The Hope (21 page)

He joined Maria for a silent lunch.

In the afternoon he shut himself away in the bedroom, emerging at around 16.00.

“Been busy?” Maria asked, as a formality.

“Yes, my dearest
ricettacola
, I have spent a very profitable day.” He gave her a peck on the cheek. His moustache prickled her. “I am just going to make peace with the Montgomerys. I think this nonsense has gone on long enough.”

Maria stared at him with a mixture of astonishment and judicious concern as he walked out with a small tool bag under his arm.

Bellini knocked gently on the Montgomerys’ cabin door. Arnold opened it and instantly banged it shut. He called from inside: “Go away! Leave us alone.”

“But, my dear sir, I have come to make peace. This petty bickering between us is senseless and cannot be allowed to continue. We must respect one another’s privacy. I have come to do you a favour, but if I have interrupted you I will come back later.”

“We weren’t doing anything. Did you say ‘favour’?”

“Yes. I offer to repair your bed. Perhaps that way, we will both get a better night’s sleep.”

Arnold opened the door a crack.

“Are you sure about this? I mean, you really don’t have to.”

“Will you be able to get a janitor to fix it? No. But I have some small skills as a carpenter and I will do what I can.”

“Well, come on in then.” Arnold swung the door fully open and held out a hand to Bellini. “I agree with you, I think it’s better that we don’t fight. I mean, there’s enough fighting on board the
Hope
anyway without two sane chaps like you and me butting heads, eh?”

“Quite right,” said Bellini, beaming as he walked across the threshold and shook Arnold’s hand.

Arnold introduced him properly to Tracy, who smiled nervously. She had heard about the Italian temperament and expected anything but the amorous hug and kisses the
signor
bestowed upon her.

“
Ah, bruttissima
!” sighed Bellini; Tracy blushed and Arnold, who like his wife did not speak a word of Italian, chose to assume a proud and pleased expression. “You are a lucky man, Mr Montgomery.”

“Please, you can call me Arnold.”

“Arnold. How distinguished. I am Gian.”

“Gian’s come to make peace, Tracy, and he’s offered to mend the bed.”

“Oh, that’s wonderful. It is a tiny bit noisy, isn’t it?” She gave a shy giggle.

“The screws are loose, that is all,” said Bellini. “A simple matter. I will have it fixed in no time. Is it in here?” He indicated the bedroom and Arnold readily ushered him through. There were boxes, some full, some empty, strewn over the floor. In one corner there was a pile of framed pictures, only one of which had been hung up. This solitary portrait of a half-naked woman made the walls seem even more bare. The whole room was incomplete, undressed. Bellini put down his tool bag and jiggled the bedstead so that it bumped against the wall. He hummed and hahed for a minute, jiggled it a bit more, and stroked his moustache. “Yes. It should not be too difficult.”

“This is awfully kind of you, Gian. I thought after my little trick the other night you would rather punch me in the face than do me a favour.”

“Ah, we must forgive and be tolerant. I did not mind so much your little trick.”

“It was quite … amusing, wasn’t it?”

“What? Oh, amusing… Yes, very amusing.”

“Well?”

“Well what?”

“Will you fix the bed?”

“Oh,
si
. But surely you do not wish to stand around watching me work? It will not be very interesting.”

“You don’t need a hand?”

“No, not at all.”

“This is decent of you. Tracy and I were going to pop out for a bite to eat.”

“Do that.”

“You don’t mind if we leave you here for half an hour?”

“Not at all.”

Arnold and Tracy made their goodbyes, having asked if there was anything they could get the
signor
and received a polite refusal, and left him to it.

“Such a nice man,” said Tracy as they made their way to the dining-hall.

“I thought he might want to kill me after what I did to him, but he’s turned out to be a rather good sort.”

“And it’s important that we get on with the neighbours.”

“Such a better class of people than we had down on M deck.”

Tracy slipped her hand into Arnold’s. “And the bed’s being fixed! You’re a clever old thing, Arnold.”

Arnold found it hard not to smile.

They returned to find Bellini putting the finishing touches to his handiwork. The bed did not look noticeably sturdier, but he assured them it would not wobble and bump as badly as before. Arnold stepped forward to give it a test.

“No, no!” cried Bellini. “I must warn you, my friends. The glue I have used will not be truly dry until midnight.” He winked and tapped the side of his nose. “I would advise you not to use it until then. Perhaps you would care to come to the ballroom instead this evening? Complimentary, of course.”

“Well…” said Arnold.

“We’ve got plans,” said Tracy hastily.

“Ah, plans. Never mind.”

“But any time I can return the favour, I will,” enthused Arnold. “Just ask.”

“Of course.”

The two men shook hands again, and Bellini embraced Tracy like a long-lost cousin. The Montgomerys saw that he was smiling a smile of deep satisfaction.

“I’m glad this matter is resolved,” he said.

“Yes, it’s good that we can forgive and forget,” said Arnold, choked with sympathy.

“There is nothing that I have forgiven,” said the s
ignor
as he stood in the doorway.

“Surely you mean there’s nothing to forgive, don’t you?” suggested Tracy.

“Yes, that is what I mean. My English is not very good. The grammar is so hard.
Buona notte
.”

At a quarter to midnight, the brass section tramped into the Bellinis’ cabin, lured by the promise of another voluble rehearsal and the offer of a small consideration of money from the
signor
’s own pocket. All in all, it had been a profitable week for the members of the Bellini Orchestra. On this occasion Maria put up a protest of wild-eyed and stony silence, which was somehow more terrifying than her previous verbal outpouring of fury. Bellini doubted he would get a civil word out of her for a week or be allowed to return to the bedroom for another month, but he considered it a small price to pay.

The brass section sat in readiness, puffing into their instruments to warm them up and waiting for their great conductor to give the signal. The
signor
’s neighbours, they decided, were tolerant people who clearly loved music, and so they resolved to give an especially rousing display tonight.

Bellini cocked his head, listening out intently for something. The trombonist’s knee quivered in anticipation.

Suddenly, Bellini raised his baton.

“Two, three…”

In the cabin above, a few seconds before the Bellini Orchestra brass section began their attempt to outdo Joshua and his trumpeters at the walls of Jericho, Arnold and Tracy Montgomery tumbled loudly on to the newly repaired bed in a tangle of arms, legs and clothing, only to discover that the mattress was no longer attached to the bed-frame. As they crashed through the floor, Arnold was thinking that the
signor
had not been as much of a handyman as he claimed. But this was not the case. The true ingenuity of the
signor
’s craftsmanship was evident in his introduction of three wickedly sharp wooden spikes, each over two foot long, the end product of an afternoon’s energetic whittling on pieces of wood bought from Bart’s. These were fixed pointing into the underside of the bed in such a way that they were pushed upward by the force of the mattress as it descended beneath the weight of two bodies. The spikes pierced the mattress and impaled first Tracy, then Arnold.

Arnold could not understand why his wife was screaming and why he himself could not move and why they were wriggling like baited worms. He found it hard to think, what with Tracy screaming and the trumpets blaring away down below and this peculiar feeling in his chest and stomach… It felt very wrong there; was it something he had eaten? Things were growing dim around him. He could see Tracy’s contorted face in blurred close-up. Was that blood?

The brass section noticed how beneath Bellini’s moustache a great I’m-in-control grin had formed, and they redoubled their efforts in order to afford him the greatest possible pleasure for his money. They were deaf to anything except their noise, as were the inhabitants of the surrounding deck area.

Maria thought the trumpets sounded like human screams.

FRIEND SHIP

Pratt had chosen to be sexless because having a sex caused endless confusions and complications. For example, it limited your choice of friends. Being sexless, you could have both men friends and women friends and not feel awkward in the company of either, scared neither to roar heartily or smile secretly depending on the sex of the company. A further compensation was that no one could criticise your choice of friends. A woman who associates mainly with men is a slut; a man who associates mainly with women is a pansy. Pratt was neither a slut nor a pansy, but poised elegantly somewhere in between.

Pratt thought that Pratt might have had a sex once. Pratt’s first name might have been James or Jane, George or Georgina, Paul or Paula, but that was a matter of the past, immaterial. Only the nameless, sexless present mattered.

In the nameless, sexless present, Pratt was watching a performance by a troupe of clowns – cavorting and leaping shapes in red-spotted costumes and gills of ruff around their necks, each with a cherry for a nose. They back-flipped and forward-flipped, leap-frogged and prat-fell, banged each other on the head, pulled each other’s ginger wigs, sat on their baggy bottoms rubbing their bruised egos before jumping to their feet again and rejoining the fray. There was circus music coming from somewhere; Pratt was unsure of its source but nevertheless clapped joyously in time. Pratt punctuated the clowns’ performance with whoops like commas and laughter like a full stop at the end of every gag.

When Pratt gave three big laughs, the clowns stopped their antics and looked up as if they had just heard thunder. The music was amputated in mid-note. The clowns scurried away into the walls, which parted for them like curtains, dragging their paraphernalia of ladders and squirty flowers and hoops. Pratt begged them to return, crying, “Encore! Encore!” and clapping until Pratt’s palms ached, but nothing happened.

The cabin was empty and chilly without the clowns.

Pratt drew consolation from the fact that loneliness was all in the mind. Being on your own did not make you lonely. Not seeing your neighbours did not make you lonely. Not going out for dinner did not make you lonely. It was so easy to have friends, friends of either sex, if you were on your own. The
Hope
sent you friends, and friends filled your time, whiling away the hours of the present until the present became the past and the future became the present.

Pratt had a dachshund called Dotty. Pratt could not remember where Dotty had come from, nor how Pratt knew what breed of dog Dotty was, nor how Pratt knew what a dog was at all. There were no dogs on the
Hope
. Pratt had no memories of dogs. All the same, Pratt shared the cabin with Dotty, and Dotty, although she possessed the most affectionate of characters, also possessed the most incontinent of bladders. She had been sitting on the lower bunk watching the clowns’ display and in the excitement a spray of piss jetted from her rear over the bedclothes. Dotty took one look behind her, crawled off the bed and slithered underneath, from where she poked out her nose and two mournful eyes.

“Don’t worry, Dotty,” said Pratt. “I’ll wash it in the basin, using some of Mr Sellar’s soap powder.”

As soon as his name was mentioned Mr Sellar popped out from behind the table. He wore a grey suit, grey shirt, grey tie, grey shoes and a hat (black), and he was clutching a great big box of Sudso washing powder. He sang a jingle:

“Sudso, oh Sudso

It’ll clean off your mud so

It’ll clean up that blood so

It’ll sort out that piss so

So get Sudso

If you know-ow

That stains are no-go.

“Sudso!” he cried. “The newest, the latest, the bestest of all the new, late, best cleaning cleaner washing powders ever invented! It makes blacks grey and greys white and whites black. You won’t know who you are! You won’t know why you are! You won’t know what you are! No mess, no fuss, no bother, no lather. Sudso!” Then he sang the jingle again so that no one could forget the name Sudso, and ducked back under the table.

Pratt stared agog at the space in the air that had just held Mr Sellar. Pratt had no great fondness for Mr Sellar because friends should never sell to or steal from one another and Mr Sellar seemed to be doing both, but Pratt also knew it was uncharitable to dwell on a friend’s shortcomings. Friendship was about forgiving friends’ failings and loving their virtues.

Pratt was proud of Pratt’s friends. Pratt had chosen them from all the thousands of possible friends on the
Hope
, and their company made each passing day passable, made living livable, from the moment when Pratt came down from the bunk in the morning, stretching and yawning (as Pratt had done barely quarter of an hour ago), to the time in the evening when Pratt would glide wearily back to bed wearing pink bedsocks, nightshirt and nightcap (as Pratt was wearing now). Not all the friends were friendly – Mr Sellar, for example, or Mrs Shame – but it would be pointless to have friends who agreed with you all the time.

Before Pratt had a chance to see to the soiled sheets, Pratt felt Pratt’s belly grumbling and an urge coming on, so Pratt took out the slop bucket from the cupboard. The bucket was nearly full to the brim. Doris the cleaning-lady (and friend) would have to empty it out soon. Pratt hitched up Pratt’s nightshirt and squatted. If Pratt either stood or squatted purely for the purpose of urinating, it would be making a statement of sex, so as a rule Pratt had to wait until Pratt’s bowels caught up with Pratt’s bladder and then deal with both urges at the same time, as did men and women alike.