Chapter 22 Ore
Chapter 22
Ore
Ore heeded Daniel’s advice and donned a long-sleeved shirt and white linen trousers. She slathered herself in suncream and even dug out a baseball cap she’d jammed into her suitcase. With her sunglasses on, she looked like she was a fugitive in disguise, or at least a celebrity avoiding the paps.
Down on the lower deck, she found that she was also glad for the lack of skin on show in front of Chuck and his accomplices. She could feel their eyes on her as she walked down the stairs to greet them.
‘Hello, Ore, how did you sleep?’ Chuck walked over to meet her at the bottom of the staircase and for a dreadful moment she thought he was going to hug her. He seemed equally unsure of his own movements as he reached her and ended up awkwardly outstretching his hand for her to shake. Ore was puzzled to see him fumble; evidently he was not the confident alpha of this pack that she had assumed him to be.
Even more agonising than their exchange was that it set the tone for the other men, who filed past her one by one, offering their own palm-crushing handshakes. Each one mumbled a pleasantry: ‘morning’, ‘pleasure to have you with us’, ‘nice to see you’ et cetera. All except for Claude, whose grey gaze held hers for a minute too long and framed a smile that made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. He didn’t say anything, just waited until she broke eye contact and looked down, chuckling softly when she blushed.
Once they had all filed past, Chuck stood apart from everyone to address them.
‘Richard, Ousman, Freddie, Claude, you guys are coming out with me on the boat, I gather. Agatha will be out in a moment to talk through the itinerary. Gerry and Roger have “too much work to do”, apparently, and will be staying here.’
At Chuck’s use of air quotes, Gerry chuckled, adding: ‘Yes, securing you your next twenty-million-dollar injection!’ All the men laughed, apart from Claude.
Chuck called for Agatha, and as though she had been waiting in the wings for her cue, she appeared almost immediately at the top of the stairs.
‘Hello, boys!’ she cooed. Ore had only ever seen Agatha in what she thought of as ‘all business’ mode. She usually wore a button-down shirt, a pair of neutral pencil-leg trousers and nondescript flats. Now here she was in a dress: above the knee, with the exact type of thin straps that Ore had been warned against, and in a bright shade of pink, all coupled with white trainers. Her usually pencil-straight platinum bob was tied into stubby pigtails at the nape of her neck. She looked like she was auditioning for the part of ‘fun-loving sorority sister’.
Her reinvention was not going unnoticed. The men cheered as she came down to join them. Richard even pulled her in for a hug. Although she played it off well, Ore spotted Agatha’s look of bewilderment, quickly masked, as he did so.
‘So, in about ten minutes we’ll all head down to the boat. We’ll be joined by Carlos, our head chef, who will be setting up a beach barbecue for us later on; Nicole, one of our lovely stewardesses; Oscar, one of our deckhands; and the captain himself, Daniel Wilsons, at the helm – so we’re in good hands.’
Ore couldn’t be sure, but she thought she heard an edge of something when Agatha said Daniel’s name. All the same, she found herself quietly pleased that Daniel was coming along. There was something about his presence that made her feel … safer? Or maybe calmer? She couldn’t quite explain it.
It was a strange thing for her to feel about a man. Her dad had never been around and she’d grown up with her older sister and mother, a true matriarchy. Being around women was what made her feel at home. Men were for adventure, excitement, and more than occasionally, for heartbreak. Kyle had been the first man she’d ever felt truly understood by. Theirs had been a relationship, if she could call it that, of intense mutual care. But there had always been a current of something electrically dangerous between them. Even though he had tried so hard to neutralise it, it was never fully extinguished.
Daniel though, despite the little time she had known him, made her feel steady, grounded. There was nothing dangerous about him. Ore was grateful for that here.
Everyone milled around as Agatha flitted off to ensure final preparations were complete. Ore drifted towards Richard, or ‘Dickie’ as he insisted on being called. He was probably in his mid-sixties, Ore estimated, with the deep tan of a rich white man who can afford to chase the sun around the globe. His fingers, which a little too often found themselves resting on Ore’s shoulder, or elbow, or waist, were thick and encircled by silver rings. His watch looked as though it probably cost more than Ore’s Columbia degree.
He was pleasant enough to talk to, laughing abundantly at her witty remarks on the state of US politics, asking her questions about her upbringing and education, only name-dropping a few times.
‘Well when I holidayed with the Clintons in the 1990s it would have never occurred to me to worry about being seen with them – these days though with social media, it only takes one picture of you with the “wrong people” and suddenly you’re enmeshed in a dozen conspiracy theories and your board is telling you to keep a low profile.’ He shook his head solemnly. ‘I guess that’s why I value my time on board the Thalassa , nothing like international waters to shield you from the prying eyes of the public.’
Ore made the appropriate sounds in response, something akin to offering her condolences. She had spent time in similar circles at Columbia, with the moneyed parents of her classmates. She often found herself wondering if they simply forgot that she was not from ‘their world’, or if there was something about extreme wealth that sheltered people from the feeling that their life experiences were totally unrelatable. Maybe it was just what happened when you were so accustomed to having people listen to you. Maybe it was just natural to end up believing that everything you said was insightful and interesting.
Just as Richard began to wax lyrical about his time starting out in the London Financial District in the Eighties, Agatha came to Ore’s rescue.
‘Excuse me, Dickie, I hate to interrupt but we’re all making our way to the boat now, if you’d like to follow me.’
‘We’d better be off, after you, Miss …? Sorry what was your name again? I’m terribly forgetful in my old age.’
Here we go , thought Ore. ‘Ballou-Adu,’ she said as they followed Agatha.
‘How wonderfully exotic, and where are you from?’ Richard paused, frowning slightly as he inspected her face for clues of her racial origins. ‘Originally?’
Ore heaved an internal sigh, preparing herself for the choreography of this conversation. ‘My parents are from Haiti and Nigeria.’ She mirrored his pause, in a way she hoped was pointed without being confrontational. ‘Originally.’
‘Ah Haiti, such a beautiful place, what a shame it’s turned out the way it has.’ It was one of the more irritating responses Ore had contended with, but she plastered a smile on her face.
‘I’ve never been, but yes I hear it’s beautiful.’ That seemed to satisfy him, the acknowledgement that he was both worldly and benevolent towards the less fortunate.
In her mind she had imagined the ‘tender’ to be a small speed boat, the sort of thing that you could fit half a dozen people into, where you’d be able to feel the mist of the sea on your face as you raced through the waves. What they were actually being herded onto looked like a yacht itself. A sort of younger sister to the Lady Thalassa .
The deck they walked onto had a large dining table set with ten places, and the requisite row of white loungers at the bow. She suspected there were even bedrooms on board, judging by the row of portholes. She held on to the railing tightly as she made her way over the gangway.
Ore didn’t realise how tense she had been feeling until she spotted Daniel, welcoming the other investors, and her shoulders relaxed.