Ten Word Game (24 page)

Only later, rousing from that terrible semi-dying limbo in a tussle of limbs, did realisation come. How the hell did Ivy, meek quiet little Ivy, wife of the
rumbustious
Billy who’d bossed the Wirral’s tough cops, know I’d been beaten senseless by the odious pair? I tried not to move, and stared at her. She was asleep. Women are all awake after making smiles, wanting a fag and talk about emotions. We want to slumber and slowly climb out of that sombre pit into wakefulness. She must have understood. My respect for her soared. Less than one in a hundred women know this. If one actually understands, makes allowances and gives you time, she’s the one in a million. I wondered if I should apply my Ten Word Game, get Ivy straight in my mind.

The time, though? I looked. Ivy stirred, came to. She said was I all right.

“Fine, ta.” Please, not the litany again, was she as good as others, was I disappointed. “Look at the time.”

We agreed on time passing and other platitudes. Better get back because folk would notice.

“It’s been so long,” she said again.

“Thanks, love.” A lucky interlude, probably no more. “How did you know about Amy and Les doing me over?”

“They’re Billy’s people. It was to make you
conform
.”

“Who’re the others?”

“Everybody, Lovejoy. Except you.”

“Millicent and Jim? Kevin and Holly too?

“Especially Kevin.” She almost spat the name. I stood up, and looked down as she started to find her clothes.

“Kevin?” Why was she mad at Kevin? The image came of Billy beckoning Kevin in the casino. I used to believe I could always tell, but sometimes I’m too bone-headed.

“Billy and Kevin – what is it people say? – catch a different tram.”

“Oh. Thank you, love,” I added lamely, not knowing what to say.

“Thank you, Lovejoy.” She wept, doing that
complicated
wrist movement to fasten her bra. “You just don’t know how tormenting it has been, or how degrading. I was afraid you’d run a mile from me.”

Narked, I almost exploded at that. I was the one going to get topped in Russia the day after
tomorrow
, and I didn’t know torment?

I left first, going the wrong way down the corridor and emerging near a laundrette where passengers can do their own laundry. I went up in the lift and found a score of people eating ice-creams.

“Come to the midnight buffet!” one or two urged. “We’re just going. It’s the chocolate evening!”

“Right!” I told them. “See you there!”

And went to the casino where Lady Vee had lost a fortune, all on my card. Her friends were holding an
autopsy on the vagaries of Lady Luck and blaming me. If only I’d heeded the signs/portents/runes/
astrological
fluxes, or none or all of the above, she’d have won a king’s ransom.

“Time for the midnight buffet, Vee.” I
commandeered
her wheelchair. “Chocaholic night.”

“If you’d only stayed, Lovejoy,” she said over her shoulder as we barreled down the corridor, “we’d be up a fortune.”

“The bookie always wins, you daft old sod.”

She cackled a laugh at that and said slyly, “Who was she, Lovejoy? Don’t tell me you’ve just been having a quiet drink. A woman can always tell.”

“I watched the contract bridge lesson,” I lied. “A lady there had an infallible betting system.”

“What is it? What?”

“Not telling you.” I pressed the button for the lift. “I don’t deal with losers.”

She said nothing after that, just eyed me
calculatingly
as we went to assimilate yet more kilo-joules in chocolate. I maintained my grins for the rest of the evening. I thought of Ivy, and whether she, like June Milestone, had accepted me on orders of the
camarilla
. If not, the odds were narrowing. If yes, I was in it worse than ever.

Very late, somebody knocked at my cabin door. I’d just got in, well knackered. Lady Vee’s hairstyle was burned in my brain, my only view when pushing the old goat. I liked her.

“Yes?” I called. The laundry delivered at all odd hours.

The ship’s laundry was terrific. Put any clothes in their big paper bag, list what you were sending, and next day suits, shirts, linen all arrived back pristine. Fantastic. I’d not had service like that since Mazie, who came one winter and showed her husband what’s what by
hibernating
at my cottage. Came the first thaw, she left
rejoicing
in the harmony of marital reunion. I was
heartbroken
, because she took the two suits, eight pairs of socks, nine shirts (with ties), and even singlets and underpants she’d bought for me as a Yuletide gift. I saw her husband around town the week after, wearing my (that’s
my,
note) best worsted salt-and-pepper suit. I’d only worn it once. I was glad in a way because he looked a prat in it. But then so had I. Easy come, as they say. Mazie was blonde and had a gold toothpick, as far as I remember. I truly loved her, and was heartbroken for almost a whole afternoon. Women are fickle. They manipulate.

Nobody there when I opened the cabin door. No plastic-covered shirts hanging on the door, no parcels of wrapped linen. To the side of each cabin door there is a slot for notices, ship’s newspapers, messages,
purser’s
bills from indefatigable accountants and the like. Mechanically I looked, saw a small note and picked it up. I glanced down the corridor, and saw somebody – stewardess, maybe? – slip from sight, as if she’d been peering round to make sure I’d taken the message.

It was a scribble:
L, Please. Hospital, 1-30 am, ward 3.
Quiet.

Hospital? On board? I’d heard dinner talk about people going to see the doctor. I’d seen signs. All
passengers
carried a ship’s plan with their plastic card, though that didn’t stop us from getting lost. I checked. Deck Four at the front, a lot lower down than the passenger cabins. The time now was an hour after midnight. Five minutes at the most to get down there. I sat on the bed. Why does it always seem worthwhile to read notes twice, three times? The words don’t grow another sentence or sprout extra adjectives full of meaningful import. Yet I do it every time. If the thing had been an epistle from some
lovely
lady and was packed with hints of assignations and coloured with enticing promises, sure, another
perusal
and a longer think would be wise. But this scrap? Come to the hospital at an impossible hour, with no reason or identifiable sender? Not likely. I shelled my jacket. Whoever it was could hang on until morning, and I might not even go then.

Don’t go judging me. I still fumed from being mauled by smiling Amy and chuckling Les. I didn’t want more. Basically, I’m scared of hospitals. Doctors and nurses are armed with syringes and phlebotomes, and you’re naked as a grape. Think of those odds. I go queasy visiting pals in clinics. I just know that every nurse is eyeing me up, working out how she’s going to inflict maximum pain. There’s no future in hospitals.

It wasn’t a woman’s writing, smooth and looped where the letter a and t are hard to read. It looked like a bloke’s hand. Henry Semper? Purser Mangot or one of his ghouls?

I donned my jacket and went.

This late, there was nothing audible except the distant hum of the ship’s engines. Corridors were empty. I heard a lift creak as I went downstairs. Somebody came out on a higher floor, a lady explaining how she’d misunderstood
somebody in the Conservatory about the next whist club match. Fading laughter.

The medical centre sign indicated a waiting room, chairs laid out, Riviera pictures on the walls, notices about clinics and who to ring if you were taken poorly. It was surprisingly large, three corridors leading off the waiting area. A hatch saying Pharmacy was closed. I went in and stood, wondering if I should PRESS FOR ATTENTION. The note could have told me to phone if somebody wanted a chat, right? The late hour was a clue, and the warning to be quiet.

Which wasn’t odd. Hospitals always have signs
asking
for quiet, though they make incredible rackets with trolleys, bleeps, doors slamming. No din here. One
corridor
was signed for doctors’ consulting rooms. Another, unlabelled, led to paired operating theatres.

I heard voices, a nurse with a smile in her voice, a man answering, “If one more passenger demands chlordiazepoxide, I’ll resign back into the NHS.”

“Or forgets their beta-blockers.”

“Yesterday was all varicose veins.”

The door was not quite ajar. The carpet underfoot ran out where the sign pointed to wards 1,2,3,
presumably
so nurses’ heels could click noisily and wake patients. A window panel would have allowed me to see into the office. I ducked and slipped silently past. Ward 1 and 2 were empty, doors gaping. Ward 3 was shut, a hooded light filtering through the curtained window. The white card for the patient’s name was blank. So why the light? I opened the door – pull it towards you, makes less sound that way – and slipped in. The wall clock said 1.29 a.m.

The bloke in the bed raised a finger, shush, watching as I shut the door. I didn’t make a sound. Henry Semper, no less. He looked gaunt, with an infusion dripping into his arm under swathed bandages. He
looked at death’s door. He gestured to the right side of the bed, indicating a gadget on the bedside table. I
nodded
, got the point. Some listening device? Frankly, I was scared. Fright’s an odd thing. You don’t need to know who you’re scared of, or what the scarers might do. It simply freezes conscious thought. You can’t work out a plan of action or decide where you’re going while you’re terrified. I stepped closer, whispered into his ear.

“You okay?” I put my mouth to his ear for this
routine
idiocy of the hospital visitor. Like, certainly, great, which is why I’m having a transfusion.

“Lovejoy. The antiques thing.”

“Yes?”

“Tell them wrong when you get there.”

“Eh?”

He sighed, winced trying to move. I honestly felt his pain. He tried to say more. I stooped to hear.

“You’re the divvy. They’re depending on being told right. Tell them wrong.”

“Wrong with what?”

“The room’s the thing.”

Somebody went down the corridor. I froze, because in darkness it’s movement alarms vigilantes, not sizes or shapes.

“Look,” I said, nervous as hell. It had been a man’s footfall. Henry seemed to drift into some kind of delirium. He was sweating, his hand trembling, breathing in rasps.

“Right, Henry. I’ll do that. Okay?”

He tried to say something more. I didn’t catch it, became scared and went to stand by the door and opened it slowly. The corridor to the waiting area was clear, the nurse and the doctor still talking. I scented cigarette smoke and thought, Aha, so much for the
fitness
crud you keep giving us, huh?

“Tara, Henry,” I mouthed. “Er, get better.”

He didn’t answer, just beckoned me back. I waved feebly and stepped out, closed the door slid out to safety. Unseen! I felt like Raffles, the great night-
stealing
burglar, or Spring-Heeled Jack, the ancient prison escaper. I was drenched with sweat as I eeled out to the stairs and went out onto the Promenade Deck to cool off. I was so relieved. A few couples were still out there, even at this late hour. I wondered if I needed an alibi, and looked for somebody I knew. No luck. As soon as I was safe, I regretted not having turned back to hear the extra he’d wanted to tell me.

I stood there, leaning on the rail like in some cruise advert.

Good of Henry to give me a warning. About what, though? Tell who wrong, about what? I guessed in St Petersburg, but where there exactly? And who were they? The room’s the thing, he’d said. But
every-thing’s
in one sort of room or another. Or were some St Petersburg antiques in the gardens? I felt narked. I could have been arrested or worse, down in the
hospital
. The ship’s security people could have accused me of nicking drugs. All to see somebody delirious. I felt I’d been really brave, going to visit a sick bloke I didn’t even like. I was quite noble. I almost filled up at the thought of how courageous I’d been, going to minister to the sick at enormous risk to myself. Selfless.

Wishing I still smoked, I finally went in. I had another dream, luckily not about Belle’s love-tryst shed. It was about Ivy on the wharf at Gdynia, looking at the silverware and the gedanites and the mother-
of-pearl
, and her sad distant face after we’d made smiles. I woke quite refreshed in the morning, my usual time, sixish, and thought I’d had a really good rest.

Lounging by the Crystal Pool, I was sent for by the Purser. Not Executive Purser Mangot, but Mr Lessing. He was a rotund bloke who could hardly tear his eyes from Internet screens between which he sat like some demi-god. Standing there, as irate as when I’d last seen him, stood a bloke I hardly recognised without his string of pearls. His wife stood beside him. She was beautiful, her eyes on me.

“Lovejoy, I hear you’ve been less than helpful to this gentleman.”

I stayed silent.

“What’s your answer?”

“What’s your question?”

“Will you assist Mr Bannerman? I believe you have specialised knowledge that would help this passenger in the matter of his wife’s, ah, jewellery.”

“I paid a fortune for those pearls.” Bannerman was choking with rage. Was he ever anything else? “Lovejoy says they’re false.”

“I don’t. I merely say they’re cultivated.”

“Will you testify for him if he brings a lawsuit?” Mr Lessing asked. “It would mean a lot to the ship, if you would.”

“No. You have jewellers shops. Get them. If,” I said in a sudden brainwave, test the water, “you want to sanction me, send me home at the next port.”

A flicker crossed his expression. You had to be watching closely to see it because it was so fleeting. A sudden shadow of doubt definitely whizzed through his eyes, then was gone. I thought, aha. He was in with the mob.

“Very well,” he said evenly. “I can’t force you. But I think it’s rather a poor show, Lovejoy. That is all.”

So I was a bounder and a cad. Dear me. I left his office, Bannerman going on about lack of co-
operation
, that he’d sue the Line for not making me obey
their orders, et yawnsville cetera. Burkes, I thought, and went to see the dancers rehearsing a new number for the evening show.

The Promenade Deck was quieter than the ruckus on the Pennant Bar at the stern, where there was a karaoke session. For once I didn’t fancy a swim in the Crystal Pool among such suave elegance. Despite the luxury, I wanted to be home. I’d felt safer being
hunted
than among this mass of ephemerals.

“Over there,” Ivy said, coming to lean on the rail, “is the first bit of Russia we see. We pass it soon. It’s called Kaliningrad now.”

“Lovely,” I said. A distant smudge was on the horizon.

“It is a beautiful country. They are suspicious of foreigners.”

I was pleased to hear it. Instead, I said, “Don’t blame them.
Homo sapiens
is a rotten species.”

“Did you like the Hermitage book?”

“Yes. Ta.”

She smiled. “I was in love with a Russian poet once. Pushkin. You’ve heard of him?”

Was it sarcasm? “Sorry, love. I’m uneducated. Barely heard of Shakespeare.”

“I think you’re fibbing, Lovejoy.”

“What was Pushkin like?”

“Socially, he was everything wrong. Chased women, got in trouble, challenged people to crazy duels,
gambled
with a compulsion to lose. But you have to put him in heaven as a poet.”

“Okay by me.” What else could I say? And why was she telling me this?

“I hope you like St Petersburg, Lovejoy. Perhaps we
will be on the same coach.”

Who’d said I was going ashore? I looked at her. I often wonder about people. I mean, flamboyant Billy “the Kid”, as he announced himself, with his cowboy heels and tooled-leather boots, his cheroots and black string tie and his Mexican moustache. And here comes his wife Ivy, mousy despite her bonny face, definitely muted apparel, careful shoes, her hair done into a bun as if striving for dowdiness when she had a brilliant figure. They were an essay in comparisons.

“That’d be nice.”

“I could show round one or two places, if you get a visa.”

“Doesn’t the ship take care of that?”

“They say so. And you can always get round rules in Russia.”

She smiled. It was a warm, friendly smile that pleased me. I’d have said open and honest, if I wasn’t heading for perdition.

“Ta. I’d be pleased. If it’s okay with your Billy.”

No harm to be cautious. After all, he was a retired cop, and wives can report back to husbands. I’ve heard that.

We stayed talking, mostly of nothing. To my relief, she didn’t press me about my background as most women do. I admitted a few things, told her of my cottage. She told me very little about herself, simply likes and dislikes. She was so pleased to be speaking, I mostly listened. We parted saying how much we’d enjoyed each other’s company. Mentally I added a qualification: an exquisite woman, if she really was neutral.

A note waited in the letter slot by my cabin. Warily I opened the envelope. 

I chucked the letter away, relieved it was only another maniac.