by Rosie Harris
She looked round the tiny cabin. ‘I thought I was going to have a lovely little cabin all to myself and have my meals with you and your friends and it would be all friendly and exciting. I don’t know how I am going to survive in here even for one night.’ She sighed. ‘You haven’t even told me how long the journey will take,’ she added looking at him.
Before he could reply a klaxon sounded and he moved to the door. ‘I must go. I’m needed on deck.’ He gave her a quick kiss. ‘Stay in here and keep the door shut. Don’t answer if anyone knocks. I’ll be back again as soon as I possibly can.’
Left alone and remembering what Glanmor had said about eating, Fern picked up the sandwich again. This time she took it apart, ate some of the bread and then tried to break the meat into smaller pieces. She had no cutlery so she was forced to tear it apart with her fingers. Even then, when it was in manageable chunks, it was still so tough that she could hardly chew it.
The noise from the engine as well as from other parts of the ship had now increased and she could feel severe rocking movements as the tugs started pulling the SS Saturn from her mooring place and headed out to sea with her.
Within a very short time it felt almost as if the floor beneath her feet was moving independently and she assumed they’d now reached the open sea. She clung on to the side of the chest to try and steady herself as the ship was buffeted around and tilted first one way and then the other. She tried to stand up but the swaying was such that she felt that if she did she would lose her balance completely.
As Glanmor had warned her, the ship’s motion soon made her feel queasy. All she wanted to do was to lie down but she knew that if she hadn’t been able to sit in the hammock when they were in dock then she certainly wasn’t going to be able to climb into it now with everything swaying from side to side.
Gingerly, she edged forward and crouched down on to her knees so that she could lie down on the floor. It felt better, but the floor was so hard that it was far from comfortable.
She wished she’d spread her coat or something down first but it was too late to do anything about that now. She knew that if she tried to sit up, let alone stand up, she would probably be sick. The only thing she could do was lie there until Glanmor came back.
It was three days before Fern felt well enough to even sit up. Glanmor did his best to make her as comfortable as possible by spreading one of his blankets on the floor for her to lie on and covering her over with another one to try and stop her shivering.
It meant that he had no bedding at all for himself so he slept in the hammock fully dressed and spread his coat over his shoulders to try and keep warm.
To Fern the journey seemed endless. She was tired and weary, hungry and thirsty and had never felt so ill in her life. Glanmor did what he could for her but it wasn’t enough. When her temperature started to soar and she was verging on delirium he was so worried that he told her he was going to tell the captain that she was on board.
‘No, you mustn’t do that,’ she begged. ‘It will get you into trouble and you’ll be severely punished.’
‘I can’t leave you in this state any longer. This isn’t mere seasickness; you need to be seen by the ship’s doctor.’
Captain Mulligan was more than annoyed; he was absolutely furious and delivered a scathing reprimand. ‘It’s considered bad luck having a woman on board, you should know that; it could have caused a riot amongst the crew. I’ll mete out your punishment later,’ he told Glanmor. ‘For the moment, we must give priority to treating this young girl.’
Fern was transferred from Glanmor’s cabin to Captain Mulligan’s own quarters. She was so weak that she was unable to stand let alone walk so Glanmor was instructed to carry her there. He was then assigned by Captain Mulligan to watch over her twenty-four hours a day until her fever abated.
When he heard that Fern was on the road to recovery he gave permission for her to use the facilities in his cabin so that she could have a bath.
Fern almost cried with relief as she lay back in the tub of hot water. She washed her hair which was stiff with sweat from the last few days. As she emerged from the bath and towelled herself dry she felt thoroughly refreshed.
She was also relieved to find that the sway of the ship no longer made her feel queasy. As she dried and combed her hair she felt she was ready to face Captain Mulligan and accept whatever punishment he might impose.
‘Captain Mulligan has invited you to eat at his table to night,’ Glanmor told her. ‘I hope you realise that he is doing you a great honour,’ he told her with a smile.
‘Feeding me up before he claps me in irons, is he?’ She grinned as Glanmor helped her to the table where Captain Mulligan was already sitting.
‘Have you heard what your punishment is to be yet, Glanmor?’ she whispered as they walked towards the captain’s table.
‘No,’ Glanmor shook his head, ‘but as long as he is lenient with you that is all that matters.’
Captain Mulligan looked so stern, and his mouth above his massive beard was set in such a tight line, that Fern felt a tremor of fear. When he indicated to Glanmor that she was to sit in the chair right next to him she knew she was shaking like a leaf.
Apart from acknowledging her presence with a formal ‘Good evening’, he didn’t speak to her again until after the meal was over. She tried valiantly to eat what was placed in front of her but she felt so tense with foreboding that she could barely swallow.
At the end of their meal Captain Mulligan turned to her and asked her if she had anything to say. He listened in silence as, in a trembling voice, Fern explained that the reason she’d stowed away was because she was too young to marry without parental consent and she knew it would never be granted.
‘Glanmor decided the only way we could live together without shocking everyone we knew was for me to return to Russia with him. I love Glanmor so much that it seemed to be the perfect solution,’ she added with a shy smile.
‘So you persuaded him to smuggle you aboard my ship?’ Captain Mulligan said sternly. ‘You must have known that you were bound to be discovered. Surely you realised that it was against the rules and that it would get Glanmor into serious trouble? Why didn’t you ask if you could travel with us?’
‘Your ship doesn’t carry passengers, it was as simple as that,’ Fern sighed.
‘Humph! It seems we’ve got one now whether we want her or not,’ Captain Mulligan growled. He took a sip of his drink. ‘I could cast you over the side, I suppose. That would be a quick and easy way of dealing with the matter.’
‘If you did that, then I would probably drown and you’d feel responsible,’ Fern said in a shaky voice.
‘Hmm! I suppose you have a point. What about if I set you adrift in a lifeboat? Do you think you would manage to survive long enough to reach land?’
Fern shook her head. ‘I’d die of fright long before I reached the coast,’ she told him.
‘Well, in that case, I suppose I’ll have to consider letting you to stay on board. If that is what you want to do, then you will have to earn your passage.’
‘Willingly. I’ll do anything you tell me to do,’ Fern told him eagerly.
Captain Mulligan’s bushy eyebrows went up as he regarded her contemplatively.
‘Well,’ he said at length, ‘what about scrubbing the deck every morning at five o’clock, or would you prefer to go on watch every night from midnight until six the next morning?’
Fern quailed at the thought of either of those tasks but she squared her shoulder and tilted her chin defiantly. ‘You are the captain, so it is up to you to decide which one you want me to do,’ she parried.
He laughed uproariously and slapped his fist down on the table. ‘A feisty young lady; I like that. Perhaps those tasks are rather daunting, but what else can you do. Can you cook?’
‘Not really.’ Fern shook her head. ‘I can cook for myself and I often prepared a meal for Maria, the woman I lodged with, but I wouldn’t be any good at cooking for as
many people as there are here. I could help perhaps in other ways.’
Captain Mulligan nodded his head thoughtfully. ‘Well, there’s always room for another one in the galley. If you can’t cook, then I suppose there are plenty of other things you could do to help like preparing the vegetables and washing up all the dirty plates and the greasy pots and pans afterwards.’
‘If I do that, will you let Glanmor off without any punishment?’ she asked boldly.
Captain Mulligan scowled and then sat stroking his beard as he considered what she’d requested.
‘You’re asking a lot, young lady,’ he boomed. ‘He knew full well that he was contravening all the ship’s rules when he smuggled you on board. If you hadn’t been taken so ill that he was worried about your welfare he would never have said anything. In fact, I don’t suppose either of you would have done. He’d have smuggled you ashore when we reached Russia without saying a word to me.’
‘If he’d been able to do that you would have known nothing at all about it so there would have been no question of punishing him. He meant well, he was only trying to make me happy. Please don’t punish him for doing that,’ Fern begged.
‘I’ll think about it and also about what is the most suitable punishment for you. In the meantime, keep out of my sight and perhaps I can forget I ever saw you.’
Fern nodded. Although his tone was harsh she saw the twinkle in his piercing blue eyes as, nervously, she held out her hand and thanked him for being so considerate.
Chapter Twenty-two
Fern waited in trepidation for a summons from Captain Mulligan to let her know what he had decided her punishment task was to be. As each day passed and she heard nothing she breathed a little more easily. Nevertheless, she remembered his warning and made sure she kept well out of his way.
Glanmor brought her meals back to the cabin. Now that it had been acknowledged that she was on board he no longer had to scrounge leftovers or save part of his own rations for her.
He was no longer permitted to sleep in his own cabin, however. Instead, he had been told that for the rest of their journey he was to sleep on deck. Knowing how cold and uncomfortable this must be Fern wondered if this was intended to be his punishment for smuggling her on to the ship.
She found being in such a confined space on her own all day and all night was very claustrophobic. Rather daringly she began taking a walk on deck each evening at the time when she knew Captain Mulligan would be having his evening meal.
She wished Glanmor could walk with her but they knew that would be forbidden so they’d agreed that he would keep an eye open and alert her if there was any change in the captain’s routine. Normally his mealtime lasted for well over an hour and it was a time Fern looked forward to all day.
She revelled in the feeling of fresh air on her face and even though the temperature dropped lower and lower as they sailed across the Baltic and drew nearer to Russia it did not deter her from her daily constitutional.
As they sailed across the Baltic Sea and entered the Gulf of Finland Glanmor explained that they were now not very far from their journey’s end.
‘Very soon now we’ll be approaching Petrograd,’ he told her. ‘We’ll be going into dock there and once our cargo has been unloaded we’ll be given shore leave.’
The closer they got to Russia, though, the more Fern worried about what was going to happen once she left the Saturn. While she was still on board she felt fairly safe but Russia was a foreign country and the people would speak a language she didn’t understand. Even the food would be strange and the people probably very different from those she’d grown used to in Cardiff’s Tiger Bay.
Constantly she thought of Maria and wondered how she was. Had she managed to sell her business, or had she changed her mind and was she struggling to keep going? She hoped that Rhodri was taking care of her as he’d promised to do.
Occasionally she mentioned what she was thinking to Glanmor when he brought her meals to the cabin but he always hushed her to silence.
‘Stop worrying about the past; you’re embarking on a new life now. Everything will be fine because I’ll be there to take care of you,’ he always assured her. Then he would take her in his arms and the moment his lips met hers she was lost to the real world. All her worries and other thoughts went out of her mind as she made the most of their brief, passionate moments together.
Every night as she settled down to sleep she found herself shivering with the intense cold. She tried to imagine she was in Glanmor’s arms, safe and warm, cocooned in his love, and it helped her to find peace with herself and the world around her.
It was only during the long lonely days that the dark troublesome thoughts returned to plague her. If she knew more of what lay ahead she would probably feel more confident, she told herself. As it was, she knew so little about Russia that she couldn’t formulate any plans or even indulge in any dreams about what sort of future she and Glanmor would have.
Never mind, she told herself, as long as Glanmor was there at her side looking after her then all would be well because he’d make sure of that.
When finally Glanmor was able to tell her that they would be entering the Port of Petrograd sometime within the next two days Fern felt elated.
They were there; it was the real start of their great adventure. There was no turning back now. The die had been cast. Within hours she would be setting foot in Russia. At first she felt jubilant but then her fears and uncertainty grew apace.
Memories of the stories she’d heard about the revolution that had taken place there surged into her mind. There had been an uprising and people had killed their ruler the Tsar, so what sort of place was it? Was it going to be as lawless as it sounded?
She tried to concentrate on all the good things Glanmor had told her, about this new man Lenin who was now in charge of the country and all the wonderful things he had done for the ordinary people. They thought so much of him that they were even talking of changing the name Petrograd to Leningrad and she found that all very confusing.
Fern wondered how long the Saturn would be staying in Petrograd after they’d unloaded the cargo they’d brought. She felt sure that it would not take more than a few days at the most and she felt very concerned about what was going to happen after that.
Glanmor had mentioned shore leave but he didn’t seem to know how many days or weeks that would be. Anyway, did it matter? Although he had not made it clear, she was sure he intended leaving the Saturn and staying ashore in Russia.
He must be intending to do that, she mused, because he had talked incessantly of the better life they would have there. It was why she had agreed to come with him, so surely he wouldn’t simply leave her there all on her own?
The whole object of coming to Russia, she reminded herself, was not only so that they could be together but also so that they would be able to live together openly without breaking the law or being condemned as being sinful. Where would they live and how long would their money last if he couldn’t get a job?
As she waited for Glanmor to explain things in more detail, she became increasingly frustrated. She felt so alone; so vulnerable. If only there was someone she could talk to, or something she could do to pass the time constructively, she mightn’t feel so bad. She collected together her few possessions, sorted them and packed them into the kitbag.
When she woke the next morning the entire atmosphere on the ship had changed. The pulsing of the engines was gone; she could hear a confusion of shouts and orders coming from below deck as well as from the top deck and the shore.
She waited impatiently for Glanmor to bring her food so that she could find out what he knew, but the time ticked by and he didn’t put in an appearance.
Since the strict daily routine seemed to have been abandoned Fern wondered if she dared go up on deck so that she could see for herself what was happening – even though Captain Mulligan had told her to stay in her cabin.
The hours passed but still there was no sign of G
lanmor or of her food and she became increasingly concerned about what was happening. She could only assume that he was so busy helping with the unloading that he didn’t have time to come and see her. Surely, though, they must stop for food? She felt hungry so the men unloading the cargo must be starving by now.
She kept opening the door of the cabin and peering out. There seemed to be a lot of activity but she couldn’t see what was going on. She wondered what would happen once all the cargo had been unloaded. Did they turn the ship round and go back to Cardiff right away or would it have to go into dry dock for a thorough overhaul before embarking on another long journey?
It was late evening before Glanmor came with food for her. He looked exhausted.
‘Don’t I get a kiss and a hug?’ she asked as he handed her the plate of food and then stepped back as though to leave. ‘Have you had something to eat?’
‘No,’ he shook his head, ‘we’ve only just completed the unloading of all the cargo. I brought yours along first because I thought you’d be hungry.’
‘I’m starving, but I’m also concerned about what is going to happen next.’
‘Captain Mulligan has sent for me and I have to go and see him right away so I should be able to tell you after that,’ he said, smothering a yawn. ‘I’m dog-tired,’ he added ruefully.
Fern tried to eat the food Glanmor had brought her but suddenly her appetite had gone. She pushed the meat and potatoes around on her plate but although they looked and smelled appetising enough she didn’t really want them.
It was almost an hour before Glenmor came back again and when he did his tiredness seemed to have vanished and his face was wreathed in smiles.
‘It’s all fixed,’ he told her jubilantly. ‘The Saturn has to go right around the coast to Nakhodka Port, which is away to the East, to pick up the next cargo and Captain Mulligan has said I can stay here in Petrograd while they do that. I will then rejoin the ship when she returns and puts in here again on her way back to Cardiff.’