The Sea Between

by Thomas, Carol

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘D’you think he’ll be agreeable to making shorter voyages, to being ashore more often?’

  Charlotte reached up to finger the silver brooch pinned to the bodice of her white cotton blouse. ‘I don’t know,’ she answered honestly. She doubted Richard would agree to give up his long voyages altogether, but he might be prepared to make them less frequently.

  Sarah studied her for a moment, then gave a small shrug. ‘Well, you can but ask him. If he says no I suppose you’ll just have to make the best of things.’

  Charlotte looked down at little Mary Ellen, sleeping peacefully in her mother’s arms. That was the other thing she’d been thinking about a lot lately—children. She wanted children of her own, Richard’s children. She wasn’t prepared to raise them on her own, though. Where was the joy in that? Looking up again, she shook her head. ‘I’m extremely fond of Richard, Sarah, but unless he’s willing to spend considerably more time ashore, I won’t marry him.’

  Sarah tossed her an old-fashioned smile. ‘I’ll lay odds you will,’ she said.

  Ten days had seemed like a reasonably long time when Richard had said that was how long he would be ashore. But the ten days were in fact only eight days in terms of his stay at the farm, because the ten days included the day it had taken him to travel from Lyttelton and the day that it would take him to travel back again. In terms of the weather, however, the eight days couldn’t have been better. Every day had been fine and sunny and every day they’d either ridden or walked across the hills together. In terms of their relationship, well, that was every bit as rosy as the weather. Charlotte enjoyed Richard’s company immensely, and he obviously enjoyed hers too.

  On Richard’s final day at the farm, they had ridden up to Shelf Rock and were lying on the grass in each other’s arms in the shade of the overhanging rock, out of the heat of the sun. Even so it was very warm, all the more so with Richard lying half on top of her. He had rolled up the sleeves of his shirt and undone the top three or four buttons so that the front was gaping loose, letting in some air.

  Sliding her hand up the back of his neck she ran her fingers through his hair as he planted a trail of kisses down her throat. She loved the way his hair fell forward when he was kissing her, brushing against her skin as he moved.

  Lifting his head, Richard smiled down at her. ‘I suppose you’ve realized that I’m in love with you,’ he said softly.

  She smiled happily. She had thought that he loved her but it was the first time that he had actually told her that he did. ‘And I suppose you’ve realized that I’m in love with you,’ she returned quietly. It was the first time she’d told him how she felt, too.

  Richard’s smile spread several notches. Leaning forward, he kissed her on the lips, an indescribably gentle, tender kiss that expressed in a way that words could not the depth of his feelings for her.

  ‘I’ve something to ask you,’ he said quietly.

  She looked at him and waited.

  ‘I want you to be my wife, Charlotte. Will you marry me?’ His smile stretched expectantly.

  She smiled back at him, aware that her heart had started to thump. ‘Richard, I do want to marry you,’ she said, choosing her words carefully, ‘but there are a few things we need to talk about first. We need to talk about what our marriage will be like, in terms of seeing each other, spending time together.’

  A puzzled frown formed between Richard’s brows. ‘I shall see you whenever I’m ashore.’

  ‘Yes, I know you will, but how often will that be? Twice a year? Richard, I want to see you more than that.’

  He pushed himself up slightly, supporting himself on his left forearm. ‘What are you suggesting, Charlotte? That you accompany me on my voyages?’

  ‘No, of course not.’ She reached up to touch his cheek gently.

  ‘Then what are you suggesting? That I should sell my ship and become a farmer?’

  ‘No, of course not,’ she said again.

  ‘What then?’ Richard had been expecting her to delightedly accept his proposal and he was looking somewhat put out by this unforeseen turn of events.

  Pushing herself into a sitting position, she curled her arms around his neck. ‘Richard, I love you very much and I want to be your wife. I would never ask you to give up the sea entirely, because I know how much you enjoy it—but do you have to go on long voyages? Do you have to be away for six months at a time? Could you not carry local cargoes up and down the coast, that would only take you away from home for a night or two?’

  Letting out a deep sigh, he sat up so that they were sitting side by side. ‘Charlotte, I’m afraid it isn’t that simple. I own a sea-faring barque, not a coastal trader. It was built with long voyages in mind. It’s not suited to short coastal hauls. It’s the wrong type of vessel.’

  ‘Well, could you not exchange it for one that is suited?’ she asked.

  ‘Are you telling me how I should order my business affairs, Charlotte?’ There was no mistaking the sharp note of warning in Richard’s voice.

  ‘I’m suggesting a way around a problem,’ she returned evenly.

  ‘You were suggesting that I sell my ship.’

  She turned away and stood up. ‘If you want to marry me, Richard, you’ll have to find a way of spending time with me, and more than just a few days a year. How you do that is up to you. I was merely suggesting coastal trading as a possible—’

  ‘Charlotte,’ Richard interrupted. ‘You know nothing at all about shipping, or finances. I’m currently paying off a loan and paying it off reasonably quickly, because there are good profits to be made in carrying long-distance cargoes, particularly when I carry a cargo on my own behalf. I purchased a cargo of tea last year and sold it in England for twenty times what I paid for it. Within five or ten years I’ll be completely free of debt. If I were to use the Nina only for coastal trading, I’d still be in debt in twenty years’ time.’

  She glanced down at him. ‘A moment ago you said it wasn’t suitable for coastal trading.’ He was changing his tune now. ‘Anyway, does it matter if it takes twenty years to clear your debts?’

  ‘Of course it matters!’ He pushed himself to his feet.

  She folded her arms and looked away. ‘Well, it matters to me that I’d not see you for months and months!’

  Expelling another loud sigh, Richard turned her around to face him again, then leaned forward and kissed her forehead. ‘Charlotte, let’s not quarrel about it,’ he said quietly. ‘We’ll discuss it again when I next come home, when you’ve had time to think about it some more.’

  ‘And will you be thinking about it as well?’ she asked. ‘Will you be thinking about how you can spend more time with me? Or is it just I who must think? Think up ways of occupying myself while you’re at sea.’

  ‘Charlotte, the sea is my livelihood,’ Richard said patiently. ‘Much as I’d like to spend more time ashore with you, it isn’t possible.’

  ‘It would be, if you made a change to coastal trading.’

  ‘I’ve already explained to you why I travel long distances.’

  ‘Yes, you have explained. It’s on account of profit, which is apparently more important to you than spending time with me!’

  Richard tightened his lips. ‘Well, if that’s how poorly you rate my feelings for you, you’d better not marry me.’

  ‘I don’t intend to,’ she returned. ‘Not until you can assure me that you’ll spend a reasonable amount of time with me. I want a proper husband, Richard, not one I don’t see from one month to the next, whom I can only converse with by letter, who’s hard-pressed to remember his children’s names because he sees them so rarely. I want a marriage that is a marriage.’

  ‘So either I give in to your demands or else you won’t marry me—is that it?’

  She looked away impatiently. ‘They aren’t demands. They’re requests.’

  ‘Whatever you want to call them, they amount to the same!’ Silence fell. Shaking his head in exasperatio
n, Richard strode down the hill about twenty yards, stood for a minute staring at his feet, then walked back up the slope to her. ‘We’ll discuss it again when I come back in a few months,’ he said coolly. ‘You can give me your answer then.’

  ‘And when we discuss it again, when you’re next ashore, will we be discussing how you can make some changes so that you aren’t away so much?’ she asked.

  ‘Charlotte, I want to marry you but I will not have you dictating to me how I should run my business affairs,’ Richard returned in the same cool, even tones.

  She looked away, feeling hurt and angry. He was more or less informing her that he had no intention of making any changes whatsoever to his comings and goings, and that she would have to learn to accommodate any domestic inconveniences they caused.

  ‘You can have my answer now, Richard. It’s no. And it’ll stay no until you make me a better offer than the one you have,’ she said shortly, and strode off.

  As she made her way down the hill to where they’d left the horses she looked back only once, to see if Richard was following her. He wasn’t. He was standing where she’d left him, watching her, expecting her to go back to him no doubt. She didn’t go back. She mounted her horse and galloped off. Half a mile further on she turned off into one of the side valleys, rode until she reached a spot where she couldn’t be seen, and burst into tears.

  Three hours later, Charlotte found herself at the centre of a second row; this time in the parlour, with her family. It was a casual question from her father that started it.

  ‘What time will Richard be stopping by tomorrow morning, Charlotte? I meant to ask him if he’ll buy me some decent tobacco if he comes across some. This stuff is very poor.’ Pulling out a small wad from his tobacco pouch, he stuffed it into his pipe, tamped it down with his thumb, then reached for a taper.

  Sarah looked up from her tapestry frame and threw Charlotte a sideways glance. Charlotte had already confided in her what had happened between her and Richard.

  ‘I don’t think he will be stopping by, Father,’ Charlotte answered quietly.

  Putting the lighted end of the taper to the bowl of his pipe John gave two or three short puffs then, satisfied it was lit, blew out the taper. ‘Why not? Is he leaving very early?’

  ‘I don’t know what time he’s planning on leaving,’ she replied.

  Leaning back in his armchair, John fixed a shrewd eye on his daughter. ‘Are things all right between the two of you?’

  Sensing the answer might be no, Edwin set his book down on his knee while Isobel, who was sitting next to Sarah, reading through a letter, looked up and frowned.

  Deciding it was pointless to beat about the bush, Charlotte said, ‘If you mean will we be marrying, the answer is no, I’m afraid we won’t. We’ve found we’re not compatible.’

  John slowly pulled his pipe from his mouth and stared at her, then in an ominously low voice he asked, ‘What do you mean, not compatible?’

  ‘I mean I’m not suited to being a captain’s wife, Father. Richard’s away at sea most of the time and I’m not willing to spend long periods on my own. I said I wouldn’t marry him unless he arranged his affairs so that he’s ashore more’.

  ‘Did he propose marriage to you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you refused him?’

  ‘Yes.’

  There was a long silence during which everyone in the room seemed to hold their breath, then John said loudly, ‘Don’t you think you should have consulted me before giving Richard an answer? Or does respect for your father count for nothing, Charlotte?’

  Charlotte reddened and lowered her eyes. She ought to have consulted her father, and he had every right to be cross with her, but the truth was she had never anticipated this outcome. She hadn’t expected Richard to agree outright to her request, but she had expected him to say he would give it some thought. She certainly hadn’t expected him to simply dismiss her request out of hand.

  She looked up as her father began to speak again, and listened in tight-lipped silence while, over the next ten minutes, he told her very loudly how very disappointed he was with her, how very disappointed the Steeles would be, how astonished he was that she’d had the audacity and presumption to demand that Richard should rearrange his shipping itinerary, and finally how stupid she was to have refused Richard. After which, he decamped to his study to fume in private.

  ‘Don’t worry, Charlotte. John will get over it,’ Isobel said dismissively, breaking the heavy silence that John’s angry departure had left in its wake.

  Edwin narrowed his eyes suspiciously as he turned to look at his aunt.

  Knowing what was going through his mind, Charlotte chipped in quickly, ‘It was my decision, Edwin.’

  Edwin glanced across at her, his expression cynical. ‘With no influence from any other quarter?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I suppose you agree with John, Edwin? You think Charlotte should have accepted Captain Steele and made the best of things,’ Isobel remarked scornfully.

  ‘We all have to make the best of things,’ Edwin replied. He looked at Isobel pointedly, as if to say he had to make the best of her prickly presence in the household. ‘And yes, as a matter of fact I do agree with my father. Charlotte was a fool to turn Richard down,’ he added.

  ‘And that, I suppose, is an opinion you’ve formed entirely independently, without any influence from your father?’ Isobel taunted.

  Edwin tightened his lips angrily.

  Springing to his defence, Sarah said in terse tones, ‘Just because Edwin agrees with John doesn’t mean that he hasn’t made up his own mind, Isobel.’

  Isobel smiled triumphantly. ‘No, indeed it does not. And just because Charlotte agrees with me doesn’t mean that she hasn’t made up her own mind either. Charlotte can do a lot better than Richard Steele,’ she stated confidently.

  ‘We’ll see,’ Edwin gritted.

  ‘What do you think, Sarah? Do you have an independent opinion about all this?’ enquired Isobel.

  Sarah’s cheeks turned a deep plum colour. She looked almost as angry as Edwin. ‘I think she’s made a mistake and I think she’ll rue it one day! And I’ve formed that opinion without any consultation with anyone!’

  Charlotte had had enough. Rising to her feet, she strode over to the door. As she reached the doorway, she said over her shoulder, ‘You can all think whatever you like. I’ve no regrets. There are plenty more fish in the sea besides Richard!’

  She spent the rest of the evening in her room, crying. She had meant it, though: if Richard didn’t love her enough to make some changes, she wouldn’t marry him.

  Richard had also decided that there were plenty more fish in the sea, and fish who weren’t so choosy about the bait. In December, his parents received a letter from Southampton, telling them he had married.

  Chapter 8

  January 1866

  In the New Year of 1866, Charlotte went to live with George and Ann. Her father had told her that he believed it was in her best interests. Although he didn’t state his reasons in so many words, Charlotte knew he had more than one reason for sending her to Lyttelton. First, her prospects of finding a husband to her liking were far better there; secondly, she would be distanced from Isobel’s undesirable sphere of influence, which John was convinced had played a large role in Charlotte’s turning down Richard’s offer of marriage; and last but not least, relations between the Blake and Steele households would settle back into place far more quickly if she was elsewhere. Much as she didn’t want to leave the farm and her family, she couldn’t deny that it would be better for all concerned if she did.

  Anyway, she didn’t want Richard to find her still at the farm and still unmarried when he next came to visit his parents, whenever that might be. As far as she was concerned, if she never saw him again it would be soon enough. She’d been deeply and bitterly hurt by what he’d done, far more than she’d let her family see. She had loved Richard and had thought he loved her. Despi
te their quarrel, she had truly believed that they would talk things over again when he was next ashore, so she’d been completely stunned when Ben and Letitia had broken the news to them that Richard had married a woman from Southampton. Eliza somebody or other. Four months after he’d asked her to be his wife, he had married someone else! She almost wondered if he’d done it on purpose, to thumb his nose at her because she’d turned him down. She was more inclined to think it was simply an indication of how little he had really felt for her.

  Living in Lyttelton had one obvious drawback, of course. It was the port where Richard would call whenever he visited his parents—not that he visited them often. But since Lyttelton was where George and Ann lived, there wasn’t much she could do about that. The likelihood of their paths crossing was fairly small anyway. When Richard was in port, she didn’t imagine he would be going out of his way to see her, and she certainly wouldn’t be going out of her way to see him.

  Charlotte didn’t settle easily into life in Lyttelton. It was a far cry from her father’s farm, nestled in the beautiful Malvern Hills. The craggy hills surrounding Lyttelton rose up steep and stark; they were sparsely covered in scrubby tussock grass, and the skyline was rugged and angular. The fogs that rolled in were sea fogs, and the smells were the smells generated by fourteen hundred human beings congregating in close proximity. The unpleasant odour of human waste could quite regularly be smelled wafting across the town, when the wind was blowing in the wrong direction. Wood smoke, coal smoke, the smell of pigs, which quite a number of residents fattened in their back gardens, and the smell of seaweed—these were the smells of Lyttelton. Charlotte had yet to smell the sweet smell of a grass drifting on the wind.

  On the positive side, there was always something happening in the port, something interesting to watch down on the jetties and wharves, and she was getting on far better with Ann than she’d expected to. They prepared meals and did the housework together, and most fine afternoons, apart from Wednesday afternoon when Ann went off to a ladies’ sewing group, she and Ann walked out together. The evenings, however, were painfully dull. George invariably buried his head in a newspaper or a book, and, since he didn’t like people to talk while he was reading, Ann quietly embroidered and Charlotte quietly occupied herself the best way she could. Usually she either played patience or read. She was currently reading a book that Isobel had sent to her—A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: with strictures on political and moral subjects. It had been written by an Englishwoman called Mary Wollstonecraft, in 1792. Contrary to Charlotte’s expectations, it made very interesting reading. Like Isobel, Mary Wollstonecraft was a highly intelligent woman who passionately believed that women should be allowed the same right to education as men. She maintained that intellectual companionship was as important a component of marriage as any other, and that intellectual companionship could be achieved only if girls were offered the same opportunity for schooling as boys. What Charlotte really admired about her writing, though, was the way Mary Wollstonecraft looked at every aspect of the situation. She was just as quick to point out the disservices that women had done to themselves as she was to point out the disservices the government had done them.