The head chef was speaking to us in the main theatre. It was thronged, standing room only. I was at the back because I came in late. Ivy was there, and June Milestone. Lauren was next to me. I’d just finished a talk on buying antiques – auctions, how not to get done in street markets, the pitfalls of antiques collectors’ clubs, glad it had gone well. I’d come for a rest.
The stage was occupied by chefs and caterers. Each had a go, bragging about the efforts they made to stuff us to the gills so we’d all be fatter still.
“Over 20,000 bottles of wine are served every cruise,” the chef said, to gasps of adulation. “Beef is the most popular dish.”
Somebody called out, “What’s the most popular desert?”
“Sponge pudding!”
Laughter.
“Coffee and tea served every day, 146 gallons.”
The restaurant manager rose to put his bit in. “Some 120,000 main meals are served on an average cruise, for which we use fifteen tons of beef and twenty-eight tons of fresh vegetables and fruit.”
“Including,” a chef popped up, “51,000 fresh eggs, and over 10,000 litres of milk and cream, with 70,000 bread rolls and half a ton of chickens every single day!”
People applauded at the scale of it. In the gloaming, I saw Lauren’s eyes. I thought, well, I too feel sorry for all those chickens and fishes, but don’t take on. Nothing we can do about it.
“Every cruise, a waiter walks ninety-one miles, the laundry washes 14,000 table cloths and 88,000 serviettes!”
I whispered to Lauren, “Meet you outside in half an hour, okay?”
Women and weeping. I had a lass once who cried every time somebody ate vegetables because carrots had feelings. She kept asking how would I like it if I was a turnip and somebody chewed me to bits. I was glad when she left. She wrote books about amino-acids in nuts. Insensitive fascist that I was, I asked if filberts were unemotional beasts. We parted.
Free, I went to Reception, and told the lass I wanted to see Mr Henry Semper. She conducted me to Executive Purser Mangot.
“What about?” He glared at my throat.
“The antiques in the store room. I want to know what Mr Semper’s scheme is for the evening quizzes.” I paused. “It’s just,” I explained lamely, “I’m doing his talks, see? When will he be back on duty?”
“I thought you couldn’t be in doubt about antiques.”
“Look. If he wants me to follow the same order, I should know, see?”
His brow cleared. “Do it any way you like.” Then he chilled my spine by saying, “The thing is, Henry had to leave. He’s having a serious operation in Copenhagen this very minute.”
“Poor bloke,” I said. I meant me, not Henry. We’d long since passed Copenhagen, unless my geography was wrong again. “Wish him well from me, eh?”
“Get out.”
“Er, ta.”
The Lido Deck was thronged, the day bright. A rock band was rocking, teenagers were jigging – or does that term mean something else now? People were lounging, swimming in the pools, drinking the morning sunshine, a scene worth at least a postcard. Somewhere at the ship’s back, abaft the beam or whatever, anyway behind the funnel, I knew there was a flat space marked out for a helicopter to land. It was usually covered in nets, for cricket, golf, and some kind of shuffle game using long handles. I’d gone up there the day before, to look for whales or dolphins from a vantage point.
The nets were still in place. Passengers were hard at games, one man showing his wife how to use a nine iron, aiming the ball at a screen countryside. Her ball missed the whole landscape. She laughed as friends cheered. I saw Fern and Delia Oakley waiting their turn.
The whole area looked exactly as it had the previous day. Therefore no helicopters. Yet ships the size of Melissa have little boats. I walked round the lifeboats and tenders. They’re usually all wrapped up, so you forget they’re waiting there for catastrophe in life’s mad gaiety. These too looked undisturbed. A crewman painting the davits was halfway along, another day’s brushwork to finish.
And Henry Semper, too sick to rise from his bed earlier the same morning, was now in Copenhagen under the surgeon’s knife, was he? I tried to recapture the glimpse of the lass who’d delivered the message to my cabin, and failed. Female, I’d been sure, but was she a stewardess, or a passenger? A woman would have spotted the difference in dress; we blokes can’t tell. And Lauren wept at the thought of all those poor lobsters the galleys cooked for our supper. Maybe, but was it likely?
“What’s next, Lovejoy?”
“You made me jump, Mrs Oakely. Next?”
“I saw you getting bored in there, like me and Fern. We came out to play golf.”
“Next what?”
She was a bonny woman, never looked shivery the way others did. She could do that knowing smile women use to hide guffaws, but just friendly, not to put people down.
“Antiques. Give me a clue about the answer. You’re doing the afternoon session with June Milestone. Isn’t she brilliant?”
“I’ll make it up as I go along.”
“Are you serious friends with Mrs Milestone, Lovejoy?” She was offhand, which meant deadly curious.
“Me? No. She’s rich and famous, I’m hoi-polloi.”
“Then why does she have you followed?” She laughed at my expression. “Her friend – the big American man – never takes his eyes off her, then acts on her signals. Fern jokes about it.” She gave me a mischievous glance. “Haven’t you noticed?”
Did she mean Victor Lustig? My head ached. I don’t get migraines, just a throb twice as bad. It saves itself for moments like this.
“Fern says you’re a true divvy.”
Good old Fern. I looked across. Delia’s pal was just swinging her golf club. The screen’s computer registered the ball’s thud and said she’d sent it 109 yards near a bunker. The landscape changed. I wonder about golfers. I think it’s a terrible ailment. Fern had seemed pretty normal until now.
“Not me,” Mrs Oakley said quickly. “Golf’s so obsessional, isn’t it? Fern saw you once in Wimbledon at an antiques auction. We were wondering if you were free for lunch at the Boulevard, Deck Eight.”
The Boulevard was an ultra-smart restaurant and you needed to book. It never closed, had special wines and was for late owls wanting quiet.
“Er, I’m pushed for time.”
“Please try.” She smiled. I weakened. “We shan’t talk golf.”
“Noon, then?”
I finished my trudge and came on Lauren looking for me on the Promenade Deck. Her eyes were red and bulbous. I told her Mangot’s news.
“I heard, Lovejoy. Poor Mr Semper.”
“How big’s that store room?”
After all, it had to be emptied, presumably to house the stolen art treasures of the Hermitage, right? Or something had. Mind you, a ship is a massive place.
She looked at me. I thought, do women who wear specs cry less than those who don’t? She kept trying to slide a tissue up underneath the rims to blot her tears.
“Henry wanted more space, to bring furniture aboard. Mr Mangot did the arranging. Henry was so cross. He had to send most of the antiques back in the same van. It was outrageous. They were lucky to get Henry to agree to… to everything. He’s not appreciated.”
“Why didn’t you go with him?” And explained, “To hospital.”
“He wanted me to stay and complete the contract. He isn’t a rich man, Lovejoy.”
Lauren and Henry. Lovers, or disciple and teacher?
“When did he go?”
She wept then. An elderly couple strolling arm in arm looked daggers at me, wanting to ask what kind of a sick swine did I think I was. I smiled weakly.
“I’m so frightened, Lovejoy.” She stared out at a distant freighter heading past towards civilisation. “Henry tried to get us off in Warnemunde but Mr Mangot wouldn’t give permission.”
“Frightened of what?”
“Henry said he would forego his fees if we could be allowed to fly home. They said no. I would have gone with him, Lovejoy.” She eyed me, worried I would be cut to the quick at the revelation. “He and I were … He’s never had a really good woman, you see. Women take advantage of him. I would rescue him. He needs me. The money from this cruise was going to be our nest-egg, to make a new start.”
“And Mr Mangot?”
“Henry said we should escape before we reach Russia.”
“Escape?” I made out I was gormless. “From this cruising paradise?”
“He told me something horrid would happen in St Petersburg.”
“Did he say what?”
“No. They wouldn’t let me see him when he became ill. I tried phoning, but the Danish hospitals say he’s not there.”
“Look, Lauren. Can I be excused this evening’s dinner quiz? I’ll ask Mrs Milestone to do it with you.” I thought of Henry Semper alone in his ward.
“Why? What are you going to do?”
“I’ll try to find out how he’s getting on. I’ll be in to dinner same as usual. I can speak Danish, you see,” I lied with dazzling inventiveness. “Don’t tell anybody.”
We parted. She had to get ready for the Antique Collectors’ Club. I needed to think with whatever logic I could scrape up. I went for coffee in the Horizon lounge. No officers, just Ivy joining me as soon as I sat.
“Your bag, Lovejoy. You left it in the chefs’ session. You don’t want to be taken by surprise, do you?”
I hadn’t seen the bag before and drew breath to tell her so. It was one of those open canvas things with some stamped logo Antiques For Yonks, whatever that meant. I took it. She walked off. I didn’t look inside, just dropped it beside my chair as if it was unimportant. I saw her shoes as she turned away, and saw they were dark crocodile, false or real skin I didn’t know. And remembered the dappled sheen on the message woman’s heel as she’d slipped from Corridor F. Ivy, passing me that note to see Henry Semper in the hospital?
The headache really swung in. I tried to reach oblivion in case it was an all-day banger. I might have made it, but Les came round the lounge doing card tricks. He was really good. He insisted on including me, and a crowd gathered. Imagine how pleased I was to see his sleight-of-hand pulling the Jack of Diamonds from some lady’s earring, if only my flickering vision would have let me see the damned thing.
An hour later I tottered to an armchair in the ship’s library and looked in Ivy’s bag. It contained yet another catalogue, this time of the Hermitage’s latest exhibition. I could hardly read the title, so bad was my migraine by then: Hidden Treasures Revealed. I find some colours terrible to read at the best of times, but almost impossible in blue capitals on Van Gogh’s ochre and browns. I sat on the bag and tried to doze. Ivy, though? And on whose side? I wanted some Flash Gordon to zoom in, tell me who was Ming from Planet Mongo and, better still, who wasn’t.
I came to with my side aching from a hopeless slumped posture, too late to join June Milestone at the next Antiques Clubber Talk. She’d give me hell for letting her down again. My head was almost back on, though, so I didn’t feel too bad about it. I looked about. Only two people clicking away in the nook reserved for Internet folk, and the occasional book browser along the shelves. I opened the catalogue of the State Hermitage Museum, and read.
* * *
Another note from that lunatic Bannerman was under my cabin door.
Lovejoy,
Okay, 30% of the gross. That’s as high as I can go. My wife Cynthia agrees. You write the script, and she’ll say exactly what you tell her to. We’ve watched you, and reckon you can do it good. Deal?
Josh Bannerman
I ditched it. One less complication.