The Sacred River (6 page)

Mrs. Cox took a sip of her chamomile tea and picked a round yellow flower from between her teeth.

“You don’t want to live like your aunt, do you? I’ll tell your fortune, Harriet,” she said.

Producing a leather pouch from a bag that matched her dress, she began laying out a spread of cards in rows, face upward, with some placed sideways, others with their pictures upside down. Harriet sat in silence, watching. She hoped Yael couldn’t see. Aunt disapproved of what she called soothsayers and was more than capable of arriving at the table to say so, delivering her views on the inadvisability of trying to peer into the future, which she considered God’s business.

“You will marry,” Mrs. Cox said, as if in answer to a question Harriet had asked. “And have children. I see three, but only two births.” She looked up at Harriet with shining eyes. “Perhaps you are going to have twins. Do they run in your family?”

“Really, Mrs. . . .”

“Oh, call me Sarah.”

“Sarah, I . . .”

“You’ll recognize the man when you meet him. You will know him immediately. His occupation is something quite out of the ordinary. He won’t be a banker or a businessman or work in any kind of office. He’ll work with his brain and his hands together.”

Mrs. Cox peered at the spread.

“You won’t believe this.” Her voice was incredulous. She reached out and touched Harriet’s wrist with small fingers that were unusually even in length and with a row of three diamonds glittering on one of them. “You’ll encounter him on a voyage. A nautical one.”

Harriet felt herself blushing, but whether with embarrassment or annoyance, she wasn’t sure.

“I doubt that.”

Mrs. Cox looked around the crowded saloon and Harriet’s eyes followed, roaming over elderly Mrs. Treadwell, a suet-pudding-like couple with four round, pale children, two spinster sisters who conversed solely with each other. The only unmarried man present was Reverend Griffinshawe, a widower, who explained to everyone from under bushy white eyebrows that he was taking copies of the Bible in Arabic to his parish in Egypt and would appreciate most kindly any support they could offer for this worthwhile venture.

“He’s here somewhere,” Mrs. Cox said. “He must be.”

“I hardly think so.”

Harriet picked up one of the cards and examined a man hanging upside down, his ankles suspended from the branch of a tree. It was humiliating to have one’s fortune told and even worse to experience the rush of unaccustomed hope she’d felt on hearing the prediction.

“Do you really believe I could marry?”

“Of course. Why ever not?”

“There’s my poor health. And some people think red hair is unlucky.”

“It’s clear as day, Hattie. You will join with a man whom you meet on the water.” Mrs. Cox gathered up the cards and slipped them back into a worn wallet of morocco. “I have seen one eligible gentleman,” she said, raising her finely shaped brows. “You must have seen him too, that day we first—”

Harriet rose from the table, accidentally stepping on Dash’s tail as she emerged from the bench seat, making him whimper.

“Excuse me, Mrs. Cox. I must return to my mother.”

Bidding her friend goodbye, she picked up the dog and left the saloon, made her way down the spiral of iron steps to the second-class cabins. At the bottom, she stopped by a porthole, resting her elbows on its inside rim.

On the other side of the glass, the sea was agitated and unsettled, rearing up around the ship as if it were trying to communicate something from the deep. The sea was becoming a companion, true and constant; Harriet felt a new pleasure every time she looked at it. Perhaps that was the union that Mrs. Cox foresaw.

With Dash at her heels, she continued along the narrow passageway, bracing herself to meet Louisa’s anxious solicitude.

EIGHT

Three times a day, all passengers sat down to meals in the dining saloon. They took up the same places, on the same turning chairs, at breakfast, luncheon, and dinner. Harriet’s was at the end farthest from the captain’s table, an isolated spot but with the advantage that she could see the whole saloon.

The painter sat a few tables away. More than once, Harriet had seen him staring in their direction with a brooding look, his sketch pad open on the white cloth, chin resting on his knuckles. At first, Harriet believed that the man looked at her. He regretted having tried to kick her dog on the weather deck, she told herself, and was wondering how to make amends. Quickly, though, and reluctantly, she formed the impression that it was not herself who attracted his attention. It was Louisa.

On the evening of Mrs. Cox’s soothsaying, the painter entered the dining saloon late. He stood in the doorway as his eyes roamed the room and came to rest on their table. Louisa was in a good mood. As they’d sat down, Captain Ablewhite had complimented her on keeping her sea legs, then sent two glasses of sherry to the table. Aunt Yael took only a small glass of wine once a year, on Christmas Day. Louisa had finished her own and begun on the other.

In her dark satin evening dress, with the necklace of marcasite around her throat sparkling by the light of scores of candles in the crystal chandeliers, reflecting off the mirrors, she looked elegant and assured, like the subject of one of the paintings she admired. Louisa loved to walk to the National Gallery on a Sunday afternoon and stand in front of the great portraits in oil, identifying the fabric of the women’s costumes, speculating as to the meaning of the look in their eyes, the significance of the items in the background. Sometimes she ventured to recognize the tints and pigments used in the paintings, murmuring their names to herself in a private incantation that, when she was a child, Harriet had mistaken for prayer.

Louisa chinked her schooner against Yael’s water glass and Harriet’s tumbler of Indian tonic.

“I do believe you’re looking brighter already, Harriet,” she said.

Aunt Yael put down her soup spoon.

“Louisa, dear,” she said. “Do you know that man?”

Louisa glanced up and Harriet followed her eyes. The painter was heading toward them with an air of purpose. Harriet felt the start of a blush.

“I can’t say that I do,” Louisa said.

Before Yael could continue, the man arrived at the table. He bowed.

“Good evening, ladies. May I join you?”

“Why not?” Louisa said, smiling at him as he eased himself into the chair next to Harriet’s. “We are all travelers together.”

“Indeed.”

He picked up the menu and began reading the courses aloud. “ ‘Barley broth. Steak pie. Mutton chops. Spaghetti in cream. Cabbage. Apple tart with
sauce anglaise
.’ ” The usual muck,” he said, putting down the card, looking around for the steward.

“There are plenty who would be glad of such fare,” said Yael, pleasantly.

The captain rose to his feet, ringing on his glass with a knife, and the dining saloon quieted to a churchlike hush as the passengers turned their faces toward him.

“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. A few announcements. The Reverend . . .” The captain consulted a piece of paper. “Ernest Griffinshawe conducts divine service at eight each morning in the grand saloon. He would appreciate the attendance of a greater number of fellow worshippers.

“We have in our midst a pair of honeymooners. I extend my congratulations to Mr. and Mrs. Zebedee Cox.”

A murmur of approval went up and there was a general lifting of glasses. Zebedee Cox got to his feet, looking flustered.

“On behalf of my wife and myself, thank you, Captain Ablewhite,” he said.

The male passengers banged their tankards on the tables and the women looked at each other, resettling themselves on their chairs like a twittering flock of jeweled, powdered birds. Harriet caught a drift of recent cigar smoke, mixed with a sweet, woody scent, and took a sideways glance at the painter. Even dressed in a black tie and tailcoat, his dark hair greased, he looked different from the other men. The clothes failed to tame him and in place of a starched handkerchief a small sketchbook protruded from his breast pocket. He’d turned his eyes back to Louisa and was watching her, his expression intent.

Captain Ablewhite cleared his throat.

“Enjoy your dinner, ladies and gentlemen. The
Star of the East
makes good speed. We traversed the Bay of Biscay without encountering any storms but we anticipate strong winds in the Mediterranean.”

He sat down and the voices rose quickly to their previous pitch. The painter summoned the steward and ordered a bottle of red wine.

“I suppose you are traveling to Egypt?” he said, addressing Louisa.

“Yes. Alexandria.” Louisa’s face was flushed and her eyes bright. “We are so looking forward to seeing the River Nile.”

“Alex isn’t the place to see the river.”

“Where should one see it?” Yael said, raising her head from her soup bowl.

“It is at its best at Aswan in Upper Egypt, where it flows over the cataracts. But that is a thousand miles away.”

“Upper Egypt?” said Yael. “I would have thought it was Lower Egypt, farther down.”

“Yes. But it isn’t.”

“Imagine seeing where Moses was put in his basket among the bulrushes,” Louisa said.

She took the last of the second glass of sherry, tipping back her head, her white throat exposed and swanlike under the delicate necklace. Yael’s napkin was tucked under her double chin like a baby’s bib; she began sawing into a bread roll with a great, blunt knife.

The man leaned forward and seized his soup spoon. He ate silently, tipping the dish away from him. Harriet pushed away her own empty bowl. Printed around the rim, in a loopy flourish, was the name of a ship, but it was the wrong ship. SS
Tanjore
.

Putting down his spoon, the painter wiped his mouth and turned to Harriet.

“You’re the girl with the dog, aren’t you?”

Under the table, Harriet felt Dash’s back with her toe.

“I have a dog, yes. The one you feared would kill your rag.”

She dropped the remains of her roll off her lap and pushed it in the dog’s direction as the steward returned with a large, high-sided tray, the floor rolling under his feet. He pulled the cork from a bottle and splashed red wine into a glass.

“Good health,” the painter said, raising it.

“We haven’t been introduced,” Louisa said. “I am Mrs. Heron, this is my sister-in-law, Miss Heron, and my daughter, Miss Harriet Heron.”

“Heron.” He rolled his wine around the inside of his glass. “I don’t know the name.”

“Why should you?” Louisa said gaily.

He turned to Harriet again. “Would you like a glass of wine?”

Harriet pulled strands of meat from a chop with the large knife and fork. She’d never tasted wine. Throughout her childhood, Louisa had said she was too young. Later, when other girls her age were marrying, giving birth, running households, Louisa had insisted that wine might bring on an attack.

“I believe I would,” Harriet said. “Yes.”

“She doesn’t take it,” Louisa said. “My daughter is an invalid.”

“Mother, I—”

“I see. And Miss Heron, being the mainstay of the Reverend’s congregation, will most likely be a teetotaler. But Mrs. Heron”— he carried on looking at Louisa—“will join me.”

He reached out and poured another glass. Putting down the bottle with a bump, he held out the wine to Louisa. There were streaks of oil paint on the back of his hand, bronze and sage and dark mustard, raised spots of it on his nails thrown into relief by the light from the chandelier. Louisa’s eyes were fixed on the man’s hand. She hesitated as she took the glass.

“You must be a painter,” she said.

“I am. Why, Mrs. Heron? Are you interested in painting?”

Louisa shook her head. “Not especially.”

Her voice was flat. Harriet shifted on her chair and glanced at her aunt.

“Do you intend staying long in Egypt?” Yael asked, peering at the man through the spectacles that magnified her eyes and made her appear as if she were capable of clairvoyance.

“Until it becomes tedious,” he said. “Which I expect will be soon. I’ve been a half-dozen times before.”

Louisa interrupted the silence that followed.

“I don’t believe you told us your name, Mr. . . .?”

The air of giddiness and elation had leached away from her and her voice was clipped.

The man leaned back in the revolving chair. “I don’t believe I did. It’s Soane. Eyre Soane.”

It seemed to Harriet that Louisa flinched. “You have an unusual name,” she said.

“You are not familiar with it, Mrs. Heron?”

“There are so many names, these days,” said Yael.

Louisa had barely touched the slice of steak pie, the mound of tinned peas, before she laid down her knife and fork, declared herself unable to eat another morsel, and asked Mr. Soane to excuse her. Picking up her fan, she began ushering her skirts out from under the table.

“Will you take some water, Mother?” Harriet said. “Oh . . .”

Louisa, half out of her seat, had knocked over her wineglass. A ruby sea was seeping over the white damask.

“Come, Harriet. It’s time we retired,” she said. “If you would excuse us, Mr. . . .”