The Hope Read online

  “Are you OK?” asked Gilette and her concern was so pronounced it might have been genuine. Angel could only examine her feet and nod.

  “Bad crash, right?”

  Angel nodded again, feeling the tears come and sniffling them back.

  “Oh baby…” Gilette tried to hug her but Angel shrank away. “It’s not so bad. You want to eat?”

  Angel, weak and hungry, was close to breaking down, dangerously close to trusting Gilette, which was a luxury, like the drugs, she could not afford. She muttered that she was fine, thanks, don’t worry about her, but Gilette was warming to the role of Protector of Angels.

  “I’m going to get you something to eat. I don’t want any bullshit, Angel. We’re friends and friends look after themselves.”

  Angel wondered if Gilette had noticed the ambiguity of her last sentence but she kept her mouth shut instinctively. Swallowing your pride was one of the best ways to a full stomach. Before Gilette could do anything about food, however, Riot sauntered up, slipped his arms around Gilette’s waist from behind, kissed her soundly on both cheeks and began to make exaggerated humping noises. Angel winced as Gilette squealed in pleasure. Riot was one of the so-called hard men, the leader, so you didn’t tell him to fuck off however badly you wanted him to fuck off.

  “Riot, Riot, stop it!” Without much severity. “Stop it!” Again, laughing.

  “Now this is a bottom that could take a lot of spunk!” Riot growled, before noticing Angel. “Who’s your friend, Gil?”

  You know bloody well who I am, thought Angel. Are you doing this on purpose?

  “Riot, Angel. Angel…” Gilette squealed again as he nuzzled her neck, not taking his eyes off Angel.

  “Pleased,” he said. When Angel did not reply, he murmured in Gilette’s ear (not so quietly that Angel could not catch it): “Come on, Gil. There’s someone I want you to meet.”

  To her credit, Gilette said she couldn’t leave Angel, but Riot insisted, so Gilette promised she would be back later. Angel asked her if she’d seen Push.

  “You don’t want to bother with him, Angel. Bad news. Find someone else. Riiiiot!” And she was dragged away giggling into the crowd.

  The music was depressingly loud. Angel let it roar over her like the sea she had drowned in on her trip the night before, and she was numb, and she was dead outside, so dead that she almost missed Push as he swanned by her (he had seen her but he had better things to spend his precious time on). It was, however, hard for him to ignore someone tugging on his arm. To the untrained eye, the transformation of his expression as he turned round, from innocence to delight, was so marked that it might appear contrived, even unreal.

  “Angel! Baby! I’ve been looking for you all over. I didn’t see you there. Hey, you look beautiful. Has anyone ever told you that?” She let him plant his lips on hers. He held her face gently. His irises were screwed tightly around pupils no larger than a full stop.

  “I want some … you know, shit.” There you go, be honest with him. Honesty’s the best policy. Push made the drugs himself, using whatever was available, mainly salt and seagull droppings. He was a devout advocate of the hallucinatory properties of guano.

  “You want some you know shit, do you?” he mimicked in falsetto as he led her to one corner where the music was fractionally less deafening and the shadows would hide a man’s face. He sat her down beside him.

  “Why did you go this morning?” she asked.

  “Business. You know the sort of thing. I’m a busy man. Busy, busy. And besides, you were sleeping like a baby. That was good shit I gave you, hey? I don’t jerk you around, do I now? I respect you too much.”

  “It’s just... Well, I don’t know. I think… No.”

  “What is it, baby? You can tell me. We should be able to tell each other everything.”

  “Do you like me?”

  “Of course I do.”

  “Really like me?” She took his hand. This startled him as much as it would if she had put her hand down the front of his trousers in public. Things, he decided, were getting way out of control. His expression transformed again as if made from mercury. His lips curled and his eyelids narrowed.

  “Listen, bitch, stop bothering me, all right? I’m fed up with you. I’m sick of you. You bore me. Leave me alone. It’s over. OK? Over.”

  The music thundered in Angel’s ears and beneath it she thought she could hear the angry rumble of the Hope’s engines, growing louder, and it seemed that the day everyone prophesied, the day when the engines would burn out and explode, had at last arrived.

  “OK,” she said.

  She brushed her hand across his face. She thought she brushed her hand across his face. She couldn’t really tell because she was in the eye of a howling storm. She realised she had in fact raked her nails into Push’s eyes and he was bent double in agony and screaming, “I’m blind! The slut’s blinded me!”, and although there was a lot of blood she could not tell if this was true or not, because Push was a bit of a liar, wasn’t he? Her hands had only really brushed his face, hadn’t they?

  At that moment a record came to its end and the conversation, which would normally rush in to fill the gap like the Red Sea on the heads of the Egyptians, petered out as people sensed something was happening and looked unerringly towards where it was happening.

  Push kept up an uncomprehending wailing and Angel stood with watery streaks of blood on her fingers.

  “Christ, Angel, what the fuck’ve you done?” Gilette’s voice, its revulsion undisguised. A drumbeat burst open a song over the silence and Angel was aware how people were watching her, how their dumbstruck curiosity was as insulting as the way Push had spoken to her.

  Words came from her mouth to be flung at the wall of eyes and faces, some known, some strange: “Screw you! Screw you all!”

  She found herself outside and running along the deck through the dismal rain and there was no sense of direction other than a need to go upward, upward and out of there, to climb staircases and scale ladders until the Hope dropped away beneath her and she would reach heaven. She climbed stairs past signs which read “N DECK” and “K DECK” and “E DECK”, and she had a vague idea that when she reached the top she would fling herself off into space, end her life in a final ecstatic free-fall, better than any bird-turd drug. She would dive into the ocean as she’d often dreamed of doing and kiss the safety of its cold-comforting hands.

  When she finally came to rest, exhausted, she was gasping in sweeter air and the rain was less persistent on her face. She took stock of her surroundings and was surprised to see no stoppers, no people at all. One of the funnels loomed over her, blocking out a large portion of starlit sky, and she thought the smoke pouring out of it must be the night’s breath. She was not really allowed up here. That was an unwritten rule. You should be content with your own level. That was the way of the Hope.

  And the sense of space was overwhelming, the sky vast, a monochrome dome cupped over the ocean, confining it and at the same time emphasising its unendingness, as if their edges never quite met.

  Perhaps, thought Angel, we’re sailing round and round in a circle inside the sky. Who would know, who could tell if we were?

  She was giddy beneath the stars. She wished she could be above the Hope and riding her like she’d seen horsemen riding in picture books, her legs like pylons astride the funnels and the ship’s cables grasped in her giant fists. She was quite alone.

  Music, faint and unlike any music she had heard before, broke in on her reverie. Without hesitation she headed towards it. She passed a row of potted palms looking sorry for themselves and then she came to a huge room of lights. She looked in through a porthole. She knew this place.

  She had never seen so many old people in one room, but they did not scare her or revolt her as they were supposed to. The light, scattered from a shatter of diamonds suspended from the ceiling, glowed on the men’s white hair and pink scalps and shimmered on the women’s dresses. Couples pirouetted around the r
oom, sweeping in and out of her line of vision. Their elegance was awesome. They swept by again and again, daring her, thrilling her, all for her, even though they did not know she was there.

  The music came to an end and everyone clapped and knew, without having to be told, that it was time to go. A few yards from Angel a door opened and she ran and hid in the shadows, but kept watching. Of all the people leaving amongst the cloud of chattering voices one woman caught her attention, not just by her striking good looks but by the grace of her step, her limbs. She walked away alone, although she seemed to take a part of every dancer with her, and Angel slipped through the dispersing crowd and followed her. Angel did not understand the urgency she felt.

  The woman let herself into a cabin and Angel saw the door close and the lights come on. She padded up to the door and found she was trembling. In fear? Excitement?

  Push the door. Gently does it. A slice of light. The woman looking up (not hostile, not afraid). A flash of green cat’s-eyes.

  Things collapsed around Angel. There was darkness and she learned it was not a thing to be feared nor the oblivion she longed for. She felt herself floating up into the dome of the night, which had been waiting for so long to catch her.

  There were hours of waking sleep and it seemed to Angel that every time she opened her eyes the woman’s smiling face hovered over her and that her every slightest need was being attended to. A selfish part of her drew this attention into herself and suckled on it because it was a long time since she had been cared about (genuinely cared about). It was only right she should get her fair share of love. But in her more lucid moments she tried to thank the woman as humbly as possible, hoping she could pay her back in words, but the woman would hear nothing of it. She called Angel a poor child and said she would not let her move until she was much better.

  Once, when the woman had gone out to buy something to eat, Angel propped herself up in bed and took a bleary look around the cabin. All the furnishings gleamed – polished mahogany and teak – and the curtains and the bedding were a rich dark blue, thick material such as she had never seen before. There was a lamp like a woman with a fish’s tail. Angel studied it for several minutes, counting the scales. A large part of one wall was taken up by a mirror, in which she could see a small child engulfed in a huge bed. Someone had taken the trouble to comb the child’s hair and wash her face and hands so that she was almost pretty. An old grey cat on one of the chairs was washing itself painstakingly, glancing up now and then at her to make sure the young human fully appreciated the efforts being made on her behalf.

  Another wall was almost entirely window but the curtains were drawn across it to keep the cabin in twilight. Angel briefly wondered what the view was like from so high up and longed to see for herself, but exhaustion pulled her back down into the bed. As she fell asleep it occurred to her that there was no other bed in the cabin and that meant the woman had nowhere to sleep, but the thought lost itself in other softer thoughts.

  Dawn broke brilliant and blue and the woman drew the curtains. Angel woke with it, feeling as it she had slept for a hundred years. The woman was sitting in an armchair, her back straight, reading a book perched on the back of the cat on her lap. Angel lay on her side and watched through half-closed eyelids in the hope that she could go on looking for ever, undisturbed, but the woman glanced up, shut the book and smiled a smile brighter than that morning’s sun.

  “Feeling better?” she asked, and Angel remembered Gilette asking, “Are you OK?” and marvelled at how differently one question could be asked.

  “Yes. Thanks. How long have I been asleep?”

  “On and off, about four days.”

  “Four days!” Panic reared up – parties missed, appointments blown – but it subsided quickly. So what about parties and appointments?

  “Hungry?”

  “Starving.”

  The woman set about preparing breakfast in a small, immaculate galley kitchen and Angel followed her movements, the economy of her grace, like a dancer.

  “I saw you dancing the other night, before I … came here.”

  “No, you didn’t,” said the woman, trying to sound reproachful.

  “Yes, I did. You and lots of others, in a big room with a big light in the ceiling. You were there, weren’t you?”

  “Yes, Signor Bellini’s ballroom.”

  Bellini – that was Paolo’s surname, wasn’t it? But Angel did not want to think about Paolo or Eddy or Gilette or Riot or anyone.

  The woman continued: “I was there, but I wasn’t dancing. I don’t.”

  “Not at all?”

  “Not any more. I used to –” And she stopped, as if she had said too much. Angel wanted nothing less than to upset her saviour, so she tried a different tack.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Gabrielle. Call me Gabby.”

  “I don’t like Gabby. I think it sounds a bit silly. Can I call you Gabrielle?”

  “If you want.”

  “I’m Angel.”

  “Yes,” said Gabrielle. “This monster is Lucius.” She pointed at the cat, who was sitting expectantly on the counter. “He’s the last in a long line of distinguished cats.”

  “How many do you have?”

  “Only the one,” she said, tickling him behind the ears. “I measure my time spent on the Hope in cats. The first I had was Black Ferdinand. I took him on board with me, but he disappeared after a few months. Poor thing. I hope he had a happy life. Then there was Margot and Wilfred and – I do go on, don’t I? Ask me to talk about anything other than cats, because when I start there’s no stopping me.”

  “Oh,” said Angel, scared to say or ask anything more in case words broke the spell and she would suddenly be sent hurtling downwards back to the lower decks and the crowds of people who knew her and cared nothing for her. She contented herself with looking out of the window at the Hope and the sea glistening in the sunlight. She had left a life somewhere down there in the canyons of decks built high and stifling on top of each other and she wished that life would stay there for good. Here, surely, conversation would be kindly and pleasurable and honest … if she was allowed to stay. She dared not ask, in case a refusal came, like a sentence of death.

  Breakfast smelled wonderful and tasted better. Angel cleared her tray in five minutes while Lucius sat beside her on the bed offering to help her out should she get stuck. There was tea in a fluted bone china pot (Angel poured it gingerly, frightened it might shatter in her hands, those same hands that…) and there was bread still warm from the ship’s bakery, and there was, miracle of miracles, fresh fruit grown in one of the greenhouses. But with each heavenly mouthful Angel became more and more nervous that this was her final meal here, a parting gift.

  Gabrielle removed the tray and Angel thanked her, believing she could never thank her enough. The older woman looked tired and Angel would not have been surprised if she had not slept once during the past four days, keeping vigil over a complete stranger.

  “Please,” Angel said, “you must have a rest. I feel fine. I’ll get up and you have the bed. I’m fine. No really.” In the end Gabrielle relented and lay down (“Just for a little while”) and fell asleep with the cat lying fitted into the curve of her body. Angel, wrapped in a crimson silk dressing gown, paced about the cabin for a while, feeling lightheaded, then sat in the armchair and picked up the woman’s book. It was called Jane Eyre and Angel, having read the first few pages, decided she didn’t have a clue what was going on and nodded off.

  “You must think I’m absurdly old-fashioned, enjoying the dances like that.”

  “No, I don’t. I like it. It looks nice.”

  “It’s terribly difficult, you know. You can’t just go out there and whoosh about with a strange man without knowing all the movements, steps and patterns. Oh! To listen to me you’d think it was maths or geometry or something, and it’s really nothing of the sort. But it needs more than knowledge alone. Any idiot can learn a few steps by rote just as any
idiot can learn a times table. Well, except me perhaps!” She laughed a generous, self-deprecating laugh. “To dance well, you need much more. You need…” Her smile became apologetic.

  “You need to love it?” Angel suggested.

  “Yes. I can’t think of any other way to put it.”

  It was afternoon, following a morning spent asleep and a lunchtime spent by Angel on tenterhooks, as she dreaded the blow that must fall eventually – “You have to go now.” It had not fallen, yet, and when it did, she was sure it would come in the kindest, gentlest manner possible.

  Gabrielle and she chatted like old friends about their disparate lives, a lot about the injustice of the way of the Hope, a little about life on the land. This last was a bizarre fantasy to Angel and a subject Gabrielle seemed uneasy about, as did most old folk. She said she vaguely remembered embarking, but it was about thirty years ago.

  “One thing I remember well. There was a ticker-tape parade, thousands of bits of paper dropped from the very top of the ship down on to the passengers and the people on the quay as they were waving goodbye. They used black paper, which was unusual, but très chic. I thought it looked more like a shower of ashes. The whole thing was terribly unusual. It didn’t feel like a time for celebration. I felt that the whole ceremony was for me and for me alone, private and not particularly joyful. When I’ve mentioned this to other people, they agree and say they felt the same. It’s hard to know why. Perhaps it’s best not to talk about it.”

  As the day wore on, Angel relaxed slightly. Perhaps if she kept talking long enough, she might be allowed to spend just one more night.

  “Why did you give up dancing?” she ventured.

  Gabrielle scratched the top of Lucius’s head and looked puzzled, not as if the question was unexpected but as if she had been asking herself the same thing every day and had not reached the answer, which lay locked in that part of her that said, “You’re too old and your time has been and gone. Who are you fooling?”