Fen looked at him again and then turned in embarrassment as he caught her staring. I must be the only passenger who knows he’s German, she thought to herself, feeling his large blue eyes on her. She thought back to the image of Mrs B’s mouser and his quarry under his paw. And I hope that’s not information he’s willing to kill to keep from getting out. She shivered as she showed the steward at the bottom of the gangplank her ticket and was grateful to be finally climbing up and away from the crowd on the quayside.
6
The De Grasse was a beast of a ship. Its vast black hull had towered over them as they’d waited on the quayside and now, as she walked up the metal gangplank that led onto the deck, Fen could feel the enormity of the tonnage around her.
She held her suitcase with one hand and let the other trail over the metal handrail of the walkway. She liked to touch buildings as she walked around them, it was her way of connecting to her surroundings, and the sheer size of this ship left her with the same urge. Unlike the usual roughness of stone or brick, though, she felt cold, hard steel. The handrail was damp to the touch, and no wonder as the grey clouds overhead were threatening rain and the atmosphere was heavy with precipitation.
Fen climbed up the steep ramp, each step a metallic strike that caused a worrying vibration. She was pleased to see the smiling face of another crew member as she reached the top.
The officer checked her ticket again and gave her directions on how to get to the upper decks and her cabin. The journey to Southampton wouldn’t take more than a few hours, but as it was overnight, Fen had decided to award herself the luxury of being able to sleep as they ploughed their way across the Channel.
‘Second class, ma’am?’ the clipped tones of another officer greeted Fen as she stepped off the deck and into a carpeted corridor. His English accent reminded her that the French Line was a truly transatlantic company with employees from all over the world.
‘Yes, am I heading in the right direction?’ Fen replied.
‘Yes, ma’am, follow this corridor down to the main staircase and you’re on the left.’
Fen thanked him and carried on down the carpeted hallway until she saw a huge glass atrium spanning an ornate, and vast, staircase. Much narrower passageways, each with four doors leading off them, lined the left-hand side, and to her right she was entranced by the sweeping gold of the stairs that led down to the lower floors and up to even more decks above. Smart, upholstered chairs lined the edge of the banisters, creating a genial sort of sitting area, bathed in light from the vast glass ceiling above, and Fen saw that over the other side of the grand staircase there were similar narrow passageways, all leading to more second-class cabins like her own.
Fen reached the narrow passageway that serviced cabins sixteen to nineteen and was met by another steward.
‘Cabin nineteen, ma’am?’
‘That’s right, yes,’ Fen replied to the officer as he ticked her name off a list. Fen could see pages of names and, without thinking, asked how many other passengers there were on board.
‘All souls should amount to well over nine hundred, ma’am,’ he replied, ‘with fifty travelling first class, one hundred-odd here in second and the rest in third and steerage.’
‘Gosh,’ Fen realised that her second class, though obviously much less dear than first class, wasn’t such a bad place to be after all.
She followed the young officer down the narrow passageway to her door, which was one of the two furthest from the main staircase corridor, and let him click it open for her. She followed him inside.
‘Not too much to explain, miss,’ he said, which seemed rather an understatement considering the size of the cabin, and then pointed, rather obviously, to the bed. ‘Bed here, and private wash facilities to the left.’
Private wash facilities… Fen smiled to herself. That would be the basin and mirror next to the bed then. This young steward couldn’t have been more than twenty or twenty-one, but he was already indoctrinated into the naval lingo. His mention of there being ‘souls’ on board had been another giveaway. Fen wondered if he’d been in the merchant navy during the war, or even serving with the Royal Navy? As young as he looked now, he would nevertheless have been old enough to have served throughout the whole war, more’s the shame of it.
‘Thank you, Officer…’ Fen peered at the name embroidered onto his breast pocket, ‘Dodman.’
‘That’s correct, ma’am.’ He pronounced it as mam, to rhyme to with Spam. It made Fen feel older than Mrs B and her mother put together and she told him so. ‘Sorry, ma’am… I mean, miss,’ he stammered and Fen apologised.
‘Oh, please don’t worry, Mr Dodman.’
‘Better dash now, miss, plenty of other folk to help aboard.’ He gave her a quick salute and she was about to salute back to him when she remembered she was just a civilian.
‘Silly, Fen,’ she scolded herself and peered out of the cabin door to check no one had heard her talking to herself, before closing it behind her.
The cabin was the size of a generous broom cupboard, but it would do perfectly for her one night on board. The walls were all painted a light cream colour, but there was no getting around the fact that they were made of riveted steel; bolts and welded patches were pretty obvious to see. A narrow single bed took up most of the room and was positioned along the longest wall, which was the external one of the cabin.
Above it was a porthole-style window with a pretty, if
