News from nowhere

Matthew Stevenson

On board Queen Elizabeth 2 On the first evening of the crossing from New York to Southampton, I was standing at the port railing, wondering about the lights flickering in the distance. They were those of either Montauk, the tip of Long Island, or Martha's Vineyard, a summer camp for adults with literary pretensions.

Inside, on a staircase swathed in shag carpeting, I encountered one of the QE 2's chief officers leaving the navigation room. He had the gait of an admiral, and the stripes on his sleeve shone like the rings of Saturn. I asked him where we were.

'At sea,' he said; but his disgust conveyed the mind of a man who obviously thought that if this were a just world, he would be providing naval support for the Raj rather than answering the questions of tourists lost at sea. Nevertheless, I tried again.

`And the land, where is that?'

'Aft,' he said and walked away.

At best, the ship is a Holiday Inn equipped with the appropriate nautical fixtures. One enters the ship, for example, through the midships lounge, a no-man'sland of circular green couches the colour of beer on St Patrick's Day. And the first-class ballroom, where every night at sea there are acts varying from hypnotists to Blackpool comedians, is stocked with those one-piece rows of plastic chairs that are so maddening in airport waiting rooms.

Despite the occasional 'star' — for example, on board is the creator of a television series called Love Boat — the passenger list could be that of an American Express bus tour to Stratford-on-Avon. It is as if every town in America and Britain had volunteered one anonymous couple for the expedition.

The daily routine revolves around the consumption of either food, alcohol, gambling chips, or hints on self-improvement, such as Chinese cooking or how to build your own tax shelter. Conservation resembles a play by Ionesco. For example, at dinner the first evening, the man sitting next to me introduced himself as 'Doug Fink, Port Everglades, Florida,' and then asked: 'Say, are you a musician?'

Talk is mainly about the food, the weather, the hidden meaning of Ordinary People etc. Depending on the price of your ticket, the food is either loathsome or wonderful. The passengers in first class whine a lot about the rationing of caviar; those in transatlantic class (read second) eat as though the lifeboats are about to be lowered.

One reason for the dismal level of conversation is that meals invite preprandial intoxication. If there is one thing that everyone, with the exception of honeymooners, dreads, it is their table companions. The only question to keep conversation going for an hour before eating is, 'Who's at your table?' I hear tales of rock stars afraid of flying; a man who after the first day demanded to be seated alone; a Spanish socialist with views, only in Spanish, about reforming the monarchy; and of couples celebrating their silver wedding.

At my table I have a couple from the US Navy (I keep wondering if they didn't get on the wrong ship in New York) and a retired schoolteacher from Detroit. Gary is actually retired from the navy with a pension of $1100 a month. Jeannie, his wife, who fixes computers, is, however, being transferred to radar duty in Italy. She is one of the few on board I have met who is seasick — the crew compare the water to a lake — and today she came to lunch wearing a little bandage behind her ear that, she claims, prevents nausea among the astronauts.

Gary was a took on an aircraft carrier, so yesterday at lunch we discussed the advan tage of fresh over powdered eggs as though we were comparing the styles of Proust and Harold Robbins. 'Whenever we'd powder them in the navy,' he said, 'we would break up about a dozen egg shells I saved for the occasion. That way nobody would think it was powder because they were picking shell from their teeth.'

At dinner, the conversation turns to motorcycles, Gary's other passion, although sometimes Mildred, the schoolteacher, wants to discuss the four o'clock movie or ask me the name of someone she wonders if I know in New York. And without fail during all our meals, Gary turns to his wife and says, as though they have been separated for weeks: 'Hi, Jeannie!'

'Hi, Gary!' she answers. Then they usually kiss or shake hands. He filled out a questionnaire on the trip as though it were a fitness report for someone he wanted transferred to active duty in the Persian Gulf — the service is slow, the pastry-cooks obviously wear no hats in the kitchen, etc. And when he proudly passed around his comments, I noticed the rhetorical question: 'Why aren't there toothpicks at all the tables?' Hi, Gary.

There is clay pigeon shooting on the aft deck each afternoon at four-thirty. It attracts showmen. In the group is Bob, a Hollywood lawyer CI don't do entertainment law'), a Broadway producer on his way to retrieve a musical from London (It's a collection of movie theme songs. It's dynamite. You ought to swing by to hear the tapes. . .'), and a television researcher, if such a profession exists, who looks like an advertisement for Playboy, a man with 'lust for life.' And such is his lust that he squeezes the trigger about the time he yells, thus ambushing the clay pigeon.

The worst marksman buys the drink afterwards, Today Bob, and John the researcher, praised casino gambling as though it was one of those Eastern religions that deliver inner peace and American co-eds.

'I go to Vegas, maybe Tahoe,' Bob said, 'about once a month. I take a girl and a couple of thousand dollars, and we have the time of our lives.' He leaned forward. `And I want to tell you something. All the girls tell me that when I'm winning — you know, roulette, blackjack — I'm better — you know, better.' He wrote on the back of his business card, when the talk turned to food, 'Ritz Hotel,' and gave it to the only single woman at the table, He was about twice her age.

'I know some restaurants in London,' he added, as though it were Chad.

John is difficult to take seriously. He wants to have Bob's ease, to hand his card to young women, but it all comes out wrong. 'No, I'm bi-coastal,' he said when someone asked him if he was from New York.

He wants us to believe he only goes first class, but my hunch is that he is hidden somewhere in the honeycomb of second. He did, however, improve his station at dinner and now eats in the Princess Grille, which is, according to the literature, one of the world's great restaurants. And he talked about moving cabins up to the Signal Deck, where the tariff for the five days is $15,000. I offered 'em a grand.' Bob interrupted the bribe explanation to ask if the room he wanted wasn't 'that little one near the stairs', and John hastily changed the conversation to great wines he had drunk and his favourite restaurants in Paris. Listening to their stories of conspicuous consumption, one got the feeling that what they were really trying to do was work out the other's net worth. If the conversation had gone on much longer, one or the other would have cabled his tax accountant to provide some necessary documentation. Before everyone drifted away to dress in tuxedos for dinner and an evening in the crypt-like casino, there was discussion of the reports that the dock workers in Southampton were planning to strike in stead of carry off the luggage. (Apparently, there are as many demands for wage increases as there are dockings.) 'This happens all the time,' Bob explained. 'This is my sixth trip, and every time about the fourth day they get on the intercom to announce that there will be a strike in Southampton and that everyone will have to carry their own bags ashore. That stirs 'ern up. Especially in first class. There are meetings about diverting the ship to Cherbourg or getting a refund. And once, when there actually was a strike, one woman in first class refused to get off in Southampton. She told one of the officers: "If my bags aren't carried off, I'm not getting off." And since none of the crew could take her bags ashore without risking reprisal from the unions, she sailed the next day when the ship left for the Canaries.'