The Fever Tree

by Jennifer McVeigh

  Late the next morning Frances woke up and knew that the storm was over. The ship was barely swaying, the engines had subsided to a dull throb, and when she looked out of the porthole above her bed the sea held a perfect level. The cabin was empty. She went to the bathroom to wash, and when she came back Anne was mopping the floor. Mariella put her head around the door. “Morning, Sleepyhead. Here’s toast and marmalade. You should thank me. Everyone has an appetite all of a sudden, but the ship is in chaos.” She handed Frances a plate and stood swaying in the doorway.

  Frances licked a blob of marmalade off her finger. “What chaos?”

  “The gale got hold of a lifeboat and now it’s hanging all in pieces, the cook is still drunk, two berths were flooded, and a steward has broken his leg. Oh, and someone very grand in first class has been burnt by lobster sauce.”

  “What was anyone doing eating lobster sauce?” Frances asked, and the girls laughed.

  “There was a woman last night, rescued from going overboard. William Westbrook saved her.”

  “Who is William Westbrook?” Anne asked.

  Mariella looked at her in astonishment. “Only the most eligible man on the Cambrian, Anne. Where have you been hiding yourself?” Anne smiled and shrugged her shoulders.

  “Who was the girl?” Frances asked, standing up and stretching her arms to ease out the tight pain across her ribs where she had fallen.

  “Not sure.” Mariella leant into the cabin and tickled her under one arm, and Frances buckled, laughing. “But she’s no doubt lost in a fit of passion. Knights in shining armor don’t come any better-looking than Mr. Westbrook.”

  Twelve

  Later that morning she saw Mr. Westbrook playing deck tennis with Emma and Joanna Whitaker. They were cousins, and Frances had heard that they were performing a flute duet at the concert. She watched, unable to tear herself away. The girls were plump and pink-faced, with large mouths and raucous laughs, and they vied with each other for Mr. Westbrook’s approval. She hadn’t realized how much she wanted to talk to him until the game ended and he walked straight past her with Emma Whitaker leaning on one arm, her racket spinning a circle in her other hand. Frances stood and stared, thinking, If he doesn’t look at me, there is nothing between us. Just when she thought he would walk past without acknowledging her, he glanced up and winked. She felt a surge of relief and gratitude. He had known she was there all along.

  She tried to be realistic. William Westbrook was well liked, and she suspected he was willing to grant his affection indiscriminately. Women and men alike were drawn to him. He was charming and cultured and good at playing games. There was a backgammon tournament on board, and she had heard he was the favorite to win. She knew that if he had shown an interest in her, it was in the same way that a man might play with a child on a lazy summer’s afternoon. It was an amusing way to pass the time. But all her attempts at forgetting him were useless. She couldn’t put him out of her mind.

  She found she didn’t need to ask to find out about him. He aroused people’s interest in the same way that a classical sculpture might were it to be unveiled on board. They wanted to examine the sum of his perfections and seek out his faults. By all accounts, he was a man of contradictions. He had perfect manners, but he seemed not in the least restrained by formalities. He had the kind of determination and ambition that was a hallmark of being Jewish, but he wasn’t afraid of enjoying himself. Despite his Jewish blood, he had strong social connections—he was a member of the Kimberley Club and his cousin was Joseph Baier, perhaps the most influential and certainly the wealthiest man in Kimberley—and yet Frances knew that he drank in the sailors’ quarters, and had even held a wrestling match with one of the furnace stokers (he had taken defeat graciously). Although not independently wealthy himself, he had all the backing of Baier’s money, and he was talked about as a man who already wielded considerable power.

  • • •

  IT WASN’T UNTIL two days later that she spoke to him again. She was practicing in the music room when she saw, out of the corner of her eye, that he had come to stand beside her.

  When she stopped he said, “You never mentioned playing the piano.”

  “Why would I have done?”

  “To impress me?”

  “Are you impressed?”

  “Not yet.” He reached forward and turned the page of the music book. His hand was broad with square knuckles and strong, callused fingers. As he brushed past her, she smelt the same earthy musk of sandalwood.

  “Will you play it for me?”

  It was a Chopin piano sonata. She knew the piece well, and she began confidently, until she felt him circling the nape of her neck with his hand. Her skin froze, then crawled hot and alive under his touch. A ripple went down her back into the base of her spine. She faltered slightly, missing her notes. When he took a lock of her hair and tucked it behind her ear, she was so shocked by the rub of his skin against hers that she stood up abruptly, knocking over the stool. He was looking at her intently. One of her legs was trembling. When he stepped towards her, she felt his knee push against it and heard the bristling of her skirts against him. She took a step back, into the piano, and there was a dark thud of keys. She was scared by how strongly she wanted him to touch her. Her need felt destructive. It wasn’t rational, and it didn’t call for conversation. It was as though she wanted him to obliterate her. She pushed forward past him, but he grabbed her hand and pulled her back.

  “Frances. Don’t be scared.” He smiled at her suddenly and squeezed her hand, reassuring her and bringing her back out of her passion. He understood what she wanted when she barely knew herself. He seemed to be taking the darkness of her desire and turning it all to light, and his words created an intimacy between them which was even more profound than when he had touched her.

  “Dinner,” he said. “Tonight, in the first-class saloon. Will you come?”

  She nodded, not trusting herself to speak, and he let her go. Later she turned over the way he had said her name, as if he knew everything about her, understood her, and offered her his protection. The fact that he had remained perfectly in control when she had been so overwhelmed only made her vulnerability more acute.

  • • •

  FRANCES HOVERED at the doorway to the saloon, conscious that she was late but reluctant now that she was here to push aside the red velvet curtain and step inside. Sister Mary-Joseph had given her permission to dine in first class, as long as she was back in her cabin by nine o’clock. She could tell from the rabble of noise that dinner was already under way. Laughter rose in waves from the other side of the curtain, and a female voice warbled merrily along in time with a tinkling piano. She wore her only evening dress, and was glad she had brought it.

  It was only when she had returned to her cabin that afternoon that she remembered Edwin. The truth was unavoidable. She was engaged to be married to another man. In less than three weeks she would almost certainly be Mrs. Edwin Matthews. Yet she had decided to come anyway. Was it too late to try to change the future?

  The dining saloon made a stab at grandeur, but age and the evening sunlight streaming through the long skylights gave it a shabby, tired air. It had the damp, discordant feel of a winter’s drawing room on a summer’s evening, and it smelt overpoweringly of boiled meat and women’s perfume. Stewards in livery served champagne, and mulatto girls took orders from the passengers.

  “Miss Irvine!” Mr. Nettleton had risen from his seat at the far side of the saloon and was waving his hand vigorously at her. She waved back and threaded her way across the room, catching sight of herself in the mirror that ran floor to ceiling down the length of the funnel. The blue of her dress shone back at her, but her body was barely visible. Her pale, freckled skin and auburn hair blended into the golds of the room and the tarnish on the mirror so that she seemed a gaudy, shifting ghost.

  The gentlemen at the table stood up as she approached, William clutching a napkin and using it to shield his eyes against the crimson su
nlight which flickered over his face and turned his skin to a strip of burnished copper. She felt a lurch of concern when she saw him. What was she doing here?

  She shook hands with a couple who were introduced as the Musgraves. The man had thick, wet lips and a poorly shaved beard. He sprouted hairs from his ample face like wires from a pig’s bottom. His wife was very large, with a huge, swelling bosom on which was nestled a miniature black poodle. It lay with its head curled into her neck, staring out at Frances with small black eyes. Mrs. Nettleton, looking even sharper boned next to such a generous display of flesh, gave Frances a curt smile.

  “Bubbly?” Mr. Nettleton asked, shouting slightly to be heard over the noise of the other diners. She nodded and he filled her glass. They were discussing illicit diamond buying in Kimberley.

  “The damned kaffirs hide them in their arses!” Mr. Musgrave roared, draining his glass of champagne and helping himself to claret.

  “Mr. Musgrave!” Mrs. Nettleton admonished, fingering her small, diamond-studded necklace.

  “It’s true,” William said, giving Mrs. Nettleton a broad smile. “The finest jewels on a lady’s neck have been in places you would rather not consider.”

  Mrs. Nettleton laughed nervously, and Mrs. Musgrave said, “They hide them in mules too, apparently.”

  “Yes, Madam. Even in dogs.”

  “Oh, how dreadful!” She buried her face in her poodle.

  William caught Frances’s eye and smiled. His eyes sloped down into an expression of complicit affection, and she saw that he knew she was thinking about the way he had touched her that afternoon. Pleasure and expectation surged inside her, and a deep flush rose up her neck.

  “Now, Frances,” Mrs. Nettleton was saying in a bustling, matronly voice, “tell us what you are doing in South Africa. Are you going on to Port Elizabeth?”

  “Actually, I’m disembarking at Cape Town.”

  “And do you have a good position there? I know a few respectable English families. I dare say Mr. Nettleton and I could put in a good word.”

  “Thank you, but I’m not in need of a position.” She paused. They all turned to look at her. “I’m to be married in Cape Town.” She glanced at William as she said it, and saw his eyes flicker over her in surprise. There were general exclamations and congratulations around the table.

  “Miss Irvine”—Mrs. Musgrave leant over her husband to look at Frances—“you are traveling with an emigration society, is that right? And yet, you’re not under any obligation to them financially?”

  Frances nodded. “Yes, that’s right.”

  “Well, that makes you perfectly placed to give us an impartial view on our little debate. I have been defending the emigration societies to the present company, but I’m afraid I need a little help holding up my end.”

  Frances, embarrassed, looked round the table. The last thing she felt in the mood for was a discussion about the politics of women’s emigration.

  Mrs. Musgrave levered her bosom over the table and tapped Mrs. Nettleton on the hand. “Now, don’t be shy, Liza, we’re never to be ashamed of having a point of view. The progress of our nation has been built on fair discussion.” Mrs. Nettleton colored and pulled back her hand.

  Mrs. Musgrave turned to face Frances. “We were discussing in particular the question of redundancy. What do you make of it?”

  “Redundancy?” Frances asked, confused. She glanced at William, hoping that he might intervene on her behalf, but he was staring at her as if from a distance, with an expression of fascinated reappraisal. His forehead was curled into a slight frown, and he held the edge of his lower lip between his teeth. His hands, she noticed, were moving. He was balancing a knife across his forefinger as he looked at her. Mrs. Musgrave might be well-meaning, but her self-conviction made her unpredictable. What wouldn’t she say?

  “Yes, redundancy. How are a million surplus women in Britain ever to be married unless they go to the colonies? What can we possibly do with them if they stay in England?”

  “I wasn’t arguing against emigration,” Mrs. Nettleton cut in, sounding shrill and affronted. “Indeed, I wholeheartedly support Mrs. Sambourne, but she can be naive. Like you, Mrs. Musgrave, she is led by her heart. Sometimes a little more plain speaking is called for. Emigration societies are only as good as the girls they take on. Even she complains that most of her protégés lose all semblance of principle once they step on board ship. You should hear the stories she tells!”

  “Come, it can’t be as bad as that.”

  “I admire your aptitude for fair-mindedness, but really, you know as well as I do that emigration societies are little better than marriage bureaus.”

  Frances sat very still, anger welling up inside her. She twisted her napkin around her forefinger. These people knew nothing of the helplessness of the girls in the second cabin, their sense of failure and rejection, and the personal tragedies which had brought each of them onto the Cambrian. They couldn’t imagine what it felt like to be shipped out of England.

  “And why shouldn’t they be marriage bureaus?” she asked in a cold voice, looking round the table. William would more than likely never speak to her again, and she was exasperated by the fact that she had no say in her own future. Her hand went to her throat, tugging at the skin. “The raison d’être of London Society is to marry off eligible women. Why shouldn’t those who aren’t deemed good enough for England try their chances elsewhere?”

  “Because, my dear, we pay our good, charitable money so that they can find work in the colonies, not run off with the first ship’s steward who takes a shine to them!”

  A silence settled over the group while everyone absorbed the implications of this statement. When Frances spoke, her voice seethed with anger, and she stared at Mrs. Nettleton, trying to hold eye contact. “One would think the least these girls could count on would be the support of their own countrymen. And yet you heap prejudice on top of penury. Is it any wonder they take the first opportunity to marry?”

  “Well spoken,” Mrs. Musgrave muttered, reaching over to pat Frances moistly on the back of her hand.

  “Of course,” Mr. Nettleton broke in, trying to lighten the mood, “no one is suggesting your friends in second class are in the least bit taking advantage. Their intentions are, I’m sure, quite responsible. Even Mrs. Sambourne’s fair beauties were—”

  “Mrs. Sambourne’s fair beauties—as you call them—were little better than common prostitutes,” Mrs. Nettleton interrupted in a clipped voice. “Last year, fifty of them, all with genteel pretensions, shipped to Cape Town. The residents were so furious they wouldn’t let the women disembark for a week! Mrs. Sambourne had, in her kindness, established positions for them with respectable families, but of course it didn’t take long for them to go back to their old ways.”

  “All for the goodness of mankind, my dear,” Mr. Nettleton said.

  Mr. Musgrave gave a gurgling chuckle. “Yes, an interesting linguistic conundrum. The ‘pretty horse breaker’ in London is known in Cape Town as a ‘London beauty.’”

  “The point is,” Mrs. Nettleton continued, ignoring him, “if they say they are going out to work, then it is work they should do. It’s next to impossible, by all accounts, to find good European help at the Cape. I know someone who had two nursemaids run off to be married within six months of each other. Now she has to make do with a kaffir.”

  William stopped his balancing act with the knife and spoke with a cold smile. “And, my dear Mrs. Nettleton, is one nursemaid not as good as another?”

  “You’d have your children looked after by a kaffir? Perhaps you shouldn’t answer that question until you have children.”

  “And perhaps you, Mrs. Nettleton, shouldn’t ask that question until you have met a kaffir,” William retorted.

  Mrs. Nettleton turned scarlet and was silent.

  Mrs. Musgrave fondled one of her dog’s ears thoughtfully and said, “I read a letter in The Times which said that babies can take on the pigmentation of th
eir nurses. Their skin turns oily and cloudy just as if they were little savages. An English mother testified to it being true.”

  William gave a dry laugh. “What’s true is that the English mother you speak of must have had herself tupped by a black ram.”

  Mr. Musgrave’s appreciative chuckle broke up the awkward silence, and the stewards arrived with platters of food. It was nothing short of a banquet, and Frances was astonished that the same kitchen which produced such a meager spread for the second cabin was capable of such extravagance. There was a tureen of turtle soup and another of vichyssoise, poached salmon with hollandaise, a lobster salad, and afterwards a joint of veal, roast guinea fowl, and potatoes parmentier. Frances, fed up with baked tripe and boiled beef, had been looking forward to eating well, but she was suddenly sickened by such an ostentatious display of indulgence. Who was she trying to fool, sitting here in first class? It amused them to turn over the politics of her fall in fortunes, but where did that leave her? And then there was William, sitting opposite her, and the sinking realization that anything she might have hoped for between them had almost certainly been extinguished by the revelation that she was engaged to be married. It was all she could do to accept a bowl of soup.

  The conversation roamed from the climate at the Cape to the problems of giving parties. Native servants, Mr. Musgrave was maintaining, were a particular problem because they couldn’t help but indulge themselves at their master’s expense, often arriving at the table nothing short of drunk. “Of course,” he said, wiping hollandaise from the corners of his mouth, “the raw native is like a child. He needs to be guided, and that means keeping the bottle firmly out of his reach.”