by Celia Imrie
‘Any more calls from your stalker?’
Melanie looked puzzled.
‘The pest, who keeps phoning the office.’
‘Oh, him. Natch. He’s been on this morning. Wanted to know if the “Art for Teens” class was open to everyone.’
‘He’s not a teen, is he?’ Suzy smiled. ‘I would have thought the title was self-explanatory.’
‘Exactly.’ Melanie tore open a wrap of sugar and emptied it into her coffee. ‘Do you have problem customers in your world?’
Suzy mulled this over. ‘We get silly things said to us by strangers in the street, I suppose. “I hated you in that” or “But it would have been so much better if Judi Dench had played your part”. I had a woman once tell me she thought I was “way more wrinkled in real life than I was in Dahlias”, a TV series which I did about thirty years ago!’
Melanie’s face said it all. She stared at Suzy, open-mouthed, eyes popping.
‘I had no idea!’ She downed her coffee in one. ‘You’d think actors only ever got people telling them they love them. I get people who know how to do things better than I do all the time, but apart from that …’
‘I suppose we actors don’t have very much direct communication with our customers. Sometimes our colleagues can be the problem, sometimes directors. Though I have to say they are mostly very sweet.’
‘This fellow is an actor.’
‘Which fellow?’
‘The annoying one who keeps calling my office.’
‘He’s an actor?’
‘That’s what it says on his passport. I looked him up last night. It suddenly occurred to me he might be one of those secret agents sent by head office to test us, or perhaps a nasty journalist from one of those cruise magazines, trying to make trouble, checking me out in case I lost my cool.’
‘But he’s an actor?’
‘That’s right. An actor. Though personally his voice doesn’t sound up to it. Weasely. I’d love to see him in the flesh, but I’ve only heard him down the phone.’ Melanie stood up and laid all her dirty dishes on a tray. ‘Name of Stanley K. Arbuthnot.’
Suzy had just raised a spoon full of cornflakes to her mouth. She put it down.
‘Stanley Arbuthnot?’
‘That’s right.’ Melanie blushed. ‘Oh no. How embarrassing! You know him. He’s probably your best friend or an ex-husband or something.’
‘No, no. Stan Arbuthnot, you said?’ Suzy’s breath was quite taken away. Her heart pounded and her breathing became shallow. ‘Where did he get on?’
‘Southampton, of course. Only a very few people stayed onboard after the Med. Genoa to Southampton was only a repositioning cruise.’
Suzy’s mind raced through all the events, starting at Zurich Airport. Barbara told them that Stan had left early that morning, on the same day that she and Jason had taken the train and gone down to Genoa to board the Blue Mermaid. There had been those few days at sea from Genoa to Southampton, then a day in Southampton … plenty of time for Stan to sort himself out and pack for a cruise.
‘I hope I haven’t upset you by telling you that. It was a spur-of-the-moment thing, I think. He booked on the day we sailed.’
Suzy’s mind raced. Stan Arbuthnot! So it wasn’t so batty to think that Jason and Stan were in cahoots.
Melanie looked rather panicked, as Suzy’s wide-eyed silence led her to think that she had made a serious faux pas. ‘I had no idea you were friends.’
Suzy wiped her mouth and got up.
‘No. Sorry, Melanie. It’s nothing like that at all. Really. It’s just … just … I can’t stand the man.’ She took a quick swill of tea. ‘I’m happy to be forewarned. Must rush. I need to speak to someone before my class starts, and I’ve just seen the time.’
Suzy could barely stop herself running as she rushed through the cafeteria, heading back to her cabin, which naturally was at the opposite end of the ship to where she was now, and then back to the ballroom, where her class would start in ten minutes.
Stan Arbuthnot! How absurd! She stabbed at the button for the lift, then impatiently decided she couldn’t face waiting for it, so ran down the stairs instead. She turned the corner and marched into the entertainment quarters. She arrived at Jason’s room and was about to knock when she remembered that Jason had a room-mate and that they had both been working till the early hours. However much she needed to speak to Jason she didn’t want to upset his fellow ghost.
She looked at her watch. She was late for the class.
She ran into her own cabin and scribbled a hasty note. The message was simple:
Jason. You should have told me. As you probably know, Stan Arbuthnot is aboard. If you can’t explain yourself, I will have to go to the Captain and inform him. Find me after my class or asap. Suze.
She slipped the note under Jason’s door, then she ran the entire length of the ship, taking the open deck which, at this time of day, was clogged with earnest joggers all doing laps in a clockwise direction. She felt like an Olympic sprinter as she whizzed past the more leisurely runners.
When she arrived, panting, in the ballroom, her students were already standing in a circle on the dance floor.
She ran down the ramp to join them.
‘Pardon me. An unforgivable offence in the theatre, being late. It makes you very unpopular.’ She flung her bag on to a seat and strode into the circle. ‘Once upon a time, when I was young, believe it or not, actors were fined for being late. So now, let’s get on with it! Yesterday we played the game of being seen. After our warm-up today we are going to play the opposite game: “The Art of Becoming Invisible”.’
‘Why would you ever need that?’ enquired a keen stick-thin man wearing a T-shirt and shorts. ‘Surely you want to be seen all the time.’
‘No. There are scenes where it’s necessary that no one notices you until you step forward and make some surprise announcement, for example. And another thing, which even some professionals don’t ever grasp: for any play to work you have to give others their moments. For that you need to be able to fade in and out of a scene, without anyone noticing what you’re doing.’
She looked up to where yesterday Jason had been sitting. Blake was there, regarding the class. He’d seen her come in late. He was not smiling.
‘Will we be doing any textual work?’ asked an earnest little girl with a very posh voice. ‘I’m applying for drama school in January, and it would be very useful to go through my audition speeches.’
‘Eventually.’ Suzy really didn’t want the class to be about one person. There was always one who simply thought the whole thing was about them. ‘But we always start with exercises and games.’
‘I just thought we would be doing scenes from plays.’
‘Tomorrow morning I’ll bring in some scenes for you all to work on.’
‘Why can’t I do my monologues? I’ve been working on them for weeks. But I need professional help.’
‘We’re all going to do some famous scenes. Together. In groups.’
From the corner of her eye Suzy saw Blake get up and leave the ballroom. No doubt he had taken a dim view of that little altercation, but what else could she do? You cannot give a group class and concentrate on one individual.
Suzy clapped her hands, turned to the others and said, ‘Now let’s get on with this morning’s game.’
*
Amanda woke and lay in her bed, staring out at the grey clouds scudding by in an otherwise blue sky. She was warm and cosy, and feeling very happy after the surprise turn of events last night.
Despite losing her Tyger-made hat, she had gone back to the Ascot Ball and shared a table with her elegant new friend. She realised that she had not asked his name! Well, whatever he was called, he had been wonderful. He’d ordered champagne and they had talked as much as it was possible to when sitting so near the band. Mainly they discussed the ship and how comfortable it was, but he’d asked where she lived and she told him about her housing saga. He was very sympathetic and
said that he was on the move himself. A far more major effort for him, moving from Europe to the USA. When he said goodnight, he had implied that they would meet again. Amanda had got out of the lift before he did. She presumed he must be staying in one of the fancy cabins on the upper floors.
Amanda sat up and read the ship’s daily papers, then had a luxurious bath, dressed and walked slowly to breakfast. She hoped so much to meet her new friend in a corridor or perhaps in the lifts, or even in the cafeteria.
But no.
After eating breakfast, and dawdling with her coffee refill, Amanda decided to explore the library and bookshop, secretly hoping that her new friend might be in there. He certainly came over as the reading type.
Amanda was amazed how full the bookshop and library were. In the library not only could she not find an empty chair, but many of the people were fast asleep, which was very annoying. The window seats had a magnificent view over the prow of the ship and everyone sitting in them were slumped down and snoring! She wandered through the aisles of stacked books, looking for a novel which she could read in her cabin during the afternoons. She had turned a corner and inspected a whole shelf of books before she realised she was now beyond fiction and browsing the Natural World shelves: Arctic Wildlife, A History of the Natural World, Animals – From Aaadvarks to Zebras …
Aardvark!
She still hadn’t sorted the storage problem. Oh no! That would be another 24-hour top-rate extortionate bill.
She rushed from the library, down the stairs to her deck, then ran along the corridor. She was halfway down when she realised that she had lost her sense of direction and that she was on the wrong side of the ship. Hers was an odd-numbered cabin and all these were evens. She cut through, crossing one of the landings, marching past the lifts. One lift opened and a couple stepped out and stood still, deciding where to go. Amanda stopped and walked around them, and found herself colliding with a man who was running up the stairs in his gym clothes.
‘Hey!’ The gym-goer was her champagne pal from last night. He flicked his towel over his shoulders. ‘Where are you off to in such a hurry? Must be something very exciting.’
Amanda laughed. Suddenly she could see how piddling were her domestic problems.
‘It’s silly really. As I told you, I’ve just sold my house, bought a flat, and all my stuff is in storage …’ She stopped herself going on. ‘But you don’t want to hear this nonsense.’
‘Storage can easily be sorted.’
‘I know I’m being silly. At the same time my son is playing up. And …’
As she reeled off her problems the answer to everything dawned on her. Mark! Her son could be the solution to it all. If he could get to the solicitors’ office to pick up the keys today, before they moved to Leicester, then go and get her furniture out of storage … Hey presto! He could have somewhere to stay – her flat. All her key and storage problems would be sorted. All their problems solved in one go.
‘Amanda?’
The man stood beside her waiting for an answer.
Amanda realised she had not only failed to answer his question, she was so taken over by her own thoughts that she hadn’t even heard it.
‘I asked whether you might like me to talk to your son?’ the man asked again. ‘Man to man. When a stranger speaks, it is sometimes effective.’
‘No, no,’ said Amanda. ‘I think I have a way to sort it all out. Look, I must rush now, but we could meet later. How about lunch or tea?’
‘Tea!’ The man wiped his towel against his cheek. ‘I look forward to it.’
As Amanda dashed on along the corridor, she realised she had still not asked the mystery man’s name. Though he, she noted, had rather flatteringly remembered hers.
Back in her cabin she wrote the necessary emails: first a note to the solicitors, advising them that her son Mark would come in and collect the keys; then a letter to Aardvark informing them that her son would arrive later to take away her things. While she was starting the long email to Mark, giving him the address of the lawyers’ office, the details and key-pad number of the storage facility and a description of her new flat, she noticed that the solicitors had sent a reply. She popped down the current email and read it. They pointed out that before they could release the keys to her son they would need him to be carrying a passport or some other legally acknowledged identity papers, together with a signed letter of authority from her.
A signed letter of authority! How on earth could she get that to Mark? She was in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, for God’s sake.
To make matters worse she only had till close of business today to get it sorted. She glanced down at her computer clock which was now, strangely, coming up to 9 a.m. Surely it couldn’t be that time? She had done so much already and had a lie-in this morning. She looked at her watch and turned on the small TV. She flicked around until she found the page devoted to sea conditions and charts and had an active analogue clock in the corner, which was always adjusted to ship’s time.
But before she could click through the TV channels, passing from some old black and white film to a talk from the lady who ran the spa, in the corridor the tannoy sounded the daily bells. No need to find the time. The bells meant it was now noon. Amanda propped open the cabin door so that she could hear the Captain’s announcement while she continued to write her email to Mark.
‘Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. I hope you’re enjoying your time onboard.’ The Captain’s voice was mellifluous and calming. She tried to imagine him sitting up in the bridge in his swanky uniform – not costume! ‘Some of you will have noticed a little swell yesterday. We’ve skirted the main body of that storm, but we did catch a tiny effect of the tail end of it. Yesterday we took our normal track, sailing away from Bishop’s Rock and across the Porcupine Abyssal Plain …’
In exchange for getting the keys and the furniture, she wrote to Mark, he would have somewhere comfortable to stay till she got home. Fitted kitchen, lovely bathroom, bedroom and large bright living room. Once he picked up the furniture he would also have two TVs, a double bed, sofa, desk, kitchen equipment like toasters, a kettle and cutlery, i.e. everything he needed to live a perfectly comfortable life, and it would cost him precisely nothing. (And, she thought, at the same time all her other worries at home would be solved. Howzat!)
She told Mark that he would need to bring a passport to the office, but then remembered the letter of authority. She realised that she had a good deal of time before the end of the working day.
Amanda slumped at her desk trying to think of a way she could get her signature to Mark within the next five hours. She wondered whether there existed a supersonic version of a carrier pigeon?
Through the corridor speakers, the Captain was still burbling on: ‘Today we will continue our voyage along the great circle track, and pass over the Faraday Fracture Zone, an undersea range of volcanic mountains stretching from the Arctic to the tip of Africa, and which occasionally pops up above sea level forming, for example, St Helena and the archipelago of the Azores …’
Thinking about that brought her up short. Being so cut off, she could picture the ship, a tiny dot in the middle of a huge ocean. But now she had to factor in something more disturbing: the thought of the seabed under them.
‘… Being mountains, it means the depth from the ship’s hull to the sea floor today fluctuates from depths of over 3,500 metres, shoaling to only hundreds of metres. Make the most of the weather this afternoon, won’t you, as tomorrow it looks as though we might be in for a bit of a choppy ride. And don’t forget to change your clocks back one hour again tonight. I will now pass you over to our German hostess.’
Oh no! Amanda grabbed a pencil. She’d forgotten the time difference. During the night they’d put the clocks back twice since Southampton, so London would be what time now? If it was noon onboard would they be ahead or behind? Perhaps the UK was the time showing on her computer – 9 a.m. Why did the computer say 9 a.m. when it was noon? Was that UK
time? Did you add or subtract? Her head was totally muddled; she felt herself go hot with panic. To make things harder, a metallic voice from the corridor speakers was now retelling the information that the Captain had just delivered, only this time in German.
Amanda grabbed a scrap of paper. New York, she knew, was five hours behind London. That would mean the ship was also behind London, so she wrote down the time and added the adjusted hours since Southampton then saw that the time in London must now be after 2 p.m. This meant that she had only three hours to work it out, and once you subtracted the time Mark would need to get to the office, that would be two.
How she wished she had not had the stupid idea of coming aboard this ship.
Everything would have been so easy if she’d just remained in London.
There must be a way that she could send a scanned signature to the UK, but it was obviously not something you could do sitting alone in a cabin.
There was only one thing for it – she would have to ask for help at the purser’s office.
The queue at the desk was long, and by the time she reached the front it was almost one o’clock, ship’s time. She had an hour.
*
After her morning class Suzy went back to listen outside Jason’s cabin. All silent within. She returned to her own room to make sure he hadn’t replied to her note, but nothing.
She felt really hungry and decided to grab an early lunch now, so that later, when she found Jason, there would be time for a serious talk before he went to work. She knew now that she had to find a real way to challenge him once more, and if his replies were as glib as they had been so far, she would have to take the information to the Captain who would deal with it his way and he could inform the police.
While picking the dishes from the hot display – tomato soup, poppy-seed roll and an apple pie – Suzy mulled over the dilemmas.
She still had no idea whether Jason had actually filched everyone’s money, but it was possible. What other explanation was there? It had to be somebody in the company, and as it had affected everyone except Jason and perhaps Stan, it must be him. Probably both of them in concert. And if this actor Melanie was talking about really was Stan, she needed to quiz him too. Stan Arbuthnot! Of all people! Surely it couldn’t be him? But as Equity didn’t allow two performers to take the same name it had to be him. Maybe this man onboard was a non-union actor. There were so many of them these days. But that all seemed too pat. It was clearly their Stan.