SIXTY-TWO

Louisa allowed the sailor to lead her belowdecks; he showed her into a cabin with six bunks.

“The other ladies’ll be ’ere soon enough,” he said. “Make yerself comfortable.”

Louisa sat down on the only bunk that had no personal items on it. She reached automatically to the back of her head, felt for the falling coils, and found, for the thousandth time, their absence. She had only her handbag and the old green dress she stood up in, the traveling coat that she had worn on departing England. Feeling in the pocket of her coat for a handkerchief, she discovered something hard and sharp and smooth. She drew it out. It was the carved green beetle that Dr. Woolfe had presented her with. The symbol of rebirth. She held it on the palm of her hand, looked at its humble, industrious form.

Louisa had a curious sense of lightness, as if a part of her had been amputated. She looked around the cabin, unable to believe that Harriet was not there. Was elsewhere. She hugged her arms over her chest, as if healing a wound. She barely knew how she felt. Alongside the shock, the pain, she had another feeling. It was relief. Harriet had moved into her own life.

The door of the cabin opened and a dark-haired woman stepped in. Louisa put the scarab back in her pocket. Glancing up at the woman, she felt even more odd, as if she had so deeply immersed herself in remembering, examining the past, herself as she had once been, that she was now conjuring her own ghost, in pale flesh and warm blood. She had the most curious feeling, as she stood up, held out her hand for shaking, of coming face-to-face with herself.

“I’m so sorry to disturb you,” said the woman. “Did I startle you?”

“Not at all,” said Louisa, as the woman moved to the basin and poured water into it from the ewer, began to splash her cheeks.

“It’s rather cramped,” said the woman, looking around, drying her face on a towel. “But we will manage, I’m sure. We are so fortunate to be going home, safely.”

She removed her hat and began to adjust her hair, pulling the pins out of a chignon on the back of her head.

“Yes,” said Louisa. “Yes, indeed.”

Sitting on the edge of the bunk, watching as the woman brushed out her long hair, stroke after stroke, Louisa felt overcome with tiredness. The collapse she had felt coming for so long had arrived. Perhaps this was the moment of her death. She lay down, pulled the rough blanket over herself, and fell asleep.

By evening, the weather deck was shrouded in a sea mist, the temperature fresh. Louisa moved to the railing, gripped it with both hands, and looked in the direction of the sea, invisible in the vaporous atmosphere. She might have been at the very birth of the world.

Two figures were walking toward her out of the mist, close by each other, their heads bent. It took Louisa a minute to see that they were man and woman. Another to understand that one of them had an arm in a sling, inside a brown velvet jacket. Louisa moved toward them until she came within a yard of Eyre Soane. Like his father before him, he was a little man. Unremarkable. With no power over her.

“Good evening, Mr. Soane.”

Louisa spoke without fear. She turned to the woman and saw the one who had entered the cabin earlier, who for most of the day had rested on a nearby bunk.

“Mrs. Heron,” said Eyre Soane. “Allow me to introduce my sister. Mrs. Julia Summers.”

Louisa reached out for her hand. “I believe we have met before.”

“Probably.” Mrs. Summers smiled, taking Louisa’s hand, shaking it. “I’ve met so many people in the last twenty-four hours that my head is spinning.”

She was the same height as Louisa. Dark-haired and red-lipped, slender as a reed, but with her father’s broad, flat face. Her dark hair was parted to show an irregular peak on the right of her forehead. Louisa looked down at her own body, in the old green dress, under the traveling coat. She had the curious sensation that her breasts were leaking milk. That it ran wetly down over her belly, trickled past her legs, would at any moment begin to drip on the tops of her shoes, spill over the deck, flood the sea, and turn it white.

“Julia!” she said. “I have always been fond of that name.”

“Are you feeling all right, Mrs. Heron?” Julia Summers said. “What an awful time we’ve all been through. But we must count ourselves fortunate to emerge alive.”

“Indeed,” said Louisa, making herself let go of the warm hand, raising her head. She looked at Eyre Soane. “You can have no idea how I’ve longed to meet your sister.”

“Really?” he said.

Louisa stared at him, locking her eyes onto his.

“I have the strangest feeling,” she said slowly, “as if I have always known her. Isn’t that the most peculiar thing, Mr. Soane?”

Eyre Soane looked at her. His eyes turned back to Julia. Then again to Louisa.

His face blanched. His mouth opened.

Louisa continued to speak. “And do you know, Mrs. Summers, that I once met your mother. It was just around the time you were born. She showed me a kindness that day and I have never forgotten her grace.”

“That sounds like Mother,” said Julia Summers. “She has a sense of what’s right.”

“Will you take my arm, Mrs. Summers?” Louisa peered past her into the mist. “We can walk for a little way together.”