Remember Why You Fear Me (61 page)

“Thanks,” she said.

The coach honked again. Everyone onboard was glaring at him, and one couple were taking a photograph. “I think,” she said, “they want you to go.”

“I could go on your coach,” he said.

“It’s full.”

“You can come on mine.”

“But I’ve only just got here,” she pointed out. “I haven’t seen the sights.”

“There aren’t any sights,” he promised. “Unless you like anchors. Do you like anchors?”

She frowned, did that squint again, sizing him up. He waited. “Well,” she said, “I’m sorry, but I
do
like anchors, yes.”

One final blast on the horn, very long and very angry. He smiled, and said casually, “Enjoy them then! And see you at dinner!” And he got back on to the coach, pretending that all the tutting was nothing to do with him. He looked for her out of the window, and he thought she was looking for him too, it was hard to tell under the hat. He gave her a wave that was a little too cheery. Nothing for a few seconds, then she gave a wave back, of sorts, and turned her attention to the splendour of Vigo.

And she didn’t come to dinner. He’d arrived early, bagged the seat next to him. He’d dressed up, too, put on his suit once more. “You’ve got it wrong again, this is casual night,” Mrs. Flip-Flops told him. Roger didn’t even stay as long as the entrée, told the table he needed the toilet, and left. No one seemed to notice. Maybe she was eating elsewhere. He went to the Steakhouse Bonanza on deck five, the twenty-four hour buffet on the sun deck, even the burger ’n’ BBQs bar up near the pool (although he’d already decided that burgers would not be to her taste). Nothing. So much food on the boat, there seemed no end to it, enough to feed a small nation, all being pumped out to keep a bunch of fat holidaymakers all the fatter—so much food, and she wasn’t eating any of it. He went back to his cabin.

“Bloody hell,” he said.

There were towels everywhere; it was a menagerie in towel form. Roger’s eyes were drawn at first to the monkey suspended from the light fitting by one of the hangers from his wardrobe; the puff of the air conditioner made it rotate a little. But then, peering behind the primate, he saw that the dressing table boasted another rabbit and—what was it? a hedgehog? or, perhaps, an armadillo? On his pillow there were a couple of white mice, on the sheets a duck and the flat triangle of a manta ray. But the biggest animal of all was the elephant. It was too big for the bed, and sat in the centre of the carpet. A couple of beach towels had gone into the main body; hand towels made its ears, a flannel its little tail, and, best of all, the rug that had covered the toilet had been taken, rolled up tightly, and inserted into the head to form an exaggerated parody of a trunk. It was the piece de resistance of all towel animals, it was a work of loving genius. Roger boggled at it, wondered how it could even stand up. He peeked under its massive bulk, timidly, not wanting to topple the structure over.

And then he picked up the phone, and called Jesus’ pager. He sat on the bed and waited for him. Chocolate eyes from all the creatures bore into him, unflinching, cold. It was a good ten minutes before the steward arrived.

“You like?” he said, with a big smile. “You have fun?”

Roger had had time to work out three very distinct ways to explain to Jesus how he felt. He forgot them all at once. “You’re sick,” he said. “Sick.”

Jesus’ smile faltered. Then he beamed anew, as if he’d misunderstood.

“What is this?” said Roger, and reached for the elephant and pulled out its innards. “What is this?”

“Is pot.”

“No. Is not pot. Is my
wife.
You sick . . .  It’s my bloody
wife.
”

Jesus looked at the urn, around which he had built his towel construct, frowned. “No,” he said. “Is pot.”

“Shit,” said Roger. “You fuck.” And he got up from the bed swiftly. He wasn’t going to punch Jesus, he was sure of that, but Jesus backed away in alarm, got his head caught in the monkey. “What did you do, open my
safe
? Yes, you saw the combination, didn’t you, thought you’d have a little game with my wife. What the hell is wrong with you?”

“The pot was on the table,” said Jesus.

“No, I put it in the safe.”

“It was on,” said Jesus, with a new coldness, “the table. I wanted you to have fun. Okay? I wanted to make you happy. And you come at me with your shit fuck. Well, you’re the shit fuck, I spent long time making those animals, I spent
twenty minutes
, because you’re so miserable, you never smile. The people on this ship, every week they come, they pig themselves on food, they laze in the sun, they
lazy.
But they
smile,
and Jesus, he smiles back, puts on the accent a bit, makes the English not so good, hey? But I speak English fine, and you’re the shitfuck, you Mr. Shitfuck. That your wife?” And he pointed at the urn. Roger nodded dumbly. “She lucky woman. She die to get away from you, hey? Maybe she kill herself? Shitfuck.” And Roger at last
tried
to hit him, but really, it was so feeble, and Jesus sidestepped it easily. And with a gentleness that was so much more insulting than a punch would have been, he pushed Roger back on to his bed. Roger sat there, stated up at the little Philippino steward, who even now hadn’t once raised his voice, and who even at this late stage somehow contrived to flash him a grin. “I only wanted,” he said, “to make you happy.”

And then he went.

And for the first time since Deborah’s death, Roger cried. The tears just flowed out without any effort, he almost felt detached from the whole process; he just sat there and felt the water stream hot down his cheeks, and waited for it to stop. He reached for the nearest towel—which happened to be the duck—and wiped his face with it. Then he ate the chocolate eyes from the duck, and then, for good measure, those from the manta ray as well.

Because, in a way, he supposed Jesus was right. Maybe Deborah had just been eating to kill herself. Or, if not exactly to die, at least to make herself happy, to give herself the little joy which he so plainly couldn’t. If she hadn’t keeled over in the supermarket she’d have keeled over somewhere else eventually. Perhaps she’d have made it on to the cruise, and she’d have had the formal dinner, and then gone to the steakhouse, and then on to the buffet and the burger ’n’ BBQs; she’d have keeled over on the Mediterranean instead. “Come on,” he said to the urn, and he got up, “let’s get this over with.”

This time he didn’t care if he were seen. Shit the regulations and fuck them. He walked straight up to the railings, took the lid from the urn, and without further ceremony, tipped it over the side. Nothing came out. Roger hesitated. Dazedly, he looked inside to see if the ashes somehow had clogged together, or had got stuck, or needed to be prised out with his fingers.

The woman at the purser’s desk was called Kylie, so he assumed she was Australian, but when she spoke it was with the same flat disinterest of the Vigo tour guide. Maybe she
was
the Vigo tour guide, he couldn’t remember. “How can I help you?” she asked.

“I want to report a theft,” said Roger.

“Yes, sir?”

“It was Jesus. He got into my safe. This urn used to be full, almost to the brim, my wife was a big woman. Now look at it.”

The purser asked, “Was there anything else missing from your safe? Your wallet? Any valuables?”

“No.”

“Just the urn.”

“Not the urn, obviously. I still have the urn. Look, I’m holding it, look.”

The purser took it, looked it over, gave it a sniff. “And this urn contained a powder of some kind?”

“A powder? No. Well, yes, if by powder you mean . . . ”

“Because it’s left quite a sweet smell. You will know, I hope, that transporting certain powders is an offence. Failure to declare it at customs . . . ”

“It wasn’t that sort of powder. It was my wife.”

“Your wife was in the urn?”

“That’s right.”

“You brought your wife onboard.”

“Yes.”

“And does she have a passport?”

Roger stared at her. “No. No, look. She’s dead. Isn’t she? I mean, obviously.”

The purser didn’t even flinch from his stare. “Either you transported her onboard as a passenger, in which case she needs a passport. Or as a powder, in which case, failure to declare it at customs is an offence, and may even be seen to contravene the narcotics act.” Roger didn’t know what to say. “I would hope, sir, that the contents of your urn
remain
missing. I think that would be the best thing for you, wouldn’t it?” And she confiscated the urn behind her desk. “Now, was there anything else?”

Roger said feebly, “He also called me a shitfuck.”

“What was that, sir?”

“Jesus. Called me a shitfuck.”

“Well, sir,” said the purser. “Maybe that’s because you
are
a shitfuck.”

Roger opened his mouth to say something, then closed it again.

“Yes,” said the purser, as if giving the matter some consideration. “Yes, I think that you’re a shitfuck. We’ve had complaints about you, sir. Harassment. A certain Irene Knowles says you’ve been stalking her.”

Roger was about to tell her he didn’t know an Irene Knowles, but then, “Is she an elderly woman? Sort of grey hair with silver bits in?”

“I am not at liberty to describe passengers’ hair.”

“That’s her, isn’t it? No, look, you’ve got it all wrong. She was the one who approached
me.
Came to my cabin last night, most surprising, and then she . . . ”

“. . .  And then she what,
sir
?”

But Roger couldn’t say, because he could hardly believe it himself.

“Mrs. Knowles is a regular passenger, sir. We’re all very fond of her. I think you’d better keep away from her from now on, don’t you? I think you’d better keep your nose out of trouble. Smuggling illegal substances, slandering your steward, and sexually intimidating the elderly. This is a pleasure cruise, sir, we just want to make you happy. But there are limits. Do you understand?”

“I suppose so.”

“Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“Good night, then, sir.”

He went back to his cabin, picked his way through the debris of gutted animals, and lay on the bed. With his remote control he turned on the TV. The American woman with the wide smile was still enthusing about the shipboard activities, and he watched her, wondering where she got so much energy. The programme was on a half hour loop, and sometime during his second viewing Roger began to see something more mocking in her smile, it wasn’t a smile so much as a sneer, and there was an anger behind her eyes, they were blazing with
something
, and whatever she might claim it wasn’t an appreciation of the ship’s beauty salon. And second time round, too, the passengers in shot looked so much
older
, the kids playing in the pool weren’t kids at all but people steeped in a second childhood from which they would never escape.

And at some point he must have fallen asleep, though he certainly didn’t remember turning off the television or the lights. And he dreamed of Deborah, she was alive, and she was on the cruise with him. “Thank you for bringing me here, you’ve made me so happy,” and she
was
happy, by God, was she happy!, “this is
luxury
, darling,” as she waddled her way around the deck. At least he assumed it was Deborah, but she was so fat, her face had got so wide and chubby its features were all flattened into nothingness, but she was doing that thing with her watery eyes when she wanted her own way, so it
had
to be her. And the purser was taking him aside in complaint, “Sir, your wife has eaten all the food on the ship, there is no food
left
, you’ve got to stop her, shitfuck.” And Deborah was starting on the passengers now, biting into them, then wolfing them down, and sure, she couldn’t move very fast to catch them with her great bulk, but they were so
old
, and there weren’t many places they could run, the uncaring Mediterranean Sea all around them. “Darling, I’m hungry,” she said, and reached out for Roger, and he knew he’d give in to whatever she asked, because he
always
gave in, didn’t he, and he only wanted to make her happy, that was all he had ever wanted, he just hadn’t known how, it was so easy at the beginning but then she’d had the kids and then she’d had the depression and then she’d swelled up like a balloon. “I’m hungry,” she said, and she touched his cheek, and it wasn’t even flesh, her hands were coarse like towels. . . .

He forced himself awake. But the towels were still there, lapping at his face. Holding back a scream he wriggled free, scrabbled for the bedside lamp. In a moment the room was flooded with light. And then he really did scream.

There was a man hanging from the ceiling right above his bed. Not a real man, of course, but something almost as grotesque—a series of large beach towels knotted together to make up the torso, and the legs dangling from it. It had been one of those legs that had been brushing against Roger’s face. And the whole thing was suspended from a noose, made from nothing more remarkable than a twisted flannel—but it had to be more than that, surely, how could it have taken the weight? A hole had been pinched in the head to form a mouth, opened in an expression of comical surprise, as if the towel man really hadn’t
expected
to spend his cruise holiday hanging in a cabin after all, he’d as soon as play the bingo instead, what a turn up for the books! But those inevitable chocolate eyes of silver wrapping gave the face a colder, dead expression.

Even in his terror, Roger couldn’t help but admire the
detail
in Jesus’ work. It made the animals of his past exhibitions look like the juvenilia of a dilettante. The body must have taken hours to construct and hang. And that’s when the impossibility of it all struck Roger; Jesus must have been in his room all the time he was asleep, and standing on his bed right over him. Roger prodded the bed—it was a firm mattress, but not
that
firm, and the room was rocking gently on the waves. There was no way that Jesus could have been here for that long, balanced over him so precariously, and carried out such delicate work, without waking him up. And yet there it was, Jesus’ masterpiece, twisting to the roll of the sea. I can come and get you any time, that’s what the hanged man was saying. I can come and get you and you’ll never even
know.