Braulio Beltrán Morales was eighty-something, loved stamp collecting and firmly believed that water belonged in kettles, garden hoses and nowhere else. Yet, there he stood on the upper deck of the M/N El Sol Soberano, clutching the teak railing like a drowning man holding onto a lifebuoy.
‘Isn’t it glorious, Braulio?’ gushed his wife, Pilar, adjusting her oversized sunhat. ‘The open ocean, the fresh breeze and seven nights of unlimited buffet!’
Braulio groaned softly. The ship had barely cleared the harbour walls, yet his inner ear was already staging a violent rebellion. His stomach felt less like a digestive organ and more like a half-empty paint tin sloshing around in an industrial cement mixer.
He had tried every remedy in Pilar’s extensive travel first-aid kit. First came the motion sickness pills, which promised zero drowsiness but immediately left Braulio feeling like a tranquillised sloth. Then came the wristbands, which pressed small plastic beads into his pressure points so hard his hands turned an alarming shade of purple. Finally, Pilar had stuck a small scopolamine patch behind his ear, assuring him it was cutting-edge medical science.
By six o’clock, the patch had fully kicked in, bringing with it a subtle haze of mild delirium.
‘I am Hemingway,’ Braulio muttered to his pale, greenish reflection in the bathroom mirror. ‘I am the old man. The sea is my foe.’
The true test arrived that evening at the Captain’s Gala Dinner.
Braulio, dressed in a tuxedo that smelled faintly of mothballs, wobbled down the grand staircase towards the dining room. The ship gave a gentle pitch to the port side; Braulio lurched right. The ship rolled starboard; Braulio lurched left, accidentally high-fiving an astonished waiter who was holding a tray of champagne flutes.
‘Splendid form, sir,’ the waiter remarked dryly.
At Table 42, Braulio sat opposite Lord and Lady Farthington, a couple who spoke entirely in booming aristocratic tones.
‘Rough seas tonight!’ Lord Farthington chuckled, buttering a bread roll with terrifying gusto. ‘Nothing like a churning swell to stir up a healthy appetite, eh Beltrán?’
Braulio squeezed his eyes shut. Across the table, a soup bowl filled with cream of asparagus sloshed hypnotically back and forth. Left, right, left, right. It was a tiny green pendulum of doom.
‘Braulio is a bit of a landlubber,’ Pilar piped up brightly in the fluent, upper-class English she’d perfected during her years at a British boarding school in Gibraltar. ‘But he’s braving it!’
Just as Braulio managed to take a small sip, the ship took a heavy dip into a wave trough. Lord Farthington’s butter knife flew into the air, while Braulio’s soul briefly departed his body. He gripped the edge of the table so tightly his knuckles turned white.
‘Are you quite all right, old chap?’ Lord Farthington asked, pausing mid-chew. ‘You’ve turned the exact shade of that asparagus soup.’
Braulio stood up abruptly, his chair screeching against the shining floor.
‘I must observe the stars,’ he announced with grand, heroic desperation.
He made a mad dash for the promenade deck, weaving through glitz, glamour and unsuspecting passengers. He burst out into the cool night air, collapsed against the railing and offered his deepest, most sincere apologies to the Atlantic Ocean.
Ten minutes later, battered by the sea breeze but feeling strangely victorious, Braulio wiped his brow with a silk handkerchief. He looked out into the ink-black expanse. He had faced the leviathan of nausea, survived the terrifying asparagus soup and lived to tell the tale.
Pilar joined him a moment later, draping a warm blanket over his shoulders.
‘Feeling better, dear?’
Braulio drew himself up to his full height, smoothed his lapels and gave a weary nod.
‘The sea and I have reached an understanding,’ he declared solemnly. ‘Tomorrow, I shall conquer the mini-golf course.’
❤️