S.O.S. by Joseph Connolly Read Free Book Online

long ago she picked out for me the very smart black suit that I’m wearing right now – she had an eye, Mary: an eye for things like that). Packing, of course – that could be coaxed out into a couple of days: fresh-ironed stacklets of this and that always adding to the anticipatory feel.
    We went all over: Capri and Sorrento, I recall, was a particularly successful little package. We were very partial to pasta and we’d never tasted peaches quite like that before: fresh off the tree. Crete, Dordogne – Tuscany, of course: got her to try some wine on that trip – always made me laugh, she was never a drinker, Mary. But it’s all so
sour
 – it’s just not
sweet
, Tom, she’d go – I just don’t know how you can stomach it. Fellow at the hotel – nice sort of chap, sort of courier, or something – must’ve overheard, I assume; anyway – sent over a bottle of Asti Spumante, and that did the trick. That’s the only wine, Mary went, that has ever passed my lips that I can truly say I’ve
enjoyed
: one thing, though, Tom, she giggled at me then – it’s gone straight to my head, just that one little glass. The giggle made me feel so fond, so warm – warm, yes, and so very protective. I’ll never again hear it, now.
    So yes – I took the point when Ed and Fanny went on like they did: in their terms we were – of course we were – lucky, very. But I know that Mary, deep down (she never said so, not in so many words, but you get to hear such a lot of unspoken things when you’re that close to someone, you know – day and night, for years and years) … Mary, yes, she would eagerly have traded in all the holidays and new three-piece suites under the sun, just for a baby of her own, to love and care for. She would have liked lots – but one, I know, would have been more than enough. But, well … it was not to be (which is what you say when you really can’tbear to think about it any more). So we buckled down to the double glazing and the laying of patios – we baulked at a roof conversion, though, because look: the house already was accusingly large, so where’s the sense in more?
    So we continued to go hither and thither under the scathing eyes of our nailed-down friends who roared at us repeatedly how appallingly
lucky
we were. Well – we weren’t complaining (were we Mary, my love?); and, as we kept on saying, we had each other. And now – except for this stopped-up bulk of bits of our lives that sticks out clumsily from deep within me – the link has now been broken.
    I’m still in first gear. The cars ahead have been grudgingly astir for fifteen minutes or more, and in that time I’ve covered maybe just fifty yards, or so. I can see a part of the ship now, though. God. I mean – you know it’s
big
(we read the brochure again and again, Mary and me) but nothing really quite prepares you. The red and black funnel, tall as any building I’m aware of. Just the one funnel, then? Oh yes – it was the old
Queen Mary
that had a pair, fairly sure (and
Titanic
had
four
of the things, much good they turned out to be). It’s a shame, I said, that the
Queen Mary
doesn’t exist any more – we could have pretended it was built for you. Well Tom – I could always change my name to
Transylvania
, Mary had said. Ho ho, I went – a little extreme, I think. Yes. Doesn’t matter what she’s called, now.
    This was to have been our trip of a lifetime. Well: correction – it was to have been our very luxurious and self-indulgent trial-run for what maybe next year (and there will, won’t there, be a next year? And one after that and one after that?) could have become the real thing, the big thing, the ultimate. We’d never ever been on a liner – we’d talked