Another door opened up to reveal a lavatory. Fen was glad that she wouldn’t be staying more than one night as the thought of traipsing along these very public corridors to find a bathroom for a proper wash wasn’t particularly appealing. The only other items of note in the cabin were a small wicker stool, painted white to match the wall colour, and a flip-down table that was currently in its horizontal position and replete with the ship’s headed notepaper and a few envelopes.
She closed the door on the WC and heaved her suitcase onto the end of the bed and opened it up. ‘No point unpacking much,’ Fen said to herself, and within minutes she had unearthed what she felt she might need for her one night on board.
She had started her adventures in France only six weeks or so before and had not brought much with her except her field-work clothes – trusty dungarees and a few cardigans and jumpers – and then in Paris she’d picked up one or two more pieces, notably two rather lovely, if somewhat old-fashioned, tea dresses that had belonged to her late friend Rose.
She hung one out so she could wear it tonight, hoping that the creases would drop in time. She also very carefully lifted out of the suitcase a silk-wrapped parcel; the silk had once been one of her Parisian friend’s rather flamboyant turbans but was now protecting a dear little oil painting that Fen had been gifted, among a few other mementos for herself and her parents to help remember their eccentric friend by.
Fen pressed the silk parcel to her lips and then gently placed it on one of the shelves in the cupboard. Her hairbrush and flannel she placed next to the basin and she laid out a fresh blouse and some rather more sensible-for-travelling-in woollen trousers on the wicker stool next to the bed, ready for the morning. The case itself she closed up and slid under the bed, ready to repack before they docked in Southampton.
Some people might not have bothered to unpack even that much for just the one night at sea, but Fen liked to make a place, however foreign or shabby, feel like home, and unpacking one’s suitcase was one way to go about it.
Fen looked out of the porthole window wondering why light was coming from outside. As she’d boarded, the sun had been about to set and by rights it should almost be dark by now. But what she saw surprised her and made her think about the layout of the ship. Instead of a view out to sea, the porthole actually overlooked a covered deck area, brightly lit now by a festoon of lights, and then beyond them and the steamer chairs and handrail would be the ocean, or for now the English Channel.
She pulled the curtains to and gave a cursory plump and test of the pillow, which was sadly rather lumpy.
‘Oh well, only the one night,’ Fen sighed, and then took a quick glance in the mirror before heading back out onto the main passage. The urge to explore was overwhelming and with not long on board she was keen to see more of the opulent interiors and nose around the corridors and decks.
She waved at Dodman, the friendly steward, but paused as she saw him showing the man she’d bumped into earlier to a cabin. Dodman seemed less jovial towards this passenger and was in and out of his room with no time for pleasantries.
I was right, Fen thought, he is German and Dodman must know of the man’s heritage, too. Fen found herself feeling relieved that she wasn’t the only one on board to know his secret.
‘It’s like having an albatross on board,’ Dodman said to Fen as she walked past him. He nodded down towards the cabin he’d just left to emphasise the point.
‘Bad luck, you mean?’ She referenced the old superstition that sailors had about albatrosses, how if one landed on your deck, then it portended a death to come.
Dodman gave an exaggerated shiver. ‘Almost right, miss. Albatrosses are actually deemed to be good luck – unless you kill one, that is. Then it’s bad luck all the way.’ He crossed himself.
‘But surely no one on board would… I mean, the war’s over and we should all be trying to make allowances for each other now, not… well, not hurting each other.’ She felt like she was convincing herself as much as the steward, but she did believe in what she was saying. Innocent citizens had been hurt in what was deemed collateral damage on both sides of the war and she wasn’t sure she liked the way Dodman had implied that, simply because he was German, the man might be a target for violence.
‘I tell you, miss, you know as well as I do that nothing good will come from having one of them on board. Crummy luck they’ve gone and put him in cabin thirteen, too.’ He turned away from her, ticking more names off his clipboard as he went.
Fen frowned, then made her way towards the deck, with no doubt in her mind that Dodman was no longer talking about albatrosses, and that he too was concerned about having a German on board.
7
Fen followed the corridor past the grand staircase surrounded by banisters and cosy chairs to the doors that led to a more utilitarian stairwell and the outside. In one direction, the deck ran alongside portholes, such as the one in her room, forming a covered walkway, a sort of promenade deck dotted with the low-slung steamer chairs that passengers could almost fully recline on during the brighter and less wet days at sea.
In the other direction, the deck opened out
