There was a smell of fish in her nostrils, fish and seaweed, the smell of the beach when the tide turns and goes out, revealing the debris that lies beneath the sea.
‘Look, there’s Sam waving.’ Her face beaming, the young woman in the velvet hat pulled off the red scarf she was wearing round her throat and flapped it towards the other end of the ship, where the tourist-class passengers were coming out on deck to wave their goodbyes and watch their native land fade into the distance.
She was looking up at Vee again and, for a moment, their eyes met. Then the woman turned back to the man in the shabby mac. Once again the words reached Vee. ‘Scandal wherever she goes, she’s often in Tatler, and her cousin, Lady Claudia Vere, oh, she’s lovely, blonde hair and huge blue eyes. Her picture’s always in the society magazines.’
‘Yes, and she’s got a noble brother who’s stark staring bonkers and will swing from the nearest lamp-post come the revolution.’
‘Oh, you and your revolution. I tell you, there isn’t going to be any Bolshevik revolution, and the sooner you realize it, the happier you’ll be. Then you can get on with life instead of moaning about it.’
Vee turned away, dismayed as the girl’s words struck home. She pitied Jimmie and his illusions. Probably, even before the year was out, he would be in uniform, at close quarters with his brothers to a degree that would make him long for less comradeship, and without a minute in the day to ponder on the rights of men or the oppression of the workers.
There was a greater sense of urgency on the quay below; a car arrived and its doors flung open even before the brakes were on, three men got out, a porter came hurrying to unstrap cases from the boot, an official with a clipboard and a frown ushered them towards the customs shed, pulling out a watch as he did so.
Vee stiffened, her eyes fixed on a tall, dark man in a grey suit standing beside a wicker basket. She couldn’t put a name to him, she had never been introduced to him, but she had seen him before, several times, always as a shadowy, lurking figure. A watcher. In the park, when she and Klaus … And outside her flat. A man with a bony face. Not distinctive, and yet his features were etched on her mind. He wore the kind of clothes that would never stand out in a crowd, he was a blender.
Panic set in. If he were coming on board, it could mean only one thing.
She must get off. This was a hideous mistake. She would get off the boat right now, this very minute, never mind her luggage, never mind anything. She would take the train to London, and then to Scotland, to Ireland, anywhere …
She couldn’t. Despair swept over her.
But was he embarking for the voyage? He was making no move towards the ship. Instead, his eyes were scanning the decks, resolutely and systematically. She stepped back and tucked herself behind a metal buttress. The watcher’s eyes paused, moved on, came back. Only his eyes weren’t on her. His hand rose in casual acknowledgement, then he turned abruptly, and was lost in the crowd of onlookers.
He hadn’t been looking for her. Who then? Someone on the deck below, over to the left. She hung over the rail; all she could see were hats; everyone was looking down at the quay or over to where the tugs were manoeuvring into position.
She ran along the deck, pushing past other passengers, and almost tumbled down the steep gangway to the deck below. It was teeming with people, some sombre, tearful, even; others cheerful. Which of them had the man been looking for? She caught a glimpse of a man who looked just like Joel. It couldn’t be, of course, Joel was the last man to leave his college and set sail just before the start of term.
Some of her fellow passengers recognized her, there were whispers and curious glances. But not one of them was the right kind of person; none of them could be an associate of the man on the quay.
A cheer went up from the quayside, paper streamers rained down from the decks and the gangways were trundled aside. Answering cries and shouts floated down from the decks, there was a burst of steam, a whistle and then a blast from the SS Gloriana’s funnel, an oddly lightweight sound in comparison to the bass notes of the tugs. A band was playing, bunting flapped and a strand fell loose, swooping down into the sea.
Inch by inch, the boat glided away from her mooring. There was a foot of murky water, a yard, fifty yards. Then the Gloriana, attended by her acolyte tugs, was sailing serenely down the grey stretches of the Thames, moving slowly past warehouses and wharves. People in small boats waved, more hooters and horns and whistles sounded; the voyage had begun.
Vee stayed at her post, watching without attention as they sailed past cargo boats, unkempt and tubby and rusty, holds gaping, crates and laden nets being swung down into their bowels on winches. Business, purpose, activity.
Lucky, lucky people.
Unlucky her?
The moment of self-pity passed before it had begun. It wasn’t a question of luck. It was a matter of taking the wrong decisions, in acting out of anger and temper and folly, and of one disastrous mistake, a well-meaning mistake, leading to another and another and another until here she was, where she had no wish to be, acting and living like a puppet, with strings pulled by a puppet master who had no more interest in her or her rage or wretchedness than if she had indeed been a painted marionette.
If only …
The if only’s went back a long way, she knew that. If only her sister Daisy hadn’t died. If only Grandfather hadn’t been such a tyrant. If only …
Her life might have taken a very different path. If she could have those years back, be given a magical chance to live them again, the one place she wouldn’t be was here, on this boat.
There they were again, the terrible thoughts that rattled round and round in her head. She’d need a sleeping tablet tonight, to bring her at least an hour or two of the heavy and dreamless sleep that she craved. For that brief space of time, no dreams broke through the pharmaceutical veil of her white tablets: take one at bedtime.
She was profoundly grateful to a medical friend for prescribing them.
‘You’re a fool, Vee,’ he’d said. ‘They aren’t any kind of an answer, and if your own doctor won’t give them to you, he’s probably right.’
‘Darling, he’s simply too old-fashioned. The only reason I sleep badly, according to him, is because I’m a young woman without husband or children, not fulfilling my raison d’être, do you see?’
‘He can’t blame you for being a widow.’
‘He can blame me for being a well-off young widow who, after a decent interval, hasn’t remarried. That’s an affront to the natural order of things, almost as bad as someone like Cynthia Lovelace going off to live in a cottage in Wales with her burly woman friend who teaches PE at Grandpont, or the unfeminine types who choose to go to university and have a career instead of sacrificing their virginity and independence on Hymen’s altar to an eligible and suitable young man. So, no, he won’t give me sleeping pills.’
Vee’s thoughts flitted to Cousin Mildred, who had her own means of dealing with the strains and stresses of life, ‘Do try some, dear child, there’s nothing like it.’
There were bound to be people she knew on board, several of them with Mildred’s habit. Most of them from the ranks of the idle rich, not people going out to do a job of work like the unknown Sam with his friends Jimmie and Velvet Hat waving him goodbye from the quayside. Egypt? India? Their week’s holiday would be spent hiking in Wales or at a b. & b. in Weymouth; they wouldn’t have the luxury of weeks and months of leisurely travel in warmer climates, with expensive substances to change their spirits and mood if they felt the need.
Oh, yes, there would be friends and acquaintances on the Gloriana, people going to winter in the Egyptian sun, and it was the time of year when mamas with