S.O.S. (5 page)

‘
You're
nuts, Sammy. You know that? You're completely barking crazy.'

‘That's why you love me. I've got one more case down here and then that's the end of it. Then we do the gin and vodka.'

‘You know what Jaffa was telling me?' piped up Jilly, quite brightly.

‘No – what? Actually, Jilly – why do you always call him that?'

‘Stewart? Because he's always got that orange face on. His dopey fake suntan. You know, I think he actually believes that people see him as some sort of, I don't know – Bondi Beach Adonis, or something. All bronzed and sun-bleached blond. Looks more like a
poodle
, I think.'

‘Stewart's all right. Or at least he will be if he makes it. I think sometimes, you know, he's headed for some kind of breakdown, or something. Have you ever seen him when he's grinning like mad with the punters and giving out balloons and dancing away with all those ancient women – and then he suddenly turns away and, Christ – the look on his face, it's so … don't really know how to describe it …'

‘Dark? Sort of scowling? Yeh – I've seen that.'

‘Murderous, more like … Real sort of Jekyll and Hyde do.'

‘Jesus, Sammy – you're scaring me, now. I have to work with him, remember.'

‘Oh – he's safe enough. Anyway – not long now. If he can survive over three months of this, another couple of weeks won't kill him.'

‘So long as he doesn't take it into his head to go around killing anyone else. Like
me
, for instance.'

‘Nah,' joshed Sammy. ‘I'd kill him if he did.'

‘Oh gee shucks
thanks
. How much gin is there?'

‘Bout … twenty cases, looks like.'

‘Oh yeh –
that's
what I was going to say. Old Jaffa-face Stewart was giving me the rundown on how much of all this stuff we actually
go
through on one of these cruises. It's just unbelievable!'

‘Nothing would amaze me. I seem to be pouring drinks non-stop all day and all night. It's almost as if they feel it's all got to be used up, or something. And it's not exactly cheap, is it? I mean the mark-up's just wicked. And it's not like the food – I mean I know they never stop stuffing themselves with food, but that's all in with the ticket, isn't it? Drink isn't, that's for sure. God, you know – apart from the meals … John in cabin service was telling me, one time – you know John?'

‘Oh yeah – tall guy? Goofy ears?'

‘No no – my height. Ginger hair. Think you're thinking of
Cyril
, pretty sure his name is. Anyway – John was saying that there is just no such thing as a quiet time, down there. Twenty-four hours a day, that phone is ringing – tea, sandwiches, steaks, pasta … one bloke orders a whole bloody lobster at three a.m., every single night, if you can believe it. And José – José, yes? Duchess Grill? Anyway, according to José, that's
exactly
what the guy has for his dinner! I'm telling you, we're afloat with a shipful of loonies.'

‘It does sometimes seem like that. But that's exactly what I mean about all the
booze
. Jaffa says the whole ship gets
through about two hundred bottles of champagne every single
day.'

‘That doesn't actually seem that much, to me. Sixteen hundred passengers, after all. How much beer?'

‘Oh God – something like three
thousand
bottles of that, pretty sure. You wonder where they put it all.
And
a thousand packets of fags. We're talking every
day
, Sammy – can you believe it? Bloody expensive route to suicide, these cruises.'

‘Mm. The cost of dying. But tastefully
done,'
smiled Sammy. ‘Right. Let's do the vodka – about eight million gallons of that and then, God – I'd really love a cuppa.'

Jilly was thoughtful. ‘Oh yes – ever so tastefully
done
…' she agreed. ‘Here – that's another thing Jaffa was telling me: do you know what we go through most of? Over two
million
, every single year?'

‘Two
million?
Blimey. Dunno. Tea bags?'

‘Not close. Nowhere near.'

‘Assistant Cruise Directors?'

‘Silly! Be serious.'

‘OK. Eggs?'

‘Eggs are far less – quarter of a million, tops. Give up?'

‘Yeh – go on, then: stun me.'

Jilly leaned forward and held on to Sammy's forearms: her eyes were urging him to listen and learn.

‘Doilies,' she said.

Sammy just looked at her. ‘Doilies? Two million
doilies
?'

Jilly nodded. ‘Amazing, or what?'

And Sammy nodded too. ‘Truly,' he whispered. And then, after a pause: ‘I just can't think of anything at all to say about that.'

*

Every single time I come to Southampton, I always get stuck in a traffic jam, just like this one. And usually about here –
just as all the roads converge towards the docks and you have to cross this sort of bridge affair, is it? Just as well I allowed plenty of time. Which is all, really, I've been doing, if I'm honest. Since … it happened. Allowing for time – apologizing, in one sense (and to whom? Who on earth is listening?), for the continued existence of time, when really it ought to have stopped, along with Mary.

I say
every
time I come to Southampton, but goodness – do you know in all honesty I can't even remember the last occasion. Could've been as long as maybe seven, eight years back. Mary and me, we went on a sort of a two-day, well – not much more than a pleasure trip, really: can't for the life of me recall the name of the boat, ship – whatever it was; Isle of Wight came into it somewhere. We did things like that: free agents, did what we liked. Friends of ours, of course – Paul and Joan, Ed and Fanny (God – those two: they never ever stopped going on and on about it) – yes, all these friends with youngish children (
four
of the things in Ed and Fanny's case, God help us: well – whatever did they expect?) – they were forever going on about the loss of spontaneity, impulse – the spur of the moment thing.
Honestly
, they'd go – once you've worked out all the dates of the school holidays, which never ever coincide (you'd think, wouldn't you, the powers that be could at least get their heads together and coordinate that much: can't be that difficult – and it's not as if we're the only ones to suffer) and then by the time you've seen that all their beastly
projects
are under way, or at least that they've bought the scrapbooks (they seem to have more work to do in the holidays than in termtime, these days) – which means
muggins
here has to keep on going down to the travel agents and casually half-inching all these brochures about the Loire Valley and the bloody
Alps
and all the rest of it and then spend oh God just
days
knee-deep in encyclopaedias and Cow Gum putting the whole damn mess together – their job, I know – but what are you going to do? The
kids
, of course – oh Jesus:
you sit them in front of the Net and give them a perfectly straightforward list of nonsense to dig out – Epernay's annual yield of champagne, or something (God I could do with a glass or two right now), and hours later they're still just
sitting
there transfixed by some complete and very often pornographic irrelevance and then I just
scream
at Ed to for God's sake pull his finger out and get all these ghastly channels locked
out
, or whatever they say, and he says like he always does, I will I will – but I don't know why this sort of thing isn't tackled at
government
level – and I go Yeh, totally agree, but
until
they get around to it it's our kids, right? And it's our bloody job to protect them. And then one of them will be
ill
, or something – chicken pox last summer, don't please
remind
me – and we have to get a housesitter for the dogs (kennels are just ruinous) and God, you have to book so many
rooms
, now, because Neil – he's just twelve: can't take it in – he absolutely refuses to share any more, and quite frankly the whole thing just isn't cost-effective, when all's said and done – and
exhaustion
just doesn't come into it: I'm completely bloody knackered, I don't mind telling you, even contemplating the
idea
of a holiday, these days. Mmm. So we just go off for odd days, now.

And then Mary and me, we'd brace ourselves – secretly holding hands, sometimes we were, under the folds of the tablecloth – for here now would come the inevitable exhalation: the rounding up and rounding off of all their frustrations and passion spent. ‘You two,' they'd go: ‘you're just so lucky not
having
any of that.'

Yes. Well. It's not at all, I can tell you now, not at all what Mary felt she was: lucky. No, not a bit of it. Oh yes – we had a good life, admittedly – my rather dull job in insurance took good care of most things, and Mary's little florist's was something of a goldmine. So no real worries on that score – but once you've cleared the mortgage and sorted out the pensions and repapered the lounge and tacked on a modest conservatory and seen to the first-floor window frames,
well … you're hunting about, quite frankly. Holidays are the natural thing: it takes time to discuss them, plan them, budget for them; and then there's the shopping beforehand (I left that to Mary: wasn't all that long ago she picked out for me the very smart black suit that I'm wearing right now – she had an eye, Mary: an eye for things like that). Packing, of course – that could be coaxed out into a couple of days: fresh-ironed stacklets of this and that always adding to the anticipatory feel.

We went all over: Capri and Sorrento, I recall, was a particularly successful little package. We were very partial to pasta and we'd never tasted peaches quite like that before: fresh off the tree. Crete, Dordogne – Tuscany, of course: got her to try some wine on that trip – always made me laugh, she was never a drinker, Mary. But it's all so
sour
 – it's just not
sweet
, Tom, she'd go – I just don't know how you can stomach it. Fellow at the hotel – nice sort of chap, sort of courier, or something – must've overheard, I assume; anyway – sent over a bottle of Asti Spumante, and that did the trick. That's the only wine, Mary went, that has ever passed my lips that I can truly say I've
enjoyed
: one thing, though, Tom, she giggled at me then – it's gone straight to my head, just that one little glass. The giggle made me feel so fond, so warm – warm, yes, and so very protective. I'll never again hear it, now.

So yes – I took the point when Ed and Fanny went on like they did: in their terms we were – of course we were – lucky, very. But I know that Mary, deep down (she never said so, not in so many words, but you get to hear such a lot of unspoken things when you're that close to someone, you know – day and night, for years and years) … Mary, yes, she would eagerly have traded in all the holidays and new three-piece suites under the sun, just for a baby of her own, to love and care for. She would have liked lots – but one, I know, would have been more than enough. But, well … it was not to be (which is what you say when you really can't
bear to think about it any more). So we buckled down to the double glazing and the laying of patios – we baulked at a roof conversion, though, because look: the house already was accusingly large, so where's the sense in more?

So we continued to go hither and thither under the scathing eyes of our nailed-down friends who roared at us repeatedly how appallingly
lucky
we were. Well – we weren't complaining (were we Mary, my love?); and, as we kept on saying, we had each other. And now – except for this stopped-up bulk of bits of our lives that sticks out clumsily from deep within me – the link has now been broken.

I'm still in first gear. The cars ahead have been grudgingly astir for fifteen minutes or more, and in that time I've covered maybe just fifty yards, or so. I can see a part of the ship now, though. God. I mean – you know it's
big
(we read the brochure again and again, Mary and me) but nothing really quite prepares you. The red and black funnel, tall as any building I'm aware of. Just the one funnel, then? Oh yes – it was the old
Queen Mary
that had a pair, fairly sure (and
Titanic
had
four
of the things, much good they turned out to be). It's a shame, I said, that the
Queen Mary
doesn't exist any more – we could have pretended it was built for you. Well Tom – I could always change my name to
Transylvania
, Mary had said. Ho ho, I went – a little extreme, I think. Yes. Doesn't matter what she's called, now.

This was to have been our trip of a lifetime. Well: correction – it was to have been our very luxurious and self-indulgent trial-run for what maybe next year (and there will, won't there, be a next year? And one after that and one after that?) could have become the real thing, the big thing, the ultimate. We'd never ever been on a liner – we'd talked about it often enough, oh heavens yes (we talked about anything that would use up time), but this year we decided to go for it (and you should have heard Ed and Fanny on
that
one) – six days and nights to New York … a double
first for us, really, because neither one of us had even been to America, let alone New York. We didn't care for long-haul flights, that's the truth of the matter (what it really boiled down to), and here was the perfect solution: plus, of course, a week was eaten up just in the getting there. And then, you see – and this is how our thinking went – if we both liked it (and why would we not?) then next year we could book up for the fully-fledged World Cruise, see just everywhere we've ever read about, or glimpsed on the telly. Australia, Hong Kong, Barbados, you name it. Expensive, oh yes very – or it is, anyway, if you want to do it in any way
properly:
no point travelling the world, is there, on some mighty ship if you're going to be stuck six decks down, cheek by jowl with the boiler room? Also, this one would be taking care of four clear months: you can see the attraction.