‘People who can’t cope with change should just be shot, that’s all!’
Meriel was hanging head downwards above the poop deck from the lower topsail clue-line, her blue serge skirts lashed firmly to her ankles. ‘And I’d start with the Mater,’ she added cheerfully.
She and Gareth had been making their usual daily attempts to impress each other with gymnastic feats in the rigging of the Catriona, now six days out from Newcastle on its voyage to Valparaiso, while their mother lay below prostrated by seasickness. Harriet Llewellen’s unwillingness to adapt to changing circumstance was a cross that they’d all had to bear over the past weeks. Before she’d even finished repacking her Davenport china a fourth time, her nervous headaches overcame her. She’d gone on to be train-sick for the entire five hundred mile journey from Brisbane to the port of Newcastle, to faint at her first glimpse of the vessel they were to sail in, and to voice her terrors of the new life that awaited them in Spanish America at every opportunity since then.
‘I’m not sure we could sell Da the idea of having Mother shot,’ Gareth offered mildly with one eye on the gyrating form of his sister in the running rigging.
‘Well if you ask me he’d consider it a favour. She can’t even read his letters without palpitations!’
Meriel had always done her best to out-face and out-do younger brother in any way that she could think of; and even upside-down was gratified by the admiring, slightly shocked expression that she could see on Garry’s freckled face. Now that Da had forced them all to put Australia behind them, she’d been delighted to discover that life had even more to offer than she’d hoped. The Darling Downs and mountains of New South Wales had been a visual revelation, rolling past the train, while the reality of a voyage across the Pacific in a dashing square-rigged clipper had thrilled her to the very core. Meriel had often thought she’d like to run away to sea, if only girls could do it; and even the prospect of leaving her elder brother Harry behind, to become a dull accountant, had failed to dampen her excitement.
The Catriona was a cargo vessel with a hold-full of high grade coal for Valparaiso. Her sails were furled when they first saw her; every part of her superstructure filmed over with grey coal dust. But Meriel had been enchanted nonetheless. From the quay the ship looked like a great grey swan, dipping to the swell. From her grimy decks one could so easily imagine all sorts of perilous enterprises involving pirates and blockade-runners. Better still, the Llewellens were to be her only paying passengers; and Meriel’s new appreciation of the male sex in general, had recommended the ship’s captain in particular for her attention.
The man was Canadian and not exactly young. His eyes were prominent, a little too pale-lashed and pink-rimmed for preference, but at least half way to blue. His jaw was squarish and his hair was fair – and there was something horse-like about Captain Mclntyre’s thick neck and muscular rump that Meriel found definitely appealing. She was new, admittedly, to the whole business of romance. But from what she’d read, it seemed to her that men like horses could be broken. This one, she believed, was single.
So why not try to get him to propose, she thought with a thrill. Surely sixty day at sea would give her time to pull it off, even as a novice? Providing Vicky could be kept below, poor Meriel (who understood so little still) was blithely optimistic of success.
Harriet and her elder daughter had both surrendered to mal de mer soon after the Newcastle steam-tug left them; and although Vicky was now showing some slight sign of recovery, her mother continued to subsist on nothing more than an occasional sip of the captain’s vintage champagne fortified with iron pills, rhubarb, Black Draft and sal volatile.
‘And be honest,’ Meriel remarked from the clue-line, as she hauled herself back into an upright position and signalled for her brother to let her down. ‘Don’t you suppose that Da’s heart sinks into his boots every time he sees the Mater heave over the horizon?’
‘Af’noon Mister Gareth; Miss Meriel, Mam.’ Neither of them heard the captain’s plimsolled feet on the poop steps. But next thing, Meriel plummeted to the deck, to land beside him with a healthy thud.
‘Guess you young folks are making good use of the rat-lines?’
The man’s eyes did protrude a little, particularly when he was making an effort to be polite. But as the unfortunate image of a white rabbit formed itself in Meriel’s mind, she quickly substituted something more heroic – to hasten to her captain’s aid with her best shot at a shy smile.
‘Well they do say that a little moderate exercise is beneficial to the health,’ she told him sweetly; unaware of the look of frank appraisal in her own shining eyes.
For the two weeks it took the Catriona to round the North Island of New Zealand and reach Pitcairn Island in the mid-Pacific, the weather was still fine, though scarcely calm and more than somewhat chilly. To Meriel’s vexation, Vicky had made a number of appearances above deck in her new Art cape. Even Harriet felt sufficiently recovered to accept the little delicacies with which the ship’s cook plied her: soda biscuits, waffles, turtle soup and clam chowder; although strangely never quite strong enough for the boiled pork and Boston beans that constituted everyone else’s staple diet.
After such an optimistic start, Meriel was soon bored beyond belief – bored with the smell of canvas and of Stockholm tar, with the monotony of weeks at sea. Having set her sights so early in the piece on Captain McIntyre, she was impatient for results; taking pains to be discovered by him at the rail in a variety of the most elegant attitudes she could contrive. Yet maddeningly the object of her attention remained as formal and as courteous as ever. The trick it seemed was harder to pull off than she had thought.
In the meantime alternative amusements on the ship were limited. Books and games of cards had never managed to hold Meriel’s attention for too long. She hated needlework and it loathed her. Porpoises and black-fish appeared from time to time, but scarcely ever when you felt like watching them; and to say that there was something samish about an empty sea, was definitely an understatement! For entertainment you could visit Percy the pig in his funny little sty amidships. Or hob-nob with the helmsman at the wheel. On calm days you could fish for mollyhawk albatrosses from the stern, hooking them in by their great curved beaks with baited rings on the end of long wire lines. But although Meriel had originally laughed louder than anyone to see the foolish-looking creatures become seasick on the pitching deck, even that amusement palled with repetition.
Sunday was the one day of the week that she looked forward to; the day the captain got down his wind and current charts to show them how far they’d progressed across the Pacific. No work was done on Sundays beyond the minimum. Barbered, laundered, smelling of shaving soap and coconut oil, on Sundays Captain McIntyre became a different man – and after their session with the charts, could sometimes be persuaded to take his coffee with the young Llewellens in the chart room. On the second Sunday out, Meriel had gone so far as to invite him to join the family for their evening service in the small saloon beneath the poop deck, and her presumption was rewarded.
She herself had played the piano; with more enthusiasm than accuracy to be sure. But she played, and the captain sang in a confident baritone which had proved splendidly unlike his quiet speaking voice. The others had sung too – Vicky faintly, fighting nausea; Gareth squeakily with his voice on the change; with Harriet’s quavering contralto joining in a beat late from her cabin across the companionway.
But Meriel heard only her own voice, and the assertive masculine sound that over-rode it: ‘Bring me my bow of burning gold! Bring me my arrows of desire…’
On their third Sunday out from Newcastle, a freshening southerly necessitated the attachment of fiddles to the furniture in the saloon; and at dinner Meriel had trouble successfully transferring soup to mouth rather than lap. She also noticed something strange about the sea. It was quite dark outside, without a moon. Yet lights were visible through all the portholes, dancing in the waves.
‘Phosphorescence,’ the captain said in answer to her first exclamation. ‘Which means that we can count on some foul weather by an’ by.’
From the deck, the sea presented an amazing spectacle of shifting, sliding luminescence; a silvery-bluish light which moved in all directions with the waves. Even Harriet was persuaded to stagger up to view the phenomenon, before the sight of so much moving water overcame her. From Meriel’s point of view it was an opportunity sent straight from heaven. She shut the lid of the piano with such finality after the last of their hymns that evening, that Gareth and the captain had both jumped; and when she turned to speak, her eyes held something of the sea’s own luminosity – or so she hoped.
‘Oh Captain, won’t you take me to the fo’c’sle, to see the phosphorescence from up there?’ She aimed for artless provocation. ‘The helmsman tells us that it’s best viewed from the bows.’
‘Rather, I’ll come as well!’ Gareth chipped in, only to recall a moment later that he’d promised to read to Mater from Tennyson’s poetical works. ‘But you go,’ he told them – prompted by a second sharp kick underneath the piano.
‘Good, that’s settled then.’ Meriel was halfway to the door before the captain could object. ‘I’ll just run down and fetch my cape. I won’t be half a jiff though, Captain. So don’t you go away.’
In the tiny cabin that they shared, she splashed herself with Vicky’s eau de cologne. Her sister had slipped in next door to commiserate with the Mater.
‘And she’s hardly in a fit state to care much about her clothes and things,’ Meriel considered as she donned the cape she’d always so much admired on Vicky, with its stand-up Medici collar and appliquéd art nouveau trim.
‘My need is greater anyway.’
Captain Mclntyre was still sitting where she’d left him in the saloon; and together they strolled and rolled the length of the main deck to the steep ladder which led up to the top-gallant forecastle. The clever thing would have been to allow the gentleman to lead the way, then take his hand for her own ascent. But Meriel only thought of it when she’d already reached the top in a scramble of rope soles and grimy petticoats.
The first-watch lookout was on duty in the fo’c’sle. The captain nodded to him curtly as he joined his young charge on the little deck high in the bows.
‘I’ll take over for a spell, Gregory,’ he said; and Meriel flashed the sailor one of her best smiles as he slipped past her down the ladder. Things, she thought, were going on quite nicely.
They stood together at the rail, she and her captain, near the point where the great bowsprit jutted out into the sea. Above them the jib-sheets cracked and billowed; ahead and all around the ship the waves broke in a continuously moving pattern of soft light. Away below the painted profile of the Catriona figurehead, the water foamed and sprayed up from the bows with an unearthly radiance. Fish darting from the prow left brilliant silvery trails, and sparkling droplets glittered in the spray.
‘It’s beautiful; quite beautiful!’ Meriel repeated raptly, placing a small naked hand square on the rail beside the captain’s. She’d left her gloves behind on purpose.
The captain’s silence spoke louder to her than mere words.
‘In a moment, any moment, he’ll cover my hand with his own calloused palm and break into an incoherent declaration,’ she told herself in words she’d read somewhere or other back in Ipswich. ‘By jove, my dear, I think you’re splendid…’ That’s how it would begin. She’d heard about it heaps of times. In the right circumstances the male of the species could be counted on to act romantically, particularly in the silent watches of the night. All men were slaves to their own emotions. Everybody said so.
‘I’ve heard tell, ye know,’ the captain said at length, ‘that phosphorescence in sea water comes from the disturbance of marine animalculae by the movements of ships an’ suchlike…’
‘Great heavens, the man’s a perfect fool!’ thought Meriel, snatching her hand from the rail. If she’d wanted a scientific explanation for sea-shine she would have asked him for it, wouldn’t she? So much for subtlety!
‘Yes I dare say,’ she cut in quickly. ‘But tell me Captain, don’t you ever feel lonely at sea?’ – and she replaced the hand in such a way as to accidentally brushed his little finger.
‘Sure,’ he conceded at the end of a long pause. ‘I guess we all of us get lonesome from time to time, Miss Llewellen.’ He removed his hand to rub his nose thoughtfully, then set it down again beyond her reach. And how could any man be quite so dense?
‘I mean, don’t you ever feel the need for female company?’
‘Well now Missy, I don’t reckon there’s too much chance of that, do you?’ he asked her mildly. ‘Not so long as I have charming young ladies such as you to hold my hand.’
For a moment Meriel was nonplussed, baffled – simply couldn’t think what he could mean. Until it dawned on her that he was teasing. Turning to stare at him in blank amazement, she saw the captain’s kindly smile become a beastly mocking grin.
‘Impertinent, clever-dick white rabbit!’ she thought, blinking madly, and left the rail without another word.