The Lifeboat by Charlotte Rogan Read Free Book Online Page B

sort of dresses!’ to which he replied, ‘No one will notice what you wear.’ ‘As if you would know a thing about what other people notice!’ she said sharply, and then she huffed off.”
    A few minutes later, Mrs. Cook whispered to me, “Of course, she acted all charming whenever I came face-to-face with her, but I know what she was thinking. She was thinking that I wasn’t at the captain’s table. She was thinking that a companion is the same thing as a servant and that if it weren’t for Mrs. McCain, I wouldn’t have been in first class at all. She was thinking that Mrs. McCain needed a companion only because she wasn’t married and that a woman without a husband occupies a lower social level than a married woman like herself. And the way the captain looked at her! There was something unsavory going on there, you mark my words.”
    It seemed hardly fair that all of Mrs. Cook’s hostility toward the Cumberlands was laid on the milky shoulders of Penelope Cumberland and that, for some reason, Mr. Cumberland got off scot-free. I had found Penelope quite delightful and her husband a bore, but I also knew that wives made easier targets. I tried to point out that people sat at the captain’s table by personal invitation only, and that, as I understood it, those invitations were predicated upon social standing, which contradicted both the notion that the Cumberlands had fallen on hard times and the idea that there was something underhanded about their actions.
    “That’s my point exactly!” said Mrs. Cook, either impervious to reason or unwilling to be talked out of her animosity. “They had no social standing, nor money either! I heard the mister talking to Captain Sutter one day. I can’t say I heard what was said exactly, but the gist of it was clear, and after that they didn’t miss a day, always sweeping into the dining room ahead of everyone and demanding to be seated first. You were at the captain’s table, weren’t you, Grace? Did the Cumberlands ever explain why they started sitting there?”
    “Not to me, they didn’t, and I would never have asked. It’s my experience that we can come up with five reasons why something might have happened, and the truth will always be the sixth.” I did happen to know something about the Cumberlands, but I had been sworn to secrecy, and I didn’t see any reason to enlighten a busybody like Mrs. Cook.
    Of course, trying to stop Mrs. Cook from speculating was like trying to stop an ocean wave mid-swell, and she went on with her usual categorizing and generalizations. She considered herself a grand storyteller, and the people sitting near her would listen with rapt attention. When they asked questions, she would make up details and theories to please them. Now she said, “People who are used to having money are mortified by the idea that someday their circumstances might change. You and Mr. Winter were very comfortable, weren’t you, Grace? Wasn’t the idea of not being so something you would be horrified to consider?”
    I had been taught that money was not a fit subject for conversation, so I replied firmly that Henry handled the financial matters in our family and that I rarely thought about them, if I ever did.
    Mrs. Cook’s stories were intimate, often told in a conspiratorial whisper to interested parties, who had to be sitting near her, and even then we sometimes had to lean toward her in order to hear. Mr. Sinclair, on the other hand, was something of a scholar and would tell us stories about things he had read. He had a booming voice and often claimed the entire boat as his audience, particularly at night, when sounds seemed to travel farther than they did during the day. I don’t know how the subject of memory arose, but Mr. Sinclair informed us that as far back as the fourth century BC , Aristotle was writing about it in a scientific way. “Aristotle determined that memory has only to do with the past, not with the present or the future,” he