All Aboard!, page 14
‘He’s gone. They’ve arrested his accomplice and one more crew member who was in charge of the cargo in the hold. You don’t have to worry now.’
She put her head back, sort of leaning against him, and allowing herself just that moment of bodily contact. Feeling the warmth of his body on her bare neck, she asked, ‘I don’t have to worry then?’
‘Nope, you don’t.’ Somehow, she already felt safer with him around.
‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘Thank you for being here. I always seem to be thanking you.’
‘I couldn’t let you deal with this alone, could I?’ he replied. She could feel the heat of his body through the thin cotton T-shirt she had on. Her hands began quivering. She broke bodily contact and turned around with a start to find her face a few inches away from his, noticing for the umpteenth time that his lips were smoother than they legally should be.
‘But you need to be more careful. Please stop getting flattered by the attention any man pays you.’
She gasped.
He continued. ‘Anyone with half a head on his shoulder could see that John was a con man of the first order and he almost succeeded in seducing you.’
Rhea winced at the remark. Perhaps he had a point. But she was not going to allow him the pleasure of knowing she had conceded to him. It came from growing up being the gangly, pimply, bespectacled, nerdy kid who was only befriended because she was the principal’s daughter. She had an overwhelming urge to be accepted and she bent over backwards for anyone who showed her a little affection.
‘I can take care of myself,’ she said curtly, taking two steps back.
‘Yes, I saw that the other day at the disco, with him all over you and you too drunk to push him away or to walk out on your own.’
‘Kamal Shahani, thank you once again for all your help,’ she spat out, suddenly infuriated by his assumption that he was in charge of her, ‘I would be obliged if you didn’t appoint yourself as my keeper anymore.’
They stared at each other for a long moment, neither willing to break eye contact first. Then a cool voice piped up in the immediate vicinity.
‘So here you are, darling, I thought I spotted you coming this way.’ It was Sonia. She emerged from the end of the passageway, dressed in hot pants and a cropped top which left her almost illegally flat abdomen appealingly bare. Her face was devoid of any obvious make-up except, perhaps, a touch of lip gloss and a hint of eyeliner on her hazel eyes. Rhea noticed a small beauty spot at a perfect location just above her upper lip. Fresh and glowing, Sonia could take anyone’s breath away.
She acknowledged Rhea with a polite yet distant smile and tucked her arm into Kamal’s, instantly making them a unit. ‘Shall we go? Naina and the kids are waiting for you, time to go ashore!’
Giving her a loaded look, Kamal walked off. She however noticed with evil delight that he gently disengaged his arm from Sonia’s. Naina rushed up to him, dragging a kid with each hand, and happily handed over Jay to his uncle.
Rhea hugged herself briefly, rocking on the balls of her feet and trying to arrange her thoughts into coherency. She went down to where Rina Maasi was waiting for her. ‘What happened, Rhea?’ Maasi asked. Rhea realized her face must have been pale and wan with the stress of the morning. But she couldn’t tell her aunt about it. She had sworn Kamal to secrecy too.
‘Nothing, I was walking around. I don’t feel like going ashore,’ she said, and fished out her mobile. It was time to distract her aunt. ‘Samir called last night. And this is the message he sent when I didn’t take his call.’
‘Oho, why didn’t you take his call? Don’t tell me you were being stingy about international roaming charges when it was something so important.’
‘I was just too shocked to talk to him at that moment. Honestly, Maasi, I didn’t know what he was going to say and what would my response be.’
Maasi sat down on a convenient bench and put her reading glasses back on her nose from the chain it dangled on through the day. ‘Ah,’ she said, ‘I can imagine, this must have really upset you.’
Rhea nodded meekly.
‘Stay back on the ship if you don’t feel like it. Think about it. What do you want to do? Sometimes it’s best to let time settle things down. Do you still love him? Do you want him back?’ she continued without waiting for an answer. ‘What did you feel when you read the message, elation or fear?’ This time she stopped, waited, and looked Rhea in the eye.
Rhea closed her eyes. ‘I just felt panicky. Terrified. It didn’t make me happy.’
‘Then don’t reply now. Let him suffer till you get back to Delhi. And then decide what to do.’
‘Yes, you are right,’ Rhea said hugging her aunt. She then turned around to go back to the cabin where she would draw the curtains and lie down, hoping to sort out this sudden sense of despair on realizing that she didn’t love Samir anymore. Instead, she was falling head over heels for a man she had just met a couple of weeks ago.
TWELVE
After the last port of call, the passengers of Aqua Princess had a couple of days out at sea before their next halt at Cannes.
‘So, have you decided what you’re going to reply to Samir?’ Rina Maasi asked the next morning at breakfast, just as Rhea was about to tuck into some sinful hashbrowns and sausages.
‘I need more time, I can’t decide.’
They ate their breakfast in silence. As they sipped their tea, Rina Maasi cast a narrowed look at Rhea. ‘You have time till we get back, darling, enough time to come to a decision. But remember, with every day, time is running out and you need to get settled. I see how worried Shakun is, and you have your biological clock ticking away you know, tick tock, tick tock, can’t stop it.’
Shakun, Rhea’s mom and Rina Maasi’s sister, had stopped a millimetre short of banging her head on the wall when Samir bailed out on the wedding. She assuaged the fury in her breast by spending ten minutes abusing him with the choicest expletives that no one could have imagined she possessed in her repertoire. After venting out her anger, she sheepishly confessed that she stole the words from Kareena Kapoor’s character, Geet, in Jab We Met. ‘And sachi, dil thoda halka ho jaata hai,’ she had confessed to feeling lighter after that.
‘A little rich for you to talk about biological clock and time running out Rina Maasi, when you filed for divorce within a few months of getting married.’
‘My circumstances were very different from yours, Rhea,’ Rina Maasi replied, looking a little upset. ‘I was married against my wishes to a man who was much older than me and who repulsed me physically. When I got myself a job that ensured I wouldn’t need to be dependent on my parents for either a place to live or financial support, I filed for divorce. That doesn’t mean that I advocate staying unmarried.’
The morning sun streamed in through the window of the cabin and lit dizzying patterns on the floor and ceiling. ‘But never mind me and my life. What are you doing here, shuttered inside the cabin when the entire ship is out and having fun? Go, enjoy yourself. Make some more friends, smile at people, go, go, go.’
Rhea trotted off dutifully to the poolside. Wearing a sundress over her turquoise bikini, she hoped against hope to bump into Kamal again. She was also carrying a large tube of sunblock. Just in case.
Strangely, the area was not crowded. Rhea assumed people had better things to do. She took off her sundress and moved into the pool, belly splatting the water surface in the shameful manner of the untrained. The water was warm thanks to the almost overhead rays of the sun and it felt good against her skin.
Rhea tried front crawl—a stroke she had not yet refined—and swam the length of the pool a couple of times, carefully avoiding the other swimmers who were in a more relaxed mode and floating around. After a few laps, she climbed out, dried herself with a towel and stretched out on the sun bed. It started getting hotter and the sun’s rays almost reached the little awning where her bag was. Naina spotted her bag and grabbed the next deck chair, pretty in a floppy sunhat and a hibiscus flower print sarong over a bandeau bikini.
They greeted each other with an air kiss and a hug and got down to some girly conversation. Naina was in an unusually chatty mood. ‘It feels good to have a conversation which doesn’t have “Stop it now, don’t touch that”, every five minutes,’ she confessed. The kids had been deposited in the play zone and would not emerge from that haven of jungle gyms, activities and storytelling sessions until lunch time.
‘My brother, unfortunately, seems to have no time for me, now that Sonia’s here,’ she said laughing, completely oblivious to the sharp knife like effect that the words had on Rhea. ‘I’m so bored all by myself these days and there’s only so much under-age company I can deal with. I long for a meal where I don’t have to spend all my time cutting food into bite sized portions on adjoining plates.’
Which explained, she thought, why she hadn’t seen Kamal around. Rhea did a fake laugh. ‘Of course, I’m much in the same boat. My aunt and the Colonel have me as the unwanted third leg and I would rather dine on my own than sit awkwardly while they play who blinks first. It does get a little trying.’
Naina continued, ‘I hope they get together again. Sonia is trying her very best to bring him around, and she’s a nice girl. Our families have known each other for years and we’ve practically grown up together.’
Rhea nodded politely at the use of the word ‘nice’ for Sonia but that debate was for another time. She pulled out her novel and opened it to the bookmarked page to try and get Naina to stop discussing Sonia and Kamal. Thankfully she took the hint and turned the conversation towards the hunky lifeguard who was now smiling in their direction. What’s the use of being newly divorced if she couldn’t flirt a bit with a complete stranger! After some time Rhea decided that she should apply her own sunblock since there seemed to be no volunteer in the immediate vicinity that morning. Naina downed her tall glass of fresh orange juice, plucked herself up from the chair and casting off her sarong, made her way through the scattered chairs to the pool, all the while keeping her eye on the muscled lifeguard. She dived into the water and then raised a lazy hand asking for his attention. He half-smiled and dived right in. Rhea choked back laughter as she watched on until she just got bored and decided to head back.
She gathered her things and began to walk towards the cabin to get dressed for lunch. Her mood had suddenly darkened and she realized that the sick, dull ache in the pit of her stomach was jealousy. ‘Don’t be silly, Rhea,’ she told herself, ‘You barely know the man; two kisses and one back rub does not mean a relationship. And there is Samir, waiting for you, apologizing . . . ah, well, you can get him to grovel when you get back. Don’t be a fool over Kamal. He was probably just amusing himself with you.’
Nonetheless, she spent the rest of the day holed up in the cabin, sitting in the balcony, reading her book and avoiding all company.
The next morning dawned bright and blue, and busy because it was to be port day at Cannes. Rhea decided not to hide any longer and face the world, one which Kamal and Sonia were a part of.
The cruise liner anchored in the bay and they were tendered into the quay by smaller boats, passing the gorgeous yachts anchored along the way. The standard excursion plan they had signed up for included a tour of the Palais des Festivals at the Boulevard de la Croisette where the famous Cannes Film Festival takes place every year, a walk down the promenade and seeing handprints of stars at the Allee des stars which is the Cannes equivalent of the Hollywood walk of fame. They would then move into the old town before going onwards to Grasse to see how perfumes were made. Rhea’s shore excursion group had the Colonel and his family, Naina and the kids, and a disgruntled looking Kamal with Sonia. She noted, with some jealousy, that Sonia was looking resplendent in a thin white linen shirt worn over tan shorts and a huge straw hat. Though she did not look at Kamal more than what was essential for a customary greeting, she was aware of his eyes on her almost all the time. The last time they had met, she had asked him to steer clear of her and as was apparent by the past few days, he was doing just that. Rhea hardly had any affinity towards perfumes—she used just the requisite amount for mandatory grooming—and therefore had no interest in visiting Grasse to see how it was made. What she wanted to visit instead was Saint Paul de Vence, a sixteenth-century village that was barely an hour away. ‘It is the oldest medieval village in France. Marc Chagall is buried there and it’s only an hour away from Cannes,’ she hissed in a fierce undertone to Rina Maasi, trying to change her mind. But Rina Maasi, being her prosaic self, would not change plans and skip the excursion that she had paid for, for one that would need extra payment. That, and also the fact that it would require a lot of steep climbing, something that both she and the Colonel would be uncomfortable with.
‘The last I saw you keen on any artwork was the join-by-dots painting books of your childhood. Believe me, one grave looks much the same as the other and we’ll find you some graves to look at in Grasse. Every little town has graves. I can show you graves back in Simla too,’ she said in a stentorian tone that brooked no argument.
Rina Maasi’s voice, trained by long years of putting rioting classrooms of adolescent boys into order, had the entire bus load of cruisers looking at them curiously. Rhea was tempted to defy her and insist on going alone, but as always, she regressed to being a tongue-tied five-year-old. She felt her cheeks flame into glorious red from the embarrassment and her eyes began to tear up in frustration.
As they stumbled out onto the cobble-stoned streets of the old city, Rhea asked the tour guide if there was any way she could get into another tour to Saint Paul de Vence instead. ‘You can take a taxi or drive,’ he said, adding, ‘But it will not be my responsibility. You have to be back in the ship by 5.30 p.m. It’s 1 p.m. already. One hour to Saint Paul and one hour to drive back.’
Rhea fidgeted uncomfortably. She didn’t have the courage to take a bus trip on her own, at least not without knowing the language of the country.
‘I don’t drive,’ she almost whispered back, dejection sagging her shoulders. ‘I mean I do, but I’m not confident enough to drive in another country.’
‘Then you can rent a car with a driver,’ Jean-Paul informed politely and dismissed her by turning his attention back to his scattered flock who had to be herded back into the bus from their wanderings around the stores.
‘I can drive anywhere,’ said a familiar voice behind her. She turned around with a start. It was Kamal, looking with the kind of mocking gaze that would have normally infuriated her, but it only made her stomach lurch. ‘It’s only a few kilometres away and would be criminal to miss for some silly perfumeries. I can take you there.’
‘Wha . . .’ she began, confused, and not comprehending what he had in mind.
‘Kamal, you don’t have to . . .’ she tried again but he took her hand and pulled her and the guide aside. ‘I am taking this lady off the excursion and we don’t want our money back. I take the responsibility of getting her back to the ship on time.’
Rhea’s jaw clunked to the ground with a thud. ‘I can’t let you do that,’ she protested weakly. ‘Your family is here and you would much rather be with them than with me.’
‘That’s where you are so mistaken, Rhea Khanna,’ he replied enigmatically. ‘I would much rather be with you than with anyone else, even though you told me to stop being your keeper. I never intended on being that anyway. Now, let’s go tell your aunt that you are going to Saint Paul de Vence with me. I don’t think she will have any objections.’
It seemed futile to argue or protest and she was amazed to see Rina Maasi most unperturbed about her niece wandering off into the French countryside with a strange man. But then, Kamal wasn’t a strange man to Rina Maasi, she had probably seen him graduate from knee-length shorts to long pants and knew him much better than she did.
From the corner of her eye Rhea could see Sonia turning to look at them from a store window where she and Naina were. They came out and she said something to Naina who then walked across the street with a small frown splitting her forehead. Kamal spoke to her, gently.
‘Rhea wants to see a sixteenth-century village about twenty kilometres away. I’m taking her there and will meet you directly on the ship in the evening.’ It was a tone that brooked no discussion, no argument and no questions. Sonia had joined them by then but before either of them could respond, Kamal took Rhea’s hand and moved with swift strides to the other end of the road, where he inquired about a self-drive car rental agency.
There was one issue however. ‘I know I can drive there but I need help with directions . . . are you any good?’ he asked, pulling out his phone and keying in the destination’s name to find the area’s map.
She shook her head apologetically.
‘I think it would be better to hire a taxi. It would save us precious time. If we had the entire day I might have still risked the self-drive, but we have,’ he checked his watch, ‘Under four hours from now to get there and back.’
She hadn’t done anything risky since the occasional bout of binge drinking with her buddies before Samir came into her life and sobered her up into blandness. He had been intent on moulding her into an image of himself—prim and proper, not a hair out of place, never mind her suspicion of his perfect hairline owing credit to hair plugs. Could she dare do something spontaneous? Could she dare go with the moment?
