Читать книгу The Map of Us - Jules Preston - Страница 21

At first Violet North sent her imaginary hero to sea, but it did not sit well with him. The blank expanse of blue water was not to his liking. The food was stale. His cabin was compact and stuffy. It was too near the engine room to sleep. The metal plates of the hull gathered condensation that seeped into his bunk. He shared the cabin with a fellow traveler who had bad dreams and tied his boots to his wrist so they would not be stolen. He could hear the cargo shifting. He worked his passage as far as the Azores and then disembarked, tired and disillusioned.

Violet offered him a better cabin, but he would not leave the comfort of the shore. She made him the Captain of a merchant ship. And a smuggler. And a retired Admiral. But he would not go. He found cheap lodgings and ate plump grilled sardines and drank green wine, and as the sun dipped he stood on the harbour wall and wondered what it was he would do next.

Violet sent off for a book to keep up with him. It was in Portuguese. Things could not continue this way.

She gave him boots. They were stolen from his companion in the cabin. She had invented them. They were hers to steal. They did not fit, so she wrote that they were another size. That was better. He liked the boots more than he had liked the food onboard ship. He went for a walk to try them out.