Honey Harlot by Christianna Brand Read Free Book Online Page A

knew such a berth. I wish already I was out of it.’
    ‘Giving anudder yell and she’ll being out quick enough,’ said Martens, grinning. ‘She’s not liking bad words, no more dan de Captain does.’ He jerked a thumb. ‘Come, lady, dis ain’t no place for you, go where you belonging.’ And he grinned again. ‘On de lower deck you’ll maybe finding better companies.’ I think that I flinched away, mystified that they should be so rough and hostile and he added, winking across at the boy. ‘Below deck is where is keeping de pigs unt der hens.’
    A couple of poor sea-sick piglets for slaughtering on the voyage to provide fresh meat; a coop full of hens for eggs. On this trip, however, we carried none; I think that in his panic rush to leave New York and Mary Sellers, my husband would not wait for livestock; and I was thankful enough not to have to think of them, cooped up and stifling down there. I turned away sadly and leaned in my old way on the rail and looked down at the rush of the water against the side of the ship and thought how wide was the ocean, limitless about me and how bright; and how wide was the world into which the past few weeks had brought me—and how dark.
    That evening the boy slapped down upon the table a piece of bacon, barely cooked, a dish of potatoes hard at the centre and a bowl of hot raw cabbage leaves. The chief mate was at the wheel, the second mate ate with us. My husband said: ‘What’s this?’
    ‘ Her orders,’ said Tedhead with a crude gesture in my direction.
    ‘Her orders, whose orders? Do you speak of your Captain’s wife with a jerk of your thumb?’
    ‘Mrs Briggs told him the way she wished the food cooked, sir,’ said Gilling. To me he added, with sneering triumph: ‘I regret, Ma’am, already the men are complaining.’
    ‘Go,’ said my husband to the steward. Tedhead disappeared back into the pantry. My husband said: ‘Madam, what is this?’
    ‘I only said that… He’s only a boy, he doesn’t understand…’
    ‘And you an older woman, I suppose, and accomplished ship’s cook?’ And indeed, the boy was older than I by two or three years, I daresay, and I knew only what my mother had taught me and all those officious sisters, complaining, ‘You’re all fingers and thumbs, can’t you so much as cook a cabbage leaf?’ If I had been a little cleverer, cleverer in my mind or cleverer in my hands, either one or the other!—but I was neither, I was nothing. I thought how happy it might all have been, the Master’s wife brisk, capable, and yet charming them all into ready acquiescence, revolutionising the dreary intake of necessary food into meals that, even when the fresh food had given way to conserved meat and dried pulses, would be a pleasure after each spell of hard work. I thought of a jolly crew, vying with one another to satisfy my questioning, explain things to me, until all the world of sail would speak of young Mrs Briggs, ‘knows as much about her ship as the Master does’; in my mind’s eye, I saw the crew lining up after each voyage to wish me God speed and thank me, caps off and three cheers for the mistress of the Mary Celeste… The boy’s harsh voice broke in: ‘Shall I bring in the duff, sir? It’s from the dinner hour, heated up. It wasn’t eaten then.’
    My fault, my foolish fault that a meal of raw bacon and uncooked vegetables should be followed by a soggy mess of heated-up plum duff, heavy as lead. I saw the triumphant gleam in the mate’s cold blue eye and I thought, what have they got against me? Why should they resent me? What mistake have I made?
    I am a figurehead, a wooden figurehead all painted in gay colours in the sparkle of the sunshine, in the fine white spray; and if when storms arise I am lashed by the waves of my husband’s wrath, foundering beneath the heavy seas of his loveless lust—at least a painted wooden figurehead has no heart to break…
    Two more days passed and on the third day my heart broke