Kevin

By Christopher Woods

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They rose slowly from the bowels of the ship, toward the restaurant deck. They listened to Muzak selections as the elevator ascended, humming in its vertical dimension. All around them the Nordic Princess churned at a brisk sixteen knots, halfway between Caracas and Barbados.

“It’s taking its time,” Ted growled, breaking the silence begun in the stateroom. “You know what the pastry buffet looks like once it’s been vandalized.”

At least he’s speaking, Gwen thought. She had feared one of his lengthy silences. He was angry at her, and she couldn’t fault him for it. She had tried to pass up lunch, lying to him that she wasn’t hungry. Ted knew better. It’s the man from Nottingham, isn’t it, he asked her. The man and his son. It was, but she couldn’t admit it, not even to herself.

Finally the doors of the elevator opened. She could see the Paddington men already at table, napkins draped across their laps. So savagely prompt, she thought, as she and Ted approached the table.

Neville Paddington, Kevin’s father, rose and pulled out Gwen’s chair. Kevin remained seated, but Gwen noticed that he attempted a nod of his gargantuan head. It passed without an incident. The Englishmen has started without them. Neville poked at a poached halibut, on the lookout for shellfish. “We don’t eat those,” he had remarked during their first meal out of Miami.

They watched from the railing as passengers disembarked in Bridgetown. It was raining, and dockworkers wore yellow slickers. Neville and Kevin were among the first off the ship. They wore their eternal tweed. Walking up a rain swept street, Neville held Kevin’s arm. Kevin’s portfolio and camera gear were wrapped in plastic. Wind off the water whipped at the plastic and made it look like they were being steered by a large sail.

“I don’t know,” Ted said at last. “I feel bad about it, but I’m going to talk to the steward about changing tables. We aren’t enjoying ourselves like we should be, Gwen.”

“We can’t do that,” she said. “Imagine poor Kevin. Besides, we can’t request a table change after the first three days of the cruise. I know, I already checked.”

“I’ll see about that. I’ll talk to the steward tonight.”

Ted’s appetite ebbed at dinner, over Trout Veronese. He was sure it was because he was trying to keep a conversation afloat with Neville Paddington. Gwen had kept after him to carry his load. But at the moment Ted was most concerned with a trout bone wandering in his mouth. He wanted to go after it with a finger or two.

“What is your job in the States, Ted?” Neville asked.

“I retired this year from Continental Corrugated Cardboard,” Ted replied with difficulty. “This is our retirement cruise.”

He was thinking how much he disliked the way Neville spat out his name. Ted, Ted, like it was a sesame seed. He watched as Kevin pushed his ledger over to his father.

“Kevin wants to know how many trees must die each year to accommodate your company’s needs,” Neville said, after reading Kevin’s ledger entry.

“I can’t help him there,” Ted said. “I was in the advertising end of things.”

“I imagine you and Kevin are looking forward to Barbados,” Gwen said, trying to change the subject. “It’s still part of the Commonwealth, isn’t it?”

“We certainly are,” said Neville. “I dare so we will enjoy it more than Curacao. All those garishly painted houses appalled Kevin. Subtlety has never been a predominate Dutch trait.”

Gwen sensed that Kevin was nodding vigorously in agreement, but she chose not to look. Make me brave, she implored herself. She promised herself not to look in Kevin’s direction until a break in courses, and perhaps not even then.

There was good reason. Kevin’s head resembled a huge potato, recently excavated. It sported dark, mysterious nodules and leafy flesh that hung like flaps from his tweed collar. By Ochos Rios, Ted said, Kevin’s head reminded him of a runaway head of lettuce, but Gwen was adamant about her potato comparison. After all, she said, his head is brown. Mostly brown, Ted said.

“First we’ll visit Lord Nelson’s statue in Trafalgar Square,” Neville continued. “But given Kevin’s botanical obsession, the Villa Nova will be our primary concern.”

“Isn’t that an old sugar plantation?” Gwen asked.

“Correct, Gwen. Kevin will photograph two portlandias once planted by Her Majesty years ago. It will become part of Kevin’s portfolio of plants and trees dedicated by the Royal Family all over the world. Like most of Kevin’s projects, this one is quite an undertaking.”

“I see,” Gwen said, though of course she didn’t. She was perturbed that Ted was not holding up his end of the conversation.

“Perhaps some evening you and Ted can visit our stateroom and take a peek. We have visitors so rarely. I regret that, but I understand how people feel.”

“I’d like that,” she said vaguely.

“Kevin would feel honored,” Neville said. “You’ve no idea.”

They could see that Kevin was writing furiously in his ledger. When he finished, he pushed the ledger to his father again.

“Kevin says you need to leave for sick bay at once, Ted,” Neville said. “The trout bone causing you discomfort is about to lodge in your esophagus.”

“But how does Kevin know that?”

“Past experience,” Neville answered. “I’ll go with you, Ted. I’m sure everything will be fine, but Kevin seems alarmed. I assure you, he is never wrong.”

“Feeling better dear?” she asked.

“My throat is still sore,” Ted said weakly.

“Tomorrow you’ll be good as new. You’ll see.”

“Is that what your friend from Thalidomide-on-Avon says?”

“You should thank Kevin,” Gwen said. “For all we know, he saved your life.”

“All I know is that I’ll miss the Henry VIII dinner tonight.”

“There will be more roast beef later, Ted.”

“I’m going to talk to that Italian steward, I swear I am.”

“If we change tables it will break Kevin’s heart.”

“That would be preferable to us having breakdowns in tandem. I’ll collar that fascist Italian steward in the morning at breakfast.”

“Fine, but leave me out of it,” Gwen said. “I’m staying with the Englishmen,” she vowed defiantly.

“We are so honored that you’ve come,” Neville said as he showed Gwen into the Paddington stateroom.

In the very dim light she saw that Kevin had raised a hand in salute. He was on his bed, his giant head propped on scores of Princess pillows. Gwen thought he might be smiling, but this was difficult to know for certain.

“I must apologize for the light,” Neville said. “I’m afraid Kevin is having one of his migraines.”

“This is all the light I’ll need, I’m quite sure,” Gwen said.

The stateroom was like a scene from an old Sir Walter Raleigh movie. Cluttered with maps and charting instruments, it reminded Gwen of an old maritime museum she and Ted had once visited in New England. Neville noticed her amazement.

“Oh, those dusty old things. Kevin is quite keen on maritime history. Don’t get him started or we’ll never hear the end of it. Besides, he’s running out of pages in his ledger.”

“How did he become interested in all this?”

“Kevin is a man of many quiet passions. He can answer any question you might have about sunken galleons and their contents, for instance.”

“I’m afraid I wouldn’t know what to ask,” Gwen said.

“Please excuse me for not offering you some sherry,” Neville said. “Kevin won’t allow alcohol, you see.”

“I’m surprised the two of you didn’t go to the Henry VIII dinner tonight. It sounded very British.”

“I couldn’t have dragged Kevin there with a team of wild horses. Of course, we’ll miss our Yorkshire pudding, but Kevin holds a terrible grudge against King Henry. He will never forgive the man for his break with the Church. All to satisfy a low, libidinous craving. I hope you don’t mind my frankness.”

“Not at all.”

”Kevin believes that all of us have a higher calling. For a man in Henry’s position to ignore that is repugnant to Kevin.”

“I see,” she said, and this time she really did.

“Kevin’s sympathies are with Catherine Parr, Henry’s last wife. I think it is because she survived him. Then, when she remarried, she died in childbirth. You see, my wife died the same way, giving birth to Kevin. He will never overcome the guilt he feels. To make up for it, he tried to perform good deeds.”

From across the stateroom came a shrill, whistle-like noise that sent chills up Gwen’s spine. Kevin had fallen asleep. Gwen watched as Neville crossed the room to pull a blanket over him.

“I have never seen a person so attentive to another,” Gwen said in admiration.

“He’s all I have,” Neville said, sitting down again.

“I’ve heard of people with his affliction before. The waterhead syndrome? But I was under the impression that they never survived for long.”

“With very few exceptions, this is true. But you must remember that Kevin’s will is stronger than his physical condition.”

A few minutes later, Gwen said good night to Neville. Padding along the corridor to her own stateroom, she wondered if she would remember everything that was said. She also wondered how much of it Ted would believe.

“I like this view even better,” Ted said as he dismantled a lobster.

“I guess so,” Gwen said weakly. She could not eat a bite.

Across the table the French woman was smiling at her again. Gwen returned the smile, then looked back at her plate. At the new table there was much smiling. They ate now with a French couple and their two children. They were nice, upwardly mobile for Third
World, Ted had judged. But the problem remained, they could not understand each other because of the language barrier.

The Princess was docked for two days in Port-au-Price. Earlier in the day, Neville had invited Gwen to go ashore. Kevin was looking for a Haitian primitive painting to add to his naive art collection. Gwen told Neville that she and Ted would stay aboard the ship. Then we’ll see you at dinner, Neville said brightly.

She had not been able to break the news to Neville, that she and Ted had changed tables. Now, sitting with the silent French family, it came to her that the dining room seemed unusually quiet. Only Muzak and the occasional clash of silver broke the deadly silence. She kept looking across the room to their old table. The Paddington men were not there. Gwen felt very guilty. She feared that the Englishmen’s feelings were so hurt that they could not even enter the Viking Dining Room. She decided she would find out what she could. The Captain was passing by.

“Excuse me, sir, but could you tell me where the Englishmen are?”

“Haven’t you heard, Madam?” the Captain asked, bending down close to her.

She had heard nothing. In fact, she longed to be at their old table with Kevin and Neville, enduring the same awkwardness through meals. But she could nom longer risk Ted’s wrath. She feared a deadly siege of silence from her husband. Now, she felt like a Judas, and there was no getting around it.

“They were in the Iron Market, the way I understand it,” the Captain was saying. “Doing some shopping, I imagine. Suddenly, a crowd of Creole children attacked the younger Paddington. They thought he was some kind of evil spirit. It was all over in a matter of a few minutes.”

Gwen could not say a word. Ted, who was listening, put down his fork in a moment a silent tribute. The French family, who had understood none of it, continued to smile. Gwen kept looking from the Captain’s face to the empty table across the Viking Room. The Captain, always a busy man, at last moved away.

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Christopher Woods lives in Houston. He is the author of a prose collection, Under A Riverbed Sky (Panther Creek Press), and a collection of stage monologues, Heart Speak (Stone River Press). His play, Moonbirds, about doomed census takers in a Third World country, was produced recently in New York by Personal Space Theatrics. Moonbirds will be produced this summer in Ghent, Belgium by Kattenkwaad Theatrics.