Fen smiled at her and sat back. So that was the why, but where had Eloise and Mrs Archer been throughout the war? She asked Eloise, who, despite her despotic aunt, was turning out to be rather fun company.
‘Oh, well Aunt Mariella managed to get us out of Paris before it was occupied. That’s the benefit of friends in high places; they were able to warn her, you see, before it all went belly-up.’
‘Paris, you mean?’ Fen was intrigued.
‘Well yes, Paris, obviously. We could all see what was happening there,’ Eloise replied matter-of-factly, though Fen wondered if she was gifting herself with the prescience of hindsight, for the sake of the storytelling. ‘But the real warning that paid off was predicting how the Nazis would react to us. We Americans were neutral, you remember, back in 1940, but someone, somewhere gave Aunt M the nod and off we went one night, before the Nazis got their stranglehold on the whole city, and we fled down to the south, right in the sticks of Free France, Vichy, you know.’
Fen nodded. She did know. The Nazis had worked with what many thought was merely a puppet French ‘Vichy’ government, named after the spa town from which they governed in the south of France.
‘Gradually, the Nazis took over most of France,’ Eloise continued, ‘but Aunt M had the guts to stay put in our self-imposed prison… sanctuary… whatever you want to call it, and we never got bothered by the Germans. Helped that a squadron of our own boys came to hole up in the château too.’ Eloise laughed and then stopped herself. ‘So I can’t complain really. Though five years is a long time to be away from home.’
‘From your parents and friends, too,’ Fen added thoughtfully.
‘And with Aunt Mariella…’ Eloise winked at Fen and the two of them had to stifle their giggles when the captain turned his attention to their side of the table and engaged them in conversation.
‘My family have been serving the French navy for generations,’ the captain told a captivated audience. He had been talking to Eloise and Fen since he’d interrupted their giggles and gradually the whole table had quietened down to listen to what he was saying. Despite sitting with a celebrity, a viscount and a grand dame of society, he was the most important man at the table, and indeed on the whole ship.
Captains were responsible for all the passengers on board and even had the legal right to use lethal force if they thought there was any threat from mutiny or piracy. The thought thrilled Fen slightly, though she was fairly sure the chances of either of those situations were slim to none on a voyage such as this, and this calm and collected-looking man wouldn’t be troubled with such a thing.
Captain Lagrande appeared to be in his fifties, with what was once jet-black hair now grizzled with grey streaks around his temples. He was tanned in that way that those who spend their lives outside in all weathers tend to be, his skin almost leathery in appearance. Having said that, he looked so at ease in his smart evening dress uniform that Fen wondered if he was now perhaps more used to watching the elements from the inside of the ship’s bridge than hanging from the mainsail, or whatever ship’s captains used to do in the old days.
He wasn’t a tall man, but he was well built and had that air of authority that could be seen as arrogant in someone in a lesser position, but was reassuring in a man with so much responsibility. His voice, accented but fluent in English, carried this confidence across the table as he continued his family history.
‘My great-great-grandfather fought for Napoleon, died in the Battle of the Nile—’
‘Sorry about that,’ James mumbled, remembering his naval history and the British victory over the French better than the others round the table.
Captain Lagrande nodded in response and carried on. ‘And my brother and I were both junior officers in our navy by the time the last war started – we troubled the Germans considerably in Zeebrugge and Ostend.’
There was a ripple of approval around the whole table as the skirmishes of the Great War were more familiar to them all than Napoleon’s sea battles of the eighteenth century.
‘My brother, Jean-Louis,’ Captain Lagrande paused, his brow briefly furrowed, and there was silence from those listening. He continued, ‘…was accepted into the merchant navy after the last war. And here I am now, captain of this, how would you say, magnificent ship.’ He reached for his glass, his tone more sombre again. ‘Being at war, it seems, happens every generation. That I have survived two when others did not have that same luck, I thank God.’ He raised his glass. ‘To peacetime.’
‘Hear, hear.’
‘Cheers to that!’
‘Amen.’ Dr Bartlett, who was the other gentleman at the table and who Fen had gathered was the ship’s doctor here on the De Grasse, was the last to lower his glass and Fen smiled at him, having not had a chance to be properly introduced to him yet. Genie had been dominating the conversation with him and even now, after the toast, Fen could see that Genie was gearing up to ask him more questions.
‘And what do you find is the greatest ailment on board?’ Fen heard Genie ask, her voice sounding as if she were auditioning for the BBC at Broadcasting House. Ever since Mrs Archer’s slight before the meal began, Genie had changed her whole demeanour to try to fit in with the smart women around the table, and Fen, who didn’t count herself as one of them, was reminded of the exclamations she had heard coming from cabin thirteen. ‘I am foreign!’
Perhaps in this brave new world we all are. No one knows where they belong yet, thought Fen to herself, smiling at Genie.
‘Well, various nauseas. There’s seasickness, of course,’
