1st of the Short Story
Propping the sketch on the bunk wasn’t ideal, but in her few
days aboard the passenger ship Nomadic, she hadn’t discovered a better
place in the third-class berth. She shared the tight quarters with three other
young ladies. Hettie Rufford’s climb to the top bunk still disconcerted her,
but chattering with new friends was an unexpected benefit.
Luck had flown with her when she finished her portrait for
the dowager Lady Malvaise much earlier than anticipated. The booking office had
recorded a cancellation the morning that she arrived to ask about an earlier
berth. She sent blessings to whoever had cancelled their reservation, for she
would join Madoc a month earlier than originally planned. A voyage of forty
days with an additional five days ashore in Port Said, waiting to transfer to a
ship that plied the Indian Ocean, would be no great matter.
She slipped into her strappy heels then fluffed the gathered
skirt of her black frock before stepping to the mirror mounted above the tiny
washstand.
“As lovely as that frock is,” Nedda Cortland shared,
swinging a slippered foot as she lounged on the lower bunk, “you’ll need
something more, Isabella. You will certainly need more for a stroll on the deck
under the moonlight.” She turned another page in the fashion magazine she’d
confiscated from the first-class Reading Room.
Isabella gave an inelegant snort. “No moonlit strolls for me,
but I will take my India shawl.” She retrieved the brightly-colored wrap from
her bunk and shook it loose from its folds. “Are you certain that you’ll be
fine here?” Fine alone, she meant, for on the past evenings they’d dined
together, braving the crowded second-class dining room to enjoy a bland meal
more filling than tasty.
The secretary lifted her dark gaze from the glossy pages.
“The steward will bring a tray, and I intend to enjoy a few hours alone. Not
even Hettie or Caro should disturb me,” she added, naming their roommates. “Go
on. You will be late, which will not be an auspicious beginning to an evening
with Mr. Ingram. You have his invitation? You will need it to enter the
first-class dining room.”
She waved her silver-beaded purse. “I have it here. You are
certain, Nedda?”
The secretary rolled her eyes then straightened from her
lounge on the lower bunk. She tugged the silky flamboyant wrap onto her
shoulder. “Stop havering over this opportunity to enjoy first-class.”
Isabella laughed and went.
The trek from third-class sent her along narrow passageways
and up three flights of stairs to reach the Promenade Deck, above the main
deck. The Nomadic was a larger ship in the British-Asia Oceanic
Navigation line. With a single-funnel and four masts, it was considered one of
the premier ships traveling from Britain to the Mediterranean.
BAON offered four types of accommodation to passengers. Gold
Star denoted first-class passengers with staterooms on the promenade deck and
the first deck. Silver and Bronze Star meant second- and third-class passengers.
The majority of those traveling, these passengers were housed in the second two
lower decks. The Red Star fourth-class, the smallest contingent aboard, were
deeper into the ship, rarely emerging into areas shared by the other
passengers.
British-Asia Oceanic prided itself on its treatment of all
passengers, but Red Star lacked any amenities, including a dining room. They
had only a canteen and had to eat in their cramped, dormitory-style berths.
Madoc had warned Isabella not to take a fourth-class berth.
She had saved money with a third-class berth, considering what was acceptable
for the servants of first-class passengers would be acceptable for her. Thus,
she met Nedda Cortland, secretary to the wealthy financier Hyatt Ingram, and
two personal maids, Hettie Rufford and Caro Marten. She rarely saw Hettie and
Caro, but she and Nedda had formed an alliance.
After a working lunch with her employer, Nedda had spotted
Isabella on deck with her watercolors. The secretary had guided Mr. Ingram to
meet her new friend. This evening’s invitation to the first-class dining room
was the result. That encounter, Isabella suspected, was a carefully planned
subterfuge to win time away from a demanding employer.
She didn’t begrudge Nedda seizing a chance for solitude.
Like a little city on the ocean waves, the Nomadic was crowded, with few
places for a solitary retreat. Of the four in their shared berth, only Isabella
was not at someone else’s beck-and-call. While she relished deciding how to
spend her free hours, she sympathized with her three roommates, working as hard
aboard as they would on land.
In the first-class dining room, hundreds of candles softened
the ship’s harsh light. Floral arrangements graced the tables. China and
crystal and silver sparkled on crisp white linens.
Isabella followed the maître d’ to a prominent table
already half-filled. A sommelier listened to Mr. Ingram’s instructions.
She assumed the other two at the table were his son and grandson, mentioned
this afternoon. The men rose as the steward drew out a chair on the table’s
long side, one of four.
“Charming, charming,” the financier murmured. Approaching
his seventies, he still looked hale, eyes clear and bearing upright. “Mrs.
Tarrant, my son Sheridan, my grandson Colfax. Mrs. Madoc Tarrant, the artist.”
Sheridan Ingram had his father’s long face and neat
appearance, but pouches beneath his eyes and forming jowls hinted at
dissipation. He gave a hearty pleasantry which Isabella returned. The grandson
barely lifted his eyes from table. Colfax Ingram had a couple of inches on his
father. The pads in his jacket couldn’t hide his narrow shoulders.
The men started to sit only to stand again as others reached
the table. Leading the way was an elderly woman in black crepe de chine
with a floral georgette swath at the neckline and over the skirt of her gown.
With her silver hair piled high, sparkling with diamante pins, she looked to
have more than a decade on Hyatt Ingram.
Following her and quick to draw out her chair as hostess was
a man with a thin mustache and a military bearing. Isabella couldn’t place his
age, somewhere in his thirties.
Coming last was a fashionable couple of Sheridan Ingram’s
age, Mr. and Mrs. Neal Gallagher. He wore a cerise tie and matching pocket
square with his white dinner jacket. Mrs. Gallagher’s gown, a long sheath with
a flared skirt, matched her husband’s flash of cherry-pink.
Two chairs still remained empty. As Isabella exchanged
greetings with the newcomers, she wondered who had yet to appear.
Their hostess was Lady Serilda Peverell. Isabella knew the
name, for her roommate Hettie Rufford was the woman’s maid. The military man,
Colonel Emerson Werthy, took the chair on Isabella’s right. Mr. and Mrs. Neal
Gallagher separated, the man to Mr. Ingram’s left and his wife to Lady
Peverell’s right. At first glance Isabella had thought him older than his wife,
but as he spoke across table to Sheridan Ingram, ignoring the sulky grandson,
she adjusted that age downward, deeming them nearer in age to Col. Werthy than her
own of 25.
As the stewards served a chilled cocktail, two women arrived
to take the last seats at table. The one in a flurry of crocheted shawl and
fly-away curls with threads of grey was Miss Arabella Swandon. She tittered
about her tardiness and difficulties with finding the table and gave a “hallo”
to everyone, repeated to Colfax beside her until he deigned to look up and nod.
From that Isabella guessed that only the Ingrams and Lady Peverell always had
this table. The others shifted around at will for each dinner.
The svelte woman strolled behind Miss Swandon. She waited
for her chair to be withdrawn, done with alacrity by Col. Werthy. Over a simple
chemise of aubergine she wore a haut couture gown with beaded
embellishments on the elaborate embroidery. She introduced herself as Mrs.
Phoebe Drake. Isabella expected the able colonel would ignore her to attend to
Mrs. Drake, but he surprised her. He gave them both equal attention as the
courses progressed through a consommé, baked cod in butter, then a ragout of
oxtail.
The entrée was an excellent beef tournado. She
enjoyed it even more when she recalled last night’s curried chicken and rice,
preceded by a rice soup and followed by rice pudding. With a bite in her mouth,
though, the conversation turned to her. She should have expected it. Lady
Peverell had speared the others at table, course by course. The Gallaghers were
queried during the cocktail and soup, Mrs. Drake during the fish, and Miss
Swandon during the ragout.
She swallowed her bite of beef as Mr. Ingram explained how
she came to join their table.
“An artist?” Lady Peverell frowned, a minatory gaze looking
for a flaw in Isabella’s appearance. “What brings you aboard ship?”
She gave a silent thanks to her friend Flick Sherbourne for
the paisley shawl and to her sister-in-law Cecilia for the Lanvin-style frock,
simple elegance in black satin woven to resemble silk. The elderly woman’s
eagle eyes had likely spotted the inexpensive fabric. Isabella lifted her chin
and gave a smile that belied her jitters. “I sail to join my husband in India.”
“A planter?” Sheridan Ingram leaned forward to look uptable.
“With which company?”
“He’s not a planter. He’s with Tredennit Builders.”
Col. Werthy hmphed. “Road building,” he informed the others.
“A contract in Australia, isn’t it?”
Her view of the colonel warmed. “It is, but I know very
little. Madoc has only been employed with Tredennit since the New Year.”
“Tarrant. Tarrant.” Neal Gallagher tapped his knife on his
plate. “I’ve heard that name. Read it. In the newspapers.”
Eyes swiveled her way. She swallowed air this time. Only
careful maneuvering would keep the topic away from salacious gossip about
murders, the arrests of Frederick Petrie and Nigel Arkwright, and Cecilia
Arkwright’s subsequent marriage to Madoc’s brother Gawen. “My brother-in-law is
a renown archaeologist. Professor Gawen Tarrant at St. George’s University. He
is publishing a series of articles about his archaeological dig on the island
of Crete. I did the drawings with the articles.”
“Pen and ink?” the colonel asked. “And watercolors. I saw
you working this afternoon. Do you use any other medium?”
Before she could answer, Mrs. Gallagher asked, “Do we dock
at Crete? It would be fascinating to visit an actual archaeological dig. We
would touch history.”
“I’ve seen one of your paintings,” Lady Peverell declared.
“An oil of young Edward Malvaise.”
“Yes, my lady, I completed that portrait in the last month.
To have seen it, you must be well acquainted with the dowager Lady Malvaise? It
hangs in her private suite at the family estate.”
“She was most pleased with your work, Mrs. Tarrant. She
advised all of us to commission you before you sailed for the South Seas.”
“I escaped all commissions, my lady. I had to finish my work
for Prof. Tarrant and a few pen-and-inks for Tony Carstairs. He offers my work
in his gallery.”
“Is it a nice portrait of the Malvaise boy?” Miss Swandon
asked. “He’s the only one still alive after the war, isn’t he?”
The dowager Peverell ignored the interruption. “She said you
were not the usual artist.”
A raised voice at a nearby table stopped any reply. “You do
not have my permission to write to him,” a man declared.
The comment drew the eyes of all who had heard, passengers
and stewards alike. Colfax Ingram turned in his seat while Isabella’s side of
the table watched without displaying such rude interest.
The couple were smartly dressed. The young woman wore a
stylish embroidered peacock gown. A glittering tie pin detracted from the
understated elegance of the man’s crisp suit. As he berated her about her role
as a Stropeford bride, Isabella didn’t envy them at all.
The young woman had lowered her gaze to her plate. Her
murmured response did not reach their table. Nor did it placate her companion.
He withdrew white rectangles from an inner pocket and cast them
down. One fluttered open to land on the daisy-filled posy. Then he drew out an
envelope and waved it under his wife’s nose. “What do you have to say for
yourself?”
At the snap in his voice, Isabella flinched. She wanted to
look away, yet her gaze was captured by the train wreck. The Gallaghers and
Miss Swandon had twisted around, copying Colfax’s obvious staring.
The bride reached for the envelope only to have the man snatch
it back. “You dare write to him after—.” He lowered his voice, hiding the words
although not his harsh tone.
Col. Werthy started from his seat. Mrs. Drake put a hand on
his arm.
Hyatt Ingram loudly cleared his throat. “Steward!”
The man looked up then. When he saw the censure over this
public drama coming multiple tables, he flushed red. His chair scraped the
floor as he stood. He tossed the envelope onto the table before he strode out.
In a flurry of jerky actions, the young woman hastened after
him.
The whole room watched. When the doors closed, talk resumed,
loud and clattery in the first moments before settling down as people overcame
amazement.
“We shall see what we shall see,” Lady Peverell intoned.
The steward had arrived. “More wine,” the elder Ingram
ordered.
The man lifted a hand, and a younger steward appeared with a
new bottle. He uncorked it and poured a mouthful, which he offered to Mr.
Ingram for approval. Everyone watched him taste the wine. He commented to Mr.
Gallagher and the colonel about the vintage.
The first steward moved away as the younger one began
filling goblets with the new wine.
“A cabernet,” Mr. Ingram informed them. “You will enjoy it
with the beef.”
“Oh my!” Miss Swandon fanned herself. “I usually have only
one glass at dinner.”
The financier smiled like a benevolent uncle bestowing a
treat. “Tonight you will have two.”
Lady Peverell lifted a finger, and the first steward bent to
listen to her. Then he stepped to the abandoned table. His body blocked his
action, but when he returned, he handed the folded notes and the letter to the
elderly lady. She slipped them into her beaded purse. Her gaze then speared
Isabella. “Mrs. Tarrant, you and I shall have a talk in the morning. At 11
o’clock in my stateroom.”
That sounded ominous. Isabella could give only one answer.
“Of course, Lady Peverell.”
Find the story at these links:
Books2Read https://books2read.com/u/3yWAAl
Listen to the Story on Podbean (Christmas gift for 2023) https://eden5695.podbean.com/e/merry-christmas-amber-dreams-chapter-1-sailing-with-mystery/
