For years Alice had felt she was always being observed and judged, whether it was by her family, her music teachers, her neighbours or her choir. Even here, looking out on the middle of nowhere, she was surprised to feel surrounded, though it was by water. The crucial difference, Alice realised, was that while standing alone gazing outwards, observation flowed in one direction only. The stars weren’t watching her, nor was the sea waiting for her to fall in. The feeling of complete anonymity against the immense silence of sea and sky was intoxicating.
How long the tall fellow had been looking at her before she noticed him, Alice had no idea. He was very thin, with narrow shoulders and what was possibly a slight stoop, though it could easily have been an illusion produced by his leaning into the strong wind that gusted along the deck. The bones protruded from his face as if he were some hastily assembled piece of machinery. He wore a tweed flat cap in a herringbone pattern and regarded her patiently through wire-rimmed spectacles in the manner of someone who, although Alice hadn’t met him, seemed to know exactly who she was.
Instantly he reminded her of the man she’d not seen in years but who haunted her dreams—and of whom, despite her best efforts, she hadn’t quite been able to train herself to stop thinking.
Alice nodded at the thin man before turning back towards the ocean, reminding herself it was pointless and fanciful to entertain notions about a complete stranger. Look how far that had got her last time. With each wave the ship crested and sank, a pattern as common to music as to heartbreak. When Alice turned back the man was no longer there.
Once or twice since their encounter on the deck, Alice had nodded in acknowledgement at the hollow-cheeked man with the spectacles. She had noticed him during the dinner service, sitting with a few other seemingly unattached men at a table not far from her own, where she endured the talk with fellow travellers that grew smaller each meal. And she had seen him at the rear of the chapel when she was leaving after the service. His shyness radiated towards her, and Alice sensed that it would take only the smallest encouragement from her to see him walk awkwardly in her direction, all limbs and bony shoulders, to introduce himself. It amused her to think that just minutes earlier she had been singing in her clear soprano voice, and yet now she chose to remain silent. Choosing not to speak was a power of sorts, she supposed. She feared being bored immediately by the man with hope in his eyes. But perhaps her deeper fear was the return of hope in her own.
A few nights later Alice arrived at dinner to find him sitting next to her father, comparing the food heaped on their plates. She was impressed: her father’s powers of observation were greater than she had given him credit for. In his nervousness he stood up too fast, bumping the table so that the nearest drinks wobbled.
James Taylor introduced his daughter to Mr George Lloyd. ‘Mr Lloyd here’s returning from Cardiff, where he’s been visiting his mother.’
Alice was surprised to learn that he was a farmer’s labourer. He looked more the indoors type.
‘I was working out at Suntop farm, west of Yeoval district, saving up for my own lease,’ he said. ‘But there’s no place like home, is there?’
Alice wasn’t so sure. She was looking forward to the opportunity to miss it.
She felt sorry for the softly spoken man and wanted to put him at ease. He hunched over slightly when he talked, which made her suspect he was self-conscious about his height. His slender hands and elongated fingers looked better suited to a librarian or a pianist, though the tops of his hands appeared more wrinkled than she would have expected of someone his age. What was his age, anyway? About forty, maybe, though Nance had written that many locals looked older than their years due to the intensity of the Australian sun. Perhaps thirty-six. Who was she to be picky, at hers?
And did George enjoy the line of work he had chosen? After watching her father and brothers spend their working lives as human fodder for shipbuilders, Alice couldn’t help but respect a man for wanting to be his own boss. And if he was still rake-thin after eating his mother’s meals for six months, George would never develop a belly like her father’s, sagging over his pants like excess baggage. George’s suit jacket hung off him as if it was pegged on a line.
Alice could tell George was dying to ask her what her plans were once they made it to Sydney. Any fantasy of staying aloof and mysterious evaporated with the ensuing line of conversation, in which her mother shared that her son-in-law would pick them up in Sydney and escort them on the train to Newcastle.
‘Why, that’s only three hours from Yeoval!’ George exclaimed, failing to temper his excitement.
Despite herself, Alice found his ineptitude charming. She liked how his eyes creased at their edges when he smiled. It gave her the sense that they’d had a lot of practice. Beyond the superficial resemblance, she thought, he really was nothing like John Henry Edwards. George could no more tell a lie or disguise his true intentions than he could hold back the tide. There was no deviation from the norm, no hidden nuances or secret agendas. George Lloyd was as straight as a cricket bat.
Alice emerged from her 10,000-mile odyssey with a suitcase, a shy suitor and a glimmer of hope. Though she was ten years younger than George, I suspect what she had learned about men and love had given her an edge on her future
