Her cabinmate offers no help, only resentment, and this she dishes out like it is harvest time and she has cut it fresh herself. On top of the lashings of resentment, she has one piece of advice, which she hands out like a slap:
‘The youngest has to do more of the work, it’s only fair.’
It doesn’t seem fair to her, but she soon finds out it is true. It feels like she never stops moving. She runs to help her passengers; she spins to clean and clear; she jumps when spoken to. Everything is rushing and bobbing– the ship and her on it.
She does not know which is worse: the seasickness or the homesickness. The seasickness leaves her white and sweating. Until now, she never knew you could sweat with cold. She tries to lean into the waves like her large friend and concentrates hard on not being sick, especially when she is being bullied by the over-perfumed woman with bad teeth in Stateroom Four. She wonders what would happen if she were sick all over her and her Pekinese, in its puce satin bed. Would she be thrown overboard? She doubts if even the kindly Big Barbadian would dive in to save her.
Her homesickness comes in waves like the seasickness. It can start with the sound of feet pounding on the wooden deck or the sight of blue flowers embroidered on a handkerchief. The memory of her sister wearing a forget-me-not crown she has woven for her– a prelude to pain.
The homesickness and the seasickness are things that must be borne, and when the sea calms and the temperature rises, she finds both are easier to endure. As the sun comes out, painting the ship in brighter colours, so the passengers seem to unfurl like flowers. They smile at her and think to praise her for an extraordinary service, like fetching a shawl, then a book, then a parasol. Their memories improve, too, as the sun bakes their hat-covered heads and soon they can recall her name and remember they are meant to tip her.
The sun does not reach into her companion’s part of the cabin– which includes the entire floor, all the surfaces, every drawer and most of the hanging space in the cupboard. Here it is still winter.
Sometimes she escapes the chill, and up on the deck, hidden behind the lifeboat winch, the sun warms her shoulders and arms until they are the temperature of freshly baked bread. There are precious minutes here, moments when she can watch the world of water.
And it is from here she spies her first dolphin.
Chapter 35
Emma
Brass Flowers
As Emma emerges from Clem’s flower shop, she thinks she will never tire of visiting Cambridge. She loves the arched gateways that lead into the colleges and the secret worlds within, and the soaring, cathedral-like buildings that appear around each corner.
She walks along, thinking about Betty and Les, and about what an amazing woman Clem turned out to be. She is now confident that therewasa florist of some sort on board theTitanic– maybe notThe Florist, but someone who had a gift with flowers. She still does not have the least idea how she is going to find this person but she is sure something will come to her.
She smiles at strangers, knowing this is not what her mother would do, and she touches the top of her head to feel where the sun has warmed it. What was it Clem said?Don’t be like her. Simple as that.
She runs her fingers through her hair making it bigger, wilder.
On the corner of the street, she stops to stare at the dipping rays lighting the buildings around her. She gazes at the golden stone, the herringbone brickwork and the intricate patterns created by the shadows. Looking down, she sees with surprise that the streets are paved with flowers. Beneath her foot is a small brass, flower head set into a paving stone. A bit further ahead is another and then another.
She follows the flower path, stepping carefully from one paving stone to the next, toes touching the flowers but never the lines on the street. In all her years in Cambridge, she has never noticed these flowers before.
When she comes across the scarlet door of a tapas bar, Emma realises how hungry she is. She opens the door and is met with a wall of conversation and laughter, and catches two waiters exchanging remarks in Spanish. She has the pleasant sensation that this bar is everything she hoped it would be. One of the waiters shows her to a tall stool in front of a broad slab of mottled wood that stretches across the full length of the bar. It reminds her of a natural history programme about the Baobab tree that Will once insisted they watch together.
When the waiter returns, she looks up confidently, knowing her Spanish is good. And, as her father had once commented,her accent improves in proportion to the amount she has drunk. She orders several plates of tapas and, in memory of him, a chilled red wine. At the last minute, she decides to order just one glass rather than the full carafe. She also adds a large bottle of sparkling water to her order and congratulates herself on how sensible she is being.
The waiter brings her bread and cutlery and Emma asks him if he knows why there are flowers on the pavement outside. The young man shakes his head. ‘I’ll get my dad– this is his bar. He always knows stuff like that.’
The short, balding man he beckons over looks to be in his sixties; he wears his white apron long, coming down almost to the ground. It strikes Emma that it might look comical on anyone else but this small, rotund, neat man wears the mark of his trade with confidence and authority.
His son says something to him in Spanish, and when he looks confused, Emma adds her explanation, also in Spanish. The older man beams at her and compliments her on her accent.
‘The flowers are an art project for the city; each of the brass heads represents a flower found in the architecture of the colleges surrounding us.’ He raises his hand and sweeps it in an arc around him, like a conductor motioning his thanks to his orchestra. ‘The flower path runs for a mile through the city. I believe each flower has a meaning, a significance, for the college it represents.’
‘A path of flowers,’ Emma murmurs, to no one in particular. ‘I was so right to come to Cambridge.’
‘Indeed you were, señora,’ the owner agrees, smiling at her. He tells her that his name is Roberto and introduces his son as Antonio. Roberto presses Emma to call him if she needs anything during the evening. ‘I will personally look after you,’ he promises.
Emma turns her attention to her food and then to the people around her. At the other end of what she thinks of as her Baobab tree sit a young couple. The boy reaches out and tucks a stray curl behind his girlfriend’s ear. It sparks an echoing memory in Emma, and she drinks more deeply from her plum-coloured wine.
Roberto is as good as his word and keeps a careful eye on her, appearing from the kitchen every now and then with an extra plate of something special he thinks she might like to try, talking to her in a stream of eager Spanish.
‘I think that’s you… Excuse me, Emma, I think that’s you.’
Antonio is nodding at her phone, which is facedown on the Baobab tree alongside her notebook. She grabs it, and in her haste answers without looking. She scrambles from her stool to find a quieter spot at the back of the bar.
