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Conversations with travel companions

I was a on a cruise ship at a dinner table with two other couples, and the conversation turned to how each couple had met. I had a pretty good tale, one that I’ve been polishing for a while, so I held it back and let the others go first.

The Australian couple went first. Jayne told us that when she was seventeen years old she was swimming off a beach in Perth and went in deeper than usual.

“I don’t blame you,” I said. “I’ve been to Perth. If only you’d gone a little further you might have reached South Africa.”

She felt a tug on her leg and then an impact like someone kicking her, but she didn’t realise she’d been bitten by a shark until she heard herself screaming. Glen was on the beach with some friends when he heard the commotion, and at first he didn’t realise it was a shark either, but he ran toward the sea to see if he could help. As he was swimming out, he saw the blood, and then he saw something dark, a tail.

“It was a bloody big Great White,” said Glen.

“It wasn’t,” said Jayne. “It was a bull shark. He just says that because he thinks Great Whites are more impressive.”

Glen swam out to Jayne and he took her in his arms and swam her back to shore. She was unconscious when he pulled her out onto the sand. He used his towel to bind up her leg and watched as the ambulance drove away with her.

The next day he went to visit her in hospital. “I had to get my towel back,” said Glen.

Jayne had lost a lot of blood, and the leg was still attached when she reached the hospital, but the doctors had to remove it. Glen came every day. When Jayne woke after her operation, he was the first person she saw. “He looked so tall, standing over me,” she said. “I thought he was a giant.”

I looked at Glen, who is about the height of Themba Bavuma, or Sarah Jessica Parker. “She thought I was tall,” he shrugged. “I had to marry her after that.”

“And I had to marry him,” said Jayne, pulling a face, “because he saved my life.”

“You could have married the surgeon,” I said. “He saved your life too.”

Jayne looked at Glen and frowned. “I didn’t think of that,” she said.

I thought that was a good story, but the other couple were two older Americans, from Delaware.

When Peter was sixty years old he had never been married. His brother and his sister-in-law were celebrating their wedding anniversary and were taking a cruise. They were close and enjoyed Peter’s company so they invited him to join them. Peter hadn’t wanted to go, because he was prone to seasickness, but finally they persuaded him.

I looked at Peter’s wife. “Did he steal you from his brother? That’s pretty hot.”

No, that wasn’t it.

She had been married for forty years but had lost her husband to a sudden illness several months earlier. For weeks and weeks she didn’t leave her house. She didn’t want to see anyone or meet anyone or do anything. Eventually her grown-up children persuaded her to go with them on a cruise. They hoped it would bring her out of herself, make her interested in life again. They took her on a three-month cruise from San Francisco to Japan and the eastern seas, down through the Pacific to Australia and on to Singapore and the Indian Ocean.

It didn’t work.

She stayed in her cabin for the first month. She wasn’t interested in the blue ocean outside her window, or the islands or the flying fish. She didn’t want to visit the towns and markets and beaches along the way or swim in the sea. She watched from her balcony as the Sydney Opera House rolled by.

Her children were afraid they’d made a terrible mistake.

Finally one night she went up to the lounge and watched people dancing. She listened to the band and thought about her husband. There was a man there, and she was afraid he’d ask her to dance but he didn’t. He sat with her, and didn’t ask her questions, but from time to time he said something that made her laugh. This was Peter.

The next morning she went to breakfast for the first time, rather than eat it in her cabin. She saw him there and they spent the morning together. They drank tea and threw things at sea birds. He made her laugh more. He asked her to have dinner with him that night, but she thought it was too much, too soon and said no. The next day he left the ship. His trip was over and she still had another three weeks all the way around Africa and up to London.

He flew home to Delaware. He thought about her. She walked each day on the deck. She thought about him. She realised that the breeze was warm and the skies were wide and that there was a world out there that stretched on and on and that one day she would no longer be a part of it, but that time hadn’t yet come.

He emailed her on the ship. She emailed back. The ship stopped at Port Louis in Mauritius, then at Durban, then at Cape Town. At Cape Town he boarded the ship again. Every year on their anniversary they take a cruise together, even though he still gets seasick. It was their tenth anniversary.

After that they all turned and wanted to know my story, but I’m no fool. I couldn’t compete. Sometimes in life, the smartest thing you can do is know when other stories are better than yours.

Darrel Bristow-Boveyis a columnist, screenwriter, travel writer, author. Check out his new book: One Midlife Crisis and a Speedo

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