Jumping over thoughts of the journey itself, Honor tried to fix her mind instead on its end at the clapboard house her future brother-in-law had sketched for Grace in his letters from Ohio. ‘It is a solid house, even if not of the stone thee is accustomed to,’ Adam Cox had written. ‘Most houses here are made of wood. Only when a family is established and unlikely to move do they build a brick house.
‘It is situated at the end of Main Street on the edge of the town,’ he had continued. ‘Faithwell is still small, with fifteen families of Friends. But it will grow, by the grace of God. My brother’s shop is in Oberlin, a larger town three miles away. He and I hope to move it when Faithwell has grown large enough to support a draper’s. Here we call it “dry goods”. There are many new words to learn in America.’
Honor could not imagine living in a house made of wood, that burned so quickly, warped easily, creaked and groaned and gave no feeling of permanence the way brick or stone did.
Though she tried to keep her worries confined to the notion of living in a wooden house, she could not stop her mind straying to thoughts of the voyage on the Adventurer, the ship that would take them across the Atlantic. Honor was familiar with ships, as any Bridport resident would be. She sometimes accompanied her father to the harbour when a shipment of hemp arrived. She had even gone on board, and watched the sailors furling sails and coiling ropes and mopping decks. But she had never set sail in one. Once when she was ten her father took them to nearby Eype for the day, and Honor and Grace and her brothers had gone out in a rowing boat. Grace had loved being on the water, and had shrieked and laughed and pretended to fall in. Honor, however, had gripped the side of the boat while her brothers rowed, and tried not to appear alarmed at the rocking, and the curious and unpleasant sensation of no longer having stable footing. She had watched her mother walking up and down the beach in her dark dress and white bonnet, waiting for her children to come back safely. Honor avoided going out in a boat again.
She had heard stories of bad crossings but hoped she would cope with such a thing as she did any other hardship, with steady patience. But she did not have sea legs. That was what the sailors said. Perhaps she should have realised this from her encounter with water under her feet in the rowing boat. After leaving Bristol she stood on deck with Grace and others, watching the Somerset and north Devon coast unfold alongside them. For the other passengers the unsteadiness was an amusing novelty, but Honor grew more and more unsettled, responding to the ship’s movement with a wrinkled brow, tightening shoulders and a heaviness deep in her gut, as if she had swallowed an iron pound weight. She held out as long as she could, but as the Adventurer was passing Lundy Island, Honor’s stomach finally convulsed and she vomited on to the deck. A passing sailor laughed. ‘Sick and we’re barely out of Bristol Channel!’ he crowed. ‘Wait till we reach the ocean. Then you’ll know sickness!’
Honor was sick down Grace’s shoulder, on to her blankets, on to the floor of their tiny cabin, into an enamel basin. She threw up when there was nothing left to bring up, her body like a magician managing to conjure something from nothing. She did not feel better after each bout. When they reached the Atlantic and the ship began its long roll up and down the swell of the waves, she continued to be sick. Only now Grace was ill too, as well as many of the other passengers, though only for a time, until they got used to the new rhythm of the boat. Honor never got used to it; the nausea did not leave her for the whole month-long voyage.
When not seasick herself, Grace nursed Honor, rinsing her sheets, emptying the basin, bringing broth and hard sea biscuit, reading to her from the Bible or the few books they had brought: Mansfield Park, The Old Curiosity Shop, Martin Chuzzlewit. To distract Honor she chattered on about America, trying to get her to think about what lay ahead rather than the grimness of the present moment. ‘What would thee rather see, a bear or a wolf?’ she asked, then answered her own question. ‘A bear, I think, for wolves are like overgrown dogs, but a bear is only like itself. What would thee rather travel on: a steamboat or a train?’
Honor groaned at the thought of another boat. ‘Yes, a train,’ Grace agreed. ‘I wish there were a train we could take from New York to Ohio. There will be one day. Oh, Honor, imagine: soon we will be in New York!’
Honor grimaced, wishing that she too could see this move as the great adventure Grace clearly did. Her sister had always been the restless Bright, the one most ready to accompany their father when he had to travel to Bristol or Portsmouth or London. She had even agreed to marry an older, duller man because of the promise he held out of a life away from Bridport. Grace had known the Coxes, a family of five brothers, since they moved from Exeter several years before to open a draper’s shop, but she only showed interest in Adam when he decided to emigrate to Ohio. A brother – Matthew – had already gone there but had become infirm, and his wife had written to ask a spare brother to come and help with the business. Once Adam had moved to America, he and Grace corresponded regularly, and with gentle hints she led him to ask her to join him in Ohio as his wife, where they would run the shop with Matthew and Abigail.
The Brights were surprised by Grace’s choice; Honor had thought she would marry someone livelier. But Grace was so thrilled by the prospect of living in America that she did not seem to mind her prospective husband’s reserve.
Though patient, and perhaps feeling guilty for subjecting her sister to weeks of seasickness, even Grace grew irritated by Honor’s persistent illness. After a few days she stopped urging her to eat, as Honor never kept anything down for more than a few minutes. She began to leave her sister alone in their cabin to walk on deck and sit and sew and chat with the other women on board.
Honor tried to accompany Grace to a Meeting for Divine Worship organised by the handful of other Friends on board, but as she sat in silence with them in a small cabin, she could not let go of her thoughts enough to empty her mind, worrying that if she did so, she might lose what little self-control she had and vomit in front of them. Soon the rocking of the ship and the upheaval in her stomach forced her to leave the cabin.
Sometimes on the fraught voyage between Bristol and New York, when she was curled like a shrimp in her cramped berth or doubled over a chamber pot, Honor thought of her mother standing on the pebbles at Eype beach in her white bonnet, and wondered why she had left the safety of her parents’ house.
She knew why: Grace had asked her, hoping a new life would quell her sister’s heartache. Honor had been jilted and, though her spirit was less adventurous, the prospect of remaining in a community that pitied her propelled her into following Grace. She had never been dissatisfied in Bridport, but once Samuel had released her from their engagement, she was as eager as Grace to leave.
All of her clothes stank with a sour meatiness no washing could remove. Honor avoided the other passengers, and even her sister: she couldn’t bear the disgust mixed with pity in their faces. Instead she found a space between two barrels on the leeward deck where she tucked herself out of the way of busy sailors and curious passengers, but close enough to the railing that she could run across and heave into the water without drawing attention. She remained on deck even in the rain and the cold, preferring it to the tiny cabin with its hard board for a bed and the close stench of her blankets. She was, however, indifferent to the seascape – the huge sky and sea that were such a contrast to the neat green hills and hedgerows of Dorset. While others were amazed and entertained by the storm clouds and rainbows and sunlight turning the water to silver, by schools of dolphins following the ship, by the sight of the tail of a whale, for Honor monotony and nausea struck dead any wonder she might have felt for such feats of nature.
When not leaning over the railing, she tried to take her mind off her sore, churning stomach by bringing out her patchwork. As a gift for the journey her mother had cut out hundreds of yellow and cream cloth hexagons and paper