nodded cautiously and turned her head. Another sting of spray. She noted with surprise that in all his chatter he had actually caught her own earlier thoughts – about the sound – and voiced them.
He took out his cigarettes, looked at them, met her eye, grinned ruefully, and then put them away again. ‘Ugh. Funny thing. No comfort there.’ They stood, volunteering nothing further for a while, riding it out, watching the intricate variations with which the sea and sky were confronting them. Then she remembered his opening remark.
‘I’m afraid I didn’t quite understand what you said at first. Something about it being difficult to get away?’ Shouting again as the wind tried to snatch the words from her mouth.
‘Oh yes. Difficult to get away from England. Won’t take you to her heart but won’t let you go. Horrible old spider, in fact. She wants the blood out of a man. Sorry.’ He apologised again. ‘I’ve probably said something unforgivable. Perhaps you’re incredibly patriotic and terribly sad to be leaving. I don’t know. It’s just the way I feel.’
‘I am sad. To be leaving one’s home. For good. Don’t you think?’
‘I’ve no regrets. Honestly. A grasping, petty and superstitious land infested with churches. But then I consider myself a scientist – for whom God can’t strictly be said to exist.’
‘I see. And not a very poetical description, either.’
‘I probably shouldn’t be saying this. Probably socially quite beyond the pale; I can never tell. They pull everything out of shape.’
‘What?’
‘Churches. I mean the map, even. Wherever you go. That’s the one good thing about the view here; not a steeple in sight.’
‘My. You do have a chip.’ She felt herself put about. His words provoked a longing for railway lines, green fields, and, indeed, the needle spire of Chelmsford cathedral which had always been visible from her bedroom window at Galleywood.
‘I’m sorry,’ once more excusing himself, ‘I’ll shut up. Bad taste to call religion into disrepute, I know. Digging myself deeper. I shouldn’t have forced my opinions on you. You’re probably a devout something or other and I’ve offended you for ever. Probably the weather.’
Just after the lowest point of the downward plunge, one could sense the very moment when gravity came back through the soles of the shoes.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Let’s talk about the weather. I wonder if people can ever get used to this.’
Then she laughed again. ‘I don’t mind hearing someone’s opinions.’
Peering past her, he considered the swell ahead. He pointed. ‘Here comes something!’
An irregularity in the pattern: ridges too close together; big ones, brimming, high and innocent. The ship went down in front of them as usual, and then rose significantly higher; higher, and poised. An exceptional wave began its course almost casually along the length of the water-line under them. It passed where they stood and became a huge fulcrum somewhere about the neighbourhood of the dining-room. Then the dive. The bows went right under. A rush of tide and foam sluiced off the fore-deck and drained around the tubes, bollards and hatches not so very far beyond them.
‘God,’ she muttered audibly in the moment of slack that followed – as sometimes they did when the ship seemed not to know what it would do next.
‘The seventh wave. Isn’t there something about the seventh wave? You see, I had a hunch England wouldn’t make it easy to get out. At least this much of a fight convinces me I’ve taken the right route!’
Yes, it was nice to talk to someone. She had not talked to someone, a personable young man, in fact, in her own right since … ‘I’m going out to Adelaide,’ she said firmly.
‘Oh, really? Me too.’
He was nice to talk to … Since her marriage. She had no idea. How nice it was to be spoken to as herself. Then, helplessly, from her clutch on the stanchion: ‘I’m joining my husband, you see.’
‘Ah, yes. And leaving your mother.’
‘I suppose I should be getting back to my cabin.’ She touched the place on her cheek where the wind felt almost like a bruise. The cold. And not just her cheek. Really, it got through coats and layers. It limited the time you could stay out. Or perhaps the main lounge again, Mrs Piyadasa.
‘Must you? There’s a man in mine.’
‘A what?’
‘A man. The man I share with.’
‘You have to share?’
‘Yes. Don’t you?’
‘There is another bunk. But it’s empty.’
‘You must have more clout than me. My other bunk is full of a seasick man. It’s pretty disgusting.’
‘I didn’t realise people had to share. I mean except families. Heavens, I should hate that.’
‘Yes,’ he said.
‘For four or five weeks, cooped up with someone you’ve never met.’
‘Yes. I keep wondering who I should have tipped, or rung up beforehand. That’s the trouble, not having the right connections or the absolute know-how. I’m sure if I did offer someone money he’d just look at me – it would be the wrong bloke.’
‘Yes,’ said Penny. ‘But he’d just look at you and then take the money.’
‘Exactly.’ He laughed. ‘I’m sorry, sir. The ship’s full. There’s nothing I can do. But thank you very much all the same.’
This laughter in the face of the sea – Penny felt slightly uncomfortable, though – over and above the discomfort of the storm, which in all truth she had briefly forgotten. But she could put no name to the feeling. She waited. She thought the man was virtually bound to ask her about Hugh next. A man would. For all sorts of reasons.
So she pre-empted him. ‘We haven’t been introduced. Penny Kendrick.’ She held on and stretched out her free hand.
‘Robert Kettle.’ He clasped hers during the transition from suspension to effort, and then drew back to his place at the rail. ‘Both “K”.’ He smiled.
She smiled back. But the ‘K’ was Hugh’s name, of course. ‘My mother owns a preparatory school in Essex. That’s where I grew up – among lots of little boys away from home.’
‘I went to one of those once,’ he said. ‘Always marching and doing drill. Present arms with miniature hockey sticks. But not for long. My parents couldn’t afford to keep me there. We weren’t really in the right league, financially. I suppose they were making a desperate bid for social—’ He failed to finish as once more the spray surprised him.
‘Oh, I see.’ Then she realised why she had felt uncomfortable. It was the way they had linked themselves through the character of
