At the Captain's Table

by Gervase Phinn

Genres: Humorous gen fiction

Synopsis

Sail away with the delightful new novel from Gervase Phinn, bestselling author of The School at the Top of the Dale

A summer cruise should be just the ticket for a few weeks of luxury and relaxation - but for the passengers and crew of the Empress of the Ocean, the sights of the Mediterranean are nothing compared to the excitement on board...

For bickering couple Albert and Maureen, the trip might prove a much-needed escape - or the final straw. Elegant Frances de la Mare is determined to hobnob with the right kind of people - but her penthouse suite proves lonelier than she ever imagined. Meanwhile, precocious twelve-year-old Oliver discovers that guidebooks don't teach you everything, sparks fly when the port lecturer finds himself upstaged by a popular author, dancers Bruce and Babs can't keep in step, and cruise expert Neville just wants someone to speak to.

But as unlikely friendships are forged, feuds bubble in the laundry room, and everyone jostles for a seat at the Captain's table, they might find all their plans going overboard....

Warm, funny and uplifting, this is the perfect escapist read for fans of Gervase Phinn's Yorkshire novels, as well as readers of Celia Imrie, Alan Titchmarsh and Maeve Haran.

'[Gervase Phinn is] a worthy successor to James Herriott, and every bit as endearing' - bestselling author Alan Titchmarsh

(P)2022 Hodder & Stoughton Limited

Release date: June 9, 2022

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Print pages: 320

Sample

1

‘Did you need to bring all these bloody cases?’

The speaker was a broad individual with an exceptionally thick neck, fleshy nose, and small darting eyes. A bald patch showed through the stringy colourless hair. With a sallow, sweating face he pushed a metal trolley laden down with luggage. His companion, a small woman with severely bleached hair with signs of black at the roots and a nose as sharp as a pen nib, walked ahead at a brisk pace. Her face seemed set in a permanent frown.

‘Oh Albert, do stop complaining, for goodness’ sake!’ she snapped without turning around.

‘We’re going away for two weeks not on a bloody world cruise,’ he shouted after her. ‘And slow down, I can’t keep up with you.’

The woman stopped, turned, and looked daggers. ‘Albert, will you stop swearing!’ she hissed in that censorious way to which he had become accustomed. ‘I don’t know what the other passengers on the ship will make of you using such language.’

‘I couldn’t give a monkey’s what other passengers on the ship make of me, Maureen,’ he answered.

She gave an extravagant sigh and walked on, this time at a slower pace.

‘I mean, what have you brought with you, the bloody kitchen sink?’

She turned to face him again and stopped. The trolley came to an abrupt halt. ‘I can’t wear the same outfit every day,’ she informed him. ‘Mrs Mickleby, who came on this cruise last year, said there are three formal evenings and a themed night when the ladies have to wear evening dresses.’

‘And I have to put on that monkey suit,’ Albert grumbled. He waited for her to respond, as was her wont. She didn’t.

‘Then there’s the Captain’s reception,’ Maureen carried on, ‘and Mrs Mickleby said we will probably want to eat out on some occasions and visit some exclusive places. I can’t very well sit in a restaurant in Seville or Mallorca wearing old clothes or walking around the Vatican in jeans.’

‘Sitting in a restaurant in Seville or Mallorca,’ scoffed Albert. ‘You can forget about that. This cruise has cost me an arm and a leg as it is. I’m not shelling out any more money. All the food is included anyway.’

‘And it’s not just dresses,’ the woman continued, ignoring the comment. ‘There’s my shoes and accessories.’ She walked on. ‘It’s different for men. They can wear the same suit, and they don’t need the same amount of clothes. I told you all this back home. I think your memory must be going. It’s either that or you just don’t listen. Now do stop going on about the cases. It’s not as if you’re carrying them. Mrs Mickleby said they will be taken up to the cabin. It’s all done for us. All you have to do is push the trolley and you are making such a song and dance about it. I hope I’m not going to have to put up with your complaining for the next fortnight, I get enough of that at home.’

Albert sneered. ‘Well, that’s the pot calling the kettle black, if ever I heard it. You’ve done nothing but complain since we set off.’

‘Just be careful with that trolley,’ directed his wife, not minded to respond. ‘I don’t want my cases falling off.’

‘And what’s with this big bloody umbrella? I don’t see anybody else taking one of these.’

‘It’s a parasol, not an umbrella,’ she told him. ‘Mrs Mickleby has lent it to me. She said it gets extremely hot where we are going. I don’t want to get sunburn. And while we are on about it, you need to make sure you put some cream on your bald patch before you go out. You might remember the year before last when we were in Mablethorpe, and you stayed too long in the sun and your head came out in those unsightly blisters and you spent most of the holiday scratching your scalp. I never heard the last of it. It was an embarrassment going out in public with you.’

‘Give me strength,’ he muttered.

There had existed between the couple a mutual hostility for as long as either of them could remember. Trivial slights and differences of opinion soon escalated into major grievances. Surprisingly, despite this antagonism and constant bickering, the marriage possessed staying power and they had been together for twenty-five argumentative years. Albert had taken some persuading to come on the cruise. His idea of a restful holiday was not being confined on a ship with hundreds of strangers, braving rough seas, stuck in his cabin with sea sickness and no Yorkshire bitter. However, his wife’s unremitting nagging had finally worn him down. For ten years the couple had spent a fortnight in a caravan on a campsite in Mablethorpe, but last year, when it rained incessantly, Maureen vowed this was the very last time. Her neighbour, Mrs Mickleby, had waxed lyrical about the holiday she had spent on a luxury liner. Since coming back from the cruise on the Empress of the Ocean, she had not stopped for breath, telling Maureen about the wonderful two weeks at sea: the comfortable cabin, excellent service, fantastic food, first-class entertainment, nice people, and interesting places to visit.

‘All right! All right!’ Albert had finally surrendered. ‘Anything for a quiet life.’ As he had said it, he doubted that there would be any peace and quiet for the next fortnight. At least in the caravan in Mablethorpe he could disappear most nights to the social club while Maureen played bingo. On the ship there would be little chance of eluding his wife’s incessant badgering.

At the cruise terminal, as he parked the trolley, Maureen asked, ‘Did you check the labels on the luggage?’

‘Yes.’

‘I don’t want them delivered to the wrong cabin.’

‘They won’t be.’

‘Have you got the passports?’

‘Yes.’

‘The boarding passes?’

He sighed theatrically. ‘Yes.’

‘The itinerary?’

‘Yes,’ he muttered.

‘The joining instructions?’

‘Look Maureen, I’m not a complete idiot. Of course, I’ve got all the bloody bumf.’

‘Well, you had better check you have them handy to make sure. I know how forgetful you can be. Mrs Mickleby told me when she came on this cruise last year there was a couple at the check-in holding all the queue up looking for their travel documents. People got very impatient and bad-tempered.’

‘I’m getting impatient and bad-tempered,’ muttered her husband.

Before his wife could respond, a porter arrived smiling widely.

‘Is this your luggage, sir?’ he asked cheerfully.

‘Yes,’ replied Albert, ‘all four suitcases and the holdall and the travel bag and the large, multicoloured umbrella.’ Then he added sarcastically, ‘My wife prides herself on travelling light.’

Maureen scowled.

The porter chuckled.

‘Well, just leave everything here, sir,’ he said. ‘I’ll unload it. Your cases will be put aboard and placed outside your cabin.’

‘What did I say,’ stated Maureen smugly.

In the first-class passenger lounge sat a slim, middle-aged woman of elegant bearing with a small delicate nose and expensively tinted hair scraped off her face and curled in wreaths on her head. Sadly, her personality was far from attractive. Mrs Frances De la Mare could be by turns rude and deferential depending on the status and position of the person to whom she was talking. In her late forties, she was materially better off than she had ever been in her life but emotionally she was beset by loneliness and melancholy. Her life had become drab and predictable.

It had been five years’ ago, just after her husband died, that she had last been on a cruise ship. At Southampton she had boarded the Alexandra (‘the very latest in world class liners, elegance personified, stylish in design and sophisticated in atmosphere’ – so the glossy brochure had assured her) and spent two rather cold, but not entirely unpleasant weeks visiting the Norwegian fjords. Giles, her late husband, had invested prudently in stocks and bonds and left her very well provided for and, a month after the funeral, she had bought a new wardrobe of clothes (with accessories) and booked a state room to ‘discover the delights of spectacular Norway’. Of course, it had not been all plain sailing, for Mrs De la Mare always found something not to her liking. As she had explained to her one and long-suffering friend, Marcia, on her return, she had refused to lower her standards; only the best was good enough. The highlight of the cruise for her had not been the wonders of the spectacular fjords or the delights of Copenhagen and Oslo, it was when the Captain had invited her to dine at his table with other privileged passengers. ‘Such a charming man,’ she had told Marcia, ‘with impeccable table manners and most diverting conversation. We had so much in common.’ A photograph of her posing with the ship’s master on the steps of the atrium at the first formal evening, had pride of place on her mantelpiece.

It was Marcia who had persuaded (or rather pressured) Mrs De la Mare to come on this cruise.

‘Of course, Michael and I would love you to come with us again to the Algarve for the summer, Frances,’ she had lied. The holiday Mrs De la Mare had spent the previous year with her friend and family, had been an ordeal. Marcia’s husband had said there was no possibility, none whatsoever, of having ‘that dreadful woman’ spoiling his holiday again. Frances had remained silent, so Marcia persevered. ‘It’s likely to be a scorcher in Portugal this summer and you know how unbearable you found the heat when you came with us last year and then there were the mosquitoes which you said were so irritating. A cruise would suit you down to the ground. You’ll be the life and soul of the party, the talk of the Captain’s table.’ She knew, of course, that the likelihood of her friend being the life and soul of the party, was more than fanciful. Since her husband’s death, when she had reinvented herself as the grande dame with an inflated idea of her own importance, her friend had become even more disagreeable – short-tempered, fault-finding, and argumentative. Marcia had decided that their friendship, such as it was, would lapse.

Unenthusiastically, Mrs De la Mare had booked the cruise, but she knew as soon as she saw some of her fellow passengers, it had been a mistake from the start. She noted, with a sinking heart and a scornful expression, the throng of people in the reception lounge at the cruise terminal: elderly couples, some in wheelchairs or with mobility aids, overweight women in tight jeans, tattooed men in shorts and trainers and noisy children. She noted with distaste that the young woman at the reception desk wore a little silver stud inserted in the side of her nose. She predicted that this cruise would not be to her liking at all. Even the sultry heat and the irritating mosquitoes of the Algarve, she thought, would have been an improvement on this.

In the general reception area at the cruise terminal sat two elderly ladies. One was a small stout woman with hair the colour of brown boot polish and a heavily powdered face. She sported a long rope of artificial pearls and matching earrings. Her companion was an equally corpulent woman with the same substantial bosom and wide hips. She had elaborately coiffured silver hair and thin lips, red with too-bright lipstick, and fingered the large cameo brooch at her collared neck.

‘Did you see that, Miriam?’ the first woman asked her companion, staring at Mrs De la Mare.

‘Did I see what, dear?’asked her sister. She looked up from the magazine she was reading.

‘That woman who has just disappeared into the first-class lounge. She had dyed hair piled up on her head and a face that would curdle milk.’

‘No, Edna, I didn’t see her.’

‘Very hoity-toity. I’ve seen her type before. You would think she owned the ship the way she paraded down the room with her nose stuck up in the air as if there was a bad smell, going to a reserved desk and getting prefermental treatment, while the rest of us had to queue up.’

‘Preferential,’ prompted her sister sotto voce.

Edna had bottomless curiosity and an extensive repertoire of facial expressions. She was also a persistent user of memorable malapropisms and amazingly inventive non sequiturs.

‘What?’ asked her sister.

‘She didn’t need to queue up,’ explained Miriam. ‘She’s in first class, that’s why she’s got preferential’ (she emphasised the word) ‘treatment.’

‘I know she’s in first class. I’ve just said so!’ snapped her sister. ‘Anyway, I don’t suppose we’ll be seeing much of her on the cruise, and I shan’t lose any sleep over that. “All fur coat and no knickers”, as our sainted mother would say.’

Edna was a woman possessed of a bluntness, a thick skin, and a sharp comic talent for description, someone who injected her opinions forcefully. She had a devouring interest in other people and was not unforthcoming in sharing her opinions about them, usually to her sister who listened, for most of the time, with consummate patience. The smallest details of other people were the topics for comment, their appearance, behaviour, relationships all came up for speculation or dismissal. Edna now turned her attention to an elderly couple with a small boy, who were sitting by the window.

‘That’s all we need,’ she complained.

‘What now?’

‘I didn’t know we would have children on board. What is a boy of his age doing on a cruise to the historical sites of the Mediterranean? He should be at Disney World or some such place. I hope he behaves himself. I can’t be doing with badly behaved children running around the deck like headless chickens, shouting and screaming and molopolising the swimming pool.’

‘And when was the last time you were in a swimming pool?’ she was asked.

‘That’s beside the point. Children these days don’t know how to behave themselves. There’s no discipline at home or in schools.’

Miriam shook her head and smiled. Her sister’s experience of raising children was hardly comprehensive. She looked at the boy.

He was a serious, self-absorbed young man of about eleven or twelve, unaware that he had two observers; his nose was buried in a book. He was an oddly old-fashioned looking child with startling, grass-green eyes and an eye-catching crop of red hair cut in the short-back-and-sides style and with a neat parting. He had a meditative, intelligent face peppered with a constellation of freckles. He looked as if he had walked out of the 1950s. The boy wore short grey trousers held up by an elastic belt with a silver metal snake clasp, a dark blue jumper, white shirt and tie, knee-length grey stockings and sensible sandals. It was not the sort of outfit one would expect to see a youngster wearing on a cruise ship bound for the Mediterranean.

‘He looks a well-behaved little boy to me,’ remarked Miri­am. ‘He doesn’t look the sort to go shouting and screaming around the deck.’

‘Yes, well looks can be perceptive,’ pronounced Edna. ‘Never judge a book by what’s on the cover.’

Miriam returned to reading her magazine. Her sister continued to scan the passengers. A couple heading for the first-class lounge caught her interest. The man was a tall, bald individual with a rugged face the colour of an overripe russet apple and hands the size of spades. He wore a loud suit and a flamboyant tie and was accompanied by a plump, round-faced little woman with the huge liquid brown eyes of a cow and thick springy hair. They were chattering excitedly.

‘Well, will you look at that,’ said Edna suddenly.

‘What?’

‘There’s a very odd-looking couple just gone into the first-class lounge.’

‘And?’

‘They don’t look like first-class passengers to me.’

‘Yes, well, as you’ve just said, looks can be deceptive,’ said Miriam. ‘Never judge a book by the cover. It takes all sorts.’

‘You can say that again,’ agreed her sister, studying another passenger who was dressed in a ridiculously garish Hawaiian shirt festooned with brightly coloured exotic flowers and birds and wearing cut-off, knee-length denim shorts. He wore socks and sandals. ‘Just look at the state of him.’ The man, who was endeavouring to engage a smartly dressed woman in conversation, was a tall, bony individual of poor posture with a curiously flat face, a little lump of a nose and crinkled hair cropped close as a doormat. His shoulders hunched and his long thin neck stretched forward. He reminded Edna of a tortoise.

‘Travelling alone, are you?’ the man asked the smartly dressed woman, speaking in a high nasal tone of voice.

‘Yes,’ she replied looking around, clearly made uncomfortable by the man’s unwanted attentions.

‘Snap! I’m travelling solo too,’ he said.

‘Really?’

The man rubbed his neck and leaned closer as if he were being overheard. ‘I’m a seasoned cruiser myself. I’ve been on this ship more times than you’ve had hot dinners. I know it like the back of my hand.’ The woman glanced at her watch. ‘Do you cruise much yourself, then?’

‘No, not a great deal.’ She looked around again, desperate to get away.

‘Cruising for me is a way of life . . .’ the man began.

‘Would you excuse me,’ interrupted the woman and, not wishing to hear any more, promptly walked away.

‘She’s given him his marching orders,’ remarked Edna as she watched the woman move off.

‘Who?’

‘The well-turned-out woman who the odd-looking man in the silly coloured shirt and half-mast shorts was trying to get off with. Course there’s always some man on a cruise ship sniffing around single women who look as if they’ve got a bit of cash. We shall have to keep our wits about us, Miriam.’

‘I don’t think we need to worry in that direction,’ replied her sister, turning a page in her magazine.

The Reverend Christopher Hinderwell and his wife Esmé stood in the queue before the reception desk waiting to check in. The clergyman had a long oval face and a crop of grey hair neatly brushed back. With a long-pointed nose and heavy hooded eyes, he resembled a melancholy bird. His companion was a handsome woman with bright blue eyes and light sandy hair tied back to reveal a finely structured face. Behind them was a rotund, bearded little individual with a thick head of woolly chestnut coloured hair. With him, in a dramatically cut red dress and high-heeled sandals, was an attractive young woman. She was resting her hand in his arm.

Mr Hinderwell turned to the couple and smiled.

‘I don’t think we should be too long now,’ he said. ‘They appear very efficient and well-organised.’

‘Have you cruised before?’ asked the little man.

‘No, no, this is our first. We’ve been saving up for it for quite some while. My wife and I are very excited. I have always dreamed of visiting Rome, the Vatican and the churches, and Esmé to see the Roman remains.’

‘I imagine I won’t have much time to go ashore,’ replied the little man.

‘Oh, why is that?’ he was asked.

‘I need to spend a deal of time practising each day. I am the concert pianist on the cruise. Getting away from everything for a couple of weeks gives me the opportunity of tackling a few new and difficult pieces.’

The young woman patted his hand and looked at him affectionately. ‘I’m sure I can persuade you to leave the piano for a couple of hours when we are in Rome,’ she said.

‘Maybe,’ he said reaching over to kiss her cheek.

‘Did you see that, Miriam?’ said Edna who was watching like a hungry cat.

‘Did I see what, dear?’ asked her sister. She gave up on the magazine and put it on the seat beside her.

‘That couple queuing up in front of the reception desk.’

‘I wasn’t looking.’

‘Well, take a look.’

‘Do you know, Edna, you could make a career out of noticing things, which is something of a miracle since you’re always complaining about your bad eyesight.’

‘I’m just interested in people that’s all,’ responded Edna sounding peeved. ‘There’s nothing wrong with that. Anyway, as regards the couple queuing up in front of the reception desk that I was telling you about, I wonder what an attractive young woman like that is doing with that little old man?’

Miriam looked at the couple in question. ‘She might be his carer,’ she said.

‘I’ve just seen him kiss her. That’s not the action of a carer.’

Miriam picked up her magazine. Edna continued to scrutinise her fellow passengers and pass comment, until the person on the public address system invited those who were in first class or who were with young children or who were disabled to board the ship first. Despite her bad hip, about which she frequently complained, Edna grabbed her walking frame and pushed her way to the front of the line. ‘Come along, Miriam, don’t dawdle,’ she shouted. ‘Make a move.’

Her long-suffering sister rolled her eyes and wondered if going on this cruise was such a good idea.

The passengers, in whom Edna had taken such a searching interest, now boarded the Empress of the Ocean, each with varying expectations of the journey to come. They were unaware that the experience during the two weeks of cruising around the Mediterranean would in some ways change their lives.

2

‘We should have opted for an outside cabin,’ said Maureen, looking around the confined space in which they would be spending the next two weeks. ‘There’s no window and it’s far too small. I feel hemmed in. You couldn’t swing a cat in here.’

‘You picked it,’ said her husband unhelpfully.

‘I imagined it would be bigger. It looked bigger in the brochure.’

‘We’re not going to be spending all the cruise stuck in the cabin, are we?’

‘Mrs Mickleby suggested we should get an outside cabin with a balcony, but it was you being tight-fisted as usual and not wanting to splash out on something larger. I should have listened to her. It’s too cramped in here.’

‘There would be more room if it wasn’t for all your bloody cases,’ moaned Albert. ‘There’s nowhere to put them. They won’t go under the bed or in the cupboards.’

‘Please don’t go on about the cases again,’ she said irritably. ‘You sound like a gramophone record and will you please stop swearing. The times I tell you. Using language like that people will think you’re common. Mrs Mickleby said there are a lot of sophisticated people on this cruise so try and watch your manners and if you are asked what you do for a living don’t tell them you’re a plumber.’

‘Well, I am a plumber,’ he told her.

‘I know you’re a plumber, but say you’re a water and heating engineer, it sounds better, and you are not wearing that vulgar T-shirt with “I’m a Plumber and I do it Under the Sink”. I can’t imagine we’ll get an invite to sit on the Captain’s table with you wearing that.’

‘Who says we’re going to sit on the Captain’s table?’

‘Mrs Mickleby said sometimes certain selected passengers are invited to sit on the Captain’s table.’

‘What, eat with the crew?’

‘I thought there’d be more cupboard space than this,’ said Maureen, ignoring the comment. ‘There’ll be no room for your clothes. You will have to leave your things in your case.’

‘They’ll get all creased.’

‘You can iron them before you put them on. There’s a laundrette on the ship.’

‘I can iron them!’

‘Well, they are your clothes and I’m not spending my holiday slaving over an ironing board.’

‘This holiday is turning into a disaster from the start,’ said Albert under his breath. ‘We should have gone to Mable­thorpe in the caravan.’

‘Why don’t you get out from under my feet and go and explore while I unpack and while you’re about it, see if you can get some more coat hangers.’

‘Stuff the coat hangers,’ he said as he stomped out of the cabin.

Albert took the lift to the Jolly Sailor Tavern on Deck 13. Most of the other passengers were checking in, coming aboard, unpacking, or were queuing outside the Galleon Buffet for lunch, so he had the place virtually to himself. There were two elderly ladies sitting by the window chattering non-stop, a small boy of about twelve reading a book and a couple at a corner table. Albert sat at the end of the long shiny wooden bar and rested his elbows on the top. ‘Peace at last,’ he said, giving a satisfying sigh.

‘What can I get you, sir?’ asked a genial barman, smiling widely to display a set of very white even teeth.

‘A beer please. Make it a pint.’

‘Have you any preference, sir?’

‘I don’t suppose you have Yorkshire bitter?’

‘I’m afraid not, sir.’

‘Well, any will do. I’m not fussy.’

He had just taken his first mouthful of the drink when a man in a lurid coloured shirt and cut-off, knee-length denim shorts sidled up to the bar and perched himself on a stool next to him. There were circles of sweat under his armpits. The passenger smiled and scratched his neck. His uneven teeth were the colour of putty.

‘Travelling alone, are you?’ asked the man speaking as if there were a peg on the end of his nose.

‘No, I’m with the wife,’ Albert told him. ‘She’s unpacking.’ He returned to his beer.

‘I’m travelling solo.’

‘You’re what?’

The man scratched his thin, red mottled neck again and leaned closer as if he were being overheard. ‘I’m by myself.’

Lucky for him, thought Albert, contemplating his own circumstances – two weeks closeted with Maureen in the broom cupboard of the inside cabin.

‘As I said, I’m travelling solo,’ restated the man.

‘Yes, I heard you.’

‘My name’s Neville, by the way.’

‘I’m Albert.’ He smiled grimly.

‘So, what do you do for a living then, Albert?’

‘I’m a plumber.’

‘That’s interesting.’

‘Not really.’

‘I have my own business. Property. That’s where all the money is these days, in bricks and mortar. I mean the banks don’t pay any interest, do they?’ Albert refrained from answering and drank his beer. ‘So, are you a seasoned cruiser then, Albert?’ asked the man.

‘Am I what?’

‘Have you cruised before?’

‘No, it’s the first time.’

‘Oh, I’ve been on over twenty. If there is anything you need to know about cruising, just ask me. I’ve been all over the world. Of course, I still have a few places on my bucket list.’

‘On your what?’

‘Places I want to visit. I’ve booked for the Suez Canal later this year.’

Albert offered no reply. He breathed out long and slow. So much for the peace and quiet, he thought.

‘I always come on this ship,’ continued the man cheerfully. ‘I’ve been on the others, but the Empress of the Ocean is my favourite. It’s like a home from home. Everyone knows me: the cabin stewards, the waiters, Bimla on reception, Martin, the Entertainment Manager, Becky up at the Ocean Spa, Leon in the gym, the Restaurant Manager, Executive Chef, and most of the officers. The Captain’s new to the ship. I’ve not got to meet him yet but, no doubt, I will before the cruise ends. I’m hoping to get an invitation to sit at the Captain’s table one evening.’

Albert took a gulp of his beer and glanced pointedly at his wristwatch. He didn’t wish to encourage any more mindless chatter from the wearisome individual. His face was short on expression.

‘So, what do you think of it so far?’ asked the man. He smiled clammily.

‘Think of what?’

‘The cruise.’

‘We’ve only just got on the boat.’

‘Actually, it’s a ship or, if you prefer, a liner, designed for high-speed transoceanic travel,’ the man informed him self-importantly. ‘It’s not a boat. A boat is a much smaller craft; an ocean liner is a ship, unless it happens to be a submarine and then it is called a boat. People often make the mistake of confusing a ship and a boat.’ He reached the end of his monologue.

‘You don’t say.’ Albert stifled a yawn.

Neville was one of those aggravating people who are excessively fond of their own voice; endlessly and pedantically knowledgeable. He was a man who has seen and done everything and took delight in telling a captive audience. There always seemed to be one such character on a cruise ship. It was Albert’s misfortune that the first passenger he met was Neville.

‘What cabin are you in?’ he was asked.

‘I’m on E Deck near the front,’ Albert told him, deliberately vague. The last thing he wanted was for this bloke to come knocking on his cabin door.

‘The forward.’

‘The what?’

The man scratched his neck again. His Adam’s apple jerked in his throat. ‘The front of a ship is known as the forward, or if you prefer, the bow. The back of the ship is called the aft, or if you prefer, the stern. Two of the other most common nautical terms are port (left of the bow) and starboard (right of the bow).’

‘Really,’ Albert said, not as a question but as a way of making him shut up. He took another mouthful of his drink.

‘I always choose an aft balcony cabin on A Deck because you can get an uninterrupted ocean view over the wake of the ship. The wake, by the way, is the backwash caused by the vessel as it travels over the sea. Aft cabins tend to be bigger than the standard cabins and quieter because they are far away from the bustle and activity on the decks below.’

‘You are quite the expert,’ remarked Albert. He glanced at his wristwatch again.

Neville couldn’t tell if he was being ironic or trying to flatter. It did not deter him, however, from trying to engage Albert in conversation and he carried on.

‘There’s nothing much