The Fever Tree

by Jennifer McVeigh

  “She was always Sir John’s favorite,” the cook told Frances, pounding dough on a slab of white marble. “And that’s the root of the problem. When your grandfather found out, he couldn’t forgive her. He refused to let her out of the house. Said she would marry a shop boy over his dead body.” She paused to blow out air and wipe a floured arm across her forehead. “Your father came, but they wouldn’t let him in. It was your mother who slipped out to him the next day, and she never set foot in this house again. Your grandfather wouldn’t let us speak of her, and he wouldn’t let anyone in the family visit her. Not even when she was clearly dying. It wasn’t until your grandfather passed away that your uncle felt able to have you in this house.”

  The dull clang of the ship’s bell rang overhead, calling the watch, and Frances blew out the candle. Two o’clock. A cockerel, not wanting to be caught out, made a strangled cry into the dark. Something cold and hard which she didn’t recognize was beating in her blood. A thin veneer of anger had calcified around her grief. Why should she feel ashamed of her father’s bankruptcy? Why should she be banished to the colonies? She let herself imagine, briefly, the pleasure of having enough wealth to be independent.

  Nine

  At some point in the night Frances must have drifted asleep. When she woke up the ship was rolling. A glass was sliding backwards and forwards on the floor between the berths. There was a rancid smell in the cabin, which she couldn’t place until she heard a choking retch from the bunk above. She whispered into the dark, and Mariella’s voice came back to her in a wet cough, asking for a bowl. Frances allowed herself a few seconds then forced herself up, clinging on to the bunks in the dark as their cabin heaved from side to side. She lit a candle and in the flickering light found a bowl under the bunk. She passed it up to Mariella, who grasped it just in time, and Frances saw the sheen of sweat on her face, and her fingers, clogged with vomit, as she lurched over it.

  She pulled her wool shawl over her shoulders and felt her way along the narrow corridor to the bathroom: a box cubicle with running water and a small zinc bath. Anne was inside, kneeling on the linoleum floor, vomiting into the toilet bowl. Frances stepped around her and came back to the cabin with wet cloths, cleaned Mariella’s face and hands, and didn’t resist when the weight of her head rolled into her shoulder. The girl’s skin was damp and she moaned softly, clouding Frances’s neck with a sour stink. By the time she had pulled the wet sheet off the mattress and changed her nightdress, a dirty glimmer of light was showing at the porthole. Anne came back and crawled into her bunk. She was a better patient than Mariella, administering to herself and never breathing a word of complaint.

  Only once, the next day, when Mariella asked her to read aloud in the cabin as the ship listed from one side to the other, did Frances feel nausea creeping over her. It pulled at her stomach and made her head spin. She went up on deck and stood for a few moments under the squalling rain until it passed. The captain caught sight of her and asked her name.

  “Well, Miss Irvine,” he said jovially, “at least someone’s on their feet. Though you’ll not have much company at dinner tonight.” He was right, and she had eaten in the fore saloon alone except for a group of English soldiers who came in late. The lantern on the beam above swung a murky light over the tables, and the soldiers didn’t notice her sitting in the corner. They were young but toughened round the edges, like fresh leather left out in the rain, and they had spent the last few days contriving ways to flirt with the girls in the second cabin, somehow getting their hands on fresh flowers, which they delivered up to them in baskets of eggs. Frances was interested to hear them talking alone. Their words were coarse and unfiltered by a sense of propriety. Two of them peeled apples, and a bottle passed between them. One soldier was telling how he had bought a native girl from a friend in return for a bottle of Cape brandy.

  “Best deal I ever made. There weren’t many flies on this one, I tell you.”

  The bottle clinked against a glass as it was pushed along the table. “They’re a darned sight easier to keep than white women.”

  “What about those kaffirs they hung for being spies? They sent them up a tree with ropes round their necks, and told them to hang themselves.”

  “Where was that?”

  “In the Transvaal. One of them wouldn’t jump, so they shot at his buttocks. The nigger caught hold of a branch as he came down and kept hold of it until they shot his hands free.”

  One of the soldiers grunted. “It’s not right.”

  “No, but it’d make a man laugh.”

  Frances had seen an African serving in a hotel in London, but he had worn clothes and spoken English. She couldn’t imagine a country peopled by men dressed in skins.

  • • •

  WHEN SHE WENT UP on deck the following morning, the light was dazzling. A high wind scuppered what was left of the clouds, rattling the clinches and filling the sails. Waves tore towards them, six or seven feet high. They reared up over the deck, but the ship always rose on the swell, staying just ahead of them, and they rolled on in a torrent of foam. A fine spray was thrown off the sea and she licked the salt off her lips and laughed. This was a wild, empty place, and it filled her with joy after the stuffy heat and wrenching sickness of the cabin. There were few people. She caught sight of the boy with the birdcage sitting cross-legged with his back to the cargo hatch. He held on to the cage with one hand, encouraging the bird to sit on his grubby finger. There was no sign of the stern woman who had chivied him on the platform. “Where is your mother?” she asked.

  The boy was concentrating intently on the bird, which hopped from bar to bar, bobbing his head at the boy’s finger. “My aunt? She’s not feeling well.”

  “Are your parents in South Africa?”

  He shook his head. The bird held on to the bars with one claw and with the other took a delicate step onto his forefinger, testing it for stability. Satisfied, it shuffled along until both claws were wrapped around his skin. The boy looked up at Frances and grinned. “I knew she’d do it eventually.”

  “Have you had her long?”

  “Not very. My mother asked me to look after her, but my aunt says she won’t survive the cold nights.”

  “Can’t you take her below deck?”

  He shook his head. “She’s not allowed. She chatters too much.”

  Frances let her hand rest on the boy’s head. It was like ruffling a pile of downy feathers. After a moment she produced a sugar lump from her jacket pocket and gave it to him. He smiled, and she said, “Do you have a name?”

  “Gilbert.”

  “Well, Gilbert, can you tell me what the worst vegetable is to have on board a ship?”

  “Miss?”

  “It’s a riddle,” she said, smiling. “You’ll have to work it out.” She left him puzzling over it, and walked towards the stern, stopping at the chalked line that was drawn each morning across the deck. Beyond was the area reserved exclusively for first-class passengers. Two sailors were up on the mizzenmast trying to reef a sail which flapped viciously out of their hands. She heard shouts, broken by the wind, and saw a group of men—three sailors and a passenger in shirtsleeves—gathered about twenty feet from where she was standing, leaning out over the water. They had rigged the gangplank, and a group of white birds circled them, dipping and diving.

  A steward walked past and saw her watching. “Baited a fish. Mr. Westbrook’s been fighting it for gone an hour.”

  She was curious to see William Westbrook in this new guise of fisherman, and she watched for half an hour under flickering sunlight, until they had hauled the fish on deck. It was at least six feet long, and broad. A swordfish, she realized, admiring the long, pointed spear. Its body was slack and its mouth gaped slightly, revealing a rusted iron hook the size of her forearm. The sailors grinned and slapped Mr. Westbrook on the back. His sleeves were rolled up, his collar was open, and his hair fell in damp curls to his neck. He handed the rod to one of the crew then squatted down to wash his hands
in a bucket of water. His shirt, drenched with sweat and seawater, clung to his chest. He glanced along the ship to where she was standing. She saw him register her, and felt caught out. Her ears were full of the roar of the sea. He watched her, his mouth opening into a wide smile. She looked away, embarrassed. The sailors had strung up the fish with a hook through its tail. Its gills heaved open and shut, the thick white flesh breaking rhythmically to reveal a rib of scarlet gashes. Two crew boys winched it up and another dug a knife into its belly. Blood gulped out onto deck. Frances, revolted by the sight of the fish turned inside out, put a hand to her mouth and swallowed. When she glanced back at Mr. Westbrook, he was leaning against the ship’s wheel talking to the captain, laughing and shaking his hand.

  Mr. Westbrook appeared beside her a moment later, one hand supporting himself on the rail, the other shielding his eyes from the sun. “You think I’m a brute?”

  She denied it, but he said, “You can be honest, Miss Irvine.”

  So she nodded and said, “It seems a mean thing to do.”

  “And yet, I don’t think you would think so if you had been the one reeling it in. It’s a wonderful thing to fight a fish that size. The dark body thrashing beneath the surface, the two of you locked in battle.” He laughed. “You look doubtful.”

  “I am.”

  “Your sympathy is misplaced. The sea looks fairly benign today, but she can be a mean mistress. You can be sure she’ll have her sport with us when a storm blows up.”

  Frances smiled. “All the more reason to placate her.”

  “Ha!” He laughed. “Yes, perhaps you’re right. But I’ve never been very good at placating.”

  He had the same poised confidence she had noticed in him before, but it was softened now by a boyish enthusiasm. He looked pleased with himself after his catch, balancing on the balls of his feet, squinting into the sun, one hand thrust into his pocket. She wouldn’t have been surprised if he had launched himself up the ladder to the crow’s nest just for the fun of it. He smiled, rueful.

  “Now those . . .” He swept his hand to the stern of the ship, where sailors were throwing line out for the group of diving birds. They had baited one of them. The boatswain was drawing it in, flapping frantically, until he had a grasp on its wings. Then he tore the hook from its stretched and gulping throat. “That’s nothing but petty cruelty.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t see the difference.”

  “Have you ever tried eating a gull?”

  She couldn’t stop herself from smiling, and he grinned back. His enthusiasm was contagious, and for the first time since her father’s death she was full of a complete, effortless joy.

  “I would like to have painted it,” she said, suddenly.

  “Painted what?”

  “Your swordfish,” she said.

  “Well, why don’t you?” he asked, looking pleased.

  She laughed. “I couldn’t. Not when the sea’s like this.”

  He leant his elbows back against the railings, and they were both silent for a few seconds, looking across the deck at the sails and the rolling blue of sea and sky. She felt entirely content in his company, just as she had been with her father. They were similar, these men, both large in stature and full of charisma. They both had an easy charm and an infectious ability to enjoy life. She suspected that Mr. Westbrook, like her father, was indifferent to the petty sermonizing of Society. And Frances was sure that there was more to him than met the eye. He could be serious as well as amusing, and he had talked passionately enough about her father’s charity to convince her that he had high ideals.

  “Miss, Miss, I have it!” Gilbert threw himself breathlessly in front of them.

  Frances crouched down. “Whisper it.”

  He leant into her ear. After a second she nodded.

  “Whisper what?” Mr. Westbrook asked.

  Gilbert broke into a delighted smile. “Sir, what is the worst vegetable to have on board a ship?”

  They both looked at Mr. Westbrook as he thought about it. He paused a long moment, then groaned. “A leek?” Gilbert gave a cry of delight, and Mr. Westbrook shook his head, smiling. “Did you think that one up, Miss Irvine?”

  She laughed, and Gilbert tugged at her sleeve. “Another one. Give us another one!”

  • • •

  LATER THAT AFTERNOON, she found a note on her bed. It was an invitation to dinner: Since Mr. Nettleton and I appear to be the only members of the saloon well enough to dine, I think you must consider it your duty to enliven our company. W.W.

  Frances looked at the quick, confident writing, and gave a private smile. Her hands were sweating slightly, and her fingers left a damp print on the fine linen paper. On an impulse, she smelt it, and caught the faint muskiness of sandalwood; then put it down, embarrassed. Mr. Westbrook was being kind. He pitied her traveling alone and wanted to make her feel included—which was admirable, but it was just this quality of easy-handed generosity which made her like him more than she had reason to. The letter was a clever concoction of intuition and lightheartedness, designed to put her at her ease. He had looked at her standing on deck in her simple cotton dress and seen through the prickliness of her pride. He had captured in an instant her grief, her loneliness, and her reluctance to go to South Africa. And now he seemed to be telling her, subtly, that he understood these things. Her throat tightened, and to her surprise she found herself brushing away tears. His kindness made her vulnerable, and though she wanted to talk to him again, she couldn’t bear to be the object of his pity, or Mrs. Nettleton’s scorn, so she wrote out a short letter declining the invitation.

  Ten

  The following day the weather improved to placid gray skies and calm seas. The ship, so quiet before that you might have been forgiven for believing she carried only a handful of passengers, began to hum with activity, like a beehive struck to life by a stone. As time went on, a routine of sorts established itself. Breakfast at eight, a slow meandering walk along the deck, lunch followed by backgammon—there was a tournament in process—dinner at four, and tea at seven: sardines and boiled eggs.

  Frances experienced a sense of freedom and independence on the Cambrian that was entirely new to her. In England she had rarely, if ever, been allowed out of the house without her father or Lotta accompanying her. Now she explored the ship on her own and talked to whomever she wished. Sister Mary-Joseph showed little interest in the girls as long as they didn’t disturb her. She was reading romances disguised between the covers of her Bible, Mariella had discovered, and she had been forced to emigrate to escape a scandal in England. It made sense. Why else would someone agree to chaperone a group of women out to the colonies for the little money the charity could afford to pay?

  The second-class saloon was home to a diverse collection of humanity. The girls traveling with the Female Middle Class Emigration Society all had positions at the Cape as governesses, teachers, or nurses, but there were other figures Frances grew to know by sight. A genteel woman with red eyes and a hacking cough was headed for the sanatoriums near Cape Town. The air in South Africa was second to none for those suffering from pulmonary complaints. Two Swedish cousins with white-blond hair and sunburnt foreheads talked diamond buying to anyone who would listen, and a brisk, efficient-looking young man plied a good trade taking passengers’ portraits with a camera.

  There was a trader from Natal with an overgrown, grizzled beard and cheeks crumpled into thick folds by the sun. He laid out his skins every day, hoping to sell the last of his wares on the trip back to South Africa. He had various cat skins, zebra skins, and the head of a lion, which must have been badly preserved because it smelt of putrefying meat, and Mariella swore she had seen a maggot wriggling between its nostrils. He sold ostrich feathers, intricately carved ivory ornaments, and jackals’ tails bound into fly swats. In the evenings he sat on deck with a lantern, and men and women gathered round to listen to him telling tales about fever swamps, elephant hunts, and mountains infested with leopard.


  The Reverend Ames was the only member of the clergy on board. He couldn’t have been older than twenty with a smooth, pale face that was prone to sudden, acute blotching when he was excited and hands that fluttered around his face when he talked. He was on his way to establish a mission in East Africa, and he led a zealous service on deck every other day and on Sundays gave the sacrament.

  A thick-set, heavy-boned Italian man with a drooping mustache and watery eyes kept a dancing bear and a monkey. He said he was emigrating for a better market. No one wanted a dancing bear in London anymore, and Frances could see why. The monkey, dressed up in military uniform, spent the day riding on her master’s shoulders, but the bear looked seasick and unhappy. She wore a muzzle and chain, and when her master cried “Round and round again,” she would tumble head over heels across the deck and then waddle her hips around his stick in an awkward dance. Occasionally the monkey scampered onto the bear’s shoulders and tweaked her ears. If the bear swiped at him, the Italian thrashed her with his stick until she bellowed.

  The third-class passengers looked drab and poor. Everyone knew they were crammed into steerage too many to a berth, and on hot days the stench of sewage drifted across the ship and caught in the back of your throat. The women spent all day mending, scolding, and sluicing their children down with buckets of seawater to prevent lice. There was a group of shaft sinkers from a coal mine in Lancashire, a toughlooking set being shipped out to work the new machinery which had been exported to South Africa. They whittled tools for the fields and swapped diamond-smuggling stories, which were passed along the deck: the lady who took a carriage out of Kimberley nonchalantly clutching a bunch of grapes, a diamond concealed in each lobe of fruit; or the carpenter who managed to smuggle £200,000 worth of stones in the handle of his chisel, only to be caught in Southampton by a private detective.