The Laments (14 page)

“Nothing, sir,” said Will.

“Not running?”

“No, sir. Finding my brothers.”

“He was running after us, but he couldn’t catch us!” boasted Julius.

Will shot Julius a warning glance and turned back to the officer.

“A big boy like you shouldn’t be lying.”

“I’m not lying,” Will insisted.

“I’m the captain of this ship, and I don’t appreciate lying. What’s your name, then?”

“Will Lament, sir.”

The captain smiled at the twins, offering each a peppermint drop from a little tin before replacing it in his gold-braided pocket.

“Look here, Will Lament, there will be no messing about on my ship. When I see your parents I’m going to speak to them about you.”

The blush of injustice rose in Will’s cheeks as he marched the twins back to the cabin.

JULIA AND HOWARD RETURNED
with severe faces. The captain had spoken to them.

“I wasn’t messing about,” Will protested.

“You were supposed to stay in the cabin.”

“They promised not to run!”

“You talked back to the captain,” replied Howard sternly. “We’re all very embarrassed.”

Will ran to his bed, burying his humiliation in a pillow.

Later, when the children were in bed, Julia approached Howard. “Darling, perhaps the twins deserve some blame, too.”

“It’s his attitude that bothers me,” replied Howard. “If he doesn’t have respect for authority, how will he get on with people, darling?”

“Well”—Julia paused, thinking of Mrs. Urquhart—“I know how he feels; I didn’t have much respect for authority at his age, either.”

“And what good has it done you?”

Julia looked amused. “I don’t know, darling. What
harm
has it done me?”

“Be realistic, Julia.
You
don’t have to answer to a boss, to prove yourself on a daily basis. He’ll have to do that one day.”

Julia’s smile faded.

WILL WAITED FOR HIS MOTHER
to set things right at bedtime. He wanted to hear the slam of the door and the clatter of toys being stowed away. But a different figure came through the cabin doorway, resembling, for a brief moment, the captain.

“We have something to discuss,” said his father.

“Why can’t Mummy come in?”

“Because I have something important to say. You’re becoming a young man, Will, and you need to show responsibility and respect. You can’t be rude to the captain of the ship.”

“I was just looking after them,” Will replied, his voice muffled in the pillow.

Howard stood in the darkness, torn between the desire to embrace his son and the conviction that the boy needed some sort of punishment, if only to toughen him up—hadn’t he asked for his mother just a moment before? What if he was picked on by the children at his new school? His mother couldn’t get him out of that. Howard resolved to be more forceful with his son.

“No talking back. Go to sleep!” Howard said. Yet he couldn’t leave without adding, in a whisper, “Sweet dreams.”

Will waited for his father’s footsteps to retreat before he began to cry. His sobs were drowned in the throb of the ship’s engine, his sorrow unheard, unseen. When sleep overcame him, he dreamt about Ruth. It was an epic dream in which he relived the digging of the hole. There were hundreds of children helping this time, and he and Ruth aged into adults as they dug deeper and deeper. The hole took on the proportions of a cathedral as they neared the center of the earth; indeed, they were married at the altar by Abraham, crowned with a banana leaf, and by the time they neared the other side of the world, Will and Ruth had grown-up children of their own, and grandchildren. When they were close to reaching the far side, there were thousands of red children behind him, cheering as he and Ruth, hand in hand, climbed up to see a starlit night bursting with Chinese fireworks.

In the next cabin, Julia lay awake in the dark, feeling a different brand of indignation. Howard’s words echoed in her ears:
You don’t have to answer to a boss, to prove yourself on a daily basis
. What was the legitimacy of a job? Wasn’t she a fine mother, educated, politically aware? Yet she hadn’t held a job or touched a canvas in years. When was there time, when she was chasing after two impulsive toddlers? Had her presence in the adult world vanished into the
inky black
?

MR. AND MRS. PERKINS
were seated when the Laments arrived for breakfast. Mrs. Perkins waved them over emphatically, while Mr. Perkins sulked behind his teacup.

“Tell me, Mr. Lament, are you going to the Equator Party?” The glance Mrs. Perkins cast at her husband suggested that this was a matter of contention between them.

“No, I crossed the equator as a teenager,” said Howard. “A school trip to Athens,” he added.

“Have
you
crossed the equator before, Mrs. Lament?”

“Never,” said Julia.

“Then you must! It’s glorious, a rite of passage. I’ve done it before, but Horace hasn’t. He should, shouldn’t he? Don’t you think?”

“Get dunked in the swimming pool by a bunch of fairies in make-up and fish costumes,” groused Mr. Perkins. “Bloody ridiculous!”

“Of course it’s ridiculous!” Julia said. “That’s just the point!”

As his wife began laughing with Julia, Mr. Perkins silently observed that he had no choice but to make a fool of himself—or risk looking like a man without humor. Bleakly, he wondered how many men like himself suffered such humiliations simply to sustain their marriages.

POSEIDON LAY SPRAWLED
on the diving board, his body dyed turquoise, his hair a shaggy wig of shells, sequins, and seaweed. He drank from a goblet, spilling a rich, amber broth down his chin, and consulted a long green scroll.

The passengers to be initiated were all dressed in swimsuits, clustered in a group at one end of the pool, surrounded by the flamboyant deck staff: women in glittering emerald-sequined bikinis, and men in skimpy suits, their skin streaked with green dye, looking ravishingly exotic. Howard settled the boys into seats near the pool; Will was quite upset, for he recognized, behind Poseidon’s green beard, the cold gray eyes of the ship’s captain.

“Call up the first victim!” roared the ocean god.

As luck would have it, Mr. Perkins emerged first from the group of initiates. He wore a baggy pair of black trunks, which emphasized his pale skin and slack body. Will noticed that Mr. Perkins’s ankles still bore the indentation of a very tight pair of socks: ridges ran up his pallid shins to a beaded line below his knees.

“Horace Perkins, as ruler of the seas, I welcome you to the Northern Hemisphere,” said the steel-eyed Poseidon.

Reaching into a basket, the god produced a herring, its silver belly flashing in the sun, and without warning he plucked out the waistband of Mr. Perkins’s trunks and dropped the herring inside. Bawdy laughter grew around the pool, ending, of course, with Mrs. Perkins’s mirthful shriek. Will, however, shrank back against his father. He was not amused.

A couple of rude-looking potbellied fellows with seaweed wrapped around their privates stepped forward, grabbed Perkins by his wrists and ankles, and hurled him headfirst into the water. There was a rousing cheer from around the pool, capped again by his wife’s uproarious squawk.

Mr. Perkins’s disappearance horrified Will. He searched the water’s surface for a sign of him. Not even a bubble appeared. There was a worried murmur from the crowd, then, suddenly, bursting from the depths like a cork out of a bottle, Mr. Perkins soared up, one hand clutching his glasses, the other raised in a triumphant salute. Everyone applauded this robust reappearance.

To Will’s astonishment, a bevy of mermaids swam out to Mr. Perkins to escort him to the edge of the pool, their eyes made up with thick green eye shadow like Liz Taylor’s in
Cleopatra,
their lips painted fluorescent pink, and their buoyant breasts cupped in shiny plastic scallop shells.

After one look at his rescuers, Mr. Perkins decided against leaving the pool. There was more laughter. Mrs. Perkins came down to the poolside to offer her hand. Perhaps Mr. Perkins’s eyesight was compromised. He ignored his wife and paddled toward one mermaid, whose breasts were a bit large for the scallop shells. With a ravenous grin, he clamped his arms around the creature, planting his tongue firmly between her hot pink lips.

Without the use of their arms, they sank.

Mrs. Perkins’s little blue eyes narrowed to points.

Moments later, the scallop shells floated up to the surface, followed shortly by the mermaid, gasping frantically for breath and faced with a dilemma, because while she needed to paddle with her arms to keep herself above water, her breasts insisted on surfacing as well, and modesty compelled her to use her hands to cover them, which sent her back underwater again. Several fully dressed male spectators, seeming to sympathize, eagerly dove into the pool to render assistance.

Horrified by the whole exchange, and noting that his mother was Poseidon’s next victim, Will tore across the side of the pool to talk her out of submitting to this wretched rite.

“Mummy!” cried Will.

“No running!” roared Poseidon.

“It’s all right, Will!” cried Julia.

But Will’s feet slipped, he felt the crash of water around him, and the surprised faces of the crowd rippled and vanished as he sank into a silent, blue world, unable to scream or breathe. After a few moments he found himself sitting on the bottom of the pool, rays of light playing on his arms and legs, when, suddenly, a hatch opened near his feet. Will recognized the almond eyes of the Midnight Chinaman, smiling kindly, as if to reassure him that he was safe.

“Will?” said Julia.

He could see his mother in a yellow print dress and pearl earrings. There was a glow about her, and he wondered, briefly, if this was heaven. Closing his eyes, he heard one of the twins talking, and it occurred to him that either everybody had drowned or nobody had. He opened one eye and saw Marcus peering at him.

“Will he live?” asked Marcus anxiously.

“Yes, he’ll be fine,” Julia whispered.

“Are you sure he’s not dead?” said Julius, with disappointment.

“I’m fine,” said Will.

Suddenly there was a knock at the cabin door, and Julia turned to answer it. The captain entered, without his wig and sequins, his midriff wrapped in a diaphanous fabric streaked with blue dye.

“How’s the patient?” he said.

Julia and Howard turned to Will, who shrank back at the sight of his tormentor. “Will,
answer
the captain,” said Howard.

“Fine, thanks,” said Will tersely.

“Will . . .” began Howard, and turned to the captain with an apologetic smile. “He’s clearly not himself.”

“I’m fine,” insisted Will.

“Darling, you owe the captain some gratitude,” Julia said gently. “He saved you from drowning.”

“Swam down to the bottom and carried you up,” added Howard. “You owe him your life.”

WILL BROKE THE SEAL
of Rose’s box of watermarked paper and issued the first of many letters to his grandmother. It was sent from Gibraltar:

Dear Granny,

I almost drowned while Mummy and Daddy played cards. And the captain wears a dress.

Love, Will

On the last week of the cruise, the Laments were invited back for dinner at the captain’s table. Will was reluctant to attend, but when he saw his parents getting dressed up, he relented; Howard wore a black suit and tie, Julia a red velvet dress. Will thought they were the most glamorous couple on the ship. The twins considered the dinner an ordeal, refused to eat, and slipped under the table to fight. Howard dragged them out, kicking and crying, for a breath of air on the outside deck. Within moments, Will saw his father running past the dining-room portholes in pursuit of them.

Meanwhile, the captain and Julia shared a conversation for a few moments. With increasing disapproval, Will watched them talk. When Howard sprinted past the doors a second time, Will interrupted their conversation.

“My dad’s running on deck,” he remarked. “Aren’t you going to arrest him?”

LATER, AT BEDTIME
, Julia confronted Will about his rudeness, but he was sullen and unresponsive.

“Will, please speak to me,” she said in exasperation.

The boy chose this moment to say what was really on his mind. “Why do we always have to move?”

“We don’t
always
move, darling.”

“Granny says we do.”

“Perhaps we move more than other families,” conceded Julia. “You know what Daddy says: ‘Laments move—it’s what we do.’”

Will frowned. “Will I have to look after the twins wherever we go?”

“Of course you will. A family looks after itself,” she said. “Especially a traveling family.”

He considered this fact for a moment. “How will I
ever
make a friend if I’m always looking after my brothers and moving away?”

“You’ll make a very good friend in England, I promise.”

But as Will closed his eyes and his breathing settled, Julia told herself that in the future she would make no promises she couldn’t keep. As she rose, she noticed that Marcus was still awake.

“When will I die, Mummy?” he asked.

“Oh, you’ll live a long life, Marcus, a very long life.”

“How long? How old will I be?”

“I can’t really say, Marcus.”

She recognized Marcus’s panicked stare; he hated uncertainty. Perhaps that was why he clung to Julius, who never seemed to have a doubt about anything.

Julia smoothed back his hair and secured his covers. “You’ll be a hundred years old, Marcus. People will be traveling in jet packs and having holidays on Jupiter’s moons. We’ll all have robots serving us tea and washing our dishes.”

“A hundred. I like that,” said Marcus, turning over and closing his eyes.

Julia stood. Two minutes after making her resolution, she’d broken it. All to get a boy to sleep.

Southampton

It was a grim day when the Laments arrived at Southampton terminal. Rain, cold drafts, and blotchy gray skies greeted the
Windsor Castle
. Will peered at the awkward current of chinless people in damp tweed jackets and raincoats, frowning apologies as they bumped and jostled one another through clouds of cigarette smoke. He cast a wistful glance back at the enormous ship.