Belle - Lesley Pearse [150]
Captain Rollins had told her to stay in her cabin until after they had sailed, in fact she got the clear impression that he actually meant for her to stay in it until he said otherwise. But she didn’t mind, she was so tired with having had so little sleep the previous night that she would be quite happy to sleep the clock round.
The captain had informed her there were only two other passengers on board. Arnaud Germaine was French, but his wife Avril was American, and they were going home to his family in France. Belle had seen only a brief glimpse of them; Avril was around thirty-five, her husband at least ten years older. But even if they weren’t likely to be company for her, she was glad that there was at least one other female on the ship. As the captain showed her the way to her cabin, she’d been leered at by several crew members. They had all looked unkempt, wild-eyed and dirty. She intended to keep her cabin door locked at all times.
By the third day on board Belle had settled into a routine and she’d found that the disreputable-looking crew were a mixture of nationalities. About half of them were negroes, the rest were Cajun, Mexican, Chinese, Irish, Brazilian, and the cook was Italian. But so far they had been surprisingly polite to her, perhaps because the captain had told them she was a friend’s daughter.
She would walk on the deck for an hour after breakfast, then collect some coffee from the galley and take it to Captain Rollins to see if he had any jobs for her to do. So far he hadn’t asked her to do much, in fact it seemed he was hard-pressed to find anything for her to do. She’d sewn some buttons on a shirt and tidied his cabin, and she’d also helped Gino the cook prepare vegetables for dinner, but he wouldn’t allow her to do anything more in his galley. Talking to the captain filled up a chunk of the day, however, and she felt he liked her company.
During the afternoon she mostly sat and read in the small, shabby room they called the officers’ mess. There were hundreds of books there, on shelves, stacked in boxes and piled on the floor, some so well thumbed they were in danger of falling apart. Belle, Mr and Mrs Germaine and the five ship’s officers ate their meals in here too. And although shabby and cramped, it was homely and comfortable.
Arnaud Germaine studiously ignored her and she felt he knew about her background. His wife Avril looked at her curiously but had clearly been told not to talk to her. That suited Belle just fine as she didn’t want to have to answer questions. Captain Rollins could and did question her, but he was gentle about it and his dark eyes twinkled. During their chats in the mornings she’d told him more about herself than she had intended to, but even when she admitted she had worked at Martha’s sporting house he kept the same calm, faintly amused expression, and she felt that even if she was to disclose everything, he’d react just the same way.
The ship was due to berth in Bermuda to take on water, then cross the Atlantic to Madeira before finally docking in Marseille. The evening before they reached Bermuda the captain told Belle she must stay on board the next day. ‘The authorities are vigilant there,’ he explained. ‘Well, they would be, they are English,’ he added with a wry smile. ‘You might think that would make them sympathetic to your plight, but you’d be wrong. They’d just send you back to New Orleans and prosecute me. So stay in your cabin.’
It was stiflingly hot in her cabin once the ship had berthed. Belle knew that Bermuda had beaches just like the one in the picture she’d had to leave behind, and she so much wished she could see them. But she stripped down to her chemise and lay on her bunk with the porthole wide open and listened to the sounds of the tropical island which wafted in. Someone was playing a steel drum in the distance, and she could hear a woman calling out something, sounding just like the street traders back in London. She couldn’t see the harbour from the porthole, for the ship was facing out to sea, but as it had come in to