Papa and I were now en route to Liverpool and from there we were to make our way to London and the fateful meeting with John Beverley Robinson. “It is my fervent wish to see you dispatched in a prudent marriage with Robinson,” Papa told me a hundred times on our trip from home to New York where we stayed for several days with Mama’s brother George before embarking.
Once aboard the Manchester, I hoped that the wind in the rigging might drown out the sound of that loathsome refrain. It did not, at least at first. Only when we were several days into our voyage, and the ocean became rough, did I find some respite from his nagging. I had never considered that seasickness might be a boon. But for three days we were each of us confined to our cabins and only the noises of the ship assaulted me: the slap slap of waves breaking over the deck and the creak of my trunk as it scraped from wall to wall.
One morning when I had just wrested my body high enough to grab the bucket on the small table beside me and vomit up my breakfast of tea and toast, I heard a new sound. A stamping of feet, a confusion of voices, from which emerged one clear phrase, “Man overboard! Man overboard!”
I struggled out of bed, threw my dressing-gown over my shift, and staggered up to the deck. The Captain’s stern voice was booming through the megaphone, “Silence! Silence! Lower the boat!”
“Miss Powell, Miss Powell, may I be of assistance?” It was Mr. Forbes, a middle-aged clergyman I had met on the wharf in New York. He rushed towards me.
“What has happened?” I asked, suddenly becoming aware of how I must look to him, hair unwashed and straggling, my dressing-gown scarcely covering my breasts.
“It is some unfortunate wretch, they say, an Irishman from steerage. Apparently he was fleeing the unreasoning hatred of the English for men of his origin. He wanted to get back to Dublin, but he had little money to finance his escape. So he climbed up on the rigging for a wager of five shillings. Then he pitched head-first onto the foreyard and thence into the sea.”
I looked down at the deck and saw a pool of liquid ebbing towards my feet. It was—blood. I pulled a handkerchief from the pocket of my dressing-gown and covered my mouth.
“Let me escort you back to your cabin. This is no sight for a lady.”
“Surely for no one.” I managed to get myself to the port side of the vessel. The crew had pulled up the rescue boat. I hoped, how I hoped, to see that poor Irishman alive within it. But it was empty. I turned to Mr. Forbes. “The man is at the bottom of the sea then?” It was a stupid remark. But in making it, I was trying to maintain my composure. Nearby was a woman with two small children whose shrieks of anguish shut out the noise of the waves.
“He was surely dead before he reached the water.” Mr. Forbes took my arm, helping me to stay upright as the waves crashed against the side of the ship. “Please, let me take you out of this scene.”
We turned towards my cabin, and there, directly in our path, was Papa. I know he was appalled to see me, disheveled and undressed and yes, arm in arm with Mr. Forbes. For once in his life he was speechless. And I could find nothing to say to him. My mind was filled with thoughts of the tragic victim who had risked all on a wager.
Like me, he had come aboard, in the hope of a better life in a faraway land. And now, his hopes lay at the bottom of the sea. Would mine survive?
* * *
A few days later, I awakened in the early evening, my brain strangely empty of the nightmares that had assailed me since the death of that poor Irishman. Nor did I feel the need to vomit into the bucket that I kept beside me. What had happened? Had I passed somehow into another world?
Then I became aware that my trunk was no longer sliding from side to side. There was no trickle of water under the doorway of my cabin. The ship had stopped its rolling motion. I waited, unsettled by the silence, and after a few minutes, I stepped down from my narrow bed, and stood upright and steady. The storm had evidently abated.
I went over to the washstand and looked into the pitcher sitting in the basin. There was enough water with which to wash myself and to wipe away the dried vomit on my lips and chin. The tiny mirror above the stand showed me more of the wreckage of these last few days. I pinched my grey cheeks to bring back some colour, smoothed my hair into a plait, and dressed myself in a blue silk frock I had bought with the “stolen” jewelry from Mama’s drawer. When I had first worn it during our time in New York with Uncle George, Papa chastised me for its “most indecorous neckline.” That was the current style, I told him. I was then almost twenty-nine years old, and I had resolved on this, my first trip across the sea, to ignore my father’s attempts to control me as if I were a child.
I went out onto the deck. How glorious it was to walk upright and to look for miles in all directions. I saw Mr. Forbes a few yards from me, his back turned. I called to him.
“Do come over here, sir. Such a sight!”
Together we watched the phosphoric light break in flashes on the water until the sea looked like clusters of glow-worms floating by. Time passed, and I seemed to be in a dream. Finally, Mr. Forbes drew out his pocket watch. “Time to sup,” he announced.
For the first time in over two weeks, I entered the dining area and took my place at a table with Mr. Forbes, the Captain and his lieutenant, Mr. and Mrs. Solomon Moses, and—inevitably—Papa. There was a quantity of stuffed ducks and geese, fresh bread and cakes, excellent wines and champagne; in fact, everything the finest hotel might supply. Conversation was generally sprightly, but I could tell from the way Papa kept his head down, saying nothing, seemingly absorbed in the delicacies before him, that he was in one of his blackest moods. I knew he wanted to chastise me for a dozen perceived misdemeanours: my “indecorous” dress, my unchaperoned friendship with Mr. Forbes, even my expressed desire to have Mrs. Moses entertain us after our dinner. Mr. Forbes had told me she was a popular vaudeville entertainer.
But I knew that Papa could not lecture me in front of five relative strangers. I was safe, for a few hours at least. Turning to Mrs. Moses, I said, “Please, ma’am, will you sing for us now?”
“Of course,” she replied. “What would you like me to sing?”
I was ready with an answer. For the first time in my life, I had been free in New York to attend a musical evening at a public theatre with Uncle George and my cousin John. I had loved the entire program, but my favourite song had been “Where E’er You Walk.” And now was my chance to hear it again.
“I love Handel myself,” the lady said. “I don’t usually sing opera, but I shall do my best to entertain you. My dear husband will accompany me on the pianoforte over there in the corner of the room.”
It was true that she was not an opera singer. But she sang beautifully, and I sat back in my chair and let the words and the music wash over me. Swept up in the moment, I turned to Papa. “Is it not lovely? Those words—‘Where’er you walk/ Cool gales shall fan the glade’—do they not make you long for the pleasant London parks and the English countryside?”
“Balderdash,” he muttered in my ear. “Asking that woman to sing is an offence against all reckoning. You must surely know that she sings in a common theatre in the worst district of London. Moreover, she is a Jew. She should—“
Fortunately, at that moment, Mrs. Moses finished the Handel aria and Papa was forced to shut his mouth. I was for a few seconds embarrassed that he was the only one at the table who did not clap in appreciation of this wonderful musical moment. Then I realized that the other people had their attention focused on the singer. They did not give a damn about Papa’s reaction.
And it was at this instant I also realized that my hopes for a new life did not lie at the bottom of the sea with those of the unfortunate Irishman who had fallen overboard. In the world I had now entered, Papa was no longer the arbiter of all things. I would go my own way, make my own plans, decide my own fate.