Salley Vickers - Dancing Backwards

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.