Free The Acid House by Irvine Welsh

and get drunk. I can't engage in any of these trivial conversations which take place concerning the weather or the itinerary. I've walked out of two movies in the cinema. Dead Again, with that British chap playing the American detective. Terrible film. There was another one with that American fellow, the white-haired chap who used to be funny but isn't anymore. Perhaps that's just me: a lot of thing aren't funny anymore.
    I go to my cabin and prepare my sports bag for another excursion to the gym. The only blessed place I've any interest in going to.
    — You must be the fittest man on this ship, the instructor says to me. I just smile. I don't want to make conversation with this fellow. Funny fellow, if you know what I mean. Nothing against them myself, live and let live and all that, but I don't want to talk to anyone right now, let alone some blessed nancy boy.
    — Never out of this place, he persists, giving a quick nod to a fat, puffing red-faced man on an exercise bike, — are you Mister Banks?
    — Excellent facilities, I reply curtly, surveying the free weights and picking up two hand dumb-bells.
    Thankfully the instructor chappie has noticed an overweight lady in a scarlet leotard attempting to do sit-ups. — No no no Mrs Coxton! Not like that! You're putting too much of a strain on your back. Sit further up and bend those knees. Forty-five degrees. Lovely. And one . . . and two . . .
    I take a couple of weights from the dumb-bell and surreptitiously stick them into my sports bag. I go through the motions, but I don't need exercise. I'm fit enough. Joan always said that I had a good body; wiry, she used to say. That's what a lifetime in the building trade, combined with sober habits does for you. I have to concede that there is a bit of a paunch, as I've let myself go since Joan. Seemed no point. I drink more now man I've ever done, since the retirement. Well, I was never one for the golf.
    Back in my cabin I lie down and drift off into that realm between thought and sleep, thinking of Joan. She was such a wonderful and decent woman, all you could hope for in a wife and mother.
    Why Joan? Why, my darling, why? These could have been the best years of our life. Paul's at university, Sally's living in the nurses' home. They finally left the nest, Joan. We would have had it all to ourselves. The way they coped though, Joan, they were a credit to you, both of them. A credit to us. Me? Well I died trith you, Joanie. I'm just a blessed ghost.
    I'm not asleep. I'm awake and talking to myself and crying. Ten years after Joan.
    At dinner I'm alone at the table with Marianne Howells. The Kennedys, Nick and Patsy, a very nice outgoing young couple, have not shown up for the meal. It's a deliberate ploy. Patsy Kennedy has a conspiratorial eye. Marianne and I are alone for the first time on the cruise. Marianne: unmarried, here to get away from her own bereavement, the recent death of her widowed mother.
    — So I'm to have you all to myself, Jim, she said, in a manner far too jocular and self-deprecating to be flirtatious. There is no doubt, though, that Marianne is a fine-looking woman. Someone ought to have married a woman like that. A waste. No, that's a dreadful way to think. Old chauvinistic Jim Banks at it again. Perhaps that's the way Marianne wanted it, perhaps she got the best from life that way. Perhaps if Joanie and I hadn't... No. The seafood, the seafood.
    — Yes, I smile, — this seafood salad is excellent. Still, if you can't get good seafood at sea, where can you get it, eh?
    Marianne grins and we small-talk for a bit. Then she says, — It's a tragedy about Yugoslavia.
    I'm wondering whether she means because we can't land there because of the troubles, or because of the misery the troubles have inflicted on people. I decide to plump for the compassionate interpretation. Marianne seems a caring sort. — Yes, terrible suffering. Dubrovnik was one of the highlights of the trip when I was here with Joan.
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