Murder on Board by Trevor Johnston

Chapter 1

 Friday 4 March 2pm

‘Do you want another sausage, Billy?’

‘Honestly, Rose. If I eat another thing, I’ll burst.’ Billy absent-mindedly rubbed his stomach as if to reinforce the point. ‘Rose, if I spent any more time around your house, I’d end up like Pavarotti, without the singing voice, of course. Anyway, Rose, should you not be taking a wee rest before the journey; especially in your condition?’

‘Good God, Billy. You would think I was pregnant. Look. I’m grand. No auld cancer is going to beat me.’

Gabriel Merrin, Rose’s husband cut in. ‘Love, Billy is right. I think you should have a wee lie down before the journey. Doctor O’Reilly recommended good rests. In fact I am not so sure that we should be heading to France, at all. It could be too much for you. Especially after the latest report’.

‘Gabriel.’ Cried out Rose. ‘I told you not to say anything to Billy or Muriel. And now you’ve gone and blurted it out.’  Rose burst into tears, dropped the frying pan full of hot fat and the remaining sausages and bacon onto the tiled floor and ran from the room. Gabriel rose quickly from the chair and went after her but Muriel grabbed him by the arm.

‘Sit where you are, Gabriel. I will go to her, this is woman’s work. You and Billy can clean up the mess on the floor and put the dishes into the dish-washer. I suppose you could also put it on, if you know how.’ Muriel left the room. She moved into the front hall, turned to the left and with an air of calm, walked slowly up the stairs. It was almost, as if she was back on duty, in the Hospice, in Derry.

Gabriel and Billy picked up the discarded bacon and sausages and put them in the bin. Then with the benefit of a mop bucket and broom and a good dash of washing powder, they started to remove the thick layer of fat from the kitchen tiles. They worked in silence and the work seemed to keep their minds away from the scene they had taken part in, some ten minutes earlier.

Billy broke the silence, eventually. ‘Gabriel. What’s up? It’s not like Rose, to create a scene like that. Is the cancer back?’ Gabriel wiped a tear from his eye. It was replaced quickly by yet another tear, then another. He broke down sobbing.

‘I’m sorry Billy. You know this is not me but I’m so worried about Rose. Doctor O’Reilly, saw her yesterday. He also called me into the room. The cancer’s back. It’s bad news. It’s untreatable. He said she had only a matter of days rather than weeks or months.’ He sobbed. 

Billy put an arm around his friend.

‘Do the kids know? Gabriel shook his head. ‘Not the latest news.’ He sobbed. ‘We were going to tell them after the trip to France. I did not want to go on the trip but Rose insists. Memories of a better time, she said. What better memory to have than your last trip away with your best and dearest friends?’

The words brought a tear to Billy’s eye. ‘You know Gabriel, that Muriel and I think the world of you. If you do not feel like the trip, that’s fine with us. We will stand by Rose’s wishes. If she wants to stay at home, we stay at home. If she wants to go that’s also fine with us. I know we are due to go today. These three day trips are hard going. Two days on board the boat, all for a few hours in Roscoff. Do you really think Rose is up to it? Anyway the decision is yours’.

Billy emptied out the mop bucket and placed it in the utility room. Gabriel meantime started to stack the dishwasher.

Upstairs, Rose cried uncontrollably into a pillow as she told Muriel of the return of the breast cancer which had rapidly spread to the rest of the glands in her body. ‘Oh God! Muriel. I have only days left. What’s going to happen to poor Gabriel? How will he manage? The man can hardly switch on the electric kettle’.