©2023Stuart Campbell

This short story was written for my Free Shorts project, which culminated in a twelve-story collection entitled The Afternoon of the Jackal. In 2025, I’m releasing one of the stories each month free on my website. Happy reading, and please leave a comment to let me know if you enjoy my work.

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On the last day of the cruise, Perky made his mind up not to get off at Sydney. He’d bought the ticket – Sydney to Darwin and back – on a whim, walked straight out of the betting shop into the travel agency and paid cash, all the cash he had in the world. There was nothing to go home to; strictly speaking there was no actual home now that his drinking buddy Jason wanted his couch back. And the job: You could pick up cash-in-hand removalist work anytime you wanted if you liked earning peanuts for breaking your back.

The gang at the smokers’ corner came up with the name Perky. They were a good lot on the whole, with all the time in the world for a yarn over the ashtrays outside the Pirates Bar. Generous too: You could always bum a smoke, which was somewhat convenient in Perky’s case since he’d puffed his last cigarette on the morning they sailed out of Darwin. The gang reckoned smokers had rights, and if the people running the ship had stuck the smoking area next to the walking track, that was tough shit on the joggers in Lycra tutting and eyerolling when they ran past. He struck up a special friendship with a bloke called Pinky so it was a no-brainer that they called him Perky, which suited him because he generally liked to go by something other than his real name.

He’d sort of planned it, sneaking around the decks to work out where he’d leave the note. It was windy up top where he’d jump overboard (‘not’ he chuckled to himself), so he wrote the note on a flattened take-away cup, bored a hole in it, and threaded his cruise pass lanyard through so he could tie the whole lot to a handrail. IM ENDING IT ALL he wrote on the cup, then added IT WAS THE POKIES.

That night Perky hid in a toilet up near the basketball court with a bottle of water and a bread roll. Someone locked the outside door around midnight, but next morning he found it unlocked. He snuck outside at midday. By coincidence, his blue shorts and white T shirt were similar to the cleaners’ outfits. The discarded rag he found the day before now became his disguise as he made his way along the deck polishing handrails. The rag came in super handy to hide the lanyard and cup when he tied them to a bracket. Head down, don’t look up: It wasn’t the first time Perky had had to look out for a CCTV camera.

Still, he wasn’t feeling so clever by now. Where was he going to sleep? The toilet? ‘Needs to control his impulses,’ one of his school reports had said. ‘Rash decisions will lead to trouble in later life,’ the next year’s report said.

Too right.

“Hey, you looking for something?”

It was a bloke in white overalls, some sort of foreigner like all the ship’s crew. Another one the same appeared and they started pointing at him and yakking in Indian or whatever.

“No mate, I’m good.” He walked away, casual, watching out of the corner of his eye whether they’d spotted the lanyard and cup.

It was open bloody season out on the decks, with crew everywhere stacking deckchairs, cleaning the pool, checking off lists. Where was it quiet on the ship, somewhere he could hang around until the next bunch of passengers got on?

Perky took the six flights of stairs down to the casino, chin down, avoiding eye contact with the odd crew coming up. One look at the rows of pokie machines flashing silently in front of empty chairs, and he was out of there – too many security cameras. So much for that stupid idea.

The glass lifts were beginning to fill up with new passengers heading for their cabins. This meant there’d be people in the corridors; he could blend in rather than hide while he worked out what to do.

It was bedlam in the gangways, with staff lugging suitcases and white-haired couples streaming from the lifts. A bloody geriatric home on water. Once he got settled somewhere, he’d find the new bunch of smokers.

A bloke in a security uniform was coming his way so he turned to a cabin door and started polishing. He jumped back when the door opened.

“There you are. Come in.”

When Lionel died, Janet’s friend Rhonda said, “You’ll miss all those cruises,” as if a widow of eighty was incapable of getting on a ship without a man. Truth was that Lionel hated cruise ships. He agreed to one a year and “that’s all you’re getting me on,” whereas she’d spend the whole summer cruising if she could. So when Rhonda made the comment, the idea came to her: Back-to-back cruises. You could spend months on the same boat: All around Australia, across to New Zealand, up to Fiji. She hadn’t been off the Pacific Reverie for eight weeks. Ruslan, the concierge on her deck, had adopted her like his auntie, arranging little treats and kindnesses: A cup of tea and a cookie each morning, superior pillows from the penthouse cabins four decks above.

The young man with the polishing cloth didn’t look as smart as the other crew members. Maybe maintenance people who worked more outside the public areas had different dress standards. “It’s the TV. I rang down because the sound’s not working.”

Perky looked around the tiny cabin. At least it had a balcony. His had been windowless right inside the hull, with rumbling and whirring all night. He was good with TVs and gadgets, a bit of a bush technician if that was an actual word. “Got the remote?”

Janet’s first doubts about the technician’s appearance faded when, with some poking inside the remote, a football commentary suddenly boomed from the TV. The lad – she guessed he was about thirty – shrugged and grinned, not making any sign of leaving.

“Well thanks for fixing it.” More nervous grinning.

“Is there anything wrong?” She sensed something familiar, an instinct born of forty years of teaching. “You’re not really a technician, are you?”

Perky turned, jaw open, grasping for an answer that wouldn’t come. The old lady asked, “Are you hungry?” He nodded. He was bloody starving.

She used to call them ‘lost boys’, lads whose life chances were erased by neglectful mothers, violent fathers, grog, drugs and God knew what else. The good hearts they were each born with corroded as the lost boys learned to survive on the margins: How to be rash, furtive, boastful, servile, threatening, depending on what immediate need had to be satisfied.

“What’s your name lad?”

“Shane, er Perky.”

“I’m Janet.”

Yes, this one was truly lost. “Hide in the ensuite while I ask Ruslan to get some food sent up.”

Perky sat obediently on the tiny toilet. The bathroom shelf held six or seven packets of drugs, but he couldn’t read beyond the first few letters of their names. Outside, the old lady was talking to somebody. His time was up. They’d arrest him. What was the bloody point?

“Don’t come out yet.”

Moments like this when he was up shit creek always sparked bad memories. His old man’s pitbull crosses that could take your arm off, the scrubby paddock at the back of the house, his mum with a broken jaw. What was it all about, this crap life? He might as well sit here on the shitter and let fate take its course.

Janet knocked on the ensuite door. “Come on out then.” Good Lord, he ate like a starving puppy, bolting down the sandwiches, eyes flicking sideways. When he finished, he looked at her with a ‘what’s the deal then’ expression.

“Listen lad, apparently someone staged a man overboard. Ruslan says they think it’s a hoax. Don’t worry, I’m not going to report you. You must have had a proper reason to do it. You look exhausted. Why don’t you take that spare pillow and have a nap on the carpet. We’ll have a proper chat when you wake up.”

She was a weirdo for sure. Anyway, if she didn’t mind having a complete stranger on her floor, so be it. Perky slept till mid-afternoon, but Janet didn’t seem up for a chat when he woke up. She told him to get a feed in the self-service cafeteria now the ship was under way. He asked if he should bring something down for her.

“No dear, I don’t have much of an appetite these days.”

That was nice of him to offer, anyway. He obviously had a good soul. Actually, she’d be grateful for some company for a few days. By now Janet had realised how lonely solo cruising was, especially for an old woman with a serious heart condition. Dinners were a trial: She’d wait in line at the big dining room with the chandeliers and seating for a thousand. Share or single? they’d ask. Share, please, she’d answer and get stuck on a round table for ten with a snobby group to her left and a bunch of yahoos to her right. The single dining option was marginally worse, perched at a table for two, with the phantom companion’s cutlery and glasses whipped away. She didn’t have the energy for the boot scooting and ballroom dance classes. And the stage shows: She’d seen them all three times over. No, the juggler just once, that was enough.

Perky’s plan was to eat some decent tucker without anybody asking who he was. The self-service cafeteria was full of busy folk criss-crossing from one bank of food displays to another, bearing piled up plates. He felt a bit more relaxed; just needed to blend in. The ship was rolling with the swell so he braced himself as he made his way along the Mexican section, loading up on tacos and chili stew: Easy on the avo, bit more salad, start loading up another plate. He traversed to the soft drink stand holding the two plates, manoeuvred one to balance on his forearm while he filled a glass with cola with his free hand. As he swung sideways to counter the swell, his right foot gave way on something slippery. The last thing he saw before he blacked out was a gobbet of guacamole heading for his face.

“Sir, wake up please.” A waiter’s face came into focus. Another one was scraping food off the floor. The back of his head hurt like hell. “Sir, I will help you to the medical centre. What is your stateroom number?” A crowd of gawkers had formed around him. Stateroom number? The game was up. But a tattooed arm hovered in front of Perky’s eyes. An Aussie voice: “He’ll be right, mate. I’ll look after him.” The meaty hand on the end of the arm grasped his shoulder and brought him to his feet. The waiter shrugged and turned away, the crowd dispersed. His new pal was missing his other arm, and had jailbird written all over him.

The hairy bloke snarled, “Long Bay, that’s where I’ve seen you, on remand. You were there for ….” Perky brushed the man off and headed for the toilets, where he scraped and dabbed the worst of the Mexican tucker off his T shirt and shorts.

Bloody hell, he needed a ciggie.

With the ship ploughing up the coast, a new gang of smokers was huddled out of the wind outside the Pirates Bar. “Mate, I left me smokes in the cabin,” scored his first cigarette of the day. By late afternoon as new members came and went, he bummed half a dozen more, as well as a couple of sucks on a woman’s vape. The crowd was thinning out when the one-armed bloke rolled up. He took one look at Perky and gave him the two fingers in the eye sign with his good arm. Fuck this, Perky thought, and scuttled back to Janet’s cabin.

She was relieved when he came back. Cruise ships were full of eyes. They’d catch him before long, but he might as well enjoy his freedom for a bit. They sat on the little balcony watching the sunset.

“Help yourself from the minibar, dear.” The prices were daylight robbery, but it was worth it for the companionship. Perky came back out with beers and corn chips, and they chatted into the evening. When the corn chips were all gone, she ordered him a room service burger.

Janet would have been happy to quietly watch the white foam rushing past on the black swells, but the food and beer had put Perky in a mood for storytelling. It was as she might have suspected: When he was small, his mum injured her back at work. Dad came and went but eventually stopped coming, leaving Mum in a wheelchair struggling with four kids. Perky wagged school, couldn’t sit still, never learned to read properly. Foster homes, run-ins with the cops, fights over money and women; he told his story without emotion, as if the fates had ordained his scrappy biography from the day of his birth. At one point he said, “You make your own luck in this life. That’s what Mum used to say”. When he’d finished, he yawned and stood up.

“I could teach you to read properly, you know when we get back to Sydney.”

Perky sat down again, an eyebrow raised in curiosity. She told him how she’d kept in touch with her lost boys years after they left school. Well, to be honest with herself, there was just that Finian who she had to take out an AVO against.

“Lost boys.” Perky repeated the phrase. “Yeah, I suppose I’m a lost boy. Never really thought about it that way. Did any of them, you know, come good?”

She hesitated before lying. “Yes, lots of them. Good jobs, children, nice houses.”

“Jeez,” Perky said, gazing out at the dark ocean. “Good jobs, you say?”

“My word. Managers, doctors, a judge.”

“A judge. Get away!”

A party mob stumbled past the cabin door, the men guffawing about getting it up and the women shrieking about putting it away. The voices faded. There was a last “Get that hand off my arse, Jim,” then the slam of a cabin door, the low throb of the engines and the hiss of the sea.

“Another drink, dear? There’s some miniatures.”

“‘Preciate your generousness missus, but I’m full as a brickie’s singlet. Think I’ll get my head down.”

“God bless,” she said when they turned out the light, and the ship rolled and hissed through the black waves towards Brisbane.

Bright light pierced the gap in the cabin blinds in the morning. The old lady was still asleep. Perky used the bathroom and tiptoed onto the balcony, taking care to close the blinds again. The ship was tied up at an ugly wharf.

“Bris Vegas,” Perky said. He’d been there once, gone up on the Greyhound to see a mate who owed him three hundred dollars, but the mate had buggered off to Toowoomba leaving his girlfriend to explain. She turned out to be a good sort, and after a quickie on the sofa followed by a feed, he was back on the bus to Sydney with fifty bucks on account in his pocket. Funny how something always turned up, like the old lady.

He slipped back inside. She was lying a bit funny on the bed. “Wake up, missis.” Her mouth was open but he couldn’t hear any breathing. He touched her wrinkly arm.

“Shit!” He touched the arm again. Cold.

He hadn’t undressed the night before, just had to slip on his thongs. Fuck’s sake, you couldn’t win a trick. He remembered a teacher he’d had, a bit like the dead lady. Miss Hampton, that was it. She offered him extra help before school, but he only turned up once. She said she was disappointed he didn’t want to make something of himself. Well, so am I disappointed he thought, seeing as my dad knocked Mum out of the wheelchair this morning and broke her wrist. Maybe the dead lady would have turned out like Miss Hampton. Nah, she was different, willing to give him a proper chance.

He found her purse in the bedside drawer, took the two hundred bucks wrapped in a plastic sandwich bag, and stuffed it in his shorts pocket. She’d want him to have it.

There was no way Perky was going to jump off the top deck, but he remembered a spot he’d seen when was scouting the ship where you could hop over a railing and hide behind a lifeboat. Head down, polishing handrails, down the carpeted staircases. The only staff around were busy with room service breakfasts. A security guy popped out of a lift but didn’t spot him. There was nobody around at the lifeboats on the outward side of the ship. It wasn’t far down. He reckoned he could swim to a wharf where there were some trucks to hide behind. He stepped off, hit the water heels first, shot to the surface and swam like buggery.

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