The Half Life Of Stars Part 12

He bristles hard and sneers at me.

'Enough,' he says. 'Too many questions.'

I feel my heart thumping in the quiet. It beats hard and firm, in contrast to my breathing which seems erratic. Michael is shrinking further inside of himself. He can't even bring himself to look at us. He wants us to go, but there's no chance of it now. It would take one of those giant cranes to lift me. Alexi can sense this, I think. He knows he won't shake me off easily.

'Let's just say your brother knew the truth,' he says. 'That he was a good man. That he kept me out of jail.'

'He defended you?'

'Not himself, no. He arranged it. And when I was free he helped get me transferred to another s.h.i.+pping line.'

'You were innocent, then? You must have been. Daniel wouldn't have helped you otherwise.'

'Innocent?' he shrugs. 'What is innocence? It all depends from which side you are looking.'

I can't believe I'm having this conversation. Standing here in this place, amid the jetties and the wharfs talking to a stranger about life and death. I feel like I've reached the start of some elaborate and dangerous trail. I'm wondering where on earth Daniel will take me next.

'But the truth, since you ask,' says Alexi, 'this man that died, Kowlosjz, was a pig. I'm happy, in fact, that this man die. But it wasn't my doing, and I swear this. It wasn't my intention to kill him. Not that time.'

This last part 'kill him' he says in English and I sense he's doing it just to scare Michael. It does the job. Michael jumps and lets out a small squeal.

'Your friend is a coward.' Alexi says.

'No, not a coward. He's just afraid.'

'You're not?'

I hesitate. I don't feel that I can lie to this man.

'I'm a little scared, yes.'

Alexi chews on his tobacco and makes another elaborate spit. This time the phlegm, as thick as treacle, lands menacingly close to Michael's feet.

'Your brother liked the stars,' Alexi says, lifting his head skyward. 'He liked to look at the planets.'

'It's a big universe out there,' I say, looking upwards. 'A person could easily get lost.'

'Sometimes a person wants to stay lost. Perhaps it is better that way.'

'Not for Daniel. He has a family. A wife and a child.'

Alexi pulls a hip flask from his pocket, unscrews the cap and takes a hit.

'This waitress, the one Thomas mentioned. She told you people sometimes leave by s.h.i.+p?'

'She said a person might be smuggled out, if they weren't able to arrange a counterfeit pa.s.sport. I thought you might know something about this. Tom said it was something...you had knowledge of.'

'It happens, of course. But I couldn't begin to say if this is what happened with your brother.'

He's lying. The metre of his speech seems tight now and clipped, he's using his words as a screen. When you work with foreign language every day of your life, you become exquisitely tuned to its rhythms.

'Did you ever have a conversation with Daniel?' I say, pressing him. 'Did you ever talk about how a person might stow away?'

He shakes his head.

'You really think it is better if he's found?' he says, sceptically. 'Not for you you, city girl, but for him?'

'Yes, I believe that. Absolutely.'

He growls and lifts his flask to his lips again. Shuffles uneasily from side to side.

'Then we may have talked about it once or twice,' he says. 'In relation to me, you understand, not to him. If a person were tempted to stow away, there is a tramp s.h.i.+p they call the Grunhilde Grunhilde. A person might think to try this.'

'Where does it go to, this s.h.i.+p?'

'Anywhere it's needed. It doesn't have a set routing, no permanent itinerary. This is what makes it useful to a person like Daniel. A tramp s.h.i.+p is like a scavenger, always on the move. Can pick up whatever needs relocating. Collect any cargo that is spare: loose grain, coal, mineral ores; sometimes, perhaps, even people.'

'And where is it now, the Grunhilde Grunhilde? Could I talk to the captain? Would there be a way for me to do that?'

Alexi shrugs.

'Who knows where she is? But you're bright, city girl. You want it enough you'll find out.'

He turns his head sharply and I think that's going to be the end of it, but it seems he has one last thing to say.

'City girl, just promise me one thing. If you should come across your brother, and he should want to stay lost, promise me now that you'll leave him be.'

What can I do? In the circ.u.mstances, I have to say yes.

The Lady and the Tramp

Why is it that people always seem so keen on having s.e.x in hotel rooms? I get it that you don't have to tidy anything up. I get it that it's nice to be away from the stresses and strains of home. But all I can think of is the thousand other couples who've had s.e.x on this mattress before me. Their fat and thin bodies squelching about on the long deadened springs; their dead, bored and pa.s.sionate eyes, staring up at this same yellowed ceiling. Their skin is in the fabric, their breath is in the sheets, their s.e.m.e.n is spilt on the pink and orange piping that runs along the edge of this flowery valance. Right in the centre of that daisy. There on the corner of that rose. The s.e.x of sailors and prost.i.tutes, of travelling salesmen, and of bored hotel staff who simply couldn't wait. These rooms always feel crowded to me; filled with the imprint of all the other guests who have stayed there before me.

Thankfully, I don't get round to thinking about all this until long after Michael and I have finished. He's quiet now, with the sheets and the blanket pulled tightly round him, sleeping off the strangeness of the day. And I'm wide awake, cursing my insomnia and wondering who last slept in this bed: a tourist, a businessman, some overexcited newlyweds, or a couple sc.r.a.ping the last dying remnants from a doomed and illicit affair.

All these queer lives swirling round us: going on, being lived, going under. And how do you know you're living the right one? The choices we make, the turns that we take, so often seem abstract and arbitrary. I met Michael at a gig I wasn't meant to go to; studied languages merely because my first love spoke Spanish. I got married, why? Was I really in love? Was Michael the man I wanted to spend the rest of my life with? Sometimes I think I did it because the sun was out that day; because this man had dared to ask me and a part of me, a shred of me, had thought that no one else ever would. And he'd bought me a ring. A stupid, extravagant, square cut, diamond ring, that made us both laugh when we looked at it. This was a man who didn't care for the consequences of things, a man whose emotions I could read. A boy who'd spend the very last coin in his pocket (and mine), just to put a smile on my face. I was lost. I was done for. It felt like love.

I've made so many poor decisions in my life up to now, I barely trust my own instincts. Sylvie believes in fate but that's lazy, I think. It's also unbearably arrogant. What does it mean? That if good things happen to you, you deserved them? That if bad things happen then you invited them in some way? Fate absolves us from responsibility; cures us of any need to change. Everything happens for a reason. Was there ever a more dishonest phrase?

In the sixties we were supposed to tune in and drop out, in the seventies we were meant to run off and 'find ourselves'. Do people even do that any more? Or are we all too busy, achieving, competing, comparing and pill popping to ask ourselves the questions any more. We are all of us defined so early on. By the place, the position of our birth. By the desires and the quirks our parents press on us. The loud twin and the quiet twin, the sporty son and the smart son, the good and the bad, awkward daughter. I wonder, if I had been home that afternoon when my father died, would things be different for me now? If it had been me comforting my mother instead of Sylvie, if she'd still been sleeping in her cot. Would I love better, know better, judge better, be closer to my family than I am? Can a single event, a simple twist of fate, dictate the way we go on to live our lives?

What if I could start all over again? What if I could wipe the slate clean? If I were allowed to live the life of the guest that was here before me, would I do better than them? Worse? Is there something intrinsic that makes me, well, me me? Or is it simply a question of circ.u.mstance? If Daniel has left, if Alexi's notion is correct, is he, in fact, becoming a different Daniel? Was his plan to run away, not from here, not from us us, but to somehow escape from himself? Did he wake up that morning, see the sky full of snow clouds and decide for some reason that his world was utterly wrong for him? That it fitted him like another man's suit. That no matter how hard he tried to squeeze his limbs inside the sleeves, there would never be enough cloth to cover him?

This is the reason I'm wide awake. I'm haunted by the imprint of the guest list in this room and by the idea that my brother could actually have done this. I am amazed by him. At turns a little jealous, then appalled. I wonder if he's on that s.h.i.+p now, and where? I wonder if he's taken Annie with him. This woman that he loved; this woman, it seems, he forbade himself. And just the merest possibility of this, the slightest hint that it might be true, makes me relax enough to close my eyes. Wherever he is now, whatever he's becoming, I feel, for a moment, that he's safe.

'I joined the navy, to see the world world! And what did I see? I saw the SEA! I saw the Atlantic and the Pacific, and the Pacific wasn't terrific, and the Atlantic wasn't all it's cracked up to BEEE!! BEEE!!'

Michael is singing in the shower; a sea shanty of some sort, I believe. He's in fine spirits this morning, suffused with a sense of adventure. The adrenalin of last nightthe risk of last nighthas left him as thrilled as a child. It took us two whiskies, maybe three, to calm down after we checked in here last night, but even the dire state of this hotel couldn't dull his mood: the wallpaper, stained; the bathroom, unheated; the trouser press and kettle, both broken. He slept exceptionally well on this hard, narrow bed. Made love on it pretty well, too.

'You managed to get it working, yet?' he says, towelling himself down. 'You had any luck with it, yet?'

I have finally managed to get my laptop working; fussed about with the odd connections in these thin, hollow walls and fought for a line to the outside world. I am searching for the names of a s.h.i.+pping line, tracking down the name of a particular s.h.i.+p.

'I've found a number. An agency that books pa.s.sengers onto freighter s.h.i.+ps. You can take these things right around the world.'

'What are you waiting for?' he says, excitedly. 'Are you going to call them? Do you want me to?'

'I'm on it,' I say. 'It's already ringing.'

The phone rings fifteen, maybe twenty times or more, before anyone picks up the receiver. I'm not hopeful. It's the second of January, the year's barely begun, I'll be lucky to find a useful person there.

'Ja?'

A German voice. Good, I can do this.

I'd like to travel on a tramp s.h.i.+p, I say. I'd like to book a pa.s.sage, would that be possible? Of course, he says, no problem. Where exactly is it that I'd like to go? These s.h.i.+ps, they are slow, do I realise? They stop in many ports, but usually just for one night. Not much chance for sightseeing trips. Nothing is organised, no tour guides at the other end; no fancy taxis waiting to collect me on the dock. Am I the kind of girl who's used to taking care of herself? Good, then, yes, it would suit me. It is cheap? Fairly. But I have to be aware, there is no entertainment on these s.h.i.+ps. Windows? Of course. A sea view? Perhaps. But just as likely, the view of a giant metal container. I can have my own room but I should bring lots of books, there is nothing much to do but sit and think.

I can take a slow boat to China. Really? I can? Or a banana boat all the way to South America. Well, I'm highly self-sufficient, this sounds fascinating, but China, it's not really me. The thing is, I've heard of one particular s.h.i.+p that takes my fancy. Yes, I know that sounds strange, but the boat is more important that the destination. I am keen on a s.h.i.+p called the Grunhilde Grunhilde, operated, I believe, by the Olan line. Are you familiar with this s.h.i.+p? Is she sailing any time soon?

Some minutes pa.s.s while he looks at his timetables, then he tells me that he's sorry, but it won't be possible. The Grunhilde Grunhilde, it seems, is far away. A small tramp anyway, run down, not too comfortable, old cabins, not even a tiny pool. Only room for two paying customers, the German officers and a small Filipino crew.

Where is she now? Why do I care so much? OK, well, Belize then, he thinks. When did the s.h.i.+p last dock in England? He doesn't know. Again, he'll have to check. Ah, yes, not long before Christmas. She was docked for two nights in Southampton. Southampton, really really? Yes, that's what he said. Am I deaf?

Where did she go to? Does he have her itinerary? Does he know the exact details of her onward route?

I can hardly manage to get this last part out. I squeak it, it peals from my throat. Waiting for the answer makes the seconds stretch and bow, and Michael is asking me if I'm all right. The German is back to the telephone. He's lifting it. He's clearing his throat.

'On the 14th of December, in the night time, she sailed first for Lisbon.'

My heart turns over. The 14th. That's the night Daniel left.

'And then where?' I say. 'And then then? Do you know?'

On to Cadiz, and then Gibraltar he suspects, and yes, then onwards to Tenerife.

Tenerife. No, I can't see itDaniel sunburnt on a beach, downing pints of luke warm lager, wearing a sun hat tied from a spotted hankie.

'Of course, then she crossed the Atlantic,' he says. 'Landed, first, in the Bahamas.'

The Bahamas. This I could contemplate. This I could actually see.

'And where then...where after that?'

'Well, let me check. Yes, she headed out into the Gulf of Mexico.'

Mexico. Could Daniel be there?

'No, wait, pardon my mistake. She made one more stop before that. She docked for one night in the port of Miami.'

'Miami?'

'Yes.'

'In Florida?'

'Yes.'

'Are you sure sure?'

The German is sure.

I'm lying on the bed next to Michael, staring back at this same yellowed ceiling. Michael is rubbing his hand across mine, slipping his fingers in between my knuckles. It feels nice. Safe. Rea.s.suring. I can sense myself getting used to it.

'What a place to choose,' says Michael, squeezing my palm. 'I mean, you hated it, right? When you were kids. It's not the kind of place you'd want to go back to?'

'No,' I say. 'Not in a million years.'

'Why go, then? What was he thinking?'

I don't know. I can't imagine. But he must have had a good reason.

'Still,' says Michael, sitting up, 'Miami's pretty fas.h.i.+onable these days, isn't it? I mean, from what I hear. People tell me...you know...that it's cool. Great music scene. Loads going on.'

'Michael, he ran away away. He's not gone on holiday. He hasn't gone there to get off with Gloria Estefan.'

'Of course not. You're absolutely right.'

My ex-husband is finished with questions, an idea is rupturing in his head. He wants to impress me, he wants to make amends; he wants a stake in the latest strand of this adventure. He's sitting up now, reaching for the phone, getting a number for the airlines.

'Two seats. No, not business, economy. Actually, is there anything cheaper cheaper than economy? Right, right, well sure...I understand. No, not Orlando. Miami. Yeah. As soon as we can. You're kidding? From Heathrow?' than economy? Right, right, well sure...I understand. No, not Orlando. Miami. Yeah. As soon as we can. You're kidding? From Heathrow?'

Michael sits beside me with the phone in his hand, waiting patiently for my answer. It's a busy time of year, there's been a lucky cancellation, if we don't fly today we'll have to wait the best part of a week. I'm not sure what to do, it's impossible to know, my brain feels like it's choked up with sludge.

'You'll come with me?'

He nods.

'You'll help me look?'

He says he will.

'You're sure sure?'