The Fever Tree (7 page)

T
wo days later the captain issued a gale warning. At five o’clock the wind began to blow and the sky turned dark. The light was sucked into a mass of granite clouds. The timbers of the ship creaked as she climbed the waves. Frances went down to the cabin and found Anne perched on the end of Mariella’s bunk. The room was cold and damp, and Mariella was vomiting into a bowl.

“What are they saying in the saloon about the storm?” Anne asked, looking at her with wide eyes. Frances gave her hand a squeeze. “We’re to keep our cabin windows shut.”

Anne stroked Mariella’s hair and gave her a cloth to wipe her face. Then she wedged the bowl in next to her and climbed into her own bunk, defeated by the swell. Frances lay down, letting her body be rocked with the sickening heave of the ocean. She tried not to think about the prospect of a gale. When Mariella begged one of them to get some more tonic for her seasickness, Frances volunteered. She was relieved to have an excuse to leave the cabin. Sister Mary-Joseph had a berth to herself a few doors down. Frances knocked and stepped inside. The narrow space beside the bunk was strewn with dirty linen and half-finished plates of food. When Frances asked her for tonic she waved her away, either too sick or too scared to talk. Frances insisted, and she said, “There’s none left.” She turned to face the wall. “You girls have taken it all.”

The doctor would have some. The surgery was at the stern of the ship, past the engine rooms. It was difficult navigating the narrow passages below deck, with their guttering lights and swinging doors. When the ship rolled, people were propelled towards you like balls down a cannon. She stepped through corridors swilling with water and vomit, then climbed the narrow stairs onto the deck. It would be quicker to cross to the stern this way, and she wanted to gauge whether the weather was really as bad as it felt down below. The wind was fierce. It snatched at the door when she opened it and blew it back hard against its hinges. She stood for a second, steeling herself against the noise, then stepped out.

The deck was a dark sweep of wet wood. Night had come on, and the weather had driven everyone but a few of the crew down to their cabins. She was at the center of a torrent of sound: the roar of the ocean, and above it the cleats rattling, and the wind screeching through the ropes. She caught hold of the rigging to keep her balance, buckling her knees to take the impact of another wave. A light curtain of spray swept over the ship, stinging her eyes. She clawed at her hair, scraping it off her face. It was rougher than she had expected.

She ran the few steps to the railings which ringed the deck and looked out over the water. The lantern at the tip of the mizzenmast dipped to the sea starboard-side, rolled up and swung down again port-side. The pocket of light swooped over the ship and out to sea, catching the surface of the broiling mass before swinging back again. It cast a fractured light over the swell, illuminating in flashes the tips of great riders thundering towards the ship.

The wind stepped up a notch, and a stinging rain flew at her in bright sparks under the circle of light. She edged her way along the deck, holding on to ropes as she went. Two sailors called to each other, their voices muted by the wind into the wordless mewing of gulls. Then, quite suddenly and without warning, the ship leapt. The deck pitched, rolled, and became a vertical. Her face slammed into the railings. Seawater surged over her, sweeping her off her feet. She tried to scream, but her mouth was full of water. It was cold, like melting ice, and it had fingers which pushed down into her throat. Then a sharp pain under one arm and a force pulling against her fall. A hand, like a vise, held her upright. She snatched at the figure, caught at a coat, and pulled herself against it. The man pushed her hard against the railings, so she knew where she was and felt safe from falling.

The wind roared. She felt the strength of the man, and the rain driving against them, soaking her skin. She pushed her face into his chest. He pulled his jacket up around her head and spoke into her ear, his lips brushing against her skin.

“We’re safer here for a moment. But you must move when I say so. Can you run?”

She dreaded having to walk across the open deck, but she nodded her head against the wet wool of his coat. The storm had risen up in an instant. She could hear the hoarse shouts of the sailors and the screeching of ropes. The engine groaned. Her legs felt weak, and there was a dull ache above one eye where her head had struck the railings. The ship felt as though it had no more strength than the leaf boats she had launched as a child into the small rapids of a stream, spinning desperately across the surface until the water sucked them down.

The ship plunged into a wave, righted itself, and the man said, “Now,” in her ear. He moved, flipping her round so that she was in front of him and his back was against the railings, then he propelled her forwards. They stumbled and slid with the motion of the ship, his weight behind her until they reached the stairs. He wrenched back the door and pushed her inside, and they slipped down the steps to the deck below. Her stomach contracted and she doubled over, retching. Bile and salt water poured from her nose and mouth.

“That was interesting.”

She looked up, her face streaming water. William Westbrook was studying her, the corners of his mouth curling with amusement. “Some people might even have called it suicide.” Then he shook his head, running a hand over his hair, and water flew off him like rain from a dog.

She was dizzy and sick, and she bent double, retching again, then stood up. Her legs felt light and very cold, and when she put out a hand she missed the wall. Mr. Westbrook caught her with one arm under hers, propping her up. “Oh no you don’t.”

He sat her down at a table in the first-class saloon, found blankets to wrap around her, and ordered coffee from a terrified steward. When the coffee didn’t arrive he went off to hunt the steward down in the kitchens. She was numb with cold. There was no feeling from her feet to her thighs, and her upper body was gripped by convulsions. Once she started shaking it was hard to stop. Four men played cards in a corner of the saloon, passing a bottle between them and laughing as the ship threw them sideways, wreaking havoc with their game. The room was otherwise deserted. Most of the lights had been left to go out, and the red velvet and gilt mirrors which lined the walls were a mockery of grandeur in the midst of the dark storm blowing them across the sea. A few bottles of wine had escaped and were rolling loose across the floor. With every lurch of the ship, remains from dinner, left abandoned on the tables, clattered onto the carpet.

Frances thought she had seen bad weather in the first few days they had been at sea when they had pitched and rolled, and the captain had praised her for having good sea legs. Now she understood. This was a tearing, terrifying thing. A storm that whined and howled, that swept them up and slammed them down again so hard the timbers of the hull sounded as if they were splintering. It blew in dark funnels, like water roaring down a tunnel. She held on to the edges of her seat to keep herself from being thrown across the room, and tried to stop herself thinking about how cold and black the water was outside, and what she would do if she was thrown into it. She was scared of dying. Not of death itself, but of the truth that dying delivered. It released a fear inside her which was corrosive, and it ate into all her certainties—that life was a noble, worthwhile thing, that her parents’ deaths had meaning, that it was something other than fear which lay at the root of every action.

Mr. Westbrook came back carrying the coffee in a large mug with a saucer held over the top to stop it from spilling. He sat down next to her, pulled a bottle from his coat pocket, and splashed a little into the mug. He spooned the hot, dark liquid into her mouth, holding the cup under her chin to catch it as it spilled. The weight of his body, the heavy line of his thigh, hip, and chest, pressed against her, holding her in place, and the spoon clattered against her teeth. The coffee was strong and it fired up her insides until her blood thickened. When she stopped shaking he placed the mug in her hand, took up a seat across the table opposite, and grinned at her. “Perhaps I shouldn’t have caught that fish?”

She couldn’t believe that he could joke at a moment like this. She had the impression that he was enjoying himself. The extremity of the storm appealed to his restless energy and gave him a sense of purpose. He didn’t seem at all afraid. Like her father, the thought of death was leaving him unchanged, and being near him gave her courage.

She managed to smile back at him. “Thank you for pulling me off the deck.”

His eyes didn’t leave hers, and a slow smile crept over his face. “How are you planning to repay me?”

She looked away, embarrassed. Her teeth chattered, and she was afraid. “I may not have to.”

“You’ll not get away that easily.” He touched the back of her hand lightly in sympathy. “A steamer has a better chance than a sailing ship. Unless the weather gets much worse, it’ll hold its course.”

Then he said after a moment, “I was disappointed when you didn’t accept my invitation. Why didn’t you come?”

“I don’t know.” Her words were jerky, and it was difficult for her to move her lips. The coffee mug burnt into her hands, and her fingers had begun to ache. “I think I felt awkward accepting your kindness. It was charitable, but . . .”

“Charitable?” He laughed. With the fingers of one hand he was turning a teaspoon from end to end, over and over, on the table. “Frances, I asked you because I like you. I wanted to see you.” He had bypassed formalities and was talking straight to her. She had the feeling there were no rules for where they found themselves now. He was staring at her, and she felt she ought to say something but she didn’t trust herself to speak. He put down the spoon and rubbed at a thin red scar on his cheekbone with the thumb of his right hand. She hadn’t noticed it before.

“How did it happen?”

“The scar? I was with my father.”

“When you were a child?”

He took her hand loosely in one of his. She felt the roughness of his skin across her fingers, and watched his mouth twitch into a smile. “Frances, your concern is charming, but my father didn’t beat me. He did, however, have a furnace. A spark of metal buried itself in my cheek.”

There was a noise behind them and they turned in their seats. A woman ran past in her nightdress. She lurched from bench to bench, trying to keep herself upright. Her face was contorted into a silent wail. A man followed, wearing nothing but his shirttails.

Mr. Westbrook laughed. “Respectable men turned into lunatics. They’ll all be ashamed of themselves tomorrow.”

The storm showed no signs of easing, and when she had finished the coffee he took her to her cabin, using his weight as a wedge in the narrow corridor to keep them from falling. The lamps had gone out, and it was hard to tell in the dark which way was upright. When they reached her door, she didn’t open it but pushed herself round to face him. She was scared, and didn’t want him to leave. The blood pounded in her ears, louder than the screaming of the ship. “We’ll be all right,” he said, reaching out to touch her cheek. “There have been rougher storms than this, and people have survived them.” And then he was gone and she had to face her fears alone.

The storm blew in even worse overnight. It was a brutal, raging force. It felt as if they were hurtling towards destruction. She lay in her berth fully dressed, gripped by a nausea which forced her to vomit again and again into a bowl which she held beside her. When the ship rolled she was thrown across her bunk and couldn’t stop the bowl from tipping. The thin bile slopped over onto the sheets, giving her skin a vile slipperiness. The only sounds from the cabin were Mariella’s sobbing and the clacking of Anne’s rosary. Frances grasped the edge of her bunk and found she couldn’t cry and she couldn’t pray. Instead, in her terror, she conjured up an image of William Westbrook. His confidence and disdain had seemed strong enough to hold back the storm. She tried to remember the strength of his body when he pulled her off the deck, fighting against the force of the sea. The bitter taste of coffee was still on her tongue, and her lips were burnt from where he had brought hot spoonfuls to her mouth. She held on to her vision of him, and braced her body against the waves.

Late the next morning Frances woke up and knew that the storm was over. The ship was barely swaying, the engines had subsided to a dull throb, and when she looked out of the porthole above her bed the sea held a perfect level. The cabin was empty. She went to the bathroom to wash, and when she came back Anne was mopping the floor. Mariella put her head around the door. “Morning, Sleepyhead. Here’s toast and marmalade. You should thank me. Everyone has an appetite all of a sudden, but the ship is in chaos.” She handed Frances a plate and stood swaying in the doorway.

Frances licked a blob of marmalade off her finger. “What chaos?”

“The gale got hold of a lifeboat and now it’s hanging all in pieces, the cook is still drunk, two berths were flooded, and a steward has broken his leg. Oh, and someone very grand in first class has been burnt by lobster sauce.”

“What was anyone doing eating lobster sauce?” Frances asked, and the girls laughed.

“There was a woman last night, rescued from going overboard. William Westbrook saved her.”

“Who is William Westbrook?” Anne asked.

Mariella looked at her in astonishment. “Only the most eligible man on the
Cambrian
, Anne. Where have you been hiding yourself?” Anne smiled and shrugged her shoulders.

“Who was the girl?” Frances asked, standing up and stretching her arms to ease out the tight pain across her ribs where she had fallen.

“Not sure.” Mariella leant into the cabin and tickled her under one arm, and Frances buckled, laughing. “But she’s no doubt lost in a fit of passion. Knights in shining armor don’t come any better-looking than Mr. Westbrook.”

L
ater that morning she saw Mr. Westbrook playing deck tennis with Emma and Joanna Whitaker. They were cousins, and Frances had heard that they were performing a flute duet at the concert. She watched, unable to tear herself away. The girls were plump and pink-faced, with large mouths and raucous laughs, and they vied with each other for Mr. Westbrook’s approval. She hadn’t realized how much she wanted to talk to him until the game ended and he walked straight past her with Emma Whitaker leaning on one arm, her racket spinning a circle in her other hand. Frances stood and stared, thinking, If he doesn’t look at me, there is nothing between us. Just when she thought he would walk past without acknowledging her, he glanced up and winked. She felt a surge of relief and gratitude. He had known she was there all along.

She tried to be realistic. William Westbrook was well liked, and she suspected he was willing to grant his affection indiscriminately. Women and men alike were drawn to him. He was charming and cultured and good at playing games. There was a backgammon tournament on board, and she had heard he was the favorite to win. She knew that if he had shown an interest in her, it was in the same way that a man might play with a child on a lazy summer’s afternoon. It was an amusing way to pass the time. But all her attempts at forgetting him were useless. She couldn’t put him out of her mind.

She found she didn’t need to ask to find out about him. He aroused people’s interest in the same way that a classical sculpture might were it to be unveiled on board. They wanted to examine the sum of his perfections and seek out his faults. By all accounts, he was a man of contradictions. He had perfect manners, but he seemed not in the least restrained by formalities. He had the kind of determination and ambition that was a hallmark of being Jewish, but he wasn’t afraid of enjoying himself. Despite his Jewish blood, he had strong social connections—he was a member of the Kimberley Club and his cousin was Joseph Baier, perhaps the most influential and certainly the wealthiest man in Kimberley—and yet Frances knew that he drank in the sailors’ quarters, and had even held a wrestling match with one of the furnace stokers (he had taken defeat graciously). Although not independently wealthy himself, he had all the backing of Baier’s money, and he was talked about as a man who already wielded considerable power.

•   •   •

I
T
WASN
’
T
UNTIL
two days later that she spoke to him again. She was practicing in the music room when she saw, out of the corner of her eye, that he had come to stand beside her.

When she stopped he said, “You never mentioned playing the piano.”

“Why would I have done?”

“To impress me?”

“Are you impressed?”

“Not yet.” He reached forward and turned the page of the music book. His hand was broad with square knuckles and strong, callused fingers. As he brushed past her, she smelt the same earthy musk of sandalwood.

“Will you play it for me?”

It was a Chopin piano sonata. She knew the piece well, and she began confidently, until she felt him circling the nape of her neck with his hand. Her skin froze, then crawled hot and alive under his touch. A ripple went down her back into the base of her spine. She faltered slightly, missing her notes. When he took a lock of her hair and tucked it behind her ear, she was so shocked by the rub of his skin against hers that she stood up abruptly, knocking over the stool. He was looking at her intently. One of her legs was trembling. When he stepped towards her, she felt his knee push against it and heard the bristling of her skirts against him. She took a step back, into the piano, and there was a dark thud of keys. She was scared by how strongly she wanted him to touch her. Her need felt destructive. It wasn’t rational, and it didn’t call for conversation. It was as though she wanted him to obliterate her. She pushed forward past him, but he grabbed her hand and pulled her back.

“Frances. Don’t be scared.” He smiled at her suddenly and squeezed her hand, reassuring her and bringing her back out of her passion. He understood what she wanted when she barely knew herself. He seemed to be taking the darkness of her desire and turning it all to light, and his words created an intimacy between them which was even more profound than when he had touched her.

“Dinner,” he said. “Tonight, in the first-class saloon. Will you come?”

She nodded, not trusting herself to speak, and he let her go. Later she turned over the way he had said her name, as if he knew everything about her, understood her, and offered her his protection. The fact that he had remained perfectly in control when she had been so overwhelmed only made her vulnerability more acute.

•   •   •

F
RANCES
HOVERED
at the doorway to the saloon, conscious that she was late but reluctant now that she was here to push aside the red velvet curtain and step inside. Sister Mary-Joseph had given her permission to dine in first class, as long as she was back in her cabin by nine o’clock. She could tell from the rabble of noise that dinner was already under way. Laughter rose in waves from the other side of the curtain, and a female voice warbled merrily along in time with a tinkling piano. She wore her only evening dress, and was glad she had brought it.

It was only when she had returned to her cabin that afternoon that she remembered Edwin. The truth was unavoidable. She was engaged to be married to another man. In less than three weeks she would almost certainly be Mrs. Edwin Matthews. Yet she had decided to come anyway. Was it too late to try to change the future?

The dining saloon made a stab at grandeur, but age and the evening sunlight streaming through the long skylights gave it a shabby, tired air. It had the damp, discordant feel of a winter’s drawing room on a summer’s evening, and it smelt overpoweringly of boiled meat and women’s perfume. Stewards in livery served champagne, and mulatto girls took orders from the passengers.

“Miss Irvine!” Mr. Nettleton had risen from his seat at the far side of the saloon and was waving his hand vigorously at her. She waved back and threaded her way across the room, catching sight of herself in the mirror that ran floor to ceiling down the length of the funnel. The blue of her dress shone back at her, but her body was barely visible. Her pale, freckled skin and auburn hair blended into the golds of the room and the tarnish on the mirror so that she seemed a gaudy, shifting ghost.

The gentlemen at the table stood up as she approached, William clutching a napkin and using it to shield his eyes against the crimson sunlight which flickered over his face and turned his skin to a strip of burnished copper. She felt a lurch of concern when she saw him. What was she doing here?

She shook hands with a couple who were introduced as the Musgraves. The man had thick, wet lips and a poorly shaved beard. He sprouted hairs from his ample face like wires from a pig’s bottom. His wife was very large, with a huge, swelling bosom on which was nestled a miniature black poodle. It lay with its head curled into her neck, staring out at Frances with small black eyes. Mrs. Nettleton, looking even sharper boned next to such a generous display of flesh, gave Frances a curt smile.

“Bubbly?” Mr. Nettleton asked, shouting slightly to be heard over the noise of the other diners. She nodded and he filled her glass. They were discussing illicit diamond buying in Kimberley.

“The damned kaffirs hide them in their arses!” Mr. Musgrave roared, draining his glass of champagne and helping himself to claret.

“Mr. Musgrave!” Mrs. Nettleton admonished, fingering her small, diamond-studded necklace.

“It’s true,” William said, giving Mrs. Nettleton a broad smile. “The finest jewels on a lady’s neck have been in places you would rather not consider.”

Mrs. Nettleton laughed nervously, and Mrs. Musgrave said, “They hide them in mules too, apparently.”

“Yes, Madam. Even in dogs.”

“Oh, how dreadful!” She buried her face in her poodle.

William caught Frances’s eye and smiled. His eyes sloped down into an expression of complicit affection, and she saw that he knew she was thinking about the way he had touched her that afternoon. Pleasure and expectation surged inside her, and a deep flush rose up her neck.

“Now, Frances,” Mrs. Nettleton was saying in a bustling, matronly voice, “tell us what you are doing in South Africa. Are you going on to Port Elizabeth?”

“Actually, I’m disembarking at Cape Town.”

“And do you have a good position there? I know a few respectable English families. I dare say Mr. Nettleton and I could put in a good word.”

“Thank you, but I’m not in need of a position.” She paused. They all turned to look at her. “I’m to be married in Cape Town.” She glanced at William as she said it, and saw his eyes flicker over her in surprise. There were general exclamations and congratulations around the table.

“Miss Irvine”—Mrs. Musgrave leant over her husband to look at Frances—“you are traveling with an emigration society, is that right? And yet, you’re not under any obligation to them financially?”

Frances nodded. “Yes, that’s right.”

“Well, that makes you perfectly placed to give us an impartial view on our little debate. I have been defending the emigration societies to the present company, but I’m afraid I need a little help holding up my end.”

Frances, embarrassed, looked round the table. The last thing she felt in the mood for was a discussion about the politics of women’s emigration.

Mrs. Musgrave levered her bosom over the table and tapped Mrs. Nettleton on the hand. “Now, don’t be shy, Liza, we’re never to be ashamed of having a point of view. The progress of our nation has been built on fair discussion.” Mrs. Nettleton colored and pulled back her hand.

Mrs. Musgrave turned to face Frances. “We were discussing in particular the question of redundancy. What do you make of it?”

“Redundancy?” Frances asked, confused. She glanced at William, hoping that he might intervene on her behalf, but he was staring at her as if from a distance, with an expression of fascinated reappraisal. His forehead was curled into a slight frown, and he held the edge of his lower lip between his teeth. His hands, she noticed, were moving. He was balancing a knife across his forefinger as he looked at her. Mrs. Musgrave might be well-meaning, but her self-conviction made her unpredictable. What wouldn’t she say?

“Yes, redundancy. How are a million surplus women in Britain ever to be married unless they go to the colonies? What can we possibly do with them if they stay in England?”

“I wasn’t arguing against emigration,” Mrs. Nettleton cut in, sounding shrill and affronted. “Indeed, I wholeheartedly support Mrs. Sambourne, but she can be naive. Like you, Mrs. Musgrave, she is led by her heart. Sometimes a little more plain speaking is called for. Emigration societies are only as good as the girls they take on. Even she complains that most of her protégés lose all semblance of principle once they step on board ship. You should hear the stories she tells!”

“Come, it can’t be as bad as that.”

“I admire your aptitude for fair-mindedness, but really, you know as well as I do that emigration societies are little better than marriage bureaus.”

Frances sat very still, anger welling up inside her. She twisted her napkin around her forefinger. These people knew nothing of the helplessness of the girls in the second cabin, their sense of failure and rejection, and the personal tragedies which had brought each of them onto the
Cambrian
. They couldn’t imagine what it felt like to be shipped out of England.

“And why shouldn’t they be marriage bureaus?” she asked in a cold voice, looking round the table. William would more than likely never speak to her again, and she was exasperated by the fact that she had no say in her own future. Her hand went to her throat, tugging at the skin. “The raison d’être of London Society is to marry off eligible women. Why shouldn’t those who aren’t deemed good enough for England try their chances elsewhere?”

“Because, my dear, we pay our good, charitable money so that they can find work in the colonies, not run off with the first ship’s steward who takes a shine to them!”

A silence settled over the group while everyone absorbed the implications of this statement. When Frances spoke, her voice seethed with anger, and she stared at Mrs. Nettleton, trying to hold eye contact. “One would think the least these girls could count on would be the support of their own countrymen. And yet you heap prejudice on top of penury. Is it any wonder they take the first opportunity to marry?”

“Well spoken,” Mrs. Musgrave muttered, reaching over to pat Frances moistly on the back of her hand.

“Of course,” Mr. Nettleton broke in, trying to lighten the mood, “no one is suggesting your friends in second class are in the least bit taking advantage. Their intentions are, I’m sure, quite responsible. Even Mrs. Sambourne’s fair beauties were—”

“Mrs. Sambourne’s fair beauties—as you call them—were little better than common prostitutes,” Mrs. Nettleton interrupted in a clipped voice. “Last year, fifty of them, all with genteel pretensions, shipped to Cape Town. The residents were so furious they wouldn’t let the women disembark for a week! Mrs. Sambourne had, in her kindness, established positions for them with respectable families, but of course it didn’t take long for them to go back to their old ways.”

“All for the goodness of mankind, my dear,” Mr. Nettleton said.

Mr. Musgrave gave a gurgling chuckle. “Yes, an interesting linguistic conundrum. The ‘pretty horse breaker’ in London is known in Cape Town as a ‘London beauty.’”

“The point is,” Mrs. Nettleton continued, ignoring him, “if they say they are going out to work, then it is work they should do. It’s next to impossible, by all accounts, to find good European help at the Cape. I know someone who had two nursemaids run off to be married within six months of each other. Now she has to make do with a kaffir.”

William stopped his balancing act with the knife and spoke with a cold smile. “And, my dear Mrs. Nettleton, is one nursemaid not as good as another?”