The Blue Book

by A. L. Kennedy

  Nevertheless, she permits herself, ‘If you’re going to be an arse about this, you can fucking well stay as you are. But getting outside and focusing on the horizon is meant to be good and we could have a go, couldn’t we? And you could cope with the yard or so from here to the balcony and then we’ll see what happens.’

  ‘I’ll get pneumonia is what’ll happen.’ He grins, though – makes a brave little halfway attempt – the good lad doing his best.

  He’s a fighter, Derek: gets in the ring and keeps swinging, even when there’s nothing to hit.

  A fighter, not a lover.

  And why is it those are the rock and roll choices?

  Why not, I’m an actuary, not a fighter . . . ?

  And why don’t you fucking focus on the task in hand?

  She wavers across the carpet with Derek, arm-in-arming it, the pair of them in no fit state.

  Lover: fighter – they picked the maiming occupations. Obvious. There’s more drama in the fatal undertakings, the wastes.

  And what are we? One of each? Two of both?

  She almost falls and, as might have been expected, complicates the possible reasons why.

  It’s not the ocean. I’d be unsteady in any case.

  Bastard.

  Recovery time – you shouldn’t need it just because you’ve looked at someone, listened to him, touched his arm.

  I used to think I’d end up feeling ruined because of the physical thing, the exertion – nice word for it – because of the two or three days of fucking against his choice of high-class backdrops. I thought that’s what it was.

  The luxury screwing.

  And Christ knows where he’s staying on board – or what he originally planned. He maybe intended a hideaway here for me, while his suite has the resident unicorn, the lapis lazuli bathroom and Fabergé bed . . . Or maybe he’d have coffined us in together and no pretence: six nights and seven days, same bed.

  Did Fabergé ever make beds ?

  Oh, fuck this.

  Beth cracks her knuckles against the frame of the balcony door, just hard enough to order her thoughts.

  ‘Careful.’ Derek produces a grin. ‘We don’t have to punch our way out.’

  ‘Hm? No, no, of course . . . Silly. And here we go . . .’

  Needle rain catches them once they’ve emerged in the open air. But mostly the air isn’t open, or too unruly: they’re boxed in by secluding panels to either side and sheltered by the balcony above. They are only mildly buffeted unless they actually crane out over the rail and ask for punishment. Which Elizabeth does.

  Like being slapped.

  Which I don’t.

  And I have nothing to be penitent about.

  Already been punished. Meeting Arthur is always its own punishment – pleasure and pain and immediate payment for both.

  He prefers things to be self-contained – even when they’re my things.

  I’m self-contained enough to scream – which makes it easier to leave him – and almost impossible. Every time.

  Seven days and six nights.

  That would have been unsurvivable. Don’t know what he was thinking – but I can guess. At his bloody games again.

  Love days.

  And Fuck me nights.

  Love days.

  And Betrayal nights.

  Comes up a good deal with punters – six – betrayal being so commonplace in life. Like fucking. Hand in glove.

  And seven and six is too long no matter how you say it.

  Seven and six makes thirteen and that’s unlucky.

  It’s all unlucky.

  Because it’s him that’s the problem, not what we do – it’s being too close to him – it makes me ill.

  Fucking Arthur – he’s like catching flu.

  Ideally, Beth should sit with Derek on the two metal chairs provided – just right for a couple – with matching metal table – and gaze out in refreshing circumstances. She’s even brought a towel with them to wipe everything down, but the rain dodges back to whichever surface she dries off and, after a while, Derek tells her to stop. ‘We can lean. It’s good, leaning.’ And he rests against the closed door, folds his arms, studies the far horizon with what do indeed appear to be beneficial results.

  Elizabeth returns to the rail, sees the ocean mounding round them and faulted into ridges, lines of stress, as if the ship is caught and sliding in a bowl of black glass, hammering and hammering against such a depth and height of glass.

  And she shouldn’t have drunk all the coffee, methodically worked down the pot to busy herself, because the caffeine is scrambling in her now, dialling up intensities she can’t afford.

  Get yourself over your sleepless night with exactly what will guarantee your next and also set a panic rubbing underneath your skin. I never learn.

  Clearly.

  ‘Do you want to try exploring?’ Derek seems pinker and more assured. ‘I might be able . . .’

  Which is a good idea. Exercise will be calming.

  And avoiding the rest of the ship would be eccentric, inexplicable. Why wouldn’t it be entertaining to survey the decks? That should prove both informative and bracing. There could even be the risk of lunch. An attempt . . .

  ‘Elizabeth?’

  Somehow the day has slipped until it is almost late enough for lunch.

  She can hear Derek shifting, pulling open the balcony door. ‘I hope we don’t see that guy again, though – the meat-eater. I could do without him.’ Feral weather leaps in the cabin’s curtains, lifts the ship’s newspaper, starts up small howls as it fills their room and hunts and searches for ways further into the ship.

  Beth nods, still facing the ocean, letting it hurt her.

  The liner has kept itself amused without them. They have already missed classes in bridge and computing, several talks on health and beauty (naturally for the ladies) and on maritime history and engineering (even more naturally for the gents) and at least one quiz.

  And the bingo.

  But nowhere is quite as photogenically busy as it should be. There is about the decks, the areas for leisure opportunities and the shops, an air of relinquished hope. Hunched passengers sit here and there in frozen contemplation of their own unreliable interiors. Healthy wives mouth news of their afflicted husbands over said husbands’ mournful heads. Healthy husbands bashfully destroy plates of sandwiches in the lovingly recreated Olde Englishe Pub while their wives stare fixedly out of windows full of grey unwieldy shapes and disturbances. There is little chatter and the good cheer of the untroubled is slightly too strident. Nobody’s plans are going to plan.

  Elizabeth leads Derek on a mild ascent through the vessel’s layers until they emerge in the gentlest location for more coffee: what appears to be a large hothouse for the propagation of geriatrics. Beyond the glass walls there are sturdy funnels, cables, antennae and receivers murmuring or bleating as they part and bewilder the wind. Overhead the sky races fiercely and underfoot the floor misbehaves as it seems set to for the duration, and yet here is only moist warmth and generous pot plants, cane chairs with footstools, cane tables, motionless figures under rugs and a bar decorated along tropical lines, forlornly suggesting late nights, cleavages, reckless cocktails and Caribbean flirting. A small man with a moustache lurks behind the bar, resigned to preparing tea, coffee and possibly cocoa, perhaps even Ovaltine. Elizabeth imagines him spending his evenings in a storeroom somewhere, stroking his boxes of novelty plastic straws and coloured paper umbrellas, counting the jars of unused maraschino cherries, wishing himself or his circumstances gone when neither can be altered.

  ‘Shall I order you a banana daiquiri, just to cheer him up?’

  ‘What?’ Derek hasn’t responded well to his journey and has laid himself flat and closed-eyed on a sun lounger.

  ‘To cheer up the barman – a daiquiri . . .’r />
  ‘Would kill me.’

  ‘Bovril?’ Which wasn’t funny, so she shouldn’t have said it. She shouldn’t have said it, even if it was funny. He’s upset – like the rest of the passengers: all of them being shaken until they break.

  Derek has started taking each jolt personally, grim. ‘It’s not going to stop, is it?’ He is gripping the sides of his seat.

  ‘I don’t know. I mean, I can ask. But the last announcement was . . .’ The last announcement was uncompromisingly certain that the storm would continue today and then worsen tomorrow and be unabated the day after that. They both heard it – that was the point of the Ship’s Announcements – everyone was meant to hear them. Although if you were suffering dry heaves at the time, you might be inattentive.

  ‘I’ll get you some warm water.’

  And Elizabeth keeps her word – is honest and does just that – brings him back a cautiously half-full mug of something comforting and hydrating and sits beside him and wonders if she should give him another pill, because that might help, but it does say on the ‘read before taking’ leaflet that they might provoke headaches – headaches and nightmares, in fact, among other things – and the next dose allowed would be three hours from now and an overdose would probably be awful.

  An overdose of nightmares.

  So she goes and finds the stack of blankets and brings one to unfold across his legs, this joining him to the rest of the room, to the sense that some catastrophe has happened elsewhere, is still occurring, but here are the survivors and a peace to contain them and an idea of waiting.

  Unclear if we’re waiting for worse things or for better.

  She strokes the flat back of Derek’s wrist and he smiles, so she continues, takes sips of a coffee the barman made her – the last thing she needs, more coffee, should have had decaf – and an elderly woman with very red lipstick and overly whitened skin reads an Agatha Christie by herself and another, larger lady – nicely dressed, but with swollen ankles and feet: ugly shoes for her misshapen feet: and this means she is probably dying, is being murdered by a failing heart – scribbles at a puzzle book and there are yawns and there is dozing and there is full and deep and unembarrassed sleep – faces turned softer and younger, parted lips, the grace of unselfconsciousness.

  And Beth remembers being with her parents at Blackpool, way out at the end of a pier in a glass garden like this – filled with deckchairs and with sleepers and with mediated daylight.

  Black tie and ball gowns for the evening, but what is the ship when we come right down to it? Just the end of a pier in motion, cast adrift. Shows with a chorus and pretty bets you shouldn’t make, and wear and tear dulling the glamour and souvenirs and someone who’ll tell you your fortune, someone who’ll pretend that he knows who you are, what you’ll do.

  Enough of that.

  Eventually, she feels Derek’s muscles surrender, his forearm drops and he’s away with the others – dreaming.

  I hope simply dreaming – not anything bad. No nightmares.

  This means she is left to be hungry and – why not? – she goes to the buffet – why not? – it’s on the same level, not far, and she needs to eat. She has no suspicious motivations.

  I can get a roll, or something. Soup. Derek wouldn’t want to watch me deal with soup. I’ll give him peace.

  And she wanders in between the largely deserted counters of vegetables under heat lamps, noodles, rice, meat – no one here she recognises – tiny oblongs of gelatinous desserts, meat, pastas, fruit platters, meat – no one she knows – an obscenely generous selection of untouched foods, fastidiously arranged. Meat.

  I suppose in a while they’ll take away the stuff no one ate for lunch and replace it all with stuff no one will eat for dinner.

  A few souls gaze out at the storm, picking at cakes, sipping unruly liquids. She does not particularly try to find last night’s table, but there it is, in any case – empty and apparently no more or less pleasant than its neighbours, no different.

  While Elizabeth waits for a sandwich to be constructed from the freshest possible ingredients according to the line’s traditions of fine dining, someone pads in to stand beside her.

  Not him, though. It’s not him.

  ‘Hello.’

  This knowledge swooping so hard through her that, for the first time, she does feel herself unsteadied by the ship, assaulted.

  By her shoulder is the older gentleman from the photo shoot: this time dressed in a navy jacket and comfortable planters and just faintly amused by how he has come to be in such a costume – blazer and slacks – and of an age when it might be deemed appropriate. He grins. ‘I’m Francis.’

  The good husband.

  ‘Never Frank. Don’t like it.’ He is laden with packages of crackers, some of which he now pockets so that he can shake her hand. ‘Hello. Yes.’ He leans in, comfortable with being conspiratorial. ‘It always seems like theft when you put them in your pocket – even though we have already paid . . . Even though we could eat it all and ask for more and they would have to let us . . .’ And at this he gives her the full smile of someone who is decent and prefers to be kind and have fun and who can no longer be bothered hiding it. ‘You know . . . if you’re by yourself, we’re just round there – past the very, very empty pizza stall – nobody inclines to pizza in a Force Nine gale, apparently – and my wife is round there and I will be directly – we’re having cheese with many more crackers than we need and not quite enough fruit.’ He begins to assume the role of dithering old man, enjoying it. ‘Do you think if I gave you some grapes to carry . . . ? I really should just find a tray . . . Only if you’d like company. Only if you’re alone.’

  Elizabeth is alone.

  ‘Bunny and I, we’ve heard everything that we could possibly say to each other by now. We long for strangers.’

  Elizabeth is exhausted and badly wired with caffeine and quickly, sour and quickly, intolerably alone.

  He cocks his head, pauses, and Beth knows he is seeing something in her that she would rather he could not. ‘We draw the line at kidnapping, of course.’

  And he pauses again, blinks, softly cups her elbow with his hand.

  So he’ll feel the bone – little bone, big bone, little bone . . . But please don’t wake me.

  ‘Your sandwich is ready – looks very nice. You should have it with us. Is that decided? I think it should be decided.’ Saying this while he looks away and is overly pleased with what should be her lunch. He concentrates on it utterly and so allows her to be unobserved, but strengthens his grip for an instant to show her she’s still thought of before he lets go. ‘Perhaps if you wanted to fetch the grapes . . . ?’ And this allows her to be in motion and only to glimpse enough of his next smile to be sure that it’s too intent. If he’s actually concerned about her she shouldn’t see it. Otherwise she knows she’ll have to cry.

  Francis gathers a tray and welcomes the grapes, checks Elizabeth’s eyes once and sharply and then hands her the finished sandwich and walks her across to share his table, along with a lady who does indeed turn out to be called Bunny.

  Classy silver necklace – he bought it for her: she has other things, but this will be her favourite – it is obviously meaningful and sweet – Arthur would classify it as literally sweet, he’d file it away in his mind as candyfloss, toffee, syrup: make it memorable like that – and I bet it has earrings to match it and they’ll dress up tonight and she’ll wear them. They’ll dance. They’ll both be movers – there and grown up for the sixties and taking part, so they’ll know how. Elegant, though – you don’t often see that, not for real. But she shouldn’t wear black – it makes her look poorly.

  Bunny is poorly.

  ‘It’s silly, we do realise.’ The wife as pleasant as the husband. ‘You can laugh if you want. It’s all right.’ Hair drawn back, but not severely, in a complicated curl.

  He’ll
like when she lets it down. Will always have liked it. Bunny, let your hair down. That’s the way. Thank you.

  The husband as pleasant as the wife, ‘Why would she want to laugh? If you were called Ermintrude, she might want to laugh. But Bunny is a perfectly reasonable form of address for a person.’ And he fires a lopsided glance at Bunny, hot and fast. ‘More suitable than Doreen, which – as you very well know – we never took to.’ His voice delicate as the sentence ends. ‘There being a number of things to which we don’t take.’

  ‘Francis . . .’ Bunny scolding without scolding, pursing her lips so she doesn’t laugh. ‘We mustn’t alarm our new friend.’

  ‘No. No, we mustn’t. And we won’t.’

  Neither of them doing it by numbers. They don’t need them.

  Elizabeth concentrates on biting, chewing, swallowing, biting again – on bread and meat and meat – while Bunny and Francis continue to be cleanly and plainly and purely just what they appear to be and also remain determined to accept her as herself.

  They are kind to her.

  They are honestly and uncomplicatedly kind to her.

  Which is why she does, finally, weep.

  And then Elizabeth ran away.

  Which is a thing she doesn’t do.

  Not often.

  I didn’t scare them – worried them, but didn’t scare them – crying too much. Francis, he expected it and that made Bunny expect it, too and No, no, not all – we quite understand.

  Francis anxious to ease and excuse. ‘It’s this weather. Quite atrocious, I’ll speak to the captain and have it changed.’ So that her sobs start to shudder her more effectively than the deck and she has to go, to bolt.

  Couldn’t make him watch me fragment. Couldn’t do that to a decent man, a normal man.

  ‘We’ve done as much.’ He’s determined to understand.

  Bunny also: ‘I’ve done more.’

  ‘Both of us have gone quite completely to pieces and in front of people we didn’t know from Adam. Honestly.’