Esmé stirred once or twice, then fell into a deep, natural slumber. Only later, when we were actually in the Hellespont and the water was growing choppier, did she wake up. I was dozing myself by then. I heard her gagging and spluttering and hardly realised what was happening before I recognised the smell and felt dampness on my chest. She had vomited all over me. This was one of the few things she had in common with Mrs Cornelius. I accepted the discomfort as fitting revenge for the blow, cleaned myself as best I could, then, putting her head back on my shoulder, stroked her to sleep. It seemed my destiny to fall in love with women who had weak stomachs. The sounds and scents of the sea altered subtly as we slipped into the Aegean, passing close to Lemnos and its big Russian refugee camp. With a certain amount of malice I thought that sooner or later the Baroness and Kitty must arrive here. It would be a shame if the child suffered, but Leda deserved a short spell in such conditions. Only then, I thought, would she come to realise from what I had saved her, how much she had lost because of her hysterical folly and her unreasonable jealousy. I had been more than careful to consider her feelings. Now she, in my absence, could consider mine!
By midmorning of the following day it became apparent that Captain Kazakian was not the mariner he had claimed to be. By the afternoon it was also obvious neither he nor his boat was fitted for the voyage. The paddlesteamer was mechanically sound, in the sense that most of her parts functioned properly but she was hardly a seagoing boat at all, being more suitable for ferrying work on inland waters. I caught the captain twice puzzling over maps and staring through an old telescope at the coast. We had never gone out of sight of shore. The launch now stank of burning oil and several times I had awakened from my doze in alarm, thinking we were on fire.
I did everything I could to keep my knowledge and my fears from the almost comatose Esmé. Mostly she lay full length on the bench, very occasionally taking faltering steps to make dry, retching noises over the rail. She had eaten nothing since Constantinople. For that I was selfishly grateful, though increasingly I was concerned about her. I could not believe anyone would react so badly to mere anxiety. Sometimes she looked up at me to ask in a tiny voice if we had arrived yet. I was forced to shake my head. All I could reply was ‘Soon.’ Then I would go to the wheelhouse and discover the bulky Armenian struggling with charts, frowning at instruments and scratching his head with the peak of his filthy cap. His reply to my question was usually a grunt and always the unreassuring information that we were ‘not far from Greece’. I admit my own geography had also been at fault, for I had believed Captain Kazakian when he said Venice was little more than a day’s voyage. At length, when I forced a more specific answer from him, he admitted our position was ‘somewhere near Smyrna’, which was almost the last place I wished to be. He tried to ease my mind by pointing at his obviously malfunctioning compass. ‘But we are on our way to Mykonos.’ He explained Mykonos was Greek; an island ‘not far from Athens’. By that evening, as the sun went down below a mysterious range of bleak cliffs and while Kazakian muttered in tempo with his engine, still puzzling over his sea-maps, Esmé was asleep and I was starving. It had not occurred to me to bring food.
Later, one of the passengers offered me a piece of thin sausage and some pitta which I gratefully accepted. He was more outgoing, more confident than most of the others (who now seemed like fellow refugees rather than tourists); a big man in a black overcoat and black astrakhan hat. He introduced himself as Mr Kiatos and was reassuringly content with the progress of the voyage. He had travelled on the launch several times, he said. She always managed to survive the trip in one piece. He was a businessman, dealing mainly in dried fruits, and he had cousins in Constantinople. He lived at Rythemo, he said. A regular steamer never took this route. If he travelled by more conventional means he would have to transfer boats once or twice and thus lose a great deal of time. I asked him where Rythemo was. It was on Crete. Captain Kazakian, I said, had given me the impression we were going straight to Venice. At this Mr Kiatos smiled without rancour in the folds of his smooth, well tempered face. ‘I think the Captain goes wherever we pay him to go, sir. And he tells each passenger he is sailing direct to that place!’ He chewed with pleasure on his sausage, returning his attention to the placid surface of the sea, while I stretched out on one of the empty benches and managed to sleep.
I was awakened by the night’s chill. We were moving slowly beneath a magnificent yellow moon. To our port the craggy cliffs ran with foam. The sea was still relatively calm but I could hear breakers rushing on a beach. The lights of our launch swung back and forth and human silhouettes stood leaning against the rails. Esmé was sitting upright, clinging with outstretched arms to the back of the bench, like a crucified doll. I asked if she were better. She wanted some water. I went below to where their tongueless Bulgarian cook sat playing cards with one of the other unwholesome-looking crewmen. I signed to him. I needed water from the barrel. He made an expansive, hospitable gesture. Cleaning out a mug, I carried it back for Esmé, who swallowed, spluttered, then asked if we were sinking. I pretended to laugh. ‘They’re putting a passenger ashore, that’s all. A minor delay. It won’t be much longer before we’re in Venice.’
She rolled her eyes upwards like some Godforsaken martyr, then again subsided into sleep. She seemed feverish so I dabbed the rest of the water on her forehead. I noticed my own hand was shaking. I forced myself to be calmer.
With a good deal of yelling and cursing from Captain Kazakian, his men brought the launch closer to shore. They started to unship one of the boats. A large Gladstone bag at his feet, Mr Kiatos stood over me, wanting to shake hands. I had become so abstracted, I had not at first noticed him. ‘This is where I leave you, sir.’ He smiled with sympathetic humour. ‘I hope it isn’t too long before you arrive in Venice.’ He bent down and placed the rest of his food and a little packet of dried figs on the bench beside me.
I watched him clamber gracefully over the side, then came to my senses enough to move to the rail. A seaman rowed him through choppy water towards the beach. I waved at him, but he did not see me. For a moment I wondered why they had not docked at the town’s wharf. Then it occurred to me we were probably closer to Mr Kiatos’s home and Kazakian was avoiding port fees. It might also be that Mr Kiatos was a smuggler.
By morning the boat was shaking and squealing across a calm sea beneath pure blue skies and I was trying to get Esmé to take some crumbled biscuits and milk, which an Italian woman had given me. The land was almost out of sight and Captain Kazakian therefore was making frantic efforts to get closer in to what he guessed might be Hydra. He was inclined to panic if, even for a few minutes, the horizon consisted only of ocean. For my part I had sunk into that peculiar stupor which over the years has helped me stand many kinds of boredom and several sorts of terror. I sat with Esmé’s poor little burning head in my lap, staring forward, watching for clouds and praying a storm did not come. By now I was perfectly convinced the launch could not possibly ride anything more than a squall. Captain Kazakian’s need for reassurance no longer seemed unreasonable. Further passengers were put off, usually in obscure coves of nameless islands. Sometimes a person would object, claiming he did not recognise the coastline or that it was not the exact place to which he had paid passage. At this, Captain Kazakian would shrug. He would argue. He would stab his filthy stubs of fingers at the charts. He would offer to take them on to his next port of call or carry them back to Constantinople. Then eventually, resentful and suspicious, they would disembark. It had, of course, become absolutely clear we should not be sailing into Venice via the Grand Canal. We should be lucky if he landed us on a stretch of pebbles less than ten miles from the city. Not that this likelihood disturbed me very much, since it was important to avoid the authorities if at all possible. I was actually comforted by the knowledge that almost every other person on board was also anxious to remain inconspicuous. Now no embarrassment existed between us; nonetheless very few fellow passengers attempted to communicate. It seemed we shared a similar reaction to our plight. Nothing we could say would improve our situation; so we said nothing.