your ladyship.’
And certainly she was remarkably good at the alternate steep climb and drop which they had settled into: ‘Just take it carefully, and keep your cabin. That’s my advice, if anyone wants it. Keep your cabin, keep your head, and thank God you won’t be stuck in Kensington all winter.’
Yes, the extremity of the movement could begin, Penny supposed, to be something they might at least accept, if not adjust to. If there were really no alternative, and if the ladyship, whoever she was, could do it. Think of England indeed. Indeed she tried.
Most of what was loose and fragile had now broken; most of what could be spilled, had spilled. Most of those diners who were still making up their minds about how to leave and where to go had found regular fixtures to help them – in the reciprocating cling and brace that was necessary. So when no one else mentioned that it sounded more and more as though the vessel were on the point of ripping in two, Penny clenched her teeth. Nevertheless, in that very act her thoughts turned first to the boys, at her mother’s school in Essex, and next to Hugh, already on the other side of the world. If she were to drown she would be of no use to any of them.
And the next thing after the thought of imminent death was the awareness of fear. Close upon that, nausea. And between the first consciousness of sickness and the worst feeling imaginable were about three suffocating minutes amid the smells of pheasant, liver, mayonnaise and chocolate.
D was one of the lower decks. Its floor and walls staggered by; its door heaved open. She managed to find a closet on that level; though, regrettably, she was not the first. Monstrous, her mouth like a burst porthole. Like an act of recall; but so painful, all the confused past springing through, still fully formed. And with that over she felt drained, but just about in command – and in the greatest need of air.
A good open-air walk ran along the whole length of both sides of A deck. It was the kind of broad, sideless corridor Penny was familiar with from popular ocean films in which five days of love culminated in New York. It ran along the whole length, that is, except for the steerage class – that old label for poorer travellers. On this level, she noted, the steerage was sealed off from the main part of the vessel, to port and starboard, behind impenetrable steel dividers in the bulkhead.
Coated and belted now, wind-whipped, with hands outstretched, she made her way towards the bow – along the scrubbed planking where in undreamable fair weather deck-chairs might be set. It was to press uphill for several seconds, march deceptively level for a moment, and then loom dangerously giant-strided. Wiser to stop and hang on to a frame or to the rail when the ship’s nose went down. Queenie Parsons’s last words kept running through her head, ‘But this is a liner!’
Truly, Penny had not imagined the white floating city which had so taken her breath against the drabness of Tilbury dock could be subject to anything like this. If they were not exactly storm-tossed – the ship was too grand and provident for that – yet it was obvious their assurance was being very seriously examined. Astride the huge ridges of complex and crazing black, the Armorica was undergoing, yes, something of an inquisition. The groaning and creaking, so audible in the dining-room and now mingled with the debate of sea and wind, were proof enough of that, if proof were wanted.
There, up ahead, the part of the bow she could see had gone in, and a wash of foam came over all the great steel winches and fittings, flushing and draining away as she watched. She would never have thought so high a point as that strong, curved prow could be at risk. Surely this could not go on. Surely. The grown-up in her told the child not to be silly. But she remained unconvinced.
She passed a Lascar with a mop, a small figure, of brown imagined bones inside his maroon jacket. Dealing, presumably, with some mess, some distressed passenger’s sick, he seemed hardly to be holding on to anything. He stared at her with opaque eyes, then looked away. These outdoor folk, diminutive, cropping up like sad, solitary djinns, she had already found them unsettling. Should she speak? Technically they fell outside the ship’s account of itself, they did not exist. Yet everyone knew the terminology: Lascars. How was that? She found herself several yards past him in only two steps. And she worried about the life-jacket instructions. Would she get the ties the right way round? The diagram was confusing.
At the forward reach of A deck she came with surprise on the Sinhalese couple tucked away in a protected nook. She had seen them about, of course. But, like everyone else, had not yet found it possible to speak. They were standing with their backs to the steel, the woman wearing a coat over her blue sari. He, smiling, smaller than his wife, was neat in his Burberry jacket and fawn slacks. Penny stopped about a yard from them. She leaned on the rail and looked out at the same prospect, comforted a little that they seemed in no immediate hurry as regards lifeboats. Indeed, the man was about to raise a pair of binoculars to his eyes. On seeing her he stopped, took the strap off and volunteered them. She shook her head and smiled queasily. Now she had ceased her struggle along the deck, it might be that the nausea was about to return.
‘No, please. Have a look.’ He insisted, holding the glasses out.
She looked. The horizon, looming nonsense for half the time, did her stomach good; though to tell the truth there was little to focus on that was not frenzied water, or ragged grey cloud. She stood, resting her elbows on the rail, in those moments when she had not physically to cling to it. She surveyed the waves, broke off. It was quite dismal. She looked again, held on, and then again. Momentarily she caught sight of something far off in the whelm; which promptly disappeared. Maybe flotsam, the corner of a box, waterlogged, she thought. A tea-chest, possibly, like the ones her own belongings were packed in. A piece of wreckage, or something thrown overboard from a tanker. Nothing worth looking at, really, but even rubbish gave the eye a mark. Like a gravestone. She suspected no life-form could live in all that desolation; they were utterly abandoned.
‘My name is Piyadasa. Is it your first trip?’
‘Yes.’ She managed a weak smile.
‘It is very rough.’
‘Yes.’
‘Please carry on looking.’
Magnified, each wave was colder and more intimate. She found herself noticing the skid, of water over water, the detachment and reattachment of drops and strings, the innumerable facets of unnameable colours – unnameable because they were all the same colour, and yet clearly not. She thought less about the depth.
She handed the glasses back. ‘Thanks very much. Not feeling too good.’
‘You should drink tea.’ The lady smiled.
‘I don’t think I could drink anything, just at the moment.’
‘Perhaps without milk or sugar. Perhaps even gunpowder tea.’
‘Gunpowder tea?’ Penny felt her eyebrows rise.
‘Any kind of tea you like.’
‘Oh. Do you think so?’
‘Ask my husband. Even beef tea.’ Mrs Piyadasa laughed. ‘Why don’t you come along with us. We’re just going inside. They will bring you something. Come with us. My husband knows everything there is to know about tea. He grows it, and then he sells it.’
Her husband acknowledged his expertise with a wry expression.
