‘Have you met Clementine?’
‘Oh, yes.’ He sounds relieved, like this is a question he can easily answer.
‘What’s she like?’
Les is now looking like an anxious St Bernard. Eventually he says, ‘Nice woman.’
Emma gets the impression Les is not used to discussing others. He surprises her by adding, ‘Betsy sets great store by her.’
‘In what way?’
‘Well,’ he says slowly, ‘Betty says Clem’s just one of those people who—’
They are interrupted by a harassed-looking man with a toddler in tow, needing advice about sheds.
Les brightens, clearly back on safe ground. He nods a farewell to Emma and launches into a discussion of overlapping apexes and scalloped profiles.
As Emma walks away wondering,one of those people whowhat?,she reflects that ‘shed speak’ is as foreign a language to her as discussing people appears to be to Les.
It is only as she is driving away that she remembers the other reason she went to the garden centre. She has been meaning to ask Les if he’s ever done any research into his family tree. With his interest in history, it seems possible, and he might have some advice.
Her own research is stalling. Not only is the search for The Florist taking precedence, but she is unearthing nothing of interest in her family tree. The more she digs, the more it feels like trying to find a connection with The Nurse is just a distraction. She senses something is slipping from her, without having any idea of what it is.
As she drives, she lowers the sun visor and rummages, one-handed, in her bag for her sunglasses. She is starting to get what she now thinks of as one of her headaches. These are often accompanied by a wave of exhaustion that leaves her listless and lightheaded. Mostly she puts this down to grief– except when the headaches arrive in the middle of the night; then she starts to worry she is developing the degenerative condition sheused to research. This irrational fear always dissipates with the dawn.
Chapter 32
Violet
Wax Flowers
The journey from Southampton Station to her lodgings is accompanied by unfamiliar noise and familiar rain. As water drips from the moustache of the porter beside her she wonders if he is raining, too. He has the demeanour of a cloud heavy with water and disappointment. She knows her tip is not going to alleviate his gloom. It is all she can spare, and she spends the journey imagining the moment when she will hand it over.
At the lodging house, everything is brown, and very little light seeps through the brocade drapes. The furniture is heavy and weighed down by ornaments: stuffed birds with beady eyes; wax flowers that will never drop; and picture frames encrusted with shells that can no longer hear the sea. On the floor are numerous animal skins. She wonders if the dark furniture fell on them squashing them flat, pinning them to the floor. She does not like to step on them and add to their misery so plots a path around them as if they were islands.
The landlady who greets her is as large and solid as her furniture, but when she talks her voice is bright and light, and her eyes are merry. She thinks of a nurse she once knew when she was a little girl.
Her landlady sits her at the table and pours her cups of steaming tea as the men who lodge with her come and go. Some are old– tanned as dark as the brown furniture. Others are young and walk as if they are still rolling the deck of a ship. Her landlady explains that she likes to accommodate sailors, her late husband having been a man of the sea. Some sit for a while and smoke a pipe, sharing stories as the smoke gently drifts through the air. Her landlady tells her that the sailors’ favourite tobacco is called Faithful Lover.
All the men are respectful and kind to the new lodger, and she begins to see that her landlady’s house is like the earth of the old man’s garden by the station: dark and heavy in which good things grow.
The following day she sends her luggage on, then leaves the lodgings, holding tight to the bag containing her letter of introduction. When she reaches the docks, the cranes rising out of the gloom remind her of the vultures she once saw in Argentina, long necks straining downwards to pluck at the inside of a carcass.
As she gets closer, the ships appear to draw themselves up to tower over her. She feels herself shrinking, afraid she might be crushed beneath their enormous hulls. She cannot measure their enormity on any scale she knows and so as she walks, she focuses on the smaller details: the face of a porter, a newspaper seller, her hand in her new glove– things she can fit into her mind.
Her eyes follow a cart loaded with crates of she knows not what, drawn by a horse that restlessly shakes his head as if he too is worried about being crushed. As she steps aside to let the cart pass, she catches the scent of the sea mixed with a pungent oily tang and she knows this is the fishmonger’s horse. Then the scent of Faithful Lover breaks through the fishy smell, and the familiar smokiness calms her.
Only when she finds her ship does she raise her eyes to take in the full size of it– and although she does not smile, she does not cry either. Her vessel is the smaller sister of the ships that are moored around it. This gives her comfort, and she draws the letter from her bag.
On the front of the envelope, Mr Turkey has written:
Orinoco: Steamer Class.
Destination: West Indies.
Chapter 33
Emma
