"Over there," she said. "Look over there."
The girl standing at the rail on the starboard side of the ship gazed out over the flat water. The sea was so bright, so calm, that it seemed one might dive in and swim the last few miles that separated them from the shore of the island. But distances at sea were deceptive; she knew that, as Miss Hart had told them earlier.
"The problem, boys and girls," she had explained, "is that there are no reference points. The sea is just one big expanse of ... well, expanse, and so you can't really tell how far one point is from another."
"Unless you're a sailor," said one of the boys. "Like that man up on the bridge there. He can tell."
They had glanced up from the deck in which they had been standing and looked at the officer standing just outside the bridge, his binoculars trained on something out to port, something that none of them could see.
"They look so silly in those uniforms," one of the girls whispered. "Those stupid shorts. Their knees must get sunburned."
"Like your shoulders," said a boy. "Look. Disgusting. Your skin's peeling off."
But now, a few days later, there were no boys on deck to make that sort of remark; just Alice, who was fifteen and her slightly older friend, Rachel. They were standing together, shaded by the shadow of the ship's superstructure, watching the island drawing closer. This was Grand Cayman, the third island that the cruise had called at, and the smallest. They would go ashore—there was a turtle farm they would visit, and shops, of course.
It was a school party, consisting of just over twenty children. Apart from one or two younger children who were traveling with their parents, the members of the school party were the only young people on the ship; everybody else, it seemed to the children themselves, seemed to be in their forties or above. "Ancient," said one of the boys. "An ancient ship full of ancient people."
And he was right, or almost right, about the ship, which was coming up for its final cruise and which was already booked in at the shipbreakers. But in spite of the shabbiness of the fittings, the scuffed carpets, and the chipped paint on the railings, the company was making a brave effort. There was a full program of events—dances, talks on the islands, competitions, and the like—and the cabins were clean and reasonably comfortable. Or at least they were comfortable for most of the passengers; the school party had been given a generous discount in return for occupying two large, stuffy cabins which had previously been allocated to crew, and these were distinctly spartan in their atmosphere. The girls occupied the slightly better of the two cabins, where at least there were portholes on one side; the boys' cabin, with its line of bunks stacked three high, was on the inside, with no natural light. It was a bad place to be if one was seasick, which some of the boys were for the first few days out of Southampton as the ship plowed through an oily Atlantic roll.
There were two teachers in charge of the party; one, Miss Hart, who looked after the girls, and her male colleague, Mr. Gordon. Miss Hart was thirty-four, a tall, slim woman with a rather attractive high-cheekboned face. Both she and Mr. Gordon were Scottish, as were the children. Mr. Gordon was a small worried-looking man who taught chemistry, and who had been out of the country only once before, some years earlier, when he had fulfilled a lifelong ambition to go to the Oktoberfest in Munich. He had taken pictures at the beer-festival events and had stuck these into a large photo album he bought on his return to Edinburgh. He was divorced and had not remarried; Miss Hart had never found a husband and, she predicted, never would. "I have had my admirers," she would say, and would look away, as if remembering something precious. But these admirers had come to nothing, and her friends assumed that their admiration had probably been unexpressed and certainly never acted upon.
Both teachers had felt some hesitation in accepting the request to accompany the school cruise. Being responsible for twenty children on a school trip, even for one day, to a museum or gallery, was daunting enough, but to be responsible for twenty children on a three-week cruise to the Caribbean would be enough to destroy all peace of mind. But they had both accepted the duty for good-enough reasons; Miss Hart because she wanted to please the school principal, whom she worshipped and for whom she would do virtually anything; Mr. Gordon because he was bored and wanted to get away from his dingy home in a dull street in Edinburgh. The Caribbean was light; it was music; it was the wider world; and the prospect of these things would compensate for the anxieties of supervising the teenagers. And they were rather nice children anyway—the well-behaved offspring of serious-minded Edinburgh families; not rebels or delinquents; respectable children, if one could use such a term about any teenagers.
It was Alice who first noticed that Miss Hart had attracted the attention of an admirer.
"You know what I saw?" she said to Rachel. "I saw old Hart being chatted up by a man. I swear I did!"
"No! Impossible!"
"I did! I really did."
Rachel's skepticism was replaced by interest. "Where? On deck?"
Alice shook her head. "No, it was in that lounge. You know, the one with the red chairs. She was standing near the door and this man was talking to her, really close, and he took her by the arm, just here, and held her, as if he was pinching her or something."
"Who was he? What sort of man would go for old Hart?"
Alice was able to provide some information. "He plays in the band. He's the one who plays the trombone. The tall one."
Rachel thought about this. She had noticed the trombonist, had noticed his face, which was animated, lively. There was something in his eyes, something bright and mischievous, which made one notice him. He was an unlikely Mend for Miss Hart, she thought; very unlikely.
"And then," Alice continued. "Then something else." She paused, watching with pleasure the growth of her Mend's interest. She liked having information which other people did not have; it gave one power. "Then, when I went back there half an hour later, she was sitting with him and some of his Mends around a table at the end of that room. They had pulled the table out a bit and there were three men there. Three men and Miss H. And guess what they were doing? Go on, guess!"
Rachel shrugged. "Drinking?"
Alice shook her head. "No. Playing cards."
Rachel was not impressed. "So? So what? People play cards. There are all those people who play bridge. Even when we're in port, they still sit there, playing bridge. Haven't you noticed?"
"But this wasn't bridge they were playing," Alice said. "This was poker! And they were betting. I saw it."
Rachel giggled. "No! Betting! Old Hart?"
Miss Hart had not wanted to play poker, at least at the beginning. She had noticed the trombonist when the band had been playing on the upper deck shortly after they had left Nassau. Whenever the ship left a port, the band assembled on deck and played a medley of suitable tunes; in this case, "Yellow Bird," "Jamaica Farewell" (not entirely appropriate, but close enough), and other tunes of a Caribbean nature. The percussionist had replaced his normal drums with steel ones, and Miss Hart had been struck by the infectious nature of the music, by its jauntiness. I am in the Caribbean, she thought. I am far away from home. Anything can happen.
She had noticed the trombonist looking at her, and had blushed when their eyes had met. She had looked away, but when she had looked up again he was staring at her again, with those bright, amused eyes. She drifted away, confused, and walked to the other end of the deck. There she watched a private yacht sailing behind the ship, its bowsprit pitching with the waves, pointing one moment at the sky, another moment down into the trough of the waves. Why had he been looking at her? She was not used to the gaze of men; she was one of those women who imagined that men she did not know, strangers, would not look at her. Yet although she was surprised, she was not displeased. He was a striking-looking man, about her age, or perhaps slightly older, and there was about him that glamour, that vague whiff of danger that surrounds the jazz musician.
She saw him again the following day, out on deck. He was dressed in one of the colorful open-necked shirts that he wore when he played in the band; it was a sort of uniform, she decided, like the white uniforms that the ship's officers wore. He noticed her, said something to the man he was talking to, and walked across the deck to greet her. She stopped where she was, uncertain what to do. She blushed.
He said, "I'm Geoff. I hope you enjoyed the music yesterday. Bill likes to get going on the steel drums."
"It was very nice." She realized, as she spoke, how trite she sounded. Very nice; as if she had been at a concert at home, in one of those douce concert halls.
"Good," he said. He looked at her quizzically, as if trying to fathom something. "Come and have a drink through there." He nodded in the direction of the bar. "Allow me to buy you one."
She looked about her, almost in panic. There were one or two of the teenagers at the other end of the deck; they were absorbed in themselves, as all adolescents are; they would not see her going into the bar with him. But did she want to?
"Come on," he said. "I'll introduce you to my friends."
There was something disarming in his manner, and she found herself agreeing. And what harm was there anyway? People made new friends on cruises; it was not the normal, quotidian world; it was different at sea.
They went inside, where he introduced her to his two friends. Tom, he said. Bill. Tom was the band's pianist; Bill had played the steel drums the day before. They stood up as she came to the table and shook hands. She saw that Bill looked at Geoff, that he caught his eye, and that something passed between them; a quizzical glance.
They talked for a while. She found their company pleasant, their wit sharp. Bill did an imitation of the captain's voice. The captain was an Irishman, from the North of Ireland, and he talked in such a way as to give the final word of each sentence a strong emphasis. Everything he said sounded like a threat or warning. "That's how he got ahead at sea," said Bill. "There are lots of threats and warnings at sea. He had the voice for it."
She found herself laughing, and when Tom suggested that they play cards, she said that she thought it would be a good idea.
"Poker?"
"I don't know how to play," she said. "But I suppose I could learn."
"Of course you could," said Tom. "You're a teacher, after all."
She wondered how he knew that, but then realized immediately that they would have seen her trailing about with the teenagers; it was so obvious. And I look like a teacher, she said to herself. I can't get away from that.
She played poker with them the next day, and the day after that. They played for small amounts of money, then for slightly larger sums, but still not very much.
"It's the challenge of the game," said Geoff. "Not the money."
Geoff paid attention to her and his manner was flirtatious. He asked her to join him for a drink after the band had finished playing one evening, and she accepted. She waited for him in the bar, feeling as nervous as a teenager on the first date. He came up to her and kissed her lightly on the cheek. He had bay rum on his cheeks and it was the smell of the islands, of where they were.
"We're going to have a game tonight," he said. "In Bill's cabin. Would you like to join us?"
She hesitated. It would not do for her to go to a man's cabin, but they would all be there and so that made it all right. She accepted.
"Good," said Geoff.
They called in at Kingston the next day. The children were due to go ashore, and she and Mr. Gordon had to be vigilant.
"This place can be a bit dangerous," he said. "We'll have to watch the kids like hawks."
She had nodded, but she did not say anything. He noticed this; she had been rather quiet all that day, and he wondered whether there was anything wrong. Women were like that, he thought; they can be moody, and there would be no point in trying to find out what was wrong.
The group visited a plantation and saw an exhibition about the use of slave labor. Mr. Gordon shook his head; he found it difficult to believe that his people had done this.
"But it wasn't just us," said Miss Hart. "Everybody did it. The Arabs were the big slave-traders. The Africans themselves suffered slavery at the hands of their own people. Everybody."
"But it still makes me feel bad," Mr. Gordon said.
They moved out of the room in which the exhibition was mounted. The vegetation around the building was lush and green; sea-grape trees, cane, creepers. They stood under a tree while he smoked a cigarette. She did not like the smell of smoke, but that was not the reason why, as she stood there, she started to sob.
He was no good with displays of emotion, especially feminine ones. He dropped his cigarette. "Elspeth," he said. "What on earth is wrong? Are you all right?"
She did not reply immediately, and he stood there awkwardly. He wondered whether he should put an arm about her shoulder, to comfort her, but he felt inhibited. He could not touch her, a colleague.
She had not intended to tell him, but she found herself compelled to do so. She had to tell somebody, and there was nobody else. "I have been humiliated," she said. "Humiliated."
He was puzzled. "I don't understand."
She took a handkerchief out of her pocket. He noticed that it had embroidery on the corner; a palm tree and the initial E. There had been handkerchiefs like that for sale on Grand Cayman; a fat woman in a blue-checked dress had tried to sell him one.
"I have been very foolish," she said. "It is my own fault. I have had my money taken away from me. All of it."
He drew in his breath. "Your money? You've been robbed?"
"In a way," she said.
She told him, and he listened in astonishment, as did one of the boys, who had gone out of the building on the other side and was standing behind a half-open door on the veranda. He stood there, unseen, hearing everything that was said between the teachers.
The ship stayed in Kingston for a day longer. As it left, she stood on the deck with a group of the teenagers. Alice was there, as was Rachel.
"I liked Jamaica, Miss Hart," said Alice. "Did you?"
"Yes," she said. "I enjoyed it."
There was silence. The band had not been on deck; now the members appeared and took up their places. She did not want to look; she wanted to move away, so that she would not see him. But she could not detach herself from the children; so she glanced quickly in the band's direction. There was no trombonist.
Alice and Rachel were looking at her. They had noticed her anxious glances.
"We don't like to see you unhappy," said Alice. "We really don't. So that man has been punished."
She caught her breath. How could they possibly have known? And what did they mean by being punished?
"I don't know what you're talking about," she said. "Please explain yourselves."
"The boys helped us," said Alice. "You don't have to worry."
She stood completely still.
Children.