Acts of Mutiny. Derek Beaven

sea. Yet she began her meal in a spirit of bravery: with a portion of asparagus in butter, excellent as always. And then the lamb.

      But now a tray full of upturned coffee-cups slid off its side-table and avalanched pieces of crockery past them. A bad wave. From around the dining-room there were shrieks and remarks from folk caught up in similar local calamities. Hardly a moment to recoup before there came another. Tests of character. Penny gripped on to her own table with one hand while maintaining her plate with the other. Gravy trickled over her fingers. She could see the Parsons couple. They had been unable to move. Half slumping, half standing a few yards away, they clutched at the door-frame, the handrail and each other. She could see white knuckles. Then all the debris came cruising along the floor as the ship tipped back through what now seemed an enormous angle.

      And slowly – but not so slowly that it became acceptable – up again.

      ‘I’m afraid we can’t have the stabilisers out in this sort of a sea, sir. They’d break off.’

      ‘What!’ Barry Parsons’s fleshy presence boomed. ‘You’re joking, I take it.’ But its sound was as unconvincing as an echo.

      ‘Absolutely not, sir. They said yesterday we were likely to run into some heavy stuff. Just have to head up and ride it out. Besides, they only affect the roll, not the pitch, stabilisers.’ The steward gestured with his flattened hand. ‘The captain won’t want to get stuck in the Bay, see. I’m sure you’ll understand.’ He grinned. He was enjoying it, Penny thought. ‘ATM afraid it’s likely to get a touch worse than this, even. Which is a little unusual even for this time of year, sir, I admit.’ Definite relish.

      Queenie Parsons just managed, ‘Worse?’ Then, ‘But this is a liner’ died to a whisper as she fought with incredulity, terror and her stomach. Hanging on, the Parsons couple appeared to Penny as ham dramatics conversing from across an unkind wooden stage. But she was hanging on to the table herself, surprised, yes, genuinely surprised that the captain could allow roughness to get to the point of breakages.

      ‘You’d think they’d know what to expect, wouldn’t you? And have special racks or whatever – for the things. You’d think they would.’ She made the remark to no one in particular, voicing her disquiet.

      Paul Finch-Clark leaned in to the table and managed to make a quip about Battersea fairground. Something else smashed. Penny caught the words ‘… You realise it isn’t quite what it looked like from dry-ground level.’

      Little Rosalind Finch-Clark gripped her chair at both sides, watching with wide eyes as her plate of half-eaten poached egg on toast moved now towards her father, now towards Penny.

      ‘When does it stop?’ Penny called out.

      It was the steward who replied. ‘Not for a few days, I’m afraid, madam.’

      ‘A few days! Like this!’ She found her voice joined by several from the neighbouring tables. Then she glanced to where the Parsons couple had been standing. They were now nowhere to be seen. They had been slid out of the ship and sluiced away, so she could fancy.

      A general lurching exodus from the dining-room was in progess, however, for the big sea continued. Every wave was a bad wave. Penny regarded her fellow travellers, trying herself to decide what to do. The ship’s creaks and groaning had increased, quite alarmingly. Surely that was not right. A noise overhead. She looked up in case signs of fracture should appear in the ceiling. She expected the lights to flicker. There was indeed an air of consternation. Sparks or water would burst through the walls.

      Only the hardiest old birds of passage were still eating, managing their plates with a degree of superiority. One or two were still calling out to waiters as if a regime of bouncing, splintering glassware and cascading cutlery were just what their specialist, when reminding them to go south again this year for the winter, had ordered. An old woman in pearls summoned assistance from her seat two tables away. ‘Cabin, I think, steward.’

      And of course the steward was propelled into action, partly by sycophancy – probably; but Penny would have liked to think, compassion – and partly by the momentary angle of the ship. ‘Directly, your ladyship.’ And, proud it seemed of his white uniform, and the braid in colours-of-the-line looped at his left shoulder, he rescued her theatrically past them all, one arm for the dowager and one for the ship.

      The dowager nodded politely to Penny. ‘I went through the Suez Canal for the first time in thirty-seven, and since then I’ve done it eighteen times, this way and that, regular as clockwork. Not counting the war, you see – and the Arabs. Isn’t that so, steward?’

      ‘Certainly, your ladyship.’

      And certainly she was remarkably good at the alternate steep climb and drop which they had settled into: ‘Just take it carefully, and keep your cabin. That’s my advice, if anyone wants it. Keep your cabin, keep your head, and thank God you won’t be stuck in Kensington all winter.’

      Yes, the extremity of the movement could begin, Penny supposed, to be something they might at least accept, if not adjust to. If there were really no alternative, and if the ladyship, whoever she was, could do it. Think of England indeed. Indeed she tried.

      Most of what was loose and fragile had now broken; most of what could be spilled, had spilled. Most of those diners who were still making up their minds about how to leave and where to go had found regular fixtures to help them – in the reciprocating cling and brace that was necessary. So when no one else mentioned that it sounded more and more as though the vessel were on the point of ripping in two, Penny clenched her teeth. Nevertheless, in that very act her thoughts turned first to the boys, at her mother’s school in Essex, and next to Hugh, already on the other side of the world. If she were to drown she would be of no use to any of them.

      And the next thing after the thought of imminent death was the awareness of fear. Close upon that, nausea. And between the first consciousness of sickness and the worst feeling imaginable were about three suffocating minutes amid the smells of pheasant, liver, mayonnaise and chocolate.

      D was one of the lower decks. Its floor and walls staggered by; its door heaved open. She managed to find a closet on that level; though, regrettably, she was not the first. Monstrous, her mouth like a burst porthole. Like an act of recall; but so painful, all the confused past springing through, still fully formed. And with that over she felt drained, but just about in command – and in the greatest need of air.

6

      A good open-air walk ran along the whole length of both sides of A deck. It was the kind of broad, sideless corridor Penny was familiar with from popular ocean films in which five days of love culminated in New York. It ran along the whole length, that is, except for the steerage class – that old label for poorer travellers. On this level, she noted, the steerage was sealed off from the main part of the vessel, to port and starboard, behind impenetrable steel dividers in the bulkhead.

      Coated and belted now, wind-whipped, with hands outstretched, she made her way towards the bow – along the scrubbed planking where in undreamable fair weather deck-chairs might be set. It was to press uphill for several seconds, march deceptively level for a moment, and then loom dangerously giant-strided. Wiser to stop and hang on to a frame or to the rail when the ship’s nose went down. Queenie Parsons’s last words kept running through her head, ‘But this is a liner!’

      Truly, Penny had not imagined the white floating city which had so taken her breath against the drabness of Tilbury dock could be subject to anything like this. If they were not exactly storm-tossed – the ship was too grand and provident for that – yet it was obvious their assurance was being very seriously examined. Astride the huge ridges of complex and crazing black, the Armorica was undergoing, yes, something of an inquisition. The groaning and creaking, so audible in the dining-room and now mingled with the debate of sea and wind, were proof enough of that, if proof were wanted.

      There, up ahead, the part of