6. "Body bashers and Hairies"

Sue signals to one of the girls behind the reception desk to come over.
‘Hi,’ chirps the girl as she reaches us. I mean really chirps. She is cute as a doll with blonde bobbed hair and big blue eyes. Her uniform is immaculate.
Sue looks at her list and starts stabbing at it with her pen as she lists the departments that need to come and collect us.
‘Give a call to accommodation, the Beauty Salon and the Galley will you Kristy, and tell F&B to send someone over too,’ she adds. Off she sets at high speed on her skinny but short pins.

With her mission successfully completed, people wearing various styles and coloured uniforms start to appear from different staircases, corridors and doors. Keys and books are passed out to everyone and names and numbers are checked off. The others are all escorted off leaving just the five of us behind and waiting to be claimed when a young man rushes up puffing and panting.
‘Hand baggage duty,’ he says, by way of explanation. Sue hands over the keys and blue booklets and promptly ignores the young man.
‘Have a look at your blue cards,’ she says, holding one of the booklets in the air. ‘Take it to your first induction, and don’t forget it.’
Jabbing the clipboard into the young man’s chest she turns on her heel and takes her hat off, smoothing her hair back with one hand as she strides over to the patisserie bar where she will have her first drink of the day.

Recovering quickly from his dig in the chest the young man stands upright with his new responsibility sitting proudly on his shoulders, and introduces himself to us.
‘My name is Paul and I am an SBS,’ he says, proudly craning his thin neck back so he can look down his nose at us.
We don’t have a clue what that means, but I presume it had something to do with Hand Baggage. He looks down at the list and calls our names. Having determined that all five of us are all present, Paul pivots around and tells us to follow him. Looks like we are off to our rooms for a well-earned rest. We gather our bags and try to keep up with him. It seems incredible to me that two days ago I was in complete control of every aspect of my life. Now I am feeling juvenile and silly. It’s hard to look confidant and controlled when you’re in a strange place and are totally dependent on the strangers around you.

Up until now almost everyone seems to be a little tense and not very welcoming at all. Without venturing any further I could tell that finding my way around the ship was going to take time.
Paul is making great speed along the hallway and disappearing to the left without any regard for us. Wow this ship is huge. There are large stairways taking you up as far as the eye can see and elevators that are busy transporting the new passengers to their cabins. We all hurry forward and turn the corner and down a beautifully carpeted stairway with gleaming chrome banisters and brilliantly sparkling glass to the next floor. A gold embossed plaque on the wall tells us we have arrived on the ‘Fiesta deck number 4’.

Instead of taking the corridor by the promising sign of luxury we are led off to the other side of the hallway through double swing doors that are clearly marked in a big red circle with a hand halt sign ‘Crew Only.’ That’s us. I can feel my temper rising as I struggle between the swinging door and Vanessa’s suitcase that has jammed me in the door leaving my luggage still firmly in my grasp but behind me at the other side of the door. It was bad enough that they weighed a ton without having to wrestle with them. When finally through to the other side I take a second to compose myself. Straightening my shirt and hair, I look up and see for the first time where we are. Allison waited just ahead of me for me to catch up. We made our way along a wide and very long corridor. This is no normal corridor; it’s more like an airstrip. I strain my eyes to see the other end but cannot see where it ends. I have no idea where we are and why we are here. It looks like this is where the engine might be.

People are walking around in white boiler suits, officer’s uniforms, and others are rushing around with drinks trays under their arms. A group of waiters dressed in black waistcoats and ties come out of a lift full of noisy banter and just as quickly disappear down a stairway. A guy dressed as a lumberjack is heading towards us. I know he isn’t really a lumberjack because he is wearing a fake muscle chest with a checked shirt straining over the front of it, a cap on his head and a false beard resting on his forehead. He has a camera in his hand. I can’t help but smile at how ridiculous he looks but it doesn’t go unnoticed. As he passes by he suddenly stoops down in front of me stopping me in my tracks. He holds his face about an inch away. I thought he was going to kiss me, instead with a deadpan face he stares me right in the eye, winks, straightens up and carries on his way.
‘What was all that about?’ asks Allison, breaking the spell.
‘No idea,’ I reply shrugging my shoulders as I start to pull my bags behind me.

Paul stops for a second and then takes a turn to the right. One by one we clamber down the narrow stairs and follow him down an even narrower corridor and back on to ourselves along another corridor. Each turn we took was just that same as the last, grey coloured and lined with numbered doors. Paul stops and shouts back to us all indicating a sliding door with a lever. ‘This is a watertight door. Watertight doors are always open in harbour but never at sea. So that is why we are able to take this short cut today,’ and off he goes again.

I am having a serious sense of humour shortage as we struggle on. My face is burning up and I have started to feel claustrophobic. Vanessa is looking severely pissed off. Her hair has stuck to her forehead except for one long clump, which has found its way into the side of her mouth. I could hear her trying to hacker and spit it out ever since we started our descent. With her hands tied she wasn’t having much luck.
Paul comes abruptly to a halt.
‘Here is your cabin,’ he calls out, looking back down the corridor at Vanessa. ‘You and, he fingers dramatically down the whole list of four other names, Ginny McLeod'. 'Whatever you do don’t lose your keys or you will be up for a written warning,’ he says, addressing all of us. Greg passes the keys down to Vanessa and with a tick to his list Paul’s off again with the others following behind. Vanessa and I looked at each other. I drop my bags on the worn tiled floor and sit down heavily. My knees touching the other wall of the corridor.

The hallway seems less crowded now the others have gone although not by much. Vanessa has done the same. She is sitting on her suitcase head down and catching her breath. As she pulls the clump of hair out of her mouth and pushes it behind her ear I can see her eyes are staring wildly at the floor.
‘You okay Vanessa?’ I ask, looking up at the ceiling. When she doesn’t answer I get up and stride over the luggage and put my hand on her shoulder. Then I realize that she is not looking at the floor but at the two sets of keys in her hand. Each set has two keys and a flat silver key ring with the number of the cabin. Only then do I notice that they both have the same number engraved on them, 128b. Both sets are for the same door.
‘Looks like we are sharing then,’ says Vanessa, recovering quickly and handing me a set of keys.
‘Well, if it makes you feel any better Vanessa, I wouldn’t have wanted to share with anyone else,’ I say. I’m not sure if I mean that but if it helps to make her feel better a little white lie is worth it. It couldn’t be that bad sharing a cabin. I haven’t had time to think about anything, everything was moving too quickly. This was not how I expected to live for the next six months, how was I ever going to find my way around? It felt like we were on a submarine or something. Everywhere was brightly lit but that didn’t take away from the fact that it was grey and shabby looking.

A couple of girls in blue waistcoats and skirts pass by the end of the corridor and check us out. One of them asks if we’re ‘bars’. Neither Vanessa nor I know what that means, but we nod anyway. She smiles while the other just stares blankly and they disappear. As I put the key in the door, I am sure that things will be just fine. There was another door about three meters up the corridor that must be the door to the other part of the cabin. I push the door open and stand in the doorway. I can feel Vanessa’s breath on my face as she stands tightly in the doorway beside me.

The door is open as far as it can go and we are able to see the entire cabin from the doorway. Actually, if I were holding a toothpick in my hand I could nearly touch everything. There are bunk beds made up of scratchy blue blankets and white pillowcases on the immediate left hand side of the cabin. Matching blue curtains are hanging by a few remaining clips above each bunk. A mirror stands on the wall right in front of us recording the moment. A small built-in writing area under the mirror with a chair tucked underneath it with a light coloured miniature double wardrobe. There is a slim double wardrobe that has been sliced in half to create the illusion that it is a double wardrobe between the writing table and wall. Each door of the wardrobe has bolts on them, one has a bicycle lock through it. We haven’t even entered the room.

We leave the luggage outside and one at a time step inside the room. Behind the door is the sink with storage space underneath and another mirror on the wall. The floor was bare and heavily worn. As we stand by each other invading our personal spaces we both look up at the only decoration in the cabin. There on wall is a large red sticker that reads, ‘I love Semen.’

A thousand things are going through my mind at this very moment. I suddenly feel alone and a wave of nausea waves over me. I don’t know if it’s hunger or whether I have just felt what is feels like to be homesick for the first time in my life. Okay, I wasn’t expecting a suite, but this? With my imaginary toothpick I reach up a do a little jump and touch the ceiling! Defeated I flop myself down on the bottom bunk only to bang my head on the top bunk as I do so.
‘Fuching hell Ginny,’ says Vanessa.
Standing in the middle of the room Vanessa looks ready to kill.
‘What the fuch is this all about?’ she says, turning to me. As Vanessa starts to rant on I notice a piece of hope in the form of a door handle.

There is another door camouflaged between the sink and the wardrobe. Getting up quickly and shoving Vanessa out of the way I turn the handle only to find it locked. We try the other set of keys but nothing works.
‘I knew it,’ I say to Vanessa excitedly. A wave of relief washed over me. Thank God I will not be trapped here for the next six months with Vanessa. She hasn’t stopped going on since we entered the cabin and her voice is grating on me. Every other word is a swear word teetering on the edge of spitting on you. So, it is decided before I even get in the door that there is another room in there, the only thing we just couldn’t understand is why there was a door joining the two cabins up or why there were bunk beds in this cabin in the first place. We rush out of the cabin and try the key in the door down from ours. None of the keys fit and the number on the door was different too.

We decide to get the luggage out of the corridor and stack some of it on the bottom bunk, or as Vanessa said, ‘her bunk.’ Vanessa pointed and I moved. With everything inside, we closed the door. Just as it shuts there is a knock at the door. Not that door, but the inside door.
I turn the handle, but it’s locked.
‘Bugger off Jo, I’m having a piss,’ shouts a voice from the other side.
I turn to Vanessa and mouth that someone’s peeing in our other room. My eyebrows are knitted so tightly together I can feel a headache coming on.
‘Who the fuch is that?’ mouths Vanessa, looking equally puzzled.
‘Sorry,’ I shout back, ‘but you knocked on the door.’
‘Who’s that?’ came the voice from the other side.
‘Ginny,’ I say apprehensively.
Just then there is a clicking noise from the other side of the door. It opens slowly to reveal a girl sitting on a toilet wearing nothing but a bra with the matching knickers wrapped around her ankles.
‘Hi,’ she says, smiling up at us. ‘Sorry, I forgot Jo went home today, we used to knock to let each other know if the loo was busy. I’m Nicky, nice to meet you,’ she says. Thankfully she didn’t offer to shake hands.