Mask on the Cruise Ship Read online

  An or else hung in the air, as if it were washing on a clothesline. “I’m sorry I ever brought you two together,” I told Jack crossly.

  Because I had, last summer. Madge had been going out with a total dweeb at the time.

  Jack must have remembered last summer too. He grinned. He never could stay stern for long. “No, you’re not sorry you did,” he said and kissed me on the forehead.

  It took us more than half an hour, because the Empress Marie turned out to have three swimming pools, not one. Madge and I kept asking directions from stewards bearing trays. And each time we did, I’d lift a nummy appetizer from the tray…

  I started waddling instead of walking. “I might sink in water,” I speculated, but Madge was too busy ooo-ing over the shops we passed, with designer this and designer that displayed in elegant little windows.

  “Do you realize the Empress Marie has 14,000 square feet of shopping?” my sister enthused, in exactly the same awed tone other passengers at the railing were using to describe the orca whales they’d just spotted.

  I waddled over to the railing to try and see for myself a gleaming black fin amid the slate-colored waves.

  But Madge pulled me onward. “Jack’s waiting,” she scolded — after dawdling to ogle a Chanel purse.

  “Mflgmfgtch,” I retorted through the mouthful of prawns I’d just grabbed off a passing tray. Madge glanced at me oddly as I crunched the prawns. I didn’t know what her problem was: I just happened to prefer them shell-on.

  Word had spread about the orcas. People started cramming that particular deck. Among them, I saw the elderly woman whose glasses Gooseberry Eyes had knocked off. They were now back on her nose, though thickly masking-taped. With the force of the crowd, she was being bundled up against the railing.

  I felt sorry for her. “That woman could use a life rope,” I remarked to Madge.

  Except that Madge was gone, lost in the scrunch of bodies. She’d probably moved on to that perfume boutique over there. But, being short, I couldn’t see.

  I began to wish I hadn’t gobbled quite so much off the passing trays. Stuffed as I was, I sure couldn’t move very quickly.

  Forget orca whales. I was a beached one.

  However, not for nothing were my friend Pantelli and I the champion belchers of Lord Bithersby Elementary. I summoned up my loudest one ever.

  With distasteful looks, the people around me edged away. I darted over to the perfume boutique, positive Madge would be there, dreamily choosing between eau de this and parfum de that.

  No Madge.

  “Oh dear,” moaned someone behind me. “I could use some smelling salts, if they have any.”

  It was the elderly woman with the masking-taped glasses. “So crowded,” she murmured. “I have a phobia about crowds … ”

  In a rare tactful impulse, I stopped myself from demanding what, for goodness’ sake, she was doing on a cruise. Instead I took hold of her arm and led her into the boutique.

  “I need something strong,” the woman told the sales clerk. “I feel so faint … ”

  The sales clerk, thin and pinch-faced, was busy craning out the boutique window for a glimpse. “That must’ve been thrilling! I wish I could get out to see a whale,” she complained.

  “I wish I could have a peaceful cruise,” the elderly woman shuddered. She attempted to straighten her glasses, which the wad of masking tape was weighing down on one side. They immediately slipped into a diagonal slant again. “First I got crashed into, and now masses of people smother me.”

  Spying a nearby tester bottle, she began spraying its contents rather wildly around her. “That’s better. Most soothing,” she breathed.

  I, too, was now doused with the perfume, called Sinful Satin. A sickly floral scent. Stupid Satin would be a better name for it, in my view. “Does anybody have a gas mask?” I demanded.

  “Excuse me, madam.” The clerk tried to tug the Sinful Satin away from the elderly woman, who, in her distress, was continuing to spray freely.

  “Let’s go outside, dear,” the elderly woman suggested to me. “I’m afraid we’ve made a bad impression. I’m Lavinia O’Herlihy. Do you know what else I am?”

  A bit weird, I answered her silently.

  But as we stepped out on the deck, I already liked Lavinia. Behind her crooked glasses, her blue eyes had a definite twinkle.

  “I’m a fan of yours,” the old lady continued. “I saw you in The Moonstone. That’s how I know who you are, Miss Dinah Galloway. You were wonderful. What a voice! I went with several friends, and believe me, we all switched our hearing aids off. No need for ’em!”

  “Thank you,” I said and giggled. I’d never had a compliment put quite that way before. And Lavinia’s timing was good, too, because I was still smarting over Talbot’s and Liesl’s insults. Break the sound barrier, indeed. Huh!

  “I’m interested in finding out about the man who crashed into you,” I said as Lavinia once again vainly tried to straighten her glasses. “I think he may be a thief. A would-be one, anyhow.”

  Lavinia stared at me, then let out a snort. “Dinah, all I know is that anyone who would shove old ladies down is slimy, cowardly, inconsiderate — ”

  “Dinah!” exclaimed Madge, breezing up to us. “Where’d you go? I thought I’d lost you. We’ve got a swimming lesson to get you to.”

  I was about to question Lavinia further about her Gooseberry Eyes experience when Madge suddenly gave a huge, and very disapproving, sniff.

  “Di, what’re you doing wearing Sinful Satin? It doesn’t suit you at all.”

  Chapter 6

  Not exactly in the swim of things

  I splashed about in the middle of the pool.

  “I’ve conquered my fear of the water,” I called to Jack. “Can I come out now?”

  “The wading pool doesn’t count, Ms. Galloway.” With a crook of his thumb, Jack gestured to the main swimming pool, which stretched, it seemed to me, for ominous miles.

  I trudged out of the wading pool and stood beside the main pool’s shallow end. “Do you know how many people drown each year in mere inches of water?” I asked Jack. “I mean, have you seen the stats?”

  “IN,” ordered Jack.

  That first lesson wasn’t so bad. He held on to my waist while I kicked my feet and rotated my arms.

  “Good. Relax, though,” he instructed. “Remember what I’ve told you to do, but don’t think about it, if you know what I mean.”

  At the moment of replying, my mouth was underwater. “Glub, glub,” I said.

  I lifted my face to expound on this, but Jack told me to keep practicing my crawl. After a while he exclaimed, “Hey, you’re doing pretty well, Di. Let’s see if you can swim on your own.”

  He let go of me — and I promptly sank.

  I stood on the end of the diving board. At the blue bottom of the pool, an octopus-sized version of the white cruise ship logo shimmered at me.

  Since I wasn’t expected to dive in, I didn’t feel nervous. Plus, my lesson with Jack being over, I had my glasses on again. Jack said that if I knew how to swim, blurry vision wouldn’t matter — but I didn’t believe him. He didn’t understand what it was like.

  Mr. Trotter was nearby, straightening the deck chairs into orderly rows. Noticing me, he glanced over at Jack, as if for help. But Jack was busy telling his first group of students the rules of the pool. These beginning swimmers were kindergarten age, which was why I’d refused to join the beginners’ class. I mean, I would have been with tinies.

  “I hope the staterooms are secure,” I called to the program director. I was thinking of Julie Hébert and the mask she was keeping in her room.

  Mr. Trotter creaked a last chair into place and glared at me. “Of course the staterooms are secure.” He checked his watch. “I’m in rather a hurry, Miss Galloway, so I don’t have time to waste on frivolity.”

  “Always walk slowly and carefully around the pool,” Jack was telling the tinies, who were looking very chubby and cu
te in their life jackets.

  I remembered what Mr. Wellman had told me about not creating trouble, but I couldn’t help myself. “I’m not frivolous,” I informed the program director. “I’m very businesslike. It’s just that I’m concerned about things that might go missing.”

  Mr. Trotter’s face had darkened to an unbecoming beet color. I shouldn’t have bothered him. Memo to self: Always listen to your agent.

  Jack told the tinies, though he was frowning in my direction, “No fooling around on the diving board when you can’t swim.”

  Suddenly, behind me, at the edge of the deep end: “Look who it is — the brussels sprouts queen!”

  I whirled.

  Talbot St. John! In swimming trunks, with a towel round his neck and a teasing grin around the soulful features Liesl found so appealing.

  Second memo to self: Never whirl on a diving board. My heels slid, meeting only air. I wobbled, flailing to regain my balance —

  I fell backward.

  As I hit the water, I could already see the huge splashes rising to smack squarely against Mr. Trotter …

  “So now Talbot — a total twerp, by the way — has been banned from the indoor pool,” I told Evan, who was tinkling out his as yet nameless tune in a warm-up for our performance.

  Which was about to start. People were wandering in, settling at little round tables and eyeing the lists of appetizers and drinks on the two-sided, stand-up cards they found before them.

  At the sight of the cards, I forgot my indignation at Talbot — for the moment. I thought, Yup, I’ll try out my joke about “Food, Glorious Food” being the ideal theme song for the Empress Marie. Maybe I’ll soon be known for my wit as much as my singing!

  Mother and Madge came up to wish me luck. “That’s a catchy tune,” Mother complimented Evan. “You should try to sell it.”

  “Gotta think of some lyrics first,” Evan replied, pleased. “Dah DAH dah dah DAH dah,” he murmured along with the notes and then shook his head. “The SONG with no NAME yet. Nope, the words aren’t coming to me.”

  “Paul McCartney went through the same thing,” Mother reminded him. “For ages, the only title he could think of for ‘Yesterday’ was ‘Scrambled Eggs’.”

  Evan laughed. “‘Yesterday’ was a definite improvement. Thanks for encouraging me, Suzanne. I’ll keep trying.”

  “Dah DAH dah dah DAH dah,” I sang along happily. “It’s a great tune. It makes you jumpy, in a nice kind of way.” I began to hop from one foot to the other. It was partly the tune and partly the rush of energy I always got when about to perform.

  Madge winced. “Please don’t do that, Dinah. I’ve already got a touch of seasickness.”

  “Ah, seasickness, the scourge of cruising,” I nodded. “Were you paying attention at orientation, Madge? They said it gets way worse when we head out to open sea.” I gave her a friendly elbowing. “Heave ho, get it? Heave ho.” I hooted appreciatively at my wit.

  “Madge and I will sit down now,” Mother informed me. She led my sister, who’d grown rather pale, to their front-row table.

  Evan chuckled. “I’m not sure this ‘twerp,’ as you call Talbot, realizes what he’s in for, taking you on, Dinah.”

  “Jack really reamed him out for scaring me,” I said in satisfaction. I giggled. “That was after Jack had plunged in to save me — dousing Mr. Trotter a second time. Oh well,” I added philosophically. “I might not even see Talbot again on this cruise. I mean, there are two thousand passengers milling around.”

  Evan grew concerned, as grown-ups always do sooner or later in a conversation. (This is what makes talking to them for any length of time so trying.) “I’ll do my best to watch out for him, Dinah. There’s no reason your week on the Empress should be ruined by personality clashes.”

  I stared at him. “In my view, personality clashes tend to enhance an experience,” I protested — but by then Evan was thrumming out the introductory notes to “Food, Glorious Food”, and it was time for me to sing.

  When the applause died down, I tried out my joke about “Food, Glorious Food” being the cruise theme song.

  Silence. People paused in chomping on their appetizers to gaze at me bewilderedly. Only Jack, who’d slipped in late after his lesson with the tinies, grinned. Beside him, Mother had been too busy fussing over an increasingly sickly-looking Madge to hear.

  “Huh!” I commented. “Guess I better stick to singing for a living.”

  Applause. That joke they all liked — go figure! I giggled and they clapped some more. I realized something: an audience and I get energy from each other.

  Granted, that’s after the initial terror of stepping out in front of them.

  I started in on my mother’s favorite song from Oliver! — “Who Will Buy?” A great belter-outer. I kept the beginning of the song shy and sad-sounding, though, the way Evan and I had rehearsed it. I became a wistful London Cockney girl, hoping against hope someone would buy her red roses.

  I had a portable mike, so I strolled around between the tables as if I really did have a basket of roses to offer, just like in the play.

  “Who will buy my sweet red roses?”

  I sang the next verses louder, building up to the agonized part where the singer begs someone at least to notice what a beautiful morning it is. Maybe they’d buy that — but of course what she wants is what you can’t buy: love.

  When I finished, I saw that a bunch of elderly women were mopping at their eyes with blue napkins imprinted with fat white ship logos. “So lovely, dear,” sobbed Lavinia O’Herlihy from the middle of the group. She raised her glasses so she could stuff the napkin against her streaming lids.

  I covered the mike. “Hey, Lavinia, you got your glasses fixed!”

  “There’s an optician on board,” sniffled Lavinia.

  “On a cruise ship, there’s everything you could possibly need,” said another woman, and they all nodded.

  Except for the oldest of them, who I saw now was actually a man. White-haired and spindly, he was hunched so far forward the tip of his nose was practically stirring the bowl of soup in front of him. “WHAT’S GOING ON?” he shouted peevishly. His tiny dark eyes blinked hard in the steam rising from the soup.

  “IT’S ALL RIGHT, IRA.” Lavinia patted the frail old man on one of his tweed-jacketed shoulders. “WE’LL FILL YOU IN LATER.

  “Deaf as a post,” she explained to me. “This is Ira Stone of Stone Construction. I’ve read about his financial empire in the newspapers. ” And, winking, Lavinia rubbed her thumb and fingers together to signify that Ira had pots of money.

  Wow. Lavinia was after Ira. Or after his pots of money, at any rate. And quite open about it. What a gal!

  I guessed the song was wrong. You could buy love — the love of someone else for your money, that is.

  Evan was playing the intro to my next song, “As Long As He Needs Me.” Another belter-outer. A romantic one. It would certainly suit Lavinia’s mood — too bad Ira wouldn’t be able to hear it.

  During one of the breaks, I went back to Lavinia’s table. I wanted to ask her about Gooseberry Eyes. Could she give me a good description of him?

  However, when I started to speak —

  “STUFF AND NONSENSE!” shouted Ira. He’d been served another snack. This time the tip of his nose was almost touching a bowl of rice pudding.

  “Later, dear,” Lavinia told me, a little curtly. “Ira needs help with his food.” Turning away, she picked up Ira’s spoon, dipped it in the pudding and began to feed him.

  At my next break I hung around Lavinia some more, but she ignored me. “Lavinia’s determined to become the next Mrs. Ira Stone,” one of the other ladies twinkled. “Must be your wonderful singing, Dinah. You’re a regular Cupid.”

  Huh. I didn’t know if I could agree with that. Granted, Cupid and I were both chubby. However, I was hardly into flying around naked and shooting arrows into people.

  Julie Hébert slipped into the lounge when I was singing “Consider Y
ourself.” Her face grew sad when I reached the line “Consider yourself part of the family.” Doubtless she was thinking about her stepsister — oh well. Maybe if I blasted out the song, I could blast Elaine right out of her thoughts.

  I planted my feet apart, tipped my head back, held the mike up and let the eardrum-splitting finale of the song rip. In my view, a good voice isn’t something to be used sparingly, like the family silver.

  “CONSIDER YOURSELF ONE OF U-U-U-U-U-S!”

  Whoa. People were standing to applaud! On and on. Holy Toledo!

  I turned and gestured for Evan to rise and get lots of applause too. It was inspiring to think that our performance had the power to make people happy.

  Uh, not quite everyone.

  Straight ahead of me, at the front-row table, Madge was throwing up into her purse.

  Chapter 7

  Lavinia, she went a-courtin’

  With careful planning I was able to fit four cheese blintzes on my plate. I made a second layer on top, of papaya wedges. Then, the crowning glory, a third layer of fat wedge fries.

  “I wish Pantelli was here to see this,” I told Jack. “He’s a champion food stacker as well.”

  “I doubt Happy Escapes Cruise Lines could afford both of you,” Jack replied.

  From the 130-item buffet, he’d selected eggs Benedict, toast and strawberries. In other words, only one layer! I shook my head at him.

  “So how’s Madge?” Jack demanded as we joined Mother and Julie at a table. “Seasick or not, she has to appear sometime.” He stole a wedge fry from my top layer.

  Well, I’d put a stop to that. I emptied a large part of our table’s ketchup bottle over the fries. I then gave him an evil, cunning smile.

  “About Madge,” Jack reminded me. He couldn’t ask Mother, because she was busy chatting with Julie.

  “Oh, right. Madge.” I waved a wedge fry around airily; a splotch of ketchup flew off and landed on the otherwise snowy cloth of the next table. Luckily no one had sat down there yet. “Madge asked me to explain that she can’t see you ever again,” I informed him. “Sorry.”