by Jonathan Coe
‘Well, maybe you need paintings just as much. Only you don’t think about that.’
Mrs Wilcox laughed at the comeback and clinked her glass with Sophie’s.
‘There you are, Geoffrey – touché.’
Mr Wilcox smiled and joined in the toast. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll be there at your lecture all right. I’m not a complete bloody philistine, after all. Am I, Mary?’
Eight more of these dinners to go, Sophie thought, as she walked back to her cabin. Not that they were unbearable, exactly, but it did suddenly seem rather a lot. Perhaps it would be easier if the older couples were to join in the conversation a bit more. But Mr Joyce seemed to have difficulty hearing anything, and Mr Murphy had not spoken a word yet, to anybody – not even his wife – or eaten a morsel of food, so far as Sophie could see.
*
The next day would be their third at sea, and the last one before arriving in Stockholm, where Ian would be joining the ship. Sophie had not been very much in contact with him so far. Use of the internet was dependent on the ship’s satellite connection: she had only got around to sending him one email, and had received four in return, from which she had learned, among other things, that there was still no news of his possible promotion, although he was still expecting it to be confirmed any day now.
Her last day alone – a Friday – was gloriously bright, and at eleven o’clock she climbed to the upper deck to have a coffee and read her book in the sunshine. Sitting at the next table, sipping a latte and jotting down the occasional reflection in his Moleskine notebook, was Lionel Hampshire. Sophie nodded and smiled at him. He nodded and smiled back, but gave no sign of recognizing her from their encounter in the cruise director’s cabin doorway two days earlier.
After a few minutes, a white-haired, strong-jawed woman approached him, clutching a copy of The Twilight of Otters.
‘Are you the author of this?’ she asked, without preamble.
‘Ah!’ He pushed the notebook aside and took the novel from her, pen at the ready. ‘My pleasure, of course. Would you like a simple signature, or some sort of dedication …?’
‘I don’t want it signed,’ she said. ‘I want to know if I’m expected to read it.’
The question took Lionel by surprise. He didn’t seem to know how to answer it.
‘There was a copy in my cabin when I arrived,’ she continued. ‘We’ve all got them. Only I’ve brought my own books, so I don’t want to read it just now. I was wondering if it was compulsory.’
‘Compulsory? Not at all …’ he answered, flustered. ‘Simply a gesture of largesse on my publishers’ part.’
‘Good. I’m quite relieved because it says on the back that the main character is “psychologically complex”.’
‘Indeed.’
‘Well,’ she said. ‘I don’t like people who are psychological.’
With that, she left him. Lionel sipped his coffee again, chastened. He was clearly aware that Sophie had overheard the conversation, so after a moment or two, in order to relieve him of his embarrassment, she said, boldly:
‘That put you in your place.’
His smile was prim but on the whole grateful.
‘The writer’s life is full of such small humiliations.’
‘I’ve already read your book. A few years ago. It was very good.’
‘How very kind. Thank you.’
‘It’s a nice idea – having a writer-in-residence on the ship.’
‘In principle, yes. In practice, I’m not sure they know quite what to do with me. It’s a pilot scheme. My publishers talked me into it.’
‘Well, as long as they don’t work you too hard. I’m feeling quite guilty – I’m only doing one lecture, and I’m getting ten days’ holiday out of it.’
‘Ah, so you’re one of the speakers?’ He turned and looked at her properly for the first time, and then – apparently liking what he saw – edged a little closer. ‘Well, look, don’t feel guilty, for heaven’s sake. I’m here for the full two weeks, and I intend to make the most of it. Maximum reward for minimum input. You should treat it the same. We’re in it for ourselves. I mean, the punters are hardly going to appreciate us, are they? Talk about pearls before swine …’
‘I was told that Legend usually pulls in a pretty smart crowd. You know, a cut above the usual cruisers.’
Lionel looked at her disbelievingly. ‘Has that been your impression so far?’
‘It’s a bit early to say,’ said Sophie, equivocating.
‘What’s your subject, by the way?’
‘Art history. The Russians, in this instance.’
‘And are you all by yourself?’
‘My husband will be here tomorrow. You?’
‘I’m alone until Helsinki. Then my assistant arrives.’
‘You have an assistant?’
‘It sounds very grand, but she’s just a young student from Goldsmiths. She helps with my emails, takes a bit of a dictation, that sort of thing.’
‘Doesn’t your wife do all that?’ Sophie realized that the question sounded abrupt, so she added: ‘A few years ago, I heard you give a talk, and you spoke very warmly about your wife, and all the help she gives you.’
‘Ah, yes. Where was that?’
‘In London? You were with a French writer, Philippe Aldebert.’
‘Hmm … I don’t recall. Anyway, June can’t manage boats, I’m afraid. Terrible seasickness. Look – shall we have dinner together this evening? Would you like that?’
‘How would that work? Don’t we have to sit with the same people every night?’
‘I meant in my cabin. Surely you haven’t been eating with the passengers?’
Sophie politely declined the invitation, and was glad to have done so, because when she arrived for dinner at seven o’clock, there had been an unexpected development. Besides Ian’s, there were two other empty places at the table. Mr and Mrs Joyce were absent.
‘Evening, love,’ said Mr Wilcox, as he passed her the bread basket. There was a grim twinkle in his eye, and an undertone of satisfaction in his voice as he said: ‘Well, it’s started.’
‘What’s started?’ said Sophie. She looked around at the others, and noticed the glaze of shock on their faces. ‘What do you mean?’
‘George has snuffed it. Heart attack. Middle of the night.’
‘He’s … He’s dead?’
‘Don’t look so upset,’ he urged her. ‘You’ve only known him a day or two. And he was hardly the life and soul of the party, was he?’
18.
23–30 August: Stockholm–Copenhagen, via Helsinki, St Petersburg, Tallinn
‘Apparently,’ said Sophie, ‘it’s quite common on cruises. I mean, they’re all getting on a bit, so you have to expect it.’
‘Bit morbid,’ said Ian. He peered at himself in the mirror, trying to adjust his bow tie, which insisted on sitting at a slight angle. Meanwhile Henry unobtrusively brushed down his shoulders with delicate strokes of a clothes brush. Tonight’s dress code was ‘Formal’, which according to the notice in On Board meant that ‘Ladies may choose to wear a formal evening or cocktail dress, while men may wear a dinner jacket or tuxedo. If preferred, a dark lounge suit may be worn.’
‘Has one of the passengers ever died while you were looking after them?’ Sophie asked Henry, now. She was constantly trying to strike up a conversation with their butler – from whom, this morning, she had finally extracted the information that he came from the Philippines, and had been employed by Legend for just over three years.
‘No, madam, this has never happened to me,’ he answered gravely. ‘Very upsetting if it were to happen. It happened to a colleague of mine. Very long cruise, to South America. Sometimes at sea for more than one week. It means there is a problem with the body – you know, the corpse? They have to put it in the freezers, down at the bottom of the ship.’ He picked a final hair from Ian’s shoulders and put the brush away in his pocket, where he seemed to keep an extraordinary variety of instrum
ents. ‘That reminds me – your menu for this evening is here. I put it on the desk.’
He made his usual slight bow and then he was gone, leaving Sophie, as always, with mingled feelings of unease and guilty pleasure at the luxury of being waited on so assiduously. Ian picked up the menu and glanced over it.
‘Scandinavian dinner tonight,’ he said. ‘The appetizer’s from Norway: breaded sweetbread with honey and plum sauce. Soup from Sweden: green pea with vegetables, rice and crayfish. Main course from Denmark: slow-cooked calf’s shank with tomato and pearl onion sauce, duchess swede and potatoes. Then a salad: marinated radish and smoked trout … Have you been eating this much every night?’
‘That’s just the start. And that’s why I can hardly get into this dress. Zip me up, will you?’
Ian zipped her cocktail dress, tracing the curve of her back that he loved so much, but before reaching the very top he leaned in and kissed the base of her neck, blowing on it softly. Sophie tingled as warm goosepimples spread all over her body. She turned, put her arms around his neck, and they nuzzled against each other. She groaned softly as she felt the weight of his lean, familiar body pressing against hers, the pressure of his erection against her belly. It seemed wrong – indeed, inexplicable – that she could have had an erotic dream about any other man.
‘Early night tonight?’ she breathed.
‘Definitely.’
But it was not quite as early as she’d hoped. She had not counted on the warmth of Ian’s and Geoffrey Wilcox’s immediate liking for each other. From the moment they were introduced at dinner, it was apparent how much they had in common: the same sense of humour, the same devotion to their wives (expressed through gentle teasing and mockery), the same scepticism about the purpose and value of this cruise, the same opinions on almost every subject, political or otherwise, that came up during the course of a two-and-a-half-hour meal. And that wasn’t the end of it. When the last crumb of cheese had been eaten and the dregs of the port drunk down, Mr Wilcox proposed a visit to the bar. He invited everybody at the table to come, but nobody was surprised when Mr and Mrs Murphy declined. And after a few minutes’ sitting at a corner table for six, listening to the languid strains of Wesley Pritchard at the piano (‘Our “King of the Keys” will serenade you into the night with his personal selection of show tunes and nostalgic wartime favourites’), it also became apparent that Miss Thomsett and Mrs O’Sullivan were going to be no-shows.
‘Doesn’t look like the lezzers will be joining us either, then,’ said Mr Wilcox.
‘The who?’ Sophie asked.
‘Sorry, Sophie, not very PC of me, I know. The two good ladies of alternative sexual orientation, then. Is that better for you?’
‘It wasn’t the word I was querying,’ said Sophie. ‘It was your casual assumption that that’s what they are.’
‘Seems a perfectly fair assumption to me. Two women sharing a cabin together. Vegetarians,’ he added darkly.
‘Oh, come on. Women who’ve lost their husbands, or never had husbands, often travel together. Why shouldn’t they? It’s nicer than travelling by yourself.’
‘You may be right,’ said Mr Wilcox, holding up his hand in mock-surrender. ‘Forget I said it.’
‘Geoffrey considers himself an expert on every aspect of human nature,’ said Mrs Wilcox, attempting to ease the tension with an icy joke.
Mr Wilcox muttered into his whisky, ‘I know one when I see one, that’s all,’ but everyone pretended not to have heard him.
*
The days continued to slip by. Sophie’s lecture on the ‘Treasures of the Hermitage’ was a great success. Demand for places was so high that it had to be moved to a larger room. Robin Walker took great pleasure in telling her, the next day, that she had scored an audience satisfaction rating of 9.3, which was almost unheard-of. The other passengers began treating her as if she were a minor celebrity, and three times that afternoon she was asked to autograph a copy of the day’s newsletter, next to the notice announcing her talk. Before coming on board, Ian had suggested that they print up some business cards for her; she had scoffed at the idea, but he’d done it anyway, and now (as was often, gallingly, the case) he had been proved right, and she found herself distributing them freely to the many women who started inviting her to address their local WI meetings or book groups. ‘You’re a hit!’ he kept telling her, and the pride in his face could not have been any plainer.
They had a wonderful day in Helsinki together, joining the coach party which drove out to Sibelius’s house close to Lake Tuusula, culminating in a performance of Finlandia at the local music academy. And that evening, they set sail for St Petersburg.
The ship docked early, and because of its size was allowed to berth almost in the city centre, on the eastern bank of the Neva. That morning, they were due to join another coach party. Ian went to check his emails quickly in the ship’s library; Sophie went to the disembarkation point to wait for him. But she waited and waited, and he didn’t appear. The coach was ready to leave, and still he didn’t appear. And finally, when the last two stragglers hurried down the gangplank, Ian was not with them. It was Mr and Mrs Wilcox, alone.
‘He’s not coming,’ Mr Wilcox told her.
‘What?’
‘He’s too upset. We saw him in the library. He heard about that promotion.’
‘What? He didn’t get it?’
‘Apparently not.’
‘Shit.’ Her stomach hollowed and she felt suddenly sick. ‘But he was so sure about it.’
‘Well … These things are never really in the bag, are they?’
Sophie knew what she had to do. ‘I’ll go and talk to him,’ she said. ‘Tell everyone to carry on without me.’
‘You can’t do that,’ Mr Wilcox insisted. ‘He doesn’t want you to. He said he’ll be fine. He just wants a quiet day by himself.’
‘Come on,’ said Mrs Wilcox, taking her by the arm. ‘We shall all be so disappointed if you aren’t with us at the Hermitage.’
‘Well …’ Sophie was doubtful. ‘I suppose it’s what I’m here for. But poor Ian …’
‘He’ll be fine,’ said Mr Wilcox. ‘He’s just having a bit of a sulk, that’s all.’
They had a long day’s sightseeing. The Hermitage itself was impossibly busy, and they spent more than three hours there shuffling through the crowds, during which time Sophie faced a constant barrage of questions from all sides. She enjoyed the visit, and was pleased to be of such help to so many different people, but it was exhausting work. The party was late getting back to the coach and by the time they returned to Topaz IV, dinner had already been in progress for fifteen minutes. The only two people who had taken their places at the table, at this point, were Ian and Mrs Murphy (who had also not come on the excursion today, for some reason). Ian seemed, quite understandably, relieved to see the new arrivals, and he rose to his feet as Sophie gave him a big, consoling hug.
‘I’m so sorry,’ she said, clasping him tighter. ‘This is such a bummer. You really deserved that job.’
Amidst the hubbub of everyone sitting down, unfolding their napkins, passing around the bread basket and the wine bottles, Ian said: ‘It’s OK. These things happen. I’ve had the day to think about it. I’m fine. And I’m happy for Naheed.’
‘Naheed? She … They gave the job to her?’
‘Yes. I’ve already sent an email to congratulate her.’
‘Did you even know she was applying?’
‘Yes. Apparently it came down to just the two of us in the end.’
Sophie was still digesting this information when, from the other side of the table, Mrs Murphy spoke. This in itself was a rare enough occurrence. It was rarer still that she should speak in such a loud, attention-commanding voice. What she said, however, was the most surprising thing of all.
‘My husband passed away last night.’
Silence fell upon the table, immediate and profound.
‘He had a stroke. It would have been quite painl
ess. I didn’t find out until this morning. I knew something was wrong when he didn’t get up to make me a cup of tea.’
The others murmured, ‘I’m so sorry,’ along with other vague, sympathetic phrases.
‘When do you fly home with him, my dear?’ Miss Thomsett asked.
‘I’m not flying home,’ said Mrs Murphy. ‘I paid for this cruise, and I’m here to enjoy it.’
She bit off a portion of bread, and chewed it defiantly. The others glanced at each other, not sure how to respond; and then they, too, resumed their preliminary eating and drinking. No one commented any further, apart from Mr Wilcox, who picked up his wine glass and, before taking a sip, muttered: ‘And then there were seven.’
*
The following evening, when Sophie and Ian arrived at the cabaret theatre for Lionel Hampshire’s reading, they found a notice pinned to the door: ‘We regret to inform you that Mr Lionel Hampshire is indisposed, and tonight’s advertised reading will no longer take place. Molly Parton will be on stage at 10 p.m.’
To Sophie’s eyes, when she saw Lionel on the upper deck the following morning, he did not look indisposed at all. In fact he appeared in the rudest of health. He was in his usual spot, sipping a latte as before, but this time he was accompanied by a blonde-haired woman about ten years younger than Sophie, who he introduced as Maxine, his assistant.
‘Not going ashore today, then?’ Sophie asked. The ship had docked at Tallinn at around six thirty that morning.
‘I’ve been before,’ said Lionel. ‘There’s not really a lot to see. We thought we might take a stroll round the Old Town this afternoon.’
‘We had the same idea.’
Ian joined them now, and so, a few minutes later, did Mr and Mrs Wilcox. This created a rather difficult situation, as Lionel seemed prepared to admit Sophie into the orbit of his conversation, but not the others.
‘I’m glad you’ve recovered, anyway,’ she said.
‘Recovered?’
‘I thought you were ill last night.’
‘Oh, that. Just a dicky tummy. Probably the seafood we had at lunch.’