Dancing Backwards
Salley Vickers
The long-awaited new novel from Salley Vickers, bestselling and much-loved author of Miss Garnet's Angel and The Other Side of You.Violet Hetherington has taken the rash step of joining a transatlantic cruise ship to New York to visit Edwin, an old friend. As she makes the six day crossing, she relives the traumatic events that led to her losing Edwin's friendship, and abandoning her career as a poet, for the safety of marriage and domesticity.Despite her natural reserve, she meets a rich variety of passengers travelling with her, who affect her understanding of her own past. Most significantly, she meets Dino, the dance host, whose motives in befriending Vi are shady, but who teaches her to ballroom dance - and inadvertently helps her to recover from her past.Moving between the late sixties and the present day, Dancing Backwards is written with the lightness of touch and psychological insight which characterise Salley Vickers' acclaimed work. This bittersweet novel is subtle, poignant and wonderfully entertaining.
Dancing Backwards
Salley Vickers
FOURTH ESTATE • London
for Rosie & Co. a birthday book
For whatever we lose(like a you or a me) it’s always ourselves we find in the sea
e e cummings
Table of Contents
Cover Page (#u83bdfa05-79a2-5366-be91-7ddae6e5f0e8)
Title Page (#uc2ba962f-3904-5896-aae4-4e8e5d356556)
Dedication (#u1106d925-45d1-55e2-a2fd-73990912b0a6)
Epigraph (#u6f0db6f0-7e13-5f95-b80c-077c10e8a9f7)
First Day (#u6f815062-8d91-5c33-bb1d-c725da44cd3f)
1 (#u0d0b5bcb-66b3-59de-a4c4-8ed99af0f635)
Second Day (#u8da54d00-3d04-5b40-a6a5-3f4391f9011b)
2 (#uc09dc44d-e1e7-5a07-863f-8ecf51c5d23b)
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Third Day (#u726e98ba-25e9-5277-ab51-016f90aa626b)
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Fourth Day (#u22a1e76d-1cc9-59cb-afcc-8938133e9e37)
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Fifth Day (#ub4c7ee8a-8f28-5fa2-8444-0d022250f571)
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Sixth Day (#u3095ccdc-4c93-5b5b-aba5-3f78ce82c66b)
30 (#u960ab796-214c-5dc3-86df-48ed85d183d0)
Comic Turn (#uecbadfb5-df38-5a77-8fe7-6cd8c140a5d6)
Also by Salley Vickers (#u120e9aba-b1f5-5aec-b3ea-68775c940117)
Copyright (#ue4445fbd-9928-57e4-98d5-47277ead9506)
About the Publisher (#uaf296ca7-688e-5781-9292-ebf4fb975f3a)
FIRST DAY
Chock-a-Block: full to capacity or overloaded. If two blocks of a ship’s rigging are so tight together that they cannot be tightened further they are said to be chock-a-block.
1 (#ulink_3a02326f-5dbd-5931-950c-0b77d6eae80a)
‘What on earth have I done?’ Violet Hetherington asked herself.
She was standing in one of several queues in the dock at Southampton. The queues, by now spilling out of the cattle shed marked ‘Departures’, to board the Queen Caroline were long and none were moving. ‘It’s best to get to the docks late,’ her friend Annie had advised. ‘If you get there too early you can grow roots hanging about.’ Annie, married to a diplomat and full of advice, was a seasoned traveller. But on this occasion her advice was mistaken.
After a while an announcement came through the loudspeakers: there had been a ‘breakdown in the computer system’. In the face of this setback the atmosphere among the waiting passengers darkened. Some attempted patience, some brave souls even tried to rise to jollity but for the most part the mood became rebellious. The world was going to the dogs and they had paid good money—many were inclined to feel through the nose—for this voyage. It might be their last chance for a bit of luxury. That they could not even be got aboard efficiently did not promise well for the rest of the voyage.
Vi’s own instinct was to turn tail. She felt in her bag for her phone and discovered that it was missing. This was a good deal more annoying than the length of the queues. It confirmed an uneasy sense that the whole idea of this voyage was one of her mistakes. She hated any form of group activity and here she was, thrown to the lions, and entirely of her own doing. And now there was the nuisance of the phone. Either she had left the wretched thing behind or she had lost it at some point on the journey to the port. She couldn’t ring the minicab company to check because the number—along with all her other numbers—was stored in her phone. The very error that her elder son Harry was always counselling her to avoid.
Behind her in the queue, stood an approachable-looking couple. ‘I’m sorry but, stupidly, I seem to have left my mobile behind. I couldn’t borrow yours to make one call, could I?’
Vi rang Harry on the obliging couple’s phone and left a message asking him to ask Kristina, her Polish cleaner, if she would check to see whether the phone had been left behind. If it was not in her flat then she was going to be in trouble, since she had no other means of finding the numbers she needed in New York. A large part of her thought, Good riddance! But this she did not confide to Harry. Harry had come to the view early in life that, if not older than his mother, he was a good deal more worldly wise. Daniel, her younger son, was more sympathetic to her foibles but that was because he shared them. Dan might easily forget to give Kristina the message at all.
The couple whose phone she had borrowed remarked that they had also arrived late expecting to avoid the crowds. ‘It was a breeze last time,’ the woman, a tall blonde with a ponytail and cowboy boots, recalled. ‘We walked straight on. I’m Jen, by the way. He’s Ken.’
She nodded towards her companion, a broad-shouldered man with a lot of reddish chest hair. ‘Ken and Jen Morrison,’ the man said. ‘We’re a double singing act.’
‘Really?’ Vi was impressed. ‘I’m Violet Hetherington. Vi.’
‘He’s just kidding. Don’t be daft.’ Jen whacked her husband with a copy of Elle.
‘We did think of doing a singing act when we first met, because of Van Morrison,’ Ken explained. A gold Star of David was visible beneath his shirt. ‘But her over there sings like a neutered cat.’
‘Charming,’ Jen said equably. ‘Look out, we’re on the move.’
The press of people moved urgently forward, although, as Ken remarked, the boat could hardly leave without them. Reaching the head of their queue at last, Vi parted from the helpful Morrisons and was ushered towards a window where she handed over her travel documents, credit card and submitted to a photograph for the security pass that acted on the cruise in place of money. As she prepared to go aboard, a man stepped forward with another camera.
‘Is this necessary?’ She detested having her photo taken.
‘Smile nicely,’ a young woman in uniform suggested.
‘But is it a requirement?’
‘Excuse me?’
‘I do not want another photograph of myself unless it is a requirement for boarding the ship.’
‘Not a problem,’ said the girl. ‘It just makes a nice souvenir of your trip.’ She made the hint of an eyebrow gesture towards the photographer, who was not bad-looking and was booked for the whole of the world cruise. ‘Go right ahead, madam.’
A couple already wearing Queen Caroline sweatshirts had squeezed past and were now blocking the way as they posed, arms round each other’s waists. Vi waited while they pronounced ‘Sex’ for the photographer and everyone had laughed heartily and then, thank goodness, she was walking up what she supposed would once have been a gangplank but was now an arcade adorned with ugly pots of artificial plants.
The ship’s foyer resembled one of the not-so-grand hotels that have set their sights too high. There were panels of shining fake walnut, extravagant cascades of chandeliers, polished brass plating and carpets patterned in the style commonly found at airports. Vi followed the signs to the ‘Elevators’ which were lined floor to ceiling with mirrors and crammed with passengers who, bedraggled from early morning starts, luggage disposal and the incurable anxiety induced by travel arrangements, might have preferred to be spared the sight of their multiple reflections.
Squashed against the side of the lift by a party of voluble Germans, Vi felt claustrophobia mount along with the lift, which moved upward, stopping at each floor to release a tide of thankful prisoners. But, at last, at the twelfth floor, she stepped out to freedom.
And, thank heavens, her room had the balcony she had requested. She had been anxiously rehearsing what to say if it had not. Ignoring Annie’s suggestion that she wait for a last-minute deal, she had thrown caution to the winds and paid the highest price she could afford in order to be sure of the sea.
The cabin was fitted out in the same would-be-luxury hotel style. The bathroom taps were in the shape of gilded swans, the beaks acting, disconcertingly, as spouts. The bedroom was plain enough, with a double bed covered by a heavy gold counterpane, a desk and chair, a brown velour sofa and, on the wall, three pictures: a field of poppies, a still life of some seashells and a solemn-looking couple in what appeared to be Dutch national dress.
Vi examined this to see if it could be removed; but it was screwed to the wall, presumably against the Atlantic swell.
She was unpacking her books when there was a tap at the door and a small man, whose smile revealed excellent teeth, entered and introduced himself as Renato, her steward. He enquired after the state of her health, pledged himself to her service and instructed her about the changing time zones.
‘Each day, madam, the clock is set back one hour.’
This was the first piece of good news. It had not occurred to her that rather than wasting time she might actually be acquiring it. Renato also informed her of an impending safety drill.
‘Guests must assemble for drill in main salon, Deck Three, to practise drill in case of emergency.’
‘You mean like the Titanic?’
Renato laughed heartily. ‘Yes. The Titanic. Very famous. You see the show?’
Vi said she had seen the film.
‘The show is better. I see it on Broadway. Very good dance.’
Renato, it emerged, was a ballroom dance devotee and before their marriage had won medals with his wife.
‘Where is your wife, Renato?’
‘She is in the Philippines. She and the kiddies.’
‘That seems a shame. You must miss her.’
‘Oh no.’ He smiled brilliantly. ‘Much better she is at home with the kiddies.’
When Vi returned from the drill (conducted amid general, and to her alienating, hilarity) she stepped outside, on to her balcony, to watch the ship get under way. The ship slid out of harbour so gradually that it barely registered that they were on the move. Impossible not to feel a thrill at the sheer enterprise of the thing. A little way off, a fishing trawler was making a white wake. A piece of foam detached itself and became a solitary tern, which flew up into the unblemished sky. An Arctic or a Common Tern? It was too far off to distinguish. Well then, it would have to be a Comic Tern.
A summary of the dining regime had been included in the information sent in advance of the voyage. Vi was in the Alexandria Grill, one of the upper echelons of the ship’s hierarchical dining system. The ‘dress code for tonight in the Alexandria’, she read, was ‘casual elegant’, whatever that meant. She put on a sleeveless linen shift and a plain black jacket. Too bad if it was not sufficiently elegant, or casual.
There was the question of what to do with her jewellery, Ted’s jewellery: the diamond, sapphire and emerald hoops he had given her as milestones of their marriage; and all the earrings, the brooches and pearls. Vi, who was easygoing about her possessions, had not liked to leave Ted’s jewels unprotected. Harry would be sure to disapprove. Eventually, she had packed the lot so now there was the problem of where to keep them. There was a safe in the cabin. But she might easily forget them altogether there and leave them behind.
In the end, she put on all the rings and bundled the other jewellery into a shoe bag in her suitcase, which she stowed in one of the wardrobes. She had continued to wear the large solitaire diamond, so worryingly valuable she had forgotten precisely what it was worth, with which Ted had proposed marriage. But she no longer wore the wedding band by which he had sealed the contract. Ted would not have liked this. But poor Ted was dead. Oh, but why always say ‘poor’ of the dead? Isn’t it the living who are in need of sympathy? Violet Hetherington thought, avoiding the cruelly reflecting lifts and running impatiently down the red-carpeted stairs to the restaurant.
A questionnaire had been included in the pre-voyage material, requesting that passengers select the numbers with whom they wished to dine. Annie had recommended a table for twelve. ‘It makes it easier to get away from bores,’ she advised. ‘There’s safety in numbers.’ Quite why Vi had followed Annie’s advice in this she couldn’t now remember. Maybe it was simply easier: Annie was so full of advice, it was not always possible to be discriminating.
One other guest was there before her when Vi found her table in the Alexandria, an elderly man with a weathered face and a pepper-and-salt beard, rather more salt than pepper. He looked so like a retired sea captain that she couldn’t help feeling smug when it turned out that she had hit the mark.
‘Captain Ryle, ma’am. I used to be master of one of the line’s ships. They can’t keep me away.’
Vi allowed her hand to be gripped, somewhat painfully on account of the massed rings.
‘Violet Hetherington.’ The captain’s large freckled hand was unexpectedly soft. Noticing him glance at her left hand, where the solitary diamond glinted, she added, for his sake rather than from any need to confide, ‘My husband died last year. This is my first holiday alone.’
Captain Ryle’s leathery face crumpled into comprehension. ‘My wife left me five years ago. Still not got over it.’
‘I’m sorry.’ She understood that it was death and not any domestic fracture that had removed his wife’s company.
‘I miss her every hour of the day.’ The captain blew his nose unselfconsciously into his table napkin. ‘Still, mustn’t complain. Kathleen wouldn’t approve. She was always one for life, Kath.’
‘Yes?’
‘She wouldn’t have wanted me moaning on. Here.’ He thrust at Vi a basket of breads—really, more of a miniature bakery so exotic was the choice. Vi took a roll, changed her mind and then, not liking to put it back, took another.
‘Good grub,’ the captain said, nodding approvingly at her two rolls. ‘Always get good grub on this line.’
A couple of Americans were being shown to the table: a long-limbed black man with heavy-rimmed glasses and a small, older-looking woman who might have been taken for his mother had she not been white. The man, in a grey suit and a cream shirt, gave an impression of easy elegance. The woman’s hair was done up in an untidy loose bun and her evening suit was a shade of pink which did not suit her pinkish complexion. Side by side, they made a somewhat ill-matched couple.
The woman introduced herself as Martha Cleever and her husband as Dr Balthazar Lincoln.
‘Balthazar as in the Three Magi?’ Vi asked, and was rewarded with a smile so winning that she at once fell a little in love with him.
‘I am generally known as Baz. No one manages the other, except my mother.’ Leaning across Vi, he helped himself to a roll and she detected in his aftershave a pleasing scent of limes. ‘My mother belongs to a mad sect which holds that the “wise men” were angels from Babylon. May I trouble you to pass the butter? She likes to claim she saw an angelic presence hovering over my father’s head when I was conceived.’ Baz, buttering his roll, afforded Vi again the smile that suggested the conspiracy of long friendship.
Encouraged by this, Vi asked, ‘Didn’t your father mind?’
‘If that is who he was. It might easily have been some other chancer. But the man I knew as my father was a patient man (he has passed away now) and he was devoted to my mother. She would not be swayed in any conviction. She is a very stubborn woman, my mother. I am stubborn too, so I know.’
‘Baz is one of seven and his mother’s favourite.’ Martha’s tone was mostly indulgent. She explained that she was an attorney in general litigation and her husband had been on a six-month sabbatical at the London School of Economics. They were returning home by boat as he had acquired so many books that it was cheaper for them to accompany the books home by sea. ‘Baz just adores books. He wouldn’t care what in the world we lost provided his library was saved.’
‘Better hope the ship doesn’t go down then!’
Two newcomers had joined the table. The man who had spoken introduced himself and his wife as Les and Valerie Garson. Until last year, they had run a garage with a Toyota franchise in Hampshire. They had been promising themselves this trip as a retirement present for he didn’t know how long.
‘It’s ever so exciting, isn’t it?’ Valerie asked. She looked, Vi thought, a little depressed.
Her husband had several complaints. ‘No room to swing a cat in our cabin, never mind the wife! Daylight robbery when you think what we’re paying for this. Have you seen the price of the booze?’
‘Baz doesn’t drink,’ Martha said, ‘so I tend not to much either.’ She turned to Vi. ‘How about you?’
‘I drink like a fish,’ Vi said and was rewarded by another dazzling grin from Baz. ‘Did you never drink?’ she asked.
‘My mother’s religion forbade it but, you know, when I got to college and it seemed that at long last I could defy her I found I didn’t like the taste after all.’
‘Did you tell your mother?’
‘He did and she said “The Lord works in mysterious ways”,’ Martha said.
Captain Ryle was confiding to no one in particular that until he met his wife his mother had been his rock and stay, when another couple, Greg and Heather, who had left their four-year-old, Patrick, asleep in the cabin, joined the table.
‘There’s a baby alarm,’ Greg explained. He was still under the delusion that everyone was as captivated by his child as he was. ‘It goes through to a central minding station and if there’s any crying they come and let you know. At least we hope they do.’ He laughed nervously.
‘He’s usually very good.’ In the absence of any interest from the other diners, Heather took up the baton of parental concern. ‘Only we were worried that the movement of the ship might wake him, you know, in a different environment…’
Vi said that she felt that the rocking of the ship might induce rather than hamper sleep. Patrick’s mother looked grateful. The other diners ignored this exchange, supposing, perhaps correctly, that if a stand was not taken from the start the topic of childrearing could take over.
The table was set for eleven but only eight guests appeared.
‘D’you think they cancelled?’ Valerie Garson asked, over her seared yellow fin tuna.
‘They won’t have got a refund,’ Les assured the rest of table. ‘I looked into it when it looked as if Val’s mother might fall off the branch.’
Captain Ryle was tucking into a lamb chop. Years of being at sea had given him an understandable aversion to fish. ‘They’ll be at one of the other restaurants.’
‘Can you eat just anywhere, then?’ Valerie Garson pursued. Les had been advising their friends in Liss that the Alexandria was the most superior of the several dining possibilities.
The captain explained that if she fancied a change, then there were several other first-rate venues. He also explained, to anyone who cared to listen, what ‘first-rate’ meant while Vi, who knew this already, affected interest.
‘Still, it’s nice to dress up once in a while,’ Valerie Garson said, looking doubtful.
‘She’s packed for Bloody Britain. Different fancy dress for every night. Nearly broke the bank!’ Les announced. He had ordered a bottle of one of the cheaper champagnes.
Martha said, ‘Oh dear, I’ve only brought one long dress. Do you think it matters?’
‘Of course not,’ said Vi, impatient with all this fuss. ‘If I have to dress up each night I shall certainly not bother to dine here.’
After dinner, Les became expansive and invited everyone who cared for a postprandial nip to join him at the bar. The captain asked Vi if he could show her round the ship.
‘There’s a champion little show on at the theatre tonight. Kiss Me Kate. It’s a company from Exeter. Kath had a cousin, a second cousin, to be precise, in Exeter.’
Vi excused herself with a fictitious headache and went out on deck. A lopsided luminous moon had risen and was laying out across the black water long ribbons of fragile fraying silver. Waves slapped arhythmically against the steel flanks of the ship as she powered purposefully on into the heart of the Atlantic. The air, infused with the moon’s chill silver, wrapped itself freshly and sweetly around her face.
She stood, absorbing the subtle shades and distinctive smells of the sea. What a peculiar thing she had done. And for what would very likely turn out to be a wild-goose chase. Crossing over to the kingdom of night, time seemed suddenly to gather with new possibility. Out of the darkness a strange sense of well-being descended on her, a feeling that things might turn out all right after all.
SECOND DAY
To know the ropes: on a square-rigged ship there were many miles of rigging. It took an experienced seaman to know the ropes.
2 (#ulink_c3673542-498e-5776-a2a2-aff219b89886)
Before going to bed, Vi pushed open the heavy glass door which divided the cabin from the balcony. It took an effort, she wasn’t strong, and a wind was getting up and the door was designed to spring back against any influx of weather. Finally she managed to wedge it open with one of the metal balcony chairs, so that her night could be spent as close as possible to the sea, being rocked in its strong grip like the baby in the old nursery rhyme.
When she was a child, her mother had told her that long ago there had been a pirate in the family, whose career had ended dramatically when he was hanged for treason on the high seas. Her mother had died when Vi was not quite ten. As with many of the best storytellers, the boundaries of her mother’s reality were, Vi now suspected, blurred. But whether or not it was the legacy of piratical blood in her veins, the sea was comforting to her.
When she woke next morning, the ocean which had beaten all night in her mind had dissolved into the sound of the steady irregular thrashing of water on the ship’s sides. She slid from under the heavy counterpane, which she’d kept over her against the cold, and went barefoot out on to the wooden deck of the balcony.
The sky was not quite fully alight. Splashes of crimson and orange shivered on the shot-satin water. A solitary white bird made a graceful arc above her head against the olive and rose-dragged sky. She stood in her nightdress, flexing her bare toes on the cold wood, the breeze wrapping the thin cotton close round her body, looking out to the faint line where the deceiving eye suggests that sea meets sky. Before her the ocean stretched, calmly offering nothing but its own vast, limitless, unapolo-getic being.
A kind of frenzy had set in when Vi, washed and dressed, went down to breakfast a little later. Cereals of all kinds, were available: Corn Flakes, Branflakes, Rice Krispies, Shredded Wheat, Weetabix, Cocopops, Fru-grains, muesli, together with stewed prunes, pears, apricots, green figs, sliced cheeses, ham, salami, smoked salmon, as well as bacon, sausage, black pudding, kippers, haddock, eggs cooked to order, mushrooms, tomatoes, pancakes, porridge, waffles and every conceivable variety of bread, muffins and toast. Besides these were jams, honey, marmalade, Marmite and peanut butter (with a prominent health and safety warning about possible allergies). Lest this were not enough, there were plates of fresh pineapple, cantaloupe, watermelon, grapefruit and piles of apples, pears, oranges, grapes, strawberries, blueberries, mango, kiwi fruit, guava, passion fruit and bunches of bananas.
Although the food was continually being replenished by teams of attentive waiting staff (and no passenger was left from 5 a.m., ‘Dawn snack’, till midnight, ‘Bedtime cookies and cocoa’, for more than fifteen minutes without ready supplies) a fever of impatience had overtaken the line of passengers as Vi queued for a bowl of muesli.
Even more consternation was being stirred up over the question of the tables. Those with sea views were sought after hotly. A bagging system was in operation: books and cardigans had been left to establish possession. This strategy, however, was not proof against the more experienced voyagers, who were willing to brazen it out and remove these colonising tokens in order to stake out their own claims. Those who had been on past cruises, and knew the score, took the precaution of leaving one party on guard while others foraged for food.
The single were at a disadvantage here. Vi, hesitating with her tray, was hailed by Ken on his way to the hot food counter.
‘We were wondering where you’d got to. Come and join us. Jen’s over there by the window.’
Vi found Jen sitting at one of the prime locations which commanded an unobstructed view of the sea. To Vi’s surprise, Jen was leafing through a book about the Russian Revolution but it turned out the book belonged to Ken. ‘He only reads non-fiction,’ she explained. ‘Loves his history. I like novels myself. Where are you sitting?’
‘Ken said to join you here.’ Vi was ready to beat a retreat.
‘No, I mean where are you in the evening? We’re way down in the Beatrix. It’s not bad, though I didn’t much like what they did with my sea bream.’
‘I’m in the Alexandria,’ said Vi, a little reluctantly in case it seemed like showing off.
But Jen was only impressed. ‘That must have cost an arm and a leg. Still, you can’t take it with you. That’s what we said. What are the others on the table like?’
‘There’s a retired sea captain. He used to work on this line.’
Jen divulged that some people at their table had had a death in the family. ‘It cast a bit of a pall on things to be honest. You have to feel for them, of course, but Ken’s going to try to get us moved.’
Ken returned with two plates on which he had piled, as if against a coming famine, bacon, black pudding, sausages, mushrooms, tomato and fried potatoes. ‘You not having any?’ he asked Vi. ‘Go on, we’ll keep your place.’
‘Really. I never eat cooked breakfast.’
‘That’s why you’re so slim,’ said Jen, amicably. ‘I’m a greedy pig, me. Can’t resist food. I had a twenty-two-inch waist when I met Ken.’
‘Too skinny by half,’ said Ken. He speared a sausage and examined it as if to ensure it had no plans to acquire a waist. ‘Not you, though,’ he added quickly to Vi. ‘Suits you. She,’ he nodded at Jen, ‘was a bag of bones before I took her in hand.’
Jen pulled a face at her husband and asked Vi what her plans were. Having no ‘plans’, Vi, who didn’t want to appear standoffish, said she thought she might explore the ship. Then, unequal to spinning out any longer a bowl of muesli and a cup of coffee, she said goodbye to the Morrisons. As she walked away, she heard Ken urging Jen to another helping of bacon. ‘Go on,’ he was saying, ‘you know you’ll regret it later if you don’t.’
Vi went out on deck, which had been colonised by those pursuing health programmes. Elderly joggers, in shorts or track-suits, sporting baseball caps and bedecked with iPods, pounding the boards to the throbbing engines, swerved perilously around troops of speed walkers who, in turn, were being frustrated by strolling passengers whose only aim was to enjoy the traditional health-giving properties of the sea air. Others had given themselves up to indolence and were sitting reading or lying, well-oiled against the sun, on the wooden loungers which lined the perimeter of the deck.
Vi shaded her eyes against the sun spangling the water with dancing points of silver and wondered how the silver of sunlight differed from the silver of the moon, and then if it really differed at all. Probably not, she decided. She strolled on round to where a small group of smokers, defiantly outfacing the disciples of health, had gathered. Above the mint green foaming train of the ship, gulls cruised the breeze, as if released by some airy conjurer’s legerdemain.
Enjoying aimlessness, she wandered round towards the ship’s bows and ran into Captain Ryle.
‘Look,’ said the captain, seizing her arm. ‘Over there. Look, look, porpoises.’
He passed her a pair of heavy binoculars and, adjusting the focus, her eyes caught up with the line of lithe, gun-metal hoops, leaping through the water which rocked slightly under her gaze. She followed the school until it was lost to the eye, and then, tilting up the binoculars, explored the horizon.
‘Did you see them? They’re lucky, porpoises,’ said Captain Ryle. ‘Sailors say so, anyhow.’ Too well-mannered to betray this openly, he was impatient for the return of his binoculars.
‘Thank you,’ said Vi, handing the glasses back. She had rather wanted to continue examining the self-renewing horizon.
‘These were a present from Kath on our Ruby Wedding,’ the captain said, restoring the binoculars to the safety of his own neck. ‘I never go to sea without them. Care for a coffee?’
Vi, who didn’t at all want coffee, said she would love one and wondered how she was going to manage Captain Ryle. It was apparent he had taken a shine to her.
They sat in the Queen Bess Bar, on seats designed to resemble lifebuoys, while the captain recounted how he had begun his seafaring career on the ferry to the Isle of Wight and had graduated from this to channel crossings before getting his real break, a berth as second mate on the Queen Elizabeth. ‘Now she’s a ship and a half, the Queen Liz. Ever been on her?’
Vi regretted that she hadn’t.
‘Too late now. They let her go. Turned her into some flipping hotel. Makes you want to weep.’
‘Oh dear.’ She could see that sympathy was called for. But sympathy, that comes so readily to some, can be hard work. Vi decided it was time for Bunbury.
Vi had learned about Bunbury from Edwin. The original Bunbury, the fictional fiction, employed as an alibi in Wilde’s most famous play, was, Edwin had taught her, a concept capable of being recruited.
‘I’m so sorry,’ she said after they had drunk one cup of coffee and she sensed that the offer of a second was imminent, ‘but I have some work I must do.’
‘Work?’ The captain’s good-hearted face betrayed puzzlement.
‘Yes. I’m a poet.’ With luck that would put the lid on any further questioning.
‘A poet?’ said the captain. Had she confided that she was a belly dancer he could hardly have looked more ill at ease.
‘I don’t generally mention it, because people can be nervous of poets.’ Guessing she could rely on his chivalry, she went on, ‘so if you wouldn’t mind keeping it to yourself?’
As she had hoped, flattery—not a bad strategy if it is only employed for self-preservation—did the trick.
‘Of course, dear lady. Our little secret. Kath liked poetry. She was the clever one. Over my head, I’m afraid, except for the one about the tall ship and the star to steer her by. Kath read that to me sometimes.’
‘Yes,’ said Vi, ‘people seem to like it. But on the whole, poetry is not most people’s cup of tea.’
Which is true, she thought, making her way back to the privacy of her cabin. She wondered if Kath really read poetry or if that was the captain’s own form of Bunburying. The dead, how ever much missed, could, as she knew, be usefully pressed into service.
Back at her cabin, she found Renato energetically shaking out the gold counterpane. ‘Mrs Hetherington, please, I can go away now and come back later.’
‘No, Renato, it’s OK, you go on.’ He had switched off the TV but she had caught the picture. ‘You were watching dancing?’
‘It is our own dancers on the ship. The TV programme which is relayed to your room, you see. They give demonstrations. Every day in the King Edward Lounge is a tea dance. You go?’
‘I’m afraid I can’t dance, Renato.’
‘You dance well. Nice figure. Not like some ladies.’ Renato held his hands wide and giggled. ‘Forgive me I speak like this to you, Mrs Hetherington.’
‘Nobody minds a compliment, Renato.’
‘Excuse me?’
‘I am delighted you think I might be able to dance. But I’m afraid you’re wrong.’
‘Oh yes. You dance well.’ Renato began to spray the desk with a vile-smelling cleanser.
‘Renato, would you mind, only my eyes…’
‘Excuse me?’
‘The cleaner you’re using. I’m sorry, but it is making my eyes sting.’
‘Excuse me, Mrs Hetherington, but I must clean the cabin.’
‘Couldn’t you just dust it or wipe it over with a damp cloth?’
Renato looked opaque. He left the room stinking to high heaven and to escape the fumes Vi went outside on to the balcony.
And there was the sea, reminding her that nothing that happens matters much in the great sum of things. And yet, she thought, how can we help minding?
She walked back into the cabin. On the zealously cleansed desk, Renato had stacked her books in neat piles. Beside them he had placed, in a parallel pile, her notebooks. She had not opened the notebooks in years. Goodness knows what had induced her to bring them. Except, of course, she did know. Edwin.
What would it be like seeing Edwin again after all these years? Was she excited? Scared? She wasn’t sure. She had set out on something stronger than a whim. It was an impulse, but with an attendant caution that had led to her making the crossing by sea. But for what? Time, she supposed. Time to consider. Time for reflection. Although you would think she had had all the time in the world for that.
She tried to recall when she and Edwin had last met—but the years had evaporated to a mist. Had they even said goodbye? She wasn’t sure of that either.
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