The Sunshine Cruise Company Read online

  ‘Ooh – that’ll put hairs on your chest,’ Susan said, sitting back up, blinking.

  ‘Christ, Barry,’ Julie said, lighting her Ambassador, leaning back against the sofa. ‘And here was me thinking I had the monopoly on all the worst men.’

  ‘Oh but you’ve had some shockers, haven’t you? Who was the alcoholic? Remember – the Scottish guy?’

  ‘Andy?’

  ‘That’s it! And the manic-depressive, wassisname? Tried to light himself on fire at New Year that time?’

  Julie let out a squeal of laughter, remembering. ‘Michael!’

  ‘Michael. Christ. Oh no no. Wait. My favourite. The hard man. The gangster type you met when you were working in that club in Mayfair.’

  ‘Gangster?’

  ‘You know! He was older than us. Handsome. Looked a bit like thingummy … ooh, that actor. Terence Stamp.’

  ‘Terence Stamp?’ Julie saw that, fairly incredibly, Susan was pouring herself another vodka.

  ‘Come on, you know who I mean. Had a mad nickname and everything. Screws, or Rivets, or something.’

  ‘Oh – NAILS?’

  ‘NAILS!’

  They both collapsed laughing.

  ‘You know what – I got a Christmas card from him a few years back. It’s in the sideboard somewhere, I think. He lives over in Tillington.’

  ‘He’s still alive? Christ, he must be getting on a bit now surely?’

  ‘God, yeah. He was in his forties back then.’

  ‘He was a gangster, wasn’t he?’

  ‘Kind of. You don’t remember what he did?’

  ‘No.’ Susan sipped her drink carefully this time.

  ‘He was a bank robber!’

  Susan sprayed vodka across the room as they both collapsed in hysterics again. ‘A bank robber!’ she screamed.

  ‘I think … I think he wound up doing twenty years!’ Julie said, laughing so hard now her ribs were aching.

  ‘A bank robber,’ Susan repeated, flat on her back on the floor.

  ‘God, I could pick them, couldn’t I?’

  ‘A bank robber,’ Susan said again, in a very different tone of voice this time.

  ‘What?’

  Susan sat up. She was breathing hard, but she wasn’t laughing any more. There was a strange look in her eyes, a faraway, thinking expression, something Julie had never seen before. Or hadn’t seen in a long time at any rate, not since way, way before Barry, back when Susan Frobisher was Susan Connors, the girl who put tacks on the teacher’s chair, who flashed her knickers at passing buses.

  ‘What is it?’ Julie asked.

  ‘A bank robber,’ Susan said for the fourth time, looking directly at Julie now.

  EIGHTEEN

  ‘YOU’RE OUT OF your mind,’ Julie said.

  ‘Seriously, how hard can it be?’

  ‘Grief. That’s it. Delayed shock. You’re out of your teeny tiny mind with grief and shock.’

  ‘You get a gun from … wherever, and you walk in and you say, “Give me the bloody money.” It’s not rocket science.’ Susan was pacing the floor now. She was clearly insanely drunk, but she was speaking with conviction, with something passing for seriousness.

  ‘You’ve never been much of a drinker, have you? I’ll put some coffee on.’ Julie went to get up but Susan put her hands on her shoulders and forced her back down, kneeling to face her, the two of them eye to eye.

  ‘I mean it, Julie. Why not? Why fucking not? I … I mean, “You are overdrawn by five pounds. Oh, by the way, the letter we’ve sent to tell you this will cost you thirty pounds!” Or … or, “Oh, we’re sorry, that cheque you paid in weeks ago still hasn’t cleared so we can’t let you have your money yet because we need it to help us make another 500 billion pounds in profits.” Or – “Oh dear, we seem to have screwed up and lost everyone’s money, but that’s OK, because you guys can all just bail us all out, thanks. And, and, you know what? We understand your husband just died but unfortunately we will still be taking your home off you because, you know, your future matters to us!”’ Susan stopped and made a grinning thumbs up, like the poster. ‘“Your future matters”? Your money matters and you can go to hell! I mean it! I’ve had it! I’ve never done a single thing wrong or bad in my whole life and here I am – out on the bloody streets at sixty? FUCK THEM! FUCK THE FUCKING BANK, JULIE!’

  Julie didn’t quite flinch but she definitely blinked. You rarely heard Susan drop the F-bomb. ‘Susan, listen to yourself. You’re seriously talking about robbing a bank?’

  ‘What’s the worst that could happen?’ Susan sat back down opposite her on the floor and took another cigarette. She lit it, coughing.

  ‘Er, you go to jail?’

  ‘Oh, come on. You said it – I’m out of my mind with grief. Diminished responsibility and all that. Half-decent lawyer, no previous criminal record, you’d probably only get a few years. You do half the sentence and then come out and sell your story. Might get a fortune. Anyway, from everything you read, prisons are all TV and Wi-Fi these days.’ She picked up her glass and drained it, as if to cement this stunning piece of logic.

  ‘I really don’t think,’ Julie said slowly, ‘I’ve ever seen you quite this drunk. Maybe at Rose Trask’s wedding.’

  ‘And besides, you’re wrong,’ Susan said, taking a deep draw on her cigarette. ‘That’s not the worst thing that could happen. Jail? Definitely not. You know what the worst thing that could happen is? I go off to be a barely tolerated house guest at Tom and Clare’s while you spend the next ten years up to your elbows in filth at that old people’s home before we both move in there together to wait to die. Eh? How about that, me old mucker? How do you like them apples?’

  Julie thought about this for a moment. Christ. She looked at Susan. Another strange expression had come over her face; she was looking up at the ceiling, as though she’d stopped herself midway through a train of thought.

  ‘Oh dear,’ Susan said.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Just need to be sick!’

  Susan leapt up and ran careering out of the room. Julie listened in amazement as she heard the honking, retching symphony come echoing out of the bathroom.

  NINETEEN

  THE DAY ROOM held four old ladies. Three of them were dozing in armchairs upholstered in that cheap, easy-to-clean vinyl. The fourth – Ms Ethel Merriman – was in her wheelchair over by the windows, munching boiled sweets and leafing through some photographs. Julie was mopping – old Mr Grant, too much tea this morning, quite a flood it had been – certainly hung-over, but nowhere near where Susan had been on the Richter scale that morning. She was thinking as she was mopping. ‘Ten years.’ ‘How do you like them apples?’

  ‘Ethel?’ Julie said, laying her mop against the wall and coming across to her. ‘If you could go back twenty years or so and you had the chance to do something really crazy, something that might wreck your life completely, but also might change it brilliantly, would you do it?’

  Ethel stopped flipping through the photographs and looked at her. ‘What’s all this?’

  ‘Just – hypothetically.’

  ‘Ah, define “wreck your life”.’

  ‘Well, say, just supposing, something like you went to prison.’

  ‘Oh, prison’s fine,’ Ethel said, going back to flipping through her pictures.

  ‘You’ve been in prison, Ethel?’

  ‘The first time – Oh, hang on, here it is.’ She fished a photograph out of the pile and handed it to Julie. ‘Was in ’56. Me and a few of the girls were prosecuted for indecency.’ Julie looked at the photograph. It was faded and cracked, black and white on stiff card, and showed a line of chorus girls in what were very revealing outfits even by today’s standards. ‘Show we’d been doing in France came to London, Café de Paris, on Leicester Square. We’d been told we’d be arrested if we went on in those costumes. This was back when the Lord Chamberlain had to approve all shows that went on in London, you know. Anyway, fuck them. On we went. Show ge
ts stopped, straight into the paddy wagon, hello Holloway. I’m third from the end on the left,’ Ethel said, unwrapping another sweet, passing one to Julie. Julie scanned across the picture and … Jesus Christ.

  ‘Ethel, you, I mean … you were gorgeous.’ It was impossible to reconcile the girl in the photograph with the bloated old lady sitting before her now. Chestnut curls down to her shoulders, gleaming teeth, legs up to her chin and traffic-stopping cleavage.

  ‘Oh yeah, I was something.’

  ‘I didn’t know you were a dancer!’

  ‘I was a singer really, darling, but you took what jobs you could get. There was always work in the chorus line. Cock too. Yards of cock. Miles of it. What were we talking about? Oh, yeah. Prison. Second time was in ’61 or ’62. I punched a copper in the face on a CND march near Aldermaston. Broke his bloody nose. Bastard fascist beak gave me six months.’

  ‘Jesus,’ Julie said, still transfixed by the 28-year-old Ethel in the photograph. ‘What …’

  ‘Ha! What happened? Age, sweetheart. That and living right. Never trust anyone over fifty who hasn’t piled on a few pounds. Look at you – too bloody skinny by half. Wouldn’t trust you as far as I could throw you. But, to go back to your question: remember, Jules, it’s better to regret something you did do than something you didn’t.’

  Julie perched on the edge of Ethel’s wheelchair and they were both looking at the photo, taken over half a century ago in Paris, and sucking their sweets when suddenly a shrill ‘Excuse me?’ cut across their reverie. They looked up to see Miss Kendal in the doorway. ‘Miss Kendal,’ Julie began. ‘I was just—’

  ‘Yes, Julie, you were just chinwagging with Ethel – again – when I’m sure there’s plenty to be getting on with.’

  Ethel went to say something – Julie could hear the ‘F’ fricative forming on her lips – but she put her arm on Ethel’s shoulder, silencing her, and stepped forward, towards Kendal.

  ‘You know, Miss Kendal, I don’t think it’s such a bad thing to spend some time chatting with the residents. Some of them enjoy a little human contact. Some of them don’t –’ She stopped, not wanting to point out that Ethel didn’t receive many – indeed any – visitors.

  Kendal had no such reservations. She came over and stood in front of Ethel, her arms folded across her chest, clamping the ever-present clipboard to her bosom. ‘Yes, well, you have to wonder why some of our residents don’t get much in the way of visitors, don’t you?’ She leaned down, coming close to Ethel’s face. ‘In fact, I can’t remember the last time you had a visitor, Ethel, can you?’ Kendal smiled savagely.

  Ethel held her gaze.

  From somewhere behind Kendal came a scrape and clatter, the sound of a mop falling, of something being picked up. Ethel’s eyes widened as she saw what was happening over the administrator’s shoulder. ‘Miss Kendal?’ Julie said. Kendal turned just in time to shriek as something unspeakable cascaded over her and her world turned a translucent yellow glow, the colour seen by someone who has their head inside an upended yellow plastic bucket of piss, detergent and floor water. Kendal started gagging and coughing through the stench of Mr Grant’s urine. She was dimly aware of Ethel clapping delightedly and Julie saying, ‘I won’t be working out my notice.’

  She called Susan from her mobile as she walked down the pothole-filled driveway, the grim outline of the home disappearing behind her for the last time. ‘Susan? It’s me. I’m in. Fuck it. Let’s … let’s do it, OK?’

  And, in the end, for both of them, perhaps this was it. It was something to do. Something they could control. Something that didn’t involve just sitting there clapped in the stocks of life while all manner of shit got thrown at them. Because sixty was the new forty and all that rubbish. Anyway, like Susan had said, half-decent lawyer to prove they were crazy and they’d probably only get a couple of years in a minimum security. Be like a bit of a holiday.

  TWENTY

  SUSAN PULLED THE handbrake on and they sat looking across the street at the tidy little bungalow. It was a pleasant cul-de-sac of 1960s houses. All the gardens well kept, sensible nondescript cars in all the driveways – the land of gnomes, pampas grass and the Rover. ‘Mmmm,’ Susan said. ‘It doesn’t look like where an ex-bank robber would live. Are you sure this is the right address?’

  Julie looked again at the three-year-old Christmas card she was holding. ‘Yep. Number 14. That’s it. I mean, he might have moved away. He might be dead.’

  ‘Only one way to find out, I suppose,’ Susan said.

  ‘Oh God. This is mental, isn’t it? We’re completely deranged.’

  ‘We’re just doing a bit of research,’ Susan said. ‘We’ll talk it through, get a professional opinion, and then take a view on what to do next. If anything. We can walk away any time.’ Nestling in Susan’s handbag were a bunch of photos they’d taken of the Lanchester Bank, plus some notes she’d made on various comings and goings. Fortunately there was a Costa Coffee right opposite.

  ‘A professional opinion?’ Julie said. ‘Susan, you’re not having some painting done. Or a bunion taken off. We’re talking about robbing a bloody bank.’

  ‘OK. Come on then.’

  They’d rung the bell for a fourth time and were about to walk away when a shape appeared through the frosted-glass door – a very slowly moving shape. ‘Oh God,’ Susan said. ‘Someone’s home.’ It seemed to take an eternity for the shape to cover the last few yards to the door and then there was an interminable fumbling at the lock, the sound of a chain going back and, finally, a face appeared. A face, but not the face Julie and Susan had been expecting to see. The only resemblance between Terence Stamp and this fellow was that they were both bipeds. Well, almost, for he seemed to be clutching onto some kind of Zimmer frame. He was also completely bald and a half-masticated, unlit cigar dangled from his mouth. Yes, fair to say he was to Terence Stamp what Hans Moleman from The Simpsons was to George Clooney. The man removed the cigar in order to speak in a gruff, east London accent,

  ‘If you’re Christians the pair of you can piss off.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Susan said. ‘We were looking for a Mr Savage?’

  ‘Who the fack are you then?’

  Julie stepped forward. ‘Steve? Ah, Nails? It’s Julie. Julie Wickham? Remember me?’

  The man looked at her through clouded, rheumy eyes. It took a moment but some light appeared to come into them and his mouth spread into a grin, revealing, oddly, that his teeth were still perfect and for the first time Julie saw a glimpse of the man she had known (a man she had loved in a series of inventive and demanding positions) nearly forty years ago.

  ‘Jules?’ he said. ‘Jules from Parkers in Mayfair?’

  ‘Yes!’

  ‘Fack me. You’d best come in then.’

  ‘Nails,’ Nails said some time later. ‘No one’s called me by that name in gawd knows how long.’ He smiled. ‘This one ’ere …’ he said, indicating Julie to Susan, ‘she had ’em eating out of the palm of her hand so she did. I swear. You’d have used her toilet paper as a hanky and been proud.’ Susan smiled. The girls were on the sofa. Their host had taken an armchair opposite, which facilitated his access to a tank of oxygen with a clear plastic face mask attached to it. He alternated deep draughts of oxygen with ferocious sucks on the cigar. A pot of tea and three mugs were on the table. It’d taken him a while to get all of this together. ‘Look at you, girl,’ he continued, beaming at Julie. ‘You ain’t changed one bit.’

  ‘Neither have you,’ Julie said with a completely straight face.

  ‘Shut your lying hole, you slag,’ Nails said pleasantly. ‘I’m a facking fossil.’ He turned to Susan. ‘You wouldn’t think it to look at me, love, but Nails here was a prince of the West End once upon a time. Flat in Knightsbridge, Savile Row suits, tables in the best restaurants, champagne all the way, Jag parked up out front and a string of pretty girls on me arm. Girls like this one here.’ He pronounced ‘girls’ to just about rhyme with the breathing apparatus of a f
ish. ‘Nowadays? It’s meals on wheels, Lucozade and I’ve been wearing these facking pyjamas since Hitler was a corporal. I’d give a million quid to be able to have a shit that didn’t make me burst into facking tears. But we had some laughs, eh, Jules?’

  ‘We did, Nails. We really did.’

  There was a pause, filled with a definite sadness. Susan took it as her cue to ease into the main topic of discussion. ‘There was actually something we wanted to talk to you about, Nails.’

  ‘You fire away, love. Nails is all ears.’

  Susan took a breath, reached into her handbag and placed the stack of photographs next to the teapot on the coffee table: photographs of the Wroxham High Street branch of the Lanchester Bank.

  Nails took a deep draw on his cigar and leaned forward to peer at them, smoke wreathing out of his mouth. He brought his head up, looked from Susan to Julie and back again, and said, with great sombreness, ‘Are you two talking about a piece of business?’

  TWENTY-ONE

  NAILS EXHALED WHILE he unwrapped a fresh cigar from its cellophane slip. This exhalation took about half a minute and was punctuated with many a cough, whoop and splutter. Water streamed freely from his eyes and Susan and Julie glanced at each other, both wondering if he might be about to expire right in front of them. Finally it subsided and he lit the cigar.

  The coughing fit this entrained lasted a further minute and a half. Finally he sat back, his face bathed in sweat now, and said, ‘Oh dear, oh dear, I gotta give these things up.’ He looked at the ceiling and breathed deeply and thought for a long time. ‘You know what I learned in thirty years of doing jobs?’ he said finally. Susan and Julie waited. ‘Doing the job ain’t the hard part. Any mug can stick a tool in someone’s face and get handed a bag of money. You know what the hard part is?’ They waited again. ‘Getting away with it.’ Nails paused to let them take this in before continuing. ‘See, the filth, they always got a list of the usual suspects. And the armed robbery fraternity is small. They get to someone who knows someone who knows someone whose cousin’s mate’s brother’s mate was spouting off down the drinker – down the Dog & Ferret, down the King’s Tits or whatever – and next thing you know they got one of you and then they get another and then they get the lot of you. I saw it time and time again. Geezers pulling the job off, it’s all double Scotches and “we’re the facking lads” and we’ll lie low for a bit before we move to Spain and, bosh, three weeks later they’re all bent over in a cell with some facking great spear-chucker banging away at their coal-hole.’ Susan wasn’t really following him here, but it didn’t sound good, this coal-hole business. ‘Which brings me to you girls. You got one thing going for you – you know what it is?’