I was too tired to speak and let Jon lead me like a child through a throng of quivering humanity. There were too many people to count. Mostly emigrants who had been refused entry and were on their way back to their country of origin. Others were travelers on their way to Europe for the summer. Jon said they would start with Rome and wind their way around the Continent.
“Have you been?” he asked, holding on to my arm as we pushed through the crowd.
“No,” I murmured, struggling to make sense of it all. I had gotten little sleep the night before, thinking about the sari and how it appeared in Jon’s kitchen. “We couldn’t afford it.”
“Well,” he grunted, using his sturdy shoulders as a battering ram, “remind me to take you to Venice.”
“Why? The way I’m going, I’ll be fortunate to see Christmas.”
“Have a little courage, wife,” Jon muttered, emphasizing the last word. He pushed past a family of six, clutching everything they owned and yelling at each other in Italian. One of the children stuck his tongue out at me. “All we have to do is make it to England.”
I sidestepped a pile of rotten fish—the stench so overpowering my eyes watered. “So you keep telling me.”
We paused near the gangway, and I noticed Jon kept peering over his shoulder. “What is it? Have we been followed?”
He did not answer, but merely pulled me with him.
As he yanked me up the gangway and onto the ship, he kindly informed me we would not be sharing a cabin as originally planned. He would berth with three other gentlemen, while I would share a cabin with several other women, possibly with children. “I’m sorry for the inconvenience,” Jon apologized, escorting me down a series of narrow corridors that were worthy of a maze. “Here,” he said, handing me my bundle of clothing and food. He knocked on the cabin door and turned the knob when there was no answer. “What do you think?”
Peering inside, I found four berths and a washbasin. I slipped past him and chose the top berth closest to the window. “I suppose this is… adequate,” I managed, near tears. “And where will you be?”
“Ah… near the stern,” he replied gruffly. “I don’t like it any more than you, Mrs. Powell. But it’s only for a week.” He grimaced. “Weather permitting.” He frowned at the sight of the threadbare blankets. “Er… you don’t get seasick, do you?”
“Before or after breakfast?”
“You’ll be fine.” He stepped aside to allow a plump blonde into the cabin and offered an encouraging smile. “Remember what I said,” he reminded me before he took off to find his cabin. “And whatever you do, don’t fall out of your berth.”
I could not offer a witty retort, too consumed with feelings of guilt and the thought that I was being punished for taking the sari. Jon did not trust me to ferry it to England and took it upon himself to hide it within his baggage. I felt it was in excellent hands. Unlike its previous guardian, who thought nothing of letting it slip through her fingers.
Climbing up into my berth, I loosened my boots and closed my eyes until I felt the ship’s movements beneath me.
* * *
The plump blonde spoke no English and claimed the remaining berths for her own when there were no other passengers to fill them. I cared little and slept most of the way to England, only rising to wash at the basin and prepare small meals of cheese and toast. I didn’t see Jon for two days after we sailed. When we met on the third-class deck, he appeared ill and looked to have gotten little sleep. “What happened to you?” I cried, taking him aside to a sheltered part of the deck. “Are you dying?”
“I feel like it,” he rasped, shivering despite the warmth of the afternoon. “I fear I may have eaten tainted sausages.”
“Your sausages or a stranger’s?”
“A little of both.” He struggled to sit down in a deck chair. “I’ll be all right. I’m just having a difficult time keeping anything… down.”
I felt his brow, startled at the warm clammy feel of it. “This will not do,” I said, thinking of the time Joshua fell ill before a football game. It was one of the last games of the season. Harvard and Princeton. Joshua had gone out the night before, had too much to drink, and vomited into his football helmet. My mother had not been amused. “What about soda water? Can you—”
“No, I cannot,” he answered tersely, reaching up with a trembling hand to yank me down beside him. “Soda water? In third-class? Shall I ask for a twist of lime as well?”
“Fine,” I sighed in defeat. “All I can recommend is lots of fluids and bedrest. Are those possible?”
“Not with my cabin mates,” he grumbled, turning an undiscovered shade of green. “One plays the accordion and the other dances a lively jig after supper.”
“Oh, dear.”
Jon waved my lament aside. “What about you?” he inquired with an awkward gulp. “Anything new to report?”
“I share a cabin with a Pole who changes berths every night.”
“What?!”
“There are no other passengers, so she’s claimed the remaining berths. I’m lucky she hasn’t shoved me out of mine.” I studied my fingernails, which I had bitten near to the quick. “Other than that, there is an unspoken agreement that I remain on my side of the cabin at all times.”
“She sounds horrid.”
“She can be. Especially when I want to cook. I gave up and stick to butter sandwiches.” I startled myself by wanting to get Jon into bed so I could nurse him. Suddenly, he wasn’t my partner in crime. He was Colonel Havelock, and he needed a nap. “How much more can you bear?”
“Oh, I don’t know. I was rather hoping the powdered milk would get me through the rest of the week.”
“I wish you’d stop joking,” I sighed, taking out a handkerchief and patting his brow dry. “Where do we stay once we arrive in London? I’ll take care of you.”
He looked startled. “You want to nurse me?”
Embarrassed, I glanced away. “Er… you suddenly remind me of your grandfather.” I cleared my throat. “At least tell me we’ll have a place to stay.”
“There’s grandfather’s townhouse. He hasn’t been in years.”
“That’s a relief.”
“But I don’t know about the kitchen. You might have to—”
“Say no more.” I dabbed his cheeks, thinking if were any paler, he’d be a ripe candidate for a coffin and a castle rental in Transylvania. “What do you like to eat?”
“In this condition?”
“When you’re on the mend,” I mumbled, handing him the handkerchief. “What do you do when you’ve had too much to drink?”
“I never imbibe,” he replied airily. I must have worn a shocked expression, for he amended his words hastily. “Liquor does not sit well with me. Makes me quite ill.”
“Never? Not even wine with dinner?”
“If I must have wine, it’s heavily watered.”
I was still doubtful. “What about friends? School chums? What did they say when you refused to join in the festivities?”
He shot me a baleful glare. “Do you really want to know what it was like?”
“No.”
We sat as reluctant partners, neither wishing to be a party to the events churning as swiftly as the sea beneath our feet. When next Jon spoke, I nearly spilled onto the deck. “I think Anderson followed us aboard ship.”
“Y-you’re joking,” I said shakily.
“I never joke, Mrs. Powell. Not about this.”
Gulping, I clasped my hands together. “And what makes you think so? Have you seen him?”
Jon shook his head slowly, his color worsening by the second. “I’ve been followed to the toilets,” he said with a slight gesture toward a pair of young men huddling near the railing. “Young boys, mostly. I suspect Anderson has paid a few spies to shadow us.” He rose with some difficulty and urged me to walk with him. “Have you noticed anything out of the ordinary?”
“I don’t think so. I mean, I try not to drink so much.” At his questioning look, I explained the current state of the women’s facilities. “They are not…”
“But you leave your cabin to walk about, yes?”
“I stay in my cabin. Sea voyages do not agree with me.”
“Then we’ll let them play. I just don’t want a confrontation.” He glanced down at himself. “I’m in no condition to parry.”
“All the more reason to keep the sari close. Use it as a pillow if you have to.”
“I am.”
“That’s good.”
I peered out towards the unending sea, wondering if I had been amiss in discarding the sari in the East River. Perhaps the North Atlantic would have been more conducive to our shared health. “Think the Atlantic would have made any difference?” I asked on the way back to our cabins.
“Out here?” Jon responded dryly. “Hardly. She’s determined. I doubt even the Mariana trench would have been deep enough.”
We parted ways at a junction near the stern. I would not see Jon again until the day we arrived in London.
The night before we dropped anchor, I caught my cabin mate nosing through my things after I returned from the toilets. I calmly took my bundle and dumped it on the floor, revealing stale oyster crackers and a moldy block of cheese. I even held up my underdrawers and petticoats and showed her the holes in my stockings.
Apparently, shame was as alien to her as the English language.
When she was done turning my underwear inside out, she waited until I had gone to bed to search through my discarded clothing. Just for spite, I shimmied out of my nightgown and hurled it at her.
I didn’t hear a peep out of her until morning.
