And now he couldn’t even support them. Maybe they’d have to live with some other family. How humiliating—asking somebody to take them in because they couldn’t afford their own house or food. Her father had turned them into waifs from a Dickens’ novel, just like Nicholas Nickleby’s family.
She heard footsteps in the hall. Her mother must not be sleeping either.
The steps stopped outside her door. “Barbara?”
“Yes, I’m awake.”
Her mother swooped over to her bed, her nightgown trailing behind her, and eased down on the bed. “I think I know what to do.”
Barbara pushed herself up onto her elbows. “What?”
“Just as you’ve been suggesting. Take a sailing trip. I’ll rent the house to cover expenses. We’ll go to the West Indies, where we can live cheaply.”
Barbara sat up and pulled in her knees. “Do you really think so?”
“What if I visit some editors and see if I can get an advance on another book from you? A sort of sequel to The Voyage of the Norman D? To finance the trip.”
“We can use my royalties, too.”
“No, let’s not touch those. I can sell articles along the way. Articles about travel as a sort of education.”
“It’ll be wonderful, Mother, escaping all this misery.”
“And letting your father wallow in his wreckage.”
“Who needs him?”
Her mother turned from her and stared ahead. “Only I worry about Sabra. I can’t possibly subject her to such an improvised journey. I’ll have to ask Mrs. Tyler to take her in.”
Barbara bit the inside of her cheek. She didn’t know what to say.
Her mother slumped over and buried her face in her hands. “Damn him for forcing this terrible choice on me. Damn his selfishness.”
“It’ll be his punishment, Mother, for deserting us. We’ll show him we can have an adventure without him.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
BARBARA AT FOURTEEN
West Indies Bound, August–September 1928
Oh, to sail again: to roll with a ship over surging seas; to lose all sense of time and place; to gaze out on the sea’s never-ending mystery. Yes, she’d sail again—and consign her troubles to the ocean’s depths.
She visited the New Haven wharf and inquired about square-riggers. She wrote letters to harbormasters from Massachusetts to New Jersey. She scoured newspaper listings of ship arrivals and departures.
But all the square-riggers had departed for southern climes in advance of roughening seas. Finally, she accepted the reality: If they were to sail this season, it wouldn’t be by schooner. After another flurry of inquiries, she learned she could acquire second-class tickets for The Islander, a steamer departing from Jersey City for Barbados.
“We can search for a square-rigger in the West Indies,” Barbara told her mother. “Somewhere on that multitude of islands, there’s bound to be a gallant ship awaiting us.”
Her mother, who had relegated travel arrangements to her, said, “Second class on a steamer isn’t the end of the world.”
The Islander departed Jersey City on September 15. What a lumbering contrivance the steamer was: its stack belching dingy smoke and its weight pushing through waves like a plow plodding through snow. Standing at the metal rail listening to the trite talk of passengers simply didn’t match feeling the spray of a schooner’s bow or watching its crew work the sails.
Still, the first few days, Barbara sought out the company of several mates and quizzed them about the ship, just as she had on the Norman D. On the afternoon of their third day at sea, as they steamed alongside shiny-backed porpoises and schools of flying fish, something of the delight she’d known on her square-rigger voyage fluttered through her.
After dinner that evening, she and her mother hauled out their typewriters. While rays of sunlight bounced off the swells and glanced through their porthole, they tucked paper under platens and clacked away. For nearly an hour, they sat mulling and typing, speaking not at all.
When Barbara paused to roll out a filled-up sheet, her mother asked, “What are you writing?”
She balked at admitting she was composing a letter to her father. Why confess she hoped he’d eventually respond to her? And she did plan to write Toby, her old Norman D mate, at some point; he’d surely appreciate her reflections on the differences between steamers and schooners. So she said, “A letter to Toby. And you?”
“I’m trying to capture that scene between you and the bosun—how you jested about miscalculating our latitude after your sextant lesson.”
This steamer journey couldn’t rival her Norman D adventure, but she’d nevertheless glean what she might about sea travel. That very day she’d borrowed Dutton’s Nautical Navigation from the bosun. She intended to master it all—the sextant, the chronometer, and spherical trigonometry.
“Next,” her mother said, “I’ll write about you emerging from the engine room with grease on your face and hands.”
Barbara sighed. At least her mother wasn’t fretting all day about leaving Sabra behind or agonizing over which renters to choose.
Her mother leaned away from her typewriter. “Why don’t you read me some of what you’ve written.”
“Okay.” Barbara took up a page of her letter. “Here’s what I said about the ship: ‘The Islander is a bulky steamship, cranky and noisy, with its engines roaring away the live-long day. She smells like a factory, all grease and steel, and coal. Sixteen knots she can manage, which gives her an advantage over a schooner since she can steam along even when the trade winds are contrary. Still, I’ll take a square-rigger any day, with its sails billowing and a canny captain applying his know-how, whichever way the wind may blow.’”
“Bar, that’s lovely. But you’re not using carbon paper. You’ll have to retype the final, so you can save a copy. To use for your book.”
“I don’t know.” She wished her mother wouldn’t hound her about keeping a minute-by-minute record of this trip. She had no desire to write another Voyage of the Norman D.
“And
