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A FOG HAD DESCENDED while we were in the dining room. Ashanta stomped along the deck leading back to our cabin with her head down and her fists clenched by her side.
“If I wake up every morning knowing I’ve got that to come, I’ll throw myself overboard,” she said, when we were out of earshot. “I’m not joking either.”
Which was my view entirely. But I couldn’t see a way out. According to the little I knew about ships, every captain has his own table and he’s notoriously touchy about it. If you snub an invitation, he regards it as a slap in the face with a gentleman’s glove, and if he takes against you, everyone does. Ironically, Ashanta herself had pointed that out right at the start.
“I don’t even care if we become pariahs,” she said. “Not any more.”
“Why didn’t you say something then?”
She turned to me. “Do you want to go?”
“No.”
“Well, why didn’t you say something then?”
“Because I couldn’t think of anything ... tactful enough.”
“Ditto.”
We started walking again, keeping step with each other like we were practising for the parade ground.
“But now we’re going to have to,” she said. “And the sooner the better. I don’t want it hanging over me all night. It’s already starting to ruin things. Bloody hell, I’ve got a headache.”
“What do you think he meant when he said he’d make it ‘worth our while’?”
“Who cares?”
“Aren’t you interested?”
“No. What do you think he meant?”
“This is the second time you’ve thrown my own question back on me. I thought you weren’t interested. You just said ‘who cares’.”
“About the offer. I still care about you.”
I took her hand and kissed it and softened. “He’s the captain of a big cruise ship, so his tastes are probably nothing like ours. It’ll be something he likes, but which we – I mean, because of the difficulty someone like him probably has putting himself in our shoes - ”
“Something like a seventy-five-year-old bottle of Bordeaux.”
“Possibly.”
“Or a wad of money-off vouchers for Harrods or Selfridges.”
“That too.”
“And how grateful do you think you’ll be able to get your face to look?”
“It won’t be easy, I admit.”
She swung in front of me, bringing me to an abrupt halt, and took both my hands. “Look, Hugo, we both know you like to help people out. You never put yourself first. That’s why I love you, truly. But we’ll probably never get the chance to go on anything like this cruise again. I don’t want it spoiled for the sake of a vintage bottle of wine or a billfold of manky shopping coupons. Is that really too much to ask?”
After a few moments’ further discussion, we decided to storm Mason’s office pronto and get it over with. We changed direction.
“We’ll just tell him the truth,” she said. “It’s not as if he doesn’t know already. He said it himself: when he was our age - ”
“True, it would be unreasonable for him to expect us to do something he wouldn’t have done. Even for a case of vintage wine.”
“That’s the pioneer spirit, my boy. And no one else wants us there. We’re gatecrashers as far as they’re concerned.”
We were walking at speed now, me in the lead. Captain Mason’s office was elevated above the deck and approached by a small flight of steps. A middle-aged C&B officer with a long chin and a pair of sleeves too big for his wrists did sentry-duty at the bottom. He glared at us as we approached. We stopped in front of him.
“Is – is this the way to Captain Mason’s office?” Ashanta asked.
“How can I help you, madam?” he said. He took off his hat gallantly to reveal a bald dome with three black hairs standing up like antennae.
“I’m Ashanta, this is Hugo. We’d like a quick word with him if possible.”
“Captain Mason’s not available at present. I’m Duty Officer Gould. May I ask the broad category of your communication? Because, with respect, if it’s a complaint it may be best dealt with by our customer services department on the upper promenade deck.”
“He invited us to dinner,” Ashanta said, “and we can’t come.”
He puckered his lips ever so slightly and raised his eyebrows. “I see. That’s a shame.” He took out a notepad and pen. “I’d better take your names. He’ll probably contact you with an alternative date if that’s agreeable. What night are you supposed to be dining with him?”
“Every night,” Ashanta said. “From now until the end of time.”
He looked as if he wasn’t sure we were sane. After a short hesitation he wrote something down. “From now until the end of the cruise,” he said. “Are you sure?”
“Absolutely,” Ashanta replied, as if she was pleased to have made herself comprehensible at last. “Every single night.”
“That would be, well, unprecedented, madam. Please don’t take this the wrong way but are you sure you haven’t made some mistake?”
“Well, I’d like to hope so, but he seemed quite clear. We’re Ashanta and Hugo Smith. No offence to the captain or any of his guests, but we rather wanted to spend as much of our - our honeymoon as possible alone. We’re happy and honoured to dine with him once, maybe twice – we cheerfully dined with him tonight, for example – but, er, just not every night.”
“Which isn’t to belittle the compliment he’s paying us,” I said, clasping my hands in front of me. “For which we’re extremely grateful.”
Duty Officer Gould put his notepad away. “I’ll let him know as soon as he gets back. I’m sure he’ll understand. In the meantime, have a very pleasant evening.”
We thanked him with zero enthusiasm and set off back to our cabin to prepare for ancient African civilisations. Although we were hardly in the mood for an hour’s worth of education any more.
“I feel awful now,” Ashanta said as we descended from the deck to the first floor. “‘But not every night’ - God, you’d think I’d have been able to come up with something a bit more tactful than that. ‘But not every night’.” She slapped her forehead. “Bloody hell!”
“It’s not as if he’s going to be told your precise words. I’m sure Duty Officer Gould will put his own spin on it.”
“I think we should go back and tell Gouldie to scratch it. We’d be better off telling the captain himself.”
“Are you quite sure about that?”
“What do you mean?” she said.
“Even now, can you think of any better way of putting it than, ‘But not every night’?”
She shook her head. “That’s precisely the point, Hugo. We shouldn’t have charged in like a bull in a china shop. We should have planned our words, maybe written a letter.” She lit up. “Actually, that’s a brilliant idea.”
“Or it would have been if we’d thought of it earlier.”
“It still can be. Only first, we’ve got to stop Gould delivering that message.”
She did an 180˚ spin and accelerated. I was becoming more and more irritated – apart from anything else, we were going to miss the lecture. But she was my soul-mate and it’s generally agreed that, when soul-mates do about-turns and burn the rubber on their pumps, the correct procedure is to tag along. Whatever your misgivings.
When we reached the steps to Captain Mason’s office, though, there was no Duty Officer Gould to be seen. Just the wailing wind and the sound of the sea swelling.
“Do you think we should go up there and knock?” Ashanta said.
“To the captain’s sanctum itself? There’s nothing to stop us. But let’s hurry, whatever we do.”
Her face flashed annoyance. “But no, we can’t.”
I sighed. “Why ever not?”
“Because either Duty Officer Gould’s told him or he’s not in. Or he is in and he hasn’t yet been told. If it’s either of the first two, we’re wasting our time. If the last one, we’ll have to explain why we’ve called, and that means falling back on ‘But not every night’ again. Shit, shit, shit.”
“Like I mentioned, Gould won’t have relayed your words verbatim. Even if he did, he won’t have said, ‘These were her exact words, by the way, sir. She actually used the phrase, “But not every night”. Those four words.’ There’s nothing to stop you writing a letter to clarify what Gould’s told him.”
“Us, that should be, Hugo. Us writing a letter.”
I don’t know why, but up till then neither of us had actually looked up at Mason’s cabin. When we did, we got a shock. Framed in the curtainless window, Gould and Mason were deep in conversation. A light shone in the background: one of those yellow-orangey desk or bedside lamps probably. Suddenly, they turned and glowered at us - as if they’d already seen we were there. My chest jumped unpleasantly. Ashanta’s hand gripped mine, so I’m pretty sure she experienced the same thing.
“Sugar,” she said. She waved feebly to them. They didn’t smile.
“I think it’s a case of message received,” I said, trying not to let my lips move.
“Time to be moving along, methinks.”
We actually ran back to our cabin, laughing like we were a couple of ten-year-olds who’d played a prank. Pathetic, really, since we hadn’t even done anything wrong. After we closed the door, we had sex to cleanse ourselves of the evening’s gloom then changed to go out.
We missed the first five minutes. Luckily, there were plenty of empty seats, so we sat near the back and ate Dolly Mixtures from the packet Ashanta always seemed to carry everywhere. The room smelt musty. It was dark except for Professor Julian Gaitliss, DPhil – a thin, bald man with a TV documentary voice, dressed all in tweed. He read his notes, fondled his beard into an inverted cone and operated the interactive whiteboard behind him with a button on a wire. He spoke without energy as if this was his thousand and twenty-seventh performance and he still had another three million and four to go.
He was describing the groundbreaking excavations in Southern Zimbabwe in the early 1980s, languidly quoting The British Journal of Prehistoric Excavations in Africa and holding the base of his tie flat against his stomach, when another latecomer came in and sat two or three seats behind us, to our left. The chair creaked as it unfolded and two soles planted themselves on the floor. Then there was a faint crackle, as of a packet being opened, popcorn maybe.
I don’t know why, but I quickly developed the sense that whoever was sitting there was looking at us. A discreet turn confirmed it. A man, probably middle-aged, in a shabby dark jacket with a wide-brimmed hat pulled down to conceal his face. Only that hat was turned towards us.
Ashanta nudged me. “Don’t.”
“Why’s he wearing a Stetson?” I whispered in her ear. Then, without waiting for her to reply I said, “He’s watching us.”
“I know. Shh.”
“Do you know him, then?”
She turned to me. “We both do. It’s Captain Mason.”
