Читать книгу Voyage of Innocence - Elizabeth Edmondson - Страница 14

The Gloriana hummed and throbbed as it ploughed its way through the storm. On the bridge, the duty officers were relaxed, quiet in the dog hours, used to the sea and her wild ways.

In their cabins, passengers slept soundly or tossed and turned, or clutched stomachs agonized by spasms of seasickness. In the great kitchens, the first staff were coming on duty, the bakers ready to bake the bread and rolls and brioches for breakfast.

‘Half as much as usual,’ the head baker said. ‘Most of this lot won’t be eating anything for the next day or so.’

‘They’ll make up for it when the sea calms down and they get their appetites back.’

Perdita was awake, relaxed but wide awake. She was still prone to sudden bursts of heat, a relic of her days of fever, the doctors had told her, and they always woke her. Soon, she would drop off to sleep again, and those last two or three hours of sleep were the best she had. In her mind, her fingers played Bach, the intricate patterns soothing her brain in time to the sound of the ship’s engines.

On D-deck, Marcus Sebert came to and eased himself groggily out of his bunk. The floor came up to meet him, and he passed out, contentedly, on the linoleum floor of his cabin.

The chill roused him an hour later, and he staggered to his feet, imagining for a moment he was in the studio at the BBC; why was everything sliding up and down, had war broken out and the Germans bombed Broadcasting House, had there been an earthquake?

This wasn’t the BBC, he wasn’t at work, he was at sea, on a goddamned liner. Was he staggering, or was it the damned boat? It didn’t matter. His eyes fell on one of the bottles of champagne he had brought with him. Champagne was good for seasickness, not that he was prone to seasickness, but you couldn’t be too careful. He eased the cork out of the bottle, and cursed as the wine frothed over him, spattering his shirt. A glass? He looked around his untidy cabin, then decided, as he slid across the floor, that a glass was unnecessary. He carefully climbed back into his berth, dribbling the wine into his mouth from the bottle.

Let the wind roar and the waves lash against the boat. ‘And we jolly sailor boys were up and up aloft,’ he sang to himself. Jolly sailor boys, jolly good idea. He could go and find one right now, ‘Below, below, below. Bugger the landlubbers!’

Perhaps he couldn’t. Perhaps he’d just have another drink and wait for the storm to blow itself out. How many days to Lisbon? Another two, three? That wasn’t a problem, he’d stayed drunk for a week at a time before now. Alcohol and sleep, the cure for all life’s little difficulties. Blot it out, sink into oblivion, no need to worry about anything in the world.

One deck up, Joel Ibbotson sat glumly looking into the bowl the steward had thoughtfully provided and wishing he were back in the tranquil surroundings of his Oxford college.

‘There’s running hot and cold in the basin, sir. I’ll be back to see if there’s anything you need.’

‘I suppose these liners don’t generally sink?’

The steward was shocked. ‘They do not.’

‘Titanic did.’

‘That was in the past, sir. And she hit an iceberg.’

‘Any icebergs out there now?’

‘Hardly, sir.’

‘Pity,’ said Joel, his face growing rapidly paler. ‘A great pity. I just want the ship to sink to the bottom of the sea as quickly as possible, so we can get it all over with.’

‘I see you like your little joke, sir.’