S.O.S. Read online

  ‘Doilies,’ she said.

  Sammy just looked at her. ‘Doilies? Two million doilies?’

  Jilly nodded. ‘Amazing, or what?’

  And Sammy nodded too. ‘Truly,’ he whispered. And then, after a pause: ‘I just can’t think of anything at all to say about that.’

  *

  Every single time I come to Southampton, I always get stuck in a traffic jam, just like this one. And usually about here – just as all the roads converge towards the docks and you have to cross this sort of bridge affair, is it? Just as well I allowed plenty of time. Which is all, really, I’ve been doing, if I’m honest. Since … it happened. Allowing for time – apologizing, in one sense (and to whom? Who on earth is listening?), for the continued existence of time, when really it ought to have stopped, along with Mary.

  I say every time I come to Southampton, but goodness – do you know in all honesty I can’t even remember the last occasion. Could’ve been as long as maybe seven, eight years back. Mary and me, we went on a sort of a two-day, well – not much more than a pleasure trip, really: can’t for the life of me recall the name of the boat, ship – whatever it was; Isle of Wight came into it somewhere. We did things like that: free agents, did what we liked. Friends of ours, of course – Paul and Joan, Ed and Fanny (God – those two: they never ever stopped going on and on about it) – yes, all these friends with youngish children (four of the things in Ed and Fanny’s case, God help us: well – whatever did they expect?) – they were forever going on about the loss of spontaneity, impulse – the spur of the moment thing. Honestly, they’d go – once you’ve worked out all the dates of the school holidays, which never ever coincide (you’d think, wouldn’t you, the powers that be could at least get their heads together and coordinate that much: can’t be that difficult – and it’s not as if we’re the only ones to suffer) and then by the time you’ve seen that all their beastly projects are under way, or at least that they’ve bought the scrapbooks (they seem to have more work to do in the holidays than in termtime, these days) – which means muggins here has to keep on going down to the travel agents and casually half-inching all these brochures about the Loire Valley and the bloody Alps and all the rest of it and then spend oh God just days knee-deep in encyclopaedias and Cow Gum putting the whole damn mess together – their job, I know – but what are you going to do? The kids, of course – oh Jesus: you sit them in front of the Net and give them a perfectly straightforward list of nonsense to dig out – Epernay’s annual yield of champagne, or something (God I could do with a glass or two right now), and hours later they’re still just sitting there transfixed by some complete and very often pornographic irrelevance and then I just scream at Ed to for God’s sake pull his finger out and get all these ghastly channels locked out, or whatever they say, and he says like he always does, I will I will – but I don’t know why this sort of thing isn’t tackled at government level – and I go Yeh, totally agree, but until they get around to it it’s our kids, right? And it’s our bloody job to protect them. And then one of them will be ill, or something – chicken pox last summer, don’t please remind me – and we have to get a housesitter for the dogs (kennels are just ruinous) and God, you have to book so many rooms, now, because Neil – he’s just twelve: can’t take it in – he absolutely refuses to share any more, and quite frankly the whole thing just isn’t cost-effective, when all’s said and done – and exhaustion just doesn’t come into it: I’m completely bloody knackered, I don’t mind telling you, even contemplating the idea of a holiday, these days. Mmm. So we just go off for odd days, now.

  And then Mary and me, we’d brace ourselves – secretly holding hands, sometimes we were, under the folds of the tablecloth – for here now would come the inevitable exhalation: the rounding up and rounding off of all their frustrations and passion spent. ‘You two,’ they’d go: ‘you’re just so lucky not having any of that.’

  Yes. Well. It’s not at all, I can tell you now, not at all what Mary felt she was: lucky. No, not a bit of it. Oh yes – we had a good life, admittedly – my rather dull job in insurance took good care of most things, and Mary’s little florist’s was something of a goldmine. So no real worries on that score – but once you’ve cleared the mortgage and sorted out the pensions and repapered the lounge and tacked on a modest conservatory and seen to the first-floor window frames, well … you’re hunting about, quite frankly. Holidays are the natural thing: it takes time to discuss them, plan them, budget for them; and then there’s the shopping beforehand (I left that to Mary: wasn’t all that long ago she picked out for me the very smart black suit that I’m wearing right now – she had an eye, Mary: an eye for things like that). Packing, of course – that could be coaxed out into a couple of days: fresh-ironed stacklets of this and that always adding to the anticipatory feel.

  We went all over: Capri and Sorrento, I recall, was a particularly successful little package. We were very partial to pasta and we’d never tasted peaches quite like that before: fresh off the tree. Crete, Dordogne – Tuscany, of course: got her to try some wine on that trip – always made me laugh, she was never a drinker, Mary. But it’s all so sour – it’s just not sweet, Tom, she’d go – I just don’t know how you can stomach it. Fellow at the hotel – nice sort of chap, sort of courier, or something – must’ve overheard, I assume; anyway – sent over a bottle of Asti Spumante, and that did the trick. That’s the only wine, Mary went, that has ever passed my lips that I can truly say I’ve enjoyed: one thing, though, Tom, she giggled at me then – it’s gone straight to my head, just that one little glass. The giggle made me feel so fond, so warm – warm, yes, and so very protective. I’ll never again hear it, now.

  So yes – I took the point when Ed and Fanny went on like they did: in their terms we were – of course we were – lucky, very. But I know that Mary, deep down (she never said so, not in so many words, but you get to hear such a lot of unspoken things when you’re that close to someone, you know – day and night, for years and years) … Mary, yes, she would eagerly have traded in all the holidays and new three-piece suites under the sun, just for a baby of her own, to love and care for. She would have liked lots – but one, I know, would have been more than enough. But, well … it was not to be (which is what you say when you really can’t bear to think about it any more). So we buckled down to the double glazing and the laying of patios – we baulked at a roof conversion, though, because look: the house already was accusingly large, so where’s the sense in more?

  So we continued to go hither and thither under the scathing eyes of our nailed-down friends who roared at us repeatedly how appallingly lucky we were. Well – we weren’t complaining (were we Mary, my love?); and, as we kept on saying, we had each other. And now – except for this stopped-up bulk of bits of our lives that sticks out clumsily from deep within me – the link has now been broken.

  I’m still in first gear. The cars ahead have been grudgingly astir for fifteen minutes or more, and in that time I’ve covered maybe just fifty yards, or so. I can see a part of the ship now, though. God. I mean – you know it’s big (we read the brochure again and again, Mary and me) but nothing really quite prepares you. The red and black funnel, tall as any building I’m aware of. Just the one funnel, then? Oh yes – it was the old Queen Mary that had a pair, fairly sure (and Titanic had four of the things, much good they turned out to be). It’s a shame, I said, that the Queen Mary doesn’t exist any more – we could have pretended it was built for you. Well Tom – I could always change my name to Transylvania, Mary had said. Ho ho, I went – a little extreme, I think. Yes. Doesn’t matter what she’s called, now.

  This was to have been our trip of a lifetime. Well: correction – it was to have been our very luxurious and self-indulgent trial-run for what maybe next year (and there will, won’t there, be a next year? And one after that and one after that?) could have become the real thing, the big thing, the ultimate. We’d never ever been on a liner – we’d talked about it often enough, oh heavens ye
s (we talked about anything that would use up time), but this year we decided to go for it (and you should have heard Ed and Fanny on that one) – six days and nights to New York … a double first for us, really, because neither one of us had even been to America, let alone New York. We didn’t care for long-haul flights, that’s the truth of the matter (what it really boiled down to), and here was the perfect solution: plus, of course, a week was eaten up just in the getting there. And then, you see – and this is how our thinking went – if we both liked it (and why would we not?) then next year we could book up for the fully-fledged World Cruise, see just everywhere we’ve ever read about, or glimpsed on the telly. Australia, Hong Kong, Barbados, you name it. Expensive, oh yes very – or it is, anyway, if you want to do it in any way properly: no point travelling the world, is there, on some mighty ship if you’re going to be stuck six decks down, cheek by jowl with the boiler room? Also, this one would be taking care of four clear months: you can see the attraction.

  And then … it happened. And among the very many (endless) things that hurtled into me and laid siege to my thoughts – and how quiet now the house is, in which to think them – was the question of what to do about the booking. I could have cancelled – could easily have done that (there’s a clause in my insurance: my cover, as you will appreciate, is always both in order and more than adequate) and I suppose this was my initial inclination. And then I thought, well … the time looms larger than ever, now – and maybe, because dear Mary is with me always, I can still (why not?) take her with me. Because where Tom goes, Mary goes – yes? So why not do this one last thing together? See? So here, in this car, in a sense we both are.

  We’re moving again. Making a fair bit of progress, now. The ship’s so close, I can’t honestly see any of it at all: it’s just like a wall, with us in our cars so small and crouching, maybe awed by the darkness of its shadow.

  *

  ‘Oh … my … God …’ came young Rollo’s look-at-me descant – but his mother was certainly far too preoccupied to pay any heed whatever to that sort of thing.

  They had all, the four of them, been standing in line in this vast and rather loweringly spartan embarkation hall for, yes, just a teeny weeny bit longer than Nicole thought was fitting for the family that had, after all, won through to be the sole captors of the fabulous no-expense-spared Trip of a Lifetime (thanks in no little way, I like to think, to my tiebreaking seventeen words which I’ll happily tell you about later but not just now because I want us to be settled).

  Nicole had rather supposed that they might have been, well – piped aboard, maybe, and warmly welcomed by one or two of the shipping line’s senior directors, or possibly even the Captain himself, or something, but so far not even so much as a paid-by-the-grin meeter and greeter had seen fit to show his face – but OK, yes, she was certainly gratified to discover that the very queue in which they were standing conferred on them at least a modicum of status. The whole elaborate checking-in system, it rather oddly seemed, was organized according to the class of onboard restaurant, of all things, to which your ticket entitled you; the longest queues all down the other end, then, must be for the rather lowlier eating places and bars, Nicole could only assume – some comfort, anyway – and presumably all these poor people (didn’t, admittedly, look terribly poor) were going to be, what, stuck in with the cargo, or something, were they? Dangling from hammocks.

  ‘Check … it … out,’ persisted Rollo. ‘Mar? Get this …’

  Marianne glanced across in the direction – Rollo was energetically and sideways jerking his head – but actually, frankly, couldn’t quite focus on much because she hadn’t got her contacts in, right, but she wasn’t about to tell Rollo that because then he’d start in on his blind-as-a-bat routine and it’s hell, quite honestly: you just can’t win with Rollo because if I ever wear my glasses (and they’re really cool, I think – designer frames, the lot) he calls me (‘four-eyes’) and it’s no good me saying Oh God, Rollo, if you’re going to be insulting at least you could be a bit original about it, couldn’t you, hm? I mean honestly – ‘four-eyes’: bit prep school, isn’t it, dear heart?

  ‘Can’t you see him?’ hissed an irritated Rollo. ‘There … over there. Prat in black.’

  ‘Rollo,’ said Nicole – absently in a way, though still with the edge of urgency lurking beneath what she liked to think was a maternal overtone. ‘Don’t just kick your bag along like that. Lift it – it won’t kill you.’

  ‘Oh yeh …’ said Marianne. ‘I see him. God – how odd. Dad? Dad? See this guy?’

  David had quite rightly judged it only a matter of time before someone – most likely Marianne, if it wasn’t to be outright abuse – addressed to him some or other comment on some or other topic, and so he now breathed in sharply and put all he could muster into chivvying along the not-yet-dead muscles in his lower face and around the chin (and oh God yes – don’t forget, will you, to open your bloody eyes) – urging them to rally round (come on, lads) into a semblance of animation and a passably fair simulation of ready-for-it eagerness.

  ‘See what, love?’

  Didn’t sound too odd, he was reasonably sure: felt it, though, by God: it was as if he was using someone else’s lips. And the pressure, now, at the base of my skull is coming very close to shutting me down. The war in my stomach I can just about subdue – but if I don’t get down a very swift couple of (oh God) sharpeners in double-quick time, then we’re booked for a bout of horizontal groaning (curtains firmly closed and a bucket of Nurofen) and I don’t think, do you, in these rather singular circumstances (on this bloody day of all bloody days) that such behaviour would altogether endear me to my doting wife and help-meet? (Or, let’s put it another way: make her loathe me less?)

  ‘Oh God – Dad never sees anything,’ spat out Rollo, with true impatience, as well as what struck David as open disgust. ‘There! There! Christ what’s wrong with you? The bloke in black …!’

  ‘We’re next, now,’ said Nicole, quite hurriedly (hadn’t been hearing any of all this: over the years, you are vaguely aware of so much background pointless droning, but God – you don’t waste time by paying attention, no: it passes soon enough). ‘Pick up your bag, Rollo. How many times?’

  ‘See him, Dad?’ urged Marianne. ‘Three queues down.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ said David. ‘I do see him now. Hm. God – once you’ve actually focused, he really does stand out, doesn’t he?’

  ‘That’s what I’ve bloody been saying,’ growled Rollo.

  David, Marianne and Rollo continued to gaze in silence at Tom. Other people too were not quite casually taking in his singular appearance (if you’re stuck in a queue – and this ship will eventually, won’t it, sail? – then any sort of diversion can only be a good thing). Tom himself seemed quite unaware. Was unaware – had been, in truth, over every night and day he could recently recall. He had said nothing to the girl in the office over there, when he handed back the keys of the hire car. Had maybe nodded briefly at the, what was he? (and in another time, he might have registered it) – big and chummy porter as he wheeled away to somewhere Tom’s one small suitcase (possibly I didn’t even do that – nod at him, briefly. Certainly didn’t utter: perfectly sure on that score). And now he just stood in line, as instructed, staring intently at the back of the mid-blue cotton hat worn by the person in front (could be a man, could be a woman – really couldn’t tell you, really haven’t looked).

  ‘He must,’ judged David, ‘be awfully hot …’

  ‘Right,’ said Nicole, with finality. ‘It’s us, we’re here. Hello.’ And she slid over four passports, along with all the rest of it.

  ‘Good afternoon, Madam,’ said the quite extraordinarily happy-sounding woman behind the quite high and boxy check-in booth. ‘Four of you travelling, yes?’

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Nicole, very readily, rapidly pointing a finger at her husband, each of her two children and finally herself – as if to check, or maybe prove it.

  ‘I think,’
considered Rollo, ‘he must be some kind of a nutter. I bet the whole bloody boat’s going to be full of bloody nutters.’

  ‘Ship,’ said Marianne. ‘It’s a ship.’

  ‘Oh fuck off, Mar,’ was Rollo’s take on that.

  ‘I’d be stifling,’ said David – more to himself than anyone (second nature, now). ‘I’m pretty warm in just this seersucker thing.’

  ‘Right,’ said Nicole – and she’s said that a good deal, now, and forcibly too. The extraordinarily happy-sounding woman blinked once only, every time she did it, and her lips just momentarily froze up in tune with the temporary breakdown; less than a second later, though, a big and immediate thaw had set in, and once more she was up there with a chance of bringing back for England a Gold in the Happiness Olympics. ‘Now listen, everyone – we’ve got to put our faces in front of this funny little thing and then it takes a picture, apparently. Oh not all at once, Rollo, Godsake – wait your turn, can’t you? And David – they need your credit card.’

  ‘And all in black …’ mused David. ‘Maybe he’s the ship’s undertaker.’

  ‘Oh Daddy!’ deplored Marianne. ‘You’re awful.’

  ‘Well someone’s got to tip them over the side, haven’t they?’ Loved it when Marianne laughed, like that.

  ‘Credit card, David. Lady’s waiting.’

  ‘Credit card?’ he came back. ‘What for? What’s this for, now?’

  ‘Good afternoon, Sir,’ was launched at him then – and David flinched just a bit before being duly dazzled by this truly professional and five-star greeting, courtesy of the Delighted One. (God it just goes to show, though, doesn’t it? The benefit of a proper training scheme and back-up refresher courses: you leave all this business of politeness and welcome to the hicks and amateurs and what you end up with is hardly more than varnished scorn.) ‘The registration of any major credit card, Sir, frees you up to charge at any point during the crossing all purchases, services or beverages to your on-board account whereupon an itemized tally will be presented for your authorization on the morning of disembarkation.’