The Glass Ocean (5 page)

•   •   •

But Clotilde has her wish now. At last she will travel with her Papa.

They met at sea, they were at sea, they parted by sea. Launched now, on a roundelay all their own.

This, though, is separate from the launching of the
Narcissus.
Weeks yet before that will sail. Not until autumn. Cold winds will blow. For now: there she lies, at anchor on the Thames. A small, seaworthy vessel, restless perhaps, listing slightly at the bows. Preparations come first. Where or what she has been before, unknown; nor does it matter. Felix Girard will fit her to his own specifications, using Harry Ellis’s money. She will be stripped down, recaulked, refitted. Two scientific laboratories and a naturalist’s workroom are installed on board. It will all be there all right, everything they need—the benches and stools, the nets, specimen jars, calipers, scalpels, hammers, brushes, vials, tweezers, magnifying glasses, microscopes, beakers of formaldehyde, jars of ether—the entire clanking, juddering, swaying machinery of science, all this is provided at the museum’s expense, and an accountant, too, pale-mustached MacDowell, with his
Ah yes, just so, just so, indeed
, the lone and constant companion of their departure—see him noting it all in his book of accounts, a book as thick with papers and as carefully kept as the devil’s own?
Ah yes, just so.
The museum is concerned for its property: concerned, but not interested. MacDowell’s shrug will be sufficient to see them off; then they’ll know themselves truly disowned.

•   •   •

The
Narcissus
is growing heavy in the oily, black water. Her belly is full of ballast: not just the weight of science but also of potatoes, salt beef, biscuits, bread and onions, cabbages and beans, pickles, tobacco, bolts of cloth, soap, bottles of bitter and of claret, barrels of water, all that’s needed to keep body and soul together at sea. There is a floating farm as well, squealing piglets, chickens, a goat, these are the ill-fortuned charges of the cook. I think it will not go well with them, but we’ll see, we’ll see, it’s a capricious thing, that wheel.

Just before sunrise on a cold October morning the tugs will take her off: the
Narcissus
sliding out low and gravid from between the tarry hulls of her neighbors, sleek wayfarers lately returned or shortly bound for Singapore, Ceylon, Bombay, black bellies looming threateningly close, then sliding back into a silent oblivion of fog. The Owen family’s latest fortune in cloves no doubt lies somewhere among them, somewhere close, unseen. And yet.

No room, now, for second thoughts.

The sun a milky sphere, a smudge, upon a horizon of intractable grey.

Now they are sails merely, dwindling down the Thames.

That’s it, then
.

My father is at the rail, small ambiguous figure, a hieroglyph above the waves. Harry Owen stands beside him.

That’s it
, my father says, as if some doubt about the reality of the matter has been dispelled by the sudden rush of water beneath their bows.

He nods with a strange, slow gravity, a serious question having been answered, then turning gently away from his companion, bends stiffly at the waist, as if bowing to the river—offering it his best regards—and vomits, violently, over the side.

As he does, a voice rings out:

Papa, look! Mr. Dell’oro is sick already—and we haven’t even reached the sea! We’re only in the river! Is it not terrible, Papa? Will he not suffer horribly when we really do reach the sea? I fear he will be very miserable, Papa, will he not?

I cannot fault my mother on her timing, it is impeccable; for, of course, it is she, who else? Dressed in a thick shawl of blue and gold, with her hands plunged deep into a furry muff, cheeks reddened by the raw wind off the river, blond hair disarranged, she looks, as she approaches, like a picturesque detail from a Scandinavian mural:
Ice Skaters on the River Lule
, or something like that.

At the sight of her my father blanches again, offers himself once more to the Thames, and once again is sick.

Such an inauspicious beginning.

Felix Girard, more ursine than ever in his greatcoat with the collar raised up stiff around the back of his neck, like hackles, seeing Leo Dell’oro curled up against the rail, growls,
He is a poor creature, Tildy! A poor weak-chested creature! A creature like this will take some time to develop sea legs, petite! Have patience! Be merciful! You must not poke fun!

Yes, Papa. I’m terribly sorry, Papa.

•   •   •

She’s brilliant, is she not? And brilliantly unfair, because my father isn’t seasick, he’s hung over. Harry Owen knows it, of course, but is too much of a gentleman to say. He was there the night before, on the eve of the embarking, saw my father, drunk, wavering up the Embankment, heard the
rat-a-tat-tat
of his ill-fitting new shoes, Leo Dell’oro bobbing rapidly from one to the next sickly pool of lamplight, such an uncanny figure in that dapper dark suit, running from lamp to lamp with the herky-jerk movement,
like one of those automata of which the French are so fond
, until suddenly he pitched sideways, toward the oily water, and disappeared.

A dangerous business this. There are cutthroats and thieves among the bushes.

There he lay, limbs rigid, quivering slightly, bright eyes staring fixedly ahead at nothing—completely absent. Being a gentleman, Harry Owen has thought no more about what he saw: that husk of my father, essence missing. Carapace only. Impolitic among strangers. Even among friends. From this Harry Owen has averted his memory; and taking the little artist back to Half Moon Street to recover, was relieved to find the carapace retenanted in the morning, after a night in the spare bedroom. Having revived it further with strong coffee, he said nothing. It is unclear if my father remembers anything of this.

•   •   •

It’s just as well, probably, that my mother knows nothing of it. The less material she has to work with, the better. And anyway, she’s about to be distracted: Hugh Blackstone has just discovered her spinet, and is shouting at the top of his voice for his men to
Put the damnable object over the side—before I do it myself!

This handsome instrument, long-legged rosewood gazelle, purchased for Clotilde by Felix Girard, in Paris, is very important to her; though it is true, perhaps, that the ocean is an improper place for a spinet. Nonetheless, the evening concerts in her stateroom will be much enjoyed. “Wär’ ich so klein wie Schnecken,” that is what she will sing, with considerable skill and grace, as the
Narcissus
bucks and rolls upon unquiet seas; and later, too, as it idles under the stars in that endlessly still, tropical night. There she will be, Felix Girard on the bench beside her, gently turning, with his great bearlike paw, the pages of her music—

•   •   •

But this not yet. Not yet.

•   •   •

Hugh Blackstone disapproves. Even as he attends those concerts (crouching, stiff backed, in the passage just outside her door, frowning)—even as he listens, almost, it seems, against his will—he will disapprove. And now four of his men (probably the same four my mother bribed to put the spinet on board) have got the instrument up, forelegs resting on the rail, ready to heave it over, even as Felix Girard, furiously shouting
Touch not the darling piano, Blackstone, you stinking bugger!,
makes his way furiously amidships, and rescues it.

This will buy my father some time, he’ll be forgotten for a while, among the shouting, the tears; it won’t be until much later, when they’ve all sat down to eat, that my mother will suddenly remember her other, unfinished work, and cry,
Are you quite thoroughly done being sick, Mr. Dell’oro? Mr. Dell’oro has suffered most horribly from mal de mer, has he not, Papa? And we are still only in the river!

Eyes will be averted from this, focus placed instead on the uneasy cantering of the silver tureen from the center of the table to its edge and back, soup stirred by the waves. Only John McIntyre, the Scots ornithologist, will smirk, and even he only from behind his monocle; nonetheless, my father, with those few words, will be put completely off his meal.

•   •   •

Why does she do it? Who knows why anybody does anything. She doesn’t know why herself.

I think it is simply, instinctively, her way of being in love. The equivalent, emotionally speaking, of the love bite of the lioness. Once he is in the teeth of it, she must tear him.

It’s in her nature.

And there’s something else, too. Something in that single-minded adoration of her Papa, Felix Girard, that fights to preserve itself despite whatever else she might feel.

She’s a difficult woman, my mother. Delectable, but difficult.

•   •   •

Leo feels it, though he will pretend otherwise.

•   •   •

Here he is, below deck, tucked up in his narrow berth, in the dark down there with a fragment of candle stuck to the wall, writing. It’s a letter, a letter home, to his sister, Anna, I think.

There are memories in this.

They two curled up together in the same bed in the narrow house on Henrietta Street, warm little animals, the two of them, smelling each other’s smells, feeling each other’s little movements, kicking, elbowing, jostling, fighting each other for everything in that poor house. Now he crouches alone over his paper and writes. She like a part of him, recently abstracted. Darker of the dark twins, indulgent goddess of seventeen, striding up the Scaur in a dismal early twilight. Spit of snow off the sea. Ancient monster undulating, darkly. Her hair flashing out behind her like wings as she walks, lustrous even in this dull light. What can he say?
Dear Anna
. I can’t imagine this really. What, after all, is there to say about this, all this, his situation?
Dear Anna. I find myself at sea.
He pictures her back in Whitby, hanging out the washing. The cobbled yard there. The dingy smallclothes dangling from the wooden pegs. The slippery edge of the cesspit, acrid sweet smell of night soils, himself perched at the edge, about to heave the bucket in.
Hsst, Leo! Hsst!
And the workshop where his father carves jet. Him, too, once upon a time. Not so long ago. Dark things, black things, memento mori. These are home. The cliffs at Whitby are lined with dark things, entire forests embedded blackly in stone, and monsters, too, from another time. My father left there early in the morning, never said goodbye. He had his reasons, I suppose. The sea spread out before him as he descended Henrietta Street in the direction of the harbor.
Dear Anna. I never said good-bye.