Here Come the Girls (17 page)

‘Flaming heck,’ said Frankie. ‘And there was me thinking I might be bored rigid cooped up on a ship for two and a half weeks. No brainer: Broadway for me again. I love Motown.’

A good half-hour passed before a shadow fell across Frankie’s face and a man’s irritated voice stirred her from a light doze.

‘Excuse me,’ he said. ‘I think you’ll find these three are our sunloungers.’

Frankie stretched and opened up her eyes to see a stunningly good-looking couple: a leggy pouty woman and the man who Ven thought was an actor from the telly. But all Frankie saw now was a couple of cheeky bleeders. And why had he reserved three beds when there were only two of them? So he wouldn’t have the inconvenience of a mere mortal lying next to him perhaps?

‘Nope, I don’t think they
are
yours,’ Frankie said, like a calm, confident John Wayne squaring up to an irate Jack Palance.

Had Olive been a snail, she would have retreated as far into her shell as it was possible to go. Ven’s eyes just opened so wide that her eyeballs were in danger of popping out.

The woman, in very short shorts, a bikini top that barely covered her nipples and a fully made-up face, stood behind her man, hand on slim hip making annoyed supportive faces.

‘I remember quite specifically which sunbeds were ours, thank you!’ The man stabbed his finger at the sunbeds. It was a very refined finger too. Long and arty with a weighty gold ring on it. But then it did belong to a very attractive rest of him – thick black hair sleeked back, a young Sean Connery-type face, rugged arms leading from a vest that showed his chest area was very well defined. Deffo a six-pack in existence under the material too.

Frankie felt that stirring again inside her that had visited earlier when she first saw the earmarked unoccupied sunbeds. She felt possessed by the spirit of a confrontational imp – an echo of the old gutsy self that she had lost somewhere in the past few years.

‘You can’t stick a towel on a sunbed and walk off for hours, love,’ she told him. ‘There are over three thousand people on this boat and we all have an equal right to them.’

‘Do you know who . . .’ the man began, but the woman pulled him away before he started spitting feathers everywhere. Frankie watched him muttering angrily to her as they left, he blowing off steam like a giant’s kettle, she patting his shoulder to calm him down.

‘Who the hell was that knob?’ said Frankie.

‘That, I believe,’ said Ven with a voice shaking like an opera singer on a vibrating plate, ‘was Dom Donaldson.’

Chapter 28

‘. . . And can you believe Frankie told Dom Donaldson off –
the
Dom Donaldson!’ Olive was telling Roz in the Vista as they waited for the waiter to bring their pre-dinner cocktails.

‘Not in so many words,’ said Frankie. ‘I didn’t swear. I just told him he didn’t have any right to reserve a sunbed and not use it. And I’m sure he was just about to say those words which immediately mark anyone out as a total cock: “
Do you know who I am?
”’ She wondered what she would have said to him if he had.

They had commandeered four chairs around a table by the window. The sun was lowering into the sea, feathery clouds bobbing in a sky that seemed to be growing bluer by the hour.

‘I’m sure he wouldn’t have said that,’ Ven defended her hero. ‘Maybe he didn’t realise how things work on a ship.’

‘Absolutely, Ven. And maybe he’s half-German,’ said Frankie with smiling sarcasm. ‘It wouldn’t be his fault then. Just his natural impulse coming out to chuck towels on loungers.’

‘You’ll never win,’ said Olive to Frankie. ‘Dom Donaldson can do no wrong in Venice Smith’s eyes.’

‘His girlfriend looks very like Angelina Jolie, don’t you think?’ said Ven.

‘Tangerina Orange Jelly, more like,’ sniffed Frankie. ‘She’s about as much like old Angie as I am. Where the hell did they get those tans? They look like the colour of my fence.’

‘Oh, shut up talking about them and look at that view. What a gorgeous evening.’ Olive was wearing her new floral sundress and matching shrug and feeling not at all out of place amongst the other passengers.

Suddenly Dom Donaldson was forgotten as a tall hunk of a man in a pristine white uniform walked through the lounge and said, ‘Good evening,’ to everyone he passed. Ven’s eyes rounded.

‘Who. Is. That?’ she said, her jaw dropping to deck six. ‘Now he
is
my idea of what the Captain should look like.’

‘Could you say that just a bit louder?’ said Frankie. ‘Only they didn’t quite hear you in Hong Kong.’

‘They don’t pick the Captains on their looks, you know,’ tutted Roz.

‘Well, they should,’ said Ven. ‘I would if I worked for Figurehead.’

‘I think I have to agree with you on this one, Ven. He’s a bit gorgeous,’ said Frankie, as Ven continued to study the officer who had set her all a-tremble. Tall with short, salt and pepper hair, very sexy light-grey eyes and a Robin Hood’s bow for a mouth. She put him slightly older than them – early-mid forties – the age where men either became full fruit or withered on the vine. This man was, in the words of St John Hite:
a tang-tastic zingy partnership of chilled class and yummy body
.

‘And sadly so out of my league it’s untrue,’ sighed Ven, getting ready to sign her name on the chitty for the three Tequila Sunrises and a Chocolate Banana cocktail.

Half an hour later, as the four ladies approached the dinner-table, they noticed there were weighted balloons floating over the middle of it.

‘Ooh, is this something to do with your competition people?’ Roz asked.

‘No, can’t be,’ replied Ven, before adding quickly, ‘at least, I don’t think so.’

‘Evening, all,’ said Eric and Irene, also spotting the balloons. ‘Someone got a birthday?’

‘Not me,’ said Ven. ‘Not this week, anyway.’

The mystery was solved a few minutes later when Royston and Stella joined them. They’d ignored the dress code and were in full formal ensemble. The reason for that would become clear in Royston’s first breath.

‘It’s our anniversary,’ he explained. ‘We were thinking about going to Cruz but we changed our minds.’

‘Cruz, what’s that?’ said Ven.

‘It’s the celebrity chef restaurant on the seventeenth floor,’ Eric jumped in, always at his happiest when imparting ship info. ‘You know, Raul Cruz has given his name to it. You pay a small supplement to eat there but it’s apparently superb. I do believe he’s on board too.’

Wow, thought Roz. So it definitely was him she had seen at Southampton.

‘But we thought it might be nicer to spend the big day itself with some company,’ said Royston. ‘It would be a bit boring with just the pair of us at a table.’

‘Oy, cheeky.’ Stella nudged him sharply.

‘Wish we’d known, we’d have got you a card,’ said Ven.

‘Oh, don’t worry about that,’ said Royston and laughed. ‘You can buy us a present in Spain instead.’

‘So you’re going to be serenaded then,’ Eric nodded. ‘I don’t know, whatever ship you go on, whatever waiters you have, it always sounds the same.’

‘Bloody awful,’ grinned Royston.

Must be some in-joke, thought the girls. They hadn’t a clue what Eric and Royston were talking about.

‘Did you book any trips, ladies?’ asked Royston, after giving Aldrin, who Royston had now renamed ‘Buzz’, his order for venison.

‘Blimey, we forgot,’ said Ven. ‘We were too busy doing absolutely nothing.’

‘Do we have to pay to get off the ship?’ asked Roz.

‘No,’ Eric told her. ‘You just check out with your cruise card. Depending on how far the towns are away from the port, there will be a complimentary shuttle bus to take you in. Irene and I don’t tend to bother going on the organised trips these days. We’ve been on most of them and prefer to do our own thing.’

‘We’re off to Marbella,’ said Royston. ‘We’ve got friends who have a villa there and they’re doing a lobster lunch for us.’

‘Lovely, Marbella,’ said Eric. ‘Terribly expensive though. Anyway, we’re only going to stretch our legs on land for an hour. We’ve been to Malaga several times now so there’s nothing much we want to see. When everyone gets off, the ship is lovely and quiet. We’ll get the pool to ourselves.’

He turned to the girls then. ‘You really ought to look at the trips though, brilliant for first-time cruisers. Some of them are a bit pricey but there’s a lovely one at Cephalonia. Melissani – a once-underground lake. Beautiful.’

Olive felt her cheeks heat up as if Eric could see the picture inside her head of herself in a boat drifting on the lake. With Atho Petrakis. And what they did in that boat.

‘And what did you do today?’ Eric asked Stella. ‘Did you get ashore?’ He chortled to himself as seven out of the eight people on that table wondered how many more times he would make his silly joke during the holiday.

‘Actually I went to bingo and won twenty-three pounds on the very first house,’ said Stella.

‘There’s bingo as well?’ asked Ven.

‘Every day, twice a day, but I just go to the four o’clock one in Flamenco. It’s just a bit of fun, although it does get very serious at the end of the cruise if the snowball hasn’t been won.’

She looked too posh for bingo, thought Ven, imagining those perfectly manicured hands holding a bingo dabber.

Angel arrived at the table with two bottles of pink champagne.

‘Please join us in a glass,’ said Royston.

‘There’s not enough room for all of us in a glass,’ said Eric, giggling away at yet another poor joke.

‘That’s very kind of you,’ said Irene.

‘Well, it’s not often you find yourself married for thirty-nine years,’ said Royston, giving Stella a big wink.

‘Goodness me,’ said Eric, although it was noted that he didn’t dive in and try and pip them by saying something on the lines of, ‘Well, Irene and I have been married fifty-one years.’ For once, the girls thought, Eric must have been outdone.

When eight glasses had been poured out, Eric led the toast.

‘Many more to come for you both,’ he said, tipping his glass their way. ‘Happy Anniversary, Royston and Stella.’ The others echoed that and sipped whilst they chose from yet another gorgeous menu, although Roz still plumped for soup and sirloin steak.

After dessert, the waiters began to gravitate towards their table.

‘Oh here we go!’ laughed Eric. ‘The choir.’

After a signal from Supremo, the waiters launched into the worst rendition of ‘Congratulations’ the girls had ever heard. It was so bad it was brilliant. People from surrounding tables were clapping along – cruisers who had seen it all before, presumably, and knew the drill. Royston basked in the attention, Stella endured it with a tortured smile on her face and intermittent jangling from her many glittery bangles.

They went as an eight to the Motown show in Broadway and thoroughly enjoyed it. Then Royston insisted they all join him and Stella for a nightcap in the champagne bar Beluga. They parted company just after eleven o’clock; everyone went back to their cabins, full of fizz and good food, except for Ven who walked up the stairs and out onto the top deck. It was dark but the air was warm and soft. She looked out and, though there was nothing to see but a fingernail-snip of moon, dots of stars in the sky, and waves sprinkled with silver, she thought it was beautiful. The ship rocked gently on the shushing sea, the breeze tumbled through her hair and she smiled to herself. For the first time in ages she felt calm and rested and thought she might have
got it
, what people found so wonderful about such a simple thing as water, when it looked as if it could have gone on and down for ever.

D
AY
4: M
ALAGA

Dress Code: Smart Casual

Chapter 29

Olive awoke first the next morning and realised the ship wasn’t moving. They were in port. She threw back the curtains and, to her disappointment, the day looked dull again. She had been looking forward to wearing her new shorts and one of her swanky T-shirts. But it seemed as if it was going to be another cardigan day.

She had just put on her slacks and long-sleeved top when there was a sharp rap at the door and Ven’s accompanying voice.

‘Ol, are you up? It’s me, Ven.’

Olive opened the door to Ven in skimpy shorts and a vest with shoelace shoulder straps.

‘You’ll catch your death in that,’ Olive commented.

‘You’re joking,’ said Ven, grinning a wide arc. ‘It’s gorgeous. Seventy degrees according to the announcement some Irish officer has just given out over the Tannoy, and it’s not even nine o’clock yet. The sun is at the other side of the ship, but trust me it is out there and blazing for us. So take those thermals off whilst I get the other two lazy arses up and then we can go up for a nice sunny breakfast.’

And sure enough, when the four of them walked up to the Buttery, they passed the Topaz area and found that the great glass ceiling over the pool had been pulled back and the sun was streaming down through it. It was gorgeous. They were in Spain. Hot, bright, beautiful Spain.

‘What shall we do? Just have a plod about on land?’ asked Frankie, mid-toast-bite. She was wearing a lovely pale-blue top with a matching bolero and white shorts.

‘Yeah, why not. Let’s stretch our legs,’ said Olive. ‘When are we off next?’

‘We’ve got a couple of days at sea then we’re in Corfu,’ said Roz. ‘So it will be nice to have a walk about, won’t it?’

‘How’s the weather back home?’ asked Ven. ‘Anyone know?’

‘According to the
Mermaidia Times
, it’s chilly with thunderstorms expected,’ said Olive with glee.

‘How awful!’ exclaimed Frankie, with fake sympathy for all the people in the UK.

Ven popped the last of her almond croissant into her mouth. She dreaded to think how many calories it contained. But sod it, it was delicious and she was on holiday. ‘Come on, then. Let’s go and sample España!’

Getting off the ship was an easy enough experience. They went down to deck four, presented their cruise cards to a guy at a machine, which recorded they had left the ship and said a robotic ‘goodbye’ to them, and then they walked down a long tunnel and into a huge enclosed building with a small selection of shops promising better prices than Gibraltar. Once they had left the building and walked outside, the heat of the day hit them full on. Frankie stripped off her bolero and Roz caught her first glimpse of the angel motif on her shoulder.