NOVEMBER 23

How can I bear it? I’m trying to bear it. I’ve washed my face and changed my dress. I’ve eaten apple pudding. I’ve answered Sophy’s questions about the album and her blocks. I’ve sounded out the letters P and K. K. K. Kitty. But I won’t go out of this cabin. I won’t go and look at the sea, which is calm now, a light wind moving us along at a good clip. Through the skylight I can see a patch of blue sky. It’s warmer than it’s been since we left New York. Sophy slept all night without a blanket. I don’t sleep but in snatches. When I do, I seem to hear Benjamin coming into the cabin, or I feel him standing by the bed, or I wake because I hear him calling my name.

They are busily running the ship around me. I am the cold, dead heart of it, which the sea has killed, and no one but Mr. Head cares whether I come back to life or not. Well, in truth, they are so shorthanded every man must be on double watches and taking orders from Mr. Gilling, who passes them on from Captain Richardson. I hear Mr. R. going in and out of his cabin. He’s taking his meals in the galley with the others, I presume so as not to disturb me here.

It’s still dark as a dungeon, as the crew hasn’t had time to uncover the windows, though once the sun rises, the skylight sheds a block of white light down the center of the room. Mr. Head opened the skylights yesterday so we are aired out. This morning he looked in and offered to take Sophy up for a walk. She is full of energy and I am a worn‑out thing who prefers the gloom, so I agreed. Then he tried to get me to come as well. “It’s a bright, clear day, ma’am,” he said. “It would do you good to walk about. Mr. Richardson is on deck and he charged me to encourage you to come up.”

I was helping Sophy with her shoes. It all feels so automatic, this life. “No, thank you,” I said. “I have some letters to write. And I’d best do it while the desk isn’t pitching about and there’s enough light to see the page.”

“Of course,” he said.

Will everyone look at me with this indulgent pity now?

As soon as her laces were tied, Sophy ran to him, her Ed‑ded. How easily her affections are transferred, lucky darling. It burdens me that she’ll grow to be a woman with no memory of her father. It’s unbearable, actually. He loved her so.

I did have it in my head to begin a letter to Olie, but all I do is write in this book. I am of two minds about what to do. The obvious choice is to cable Mother Briggs from Gibraltar, book a passage on whatever ship I can find, and head for home. But part of me wants to go on to Messina and meet Olie, as we planned – in our tragic innocence, I see that now – and sail back with him on the Julia A. Hallock . Or Sophy and I could wait at Gibraltar for Olie to pass through on his ship. Finally, I might simply stay on this ship for the duration. This last, I confess, has little appeal to me. Am I to sew and play our melodeon and interest myself in the rivalry between Captain Richardson and Mr. Gilling, which is in abeyance now, but how long will that last, as the days drag by and every one reminds me that five, six, ten, twenty days ago, I woke in the night to find my darling at my side? I hate this ship.

I will ask Mother Briggs – how does one compose a telegram to tell a mother her son is lost at sea? – I will ask her not to tell Arthur. I will write a letter to him – but how to tell him? He is such a serious child; it’s as if he knew there was a dark cloud upon his future. And he adores his father. I remember Benjamin’s expression, just exactly, the delight, the hesitancy, the pride, the sheer wonder, when he first held his red‑faced baby son in his arms. He’d seen, he said, many babies, but none like this one.

How bright the sun is on my page.

I’m not going up there to stand on the deck and look out as far as I can see at the lightly dancing, sparkling waves, or feel the warm breeze rustling my hair, or gaze up into the blinding white of the sails, or receive kind condolences from Captain Richardson as he strides the deck of his first command. What madness. What vanity of men, to sail about in fragile wooden boxes tricked out with sails, putting their lives, their fortunes, their families at the mercy of this ravenous, murderous, heartless beast of a sea. No. I’m not going up until I can put my feet on land. The sea is my enemy, and it has defeated me.

Date: 2015-02-16; view: 796