Chapter 15
After Dick had given a long, rather rambling speech that made my sister sound like a cross between Michael Palin and Jacques Cousteau, she took a deep breath and stepped up to the podium, Casper’s notes in front of her but whether they were in any sort of order was debateable.
‘The Bermuda Triangle,’ her voice squeaked, and she cleared her throat and took a sip of water. ‘Why have people been so fascinated by this small stretch of the ocean for so long? What is it about it that has inspired tales of unexplained disappearances, superstitions, strange sea creatures and dread in so many people? Not to mention Barry Manilow.’
There was a reassuring chuckle from the audience which I think gave her renewed courage, because despite everything, she smiled. I clenched my hands together, I was so proud of her.
‘In 1964 a book was published naming the area between Florida, Bermuda and Puerto Rico “The Bermuda Triangle” for the first time, and it sold fourteen million copies. Because people love a mystery, unexplained phenomena, and in the case of this book, the possibility of ancient civilisations, holes in time, and alien abductions. And I think it is made even more enticing because Bermuda is so beautiful. There are warm blue seas, pink sand, waving palm trees. Lots of people want to go there, but what if your ship or your plane should be a target for whatever is out there? Perhaps it evokes the same thrill we get from a roller coaster or a ghost train?’
There was a murmur of agreement from the audience. From my place in the shadows, I saw her glance down at Evelyn and she gave a mad grin and two thumbs up. Diana took another sip of water and pressed on.
I was suddenly filled with admiration for my sister. Although she probably had a sound knowledge of the subject after all her years of research, she hadn’t expected to present this talk herself and certainly not in front of a large audience. She could have run away, but she hadn’t. I was once again impressed by her bravery.
‘It’s been called The Devil’s Triangle. The Graveyard of the Atlantic. Stories go back to Columbus in 1492, when he noted problems with his compass, unexplained lights, and giant waves. Mariners’ tales may have been the inspiration for Shakespeare’s The Tempest. In 1609 a fleet of nine English ships were nearing the end of a supply voyage to the Bermudas when it ran into “a cruel tempest”.
‘Many vessels were lost and no trace of them were found, but of course navigation and technology were nowhere near as effective as they are today. Then in 1881 a ghost ship was discovered, in 1918 the USS Cyclops was lost. In 1941 two other ships vanished without warning, during World War II several planes vanished, then the famous Flight 19, when five planes and a rescue seaplane disappeared.’
Diana suddenly remembered to change the pictures on the screen behind her and clicked at the button on her control. There were artistic shots of the beauties of the Bermuda coastline, the island surf, quaint little beach shacks selling drinks and souvenirs. The cerulean skies, wonderful sunsets. All those things she had seen, and – I realised with a jolt – from what she had said, usually on her own. Casper had been on the ship, having safety briefings, phone conferences with the management, discussions with the engineers, dealing with all sorts of problems. No wonder he had been so twitchy when he was home on leave.
Then came a series of grainy, black-and-white pictures of tall-masted ships and wartime planes.
I looked out at the dark auditorium for the first time. There was silence. Had they all gone? No, I heard a discreet cough and the thump of a tip-up chair as someone out there in the darkness sat down.
I could feel that people were listening intently as Diana spoke and rattled through some more pictures. Her voice had lost its initial, rather breathless tone, and she was talking in a far more relaxed way.
‘The loss of five pirate ships in the seventeenth century, known as Jingles fleet, thought to have been swallowed by sea monsters or massive holes in the ocean added to the mystery. Added to that is this: sailors through history have always been superstitious. I was married to a mariner for a long time, and there are hundreds of strange customs. Don’t whistle on board a ship or you will whistle up a wind. Don’t start a voyage on a Friday, don’t wear green, don’t mention drowning. Step onto a boat with your right foot, ships’ cats can ward off bad weather with their tails. Don’t take bananas on board ship. So sailors were more than willing to believe that there is good and bad luck, or that there is a curse on somewhere or someone.’
She cleared her throat and her hand hovered over her glass of water, but she wisely decided not to have any. Good shout, after all she couldn’t exactly dodge off the stage hoping to find a loo. I wondered how long she had been talking for; it felt like a long time, but it probably wasn’t.
I looked across into the wings where Dick had returned, and he gave me a little wave and a thumbs up.
‘It was Flight 19 that alerted the public interest in the late 1940s, because this time, the story went around the world thanks to the press interest and the publicity. Five US training planes were lost and never seen again, along with a rescue plane. But even this mystery has been explained without any mention of sea monsters or alien abduction. The truth is that there are no more losses of ships and planes in the Bermuda Triangle than anywhere else in the world. In fact, statistically there are fewer. Over the last centuries, the reefs around the islands sank a lot of wooden sailing ships, but these days the Pacific and Indian oceans are more dangerous.’
She had got back into her stride by then, and she confidently reeled off figures and explanations and put up some of her pie charts and analyses.
I had heard it said that performers can sense whether an audience is enjoying themselves, but by the time she got to the end of her talk I was still so nervous for her that I wasn’t sure if it was going well or not.
‘Anyway, I hope you have found this interesting, and thank you for listening,’ Diana said at last.
She stepped away from the podium and hesitated. Suddenly there was a huge burst of applause from the audience, and I could see Diana’s face grow hot with shock and embarrassment.
Dick came scudding onto the stage, applauding.
‘Well, wasn’t that marvellous. I learned a lot there, Diana. I’ve heard Terry’s talk and it wasn’t nearly as good. Ladies and gentlemen, wasn’t she terrific?’
We managed to leave the stage with more style than we had entered it and I was amazed to see that over an hour had passed. And even more surprisingly, I realised from her expression that Diana had enjoyed herself.
‘Well done!’ Evelyn said, hugging her as she came down the steps from the stage. ‘I only came along to give you moral support, I didn’t think I would enjoy that. But I did.’
‘Thank heavens that’s over,’ Diana said, heaving a sigh. ‘Never again!’
‘Now then, I just need five minutes,’ Dick said, appearing at speed at her side and gently steering her away from the audience members who wanted to talk to her. ‘Pierre who works in the Lautrec wine bar, told me your husband used to give a talk about the history of the Voyage Première line. Is that right? Because if you have his notes on that, I’m sure we would all want to hear it.’
‘You’re joking,’ she said, her face showing her horror. ‘It’s going to take me the rest of the trip to get over giving this one. And they weren’t his notes, they were mine.’
‘Really, well I didn’t know that. Well, that’s even more impressive. But like I said, you’re a natural. And we still have a space to fill after we leave Naples.’ He favoured her with a beseeching look that reminded me of Eddy when he knew I was making steak and kidney pie. ‘And look how well this one has gone. An absolute triumph. Did you know the captain was sitting in? He came in at the back just after the lights went down, but I saw him. I don’t miss anything.’
‘Did he see me fall over on to the stage as well?’ she asked. ‘I must have looked such a fool.’
‘No, I think he missed that. But I bet you a pound to a pinch of snuff, he will have good things to say about it all. I couldn’t be more pleased.’
‘You’re very kind,’ she said, which was very generous under the circumstances.
I rubbed my sore knee and gave him a reproachful look.
‘Everything okay, Mrs Parker? No harm done. You gave yourself a bit of a bump there, didn’t you? Alfred should have some arnica cream in his first aid kit.’
Dick looked at his watch and his face collapsed into worry.
‘Now I am expected in the Seabreeze in ten minutes, I must fly. I’ll leave you to your new fans and I’ll be in touch.’
The minute he left us, several people came up, wanting to talk to Diana and ask for her opinions. One man in a battered blue anorak zipped up to the neck tugged insistently at her sleeve.
‘I wanted to ask you about your opinions of the Dean Blue Hole,’ he said. ‘You mentioned it but you didn’t go into any detail.’
‘I’ve seen it,’ she said, ‘in fact I met someone who had dived down there. He got about two hundred feet down.’
Our companion snorted. ‘Madness. What about the Lusca? You didn’t mention them.’
‘Lusca?’
He gave her a hard stare. ‘Look, I’m an expert. I’ve been all over the Bermuda Triangle and I have years of experience as an oceanographer, a wreck diver and much as I enjoyed your little talk, you can’t just brush aside the facts. Planes that take off, disappear and arrive years later. The Lusca, half shark, half octopus that pull boats down in the blue holes. Whirlpools that sink huge ships. Ancient civilisations that have mastered magnetic fields…’
‘I’ve heard of these things but I’m not an expert in any of them as you are,’ she said tactfully.
‘Indeed, I am an oceanographer with decades of experience, in fact…’
She turned as I tugged at her arm. ‘Diana, I hate to interrupt but it’s urgent that you come. It’s… that thing we were talking about.’
She looked mightily relieved.
‘Ah, the… thing,’ she said. ‘Sorry but would you excuse me?’
‘You can’t ignore Atlantis. The time/space warp…’ he shouted after us.
We hurried away, and eventually back to our cabin, which as always was immaculate. I rummaged in the replenished minibar and pulled out a brandy miniature which I slugged into a glass and handed to Diana.
‘The oceanographer with years of experience. You promised me he wouldn’t be there,’ she said faintly, sinking into an armchair.
‘How exciting was that?’ I said later as we sat in the Thai restaurant sharing a platter of delicious treats. ‘I mean, now you’ve had time to get over it all.’
Diana picked up a spring roll and dipped it into some chilli sauce.
‘It went better than I was expecting. After all, I can’t consider myself any sort of expert really. I just know stuff I have picked up over the years and what I put into Casper’s notes. I mean my notes.’
‘It sounded good to me,’ I said. ‘So what next?’
‘Next?’
‘They wanted you to do another talk, didn’t they?’
‘Yes, but…’
She chewed thoughtfully for a moment while I filled up our water glasses.
‘Go on,’ I said, ‘you look like you have been having deep thoughts.’
‘Halfway through I looked at all the pictures and it hit me, I really had spent most of the time I went ashore on my own. And I spent a lot of my time on board the ship on my own too.’
‘Well, I suppose Casper wasn’t on holiday, was he?’
‘No, which meant I was on my own for a lot of the time. I made the occasional friend which was always nice. I read books from the ship’s library, and I watched programmes on television, and mostly explored on my own, although of course I did join excursions. Which is where all my silly bits of knowledge came from. And then the other day I was doing some preparation for the talk, while you went to salsa dancing. And I was sorting out the pictures for the tech guy, and you went to breakfast. And I can see myself doing the same thing tomorrow. Rummaging around in my laptop to find the details of the history talk that I sorted out for Casper and all the pictures that went along with it. And then I’d be panicking about it and concentrating on it and not enjoying myself at all. And the whole point of this holiday was for us to spend time together enjoying ourselves, wasn’t it? A proper girls’ holiday, that’s what we said. Instead, I have been sucked into doing this and leaving you on your own like I used to be. And that’s not what either of us wanted. I don’t want to feel alone again, I want to feel we are sharing something, enjoying something together.’
‘I don’t mind, honestly I don’t,’ I said.
‘But I do, do you see? I’ve been behaving like I always used to when I was with Casper. I look at pictures of myself sitting on lovely beaches, and Casper was never there with me. Even on that video I sent to Sam for his birthday, Dad sent his love. Because of course, Dad wasn’t there. And ever since Casper died, I realise I have been in limbo, not sure how to fill my days. I never seem to do anything new or different. I can see I’ve been living my life exactly as I used to when Casper was alive. I spent a long time, trying to think of reasons why I couldn’t come on this holiday, I never told you that did I? Surely that’s not right?’
I sighed. ‘No, it’s not, and that’s exactly why Eddy suggested that I should ask you.’
Diana was shocked and her face showed it. ‘Eddy did?’
I nodded. ‘He did. It was his idea. We’re sisters, we’ve been in each other’s lives for ever, and of course we didn’t see much of Casper because he was away such a lot. But even when he was home on leave, he didn’t feature much in our social lives, and you used to retreat with him. And then he died, and you seemed to hibernate, hardly ever going out, never doing anything different, not having much fun.’
‘No, I didn’t. In fact, I look back and wonder what on earth I did do. Apart from get through each day on automatic pilot.’
‘Eddy saw this as a great chance to get you out into the world again. To enjoy yourself like you used to and perhaps get some ideas about what you are going to do next.’
‘Oh, that’s so sweet of him, what a lovely thing to do. He is thoughtful. What to do next. That’s difficult. But I know what I don’t want to do, and that’s spend my time filling in for Terry someone or other and his shingles, making myself available to give talks. Because although I enjoyed this one, I don’t want to have more time taken away from our holiday together. And I want to have some time to think. And for the first time in ages, to plan.’
I went to sit in the chair next to her and patted her hand.
‘You have nothing to prove to anyone. Whatever makes you happy.’
‘I know what I have to do.’
We finished our meal and went back to our cabin, and it seemed every few steps someone wanted to stop Diana and have a chat with her about her talk. Quite a few asked if she had written a book. I began to feel a bit like her bodyguard, especially when we glimpsed the expert oceanographer coming towards us with a purposeful tread.
We hurried off towards the lifts and made good our escape.
A few minutes later there was a knock on our cabin door.
‘Do you think that’s him? The expert wanting to talk about Atlantis and fabled monsters?’ Diana hissed.
‘I’ll see him off,’ I said confidently.
When I opened the door, there was a steward with a trolley and an ice bucket containing a bottle of champagne.
‘With the compliments of the captain,’ he said, doing a lot of fussing about with a white napkin.
A moment later Alfred came in looking very flustered.
‘I think I can take over from here, Mario,’ he said in an undertone that betrayed how outraged he was that his authority had been usurped.
There was a bit of a silent tussle and then Alfred faced his opponent down and Mario slunk away looking dejected.
‘May I open the bottle for you, mesdames?’ he said, turning smoothly, not betraying for a moment that anything out of the ordinary had occurred.
‘I don’t think…’
‘I’m not sure…’
We exchanged a glance; we were supposed to be laying off the alcohol for a change, but after all it was Bollinger, and it would be rude not to accept it, wouldn’t it?