Dancing Backwards

Kimberley Crane was standing by the bar in the thick of admirers. She clearly hadn’t any idea who Vi was when she made her way through the throng to introduce Jen who looked quite bashful and said, ‘I simply adore your books, Miss Crane.’

Vi left Jen to fight her corner with the other fans and tried in vain to attract the barman’s attention. She was rescued by Ken, who bought her a brandy and steered her through the crush.

‘Thank you, Ken. At my age, you tend to become invisible.’

‘I reckon you’re visible enough, Vi.’

‘Thank you, again.’

‘Old as you feel.’

Vi, who frequently felt as old as the hills, agreed. The ship lurched a little and he held the crook of her arm while she steadied herself.

‘Easy does it. Do you mind the swell, Vi?’

‘Actually, Ken, I quite like it.’

‘Jen doesn’t,’ Ken said. ‘Lucky I brought her seasickness tablets. She’s a terrible sailor.’ He looked admiringly over at his wife who was at the bar talking excitedly to the other Kimberley Crane fans. ‘She’d forget her head, Jen, if I weren’t there to remind her.’

Kimberley Crane was still at the bar when the critic wandered by later that evening. ‘You know,’ she swayed a little on her heels, steadying herself on his narrow shoulder, ‘my agent thinks I’ve got a play in me.’

‘Extraordinary how many seem to have,’ said the critic, stepping aside adroitly to help himself from a bowl of crisps on the bar.

‘I’d adore to run something past you. I have this idea about a play about rape victims.’

‘How fascinating,’ said the critic. He nibbled at a crisp.

‘You know, the trauma of rape is quite indescribable.’

‘But nevertheless you propose to describe it?’

‘What I thought—my God this ship is moving, I need something in my stomach, can you pass the potato chips?’

‘Certainly,’ said the critic, handing her an almost empty bowl.

‘I thought maybe of getting some real rape victims to participate—Jesus, I hope to God it’s not going to be like this all the way. I mean, a kind of therapy session but dramatised on stage. Do you know what I mean?’

‘Surprisingly well.’

‘It would go down big in New York.’

‘You believe so?’

The ship lunged and deprived of the critic’s support Kimberley clutched the bar with both hands. ‘You see, people like you and me, you know, we’re creative.’

‘How kind,’ said the critic, finishing off the second bowl of crisps. ‘Did you catch the Welsh harpist playing in the Rose of York today? I believe she is called Vivian. Not a name one naturally associates with Wales.’

6 (#ulink_caa04c3c-5d3c-50e3-9856-4675e95d5455)

Vi returned from the Golden Hinde to her cabin where she found two small squares of chocolate, positioned at a scrupulously judged diagonal on the turned-down bed. Beside them was a reminder to put her clock back by one hour. Too tired to undress, she lay down fully clothed and ate the chocolates. Her mind had returned to Edwin.

Their correspondence had been punctiliously polite. She had initiated it, nervous of how a letter from her might be received. And for a long time there had been nothing from him and she had supposed that he had moved or didn’t want to hear from her—either, or both, being possible. Or perhaps he had died? People did die. Not only her mother, and Ted, but quite a few of those she had known well had gone into the dark. (Her mind flashed, as it always did when thoughts of death arose, to her sons.) Months after she had stopped scrutinising the post, an airmail letter arrived and the neat italic handwriting told her, before she looked inside, whom it was from. Who else, other than old-fashioned doctors, would still be using a fountain pen?

Edwin’s letter was friendly if guarded. It contained news, of a public kind, about his work, which he reported as going ‘quite well’. She had heard that his latest collection, The Dust Gatherers, had been short-listed for the Galliner Prize, one of the top awards for poetry in the US. She alluded to this in her reply, offering congratulations. In the same letter she had enclosed her email address. His reply to hers made no mention of the Galliner but explained that he didn’t use email or even possess a computer.

I continue, as you can tell, as an unreformed Luddite, he wrote. To everyone’s irritation, and the alarm of some, I don’t even own a cell phone. These things possess us, I feel, rather than the other way about.

The last gave a glint of the old Edwin and she had written back swiftly (perhaps, she judged afterwards, too swiftly, since he took noticeably longer to reply to this one) to say she wished she had his moral courage but, coached by her two sons, she had succumbed to technology. When his next letter arrived, it contained no reference to the sons but he did make an oblique enquiry about her work. ‘What are you doing these days? (I hate that question so please feel free to ignore it.)’

What was she doing these days? ‘I wish I knew,’ she said aloud, getting up from the bed to take off the pearls and the black frock, put on her nightdress and wedge open the doors to the sound of the ancient and blessedly unjudging sea.

Down in the crew bar Des bumped into Boris. ‘How did you get on with Mrs Hetherington? I saw you schmoozing her.’

‘Fine.’

‘You going to pull her?’

‘Fuck off,’ Des said.

Boris levelled at him an insolent blue gaze and laughing knowingly, moved off to conclude a deal he had going with one of the waiters in Beatrix who claimed to have access to a supply of Rolexes.

Des stayed at the bar drinking a couple of beers. He moved off to see what was showing at the lower deck cinema. A romantic comedy, of the kind favoured by the female crew. Sandy, one of the bar tenders in the Golden Hinde, was in there watching the film. He had had a brief fling with her but she had begun to be pushy and demanding and he wanted to get some distance between them to give the affair time to die down. To avoid meeting her, he decided to go back to his cabin.

Crew members of the same sex and in similar posts were generally berthed together as cabin mates. But there was always some wheeling and dealing going on. Des had worked things so that he shared with one of the male hairdressers, who was having an affair with a masseuse who worked in the spa, who in turn shared with a yoga instructor, who was having an affair with the purser who, happily for everyone, had his own private quarters.

This meant that, by a knock-on effect, except on the evenings when the yoga teacher was in a bad mood, or had her period, Des had the cabin to himself.

He reached up and felt for a shortbread tin with a picture of two Scottie dogs on it, one white, one black. Leila Claybourne, in the days when he thought she was his mum, had used it to store the flapjacks she had liked to make for him and he had smuggled it into his luggage, along with his Beano albums, when he left home. She must have noticed it had gone and wondered if he had taken it. The tin now held a gold watch, a pair of jade cufflinks, a lighter, a couple of photos of himself as a child winning dance medals, a building society book and a notebook. When he had enough capital, his plan was to set up his own dance school, perhaps in the US where you had more of a chance to get on. The tax-free earnings from the four years at sea helped, but the extra input from his ‘private clients’ was a real boost. Opening the notebook, he wrote in a shorthand he had devised for the purpose.

‘H 12’ he wrote and then stopped and thought about the slight pale woman with the long legs he had danced with. She looked not unlike his own mother, whom he still preferred to think of as Aunty Trish. Like her, but most unlike her too. The eyes were quite different. But she was like Trish in being a loner, which had its dangers. Loners were lonely. He’d had a narrow escape the cruise before last, with a woman he’d had to prise off him as she knelt naked at his feet clasping him round the knees. It had been a hell of a worry that he’d not got out of her cabin undetected. She’d given him two hundred dollars, with a plea to visit her in her Manhattan apartment. It was possible that she would repent of this later and report the gift as a theft. They did this, once they had come to their senses, to get the insurance and it was important to work out in advance those who wouldn’t go on to report you as well. If you chose carefully, and followed your instincts, you’d know who was unlikely to follow this pattern since it would expose them too much. Still, it was a gamble. H 12 was a risk. On the other hand, there was that funny business about her steward. And she had after all danced with him.

There was a tap at the door and he opened it, to his dismay, to Sandy. ‘Oh, hi there.’

‘You avoiding me, then?’

‘Why would I be doing that?’

‘Boris said he saw you go into the movies. You must’ve seen me there.’

‘Boris is a cunt.’

‘Good-looking, though.’

‘You’re welcome.’

‘So d’you fancy a beer or something?’

Sandy tried to peer round him where, conscious of the open biscuit tin lying on the floor by his bunk, he was blocking the doorway.