Tuesday, February 12, 2008

The last night on the liner

Imagine this, she said, stroking a stray lock of her long flaxen hair, imagine this.

You're a third class passenger on a cruise ship. You have no say over its direction of course, there is no captain, but you're on a fantastic voyage and everything's so exciting till you realise you're confined to your cabin. You press your nose to the porthole, glimpse the sun, sparkling on the waters, sailing ships in the distance, exotic ports even but the more you strain to use your imagination to fill in the gaps the more your state's driving you mad. What's worse is you don't know if everyone's at some wonderful party or they're locked in their cabins just like you.

So, you have time on your hands, you are not unintelligent. You fashion a key, from whatever is at hand. Somehow you find that easy, maybe that's your one talent or no-one else even ever tried before, too busy drinking tea and eating biscuits, who knows. And finally you hold the key. The key that will not only unlock your cabin and set you free but perhaps unlock everyone else's cabin too. You don't want to steal anything, you're not a thief, you don't want anything, just to catch a glimpse of how other people live. The chance to talk to someone, anyone new. There's no thought in your head you won't return to your cabin. You're not unhappy there, anymore than you plan to run away to India when you go up on the train to the lakes for a day.

Anyway, you make your key and you're fool enough to try it and sure enough it unlocks your door but you step out and instead of finding yourself in a corridor, free to venture a little up or down at your own pace, in your own way, and the next cabin up had been your only intention, well you find yourself..this is hard to explain...You find yourself stepping into every room at once. Only it's always a slightly different you. And you're aware you've been...splintered, not splintered, you're like twins, free, and whole and individual but also linked inextricably. If you'd been separated at birth and met years later you'd have the same hair, the same type of dog and if that never happened and she died on the other side of the world somehow you'd know, even if you didn't know her name.

So you step out of your tiny, dreary cabin into everyone else's cabin at once, but more, into every port the ship has visited, every ship there's ever been, every possible ship on every possible ocean. Something wonderful has happened, but something went terribly wrong. And, well, you find the key broke in the lock as you turned it. It's stuck there, you can't get back. You can't even make another key, that was only possible in that cabin, at that time, only that version of you could have done it. You can no more cut another key than walk on the water, only you can sometimes, by accident maybe, you can sometimes find yourself on a corridor, lost in the bowels of the boat with all the lights blown, you can fumble through another door. You're changed now, it's like losing you...never mind. You can't meet yourself there mind but, well, pretty nearly. It's easiest to wander into a cabin you've just left somehow, another you, your things are everywhere, if you look everything but a letter.

And, so, what do you do? You have nowhere to go because you're everywhere at once, but still you must keep looking. There has to be a purpose for this, even if it's only one you imagine for yourself. Only that can save you from the..insanity which stalks you. You have made a terrible mistake but if you do the right thing, if you all can do the right thing perhaps there can be some hope of ...restitution.

Ellie stirred beside her. Katherine was aghast. She had assumed she was soundly asleep. Ellie was willowy, athletic even in sleep grunted like a baby.
Nothing babe, she stroked her hair one last time, go back to sleep.
Ellie grunted and turned over. The stately liner chugged on into the diamond arctic night.


Tickets for the fortieth anniversary cruise had proved hard to find but she had, after all, after all this time, certain connections. The magnificent ship had symbolised all that was truly splendid about the long Edwardian era and she wouldn't miss its last voyage for the world. This world at any rate. Its elaborate radiography device chittered above them, steering safe passage through the icebergs. It seemed certain the interglacial really was ending this time, after all these years of false alarms in the yellow press. The glaciers were demonstrably on the march again, not just in Norway and Iceland but throughout the Empire from New Zealand and Pakistan. Some said, the usual posse of shrill, attention seeking alarmists she hoped, they'd make it down to Derby again.

Katherine decided to go for a last stroll along the quarter deck and slipped out of the single bunk, careful not to disturb her friend. Her own bunk lay pristine but she was restless now. If she wanted to chunter, she should do it to the stars, where it could do no harm. Katherine slipped out of the cabin. She took her heavy sweater after leaving L's draped over the writing desk. There was a note there with clear simple instructions. The iron door clicked.

Ljósadís opened her eyes. She glanced at her watch. She pulled her boots on.

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