Salley Vickers - Dancing Backwards

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.