Brown had told her to go to breakfast, but where was she to go? Marina made her way towards the bridge, leaning into the wind, gasping at the way it forced itself into her mouth, her lungs. She tried the first door, but it was locked. The second, too. The third she wasn’t expecting to open so easily.
A fog of tobacco smoke, and the sound of low, male voices.
‘Good morning!’ Marina said again, as brightly as she could.
11
The men fell silent. Through the porthole the horizon moved rapidly up and down and Marina knew that she couldn’t stand up for very long. Her father sat at the table furthest away from the door, with First Officer Finchin on his left. The other men – Brown, Perkins, and the boy, Jones – faced her. The surly man who had just ignored her on deck sat with his back to her. He didn’t turn round. The room – the ‘mess’, as sailors called where they ate – was very small, and Marina banged her leg on the end of the bench as she went to take a seat next to her father. Just as she was about to sit down, the room still silent, her father shook his head.
‘This is the officers’ table,’ he said.
Brown nudged Jones and they moved apart slightly, giving her just enough space to climb over the bench and sit down.
Finchin cleared his throat. ‘As I was saying. It looks like we’ve got a wind direction of a hundred and sixty degrees.’
‘Speed?’ her father asked.
‘Sixteen, gusting up to twenty-one.’
‘Any chance of precipitation?’
‘None, sir.’
‘And the swell?’
‘Minimal, sir. Visibility is six nautical miles.’
Marina might as well have not been in the room. Her father didn’t ask if she felt any better; he didn’t enquire how she had slept or explain why she had not been put off the boat at Kirkport. Now that she had sat down, he didn’t acknowledge her presence at all.
The boy next to her – Jones – stared straight in front of him, as if he were afraid to look at her. That wouldn’t do. If her father ignored her, there was nothing Marina could do about that. He was a busy man – he had a boat to command and a mission to complete. But this boy wasn’t much older than she was. Marina turned slightly towards him and put out her hand. ‘How do you do?’
Perkins snorted. ‘Go on, Jones,’ he said, good-naturedly. ‘Answer the young lady. I’m sure even you’ve seen one of those before!’
‘That’s enough, Perkins,’ the Commander said, before returning to his conversation with Finchin.
‘Aye, sir.’ But Perkins’s mouth still twitched with amusement.
The boy ignored Marina’s outstretched hand. ‘Morning,’ he muttered, his face flushed with embarrassment.
‘I’m Marina.’
‘I know who you are,’ he hissed through clenched teeth.
‘But I don’t know who you are.’
The boy looked horrified.
‘He’s called Jones. We don’t use first names in the navy,’ Brown said kindly, filling a tin mug with tea. He added three sugars and plenty of milk before handing it to Marina. Ivy would have been horrified. ‘That’s Perkins. The quiet one is Trenchard. We’ve got Cook and his Mate in the galley and the Chief Engineer and his Mate in the engine room. They don’t eat with us. The Engineer won’t leave his precious pistons and furnace.’
The cook, round-faced, round-bellied and beaming, brought in a bowl of fish stew, and the Cook’s Mate, skinny with two long front teeth like a rat, carried in a basket of freshly baked bread and a tin of butter. This was placed on the officers’ table. The cook returned with more stew and bread for the sailors. Marina was about to reach for the bread when her father rapped on his glass with his knife. The men cleared their throats and looked down. Marina copied them. Her father said a few short words of prayer. Clearly things were different at sea: her father was not what Ivy called ‘a God-fearing man’ at home. The men heaped food on to their plates. All this – for breakfast! Marina still felt queasy, but took the bread roll Perkins handed her. She asked Trenchard for the tin of butter, but he turned his head to look out of the porthole as if he hadn’t heard her request.
‘Take no notice,’ Perkins said. ‘He was on the night watch. He’ll be right as rain once he’s had some kip. Won’t you, Trenchard?’
The man shrugged.
Marina thought about what Miss Smith had told her on the train: how there was a spy on every British boat. Well, if that were true, this man would be the spy. She observed him from underneath her lashes. If she were writing a report for the Admiralty, as Miss Smith had suggested she practise doing, perhaps even marking it for Miss Smith’s special attention, what details would she include? Shaved head, small scar on left cheek. Sullen.
The crew of the Sea Witch ate quickly and efficiently and then left the table. There was clearly work to do on the boat which did not allow them to linger over their meals. Used plates and cutlery were placed in a pail at the entrance to the very small kitchen – Marina knew it was called a galley – and she waited behind Jones for her turn to put her plate and tin mug there.
‘Denham?’ her father called.
She dropped her cutlery into the bucket with a clatter and stepped back into the mess.
‘Yes, Father?’
‘You’ll address me as “sir”. I am your Commander, not your father, while you are on this boat.’
‘Yes . . . sir.’ That sounded odd.
He slid a piece of paper across the table. ‘Here. Read this and sign it.’ He uncapped his fountain pen and held it out.
Marina looked at the paper. Under her name was a list of rules that she must obey. ‘I’m . . . I’m . . . to be a member of the crew?’
‘I’m not taking passengers on this boat,’ her father said. ‘And even
