Nurse looked very thoughtful, and answered: ‘I wonder.’
They had not heard my steps, and blushed a little as I came up. The air was stifling: it smelt of disinfectant. Natàsha, looking small in her striped flannel chemise, looked up at me and raised her delicate faint brow. ‘Ah! Mr. Georges!’
The ship’s surgeon had diagnosed her illness as being due to a mild sunstroke, the remedy being complete rest and special diet, for the little girl was very sick and could not eat.
‘Well, Natàsha, what is the matter, dear?’
‘It is romatism,’ she said — and sighed.
I stood watching her, at a loss for what to say. When we were left alone, she motioned me to her side. ‘Sit on my bed.’
I took her warm, perspiring hand, touched her slender fingers.
‘No fancy-dress,’ she said. ‘No fancy-dress because of me!’
‘Yes. No one wants to have one without you. It’s been put off for a week till you get better again.’
‘Oh, goodness gracious! A week! I’ll be up tomorrow—’ And she sighed.
‘What is it?’
‘Headache,’ she said. ‘Headache,’ wrinkling her brow.
‘Is Harry not breaking my doll?’ she suddenly asked.
‘No, I’m keeping an eye on it.’
‘Norkins can play with my doll. But tell Harry he mustn’t touch it; he’ll break it — and s’mine.’
‘I’ll touch him if he touches it.’
‘Gug-g-g-g-g—’ she laughed her gurgling laughter, and then said:
‘Have you seen Princess Mary?’
I had to confess that I had not.
‘Give me that paper, please.’
I stretched across to the opposite bunk and got it for her.
‘What are you looking for?’
‘Wait.’
She had seen Princess Mary’s photograph in the Graphic, and had fallen in love with her. Now she found the page. ‘Look! Oh, how beauty!’ she said. ‘Oh, what a lovely — Princess Mary!’
‘When we get to London,’ I said, ‘you shall see her.’
‘London. What’s it means London? How do you get at London?’
‘We shall get at it all right. It’s a big place with lots of buses and underground trains and moving staircases and things, on which you have only to stand still while up — up — up they take you, straight into the streets.’
‘Is that how you get to the King and — his wife?’ she enquired.
‘Oh yes. I will take you when we get there.’
‘Oh, goodness gracious!’ she said, bubbling all over. She sat up in bed, and pulling me over to her side nestled to me in her warm striped flannel chemise. ‘Oh, you are my uncle, I love you. You are my daddy, when daddy is away … you are my daddy. Headache,’ she said, wrinkling her brow. ‘Headache — headache.’
I touched her forehead with my own; it was hard, warm, hot, moist. As I got up to go, she held me by the hand: ‘Stay with me.’
‘Lie down, Natàsha. You must lie down. Lie down, that’s right.’
‘Oh, you are my uncle. Oh, stay with me. Uncle Georgie: I love you. I love you, Uncle Georgie. Uncle Georgie: I love you. Stay with me.’
I was loth to leave her, and she was loth to let me go; but when her mother came I went away, and smoking, pondered on the nature of her illness. What was it? No one knew. The doctor didn’t really seem to know himself.
But the third day she only said: ‘Drink Drink Drink …’ The skin was very tight on her face. When in good health she was very pale, had scarcely ever any colour. But now, writhing in fever, her cheeks were like ripe cherries in their warm gloss; she was flushed and more beautiful than I had ever seen her. In her delirium she muttered: ‘These awful mens — take away these awful mens.’ When she came to, she only muttered: ‘Drink. Drink. Drink …’
Berthe dashed past me as I came up the steps of the saloon. ‘What is it, Berthe?’
‘The little one,’ she said, ‘is very bad.’
I dreamt that what I dreaded most — Natàsha’s death — had come true, and then I dreamt that my fears were false: that I had only dreamt it, and I felt at ease. Later I woke. I woke — and she was dead; and it was unreal like a bad dream.
In the morning, before I knew the worst, I slipped up in my dressing-gown and slippers. It was very early still, and the decks were being scrubbed; the water rushed out of the hose and streamed in broad floods down the sloping deck. In the saloon doorway stood the ship’s surgeon, looking out to sea, and puffed at the end of his cigarette. His tired eyes twitched in the smoke, and the way he held the cigarette, between forefinger and thumb, spoke of relaxation after extreme strain.
I dared not ask. I dared not look. He greeted me with a nod, and looked out to sea.
I waited. ‘How is she?’
The surgeon first puffed at his cigarette.
‘Just died, poor little girl.’ And he looked out to sea.
‘We shall drift into a monsoon by tonight. See those two cursed sharks — see them? Been following us these last three days. We shall drift into a monsoon. But the Captain wants to go on and coal at Aden. First Officer thinks we ought to go to Bombay before we run out of coal. Never been on such a ship before! Yes, she’s dead, poor little girl.’
I did not understand. It was devoid of meaning. I went down into the ward to have a look at her. Natàsha lay perfectly still, and her closed lids made her faint brows look the more naïve, tender and touching. She looked like a wax doll.
Perhaps all life is but a dream within a dream, and what we call reality is but our dream of waking, of having woken; that presently we shall awake again and find that what we thought to be ‘reality’ is all without existence. Natàsha’s death … I’m dreaming? The sea breeze touches my hair perceptibly: all the same, I may be dreaming that. And if not, what matter? For even as she died she may have woken — wide awake — and smiled, and smiled, over the erstwhile burthen.
I went back into my cabin, shaved, bathed, and dressed as usual. And all the time it seemed as if all this sudden meaningless disaster was but a bad dream, that in a little while I would really wake and smile at having dreamt of so intolerable, so hideous, a bereavement.
Yet she was dead. Strange as it was, she was dead. Came a time when it no longer seemed strange. A sharp fact, it had to be faced; and faced, it became a blunt fact. She had gone unharmed through two revolutions, five sieges, two seasons of famine and pestilence. She died on the tropical water, in plenty and comfort and quietude, no one ever knew why.
The parents felt anxious to postpone the moment of burial; but the Captain’s attitude in the matter was that he would brook no interference with the ship’s routine. At 8 a.m. a procession of men carrying a plank walked down imperturbably to the hospital ward below. Natàsha, sewn up in sail cloth, with weights put inside to prevent her from floating, was placed on the plank, and the Russian tricolour — the obsolete flag of white, blue and red, hurriedly stitched together — was laid on the little body. The same men took up the burthen and carried it out on to the forecastle, followed by the procession of the ship’s officers, who had donned their full-dress uniforms, which looked like glorified frock coats. Here the procession of men halted, the burthen was laid down on two stools. In front stood the Anglican Chaplain, in surplice and hood (for want of an Orthodox priest). Behind stood the taciturn Captain, his staff drawn up at his back: the silent First Officer, shabby and long-legged in his moth-eaten full dress, the Second Officer with black whiskers, the tall Chief-Engineer, the darkish Ship’s Surgeon, the fat little Purser, and others. The Captain looked unpleasant, but yet as though pleased at the opportunity of shining in his gala dress. His look, ominously triumphant, seemed to say: ‘I am the smallest of the bunch, but the boss of you tall ones for all that.’ There was a subtle distinction about it, of which he seemed conscious. He reminded me of little Lloyd George as head of his tall Cabinet. His eyesore, the Commodore, on the contrary, stood gazing down nonchalantly from the upper deck, in a blue river jacket, his hands in his white flannels, and watched dispassionately at what we were ‘up to’. Captain Negodyaev seemed to have shrunken in stature, as he stood there with the inexorable rays of the morning sun beating down on his scantily covered temples and nape of the neck. He was very nervous, and his scraggy longish yellow moustache twitched without cease. Next him stood his wife, a crumpled swooning figure, as though Fate itself this time had stepped on her. Obstinately my mind refused to believe in the reality and the finality of death, until I mocked my own mind, refused to believe she was dead despite the body at my feet. Such things may happen in books, or in nightmares, or in other people’s lives, but not in mine. It was a cloudless morning of extreme heat and stuffiness and damp, and the decks were crowded, noisy and indifferent, and I thought that suffering and death should be in the wind and cold of winter, in the slough and drowsiness of autumn, but not in summer — oh, not in summer. Some curious passengers looked down from the upper decks. I noticed the General with the mad eyes. His own tragedy swept aside to naught, he stood there, his legs considerably apart, his head unkempt, a gaping figure, dirty and uncouth, whose only feeling seemed curiosity.