Ten Word Game (23 page)

“Think they’ll get married?” I asked innocently. “They’re well-suited, don’t you think?”

I was repellently cheery, and determined to keep it up.

The last hour before we sailed, I went down to the wharf where the folksy Polish market had been set up. Few antiques, but attractive silver, new porcelain, old amber. I particularly like the gedanite amber, even though it had only been named in 1878. Odd how the Baltic states still love the whitish amber. The Chinese like their native red, red symbolising money. English dealers, as I, love the gold colour. Sad, though, to see only newly carved pieces. Strange how my mind kept telling me the same things about amber. This was the Amber Sea, right?

“Beg pardon?” Ivy said. She was standing nearby.

“Sorry. Talking to myself.” I’d have to stop that, the
plight I was in.

There were only a few passengers about now the daylight was dying and the stall holders starting to pack up. Ghurkas were putting out the sign saying
Melissa
was to sail in thirty minutes. They had a
black-board
clock.

“Are you looking for anything in particular, Lovejoy? A present?”

“I’d like to see a set of amber candlesticks, inset with ivory, carved in 1695,” I said. “They did these in Danzig. And facetted amber bead necklaces for Russian courtesans. And North German amber
carvings
, minutely detailed, of the Crucifixion or the Judgement of Paris. You’ll never see more skilled
carvings
, except maybe those limewood tableaux,
centuries
old. Brilliant.”

I drifted along the line of stalls. I thought I was quite content, but Ivy smiled a proper smile and said I sounded wistful.

“Once you’ve seen the genuine things, all else is sham. Including people.”

She seemed so sad I asked what was up. “You’re the only one who isn’t,” she astonished me by saying.

“Eh?” I’d never been called genuine before. “Sorry, love. Back home I’m the typical phoney.”

“Not at our table.”

To brighten her mood I showed her what to look for in amber, the faint flecks of gold leaf some fakers put in to make the copal fakes look priceless.

“Amber’s a beautiful material.”

Ivy bent over a stall to peer at a small brooch in
silver
, grapes against vine leaves. Two Polish girls were busy wrapping their trays up and stowing them into their dad’s van.

And she whispered quietly, “Lovejoy, can I see you?”

“Eh?”

“Somewhere. Anywhere. Billy will be gambling tonight. I’ll slip out of the casino.”

“Eh?” I’m slow most of the time, and I’d no idea what she wanted to see me for. I mean, we were here talking now, yet she was peering over trays of brooches and rings. She intended secrecy.

“Please,” she said.

I was so confused I bought her the stupid grape brooch – actually it wasn’t all that bad – not even
haggling
about the price. She accepted it with that
non-smile
, and went towards the gangway. I drifted on, taking my last look at Poland before returning to the ship alone.

Passengers emerged onto the decks as we cast off, waving at the market people. Down at the quayside I noticed a woman in a fawn overcoat limp to a smart limousine waiting by the harbourmaster’s building. Limp? She looked familiar. I almost called out her name, and stifled the impulse. She smiled, said
something
to the driver inside. I couldn’t see him for windscreen reflection.

The door opened and she got in. A ship steward loaded three leather suitcases into the boot. The car pulled away. She didn’t even give the ship a last glance. I’d been so grateful to her. Like a fool, I’d assumed she’d come to help rescue me. As they say on TV,
reasons
apparent but unforgivable.

If I’d had half the sense I was born with, I’d have stowed away in one of the market vans and gone into orbit. When I got back to my cabin Margaret’s sketch was gone. I’d rolled it up and hidden it behind the top drawer. In its place was a piece of ship’s notepaper.

She’d listened to the gaolers, not the prisoner. I was now seriously alone, and leaving Gdynia bound for St Petersburg.

That evening, now even more determined to be
obnoxious
, I radiated good humour, cheerily greeting
everybody
until Lady Vee snapped at me to stop it for God’s sake. Beaming fondly, I told passengers she hadn’t been herself all day but what can you do? Some said I was a saint, which is true but isn’t often detected by others. I was heartbroken over Margaret’s defection.

Lauren called for me to do the endless antiques quiz round the dinner tables. The antique was a French bisque doll, for once genuine. Only 1878, but so
highly
sought nowadays that one will buy you a little flat in Harlem. I don’t like them (dolls, not Harlem flats). Bisque is sort of raw unglazed porcelain. Usually, the expensive dolls have closed red lips, fixed blue eyes and a cork scalp onto which a little wig is stuck, usually blonde mohair. The clothes are often sumptuous, on a kid leather body. They make me feel queasy, even though you can admire the tiny stitching of the
separate
fingers. It’s real craftsmanship. Lauren was relieved and pleased when I told a lady yes, the doll’s stockings were real silk and the dress hand-
embroidered
. Gaultier wasn’t the first of these French makers, though the best. He started trading about 1866, I
mentally
told the absent Margaret Dainty in silent defiance. See? I
could
remember useful details, M. Dainty (Mrs), so there.

Lauren closed on me and whispered, “Smile, Lovejoy. You’ve started frowning.” Obedient, I grinned like an ape. We had a quick nosh and did the second sitting. God, it seemed interminable.

“How come you fetched a genuine one?” I had the sense to ask Lauren.

“What do you mean?” she snapped.

“You never have before.”

Head bowed, she finished sorting the stack of answers and picked out the one coming nearest the price I’d decided.

“Because it’s mine, Lovejoy.”

“Your antique doll? Then you’re rich, love.” She looked stricken so I tried made a joke of it. “Lend us a fiver, eh?”

“You don’t understand. I fetched her with me on the voyage, for company. My grandma’s christening present. It’s the only antique I didn’t take from Henry’s stock.”

That sobered me. We said so-long to the restaurant folk and told the purser girls in Reception who’d won. It was some lady in a private suite. To them that hath, and all that. The winner’s cabin number would be flashed on the ship’s TV.

“You were testing me? What a nerve.”

“Not really.” We sat in the Atrium. The bars were thronged, as ever when the ship sailed, and dancers were trotting the light whatever. “I was just sick of the deception.”

“Me too,” I said glumly. “Sorry about Henry, incidentally. I won’t grumble any more.”

“Thank you.” She hesitated. “Lovejoy? Are you and… and anybody, well, together?”

What now? “Me? No. I just came on the cruise to help Lady Vee.” Lie, when all else fails.

“Then…” She couldn’t finish, just dithered, sitting there with her beautiful spooky doll in its basket. “Perhaps, may I invite you for a drink, perhaps, one evening? If you’re not too busy, perhaps.”

So many perhaps. “Ta.” I waited for her to explain what she wanted to see me for, then gave up. “I’d better find Lady Vee.”

“Yes, of course.”

“See you, Lauren. Ta for, er, perhaps…?”

“Perhaps tomorrow?” she said.

We separated, me thinking folk are definitely odd and Lauren probably thinking the same. People never say what they mean. I think they should be open and honest, like me.

In a lifetime of close scrutiny, I’ve only learned one thing about women: don’t ever buy them anything clockwork, electrical, or a pet, because within 48 hours it will fail and be the cause of endless requests to fix it, take it back, or rid it of worms or the dhobie itch. Like a duckegg, I shelved Lauren’s offer.

Lady Vee and June Milestone were talking in the Raffles Bar. I put a stop to all that, gave June a beam of utmost sincerity and whisked Lady Vee off to the Monte Carlo Club, the biggest and most dedicated of the ship’s casinos.

“You know you’re desperate to lose even more, you daft old bat,” I lectured her, making passing
passengers
smile. “Never change the habit of a lifetime.”

“I don’t want to gamble tonight, Lovejoy!” she was giving it, but I drew out a fortune on my plastic, and told her to get going.

She was into it instantly with hardly a glance. That’s the trouble with gamblers; their addiction ousts all
others
. I watched her slam into roulette. She lost steadily, hunched forward in her wheelchair and staring across at Victor Lustig, Billy the Kid – his Ivy standing behind him, without a glance my way; she must have forgotten – and sundry others. Jim and Millicent Akehurst were playing the slot machines, calling out to each other how they were doing.

“If they only had better decor, luvvie!” I heard Kevin say loudly, making a glittering entrance with Holly in tow. He had tinsel on his eyelashes so his face sparkled when he blinked, and each fingernail was
differently
coloured.

“The casinos are quite tasteful, darling,” Holly was giving back.

“Which,” Kevin shrilled over the din, “is a perfect
hoot
from someone who thinks sap green is a
perfect
co-ordinate for magenta and opal!”

Billy the Kid grinned and beckoned the odd couple. Kevin glided past us, head in the air. I often wonder if it’s just an act. Do they need to perform constantly? I mean, do they act even to a mirror? Attention is their addiction. Kevin changed his mind and swept out with, “I can’t stand mandarin orange against chrome!” or some such. Once departed, there wasn’t even a fragment of him anywhere in the memory. Was that simply his trick, though, to make himself forgettable? Holly remained.

“Money, Lovejoy.”

More, and so soon? I drew more money from the cashier behind her grille. The croupier exchanged it for coloured discs. I dropped two together on a square, and to my surprise won. Money actually coming in, from a bet? I dropped another two on a
different
square, and it came up. Lady Vee grew really
excited
.

She made me choose a third, which lost, then a fourth which won an even bigger stack of coloured discs. I was bored sick. Lady Vee was delirious with excitement.

“Keep on, Lovejoy!” she shrilled when I turned to go. I noticed Ivy had left. Time for me to join her
outside
in secret. I suppose I was in for another
ballocking
, God knows what about.

“No, love. Give us a shout when you’re done. I’ll be in the bar.”

“You can’t stop now! You’re on a roll!” Several
people
yelled the same thing, frantic.

“You have to gamble, Lovejoy!” Billy the Kid said
earnestly across the roulette table. “You’ve discovered you’re lucky!”

“Billy, I’d sooner watch fog.” I looked round at them. They’d gone quiet, like I’d ridiculed patriotism, motherhood and the Holy Grail. “Just look at the lot of you madmen. You put a coin in a slot and you either win or you don’t. Big deal. Or you put a token on a card and either win or you don’t… See what I mean? It’s stupid. I just don’t get it.”

Apart from the racket of the lines of one-arm
bandits
, the place was silent.

“He’s mental,” Billy told the others.

Holly spoke for them all, harsh and determined. “Everybody
must
gamble, Lovejoy! Look at Grudon.” They all nodded, looking at me. I felt on trial.

“Grudon? What’s that?”

“Grand National winner in 1901, Lovejoy.” They looked so earnest, in prayer. Lady Vee even bowed her head in reverence.

“A horse is a horse is a horse, love.”

“Grudon proves why everybody
has
to gamble.” And spoke over their chorus of agreement. “Arthur Nightingall rode it in a terrible snowstorm. First of March. You know what he did? He smeared pounds of butter on Grudon’s hooves, so the snow couldn’t ball and weigh its legs down.”

“And won?” I saw how deadly serious they all were. I got the odd feeling I was arguing against robbery in St Petersburg.

“By four lengths, Lovejoy. Don’t you see?” Holly was in anguish at my blasphemy.

“No, love, I don’t. You lunatics would bet Elvis is still alive.”

“She already has!” Lady Vee said with admiration. “Thousand to one!”

“You silly cow.” I honestly think gamblers are
insane. “Last month Elvis was seen directing traffic. And in a hurry-curry nosh caff in Palmers Green – he ordered chicken masala, with onion bhaji for starters. And at a Cumbria sheep-dog trial; his collie came
second
. All true sightings! Now.” I stared round at them. “How many bets got paid off? None!”

“Nobody had a camera!” Lady Vee cried with anguish. “The proof is out there!”

“If Elvis came back nobody would believe him. Didn’t he enter an Elvis lookalike competition in real life? And he
lost
!”

A few passengers were strolling and chatting on the Promenade Deck in the slight evening breeze, having a smoke. No sign of Ivy. Well, it couldn’t have been important, just another telling off for something I’d done, nearly done, not done, ought to have done. My spirits quailed at being here without Margaret. I
wondered
about Amy. She might prove the safest. Then I remembered her eyes, so manic and hard with that electric prod thing…

“Lovejoy?” Ivy was at the rail. She shivered. “Can we go in? It’s chilly.”

“Okay.” Women and chills. I thought it was really pleasant, the Baltic calm and the night warm. “Look, love,” I started, as we strolled towards an entrance, “if I’ve been a bit offhand, it’s just I’ve a lot on my mind, see?”

“I know, Lovejoy,” she said. We walked like strangers, at arm’s length so we wouldn’t bump. “It must be hard.”

“Hard?”

“For you. Being the only one not in the camarilla.”

“What’s a camarilla?” I already knew. Plotters everywhere, politicians included, have them. The Junkers had been one, and the Inquisition. They are the elites, cliques in control. They’re always evil. The
Olympic Committee, the World Bank and the UN are full of camarillas. Q.E.D.

“People in the game.” Bitterness is a woman’s art, and all the more alarming. Did she mean gambling, or something worse?

We went into the bright lights. The Atrium combo was playing. The shops were still open and the library across the intervening balcony was on the go. The chocolate bar had a cluster laughing and comparing tastes. “Don’t give me sympathy. I’m never in the know. It’s just the way I am.”

“It’s not sympathy, Lovejoy.”

Then what? I was more or less letting her lead the way. I’d assumed she would pause in some lounge, I’d procure her a drink and it would be back to the casino or maybe listening to a bar piano in the Horizon. Instead, she had us in a lift, then along a corridor I’d never been down. Canberra Deck?

“I get lost,” I told her lamely. “We okay here?”

We said hello to an elderly couple emerging from their cabin, togged up for some late entertainment. She paused at a cabin door and did the plastic key. More spacious than mine, but then Billy the Kid was an affluent copper, with hard-earned money to burn. You can tell the grade of cabin from the space and the window sizes. Not as grand as Lady Vee’s, but not a cupboard.

She stood by the window looking out. I felt a lemon, wondering what I’d been brought here for.

“I’m sorry, Lovejoy, for the plight you’re in.”

What did she know? I wasn’t in any plight, as far as the rest of the world was concerned. I said so.

“It’s safe to talk here,” she said, head turned
slightly
like they do when they’re all attention and
supposedly
looking elsewhere. “One of the few places on this ship.”

Safe? Why weren’t other places safe? I remembered Margaret and me making smiles, my sketch, and Margaret’s departure, which made Ivy seem more important than a minute ago.

“Billy isn’t often here. And I’m too much of a mouse to do anything rash like inviting a friend in. Don’t you see?”

She was in tears. I never know what to do when a woman cries. Some blokes say it’s a trick to make you agree, but to what?

“No.”

“We’re all in it, Lovejoy. I mean them, not me. I’m only the pathetic mask Billy brings along for
appearance’s
sake. They’re the backers.”

She moved away from the window. I could see into the dark, a light flashing ever few seconds, probably some headland. I didn’t really like watching the sea. Some passengers stared at it endlessly when there was nothing in sight, like a fascination.

I was surprised to find her walk into me, not
bumping
, just coming against me, her head almost under my chin.

We stood there like bookends with no books between. I felt daft, trying to find foothold behind me so I wouldn’t stumble back.

“It’s been so long.”

I recognised quiet desperation, but what was I expected to do? We stood there, me slowly
overbalancing
because she’d pressed me back so there was nowhere to put my feet. I toppled slowly onto a chair. She took my hands and pulled me to my feet.

“Look,” I said, more desperate than she could ever be. “If your bloke comes in…”

“Another beating, like from Les and Amy?” She did that bitter smile and suddenly sounded so tired. “I don’t think so, Lovejoy. I’ve locked the door.”

Sometimes I’ve made smiles in less ideal places, in less of a party mood, and at times which were
definitely
lacking in rejoicing. I’m not proud of the episode with Ivy, who seemed readier to mourn than frolic with a bloke like me who was no more than a shabby stranger.

One odd thing. When you think oh dear, this is a real mistake, a force takes over. Before you know it you’re in heaven with paradisical choirs and waves on the seashore and you wonder how on earth you could be so wrong. I’ve heard it’s different for women. I’ve no way of knowing, because with us making smiles is always bliss and ecstasy and mind-blowing
wonderment
.