id="ua63ed39b-0b99-523d-9c57-84bec866f450">
Dancing Backwards
Salley Vickers
FOURTH ESTATE • London
for Rosie & Co. a birthday book
For whatever we lose(like a you or a me) it’s always ourselves we find in the sea
e e cummings
Table of Contents
FIRST DAY
Chock-a-Block: full to capacity or overloaded. If two blocks of a ship’s rigging are so tight together that they cannot be tightened further they are said to be chock-a-block.
‘What on earth have I done?’ Violet Hetherington asked herself.
She was standing in one of several queues in the dock at Southampton. The queues, by now spilling out of the cattle shed marked ‘Departures’, to board the Queen Caroline were long and none were moving. ‘It’s best to get to the docks late,’ her friend Annie had advised. ‘If you get there too early you can grow roots hanging about.’ Annie, married to a diplomat and full of advice, was a seasoned traveller. But on this occasion her advice was mistaken.
After a while an announcement came through the loudspeakers: there had been a ‘breakdown in the computer system’. In the face of this setback the atmosphere among the waiting passengers darkened. Some attempted patience, some brave souls even tried to rise to jollity but for the most part the mood became rebellious. The world was going to the dogs and they had paid good money—many were
