Author: Kirsty Lewin

1966. On board the SS Himalaya

Dinner with the Captain was not going well. Tucked in tightly by his uniform, the Captain was too garrulous, too flashy, and too quick to pick out the prettiest of the young women in the group with a suggestive wink or a firm squeeze on an elbow. Janet was not picked out despite her mother pushing her towards him at every opportunity. Janet’s father stayed in the background but even he, Janet knew as she hid behind her hair, would have liked her to be more prominent, more alluring, a woman that people attended to in a crowd.

After the pre-dinner drinks, the Captain put an arm around each of the seventeen year old twins from Birmingham and sat them down on either side of him at the dining table like elegant bookends. They adjusted their short baby-blue summer dresses in unison, crossed their long shapely legs just so, and focused their full attention on the Captain’s pug-like lips. Janet, sitting at the other end of the long table, tutted, sighed and looked away. It couldn’t be true, that Angus was seeing someone else. She’d know. She’d know the way he touched her. The way he looked at her. She would have sensed something wrong, she was sure of it. Philip must have been lying. Attention seeking. Destroying the best thing that had ever happened to her.

The Captain raised a toast before the food was served and the passengers, now at least two drinks in, shouted cheers, and clashed their glasses together across the table. The bevy of tinkles reminded Janet of Christmas sleigh bells. There’d be no reindeer in Australia. Maybe there wouldn’t even be a Christmas? Where would Angus be at Christmas? Did the ships run then? Or did the crew go home to their families? Angus had barely mentioned his family. Always wanted to talk about her. Sweet whispers about what he could do to her, how she would like it, how unusual she was, how innocent. She didn’t even know where his family lived.

Janet was seated between a structural engineer from Hull and his nephew, Vince. Vince, who was around her own age, spoke on and on about writhing coils of snakes. On and on about armies of boot-stomping ants. On and on about the red venomous sacs on the backs of small spiders that would scuttle around their feet as soon as they made land in Sydney. Vince sketched out the dangerous creatures for her on the linen tablecloth with her bread knife. She couldn’t lean away from him without leaning in to the engineer. The engineer had a faint vinegary smell about him which reminded Janet of the fish shop in Pop George’s village. She’d always wait outside the shop for Pop George. Even in the rain. There’d been something not right about the fish shop. And there was something not right about the engineer.

Every so often, the engineer interrupted Vince to tell Janet about the bridges he would design, the roads projects he would oversee, the snorkeling he’d do, how rich they’d all be in just a few years. Janet nodded and smiled and counted the waiters in and out of the swing doors that led into the kitchen. She knew that Angus wasn’t on the serving team, but despite that, or perhaps because of it, she was sure he would emerge with a tray of drinks, or a stack of plates of beef, and give her a sly glance or a conspiratorial nod.

She was playing with her dessert, pushing velvety red peach slices around in custard to make neat swirls of pink and cream, when she caught sight of Philip. He was heading towards a door that led out onto the deck. Her brothers hadn’t been invited to the dinner that night. They were supposed to be eating with the older children, then being entertained by a magician or a musician, Janet couldn’t remember which.

There was something odd about the way Philip was walking around the edge of the room. As if he didn’t want to be noticed. As if he was up to something. He glanced in the direction of their parents. They were both animated, talking to the couple on the other side of the table. Her mother was laughing too loudly, something she often did after a second glass of wine. Her father had his hand on her mother’s arm, looking on proudly.

Janet put her spoon down and stood up. ‘Excuse me,’ she said to the engineer and his nephew, ‘I’m not feeling so well. I need to lie down.’ The engineer got up and nodded to Vince to do the same. They stood, awkward, their serviettes clutched in their hands, while Janet squeezed out from between them. Neither of them touched her, or asked to see her again.

Janet followed Philip out into the night. The deck lights were on, giving the ship a theatre-like feel, as if the black of the sea held the audience, and she Janet, was about to take the stage. She stood still for a moment, listening. She was used to the ship’s engines now, barely heard them, or the sea. She had to concentrate to bring the sounds forward in her mind, remind herself where she was, where she wasn’t.

And now, above the thrum of the ship pushing through the Indian Ocean, she heard voices, male, further down the deck. There was muffled laughter, then silence. It was Philip’s laugh, she was sure. She padded quietly towards the sounds. Two red glows danced above the railing in an unlit area beside a lifeboat. She caught a whiff of cigarette smoke. A bird swept suddenly over her head and she jumped. ‘Idiot,’ she said to herself. There was something about Philip’s laugh that concentrated her anger. Squeezed her stomach into a tight, heavy ball. Pushed her diaphragm upwards until she was breathless.

She was a couple of yards from them when they saw her. They were sitting on the railings, their feet on the deck-side, their backs to the sea. Philip was taking a long pull on the cigarette. His companion, perhaps a couple of years older than her brother, dropped his cigarette into the sea and jumped down. ‘Shit,’ he said. ‘I’m off.’ He squeezed past the lifeboat and disappeared. Philip stayed on the railing.

‘What the hell are you doing?’ Janet said to him.

‘Smoking,’

‘You’re not allowed to.’

‘What’s it got to do with you?’ Philip took another puff of the cigarette and blew the smoke towards Janet.

‘Everything,’ Janet said. ‘Everything. You’re trying to spoil everything.’

‘Why can’t you loosen up, Wee Jan. Have some fun for once.’

‘Don’t call me that, I’ve told you not to call me that.’

‘OK, OK.’ He hooked his feet under the lower railing and leant back. The breeze picked at his hair. He looked younger in the soft light. ‘Anyway, you should be grateful.’

‘Grateful?’ Janet’s stomach surged again. Heat pumped up through her chest, out into her face. ‘You spoiled everything. You always do. You always have.’ Something had happened to the colour and shape of her words. They were raw red. Jagged. Phosphorescent.

‘That’s not fair,’ Philip said, his left hand tightening on the railing. He sounded alarmed. ‘We didn’t want him to hurt you, Wee Jan. That’s all. He’s a skuzz bucket.’

Janet lunged at him. Tried to grab him around the waist. Pull him forward onto the deck. She was tangled in his arms. The cigarette flew into the air. His knees punched into her breasts. She staggered, dropping onto her haunches. His feet were above her. The soles of his shoes. She grabbed at them. Grabbed into thin air. Grabbed at the space of him. The scream was bird-like. High pitched. And floating. A floating scream that drifted, dissipated and disappeared into the night.

To be continued.

1966. On board the SS Himalaya

Janet leant over the railing on one of the lower decks seldom used by the other passengers and stared at the sea. Emerald waves whipped up against the sturdy white hull of the ship.  Two black frigatebirds were hunting low over the water, keeping up with the ship’s bow waves. Their long forked tails and pointy wings reminded Janet of the origami figures her father used to make for them when they were small. He’d used thin red cardboard. Or sometimes orange. He’d stopped when Philip was around ten. Must have thought that they were all too grown up for paper toys by then. Angus called the frigatebirds Flying Ws. She’d laughed when he’d told her that, and she’d told Philip and Ed and they’d laughed too.

The wind picked up and thin grey clouds started to clamber over the horizon. Janet shivered. She was still in her bathing suit, just the towel tied around her waist. Her feet were bare. She must have left the new yellow flip flops by the pool. Had she forgotten them, or had she kicked them aside because they were from Angus, and now tainted? She wasn’t sure. It was two, maybe three hours since Philip had told her about Angus and the other girl. He’d spoiled everything, the little shit.

She hated having brothers. Poking around in other people’s business. Spying on Angus. Spying on her. God, the pair of them must have seen them kissing. Her and Angus. A surge of heat swept up her chest and into her neck and cheeks. She squeezed the metal barrier harder, leant further over it until her long hair tumbled across her face and down towards the ocean. How long would it take her to climb over the railing, to fall, to sink under, to disappear in a shimmering stream of bubbles, to be eaten by the fishes, swallowed by a whale?  How long before anyone noticed that she’d vanished, vaporised, somewhere around the invisible marker of the equator?

She stayed bent over the railings with her hair kinking and tangling in the wind until the colour of the sea was dark olive and the sun had slipped down behind the horizon. Then, suddenly cold, she turned away from the ocean, pulled the towel up around her shoulders, and sat down on the deck, leaning up against the hard metal wall of the crew’s mess. She didn’t know what to do. Didn’t have anyone to ask. To confide in. Bessie, her best friend back in Scotland, would have told her to dump him. To stand square on, holding his eyes, and call him out for being a two-timer. But Bessie wasn’t with her. And without Bessie, Janet lacked courage. Self-respect. Bessie had once said Janet was a walk-over and Bessie was probably right.

Perhaps she could pretend that she didn’t know. Try harder to keep him loyal, committed. To not need other girls. Maybe it was her fault. She was too frigid, inexperienced, a daddy’s girl that winced when the probing hands went too low. Janet put a hand over her right breast. Touched the soft cotton of her swimsuit with tentative fingers. Moved the fingers to the other breast. It wouldn’t be so bad really. To let his fingers probe deeper. To bite down harder on the lemony sweetness of his tongue. To let him take her hand and push it down there between his legs. Other girls did that. Why shouldn’t she?

Janet shut her eyes and sighed. Bessie’s finger was wagging at her. Angus’s lips were firm on the back of her neck. She was caught between them. Two birds of paradise squabbling over a rotting fruit.

‘There you are, I’ve been looking all over.’ Janet started. ‘You must be freezing, darling. Come on in and get yourself dressed.’ Janet’s mother reached down, took her daughter’s hand and pulled her up. ‘Dinner’s at eight,’ she said, putting her arm around Janet. ‘It’s our turn at the Captain’s table so we mustn’t be late.’

2019. Portobello, Edinburgh

It had all happened so fast. Dan’s arms tight around her back. An antler horn button pushing a painful half-moon depression into her cheek. Her feet briefly lifting off the ground. The sucking of air out of her chest. Amy pushing past them into the hall shouting something at the man with no name. The man’s girlfriend getting up off the sofa and shoving past Janet’s enforced embrace.

Scraping sounds in the hall.  Cries of pain and alarm from the bathroom. Shouts of I’ve got it, I’ve got it. A female voice replying. Be careful, be careful. The man cursing it’s spitting bloody ice and look out it nearly blinded me. Scuffling footsteps on the wooden floorboards of the hall. A sudden damp cool mist on the back of Janet’s neck. A whining protest from the Perspex box as the lid banged shut. The desperate hammering of hailstones in a confined space. More footsteps, one set with clumpy heels. Her front door slamming. Then quiet. A hellish interminable quiet. He’d gone. Cyril the cloud had gone, and she, Janet, his only source of protection, hadn’t been able to save him.

Janet let her legs slump beneath her. Dan’s biceps went stiff under her oxters, shaking, she imagined, from the effort of keeping her upright. She swung there for a moment, feeling the weight of her body, the scrawny carcass of her rib cage, the brittleness of her bones, the crumbling of her loss. Then he was part carrying, part dragging her over to the sofa and dropping her onto the seat that the young man with no name had sat on so innocuously just a few minutes before.

She flopped back on the sofa, her neck loose, her limbs askew. She was broken, pointless. A mannequin splayed out in a skip. A loose-stringed marionette slung into a box. An elderly single woman without her cloud. She shut her eyes. Wishing the man gone. When she opened her eyes again, he was. Her hands had a new tremble, her feet a new tap tap. She got up, stood still for a moment, took two deep slow breaths, and walked over to the bay window. The knot in her chest wound around itself. Outside in the guttering a clutch of starlings dipped and rinsed themselves in the shallow rain water. Sun turned their feathered iridescence from black to green to black. Tiny droplets of water sprayed up against the glass. She pressed her nose against the window. Felt the coolness of it on her flushed face.

‘Don’t worry, Cyril,’ she whispered to the starlings. ‘I’ll get you back.’ One of the starlings stopped bathing and turned to look up at Janet with its bright black eyes. ‘I might look like a doddery old lady,’ she said to it, ‘but, as that jumped-up prosecutor said, there’s a lot more to me than meets the eye.’

To be continued