to see their route pointed at a corner of it. But there next to it of course was the Suez Canal, and that would imply Egypt. And of course in the Bible they were always swerving down into Egypt, for one reason or another – famine, the sword, tax, or tax avoidance, that sort of thing. The thought was in bad taste, she knew; but it had come to mind. Like the moment at which Robert Kettle had said ‘lavatory’, and people had changed the subject.
Repressing a smile: ‘I’m so ignorant about where countries are.’ Then another thought struck her. ‘I suppose you really only find out by going there, don’t you?’ She said it out loud, now quite composed as she resumed her seat.
‘I suppose you do,’ said Clodagh. ‘The Canal is vile. Take my word for it. Russell and I shan’t be going ashore at Port Said.’ She looked across at her husband, and then turned back. ‘I wonder have you seen that extraordinary woman? My dear, so frail she can hardly walk. I mean the woman who appeared in the dining-room the other evening. I’ve seen her on one or two other occasions as well. I mean the woman who’s excessively thin.’
‘No. I’m afraid I haven’t,’ Penny said.
‘I couldn’t quite believe it at first when I saw her. Really no more than a skeleton in a dress. I didn’t know what to imagine. She looked … I don’t know … like someone who’d just come out of a POW camp.’
The conversation lapsed. Penny worked at her coffee, adding a little more sugar, and sipping, with the saucer under the cup in case the gentle swell should catch her out and ruin her skirt. She sensed from the corner of her eye Clodagh tucking the stray wisps of her ash-toned hair back behind her ears. Penny said, ‘I’d like to know what to expect.’
She turned round involuntarily to look behind her, and found herself staring at Robert Kettle who was standing at the bar. They both looked away immediately. Penny realised with a start that she had completely forgotten having danced once with him last night.
Much later the same morning, Penny was sitting in a different chair, reading – with her book in the lap of her slick, grey worsted skirt and her pince-nez on her nose – when Finlay Coote came in.
‘Have you seen either my mummy or my daddy?’
‘They left to do some shopping, Finlay. I think they’ve gone to buy a film for their camera, and maybe Mummy would look for some new sunglasses. Or have you tried the cabin?’
‘There’s a giant squid. We’ve seen a giant squid. I want them to come and see. Over the side. What have you got on your nose?’
‘They’re my glasses, Finlay. They belonged to my great-aunt.’ It suddenly occurred to Penny that the Cootes’ declaration of a little desultory shopping might have been merely a cover. They had exchanged looks. A form of words to screen the fact that they were taking advantage of the children’s daylight absence from their four-berth cabin. She pictured with horror little Finlay opening her parents’ cabin door to find Russell’s half-clothed body working at Clodagh’s flare of floral print across one of the bunks. Incomprehensible. The girl would be terrified. And it would all be Penny’s fault.
Shocked at the violence of her own imagination, she spoke stupidly to the child. ‘I wear them to scare people away and make me look like an old woman. My boys say I look like a granny. Do you want to try them?’
‘You don’t scare me,’ said the girl, trying the glasses on her nose, torn between the fascination of looking through them, and the urgency of her story. ‘Which deck’s the shop on again, please, Penny?’ She tried out the familiarity of a name.
Penny put the pince-nez on the arm of her chair. She could not but tell her. So Finlay slipped off after her parents. In any case they would be very foolish not to lock the cabin door; and, when she came to think of it, Clodagh was so ethereal and Russell so proper that the couple’s relations had probably been suspended entirely for the duration – that film and sunglasses were devices in no way rhetorical. If indeed their children had not been immaculately conceived in the first place.
The news of the squid had stirred the occupants of the observation lounge. They were hastily finishing their coffee and tea, their Scotch, their old crosswords, and were fading off towards the decks in hope of viewing the monster. Penny found herself on the starboard part of A deck, where she had first encountered Robert. Nothing out of the ordinary. Except the sea had completely changed colour. It was a rich, nearly opaque green, tinged with pink, underslung with sienna. She looked towards the stern. The pink could be seen tapering to a bright streak behind them in the blue-black – where the wake severed it.
There was no question, now, but that the ship was moving past a cable of coloured water thicker than any creature’s limb. Yet she could reconstruct how the children, standing on the white bars and looking down over the rail as they liked to do at the sheer of the bow wave, might have caught sight of the change and mistaken it for a long tentacle. And then from their desire of miracles created the squid. After all, they had already seen dolphins, and come in yesterday with a shark alert.
But what was happening? How should the sea acquire this strange submerged patina? It was nothing to her; and yet she was frightened for a moment. She adjusted the straw bag over her shoulder on its long strap. The sun glittered off the water into her face. Further aft along the rail she saw Mrs Madeley, and moved to join her.
‘Apparently, so Douglas says, we’re entering the outfall of the Nile,’ Mrs Madeley explained. Penny stared out ahead, but could see no land yet.
‘This far out?’ she said.
‘Apparently. So Douglas tells me. He knows about these things.’
Now the colour below them had all but faded out, and they were reassured; until, yes, after a minute or two another seeming rope of rich underwater mud writhed past.
‘It’s rather wonderful, isn’t it?’ said Penny. ‘We’re miles out and the river still hasn’t got mixed up with the sea.’
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