Belle - Lesley Pearse [152]
‘Why are you being so kind to me?’ she asked in a weak voice. ‘I’ve been so mean to you.’
Belle half smiled. Both the Germaines had ignored her at the start of the voyage, but they had become much more unpleasant since leaving Bermuda, not just shutting her out of conversations in the officers’ mess, but making barbed comments about her. It was obvious they’d found proof she was a whore and felt affronted that they had to eat at the same table with her.
She had been tempted to tell Arnaud Germaine to go to hell when he begged her to help his wife when she became ill, but Belle had never been able to ignore another human being who was suffering.
‘Even whores have hearts,’ she said, as she reached across the bunk to tuck in the clean sheet. ‘In fact, some of us have bigger ones than ordinary folk. But I don’t know how you and your husband could be so hoity-toity about me. As I understand it, you’ve made your money from supplying sporting houses with liquor!’
Captain Rollins had let this bit of information slip. Belle suspected it was no accident either, and that he hoped she’d use it to her advantage.
Avril vomited again. Belle stopped her bed-making to lift the woman’s hair from her neck and cool her neck with the damp flannel. Then, when Avril had stopped retching, she bathed her face and gave her some water to sip.
‘You’re right,’ Avril said weakly, sagging back against the wall. ‘That is how we made our money. But I guess I chose not to think about it.’
Belle saw no reason to labour her point, after all Avril was very sick. The china doll in her books had come to grief too; she fell off a shelf and her face cracked, and after that she was never played with again.
‘Well, at least you are big enough to admit it,’ Belle said. ‘Now, let’s get you washed and into a clean nightdress – that will make you feel more comfortable.’
An hour later Belle left the Germaines’ cabin, taking the soiled sheets and nightdress away to wash. She was pleased that Avril’s seasickness appeared to be abating. After being washed and tucked back into her clean bunk, she had fallen asleep and her colour was much improved.
Belle was washing out the linen in the laundry-room sink when Captain Rollins put his head around the door. ‘How did your mission of mercy go?’ he asked with a twinkle in his eye.
‘Mercifully brief,’ Belle answered, and sniggered. ‘Mrs Germaine is a little better now.’
She put the edge of the sheet between the rollers of the mangle and turned the handle, watching the water being squeezed out.
‘You’d make a good nurse,’ said Captain Rollins. ‘I just saw Mr Germaine and he was very touched by the way you cared for his wife.’
Belle shrugged. ‘Whoring, nursing, they are quite alike, just looking after different needs.’
‘You could hold your head higher if you chose to be a nurse,’ he said.
Belle glanced round at the captain and found him looking at her very thoughtfully. ‘I could hold my head still higher if I had my own house, carriage and fine clothes,’ she said tartly. ‘But nursing doesn’t pay that well.’
‘So you will continue to earn money that way once you get back to England?’
Belle thought that was a strange question. ‘Not if I can help it,’ she said with a toss of her head. ‘I want to have a hat shop with a few rooms above for me to live in and have a workshop. But I have very little money left, and it is a long way from Marseille to London. So if you have any good ideas about how I can avoid selling myself to get that money, I’d be glad to hear them.’
‘It makes me sad to hear you speak like that,’ he replied, his voice soft and reproachful.
Belle let go of the wrung-out sheet and stepped nearer to the captain, and she caught hold of his cheek with her thumb and forefinger and squeezed it. ‘Like I said, you show me another way and I’ll gladly take it. But don’t trouble yourself