S.O.S.

by Joseph Connolly

  ‘Maybe enough already, Nicole. What say?’

  This was Charlene – partly in the sorry light of the stack of chips that was so frequently being raked away from Nicole by a wholly bored and unsmiling croupier, but largely because she was heartily sick of just standing there and watching it happen. My Dwight – he has phases when he hits the tables: two, three days I don’t see him. Then he storms back home yelling out stuff like Hey! What in hell sorta patsy they take me for, huh?! Yeh yeh – I don’t mind too much, you know? Like, time to time, Dwight – he can afford it; Nicole I ain’t so sure. Plus with Dwight, when he’s in a casino he lays off the soss – says he don’t wanna – get this – ‘blunt his edge’? Yeh right. I’m like, what – you have to be sober to lose a thousand bucks on the roll of a dice? This you can’t pull off so good when you’re smashed? Jeez: guys – go figure. But times like that, leastways I can pre-shate the vacation he’s giving to his bowels. One time I says to him Dwight, honey – come the time you’re dead and gone, I mean to donate those bowels of yours to science, you hear me? He says Sweetheart – there ain’t no science on the good Lord’s earth is gonna wanna touch ’em. Way he’s headed, he could sure have something there; what you gonna do with a guy like that?

  ‘Just one more spin,’ said Nicole, distractedly – in her new and other-worldly and really rather spectral voice. ‘Then we’ll go.’

  Where had Charlene heard that before? She turned now to Patty – her knuckles pale and rigid as she gripped the edge of the table, her eyes very wide and glassy as she compulsively stared at some given, fixed and distant spot.

  ‘How you doing, girl? Maybe you’d best go lie down?’

  ‘No no,’ protested Patty, with a faint but gritted determination. ‘I’ll see this out. Got to conquer it, yes? Can’t let it beat me. I just can’t seem to forget that we’re moving … and I feel so utterly foolish because I seem to be the only one on the entire ship …’

  ‘Don’t let it bug you. Maybe we drag away Legs Diamond, here, and go down the Black Horse? Get them to fix you up something for your stummick.’

  The mention of the word stomach was maybe not great: Patty reclenched her fingers doubly hard on the table’s rim, as if its jealous owner was bent on wrenching it from her.

  ‘I just don’t believe it …’ came the now too familiar and wistful exhalation from Nicole. ‘I mean it doesn’t seem to have heard of the law of averages, this bloody table. I’ve bet on red, now – what? Five times in a row, and every single time it’s come up black. I mean I just can’t believe it …’

  ‘So leave it already! C’mon, Nicole – enough, yeh? Let’s go get our men and call it a day, huh?’

  ‘Just one more spin,’ said Nicole, quite measuredly. ‘And then we’ll go.’

  To the left of Nicole, a fairly harassed-looking man – his bow tie undone, shirt collar grimy – was earnestly assuring his maybe new and possibly impressionable companion (as he laid down three thick square and redly mottled chips on 22) that he never ever, whatever the circumstances, granted an interview or sanctioned pictures.

  ‘Oh really? Why’s that then?’

  The man hissed out his frustration as the croupier raked in his three thick square and redly mottled chips from 22.

  ‘Hm? Oh, well …’ And suddenly he was crushed. ‘Never actually been asked to, basically.’

  ‘I just don’t – believe it!’ went Nicole – who had heard not one word of that, nor of anything else around her. ‘This time it’s come up – did you see that? Red! I’ve been betting on red all this time and I finally change to black and now it’s come up bloody red! I just don’t believe … I just can’t – !’

  Charlene shook her head, and maybe not in sorrow. She was taking Nicole quite firmly by the arm, now – gently tugging her away (cos iffin I don’t physically remove this momma, she gonna be here till dawn, you know?). The very bored croupier – who had a nearly moustache – eyed them with disinterest as he racked up great clacking banks of chips into brass-bound square boxes, and then – sidelong to his mate – he came out with this, from nowhere:

  ‘Funny thing is, the first thing they say, these bimbos, right? You’ve laughed like a drain at all their crap jokes and they’re well away to sticking the best part of a bottle of vodka down their throats and they turn round and they say Here – I’m not just some bimbo, you know! Which apart from being a right pain in the arse has just got to be a bloody joke, hasn’t it? I mean – what’s bloody wrong with them at all? Hey? I mean – they are just bimbos, aren’t they? That’s the whole bloody point. Or am I missing something subtle?’

  ‘Yeh …’ nodded his mate. ‘Nah. Right.’ And then more loudly, though with equal flatness: ‘Madam Ate May Sue-Fate Vo Jew, Silvoo Play!’

  ‘C’mon, Nicole. We split, yeah?’

  Nicole just stared at the table. Still seemingly transfixed, she nodded slowly and with misery – but at least, thought Charlene, she was nodding, right? Now I got two dames I godda gedda holda by the arm and steer real careful on outta here – one because she’s noshus to her stummick (and hoo boy – wait till this baby starts making like a roller-coaster: what’s lil Patty about to do then, huh?) and the other one, well – on account of she’s just some kinda nut, I guess.

  The entourage inched its way with faintly ludicrous care past a couple of women feeding these two huge and lit up clanking slot machines as fervently as a thrush with a whole can of worms might gorge to the point of satiation and beyond the limitless cravings of its nestful of fledglings. The chrome-pillared swivel stool of one of them was just about coping, while the other woman had opted for a neighbouring pair.

  ‘I’ve got thirty dollars left,’ said one. ‘Then it’s midnight snacks, I think.’

  ‘The trouble I think here is not the food but the menu. All this pan fried this and oven roasted that … I mean, how else are you supposed to fry things? Hm? And what do you think you’re going to roast something in? A handbag?’

  Charlene was checking the condition of her charges (here I go again – a full-on nurse): Patty had tottered to a halt, and her hand was flailing about her for something unyielding to grip and then hug for ever. Charlene wasn’t about to release her hold on either one of them, though, for even so much as a second: Nicole would be back to that table at the speed of one greased and electric jackrabbit – and Patty, she could fall down and die on me.

  ‘That word,’ continued one of the women on the slots. ‘That word ‘handbag’. It’s funny, but whenever I hear it, I always think of that line in some – do you know it? Some play or other – terribly famous. When somebody drawls out that word: ‘a handbaaaaag?’ Yes? Bernard Shaw or Shakespeare or something. I think it’s supposed to be funny, but I’ve honestly never understood why …’

  And as Charlene, Nicole and Patty finally made their enforcedly leisurely break for the corridor, they maybe did or didn’t witness the second woman turning with some difficulty towards her companion and uttering in mystified tones:

  ‘I honestly haven’t the faintest idea what you’re on about …’

  And gee – Charlene couldn’t barely get herself around it: Nicole, she gets outta that there casino and zingo – it’s just like that she’s Nicole again, you know?

  ‘And David,’ Nicole said suddenly, and with all the old determination. ‘He’d just better not be – hey, Pat! We don’t need the lift. Come on – we can walk down, yes? It’s only … yes, Charlene – I’m just saying. That husband of mine – if he’s seen fit to reappear at all – he’d just better for once be sober.’

  ‘If he’s with my Dwight – forget it, honey.’

  ‘Oh God – David doesn’t have to be with anyone. You could lock him in a wine cellar and years later he’d still be perfectly happy down there just drinking it. No willpower, men – just can’t tear themselves away. You OK, Pat? Bit OK?’

  ‘I think I might’ve been better,’ faltered Pat – gripping with both hands the banister rail – ‘in the lift, actually.
But yes – if I can just not look down …’

  ‘Your husband like mine, is he Pat?’

  She smiled quite sadly. ‘Yes. I’m afraid so. Exactly the same.’

  Now the three of them were hard by the mouth of the Black Horse, and Nicole was aware of a familiar discomfort: the pubby hot breath of it.

  ‘Well God help us all, is all I can say …’ is frankly all she felt she could say.

  *

  Sammy was clenched by frustration at just having to be there – it was somewhere hard and deep within him, this balled-up resentment, like a tumour in his guts (because how could he? Well? Tell him. Go on. How could he find out for sure just what Jilly was doing if he could not leave this place? If he had to be bloody here?). All the other useless bits of him, though, seemed flaccid and washed over by a barely lukewarm and humdrum misery. He stood well back from the bar (his back now causing the liqueur bottles to clink and tinkle) – as far away as he could get from the increasingly drunk and lewd and stupid bloody English bloke and that fat American guy alongside of him (their capacity for drink was little short of startling – in common, therefore, with most of my loyal and faithful band of regulars, all the soaks and lushes; well – I say capacity: it’s not as if either of these two was holding it, or anything). But this far away from the pair of them means that it’s impossible, now, to avoid the ramblings of yet another and this time solitary loser practically collapsed across the bar, here, just to the left of me. At least the bloody Japanese have packed up croaking out into that uproarious microphone their Fab Four medley of not just Flom Me To You and Prease Prease Me, but also half-hearted (and rich with botched-up lyrics) smatterings and then more lusty choruses of Penny Rain and Paperback Lighter (and let’s not of course forget the Yerrow Submaline). So what I’ll do is, I’ll just continue, will I, polishing and polishing this perfectly sparkling beer glass, and try to blank out at least the most repetitious and drivelling parts of it – while not imagining, not even beginning to picture (let alone frame) just what it might be that Jilly was right this second, oh Christ – up to. With that person. Who tomorrow, during my break, I must track down and, well – if not actually slay him, then certainly break and bruise serious parts of, conceivably with a view to disfigurement. This just must be done. Obviously.

  ‘Telling you, Sammy … Telling you … you just mark my words …’

  Sammy smiled, just about. The demolished loner had risen for air – air, yes, and of course a refill. He had been telling Sammy for quite some while – insisting that he mark his words (most of which comprised the admonition to mark them, yes, and mark them well).

  ‘Truth is … truth is … there’s a book to be written here, you know – a book, book – yes a book. And you, Sammy – are you having a drink with me, my friend? Sammy? Yes? Drink for you? No? Sure? Well OK. Sure now? Yes? OK. Yes – you mark my … uh … you mark my … uh … and you’re the one to write it, Sammy. The things you must see and hear, hey? Words. You mark them well, uh – Sammy. This ship – not kidding you. Book to be written – amazing nobody’s done it before. Sure I can’t twist your arm? No? Sure? Well OK.’

  Oh look – a bunch of women are coming over to the bar, now. Is Jilly among them? Well what do you think? Oh God – I’ll never get away, will I, tonight. And one of the women – oh Jesus: swaying badly. The other two more or less holding her up, seems like. Marvellous. Add her to my tally of incoherents and incapables: chuck her on the heap.

  ‘See …’ rambled on the rambler – making to wipe at wildly his wet and uncontrollable mouth, and missing by a long chalk – ‘a writer’s life must be very … all right. I’d do it myself, only I had the time. I’m in paper, Sammy – paper, me. Wholesale side. Not a bad living. I’m not saying it’s a bad living. But your name on a book – that’d be something, wouldn’t it? Hey? Sammy? That’d … wouldn’t it? Be something.’

  ‘Get you ladies anything?’ enquired Sammy, braving it out in the face of their concerted and very determined approach.

  ‘Dwight,’ said Charlene. ‘Shift your butt. We’re outta here. You been eating those macadamias?’

  Dwight nearly stirred.

  ‘Charlene. Macadamias I ain’t had.’

  ‘Come on, David,’ sighed Nicole. ‘Can you walk? Just lean here. Pat. You’ll be fine. Do you want an Alka-Seltzer, or something?’

  ‘Trouble is,’ broke in the man of paper. ‘Trouble is – if you’re a writer, let’s face it – well, you’ve got to write, haven’t you? Stands to reason …’

  ‘So,’ put in Sammy, quite doggedly. ‘Nothing I can get you?’

  ‘Which is,’ crashed on the relentless and jackknifed derailment of his train of something less than thought, ‘ … whichever way you look at it … a hell of a fucking stumbling block, isn’t it? Fundamentally.’

  Nicole, now, was at first squeezing, then maybe slightly pulling at, and very soon quite viciously jerking back on David’s shoulder (Jesus Jesus – when he gets like this it’s like, Christ, he’s been cemented down. He just won’t move – I’m not even sure he is aware of what I am doing to him, and it can only now be just this side of a dislocation).

  ‘Yeh yeh,’ said David darkly. ‘Yeh yeh yeh …’

  And Nicole’s concentration upon her immutable husband – this awful thing in hand – was momentarily distracted by the sort of deep and underlying but still very horribly audible sound that you really never wish to hear hissingly rumble from somewhere profound and unthinkable within the rebellious organs and cavities of another.

  ‘Oh God, Pat …’ she stuttered with caution. ‘You look just awful … here, sit here. Barman – have you got maybe an Alka-Seltzer or something, yes?’

  Like hippos at the bogside, Dwight and David had begun to lazily stir, just about detectably (and the raised up eyebrows, downturned mouths and rueful glances were just between themselves).

  ‘Here, Patty – here,’ said Charlene – moving around the nearly dissolved and gushing tablets with a briskly swishing finger. ‘You just get yourself around this baby, and you’ll be fine, girl.’

  ‘I’m OK …’ Pat barely croaked out – which put the fear of God into just everyone who heard it, and none more so than Sammy. Dwight was standing – legs well apart – and Charlene was dabbing at the corners of his mouth with the folded-in edges of a hastily licked-at handkerchief. David too was turning, now, and as he did so, he tried his best to focus. And then he focused. And then much to her own astonishment, Pat was just at that second convulsed by a huge and unstoppable assertion of no less than the whole of all her insides, and the instant eruption was not just gutturally raucous and very dreadfully copious, but of truly spectacular duration. David stared down at his obliterated shoes and well-speckled trousers. And then he looked back at the woman in front of his wide and then closed-down eyes with a gaping disbelief. Sammy (oh God, oh God – will this bloody day never end …?) and Nicole were fussing about with bar towels and cloths and rolls of paper, and neither was liking it a bit.

  ‘This is, I know,’ sighed Nicole, ‘hardly the moment for introductions … but David – this is Pat …’

  ‘Here, Patty,’ clucked Charlene. ‘Sip at this water, OK?’

  ‘Or,’ amended Nicole, ‘Patty. Which is it. Pat? Pat or Patty? Are you feeling a little bit better? Yes? Little bit?’

  ‘Yes …’ agreed the newly rosy and bright-eyed Pat or Patty. ‘I suddenly feel remarkably OK. As to my name – oh God, I’m so sorry, everyone. Awfully sorry! As to my name, Nicole …’ And now she met David’s blank and fearful eyes head on ‘ … well actually, most people call me Trish …’

  Because yes, Nicole, she was wickedly thinking: I do have a husband of my own, you see – and he is, as I said, exactly the same. The only real problem here is that he happens to be – technically speaking – yours as well, at the moment, you bloody wife. But not, maybe now, for too much longer.

  PART FOUR

  Deep Waters

  I’m pretty sure that Tom, thought
Marianne, is the sort of person who’ll be terribly punctual, so nine a.m. on the Boat Deck means, I should think, exactly that: no more and no less. Which is fine – I’ve got a couple of minutes in hand and I’m just about, what – half a corridor away? Not much more. And from what I can see of the weather, it looks like it’s going to be another glorious day. I don’t know what the Captain was going on about the other night – maybe he was joking, do you think? I mean, surely their … whatever they have – I don’t know, instruments, computers, however it’s done: they can’t say Uh-oh – storm brewing, no question, and then it just doesn’t … can they? So maybe it was just some sort of rather heavy-handed and not very witty joke; well if it was, he certainly got a lot of people wholly needlessly worried – which isn’t really, is it, quite what a Captain should be for.

  My God. Look at this! Wonders will never … no … no – it can’t be, can it? Not at nine o’clock in the morning? Can’t be. But – God – it is, you know, it jolly well is. God Almighty – can’t believe it.

  ‘Dad! Hey, Dad! Where are you rushing off to? How amazing to see you up so early.’

  David whirled round to face whatever new and fearful thing this could be now, and managed to leap into the air as he did it – this the reaction to some grossly invasive though as yet unspecified terror that already was done with softening him up, and now was earnestly working him over.

  ‘Hm? Hm? Oh, Marianne – hello, hello. Yes. Hello.’

  ‘What is it, Daddy? You look awful. Couldn’t you sleep?’

  ‘Hm? Hm? Sleep? Don’t know. Haven’t tried. I’ve just, uh – well yes, you see – I’m not so much up early as, um – still up from yesterday, if you see what I mean.’

  Marianne nodded, quite sadly. ‘Yes, Dad. I see.’

  ‘Well you probably don’t, actually – it’s not, well … it’s not the usual, if that’s what you mean. It’s just that I’ve had one or two, um – surprises, really … yes …’