The Trespass (37 page)

Holding her head still very high, Lady Kingdom left the room. Her stern, straight back spoke clearly to her elder son of his enormous folly.

TWENTY-ONE

The luck of the weather continued to follow the
Amaryllis,
although the cabin passengers who regurgitated their large dinners more than once might not have called it luck. What the steerage passengers were feeling nobody asked, although should you happen to pass the hatches on the main deck leading downwards a terrible smell of bodies and unmentionable things assailed the nostrils: cabin passengers’ daily walks therefore were kept, on the whole, to the back of the ship. But the Captain assured everybody that even at this worst time of year the winds were with them, not against them, and they made tremendous, rollicking time right through the Bay of Biscay. Always, day and night, a helmsman stood at the back of the poop deck, guiding them forwards; sometimes the Captain could be seen beside him. In less than ten days away from Gravesend, the coast of Spain was glimpsed far in the distance, and at last a thin sun tried to shine. Less than a week later they caught a glimpse of the Madeira island and the sea was calmer and the sun shone brighter and brighter. As Harriet walked dutifully with Mr and Mrs Burlington Brown and Miss Eunice, steerage passengers could be seen on the deck below, bringing what seemed to be hundreds of thin mattresses on deck, shaking them, washing them with sea water, drying them, airing them; men smoked their pipes and one of them soled a boot; thin, worried-looking women shouted at children; laughing young women pretended not to see the sailors. (Miss Eunice, whom Harriet judged to be perhaps in her middle twenties, seemed very exercised by the sailors, said she thought it was important they kept to their place on the ship.) The hold was opened so that people could take out their necessaries from their stored luggage (but all Harriet’s belongings were stowed with her in her small cabin). She watched the cabin families unpack lighter gowns and frock coats and boots and soap and candles into the sunshine, and a young man from steerage scrabbled to find his concertina.

On the third Sunday out everybody dressed in their best and a service for all the passengers was held by the Captain on the main deck: the crew had stretched a tarpaulin across to protect them from the now fiercely shining sun. The steerage passengers sang:

Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound

    That saved a wretch like me!

I once was lost, but now am found,

    Was blind, but now I see

accompanied by the man with the concertina, and the cabin passengers were very touched (for indeed it sounded beautiful as the
Amaryllis
sailed on, alone on the open sea) and forgot that the steerage passengers smelled.

That afternoon a school of porpoises followed the
Amaryllis,
dancing and playing in the water beside the ship, graceful Sunday companions, disappearing again before somebody suddenly thought of shooting them and brought out a gun. Some goats, perhaps thinking the sun augured well for them, escaped from the goat pens; great sport was had trying to catch them. One of the cabin passengers, Mr Aloysius Porter, fell flat on his face reaching for a skittering goat, tripping his friend Mr Nicholas Tennyson as he did so. The crew laughed derisively.

A wind suddenly got up, Harriet’s hat blew off, it bowled down the deck and one of the young girls in steerage caught it and came laughing and running towards Harriet as Harriet ran towards her.

‘There you are, miss.’ She had bold, laughing dark eyes.

‘Thank you so much. I thought I was going to lose it overboard!’

‘Oh well, Mrs Moore makes hats – there – her,’ and the girl pointed to a stout woman who was holding a little boy by the hand.

‘Oh,’ said Harriet. ‘Well, I will remember that.’ She smiled shyly at the girl who seemed to be her own age. All her curves seemed to fill her blue dress and she looked so healthy and strong that Harriet was suddenly aware of how thin she herself was. ‘What is your name?’

‘Hetty Green.’

‘Then thank you, Hetty Green, for saving my only black hat. I am Harriet. Harriet Cooper.’ In silence the two stared at each other curiously. Then Harriet spoke again shyly. ‘What – what are you going to do in New Zealand?’

‘I’ll be a maid first. That is, I’m going to learn to be a maid. Maids is well-paid, better than England because there’s not enough of us for the gentry. Then maybe I’ll have me own shop.’ Hetty squinted up at the sky where a curious white light was forming. ‘Then I’ll have me own house. Then I’ll have me own children.’ And her eyes sparkled at Harriet. ‘And in that order, miss. I’ve got me head screwed on.’

‘I can see that,’ said Harriet. And she cast a glance at the mysterious steerage quarters. ‘Is it – forgive me, I sound very curious – I suppose it is very crowded down there?’

‘Is it
crowded!
Ain’t you ever seen steerage?’

‘No – of course not.’

‘You want to come down?’

Harriet looked discomposed. ‘It might seem – rude. To the people who live there.’

‘Nah, look – they’re mostly on deck now that it’s fine at last, there’ll be hardly anybody there. Come on.’

Harriet looked about her, embarrassed. But there seemed nobody, no Burlington Browns, to prevent her, and she had not heard that it was not allowed. ‘May I?’

Hetty grinned. ‘Only if you show me yours after?’

‘Of course.’

‘Come on then.’

Taking her cue from Hetty, Harriet lifted up her skirts and climbed backwards down the laddered stairs. The smell, already obvious from the deck, was overpowering. Then at the bottom, turning, she gasped. There were two long rows of small, narrow beds, one above the other, all around the bulwarks: hundreds of beds. A long thin table ran down the middle. People’s belongings were stacked, hung, piled, thrown, dropped, everywhere. There were no windows – the only light came in from the open hatch – and although several women were cleaning and sweeping in the half-light a strong, fetid stench filled the dark space.

‘We have to take turns cooking as well as cleaning, I can’t cook so I do the washing. Terrible food, ain’t it, all them ship’s biscuits and potaters and salted pork?’ Then Hetty pointed to a curtain across one end of the space.

‘We sleep behind that curtain, the single women,’ and she laughed, ‘so that the single men can’t see us. But we’re smart – some of the girls even got up to the crew’s quarters but the matron found them and they was punished, locked in with bread and water. Catch them locking me in here, though it’s a long time without a man.’ She caught Harriet’s shocked look. ‘Sorry, Miss Harriet.’

‘What do you mean exactly, it’s a long time without a man?’ said Harriet shyly, but in puzzlement. ‘There are men absolutely everywhere, it seems to me.’

Hetty looked at her in equal puzzlement and for a moment said nothing. ‘Don’t you know what I mean?’ And then after another odd silence in the dark space she said quietly, ‘Ain’t you done it? Don’t you miss it?’

Harriet shook her head, unable to speak. Hetty looked as if she was considering how to proceed with the conversation. She chose her words carefully.

‘Ain’t you ever been in love?’

‘Of course not.’

‘Well.’ Hetty considered again. ‘How old are you?’

‘Almost eighteen.’ Harriet suddenly wished she could get up on deck, wished she could get away, was aware of the smell and the darkness around her.

‘Me too, I’m eighteen,’ said Hetty. ‘That’s why I’ve got my head screwed on. I’m careful now.’ And there was something about the way she said it,
I’m careful now,
that spoke of untold things. Harriet should have gone then, up the wooden ladder, but instead, unable to stop herself, she said nervously but intently, ‘What did you mean?’

Hetty looked genuinely puzzled. ‘You’re different, ain’t you, you’re a lady. I suppose you ain’t been with a man so you don’t even know what I’m talking about.’

‘What do you mean?’ (But Harriet thought of her Aunt Lucretia talking about Alice’s ‘dark duties’.)

Hetty began to look exasperated. She too would have liked to go back on deck. ‘Well I don’t know how to say it to a lady,’ she said, losing patience, ‘all I’m saying is – when you do get it, you’ll miss it after.’

Harriet looked as if Hetty had hit her. This was not what she understood.

Three young children came tumbling down the ladder followed by a shrieking woman. ‘You bastard little bastards. I’ll throw you overboards if you don’t bloody behave.’ Neither the woman nor the children saw Harriet in the dim light; careered around the big long table, the children screaming, the mother yelling, someone else complaining from one of the beds in the distance.

‘Oh come on,’ said Hetty. ‘It’s like this all the time down here,’ and she led the way upwards to the fresh air. The brightness seemed to have disappeared, the sky had become even more oddly white, and the wind was much stronger.

‘Now you show me yours,’ said Hetty and Harriet, still shocked into silence, walked dutifully back to the end of the ship.

‘Oh look,’ cried Hetty, ‘look!’ A large ungainly bird flew low across the strange white sky, over the
Amaryllis.

‘Oh!’ Harriet gasped, looking upwards.

‘What is it?’ cried Hetty. With both her arms she reached upwards as if to catch the bird. Her blue dress stretched tightly across her bosom.

‘I think – I think it might be an albatross,’ said Harriet in amazement. She stared, one hand shading her eyes from the odd light. ‘Yet I don’t think we’re far enough south for such birds. Perhaps it’s something else.’ She stared, confounded, as her skirt whipped about her. ‘I never, never expected I’d actually see an
albatross
with my own eyes, I thought one only read about such a thing in books.’ The bird seemed uncertain, rested on the wind it seemed for a moment, flew over the boat several times and then appeared to want to return to shore, wherever its invisible shore might be, Africa perhaps. Both women watched, mesmerised by its curious, gangling movement, until it had disappeared.

‘My dear Miss Cooper, there you are. Oh.’ Mr Burlington Brown had caught sight of Hetty. ‘I don’t believe you are permitted on this part of the ship, young lady,’ he said sharply.

‘This is Hetty,’ said Harriet. ‘She kindly saved my hat.’

‘Ah. Well thank you, Hetty, that will be all, off you go,’ and the Chairman of the Starlight Gas Lighting Company shooed Hetty with his hands, as if she was a chicken. Harriet protested but Hetty gave a little curtsey, her dark eyes laughed at Harriet, and then she was gone, swinging along beside the rail on the lower deck, her blue skirts billowing.

‘Now my dear Miss Cooper—’ Mr Brown began, most disapprovingly.

‘I saw an albatross,’ said Harriet.

*   *   *

During dinner a joint of pork went tumbling from the table and a jug of gravy spilled on to the floor, narrowly missing the newly unpacked summery gown of the magistrate’s wife. People in the dining saloon went on trying to eat as if nothing was happening and polite conversation was kept up grimly. Miss Eunice maintained a gay conversation with Mr Aloysius Porter until suddenly she was forced to leave the dining saloon in a hurry, her hand to her mouth. Harriet saw that the sea reared right up outside the small windows and the angels cavorting with the primroses on the ceiling seemed to change places in a most odd manner. The Captain, who had been seen earlier observing the odd white light suspiciously, had excused himself from the dining table, was already on deck. Bells called all the crew, sails were being pulled in, foreshortened. And then suddenly, at a spectacular jolt, the ship’s bell rang by itself, and echoed on across the deck and it became very dark.

‘To one’s cabin now, I think, everyone,’ said Mr Burlington Brown rather shakily, when the ghostly bell clanged again. ‘Quickly, Harriet,’ and he watched her to her door as he assisted his wife to their own cabin.

On deck, lightning lit up the sky, rolls of thunder followed, and then it began to rain. Not London rain, not Kent rain, but Atlantic Ocean rain, wild, and heavy like lead, and whipped by the wind. Harriet heard the rain, remembered about catching fresh water, and so,
it will only take a moment,
grabbing the big cup Cecil had helped her buy at Gravesend and her water jug, she opened the cabin door again and pushed her way against the squalls that blew into the passageway as she made her way on to the main deck. Rain soaked her at once, she didn’t care; she stood there, holding out her cup to the elements, placing her jug beside her, holding her face upwards and licking at the rain as it fell down on to her face and into her mouth, the most extraordinary sensation. But the next roll of the boat sent the jug flying across the deck, she ran after it still holding the big cup, slipped, slid, fell against one side of the deck and then found herself flung in the other direction in the half-darkness. The sails of the ship were down, pulled down by the sailors, and one of the masts had been smashed down by the gale; Harriet did not know all this but could hear frenzied voices and banging and hammering and then a sheet of lightning showed her the empty rigging, and the lifeboats above her, swinging madly.

For the first time Harriet was frightened and she cried out. She needed to catch hold of a rope, a rail, but could not see properly to do so. She could hear the terrified cries of the chickens and the pigs and the goats above the wind, she realised she must be somewhere near their cages; then some big object came bowling down the deck towards her, a barrel? a cage? she could not be sure; it just missed her as she reached out, trying to find something to hold on to; she scrabbled convulsively at the deck, trying to stop herself being thrown about.

‘Oh dear God!’ she cried aloud as she felt the boat rise up again and then something large fell against her face as the boat ploughed downwards, she thought it was the hen coop, heard the high terrified screeching, could not stop it, could not hold it, could not save it, sheets of water poured over her, took her to the other side of the deck again.
I must hold on to something.