S.O.S.

by Joseph Connolly

  ‘There’s the most fantastic sound system,’ enthused Jilly. And then, with huge regret: ‘But I just don’t dare … Sometimes there’s a half-bottle of champagne in the fridge, though.’

  Rollo was unbuttoning his shirt.

  ‘You’ve done this before,’ he said. Not actually minding, though. I mean Christ – her position, I’d be up here all the bloody time: different girl every day. So I’m not minding, no: just saying … But I like Jilly – really like her a lot. I’d love it if she was my, you know – proper girlfriend. That’d be great. And she could – she could get a job in London: easy. Then we could be together properly. Yes – I’d really love that. So although I just said to her, um – You’ve done this before, I maybe wasn’t just saying it, no: could be that I mind, a bit.

  ‘Well I haven’t, actually, ’ said Jilly quite airily. ‘Do you think this bra is pretty?’

  ‘I – yes. I do. It’s very … it’s lovely. ’

  ‘Wore it specially. No, Rollo – I’ve been here, obviously. But only on my own. To look around. To be perfectly honest, I did ask him, once. Sammy. Come here and touch me, Rollo.’

  Rollo was aching for her, now. He was so very close, he could feel her warmth already. His fingers stood poised and flexed, like those of a pianist awaiting his cue – and although they were straining to be away, they shied off at the point of contact, fearful of the sizzle, and then getting burned. He placed his two lips to the side of her throat.

  ‘And …’ sighed Jilly. ‘Oh God, Rollo, I just love it when you do that. And he said … ah! Ah! Oh God not my ears! Not my ears! Oh Jesus I just go crazy when you do that to my ears! God you’re – gorgeous, Rollo.’

  They pulled away from each other, then – maybe a simultaneous impulse: standing up, here, and half dressed just wasn’t going to do it. They watched one another with half-fright and hunger as the final ungainly contortions were somehow not too embarrassingly completed – reluctant and clingy bits of bloody clothing were tugged at, wrenched round and shrugged off – hurled away from them and kicked into distant corners.

  ‘What did he say …?’ gasped Rollo, for something to say.

  ‘Mm? Oh – he just said it was too dangerous, too risky. See what I mean, Rollo? Just no fun …’

  The sight of her naked sent him into something like a trance. Only when she had taken him near to swooning did he dare look back into her eyes: they pricked him deep, and made him boil.

  ‘Rollo,’ she breathed. ‘Do it to me. Come.’

  Rollo went – just went for her. And then (her arms and mouth were open) he stopped dead right there and said Fridge, where’s the fridge? And Jilly said Jesus, Rollo – please, please … and Rollo said Wait: fridge – where is it? And Jilly vaguely pointed – then more energetically with eyes closed and fingers flapping when Rollo stooped down to the wrong cupboard altogether – and as he seemed bent on fooling around down there, Jilly just flounced across to the bed and fell backwards down and into the sheer soft vastness of it and she let her eyelashes touch to only filter a gauze of redness, aware of just icicles of anticipation – hot jabs of tenderness. Her eyes then flew up as she yelped and hot ice – real hot ice, had shocked her neck and slithered all over her and stuck to her as she sat up and flailed in a frenzy of bubbled-up sex and white amazement and felt before she saw the bottle forced between her lips and the uprushing spangles of champagne quietened her down – she even heard them hushing her – but she was squealing again as the chilling gobbets of it coursed away down from her mouth and spattered her breasts and she had only just half enough time to gulp out air before all that was knocked right out of her as she took the full weight of the hard and eager man across her and opened up all of her limbs to him and then the way she bunched up when she felt him inside of her made Rollo feel safe and warm and finally home – so very enclasped and badly needed, that all he had to do was sweep back handfuls of her hair – strew them across the tracts of milk-white pillow so that now he could concentrate hard on the sweet hot face beneath him, and the tremendous pulsations that he was forcing down drunkenly – while already the impulses within him swept all that aside as they left him gasping, and then whipped him right up.

  ‘Jesus, Jilly – oh – sweet … God …!’

  And as his limbs clamped rigid, Jilly jerked hard from deep underneath him somewhere and Rollo felt his hand let go its grip on the bottle that he had no idea that still he had been grasping and he heard it thump to the floor and fizz out what was left of it – and yes, there was uncertainty and a good amount of unease in both their eyes, now, and they could not help but listen in pain to it rolling away and leaving in its wake, oh God – just what sort of a mess …? And then it clunked into something, and stopped. Rollo and Jilly clung to one another in silence, and then, quite quietly, they began to stickily unpeel themselves from where their skin had bonded.

  The unreal thunder, now, that made Jilly shriek and then go into spasm as Rollo roared and fell right off her and on to the floor had erupted from somewhere not quite here but hardly distant, and that one and sudden shocking implosion was immediately replaced by a silent vacuum, heavy with foreboding – but yes, yes – now there was the leaden thud of something coming this way fast. Jilly bundled sheets around her – held them close and up to her throat – while Rollo stood there, undecided … and then he made instinctively for his, Christ – where are they? Bloody trousers! Didn’t get there, though (no, he didn’t make it) – and now the bedroom door, already just ajar, was swung open so hard and wide it slammed the wall and Rollo did not know if he was rushing the man, there, or else just rampaging to and through the one way out of here – but whichever way he thought this thing might be going, it took a turn for the worse as he barged and then fell heavily into the dark red, outraged and practically palsied form of Sammy, the baseball bat he held high in the air knocked away from him now as the two staggered back and tumbled jarringly down three hard and head-clunking steps that spewed them into one more vast and ludicrous area and Sammy was crying through screwed down eyelids as he sought to hurt a sweat-wet naked Rollo who was coughing and hitting out wildly at anything looming, and often soft parts of himself. Jilly was screaming and screaming to God’s name stop – stop it, both of you – you’re crazy, crazy! And the sheet around her was tricking her feet and making her slither and she too toppled over and down those three bloody steps and whether or not that had been the plan, hard on top of the fiercely wrestling Sammy and Rollo and the muffled struggles of all three of them, now, were being hampered badly by the heavy and foot-snagging bedsheet which someone’s maddened arm eventually threw off and away from them as Rollo, somehow, like a new-born colt, gangled to his feet – and cold and scared and calling up manliness he covered his groin with one shaky hand and even as he was conscious there of a touching softness and dried-on caking, the index finger of the other hand, now, was up and wagging, his wet eyes wild in a spinning head, and his mouth set far from firm:

  ‘Now look,’ he quavered. ‘I’m warning you …!’

  Sammy snarled and grasped then threw away both of Jilly’s stiff and pleading arms and scrambled up and just hurtled his whole body into this bastard’s stomach and Rollo was sent over the edge into cascades of sheer injury and he fell over backwards and utterly as if completely eviscerated by a runaway train and left there void and coping with a herd of cows stampeding into the chasm that had once held guts that saw him through. Sammy was straddling a near passed out Rollo, now (much in the way Jilly had had lined up for later), and as he raised up his fist, she screamed out and ranted and danced up and down as if imploring the gods for a deluge of rain – and neither the prone and truly now out of it Rollo and nor the driven and quite maddened Sammy, his lower face coated with furious spittle – neither was at all aware of Jilly’s breasts jiggling in agitation, her hair quite lunatic – for these, as well as the fevered fighting, were the sole preserve of those at the door of the main apartment – and No … is all that got through to Stewart,
as his heart leapt up and his eyes just died – this wasn’t, was it? Not by any stretch could this be judged the best of all moments to be highlighting the peerless attractions of the Emperor – oh God help me what can be happening? – Suite, oh Christ – to a visiting party of fucking journalists. And apart from the scuffling, there was audible not even the hiss that everyone sensed – though the dark and malevolent chortle from the just had to be broadsheet guy had the swift and startled effect of roping back everyone into the here and now (whatever this could be). Just too late, though, had come any of anything to prevent just all of it having been so terminally displayed: Stewart turned his back – the blood-rush to the now livid orange of his face combining to form no colour known to man – and with arms thrown wide and much heavy clearing of the throat (couldn’t run to a chortle like the just had to be broadsheet guy – none would come) he shepherded out and away his excited charges – and one of the women he had to physically take hold of, spin around and propel right out of there. Ha ha, he went. Ha ha ha.

  Stewart glanced back just once, before he softly closed the door behind him: Sammy was sitting cross-legged, wagging his head cradled by stiff and pale fingers. Jilly had gathered back the sheet around her and she softly wept into a corner of it, her hair falling forward over the whole of her face; but for the pumping of his glistening chest, the naked man could well be dead. Right, then: very good. Well that’s it, thought Stewart, that is it: I am finished. And yes he was aware that other stupid bastards could be thinking this as well.

  *

  ‘Just waiting for my daughter, actually. Maybe she’s gone to some other bar, I don’t know. Sure she said this one, though. One does rather a lot of waiting around on this ship. Do you find that? Jennifer, by the way.’

  ‘Hello,’ smiled David. ‘David. Yes well – pretty much used to that, in my life. Hanging around. Seem to have been doing that for just, oh Christ – years.’ And then he snorted and fooled with his glass. ‘Sorry – don’t mean to, ah – ’

  ‘No no – not at all. I think I know exactly what you’re saying.’

  Finally I get to meet someone sane. Typical, isn’t it? So much wasted time. Where was David when I was making such a bloody fool of myself with the boy-child Earl and, oh Christ – evading the plague that is Nobby? Still: couple of days to go (never say die, yes?).

  ‘Get you a drink, Jennifer?’

  And no: no. No – I am not going to find myself attracted to this bloody woman, actually. Christ – I haven’t got enough on my plate? What do I imagine? A fourth entanglement on board would just add the final garnish to the dog’s dinner I seem to so bloody effortlessly make of just bloody everything? I don’t really think so.

  ‘Well I suppose there’s time for one more. She’s actually normally quite punctual, Stacy – I’m the one who just loses all track. But I think that’s another thing about this ship, you know. You start to behave, I don’t know – um …?’

  ‘Uncharacteristically? Vodka you’re drinking, is it?’

  ‘Uncharacteristically – just so. Very good. No – actually it’s gin and tonic. Haven’t had one in simply ages and I just got that taste, you know?’

  ‘Whisky man, myself. Scotch, I used to drink. Seem to be on Bourbon, now …’

  ‘See what I mean? This ship.’

  David nodded. ‘I think you could be right.’

  He ordered the drinks from this increasingly miserable little turd of a barman – bloody Sammy, he’s called, is he? All smiles just a few days ago: look at him now. And that’s a helluva shiner he’s got. Probably deserved it. Tell you something, though – OK, Nicole is history: we know that. And Trish, yes all right – she’s gone the way of all flesh. Suki, mm – gorgeous, granted … but Jesus, just a baby, really. Well isn’t she? And is cherishing, actually, now what I’m praying for? It’s someone like this Jennifer I should’ve gone for: more my speed. Too late now, though: too late now.

  ‘So tell me, David – what is it that you actually do?’

  ‘Oh heavens – you don’t want to hear about all that. Terribly dull.’

  ‘No no – I wouldn’t have asked. Tell me – go on.’

  David took the usual deep breath. ‘Well I, uh – well what I actually am is a financial, um – consultant.’ The flat of Jennifer’s hand flew to her breast. ‘Man of my dreams,’ she orated. ‘I’m just hopeless about anything to do with money in any shape or form.’

  David nodded eagerly, and his eyes were wide and sincere.

  ‘Oh me too. Absolutely. Can’t get a hold of it – not one bit.’

  ‘Oh come on – you’re just saying that! No – what I mean is – I’ve no idea from one day to the next whether I’ve actually got any money or not.’

  ‘Well I’m exactly the same. It’s awful, isn’t it?’

  ‘When a bill arrives,’ pursued Jennifer (puzzled, yes OK, but pursuing it anyway), ‘I simply can’t bring myself to even open the thing.’

  ‘No – nor me. I stick them all away in a drawer. Can’t even look at them.’

  ‘Yes! Yes! Just physically incapable – ’

  ‘ – of even so much as touching the thing. Yes – I know exactly what you mean.’

  And they both sort of laughed at that. What an intriguing man, she thought. Odd, oh yes – but intriguing, very.

  ‘But look – did I mishear you? I thought you said you were a – ’

  ‘I did, yes. A financial consultant. It’s just that … cheers, Jennifer, cheers … it’s just that, well – I didn’t say I was a good one, or anything, did I? Completely hopeless, if you want the truth. This year alone I’ve sent two companies to the wall single-handed. They were shocked to find themselves suddenly in receivership – me, well, I was completely astonished. Didn’t see it coming. Still can’t make head or tail of how it could have happened. Christ – I don’t know why I’m laughing. It’s all a bloody tragedy, really. Isn’t it?’

  But they were laughing, the two of them – and really enjoying it, seemed like to Jennifer. David’s face was the first to cloud over: he had espied something sour from afar.

  ‘Ah …!’ he sighed, with real regret. ‘Sorry, I have to, ah – said I’d, um …’

  ‘Wife?’

  David hissed like a let-down tyre: it was as if his wheeze was rumbled.

  ‘Wife, yes. Yes indeed. Said I’d have an early dinner, for once.’

  Jennifer glanced in the direction of an agitated woman standing by the door, and very reluctant, it seemed, to venture further.

  ‘Well,’ she said. ‘Wives, I understand, don’t at all like to be kept waiting. I was one myself, once. Well twice, actually. So I should know.’

  Now look: leaving a bar for the sake of Nicole was never a very easy thing for David to do – but this time, somehow, it seemed even harder.

  ‘Bye,’ he said. God – she’s very fine, you know, this woman. Very fine indeed – the way she sits, the way she drinks: just my speed. ‘It’s been … nice.’

  Jennifer smiled and raised her glass. ‘Very,’ she said.

  And it annoyed her – watching this rather attractive and God, absolutely normal man bustle away with his head down, and into the maw of his wife. Mm. Maybe say die, yes? I don’t think he’s the type to stray. Jennifer drank her gin and tonic, and sadly shook her head. Christ. It’s all a bloody tragedy, really. Isn’t it?

  *

  ‘Outstanding! Yeah oh yeah – very nice, very nice …’

  Earl’s eyes were wide with real appreciation. This little lady I did not expect to be seeing again – but hell, now she’s here (and what she said is, she come looking for me) – well, let’s go for it, momma – see what’s shaking down.

  Stacy smiled, and ceased for now her pirouette. She was wearing the black short skirt with that peachy, clingy angora top: result wear.

  ‘I’m glad you like it,’ she said. ‘You hang about this bar a lot?’

  ‘Nah. Cuppla beers. Buy you one? Stace, right?’

  ‘Stacy, yes. We
ll thank you, Earl. Maybe a Diet Coke.’

  ‘Sure thing. Maybe getcha triple vodka, go with that?’

  Stacy’s eyes were cast down; then they rose and twinkled at him: two of her fingers alighted briefly on the knobbly bones at his wrist, just by the steel and massive chronometer. Yeh he is, she thought: he’s a good-looking bloke. Never really noticed it before.

  ‘Don’t need it,’ she said.

  ‘Whatcha got in the bag, Stace? It’s a kinda big bag.’

  Stacy held his gaze of amused enquiry.

  ‘Tate & Lyle’s,’ she giggled. And then she giggled again.

  ‘Tatum what? What in hell’s that?’

  ‘It’s a syrup. Got it from the kitchens. Want to taste?’

  And Earl was momentarily thrown.

  ‘Do I, er …? Well look – I gotta beer, here …’

  Stacy had gently prised open the lid of the catering-size can of Golden Syrup.

  ‘Just a taste …’

  Earl was eyeing her extended finger, coated in gold. He then glanced nervously to the left and right of him: this was getting kinda – what? Well – just not the kinda thing people do in bars, right? Like – she just got here? But hell – way she’s looking … and that finger, it’s coming straight on tord me … hell, it’s just on my lips now, boy – well look, way I figure, just suck on that mother, yeah?

  Stacy’s whole face was sparkling at him. ‘You like …?’

  Earl closed his eyes in acquiescence. ‘Big time,’ he said. ‘Say, uh – you reckon maybe we go someplace a little more, uh …?’

  Stacy was already gathering her things.

  ‘Perfect,’ she said.

  Which is pretty much all that was said. Once or twice, as they silently padded their way down one more corridor of hush, Earl threw in a couple of things on the lines of ‘Er – so, uh …?’ or ‘Well, I guess this is …’ But there was sure no kickback, here, so hell – let’s just go for it and see what’s cooking.