Ten Word Game (22 page)

“Lose another hour?” I was indignant. Those rotten cards had come again. Every blinking time we had to put the clocks forward an hour during the night.

“We’ll get it back when we sail home, Lovejoy. Don’t be such a child!”

That stopped me. Outside, the wharf announced GDYNIA. Poland, I guessed.

My throat went thick. Next stop after Poland would be Russia and the Hermitage Museum. That building loomed vast and brooding in my mind, and I’d never even seen it.

“We can go ashore, Lovejoy!” Margaret had dressed. I emerged from the shower, monster from the Black Lagoon, towelling. I’m always embarrassed because a naked woman’s lovely but a bare bloke looks like a bushel of spuds. “I’ve heard it’s a charming city.”

“Not together.” I still hoped my watchers thought Margaret and I were strangers. They mustn’t know she was my ally. I would soon need her even more.

She was at the mirror doing her make-up. I love
seeing
women do it, but can’t help wondering why it
doesn’t
hurt. She did that gruesome thing with curved tongs to curl her eyelashes. It makes me cringe. My knees itch while I watch yet I can’t look away. She’d restored her hair from the night. It was five-thirty, the ship hardly awake. On the harbourside, stalls were being established, silver, amber, woollens, some textiles and trinkets and little dolls, put out by girls in Polish national costume getting ready to welcome visitors. I liked the lace many wore, so much bulkier than Coggeshall lace back in East Anglia. My heart cramped with homesickness.

I’d told her how I came to be on board, Gloria, Benjo, wanting to escape. She said she’d seen me
wheeling Lady Vee.

“I think they’re setting up some robbery. It’ll be the famous exhibition, Impressionists and the Old Masters. It’s advertised everywhere.”

“And you’ll divvy them?”

“I suppose so. I’ll be a visitor.”

“Then what?” She wouldn’t look away, pressing for an answer. “Stealing a whole exhibition, Lovejoy? Even you have never done that before.”

I stood at her window watching the little market on the wharf. The vans and cars looked pretty grotty, like it was lucky they’d managed to start this morning, but how else can a vehicle look? It can’t put on airs.

During the night, here in Margaret’s cabin, safe from being bugged, my mind had gone into free fall. I’d thought all sorts of dross. Like, Romania – so said the International Cartoonists on the BBC – is the only country in the world ever to arrest a cartoon (not a cartoonist, note; they’d arrested the actual drawing). It had committed the offence of depicting some mayor as a swine. Another: a football team in Dar-es-Salaam in Tanzania had been accused of witchcraft. They’d hired a Ju-Ju man to sprinkle magic powder in the goal-mouth, so rendering the team’s goal invisible. (The proof? Simla kept winning.) True crazy tales.

Plain simple factual news, not fiction, is the real horror. Like, a 13-year-old kid kills a pizza delivery man stone dead – wasn’t it in staid New Zealand? – and all the kids in the neighbourhood queue
admiringly
for the killer’s autograph. And collectors of antique erotica bid dementedly whenever the most popular erotic antique turns up. It’s an oddly shaped carving that ladies in past ages called St Cosmo’s Toe. This phallic plaything was fashioned for maidens, who recited a special prayer as they dwelled, so to speak, on its possible uses.

And a frightened dapper little man in a straw boater, dogging the progress of an enormous luxury cruise ship along the Baltic Sea, gets slain down by the water’s edge and floats among plastic bottles, orange peel and other flotsam, because he hoped to pick up crumbs from a scam he’d heard about.

To focus, I did a pencil sketch of Margaret seated against her mirror. I’d painted her portrait a year since, Gainsborough style. I intended to keep the sketch, take it back to my cabin and maybe frame it.

“They say Warsaw has a World Gang-Bang Championship.” I felt so grateful to Margaret, coming all this way to help save me. “In public on TV. Last year a Polish girl called Klaudia won it, made love to 646 men.”

“Your mind’s like a ragbag, Lovejoy. Can’t you remember useful things?” She knew not to move when I sketched because it changes the light, which is death to a portrait.

“Each man’s allowed one minute. It’s not much, is it? A Brazilian girl called Magda came second.”

“Thinking of going?” she asked drily, still as a
hunting
heron.

“The previous world record was only 251.” The sketch finished, I rolled it up and stuck the edge down. It made me start to think. There was something horribly wrong about my table companions, the planned robbery, even Margaret’s arrival.

“Come back, Lovejoy.”

“Help me, Margaret.” Once pathetic, always. She looked stricken. I’m never this frank. “They’re going to top me.”

She pulled my head to her as I sat on the edge of the bed.

“I’ve never seen you like this, Lovejoy. Tell me everything you know. How long before we reach St
Petersburg?”

“The day after tomorrow. Maybe they’ll let me off here today. Will you get me home, please?”

With Moses dead, I might be able to make the
airport
, if Gdynia had one. Or a train. Or just some cheap bed-and-breakfast where I could hide until the ship sailed, then make a run for it.

The day began with a casual summons from Amy the dancer, and her comic pal Les Renown.

They were doing a racing game in one of the lounges, dice and cardboard horses on squares. It was quite hot weather on the Promenade Deck. People had come into the cool, settling about bars and lounges to be entertained.

Shows of all kinds began about ten o’clock, with demonstrations, talks, films in the cinema, dance
lessons
, fitness club, chats over coffee with the ship’s officers, lectures about the next port of call from experts eager to tell you where to shop. You could tour the ship’s engines, or listen to chefs talking about favourite recipes, or visit the galleys. The contract bridge club thronged, dancing lessons began, it was all happening on the
Melissa
.

Lady Vee collared me. She told me Amy and Les Renown were looking for me. I pushed her to the nearest casino, and found them in the Horizon lounge talking to passengers. I waited and they drifted my way.

“Morning, Lovejoy.”

“Morning.”

They looked so smart, pleasant. I could see why people admired the golden couple. Amy looked about. Nobody within earshot, so she leant closer.

“You’re badly indebted, Lovejoy. A warning.”

“Eh?” I fumbled for my plastic card. Les put out a hand and stopped me.

Amy grimaced. “You’ve spent a fortune in the
casinos
. It’s totting up, Lovejoy. As long as you can pay it off.”

I was stricken. “I thought it was all free.”

“Everything on board is, Lovejoy.” They greeted somebody coming in with an officer and returned their attention to me. “Except shops and gambling.”

“I don’t gamble. And I’ve bought nothing.”

“The casino manageress says otherwise.” Amy’s expression would madden a saint. I stayed cool. Good Queen Bess once said anger makes you witty but keeps you poor. She was always right about
everything
, except who she slept with in Islington. I gulped and nodded.

“I’ll watch it, then. Ta for telling me.”

They looked at each other, hesitating as if they expected more of a panic, then went on circulating, Amy being charming and Les cracking jokes. I sat watching Gdynia though the panorama windows.

They wanted me to protest, run scared at their threatening news, and I hadn’t done anything of the kind. I heard Les start his patter, people near the bar already chuckling. “There’s this actor, see…” I didn’t look round. I knew Amy would be staring at me,
wondering
why I hadn’t gone berserk at their falsehood.

You
can’t
be overdrawn on a cruise ship. Your Cruise Club plastic is for boozing, for trips ashore, garments you might buy, gambling you might get up to. All else is free – meals, the shows, cinemas,
lectures
, snacks. So I was being needled, provoked into fright. I was being made to jump, take off, use every desperate means to escape. And I didn’t know why.

Except…

No Yanks or Dutch slaving over the hot stoves in the galleys, so my coffee was undrinkable.

In antiques, you learn to think
except
. Like, you might see a Victorian card table, say 1842. It looks fine – walnut, very ornate carving, sturdy, lovely job, make any dealer’s mouth water. And the vendor says, with tears in his eyes, “I’m short of cash, something urgent’s come up.” And offers it to you, this lovely rarity. Before you reach for your cheque book, say, “Great, sure, yes –
except
…” Then inwardly ask yourself “Except for what?” And it’s only then that something odd hits you. That lovely walnut surface looks just a fraction smaller than it should be, a little out of
proportion
. You realise the dealer had bought it with straight edges, a plain rectangular top. It’s still a
genuine
antique, but he couldn’t resist getting a carpenter to make the table’s edges wavy. Presto! He’s converted it into a serpentine-topped card table – worth four times the value of the plainer straight-edged sort. And you’re the mug he wants to pay four times more than he deserves? No, ta.

So from habit I thought
except for
…?

And it dawned on me. I must be thick as a brick not to have seen it before.

Since we sailed, I had had maybe a score of chances to escape – Oslo and Amsterdam especially. And on board I’d tried phones, facsimiles, e-mail, everything except a message in a bottle lobbed into the briny. I’d seduced as best I could, trying to gain allies. I had done a deal with poor Mr Moses Duploy, chiseller and crook. I’d contacted dealers ashore. In fact done everything I could. Used them all up, played every card in my hand.

In fact, it had been so easy I had crowed with delight at my cleverness. Stupid. And still I was trapped, no nearer escape. I’d been had. It came to me
in a wash of relief. They – never mind for the minute who – had let me go ashore, then hauled me back aboard like anglers reeling in a silly gudgeon.

They knew I’d become increasingly desperate, and that by the time the
Melissa
berthed in St Petersburg I would have used up all my feeble escape notions. No wonder they were confident. And now they were
putting
on the screws, telling me I was in some fearsome debt. It was one more jab of their goad.

Suddenly, though, they were unsure why I was docile and obedient. It was Margaret’s presence on board. I knew that, but they didn’t. It wasn’t much, but I felt one up. They were rattling my cage.

I asked a stewardess for today’s entertainments list. Thirty-seven events, with WELCOME TO GDYNIA across the top. I smiled a good morning to some
passengers
I didn’t know and went to find Lady Vee. As soon as the ship left Poland, I’d take her gambling again, and hope she lost a lot more. She was still in bed, her stewardess Marie told me when I knocked on Suite 1133.

Making a last-minute booking, I happened to meet Delia Oakley and Fern at the Deck Four gangway, and had the luck to spot Millicent and Ivy joining a coach party touring the city centre. I went too. The Ghurkas on the gangways didn’t turn a hair, checked me through unquestioned. Ivy was silent as ever, Millicent talking enough for us all.

Gdynia was really pleasant, completely restored after terrible historical events. The Poles are a fine lot, affable to a fault, full of music and colour. We all enjoyed it. I even began to think, roll on St Petersburg. I spent a few zlotniks on a silver pencil I knew I’d lose the minute I put it down because I always do. We heard street musicians, and I argued with the women about varieties of lace. We watched locals making bobbin lace.

Lots of people moved about among tangled alleys where a felon could escape, if he had been so inclined. I made a couple of sallies, but turned up among the main gaggle of passengers within moments, just to nark whoever was watching. It made me happier. Our courier was an entertainments girl from the ship. I recognised her. A dazzlingly blonde Polish girl carried a small flag on a stick, our guide. We had to follow it so as not to get ourselves lost. It had almost happened in Oslo to two old duffers who’d forgotten the time.

Impeccably obedient, I kept reminding people of the time and making sure we all knew the way back to the coach. Didn’t want anybody to go missing, you see. I wouldn’t want that, would I? I was a right
poisonous
ray of sunshine. Margaret was on a different coach. I happened to glimpse her, talking away to
passengers
who’d spent heavily in some jewellery shops. I saw her speaking to James Mangot, but didn’t worry.

Start as you mean to go on, I always say. I was one big hello. On the way back to the ship, I dozed
contentedly
. I remembered another of Queen Elizabeth the First’s remarks. She likened some people – courtiers she mistrusted – to “Strawberry wives, that laid two or three large strawberries at the mouth of their pot, and all the rest were little ones.” It made my smile broader still. Shrewd lass, Bess One.

Back on board, I hurried to find Lady Vee and wheeled her down to nosh. I chatted of the lovely city, explained how everybody else got Polish lace designs wrong except me. She could hardly get a word in
edgeways
. I insisted on shoving her to the casino, and
complained
when I found the casinos closed.

“They only open when the ship sails, Lovejoy,” Lady Vee said. “I keep telling you.”

“Just when I’m enjoying myself,” I groused.

“Are you all right?” she asked me several times.
“You’re different.”

“Got my sea legs. Where next?”

“What on earth’s got into you?”

We went to watch Latin-American dancing. I even had a dance, with Ivy, who kept going quiet. The floor was admittedly a bit crowded. I was beginning to see how folk liked cruising. If you were going to survive, that is. I pushed Lady Vee to her tea and didn’t bring the wrong cakes or sandwiches. She too was quieter than usual, and kept eyeing me. I was obnoxiously talkative, recounting anecdotes from the jaunt ashore. Most of my stories about Gdynia were invented, but one or two brought a feeble smile to her face. I told her to cheer up, this cruise couldn’t last for ever. She asked me if I’d had a word with Amy and Les Renown. I said yes, just a little moan about money, and said what a nice couple they were.