Not the Same Sky (8 page)

‘What does scale mean?’

‘It’s not literal distance,’ Charles answered.

‘What’s literal?’

‘I’ll explain later,’ he said.

‘Go on, sir,’ a girl said.

He had not heard sir from them before that moment. It was a pity he could not remember more names.

‘Here’s Madeira. Let me show you our proposed route. We go this way,’ and his pen traced the notional planned way. ‘We move out here, do you see, towards Brazil, because we must get with the winds. It might look as if that would be better,’ and he traced his pen down the west coast of Africa. ‘But we could not do that because we would hit the doldrums and sit for days upon days without moving. This way we should be travelling all the time. Even if sometimes slowly.’

‘What’s the doldrums? I thought that was before getting sick.’

‘Shh …’

‘If we were in there we’d see land, wouldn’t we?’

The girl’s voice had longing in it. But another chided her, ‘Yes, but what would be the point in seeing land if we couldn’t be on it and we were going to take longer.’

Another girl pointed, ‘Is that Ireland?’

‘Yes, indeed it is.’

The girl was pleased.

‘It looks small,’ said another.

Anne Sherry pointed and said, ‘That’s Australia?’

‘Yes, that’s the west coast, we are going to the east coast, Sydney, here.’

‘So, if we’ve travelled what distance? And how long since we started? And we have that far to go …’

There was a murmur of calculation.

‘That means it will be …’

‘I think it’s too soon for that,’ Honora said, looking at the map.

But someone whispered, ‘Nearly a hundred.’

‘Don’t be silly. You couldn’t be on a boat that long,’ another voice said.

Some girls stood on the tips of their toes to see who had said that.

A silence descended and all the eyes turned on him.

‘Let’s come back to Madeira,’ he said.

He showed them the equator and the tropics of Cancer and Capricorn. He showed them latitude and longitude. He got quite carried away before he noticed the bewildered looks on some faces. He really would have to get to know more of their names.

‘Will you be going home, sir?’

Before he had time to answer a girl said, ‘My brother is coming out to me.’

The others turned their heads to her and it was hard to judge whether their communal look was one of envy or scepticism. Charles began to roll the map. There was a murmur of disappointment, which could have come from a desire to still place themselves on the map. Or from annoyance that the respite from routine was broken.

‘I’ll bring it again,’ he said.

That night after bedtime when the noises had subsided, Charles walked on deck. He looked out to sea to where he fancied he could see flickering lights and candles on the island. It might have been nice to stop, to get one’s feet on the ground, even briefly. To let the boat nestle in the dock, where the workers, unhampered by the temper of the weather, could tidy up its loose ends, patch up its injuries and get ready for the next lot of seafaring. But that might be too hard on these girls, too hard for some of them to come back on board. He watched the lights until they were tiny stars thrown on the edge of the ocean. It took some time for this fading to happen. Then the dark around him thickened and the only lights to be seen were the ones still lit on the deck. He thought he heard a noise and wondered if perhaps it was a girl out looking too, without permission. Still, if it was, she was quiet. He turned his back on the sea and headed into his room where he thought he would have a drink. He passed Honora but didn’t see her. She had slipped out from the darkness below, unable to turn into sleep. She rolled herself into a small bundle under the ropes and looked up through them. She wanted to believe this was the same sky that was over the home she had just glimpsed on the map, the one she had been taken from and would never see again. That became clear the more days passed. Who could ever come back from so far? If she could believe it was the same sky surely that would help. It would be good to get a map too.

CHAPTER 9

On the following morning Charles called the girls together to begin the first washing day. He knew it would throw up its own difficulties, but then every new ritual had to find its feet. This was the opportunity to have one of the main lessons of order taught. Here are the rules …

‘Here we go again.’

That would be Julia. He could see that some of the other girls also found the rules harsh. A sulky look came over some, but they put it away from their faces when Charles looked them in the eye. Maybe he had a point about slopping water and people falling.

‘If we fell and hurt ourselves we could not come up here at all. We’d be stuck down below all day,’ Anne Sherry said.

The second washing day went more smoothly, girls even appearing to have moments of satisfaction with their completed tasks. But there was still work to be done to get the ritual flowing better. He had decided he would postpone taking up their trunks from the hold for examination—a few more successful washings would need to be achieved first. They would have to learn order before that happened.

When the men did lug up the boxes, and when the girls saw their names still there despite the sea, a few of them cried and others used that to cry as well. Sometimes it was good to have something to start crying about. Julia never cried—she wouldn’t satisfy them, she thought. She couldn’t figure out who ‘them’ was, but she wouldn’t satisfy them no matter who they were.

They tripped in the small spaces left between the boxes. They examined their clothes and found out from each other how best to banish mildew. Seeing their belongings and unfaded names gave them a boost, which matured as the day wore on.

Then Bridget Joyce saw her bird again. She saw it every morning and most evenings.

‘Look, it’s the same bird. Still with us. All day and all night in the dark. Still with us.’

‘How can you tell? Don’t be silly.’ That came from Cissy Weir.

‘It’s the same bird, I know it is.’

Her eyes filled up. Charles had seen her stepping from the breakfast line to speak to this bird.

‘It may be the same bird, it may not,’ Honora Raftery said, which seemed to settle the argument.

‘It’s the same bird,’ whispered Bridget, so low it could only be lip-read.

Charles had already had a complaint about Honora Raftery, although he couldn’t be sure if it was actually a complaint. It might have been more that the teller wanted something to report, not to get Honora in trouble necessarily, but more to test conversation and to have something to say to him. Or maybe she wanted to break from the ordered rigor and have a small disturbance.

‘Honora Raftery’s up on deck telling lies again.’

‘I don’t think they’re actually lies,’ Charles said. ‘She’s telling stories.’ He had overheard her.

‘What’s the difference?’

‘There is a difference,’ Charles said. ‘It’s all right to tell stories.’

‘Even if they’re not true?’

‘Yes, even if they’re not true.’

The subtlety escaped even him. But his incompetent explanation would have to suffice. He would have to remind himself again not to call Bridget Joyce ‘Birdy’. It would be too easy to do that.

‘You can go now. Stories are all right.’

The girl turned her back on him.

The first day of classes started with calm waters outside, which helped. The boat clipped through the sea, the sails made whistling sounds, the noise of slapping ropes faded into the wood and the water. The dawn that day appeared sedately over the edge of the flat sea and the light had slowly filled the sky. Charles had seen this as he took a morning stroll. He walked back and forth quietly, never going as far as the bridge to the girls’ quarter—he didn’t want to wake them, partly because he felt it was better for them if they slept, but also because he wanted time alone to imagine himself without charges. Some mornings were like that, maybe because of a restless night, or a deep sleep troubled by dreams. But it was hard to imagine himself without them now, particularly today as he was worried about the classes. He knew that most had more than the rudiments of English—that had been taken into account in their selection. He had seen them crowd around the map. Indeed he now knew that some of them could perhaps have been destined for more than domestic service, but that could be of no concern to him. Others of them had only the basics of schooling and some had a strange grasp of English—they understood, but put their verbs where perhaps their nouns should be. Or was it the other way about? Or was that it at all? It happened so fast in their speech that he did not have time to examine it and if he asked them to repeat it he suspected they phrased it as it was supposed to be.

Charles would have to decide how to determine class groups. Would it be best to mix the weak with the strong so that they might learn from them? But there were others, Julia Cuffe for instance, who by now had come to his attention often enough for him to remember her name. She would scoff, no doubt. She would have to be put into a class that would make her want to learn, make her want to cast aside all her certainties and approach a search for knowing as if it would mean something to her, as if it could be of use to her, as if she might like it even. But this was hard. Julia had been broken and had put herself back to living by believing that every dark thing that she had seen could be trumped by belligerence, bad language, and scepticism. This quality was so rampant in her that it frightened him. In his first direct encounter with her, he had felt obliged to call her aside because of the way she spoke to Matron. She had an answer for every comment he made. Before he had finished his sentence she had a reply ready. And what was worse than the readiness of her reply was that it was often an answer that one would expect from a more grown person, a person from different circumstances. The conversation began innocuously enough—although when he thought about it afterwards he realised that this is what had provoked his exasperation. He had not intended this to be a conversation, he had meant it to be a reprimand, at the end of which the girl would say that yes, she understood, and then he could have handed down some leniency in a benevolent fashion for which she would have been grateful.

‘Miss Cuffe, you cannot speak to Matron like you did.’

‘Why not, what’s she to me?’ Julia sniffed.

‘She’s your matron on this voyage. She will minister to you and look after you if you become ill.’

‘I’m not going to get sick.’

‘But if you do …’

‘So you’re saying that I have to not talk to her any way I want just in case I get sick? I might get sick even if I keep my mouth shut. I know people who did. Being nice doesn’t mean you won’t have bad things happen.’

‘Excuse me, Miss Cuffe …’

‘Julia’

Miss Cuffe …’

Charles was forced to raise his voice and disliked the girl in front of him for making him do that. ‘Miss Cuffe, as I was saying—and please don’t interrupt me—Matron, her helpers, and myself, wish this journey to be as smooth as possible, we are all working to that end. The co-operation and civil manners of all of you is essential to that smooth running. The other girls will be grateful too if we can achieve that.’

At the mention of the others the skin around her eyes softened, but only momentarily.

‘Well, am I going to be with those girls forever?’

‘What’s that got to do with anything?’ Why on earth was he answering this girl.

‘Now, as I was saying, and may I repeat that I do not wish to be interrupted …’ Charles said, with a sigh.

‘Then you shouldn’t have brought me here.’

‘Miss Cuffe …’

‘Mister, it’s all right, I’ll be good,’ Julia said suddenly, as if it had been her idea. ‘But sometimes I won’t, because the other girls might need a laugh now and then.’

As she said this last bit she changed the timbre of her voice, he could not say it was a sneer, it was too light-hearted for that.

So she had decided to be good. She was not doing it because he had used his authority. In fact it was only when she saw that he was losing his authority that she decided to pacify him.

‘You will now come with me and apologise to Matron.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You will tell Matron that you are sorry for having been rude.’

‘Oh I see, I’ve never done that before,’ she smiled. ‘So, I’ll just stand there and say: I’m sorry, Matron.’

‘Yes.’

‘What good will that do?’

‘It’s called having manners.’

‘All right.’

Charles was surprised at how suddenly she capitulated. He brought her to Matron. Julia stood before the woman. She straightened her back, patted her dress, and touched her hair. Charles realised, with great discomfort, that she was enjoying this new experience, this saying ‘I’m sorry’. She meant not one word of it, but Matron graciously accepted the hollow apology and Charles took Julia back to her quarters. His emotions were high. Julia trotted behind him, a child now. At the door he said, more to himself than to her, ‘You’re too young to know some of the things you know.’