Then you got off, said her father, and the ground set solid.
‘The thump of it,’ he said. ‘Under your feet.’
‘Did you get a hat?’ Kate asked him, unaccountably jealous.
‘I did not.’
‘I told you to get yourself a hat.’
‘Sure I have a hat,’ he said.
But they stopped talking about the ship, and asked instead about the family, children and grandchildren; who was where, this week — Kevin, Kate’s brother, was in Maryland on business, coming back via New York.
‘You might have flown up to meet him, for a day or two. Seen Manhattan,’ said Kate, knowing, as she said it, that such a thing was beyond them. They had had their adventure. They would never leave the country again.
‘You forgot all about the sea,’ her mother said, wistfully. The middle of the boat was hollow.
‘Like a spaceship,’ she said. ‘Oh, it was huge.’ It was the size of two football pitches, said her father, set end to end.
‘And four storeys high,’ said her mother, with every type of restaurant and bar; Thai, Mexican — a lot of it very spicy, so they steered clear.
‘Hard to sleep,’ said her father.
Yes, it was funny how hard it was to sleep. You would think it would rock you, like a baby. And sometimes, even with the size of the thing, you’d hear a booming in the metal walls.
‘Very far away,’ her father said.
The air conditioning was perfect, but there the two of them were — wide awake. She got up out of bed one night with an urge to see the water, walked for miles, past the nightclub and shut-up restaurants, looking for the right lift, the one that went all the way to the top. And when she got out into the fresh air, she said, the stars were so beautiful, you could almost see the sky turn. Then the black sea, and the waves breaking in a white V, everything moving and shifting, miles and miles below.
‘Lovely,’ said Kate.
They stopped talking about it for a while — by midsummer, you might have thought the cruise altogether forgotten — but when autumn came and the cold crept in, it started up again. Even more amazing, this time around. The Cruise! The Cruise! It was a dream, endlessly retold: from the miniature fittings in the bathroom to the other couples they met over dinner. There was a pair from Limerick called the Feenys who owned a furniture showroom, ‘four thousand square feet of it!’ There was a mixed race couple, ‘from Belfast, of all places’. Most famous of all were the Carters from Yorkshire. There was nothing Kate did not know about the Carters from Yorkshire. She knew about their daughter’s second round of fertility treatment, and she knew about their taste in Tanqueray gin. Mr Carter had had his veins stripped. Mrs Carter played golf. They set up Texas Hold’ em in the Silver Lounge and begged a jar of dried pasta from the steward, for chips.
Mrs Carter said the hairdresser was only paid five pounds an hour. Mr Carter said there was a body in the freezer — there always was on the big ships — and the purser said it would be two, by the time they made it back home.
At which point her mother would pause, out of respect for the anonymous dead.
Kate imagined a retired advertising executive stiffening as the boat ploughed on; his lips covered with frost, his back pushed and dropped by the sea, in a discreet compartment between the breakfast rashers and a hundred ready-made pavlovas, while the five different swimming pools swelled and rolled counter to the waves.
One day, when her father was really quite sick, Kate idly scanned a letter on her parents’ hall table. It was one of those round-robin things people send at Christmas. ‘Imagine our consternation,’ she read, ‘when we discovered that the paw prints on the living-room carpet, were actually those of a badger!!’ There were three family photos printed on the second page, ‘Freezing our **ses off in Cromer,’ ‘Grandparents at last!’ and ‘Call that a dog?’. It was signed ‘Lewis and Sally (Carter)’. They looked happy, Kate thought, as she chucked the thing back down. They looked like another world.
Now, whenever they wanted to say how much he had changed, people said how well Kate’s father had looked when he came back from the cruise. It was the last fixed point they had for him. He was in bed a lot of the time — quite cranky, if the truth be told — and Kate’s mother was at a loss. There was no more talk about the Carters, or the green flash at sunset, or the marshmallows they floated on your coffee in the bar on Deck Fourteen. But sometime later, Kate found another letter with a Yorkshire postmark and, when she asked, her mother said, ‘I wanted to tell them about your dad.’
Kate was so cross she had to turn away.
‘I wish you wouldn’t, Mammy,’ she said.
‘Darling,’ said her mother, ‘I am seventy-two years of age.’ Though what that proved, she didn’t presume to say.
When it came to it, her father did not have an easy death, though the ward sister said that she had seen a lot worse. ‘I know that’s not much comfort to you.’ But they were all outraged by the end — not that there was anyone to blame — it was just so outrageous: watching the tide of their father’s death wash over him and recede, wave after wave of it, until, by the end, they didn’t know if they wanted him to stay, or to go.
And when he did go, finally, they couldn’t believe that either. They looked around at each other, brothers and sisters — real to each other for the first time. There was something very honest about the days that followed. The funeral went well, the graveside prayers were almost bearable, and they managed their mother between them. She was the great worry, of course. They kept wishing their mother would cry, but she didn’t. Grief had made her astonishing. Kate’s mother wore a suit of dove grey, with a blue scarf at the neck, and she looked like Bacall might have done at the death of Bogart: untouchable. She hugged and shook hands with neighbours and friends, and not one of them made a dent in her. It wasn’t a good sign. Kate was on the other side of the crowd, inviting people back and organising lifts, when she finally heard the noise they had all been hoping for since — well, since her father had gone into decline. It was the sound of weeping. She pushed through to her mother and found her, collapsed and sobbing, in a strange man’s arms.
‘There, there, now,’ said the man, stroking her blonde-grey hair. ‘There, there.’
He was dressed in a safari jacket the colour of sand; his neck was thick and red, and his eyes were an uncertain blue. Beside him, a tiny woman in a trenchcoat picked up her mother’s hand and stroked it.
‘There, there,’ said the woman, joining in. ‘There, there, Marjorie. There, there.’
From behind her mother’s heaving shoulders the man stretched out a stubby arm, but Kate did not need the introduction. She already knew his name.
‘Lewis Carter,’ he said. ‘My sympathies, at this time.’
And later, when the three of them sang ‘Some Enchanted Evening’ in the corner of the living room, Kate was not surprised. She had expected that too.
NATALIE
Natalie put me straight. Who knows what Natalie wants or what she likes, but we know what she doesn’t like, that’s for sure. At least we do now.
‘Well,’ I said, after I put the phone down, ‘I won’t be getting in your way again.’
Natalie should be a star. When she grows up, that is. Natalie should be something really impressive. Because if she isn’t, then it’ll get pretty lonely, won’t it? I mean, how many friends has she got, to lose?