Chapter 4

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow creeps in this petty pace from day to day.

Macbeth Act 5, Scene 5

I learned about office politics at my mother’s knee. To be precise, I was concealed behind the settee in her front room while she shared her experiences with her friends, I would sneak in after school, slip behind the couch and listen avidly to their tales of the things left behind for cleaners to find. Discarded notes with pornographic content, underwear – male and female, often noisome – and used condoms became a positive plague after office parties. “I sometimes wonder when they find time to do any work,” my mum often said.

Then at sixteen, I entered the arena as a temporary typist, earning a few bob while I was still at secretarial school. My afternoons behind the settee had prepared me to a limited extent, and the clumsy fumbling of my schoolmates had identified the parts of my anatomy that would be under assault, but nothing suggested the persistence and intensity of the attacks. The only help I was offered came from the head of the typing pool who advised me to buy a chainmail bra and knickers.

In a sense, the sexual harassment was expected, even natural in a distorted way. The thing that astonished me was the cunning methods used to shift blame, usually to the most junior member of staff. I witnessed a woman being destroyed because she did something to upset the queen of the office hive, and all the worker bees turned on her. In the open office there is a chain of command, but amongst the female employees there is another hierarchy, operated from the ladies’ toilets. Upset the managing director and you might escape with a reprimand but upset the unrecognised leader of the ‘girls’ and your remaining employment can be counted in days.

Even with all that background I was surprised, after I arrived in London following the funeral, to enter an office war zone at quarter past nine on the first morning of my new life. After all, I only went there to collect the ticket for my flight to Athens. I had offered to find my own way there, but Paula insisted that the London office of the cruise company would supply a boarding card with extra hold luggage included. She had called me before eight to ensure that I was still committed to joining her as her assistant.

On the morning of the funeral, my only concern had been about my fitness for the task. I know that I get on with people and seem to have a knack for calming them down and finding solutions to their problems, but it is still an enormous step to be assistant customer relations officer to two hundred and fifty people on a cruise ship. The money is actually no better than I was getting as Mark’s PA, but I did get room and board and an office that moved amongst some of the most beautiful places on earth.

My doubts began when Alice, six months pregnant and showing it, accosted me as I left the graveside. I have neglected everyone for the past four months while I gave what comfort I could to Phoebe. What kept me going was the offer of a new life dangled before me by Paula and Captain Shaw; she had been promoted to fill Hans’ shoes and they both wanted me to take her place as assistant. It was a flattering offer.

The most attractive thing, however, was that it would allow me to turn my back on my old life, spending time with my new friends. I knew, of course, that I would eventually have to turn and face the past, but I felt that I could do a better job if I had time away from my family to discover what was best for me. I was aware that my old life could hardly be improved on; the worst thing was the encroaching boredom now that the children no longer needed me.

To be fair to myself, I had no plans to make a major change until it was forced upon me by Geoff’s announcement that we were no longer a couple. Until then I had vague plans to wean him away from his wholehearted commitment to work. Indeed, I remember that as we flew to join the cruise at Palma, I wondered if we should add cruising once or twice a year to our ‘to do’ list.

Having been so rudely thrust out of my cozy nest, I was forced to assess myself and those around me. Paula and the girls in the boutique gave me a flying start; I astonished myself when I danced all night with the captain, especially when he gave every sign that he was attracted to me as a woman. I had been a wife and mother so long that I had almost forgotten the thrill of being fancied, even if you did not much like the fancier.

Iain, bless him, had already declared himself willing to be my squire and it gave me a lift when Bill, a younger man, showed an interest. They were easy enough to recognise and deal with, but Captain Shaw was a different problem. He was a ladies’ man of a type I had learned to avoid when I was young and looking for romance. They can be charming and amusing company, but they have no staying power; they have a personal goal and, once they reach it, they move to the next target. They generally have so many possible targets that they soon back off if they are rejected, so I had no great fears of working for the captain.

The huge advantage to me in going to sea was that it put me miles away from my past both literally and figuratively. My new friends would accept whatever character I projected whereas my old friends kept expecting me to behave in the way I always had. The old Beth would have been brought to her knees by the defection of her husband, begging and pleading for him to take her back. Even I did not know what the new Beth would do. Working on a cruise ship will allow me to explore some possibilities.

I had more or less ruled out reconciliation or any new relationship. Then the meeting with the company lawyer, Eric Chesters got me wondering if I was at heart a homemaking, one-man girl. If I was, then could I really do better than Geoff? We could not go back to what we had but was there, perhaps, a way forward? It would certainly be simpler for me to be far from either of them while I explored the possibilities.

By the time I walked away from the last remains of Phoebe, I was determined to get on with the life I had planned without further agonising. Then my daughter stormed up the hill angry and flustered, I hardly heard her objections; her presence alone was enough to send doubts surging through me. She forced me to face an aspect of my deliberations that I had been purposely ignoring. She and Robert are the most important of my ‘old friends.’

The new friends who are encouraging me to reach for a future far from my past, barely know me. The old friends have not only known me far longer, but they have offered support over many years. The new people certainly seem to like me, but it is the ones I am turning my back on that love me. Alice arriving at the crucial moment made my resolution falter. It was Connie who restored the balance to my thinking. Although she is the newest of the people I have met, she has watched me endure physical exhaustion and emotional overload.

With her, all my shields have dropped exposing my faults and virtues. Her opinion, as an experienced nurse, is that I need a long holiday. Her preference would be for me to go on the cruise as a pampered passenger, but she knows that I would feel guilty if I left with no other purpose than enjoyment. Getting away from my old life for a while is the most important thing and she can accept that I will be working rather than resting.

Connie said something to Alice, who stood back to let me pass, then she put her arm around me and walked me to the car to drive me to the railway station. I wanted to turn back and at least explain to my daughter what I was doing.

“You’re exhausted, girl. She’s worried about you but she would worry even more if you talked to her now. Your contract is for six weeks. Come back refreshed and talk to them all.”

That made sense; it also tied in with my method of preparing for a journey. It is my habit to picture every junction on a journey, the points where we would leave the motorway or the route number when we had to catch a bus. I had geared myself to go to Lincoln station, pick up my tickets and board the London train, so that is what I did.

“Are you all right, young lady?” I looked up at an elderly couple sitting opposite me. It had been the woman who spoke but now her husband asked, with jocular concern, if I had been to a funeral. I had a fit of the giggles. Their expressions changed from mild concern to something approaching alarm at being seated so close to a mad woman. They had called me ‘young lady’ shortly after Connie addressed me as ‘girl’ and that set me off on my mini hysterics. I was feeling every single second of my fifty-five years.

When I regained control, I told them that I had indeed just come from a funeral, going on to make an amusing tale of calling Faisal by his nickname. That got us started on the funny things that had happened at wakes and funerals over the years. From there we moved to my ultimate destination and that, in turn, led to further stories of holiday disasters survived. We parted as life-long friends on the platform when we arrived, exchanging telephone numbers and promising to keep in touch when we were finally back home.

Cheered by their companionship, my mood was better as I arrived at my hotel, the same one I had booked for Geoff and me on the return from the cruise. For some reason, I had also booked seats for the show we had planned to see. Paula called me soon after I arrived at the hotel, further heartening me by confirming that she desperately wanted me with her. I repeated my reservations about my suitability for the job and allowed my ego to be boosted at her incredulity that I had any doubts.

Eating alone in a little French restaurant before the theatre was a bit of an ordeal, alleviated by drinking almost a whole bottle of wine with the meal. I scrapped my original idea of having a drink at the hotel bar after the show, settling instead for a cognac from the mini bar in my room. All in all, I thought as I settled in my lonely bed, not such a bad start to my new life. The next day would be straight forward though tiring and then my troubles would start when I joined the ship at Piraeus.

‘The best laid schemes’, ‘There’s many a slip between cup and lip’. I was begging for some cliché to land on me. At nine-fifteen I was standing outside a shabby building behind Tottenham Court Road, the London office of the cruise line. Their main office on Southampton Docks looks to be plush and passenger friendly but this outpost had seen better days. Inside it was worse with about twenty desks in two rows between the entrance and the high but dirty windows.

The girl at the first desk inside the door had a plastic holder on her desk naming her receptionist. I gave my name and asked for my travel documents for Athens where I was to join their ship. She barely let me finish before jerking her thumb to indicate the depths of the room, muttering ‘Ms. Adams’, before returning her attention to a computer monitor.

All the other occupants were equally absorbed. Not one head was raised to glance in my direction as I wandered down the room reading the plastic nameplates as I approached. N. Adams sat at a desk one away from the window and she paid me no more attention than any of her colleagues. I pulled out a chair tucked under the desk and waited, recognising the manoeuvre as a prime move in office politics. I could think of no reason why she chose to involve me: she is desk bound in London and I would be off in a very few minutes to sail the seven seas – well one of them, at any rate. I had stepped onto a battlefield and must be prepared to face the enemy, never mind that I have no clue about the causes of the war.

Before I placed my handbag beside my chair, I took out my mobile phone and placed it beside the nameplate on the desk. I caught a flash as N. Adams glanced up to observe my actions without moving her head. Her blonde hair was in a French pleat, leaving her profile clear, with well-formed features. She was wearing a high-necked blouse in Paisley pattern. Her left hand, long and shapely with well-tended scarlet nails, lay on the desk while her right was gripping a computer mouse, constantly moving it about. No wedding ring, I noticed.

One elephant, two elephants, three elephants, and so on. That was how we learned to count seconds in school, and I could recognise N. Adams judging the delay that would reinforce the message that I was a person of no importance. At twelve elephants by my count, she tapped the screen of her monitor with the index finger of her left hand and confided in it that there was no NVQ. I remained unmoved, my attention on the windows behind her head.

“Do you have hard copies?” she asked the screen before turning her head to redirect the question to me. I was tempted to go into details of my total ignorance on the subject of NVQ’s but confined myself to: “No.” She permitted herself a deep sigh, subtly combining annoyance with resignation. Why, she seemed to ask, do they send these people to me? I went back to my contemplation of the windows while she returned to gazing at the monitor, the mouse dancing under her fingers.

She reached twenty-six elephants by my count this time before she turned her head and spoke to my left shoulder: “No NVQ, no job.” She then took her hand off the mouse, reached below the surface of the desk and placed a document in front of me, “Fill that in. We’ll pay all reasonable expenses.” She turned back to the screen.

I picked up my phone and pressed the button to speed-dial Paula who answered after only two rings. She began chattering about how much she was looking forward to my arrival that evening, and it was some moments before I was able to give her the news that all bets were off. That gave me time to switch on the sharing facility and to turn up the volume. The remainder of the conversation was audible to almost everyone un the room.

“Sorry to disappoint you, Paula, but N. Adams says I don’t have the job. I’m in your London office to pick up my tickets and she seems to be the owner.”

“Who the hell is N. Adams?” Paula screeched, so even the receptionist at the farthest point in the room must have heard her.

“I was sent to her desk, and she has pronounced. All I know about her is that she’s deeply in love with her computer monitor – she can’t take her eyes off it.”

“Look Beth, I don’t know what’s going on, but I promise you the job is yours. Give me ten minutes to talk to the captain. Promise you won’t walk out?”

She ended the call, so I put the phone back on the desk and picked up the claim form to read while I waited. I was not so conceited as to think N. Adams had a grudge against me. I was collateral damage in a battle I knew nothing about. My guess was that the shore-bound staff of this minor branch office resented the sea-going staff or perhaps the clerks who worked in the head office in Southampton. In any event, my lack of an NVQ, whatever that was, gave Adams an excuse to throw a spanner in the ship’s engines.

Adams may, for all I know, have a legitimate grievance but she made a mistake when she decided to treat me with disdain. I arrived after my marriage failed and having watched a friend die, in no mood to be understanding or conciliatory. I wanted N. Adams to be humiliated, and I was certain that the Captain of a cruise liner carried a great deal more clout than she did. He had joined Paula in pleading with me to join the crew; now he had to stand up and be counted.

It took almost twenty minutes for him to act. Adams was wearing a head set that brought a tiny microphone close to her lips so she could talk without the sound reaching me only a metre away. She visibly stiffened as she began to speak eighteen minutes after I replaced my phone on her desk. Over the next minute or so her face became flushed, and her left hand began drumming on the desktop. She stopped speaking and set the mouse dancing just as my phone rang.

“I’m with the Captain now,” Paula chortled, her voice on speakerphone reaching throughout the room. “He tore your N. Adams a new asshole, as the Yanks say!” There was a loud noise in my ear followed by a whispered apology and then the captain spoke.

“Hi Beth, it’s Callum Shaw. Apparently, you need a First Aid certificate, but we’ll fix you up when you get here. Any more trouble, just give Paula a bell. I’m looking forward to another dance when we get you aboard.” I managed to switch off the speakerphone at that point so the remainder of the conversation was conducted in private.

While I was talking, Adams was busy with her little mouse. She rose, face still flushed with embarrassment and stalked down the room before disappearing through an open door into a side office about half-way to reception. I followed her with my eyes, noting the concealed smirks on the faces of her colleagues after she passed; Adams does not seem to be popular. She reemerged several minutes later carrying a sheaf of papers which she brought back to the desk, where she replaced her headset and sorted through the documents.

That was the end, really. The rest was the discussion after the final whistle as you leave the terracing to go back to reality. It took several minutes for Ms. Adams to sort the papers by putting some into a clear plastic folder which she pushed across the desk to me. I had picked up my handbag, placed my phone in it and was waiting to be dismissed. She was still looking intently at her monitor when she said her final words: “There’s a taxi waiting to take you to the airport.”

I walked the length of the room, no longer ignored by the other clerks who were giving me sly little glances as I passed. The receptionist smiled and waved her hand in a friendly gesture of farewell, and I was out on the street climbing into a taxi that took me straight to the terminal for my flight to Athens. I had hours to wait since I had planned on making the journey by public transport but there was a meal voucher amongst the papers Ms. Adams had handed to me.

There was no reason that I knew of for her attack on me. I reacted to aggression with aggression but now I was regretting my overkill. She had handled things ineptly but my decision to humiliate her in front of her colleagues was unforgiveable. I was dressed for comfort on my journey, in presentable but old slacks and frankly battered comfy flat shoes; I was wearing a sloppy jumper over a long-sleeved blouse. Little wonder that she mistook me for an easy target.

Perhaps she did need a lesson, but I could have dealt with her less cruelly. It was not as if my life depended on getting the job; no later than the day before I had been seriously contemplating backing out of the promise I made to Paula. By the time I had finished an indifferent lunch at the expense of the cruise line, I convinced myself that Ms. Adams is a big girl who can look after herself. I began then to worry that Paula and Captain Shaw were expecting too much of me.

I had been on one cruise lasting just seven days. At the outset, my husband told me that our marriage was over. My response was to fight back, which I did with help from a number of crew members including the captain. None of these things qualified me to become assistant passenger liaison officer, the post that I was going to Greece to fill. My experience as a mum and in the ten years I had nurse-maided Mark as his PA gave me a good working knowledge of problem solving, I admit, but it hardly seemed sufficient. It certainly did not justify the optimism and commitment Captain Shaw had shown when he routed N. Adams. I still did not know what an NVQ was, but it certainly was not the only thing I lacked.

Even dawdling over lunch left me with too much time on my hands before my flight was called. I had slept fairly well in my hotel, but I was carrying accumulated exhaustion from my months with Phoebe. I was feeling crotchety, unhappy with my past, uncertain about my future and bored with my present, sitting too much and drinking too much coffee. As usual, I felt better as soon as I joined the queue to board the aircraft. I was travelling tourist class with mainly holidaymakers so the atmosphere was happy and expectant.

You might know that I got into conversation with the people alongside me. They were going on from Athens to holidays in the islands, but they had considered cruising. They thought that my story was incredibly romantic, especially my transition from passenger to crew member. I had them enthralled about me dancing with the captain dressed in a borrowed gown, having been prepared by the ship’s beauty salon. By the time we landed I was reconciled to my decision to accept the offer of employment. Talk about believing your own publicity!

It was still too soon for any of our passengers to board, so I spent the next few days helping Paula with the paperwork. There were dietary considerations that had to be passed to the kitchen staff and special requests for cabins to be approved or rejected with an explanation. In my spare time, I was put through a crash course on First Aid by the ship’s nurse. I had a cabin to myself until the passengers arrived and I met the girl I would share with during the voyage. I was an only child so Janice would only be the second person I had shared a room with, after thirty years of sleeping beside Geoff.

There was very little time for socialising. Tina was still in charge of the salon, and we ate lunch together a couple of times. Janice works for her, doing the work on lady beards amongst other duties. Paula gave me a morning off on the day the passengers began to arrive to have a full beauty treatment, and I let myself be talked into another full Brazilian from my new roommate. The last time there had been so much itching as the hair grew back that I vowed never again.

Janice was more absent than present. A thirty-something divorcee, she was ready to work hard and party long and even harder. Discretion was not her strong point, and I often had to find reason to escape her enthusiastic after-match analysis. I mean, I have enjoyed sex all my adult life, but it is hard to remain rivetted to someone else’s account of their horizontal gymnastics. I never have understood the attraction of pornography.

Most of my work for the first few days with passengers on board was dealing with cabin assignments. Once everyone was settled, they began to agitate for introductions to the captain and crew. It was Paula and I, with some input from the stewards who prepared the recommendations for the Captain when he issued invitations to join him for lunch or dinner. We were about three days out before I noticed that he would find some excuse to detain me in his day cabin after Paula and Pedro had gone. He only chatted but the other pair gave me knowing looks when we met later. I was reminded that the office romance had survived as well as office politics. Even though I am middle aged, I am the ‘new girl’ and subject of intertest to the office Romeo.

My reaction to this recognition was to go to my cabin for a little weep. For thirty years I have had Geoff as my shield; even after I became Mark’s PA, I had my husband at home to protect me from predators. I can see now that it was my complete reliance on him that led to the lack of communication that resulted in our estrangement. Was I crying for my lost love? To some extent, I suppose, but the truth is that I was fearful about facing life alone; my new friendships suddenly seemed very fragile.

There was little time for reflection. My tears were discovered by my roommate who jumped to the conclusion that I was homesick. She was right in a way, but what I was missing was the home I had known up until six months before. I had just time to catch a fleeting thought that I did not want the old Geoff back, before I dried my eyes and gave Janice a reassuring grin.

“When I feel a bit downhearted,” she confided. “I look at all the dreamy men on this ship. You’ve seen all the passengers, Beth, are there any that you would grab for yourself?”

I told her there were several with a gleam in their eyes that hinted they were in the mood for an adventure. “Not that you need to bother, you lucky cow, with the captain giving you the full treatment!” she chortled, as we left our tiny cabin to go back to work.

The early pressure eased, with the passengers settling into the routine of ship’s life. Whatever angst they had in their everyday life, they were on holiday, and ready to be pleased by our efforts to care for them. Nevertheless, I breathed a sigh of relief when I waved most of them off to explore our first port of call. I turned away from the gangway straight into a storm that soon engulfed the whole crew. Tina, the head of the beauty salon, and Felicity, the new head of the neighbouring boutique, were at war. By the time I learned of their enmity, they had recruited armies, and the battle lines were drawn.

I almost made the same mistake as Paula when I went to the ship’s shopping mall to enquire. Both she and I had sailed with Tina before and we both liked her, so it was natural to turn to her for an explanation of the quarrel. If you want an impartial view, you cannot ask the commanding general of one of the armies. Paula had seriously muddied the waters by appearing to take Tina’s side. I would likely have made the same mistake if it had not been for Janice’s remark as we parted outside the cabin. “I’m staying out of the mall until the bombs stop falling. I’m thinking of going on the sick.” She laughed as she said it, but there was no mistaking the seriousness of her warning.

My single previous meeting with Felicity had barely registered. She made, if I remember correctly, an anodyne remark about the difference between running a shop at sea and on land. There certainly was no hint that she and Tina would become sworn enemies within three days of leaving our home port. Since I could not rely on finding a neutral witness in the mall, I turned to William who had been my cabin steward when I had sailed as a passenger.

He is in his early sixties, a quiet, self-effacing man who appeared to be a bit of a loner. He had been attentive but not intrusive after I was told that my marriage was at an end. I liked him because he seemed to radiate sympathy and understanding while giving me space. I approached him with some trepidation. I was, after all, seeking to involve him in something that was not his responsibility. Paula and I were being paid to deal with the problem while he had shown that he wished to remain detached.

In the event, he made things easy for me when I sought him out.

“A bit different from being a passenger, isn’t it miss?” were his first words when I accosted him outside one of his cabins.

“At least call me Beth to help me make the transition.”

“Beth it shall be,” he smiled. “But you’re still entitled to the service I gave you when you were a ‘miss’. That means that your trouble is my trouble.” He took my arm and eased me into the cabin he had just cleaned, shutting but not locking the door behind us. “I guess you want my opinion on the glamour girls.”

William may keep himself free from cliques, but he proved to be a shrewd observer and a careful listener. Tina is notorious for her sharp tongue and shrewish behaviour. I was a ‘punter’ when I first encountered her, so she was showing her best side. ‘Punter’ is the mildly derogatory term applied to paying customers by some sections of the crew. It establishes two groups, them and us, justifying discrimination. Before the end of my cruise, I had broken down that barrier to some extent; it is likely that this was recognised and resulted in the offer of my present job.

William patiently explained that the captain and his officers constituted a third group, admired and resented in equal parts by the other two groups. The personal interest in me by the captain was a complicating factor. William was unsure whether it would make my task easier or harder.

“There’s a bit of resentment amongst the girls that had hoped to catch the skipper’s eye and there will be more when the needy lady passengers get wind of it. However, it might give you the leverage to solve the problem in the mall.”

“I’m not ready for an entanglement and if I was it wouldn’t be with Captain Shaw.”

William grinned. “Be that as it may, he wants you. You’re his last fling. Now about Tina and Felicity.”

The steward told me that Felicity was a product of an all-girl boarding school. “Are you saying this is a class war between snobby Felicity and working-class Tina?” I raged. “This is the twenty-first century, William, not the Middle Ages.”

“The problem isn’t class, its conditioning. You went to school and then went home to a different set of rules. Felicity lived under the same set of rules twenty-four seven.”

“And we had the time between home and school when there were no rules,” I giggled. “That’s when we tried ciggies and chatted to boys.”

“Exactly! Felicity had no opportunity to escape the rules except by developing guile. Then again you were probably picked on a few times, but you could leave the bullies behind at the school gates: Felicity was stuck with them all day, every day. You need to develop a different strategy in these circumstances.”

Sometimes I am a bit slow, but I eventually get there. “Did you go to boarding school, William?”