hands of cards in classes and adding of layers of complexity when the foundations are still settling in, is not helpful. By the end of the class, Jennifer was spouting rebellious words too so our table was near to complete collapse.
The Intermediate Bridge Class massed at the doorway with ten minutes to go and no amount of me giving them the evil eye made them go away. Amber Cove hadn't a chemist in the shopping complex and we didn't stay long enough in the town of Puerta Plata yesterday to enable me to pick up the supplies I needed. Their day is coming, of that I was certain.
I went to join up with the choir who were having their technical rehearsal and we were led around the back of the stage before going onto it.
There were thirty-seven men and we stood stage right clustered around Andy and the piano. The sixty-four women arrived and spread over and into our half of the stage. The men’s tenors and bass are now hopelessly mixed together. The women alto singers are pressed in on top of me.
