by Celia Imrie
‘But those were people living in the olden days,’ said Tyger. ‘Now everyone wants veracity. They want to think what you write is the truth, not just rubbish you made up.’
Fiction is the word, rather than rubbish. But Amanda decided not to argue.
The music came to an end, and, along with everyone else, Tyger and Amanda shuffled back to their ringside table.
As they walked past Chris and Jennie, Amanda leaned down and asked, ‘No hats?’
Chris snorted. ‘We think hat-wearing is a pretty juvenile idea. Paper hats are for children. Suitable only for kids, like the ankle-biter on your arm, for instance.’
‘And for wearing at Christmas dinner, Chris,’ said Jennie in the voice of a mouse. ‘Paper hats from the crackers, remember. You always wear one.’
Luckily enough the band started up again and further conversation was impossible.
As Tyger and Amanda arrived back at their table a slightly scruffy man wearing a black and gold velvet fez appeared at Amanda’s side.
‘While you wear a formidable hat like that, Signora, I feel obliged to ask you for a dance.’
He opened his eyes wide, flaring his nostrils as he proffered his arm.
Amanda took a step back. Was this man mad?
He lifted both arms and wafted them around in the air, while Amanda flinched, thinking he might at any moment pull out a knife, but instead he extracted a pink silk rose from his sleeve and presented it to her. ‘My name is Arturo the Luminoso.’
Amanda flooded with relief. He might look out of place here, but she had seen his name in tomorrow’s Programme. He was the big act in the theatre, a stage conjuror.
As they stepped on to the floor for a foxtrot, Amanda told him her name, but all hopes of a quiet conversation while dancing were dashed. Arturo was a proficient, though silent, dance partner. Amanda smiled. To think that now she could add to the list of new experiences: dancing a mazurka with a magician. She couldn’t imagine anything madder, especially in comparison to the dismal days she had spent trudging around London before she came onboard.
‘I’ve seen your profile in tomorrow’s Programme,’ said Amanda, hoping to end the silence. ‘I plan to come to your evening performance.’
Arturo smiled. ‘You will not be disappointed.’
He looked over her shoulder then she felt the muscles in his body contract. He pulled away from her, and took a few steps back.
At first Amanda thought she must have trodden on his foot. But he continued walking backwards, his eyes fixed, while his hands fumbled in his pockets. She wondered whether he might be ill – perhaps he was asthmatic, and reaching for an inhaler, or maybe suffering from angina and needing to take a pill. She moved towards him. But then he suddenly took a pose like a fighter, pulled something from his pocket and thrust it forward. Thinking it must be a gun, Amanda automatically threw herself to the floor, and crawled away from him towards the tables and chairs, while several men leaped forward and grabbed hold of Arturo, who started howling.
They struggled with him for some moments then he landed on the dance floor with a thump. The item he had been holding fell from his hands and rolled towards Amanda.
It was something like a furry toy. As it slid closer she realised it was one of those lucky rabbit’s feet that people once won at fairground stalls.
She sat up and wiped herself down.
Arturo lay in the centre of the dance floor, crossing himself and murmuring into a string of beads which he held to his lips.
Two of the gentlemen hosts helped him up, then led Arturo out of the ballroom.
‘You took quite a fall there, madam. May I assist you?’ A sleek silver-haired man bent down and held out a hand. ‘I’m Tony, by the way. Poor Arturo. He’s harmless. Just a bit eccentric. I work alongside him, and we dine at the same table, so I know his little foibles. He keeps telling me that the Devil is onboard! Perhaps he just had a visitation.’
Amanda clambered awkwardly to her feet. She felt quite wobbly from the double shock.
‘It’s strange how your imagination takes over,’ said Amanda, taking Tony’s arm as they crossed the floor. ‘I thought he had a gun.’
‘A gun? Remember going through all the security scanners before you came aboard? I don’t think anyone could get a gun on to this ship.’ Tony smiled and asked: ‘Would you care to continue the dance?’
Amanda had been winded by the shock of the fall. She needed a little time to pull herself together.
‘Do you know, I’ll pass for now. But you’re very kind.’
Instead of going to the table, she decided to take a stroll, get her breath back. She would go to her cabin for a few minutes – to powder her nose, as they used to put it. Then she would return and start afresh. After all the night was yet young – on a floating pleasure palace like this, anyhow.
For no real reason, when she got to the cabin, and saw the neatly turned-down bed, the chocolate on her pillow, the ship’s newspapers and Daily Programmes spread out like a fan on the coverlet, Amanda was overtaken by an overwhelming feeling of loneliness.
Tears welled up. She felt stupid and forlorn. Here she was in a floating hotel with thousands of strangers, when she could be at home with people who really loved her.
She opened up the laptop and collected her emails.
Three came in. She opened the one from her daughter first.
Patricia’s was rather a snide message informing Amanda that she had at last found a solution to her childcare problem and ‘a wonderful new nanny’ had just moved in. It wasn’t hard to see the implied subtext – ‘no thanks to you’. The nanny was Norland-trained and would cost a fortune, but at least, said Patricia, it meant that the children would have ‘the best possible care’. Better than Granny, thought Amanda, wishing she had let the computer be. She suppressed the stab of her daughter’s subliminal accusation and opened the next message.
This one was from her lawyers. A PDF receipt for the bill for the conveyancing of the sale of the house and the purchase of the new flat was attached. Amanda noted that the solicitors had removed the money from the sale of her old house, so there was no actual bill to pay. They had helped themselves. The email came with a PS. From the end of business hours tomorrow, all personal enquiries, signatures, meetings etc., would need to be done from their head office in Leicester. This was due to a long-planned refurbishment of the building, which would also necessitate all phone lines and electricity cables to be replaced. They hoped it would not be too much of an inconvenience to their clients. Once completed, the bright new office with state-of-the-art technology would result in a far better service for everyone.
Amanda couldn’t imagine why that was of any interest to her, here in the middle of the Atlantic. Then she remembered that she still had to pick up the key of the new flat. So now, when she did get home, that would entail a day trip to Leicester.
She opened the last email, from Aardvark Storage, reminding their ‘dear client Amanda’ that, as she had failed to renew the contract but her stuff was still there, she would be put on to the premium daily rate. She could renew right now on the cheaper monthly or even cheaper six-monthly basis, but in the meanwhile they would continue taking those extortionate daily payments from her credit card … blah-blah-blah.
Now totally depressed, Amanda tried to get on to the Aardvark website and make an automatic renewal, but there was something wrong with the site and the links wouldn’t connect to the payments section.
Another email pinged in. Her son Mark. He must be live online at this moment.
Amanda had prayed for good news from him, but instead got another sob story. After ‘that bloody Jasmine’ had dumped him, Patricia had grudgingly let him stay on the sofa-bed for a night, but then she had come down for a glass of water at dawn and caught him canoodling with the au pair, who she promptly sacked – rather unfairly, Mark thought. Patricia had now found a new live-in agency nanny and, without so much as a thank you, had thrown him out on his ear. He couldn
’t help it if the silly girl had decided to snuggle up with him on the sofa-bed, and so wasn’t there in the nanny’s room when one of Patricia’s wretched children had started crying in the night. Mark was ‘at the end of his tether’, after spending the day looking at hotels. But he found them all terribly depressing, and too awful to contemplate. He was in despair, he said. A man of his status could not be seen to be ‘living in what was only one step up from a dosshouse’.
Amanda thought back to the rude girl on the desk at the dingy hotel, and the uncomfortable shock of finding herself sleeping in a bed in the hostel. She thought it was actually quite funny that her son had forgotten that she herself had taken this exact journey less than a week ago and that, when the same thing had happened to her, he had given her short shrift.
Amanda couldn’t really remember who ‘that bloody Jasmine’ was. She supposed that must have been the girl who was moaning and whispering in the background when she had phoned him in London, asking for help.
Amanda continued reading – Mark was angry that, what with the family household bills to pay, he couldn’t afford to stay in the kind of hotel which would make his life comfortable enough to continue working. Unless he found a decent place, he said, he would end up broke, and then his children, her grandchildren, would suffer, maybe even starve.
For some reason, despite his overdramatic tone, Mark’s email made Amanda feel guilty. She didn’t like the way he was somehow implying that it was all her fault he was in this mess. After all, he was the one who had deserted his family home, for this Jasmine woman. He only had himself to blame if he now had to pay for a household where he did not live as well as having to stump up for somewhere to rest his own adulterous head.
She still had both Patricia and Mark’s bank details scribbled down on the desk jotter, ready to transfer the money left over from the sale of the old family home once the new flat was paid for. Perhaps if she forwarded him the cash right away …
Amanda hesitated. It could only be disastrous if you tried to buy the goodwill of your own children. She would exchange that money only when she was feeling bright and cheerful and everything was looking good.
She stared glassy-eyed at the screen and suddenly realised she was still online. As she turned off the internet connection, to save the precious minutes, she saw that she had used up almost half of her paid-for internet package. Twenty-five dollars down the drain.
She flopped back on the bed.
The emails from her children had sucked the joy out of the evening.
Although she had intended to go back to the ball and enjoy herself, Amanda now felt utterly deflated. She was tempted to curl up and go to bed, but, what with the clocks having already gone backward one hour yesterday, as they were heading west, and due to rewind another hour tonight, she knew it was much, much too early for bed, not to mention too silly to give in to depression.
She would do her best to get on with her own life and leave others to deal with their own. She couldn’t face the ballroom quite yet, so went up to the cafeteria.
It was bright and cheery in there. Only a few tables were taken. She recognised some of the dancers from last night’s show, sitting with macs over their costumes, grabbing a bite between performances. Two members of the uniformed crew sat alone at a table in the corner, talking very earnestly.
Only a few guests, in evening dress and carrying their hats, were gobbling down plates of food, getting ready to go down and take to the floor again.
Amanda picked up a cup of tea and a slice of chocolate cake from the buffet and moved over to sit in a dark unlit alcove. She looked at the sea. Out there, everything was black. Only now did she notice that the ship was rocking. The tea was slopping from side to side in the cup.
She bit into the cake, which seemed to be the most delicious slice of cake she had ever tasted.
Amanda realised that really she was glad it was impossible, without a king’s ransom, to make phone calls. Anyway, she knew that if she had followed up those emails with phone calls the outcome would only have made her feel much, much worse.
From across the room the showgirls’ laughter echoed round her alcove.
Laughter was the key. She had to live in the moment. You only live once.
It was strange that on this ship she felt so safe. The problems arose when she made contact with the world she had left behind, creating horrible worries which gnawed at her innards.
The funny little Italian magician in the ballroom had given her a fright, but that episode had really been stoked up by her own overactive imagination. The poor old man had been holding out a lucky rabbit’s paw, like an amulet against evil. And when she thought about it, his looks were filled with fear, not hatred or even aggression.
Amanda was quite jealous of the magician’s amulet, though, and fancied going back to her cabin and pointing something, a clove of garlic perhaps, at her laptop. She laughed and saw her reflection in the glass. She was still wearing the smart paper hat, only now it was rather bent. She thought she looked like a character out of a cartoon.
Dammit! She would go back and dance. Why not? It wasn’t as though she could do anything else more serious while she was hundreds of miles from the shore. She would take a short walk along the deck to clear her head, then go and shake her booty!
She pushed through the double set of glass doors and ventured out on to the open deck.
As she emerged into the air, the loud hum of the engines, the crash of the waves and the howls of the wind mingled into a deafening cacophony.
A mighty gust of wind blew her paper hat clean away. It flew off her head and skittered along the glistening wooden deck. She ran after it, but the wind whipped it up high into the night air. Before she knew it, the hat wafted downwards then flew over the side, flapping off into the darkness, like a grey and red albatross.
She moved forward and clung on to the wooden rail, watching her hat grow smaller and smaller until it vanished. The ship’s lights cast bright reflections on the black boiling water below. Apart from those glistening waves there was nothing to see – not a star, no moon, and no other ships, just a black blanket of nothing. Amanda had never seen darkness like it. She turned sideways and glanced up at the steep white walls of the ship. Its bright lights now seemed to summon up memories of all those films about the Titanic, and she felt completely vulnerable, as though she was in a small tub, bobbing up and down in an eternal swaying sea.
Still gripping the rail, she took one more deep breath of fresh air.
She was ready to face the music, literally.
Suddenly the horizon lit with an eerie purple glow, and, for a few seconds, a huge branch of lightning flickered. Amanda had never seen lightning like this and thought how like it was to those domes in science museums where you placed your hand down and caused a bright web of light. It glimmered for a while and was gone.
Amanda’s clothing fluttered around her.
‘Romantic, isn’t it?’ A man was standing beside her. His voice was deep and warm.
‘Very.’ Amanda didn’t dare look around at him. She wanted to believe he was as handsome as Elvis, with a Clark Gable smile. She did not want to turn around and see a man resembling Michael Gove with acne.
So, instead, feeling like a character in a Noël Coward play, she focused on the flickers of lightning on the horizon and continued her conversation.
‘I’ve always loved the sea,’ she said. ‘Since all those childhood day trips to Mudeford.’
‘Mudeford!’ The man laughed. ‘Isn’t that where all the millionaire footballers live these days? Near Sandbanks.’
‘Not in those days. It was all “pay for your deckchair”, penny-falls machines, calamine lotion and pots of cockles and winkles.’
‘Good to know that you had a real childhood. None of this selfie and Facebook stuff.’ He chuckled, then sighed and said, ‘The sea, so beautiful. Keep your eyes peeled for dolphins. They’re all over the place. Too dark now, of course.’
‘I
saw some this morning.’
‘You’re a very lucky woman. As well as a very good-looking one.’
Finally, Amanda turned to look at him.
The man was wearing an impeccable tuxedo and black silk dicky bow. His silver hair flapped in the wind. He was very good-looking, slim. What you might describe as a matinée idol.
‘A pity you lost your hat,’ he said. ‘It was very stylish. I watched it disappear on its journey to Greenland.’ He edged forward and stood beside her, leaning on the rail. ‘I saw you earlier, in the ballroom, dancing with the mad magician. If you hadn’t left after his little turn, I’d have come over and asked you to join me for a drink. It’s lonely trying to get through a bottle of champagne on your own.’
‘I’m going back there now,’ said Amanda.
‘You’re right. It is rather cold out here,’ he said. ‘Can I join you?’
Amanda put out her elbow, then decided to be cheeky. ‘And if the offer’s still open I’d love to share a glass of bubbles.’
PART FOUR
The Faraday Fracture Zone
11
Suzy decided to grab a decent breakfast before class, so went up to the cafeteria, where she could also pocket a biscuit for later, when her class was finished.
She wandered around with her tray trying to find an empty table, but 9 a.m. was the most popular time. Eventually she found a window bay with one table free. She laid her things out, and pulled her notebooks from her bag so that she could glance over the plans for the class while she ate.
‘Getting into the swing?’
It was Melanie, the social hostess, sitting at the next table, busily spreading marmalade on her toast. ‘I’m just grabbing a coffee before I start “Forty Ways to Tie a Silk Scarf”.’
Suzy laughed, then realised that Melanie was not making a joke.
‘I thought it was napkin folding this morning?’
‘Of course.’ Melanie looked down at her folder and winced. ‘You lose all sense of time once you’re on the Atlantic. It’s scarves tomorrow.’