The Glass Ocean(15)
• • •
The Narcissus is growing heavy in the oily, black water. Her belly is full of ballast: not just the weight of science but also of potatoes, salt beef, biscuits, bread and onions, cabbages and beans, pickles, tobacco, bolts of cloth, soap, bottles of bitter and of claret, barrels of water, all that’s needed to keep body and soul together at sea. There is a floating farm as well, squealing piglets, chickens, a goat, these are the ill-fortuned charges of the cook. I think it will not go well with them, but we’ll see, we’ll see, it’s a capricious thing, that wheel.
Just before sunrise on a cold October morning the tugs will take her off: the Narcissus sliding out low and gravid from between the tarry hulls of her neighbors, sleek wayfarers lately returned or shortly bound for Singapore, Ceylon, Bombay, black bellies looming threateningly close, then sliding back into a silent oblivion of fog. The Owen family’s latest fortune in cloves no doubt lies somewhere among them, somewhere close, unseen. And yet.
No room, now, for second thoughts.
The sun a milky sphere, a smudge, upon a horizon of intractable grey.
Now they are sails merely, dwindling down the Thames.
That’s it, then.
My father is at the rail, small ambiguous figure, a hieroglyph above the waves. Harry Owen stands beside him.
That’s it, my father says, as if some doubt about the reality of the matter has been dispelled by the sudden rush of water beneath their bows.
He nods with a strange, slow gravity, a serious question having been answered, then turning gently away from his companion, bends stiffly at the waist, as if bowing to the river—offering it his best regards—and vomits, violently, over the side.
As he does, a voice rings out:
Papa, look! Mr. Dell’oro is sick already—and we haven’t even reached the sea! We’re only in the river! Is it not terrible, Papa? Will he not suffer horribly when we really do reach the sea? I fear he will be very miserable, Papa, will he not?
I cannot fault my mother on her timing, it is impeccable; for, of course, it is she, who else? Dressed in a thick shawl of blue and gold, with her hands plunged deep into a furry muff, cheeks reddened by the raw wind off the river, blond hair disarranged, she looks, as she approaches, like a picturesque detail from a Scandinavian mural: Ice Skaters on the River Lule, or something like that.
At the sight of her my father blanches again, offers himself once more to the Thames, and once again is sick.
Such an inauspicious beginning.
Felix Girard, more ursine than ever in his greatcoat with the collar raised up stiff around the back of his neck, like hackles, seeing Leo Dell’oro curled up against the rail, growls, He is a poor creature, Tildy! A poor weak-chested creature! A creature like this will take some time to develop sea legs, petite! Have patience! Be merciful! You must not poke fun!
Yes, Papa. I’m terribly sorry, Papa.
• • •
She’s brilliant, is she not? And brilliantly unfair, because my father isn’t seasick, he’s hung over. Harry Owen knows it, of course, but is too much of a gentleman to say. He was there the night before, on the eve of the embarking, saw my father, drunk, wavering up the Embankment, heard the rat-a-tat-tat of his ill-fitting new shoes, Leo Dell’oro bobbing rapidly from one to the next sickly pool of lamplight, such an uncanny figure in that dapper dark suit, running from lamp to lamp with the herky-jerk movement, like one of those automata of which the French are so fond, until suddenly he pitched sideways, toward the oily water, and disappeared.
A dangerous business this. There are cutthroats and thieves among the bushes.