But she looked at him, and both knew he would only leave her if forced.
She put out a hand and touched his sleeve in confessing, ‘I no longer believe we are the ones who will decide.’
They had both, perhaps, weathered, or matured, and deeper than their skins. Their thoughts revealed themselves more obliquely under the salt which an uncertain sunlight had dried on their faces. A grime of salt and powdered ash encrusted Mrs Roxburgh’s hands, most noticeably her rings, which she was wearing for their safety. They were not many (she had not set much store by precious stones after the first flush of her marriage) but now these few glittered most unnaturally.
‘Should you be wearing them?’ he asked.
‘What else? Shall I throw them into the sea?’
Then at least they laughed together. They were temporarily possessed by an almost sensual indifference to their fate. Mrs Roxburgh’s stance against the bulwark was not far removed from the slatternly; the scuttle of her bonnet had lost its symmetry, and the hem of her skirt several inches of its stitching, with the result that it hung in a dangerous loop. If Austin Roxburgh was more correct in appearance, he took advantage of their laughter to press himself briefly but deliciously against her side, as though they were alone, or in the dark.
She sighed at last, and petulantly. ‘Do you think we shall ever get away?’ Remissness on the part of a coachman might have delayed them in starting for the picnic she had organized.
‘They will manage it!’ Though cynicism and convention would have prevented him admitting it even now, Austin Roxburgh had the greatest faith in the working class.
Never more dismal than when handing food, Spurgeon came and offered them some, together with a word of warning. ‘Here is something to chew on,’ he muttered.
Mr Roxburgh remarked that he had scarcely any appetite, while accepting a hard biscuit and one or two shreds of beef fringed with beads of greyish fat.
Out of another convention, Mrs Roxburgh might have been preparing to charm Spurgeon into their saloon relationship of mistress and man, but the steward chose not to understand, and went away.
Some of the crew were stuffing their mouths with the haste which comes of sharpened hunger and fear that soon they must go short. Others choked and swallowed as they worked at repairing the long-boat. Even those who stood watching would offer a tool before the necessity arose, or take a turn at stirring with exaggerated care the pot of tar which played a major part in the caulking; while one or two, smiling and heavy-lidded, appeared drugged by the fumes they were inhaling or mesmerized by the rolling of a pitch-black eye into indifference towards the future.
As the Roxburghs looked on and waited they did as they had been told by Spurgeon. Although Mrs Roxburgh almost revolted in swallowing a lump of rancid fat, and splinters of lean stuck between their teeth, the wholly physical act of chewing began to pacify their squeamish souls. The biscuit was more austere than the meat, but responded to gnawing and sucking; reduced to a wholly insipid pap, it trickled down easily enough, and encouraged a sense of melancholy fulfilment in revived stomachs.
In the course of the afternoon the crew finished patching the damaged boat, with lead, leather, and scraps of blanket, their handiwork copiously daubed with pitch. It was past five by the time the boats were clear of the wreck. Mr Pilcher, in charge of the pinnace, had with him the boatswain, four seamen, and a lad, while Captain Purdew in the long-boat was accompanied by his first officer, the steward, a carpenter, five seamen, the boy Oswald Dignam — and the two passengers in addition. As the boats parted from Bristol Maid none of the survivors was able to believe that any of this had truly happened, so their dazed eyes seemed to express, their mouths either clenched, tight and resentful, or hanging slack with a look of watery injury.
Of all the company, Mrs Roxburgh was perhaps the most deeply moved: to be ejected thus from the cramped cabin and rather inhospitable saloon which her own moods, thoughts, and attempts at occupation had furnished as a dwelling place. Now she could not bear to visualize even the lumpy palliasse on which she had learnt to sleep, or the mirror in which her face had floated, often unconvincingly, amongst the frosting and the blemishes.
Here they were, however, in long-boat and pinnace. Mr Courtney was using his quadrant to make calculations, as the result of which, a course was set for the mainland, an estimated thirty miles to the west.
‘Bye-bye, Bristol Maid!’ a seaman aboard the long-boat shouted from the depths of his lungs.
He began at once to laugh and cough, exposing the ruins of some brown teeth set in expansive though bloodless gums, the tendons in his neck showing in relief like a protective bulwark.
Mrs Roxburgh decided not to turn her head, much as she was drawn to the hulk they were abandoning.
Despite the presence of gentry the crews of the rival boats started shouting ribaldries at one another. The burr and clash of their men’s voices seemed to give them courage.
‘See you in Wapping, Nat!’ yelled a tiger from the pinnace.
‘We’ll wap in other parts afore we ever see bloody Wappin’!’ answered a hitherto speechless youth.
‘Ay,’ a grizzled fellow beside him snuffled back the snot in his pug’s nose, ‘there’ll be rocks aplenty with shag on ’en for those who fancies.’
The men fell into a gloom after that. Whether the object of their outburst was to disguise tender feelings in themselves, or to shock a lady they had at their mercy, they failed either way; for the lady, who showed no signs of being hard of hearing, continued taking a clear-eyed if somewhat exaggerated interest in the empty sea surrounding them.
If Ellen Gluyas resented their obscenities it was on account of Mr Roxburgh: that his sensibility might be offended, or that he should suspect her of countenancing ‘men’s talk’. But he gave no indication of having heard or understood, and soon they were all immersed in preoccupations of greater moment.
The sea which had appeared gentle enough as they drew away from the wrecked ship slapped at the boat’s sides with increasing vigour, and a stately ice-pudding of a cloud evolved less passive forms and blacker intentions as it was moved towards them. The gold of a rampant sun and the threatening obscurity of storm and night offered an intolerable contrast to the more fearful among the castaways. Any of those who looked her way saw such a substantial Bristol Maid it pierced their conscience to know that they were abandoning her. Heeled over as she was on the reef, the little ship held firm, even when the sea raised a great white arm and brought it crashing down across her bows.
The restraint she had been taught to cultivate made it difficult for Mrs Roxburgh to cry, when Ellen Gluyas would probably have blubbered out loud, for witnessing something of the slow death of a ship. But Mrs Roxburgh did at last gently weep, hoping that none of the men, least of all Mr Roxburgh, would see.
‘Ma’am, look! Yer shawl’s trailin’ over th’ gunnel. ’Tis soaked!’ It was Oswald Dignam’s voice; he had wormed close, then closer she noticed, since boarding.
‘Oh,’ she sighed, ‘the shawl,’ and smiled at the boy like the benevolent patroness she was expected to be.
She had bundled the shawl over an arm, and forgotten about it. Now she hauled it in and wrung out the water from the drowned fringe.
‘Thank you, Oswald. But will it, I wonder, matter?’
Because he did not altogether understand, and was afraid of damaging a delicate relationship, he did not answer.
The boats were blown on their reckless course.
Mrs Roxburgh realized that water had seeped beyond the soles into the uppers of her boots.
‘Mr Roxburgh,’ she asked, ‘have you wrapped up?’