‘Richard, what a damnable business this is!’ George greeted him. ‘How’s your ship? Is there much damage to her?’
Richard shrugged and shook his head. ‘I can’t tell.’ Only a close inspection would reveal the extent of any damage. ‘How many of the damaged vessels are insured by your company, George?’
‘Just one, thank God. The Margaret.’ He turned to point to the ketch that had broken her moorings and fouled the schooner; the two vessels were still locked together, tossing about as one on the waves.
Richard frowned as he watched the two ships. Their rigging had become completely tangled. Still, it had at least prevented the Margaret from fouling any other vessels. ‘You’ll be liable for some damage to the other ship, too, I suppose,’ he said, turning back to George.
‘We will. It’ll be a difficult business to sort out who pays for what, though. Some of the damage to the other ship would have been done by the sea, not the collision. Are you still insured with Lloyd’s, Richard?’
Richard nodded. He’d approached George several months ago, with a view to transferring his ship’s insurance cover from Lloyd’s to George’s company. George, however, somewhat to Richard’s surprise, had told him to stay with Lloyd’s, his reason being that in the event of a dispute—which wasn’t unusual with shipping claims—he preferred his disputes to be with clients who weren’t related to him. Accordingly, Richard had left his insurance in Lloyd’s’ hands.
‘Where’s your partner?’ Richard enquired. He hadn’t seen any sign of Fairfield, not that he’d been looking for him.
‘He’s in Dunedin. His father’s not very well.’ George pressed his lips together. ‘Of all the days for him to be away! I could well have used him here today, with all the paperwork that’ll need to be done.’
Richard glanced back instinctively to where Charlotte was standing, but she’d disappeared, gone home probably. Eliza had told him last night that Charlotte and Fairfield were now engaged and planning to marry in the New Year.
Leaving George to seek out the Margaret’s captain, Richard joined his crew. Six of them had come down to the waterfront to offer their help, but it wasn’t until around four o’clock that he decided it was safe to take a boat out to the Nina. They spent an hour making a start on assessing the damage, then, as dusk began to fall, returned to shore.
It was nearly seven o’clock when Richard finally stepped over the threshold of his home. He walked through the kitchen, instinctively sniffing the air for smells of food, but somewhat to his surprise there were no smells at all, other than the sprigs of lavender hanging from the ceiling to dry. A cold dinner then. He clicked his tongue irritably. He’d been out all day and half the previous night and he would have liked something hot. He went through to the parlour, where he found Eliza sitting by the fire, sewing a button on his shirt. She looked up as he walked in, but didn’t get up.
‘I see your ship survived,’ she remarked.
He walked over to the armchair and sank heavily into it. ‘When did you come down to the wharf? I didn’t see you.’
‘I didn’t go down to the wharf. I can see your ship from the end of the street,’ she said. ‘Is it much damaged?’
He felt tempted to say ‘Do you care?’, but restrained himself and merely shook his head and said, ‘What is there for dinner, Eliza? I’m famished.’
Pricking the needle through the fabric of his shirt, she set it down on the sofa then stood up. ‘Cold lamb. I’ll make you some sandwiches.’
Cold lamb sandwiches? Richard tightened his mouth. ‘Is that the best you can offer me, Eliza? I’ve had nothing to eat since last night! Why isn’t there something hot?’
‘Because I didn’t know when to expect you home.’
‘You could quite easily have found that out, if you’d taken the trouble to walk down to the wharf,’ he said pointedly. ‘Don’t think I don’t know what’s at the bottom of this. You’re sulking, aren’t you, because I told you off last night for being extravagant.’
‘If that was all I had to sulk about, I’d be a happy woman!’ she returned, her voice rising with each word. ‘You’ve been out all day, Richard! Seven months you were at sea, and on your second night ashore, what happened? You were called from your bed on account of that wretched ship of yours! You’ve spent the whole day down on the wharf, then when you finally deign to come home, you abuse me for not having a hot meal ready for you!’
‘Eliza, mind how you speak to me!’ Richard warned sharply.
‘I wish it had sunk!’ she said passionately. ‘I do! I stood at the end of the street watching that wave roll through, and I prayed it would smash your ship to pieces!’
Pushing himself to his feet, Richard strode from the room, retracing his steps to the back door. He slammed it hard as he left and set off down the street. He ate at the Mitre Hotel—a piping hot meal of roast pork, boiled potatoes, carrots and cabbage, which settled like ballast in his empty belly—then went into the bar and tried to float it with several pints of beer. It was nearly midnight when he returned home, not drunk, but not far from it. Eliza was already in bed.
Swaying like a mast on a gentle swell, he stood staring at the mound beneath the blankets that was his wife. ‘It’s no wonder we’ve no children—you’re never here to father any,’ she’d complained to him on his previous visit home. Even when he was home, it invariably seemed to coincide with Eliza’s ‘time of the month’, as she called it. The one time they’d spent a reasonable length of time together, when he’d brought Eliza out to New Zealand aboard the Nina, Eliza had refused to let him go near her, saying she felt ill enough from the movement of the ship without adding morning sickness to her discomfort. All in all, he wasn’t entirely surprised that she hadn’t become pregnant yet.
Not bothering to undress, he sprawled on top of the quilt and closed his eyes. He very much doubted he’d be fathering a child during this visit.
Chapter 18
A cold, blustery southerly was buffeting Lyttelton and there was rain in the air. In the sky, thunder clouds were massing; there had already been one or two ominous rumbles. But a chilly wind and the likelihood of a sudden heavy downpour weren’t sufficient to keep people indoors when there was something out of the ordinary to see. The port’s jetties and wharves had never seen so many Sunday-afternoon visitors.
Attracting the most attention were the John Knox and the Jeanie Duncan, which had fared particularly badly when the huge waves had struck them the day before. Crowds had been gathering around them all day. The town’s children were far more interested in the hundreds of dead fish that were bobbing about in the muddy waves. Charlotte had never seen the water in the harbour looking so brown. There were huge tangled masses of seaweed floating on the waves, too; even in the middle of the town, you could smell it. In a few days it would no doubt be joined by the even worse smell of dead fish. Not all the fish would go to waste—the port’s poorer families had been out even before the sun had risen, with wicker baskets and makeshift nets, thriftily making the most of the unexpected bounty. As was often the case, what was a disaster for some was a blessing for others.
Charlotte looked up and frowned as a seagull squawked raucously overhead. The seabirds had been gluttonously feasting on the easy pickings all day. Not that anyone grudged them their feast: the more fish they ate, the fewer there would be to rot and smell.
Pushing her hands into her pockets, she continued along the jetty to where the John Knox was moored—what was left of it. There was quite a crowd inspecting it. Thank God, George and William’s company won’t be footing the bill for its repairs, Charlotte thought as she leaned out over the jetty to get a better view. To be honest, she thought an insurance company was a fairly risky business. Whether you made a profit or a loss was very much in the lap of the gods, as unpredictable as the throw of a dice so far as she could see. When she had said as much to William he had agreed that there were some risks, but with his usual confidence he had assured her that a well-run insurance comp
any, provided it didn’t have an unusually bad run of luck, ought to be capable of making a healthy profit. She hadn’t been altogether convinced, but that was probably because she lived with George, who usually spent two or three evenings a week frowning over his paperwork, which did tend to give the impression that it was all a very worrying business.
‘Have you come to inspect the damage?’
Charlotte started as Richard’s voice came unexpectedly from behind her.
‘Oh, you made me jump,’ she said as she whirled around to face him, then in answer to his question added, ‘Yes. I wanted to get a closer look at the damage to the John Knox.’
‘Of course, you have a vested interest in ships now, don’t you? Now that you’re engaged to an insurance broker.’ He glanced down at the ring on her left hand. ‘Your fiancé will be glad the John Knox wasn’t on his books, I imagine.’
‘Yes, I’m sure he will,’ Charlotte agreed with feeling. William wasn’t due back from Dunedin until tomorrow, but news of the big waves had no doubt reached him by now.
‘Is the Nina damaged?’ she asked.
‘Not badly. One of the spars has split and will need replacing, and there’s some damage to some of the fittings,’ Richard replied matter-of-factly. ‘But all in all she got off fairly lightly.’
‘That’s good,’ Charlotte said with a smile.
He smiled back, then turned his head to look across the bay to where his ship lay at anchor. He looks tired, Charlotte thought. He always looked tired when he came ashore after a long voyage.
‘Is it difficult to replace a spar?’ she asked, picking up the conversation again.
‘Not difficult, just expensive.’ Richard smiled as he briefly met her eyes, then looked over to the town. She looked the other way. ‘Shall we try to be friends?’ Richard had said to her at the farm. Well, they weren’t enemies any more, the animosity between them had gone, but she didn’t think they would ever feel completely at ease in each other’s company.
‘Have you set a date for your wedding?’ Richard asked. He glanced across at her. ‘Eliza said she thought it would be in January some time.’
Charlotte nodded. ‘Yes. The twenty-second. We’ll be married at the farm. You and Eliza will be invited, of course, but I imagine you will be at sea.’
‘Yes, I will, almost certainly,’ Richard returned.
It was what she had expected him to say, and to be honest she was glad that he would be at sea.
‘I expect Eliza will attend,’ Richard added.
She nodded again, trying to think of something else to talk about.
‘Eliza’s at home, is she?’ she enquired.
Richard nodded.
Charlotte looked away again. It didn’t require a glass ball to see that things between Richard and Eliza weren’t a bed of roses.
‘It looks as if there’ll be a downpour soon,’ she said, tilting her head back to look at the heavy grey clouds that were rolling in from the south. ‘I think I’ll be on my way. I don’t want to get soaked.’
‘Are you going home?’ Richard asked.
She nodded.
‘I’ll walk with you part of the way then,’ he said.
Instinctively she flicked a quick look in the direction of Voelas Road. Eliza certainly couldn’t see the two of them from there, not unless she was standing on the roof and peering through a telescope, but even so Charlotte still felt slightly uneasy about walking along beside Richard, just the two of them.
As they began to make their way through the railway yards towards Norwich Quay, weaving their way between stacks of timber, wagons and wooden crates, Richard began to tell her about the big wave that had surged through the harbour during the early hours of Saturday morning. All sorts of wildly exaggerated stories were being traded around the port about what had occurred. The wave had obviously been a large one, but not as large as some people were making out. The general consensus seemed to be that an earthquake had caused it.
As they approached Canterbury Street they came to a stop outside the Robin Hood Hotel, where they would part company. Before they went their separate ways, though, there were one or two things that Charlotte wanted to say to Richard, things she wanted to get off her chest. She hadn’t seen him, not close enough to speak to at any rate, since the disastrous trip to Christchurch, and if she didn’t say what she wanted to say now she mightn’t get another chance for quite some time.
‘Richard,’ she said hesitantly. ‘What happened in the jeweller’s shop in Christchurch—I know I wrote you a letter to say I was sorry, but I’ve never had the chance to say sorry to your face. But I am sorry. I never intended that to happen.’
‘No, I know you didn’t,’ Richard said quietly.
She took a deep breath before asking the other question that was bothering her. ‘Richard, how are things with you and Eliza? It’s none of my business, I know, but I feel as if I’ve caused trouble between you. I should have given the brooch to your mother to return to you. If I had done so…’ She gave an awkward shrug and left it at that.
She could see from Richard’s expression that it wasn’t a topic that he’d expected her to raise, or wanted raised. There was a long silence. ‘What happened with the brooch…’ He paused, as if choosing his words carefully. ‘It didn’t help relations between Eliza and me. But if you’re asking me if I blame you for that—no, I don’t. I blame myself. I should have told Eliza about us.’
‘Have things mended between you now?’ It was another question she had no right to ask. It had just popped out, in fact. She hadn’t planned on asking it at all.
Richard narrowed his eyes slightly, and she thought for a moment that he was going to tell her to mind her own business. He didn’t, however; he answered her. ‘Some things, Charlotte, take a little longer to mend than a broken brooch. As you’ll no doubt find out when you’re married.’
She lowered her eyes, at a loss for words. What could one say to a statement like that?
‘Fairfield—he’s the kind of man you always wanted, isn’t he?’ Richard said quietly.
She looked up and met his eyes. She knew exactly what Richard meant: he meant that William would be there for her, that he would be there sharing her bed each night, there in the parlour with her on a cold winter’s evening, sharing the warmth of a cheery fire. In that respect, yes, William was the kind of man she wanted. William would be a good husband, he would be a good father to their children, and she could expect to live in reasonable comfort for the rest of her life. She would have a better marriage with William than she would have had with Richard. But what she felt for William fell a long way short of what she’d felt for Richard. In terms of feelings, love, or whatever name one chose to put to the deep stirrings of the emotions, in agreeing to marry William she knew that she had settled for second best. She had agreed, however, because she could think of no compelling reason not to. She didn’t love William, not in the way that she’d loved Richard, but had she not met Richard, she would very probably have assumed that what she felt for William was love. Best, second best…it was all relative.
‘Yes, he is what I wanted,’ she said simply.
Richard nodded. ‘Good. Then you’ll be happy with him, and I’m glad for you. You deserve to be happy, Charlotte. I wish you a good life with him.’
Charlotte gave an involuntary swallow and hoped she wasn’t going to cry. Having Richard unexpectedly wish her well like this—she almost felt as if he was giving her away, letting go of her in the same way that a father did on a daughter’s wedding day. But Richard did have to let her go, just as she had to let him go.
‘If I don’t see you again while I’m ashore, I’ll see you at Christmas,’ Richard said with a smile. ‘Eliza and I will be spending Christmas at the farm this year. I’ve arranged things so that I’ll be ashore.’
She nodded and smiled back at him. Last year Richard had been at sea for Christmas, which hadn’t pleased Eliza. Feeling obliged to accept John and Letitia’s invitation, Eliza had s
pent Christmas at the farm with the rest of the family, but she hadn’t enjoyed her stay.
‘You’d better go—it’s starting to rain,’ Richard said, pulling up the collar of his jacket as large drops started to fall. Within seconds, the drops had turned into a heavy shower. ‘Goodbye, Charlotte.’ He reached out and touched the sleeve of her coat in a gesture of farewell, then was gone.
She stood for a moment, watching him as he strode up the street, heading for home. She still had some strong feelings for Richard, and every time she saw him they bubbled to the surface, but she was glad she hadn’t married him. Eliza’s marriage to Richard wasn’t a happy one and hers would have been no better.
It had been a bad three months for Fairfield & Blake, with a run of expensive insurance claims. Ten weeks ago, a vessel under their insurance had sunk along with all her cargo when she had hit a rocky headland in a storm. They’d also had to foot the bill for four fairly expensive domestic insurance claims. And as if all that wasn’t enough, the recent freak waves had incurred yet more bills. Not surprisingly, money was the topic of the vast majority of conversations at the moment, including the one that Charlotte and William were currently engaged in. She had gone around to see him after she’d finished her evening meal with George and Ann, thinking that he might appreciate some company. She was also hoping to find out just how bad the financial situation was. Having tried for almost an hour without any success asking indirect questions, she eventually decided to be rather more direct.
‘William, how bad are the finances? Are you and George facing bankruptcy?’ she asked bluntly. If they were, she wanted to know about it.
To her relief William shook his head, sending a twisting ribbon of tobacco smoke swirling past his face. He was standing in front of the fireplace, with his back to the fire. The firelight was catching his hair, making it look almost ginger. ‘No, we’re not facing bankruptcy, but we’re facing a significant loss. I’m afraid we won’t be moving to a larger house when we marry. We’ll have to make do with this one. I’m sorry to have to disappoint you, Charlotte. As you know, I was planning to look for roomier accommodation in the New Year.’
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