S.O.S. (45 page)

‘God you are
fabulous
, Jilly,' said Rollo, quite suddenly – and it seemed to please both of them that he had. ‘But are you sure it's, you know – OK, and everything? I mean – how did you get the key?'

‘Oh everyone does it, time to time. See, the people who had this for the whole World Cruise – and can you
believe
it? There were only two of them. Just two people in all these rooms! We're not meant to know who, but he – the bloke – was something terribly high up in
Disney
, or something, apparently. That's what I heard, anyway. And not only that – oh God, Rollo: this you just will
never
believe. They had the first class cabin next door as
well
 – it links up, see. See that door next to all the mirror? Links up.'

‘Bloody hell. Why did they – ?'

Jilly's eyes were dancing. ‘Get this – they said they
needed that – needed that for all the wife's
evening
clothes! God Almighty!'

‘
Kidding
me! Christ – these people …!'

‘Joke was, they were never ever
seen
in the restaurant. There's an awfully exclusive sort of cocktail bar type thing quite near – God, I'm not even allowed to
serve
in it … which is fair enough, I suppose: couldn't make a cocktail to save my life. But anyway – point is, they never went there either. Just stayed in this suite for just about ever – calling up room service, and changing their
clothes
.'

‘God!' laughed Rollo. ‘Sounds like my Mum's dream world. Actually no – that's not right: she'd
definitely
want to be seen. But look, Jilly – why aren't they
here
? I mean, how did you – ?'

‘Well this is it: when we got to Southampton, they apparently decided they'd had enough – fancied a week or so in London. So they just went. Happens, sometimes. See – what you have to remember, Rollo, is that, I don't know – a quarter of a million or something to these people, it's – well, it's like fifty pee to us.'

‘I've
got
fifty pence,' smiled Rollo. ‘Can I stay?'

And Jilly went up to him.

‘I
would
say for as long as you like … but will you settle for an hour? Then it's my shift. And there's no chance of the key being missed till then.
Kiss
me, Rollo …'

And Rollo did that: lip service.

Jilly took him by the hand and led him past the pair of nine-foot white leather sofas and the horrible paintings and these quite enormous picture windows (and it was right, what Jilly had said – the sea is definitely getting up: God, we're so high, though, it seems just miles down) and then through a mirrored passageway and on into a very large and low and maybe maple panelled room – and at its centre, a dusky pink and chintzy pretty much fully upholstered bed that was not, in point of fact, very much smaller than the space that held it.

‘There's the most fantastic sound system,' enthused Jilly. And then, with huge regret: ‘But I just don't
dare
… Sometimes there's a half-bottle of champagne in the fridge, though.'

Rollo was unbuttoning his shirt.

‘You've done this before,' he said. Not actually
minding
, though. I mean Christ – her position, I'd be up here all the bloody time: different girl every day. So I'm not
minding
, no: just saying … But I like Jilly – really like her a lot. I'd love it if she was my, you know –
proper
girlfriend. That'd be great. And she could – she
could
get a job in London: easy. Then we could be together properly. Yes – I'd really love that. So although I just said to her, um – You've done this before, I maybe wasn't just
saying
it, no: could be that I mind, a bit.

‘Well I
haven't
, actually, ' said Jilly quite airily. ‘Do you think this bra is pretty?'

‘I –
yes
. I do. It's very … it's lovely. '

‘Wore it specially. No, Rollo – I've
been
here, obviously. But only on my own. To look around. To be perfectly honest, I did
ask
him, once. Sammy. Come here and
touch
me, Rollo.'

Rollo was aching for her, now. He was so very close, he could feel her warmth already. His fingers stood poised and flexed, like those of a pianist awaiting his cue – and although they were straining to be away, they shied off at the point of contact, fearful of the sizzle, and then getting burned. He placed his two lips to the side of her throat.

‘
And
…' sighed Jilly. ‘Oh
God
, Rollo, I just love it when you do that. And
he
said … ah! Ah! Oh God not my
ears
! Not my
ears
! Oh Jesus I just go crazy when you do that to my
ears
! God you're –
gorgeous
, Rollo.'

They pulled away from each other, then – maybe a simultaneous impulse: standing up, here, and half dressed just wasn't going to do it. They watched one another with half-fright and hunger as the final ungainly contortions were somehow not too embarrassingly completed – reluctant and clingy bits of bloody
clothing
were tugged at, wrenched
round and shrugged off – hurled away from them and kicked into distant corners.

‘
What
did he say …?' gasped Rollo, for something to say.

‘Mm? Oh – he just said it was too
dangerous
, too
risky
. See what I mean, Rollo? Just no
fun
…'

The sight of her naked sent him into something like a trance. Only when she had taken him near to swooning did he dare look back into her eyes: they pricked him deep, and made him boil.

‘Rollo,' she breathed. ‘
Do
it to me. Come.'

Rollo went – just went for her. And then (her arms and mouth were open) he stopped dead right there and said
Fridge
, where's the fridge? And Jilly said
Jesus
, Rollo – please,
please
… and Rollo said Wait:
fridge
 – where is it? And Jilly vaguely pointed – then more energetically with eyes closed and fingers flapping when Rollo stooped down to the wrong cupboard altogether – and as he seemed bent on fooling around down there, Jilly just flounced across to the bed and fell backwards down and into the sheer soft vastness of it and she let her eyelashes touch to only filter a gauze of redness, aware of just icicles of anticipation – hot jabs of tenderness. Her eyes then flew up as she yelped and hot ice –
real
hot ice, had shocked her neck and slithered all over her and stuck to her as she sat up and flailed in a frenzy of bubbled-up sex and white amazement and felt before she saw the bottle forced between her lips and the uprushing spangles of champagne quietened her down – she even heard them hushing her – but she was squealing again as the chilling gobbets of it coursed away down from her mouth and spattered her breasts and she had only just half enough time to gulp out air before all that was knocked right out of her as she took the full weight of the hard and eager man across her and opened up all of her limbs to him and then the way she bunched up when she felt him inside of her made Rollo feel safe and warm and finally
home
 – so very enclasped and badly needed, that all he had to do was
sweep back handfuls of her hair – strew them across the tracts of milk-white pillow so that now he could concentrate hard on the sweet hot face beneath him, and the tremendous pulsations that he was forcing down drunkenly – while already the impulses within him swept all that aside as they left him gasping, and then whipped him right up.

‘
Jesus
, Jilly – oh – sweet …
God
…!'

And as his limbs clamped rigid, Jilly jerked hard from deep underneath him somewhere and Rollo felt his hand let go its grip on the bottle that he had no idea that still he had been grasping and he heard it thump to the floor and fizz out what was left of it – and yes, there was uncertainty and a good amount of unease in both their eyes, now, and they could not help but listen in pain to it rolling away and leaving in its wake, oh God – just what sort of a mess …? And then it clunked into something, and stopped. Rollo and Jilly clung to one another in silence, and then, quite quietly, they began to stickily unpeel themselves from where their skin had bonded.

The unreal thunder, now, that made Jilly shriek and then go into spasm as Rollo roared and fell right off her and on to the floor had erupted from somewhere not quite here but hardly distant, and that one and sudden shocking implosion was immediately replaced by a silent vacuum, heavy with foreboding – but yes, yes – now there was the leaden thud of something coming this way fast. Jilly bundled sheets around her – held them close and up to her throat – while Rollo stood there, undecided … and then he made instinctively for his, Christ – where
are
they? Bloody
trousers
! Didn't get there, though (no, he didn't make it) – and now the bedroom door, already just ajar, was swung open so hard and wide it slammed the wall and Rollo did not know if he was rushing the man, there, or else just rampaging to and through the one way out of here – but whichever way he thought this thing might be going, it took a turn for the worse as he barged and then fell heavily
into the dark red, outraged and practically palsied form of Sammy, the baseball bat he held high in the air knocked away from him now as the two staggered back and tumbled jarringly down three hard and head-clunking steps that spewed them into one more vast and ludicrous area and Sammy was crying through screwed down eyelids as he sought to hurt a sweat-wet naked Rollo who was coughing and hitting out wildly at anything looming, and often soft parts of himself. Jilly was screaming and screaming to God's name
stop
 –
stop
it, both of you – you're
crazy, crazy
! And the sheet around her was tricking her feet and making her slither and she too toppled over and down those three bloody steps and whether or not that had been the plan, hard on top of the fiercely wrestling Sammy and Rollo and the muffled struggles of all three of them, now, were being hampered badly by the heavy and foot-snagging bedsheet which someone's maddened arm eventually threw off and away from them as Rollo, somehow, like a new-born colt, gangled to his feet – and cold and scared and calling up manliness he covered his groin with one shaky hand and even as he was conscious there of a touching softness and dried-on caking, the index finger of the other hand, now, was up and wagging, his wet eyes wild in a spinning head, and his mouth set far from firm:

‘Now
look
,' he quavered. ‘I'm
warning
you …!'

Sammy snarled and grasped then threw away both of Jilly's stiff and pleading arms and scrambled up and just hurtled his whole body into this bastard's stomach and Rollo was sent over the edge into cascades of sheer injury and he fell over backwards and utterly as if completely eviscerated by a runaway train and left there void and coping with a herd of cows stampeding into the chasm that had once held guts that saw him through. Sammy was straddling a near passed out Rollo, now (much in the way Jilly had had lined up for later), and as he raised up his fist, she screamed out and ranted and danced up and down as if
imploring the gods for a deluge of rain – and neither the prone and truly now out of it Rollo and nor the driven and quite maddened Sammy, his lower face coated with furious spittle – neither was at all aware of Jilly's breasts jiggling in agitation, her hair quite lunatic – for these, as well as the fevered fighting, were the sole preserve of those at the door of the main apartment – and
No
… is all that got through to Stewart, as his heart leapt up and his eyes just died – this
wasn't
, was it? Not by any stretch could this be judged the best of all moments to be highlighting the peerless attractions of the Emperor – oh God help me what can be
happening
? – Suite, oh Christ – to a visiting party of fucking
journalists
. And apart from the scuffling, there was audible not even the hiss that everyone sensed – though the dark and malevolent chortle from the just had to be
broadsheet
guy had the swift and startled effect of roping back everyone into the here and now (whatever this could be). Just too late, though, had come any of anything to prevent just all of it having been so terminally displayed: Stewart turned his back – the blood-rush to the now livid orange of his face combining to form no colour known to man – and with arms thrown wide and much heavy clearing of the throat (couldn't run to a chortle like the just had to be broadsheet guy – none would come) he shepherded out and away his excited charges – and one of the women he had to physically take hold of, spin around and
propel
right out of there. Ha ha, he went. Ha ha ha.

Stewart glanced back just once, before he softly closed the door behind him: Sammy was sitting cross-legged, wagging his head cradled by stiff and pale fingers. Jilly had gathered back the sheet around her and she softly wept into a corner of it, her hair falling forward over the whole of her face; but for the pumping of his glistening chest, the naked man could well be dead. Right, then: very good. Well that's it, thought Stewart, that is it: I am finished. And yes he was aware that other stupid bastards could be thinking this as well.

*

‘Just waiting for my daughter, actually. Maybe she's gone to some other bar, I don't know. Sure she said this one, though. One does rather a lot of waiting around on this ship. Do you find that?
Jennifer
, by the way.'

‘Hello,' smiled David. ‘David. Yes well – pretty much used to that, in my life. Hanging around. Seem to have been doing that for just, oh Christ – years.' And then he snorted and fooled with his glass. ‘Sorry – don't mean to, ah – '