A Ship Through Time

by Bess McBride

  “Thomas, lad, this may sound like an unusual request, and I know you will bear with me, but could I borrow a set of your clothes? A blouse, trousers, jacket, stockings and shoes? I will, of course, be happy to reimburse you.”

  “My clothes, sir?” Thomas stammered.

  “Aye, your clothes, if you please. Clean, washed and pressed.”

  “Right away, sir.” Thomas left the room.

  “Poor kid,” I said. “But you’re right though. He’s about five foot two, and so am I. How old is he?”

  “Thomas is seventeen, small for his age. His parents could no longer care for their large brood of children, so they gave him over to the captain. I took him on as my cabin steward when I saw the other lads bullying him because of his small size. He assists me in the infirmary as well.”

  I noticed that Daniel seemed to be making more eye contact with me than before, and I wondered if his reserve was melting.

  “Are you shy?” I asked abruptly.

  Daniel’s cheeks bronzed.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Are you shy? Reserved? Were you shy as a child?”

  “I am most certainly not shy, madam. But yes, I was shy as a child. I was a sickly child, often ill with difficulty breathing. We now know that I had asthma from the coal dust in New York City. I saw the doctor so often that I wanted to be like him. And so I became a physician. I think your alternate description of reserved is probably apt.”

  I smiled at him.

  “How is your asthma now?”

  “Vanished, resolved. The warm humid air of the South Pacific helps a great deal. My parents passed away, and I have no other family, so I do not return to New York. I keep rooms in San Francisco, and though coal dust is prevalent in the city, I am not there enough to be troubled by the air.”

  “So you like the South Pacific?”

  “Immensely,” he said with a nod. “I hope to buy a house there one day and set up practice there, perhaps in a few years. Perhaps in 1850. That is a good round number.”

  My teacup rattled as I dropped it onto the saucer.

  “Are you saying it’s 1847?”

  “Well, of course it is, Mrs. Wollam.”

  “1847,” I breathed. Well, of course! I thought the women had been dressed in Victorian-era clothing. The Vigilance lacked the amenities of a modern ship. I had seen no electricity, no plumbing.

  “Odd that I’m dreaming about 1847. What’s significant about that year? Anything?” I looked to Daniel for an answer, but he had none. He didn’t believe me anyway.

  “Then you continue to believe that this is a dream, madam?”

  I nodded.

  “Oh, yes.”

  “And you do not remember stowing away aboard the ship?”

  “Not even in my dream.”

  Daniel shook his head and swallowed some of his tea, ignoring the food.

  “I am at a loss, madam. I cannot even imagine what I will do with you over the next week until we reach Tahiti. I struggle to imagine how we shall proceed even over the next day.”

  I blinked as I looked at Daniel. An inordinate sense of fatigue overwhelmed me at that moment, draining me of energy. The cabin seemed warm, too warm. I shrugged the robe off my shoulders and set my teacup and saucer down on the table.

  “I feel so sleepy,” I mumbled. “It just hit me. I haven’t been sleeping well, as you can imagine. I am so tired.”

  Despite my best efforts, my eyelids drooped.

  I heard Daniel’s voice as if from far away.

  “Mrs. Wollam? Mrs. Wollam?”

  Chapter Three

  I opened my eyes to the sight of white-capped blue seas drifting by. The sun peeped through a vast expanse of clouds. Beads of humid moisture covered the arms of my deck chair and the balcony bannister. Sweat poured down my forehead and the sides of my face.

  I pushed myself out of my chair and staggered into my cabin, my sea leg giving out beneath me. Dropping onto my bed, I allowed the air conditioning to waft over me and cool down my overheated body.

  “It is a dream,” I said mournfully. “I’m just dreaming.”

  My first instinct was to run out into the hallway, to look for the faded-red carpet, to find Daniel’s cabin, to find Daniel. But Daniel wasn’t real. He was just a dream.

  And a time traveling dream at that. Daniel said the year was 1847. I could think of no particular reason why I would dream about 1847, or 1850 or any other year, in fact. If I were going to travel back in time in a dream, wouldn’t I have traveled back a few years and dragged Jeff in to see a brain surgeon to fix his aneurysm?

  Was it possible that I could travel back two years in my dream, to talk to Jeff one more time? I pressed my eyes shut and muttered the year. Gritting my teeth, I willed myself to dream about Jeff, about a time before he passed away.

  But exhausted as I was, sleep now eluded me. The harder I tried to sleep, the busier my mind grew. Memories of Jeff intermingled with guilty thoughts of Daniel made my pulse pound. Sleep seemed an impossibility.

  I rose with a sigh, dressed in my swimsuit and cover-up and made my way to the nearest pool. After showering poolside, I stepped down into the pool and floated around, letting the swaying of the ship swish me back and forth across the surface of the water.

  Cloudy skies didn’t deter from the abundant sunshine. Unlike Seattle’s commonly thick gray weather, clouds over the South Pacific Ocean gently filtered sunlight, allowing warm rays to caress my face.

  I sloshed about in the pool, wondering about Daniel. Did he swim? Had he ever been married? Was he married in my dream? He’d said he wanted to buy a house in the South Pacific. Where? Tahiti?

  I clung to the side of the pool and wondered if I would see him again in my dreams. If he was married, that would be pointless. Surely I could control whether or not Daniel was married, couldn’t I? I scrunched my face, certain in the knowledge that I had very little control of my dreams at the moment.

  I climbed out of the pool, toweled off and returned to my room for a shower. As I dressed in a yellow flowered skirt and matching tank top, I thought about the elaborate dresses the ladies on the Vigilance had worn, and I wondered if I could do justice to the long flowing lines of their gowns in a painting. I had never painted fashion before, preferring landscapes, but something about the memory of the ladies promenading on the deck compelled me to grab the notepad I never traveled without and sketch the scene before I forgot it.

  I finished the sketch within half an hour and stared at the figures, wondering if I’d remembered them correctly. I colored in the sketch to show one woman’s dress of royal-blue silk adorned with black ribbons. A matching bonnet of blue satin perched on her silver hair. Ringlets framed her cheeks. I thought I recalled the other woman’s dress as gray satin and cream lace, with a dark hat as well, perhaps a dark charcoal.

  I set the sketch aside and stared at my blank pad. As if under its own power, my pencil outlined the oval of a man’s face. The image of Daniel’s wavy dark hair and thick eyebrows emerged. I colored his long almond eyes nut brown. Accenting the cleft in his chin, I gave him the five-o’clock shadow I had seen on him the night before.

  I stared at the sketch, wondering how I could compel the dream again. I wanted to see Daniel one more time. I wanted to see Jeff too, but no amount of tears or longing had brought Jeff back over the past two years.

  In a restless motion, I tossed my pad aside and left the room, heading down to the shops to while away some time before dinner.

  I picked up a few souvenir T-shirts for friends and stopped to look at clothing off the rack. Having no intention of dressing up or mingling with other happy couples, I hadn’t brought anything to wear on the formal dinner nights on the ship. T-shirts, shorts and yoga pants had been simple enough to pack.

  I fingered an ankle-length formfitting island-flowered dress that seemed to stretch all four ways. Resembling a wide-skirted Victorian dress not at all, I nevertheless bought it on a whim, with the vague idea of weari
ng it to bed. Just in case I dreamed that night. Hoping that I dreamed that night.

  I returned my purchases to my room and checked the time. Six o’clock. The afternoon had seemed interminable, and it appeared that the evening would drag just as much. I ran up to the buffet for a quick dinner and returned to my room by seven.

  The hour was still too early for bed, but I didn’t care. I slipped into the sleeveless dress that I’d bought, pulled my hair up into a semblance of a chignon and plopped down onto my bed.

  Catching sight of my bare feet, I drew in a sharp breath. Shoes! I needed shoes. I ran to my closet and slipped into one of two pairs of flip-flops that I’d brought, the only style of shoes other than sneakers that I had packed. As an afterthought, I brushed my teeth, applied a bit of eye makeup and lipstick and returned to my bed. Turning out the lights, I stared into the darkness and began to repeat a silent mantra as if to hypnotize myself.

  Sleep. Sleep. Sleep. Please sleep.

  I had failed to force myself to sleep earlier that afternoon. Could I make it work this time? Would I see Jeff? Daniel? Would I fail?

  Sleep. Sleep. Sleep.

  I opened my eyes to the sight of Daniel’s back as he sat at his desk. Hatless but otherwise fully dressed in his dark uniform jacket, he appeared to be writing something.

  “Daniel?”

  Daniel whirled around and jumped up from his chair.

  “Margaret? Mrs. Wollam? Where did you come from? Where did you go? How is this possible?”

  I swung my feet off the bed and stood. The look in Daniel’s eyes as he studied me from head to foot brought a flush to my cheeks.

  “I’m dreaming again, aren’t I?” I asked.

  Daniel moved toward me, taking my hands in his.

  “No, you are not dreaming, but I begin to think that perhaps I am. Your hands are cold.”

  “Yours are warm,” I murmured. I dropped my eyes from the intensity of his gaze.

  “I think I must not let you go lest you disappear again,” he murmured.

  “I don’t know if I can stop this. I’m dreaming. I went to sleep with the express intention of coming back again.”

  “Why?” He chuckled and shook his head, the first time I heard him laugh. “No, not why did you sleep, but why did you come back?”

  I looked down at our joined hands again but said nothing. I bit my lip with frustration at my inhibition even within the dream. I should have felt free to say anything I wanted, to tell Daniel that I had missed him that afternoon.

  “You do not answer. Come. Sit.” He led me back to the chair where I had sat before, and he took his seat across from me. The teacups and sandwiches remained on the table between us.

  “I was just journaling.” Daniel pointed to an open book on the desk. “About you. When you vanished before my eyes, I realized that you did not in fact stow away. You were not spirited aboard nor kidnapped. Some supernatural force is at work here, and I do not understand it.”

  “Probably not,” I mumbled. I stared at his large hands, wishing they still held mine in their clasp.

  “Then help me understand.” He leaned toward me, placing his elbows on his knees.

  “I mean, I don’t think anything supernatural is going on. It’s just a dream.”

  “And do you often sleep in such festive gowns?”

  I looked up to see his eyes running over me. My cheeks flamed.

  “No.” I took a chance. “I bought it just in case I dreamed again.” I omitted “about you.” “It’s not exactly Victorian, but it’s all I could find in the shop aboard ship that went down to my ankles.”

  “Victorian?”

  “The Victorian era? You said it’s 1847, right? I think that’s the Victorian era, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, I believe it is called such, though I am American. Are you suggesting that you were not aware of the year, Mrs. Wollam? How can that possibly be?” He leaned forward as if to study my face more thoroughly. “You are nothing if not mysterious, madam. You say you are dreaming, which you are not. But given that you believe you might be, what year do you believe it is?”

  “2018, the twenty-first century.”

  Daniel sucked in a sharp breath and reared his head back. He stared at me, his jaw open.

  “What?”

  “The twenty-first century,” I murmured, picking at a nonexistent spot on my dress, near my knee. “In my dream.”

  He opened his mouth and then closed it again, as if he couldn’t find words. I peeked up at him from under my lashes.

  “Are you shocked?”

  Daniel nodded slowly, tilting his head and studying me. My cheeks flamed. Finally, he spoke.

  “Mrs. Wollam, I-I do not know what to say. The twenty-first century? How is that possible?”

  I shrugged. “I’m not sure.”

  “But why? Why now? Why do you travel to this time?”

  “Travel? Do you mean...like time travel? Oh, I don’t think that’s happening. That’s not possible.”

  “And dreaming is?”

  “Well...” I had no answer.

  I heard the sound of bells in the hallway, and Daniel glanced at the door.

  “It is time for dinner. I am expected to dine with the captain and guests tonight.” He looked at me, and I tried not to show my disappointment. I didn’t know when I would awaken and vanish again.

  “Yet I dare not leave you here alone.”

  I tried not to read too much into his statement, by my foolish heart heard what it wanted to hear. I had rapidly become infatuated with the stranger in my dream, and I worried about my loss of control. Had I been so very lonely since my husband’s death that I’d fallen for an imaginary character in a dream?

  “I will ask Thomas to pass along my compliments to the captain and make my excuses. I shall say that I am ill. Are you hungry? Would you care for some dinner here in the cabin?”

  “I just ate actually, but I’m sure you’re hungry.”

  “I will have Thomas bring something for both of us in case you change your mind. Perhaps you can stay awhile this time.” Daniel stood up to head for the door.

  “I hope so.”

  At my words, he turned and smiled, the expression lightening his face. My heart flopped in my chest. How odd that the flash of teeth could make his handsome face that much more charming.

  “Good! Do not leave! I will only be a moment.” Daniel spun around and left the room. I gripped the edge of the table, trying to hang on to the present, trying desperately not to slip away. I didn’t feel sleepy, but I had drifted off before.

  Thankfully, Daniel returned in a few minutes. Rushing into the room, he took one look at me and came to a stop.

  “There you are!”

  “Here I am,” I said with a grin.

  “Thomas will bring dinner soon. By the way, Thomas did bring a set of his clothing. I laid them by. Perhaps you can wear them in the morning, provided that you are still here.”

  Daniel indicated a pile of folded clothing lying on top of the trunk.

  “In the meantime, tell me about your life in the twenty-first century. For whether you are dreaming or traveling through time, I know nothing about the twenty-first century.”

  He sat down and gave me his full attention. Flustered, I found myself stammering.

  “Well, I don’t really know how to describe it really. What do you want to know?”

  “Tell me about medicine. Is there finally a cure for typhus? I have heard shiploads of Irish immigrants fleeing famine have arrived in Canada with typhus.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know. I think so. Probably with antibiotics.” I told him what little I knew about antibiotics. I told him about planes and automobiles, computers and the Internet, space and deep-sea exploration. And I asked Daniel questions about his time—what sort of a ship we were on, what diseases were rampant in his time, how women fared both physically and legally.

  “Have you any theories as to why you appear in 1847 versus any other time? We can infer
that you appear on this ship because it appears to be following a similar course as your Century Star, no? You did say you were on your way to Tahiti?”

  “Yes, Tahiti. And no, I don’t know why I dream about 1847.”

  “Do you have a particular interest in this era?”

  “I don’t think so. I didn’t anyway. I do now.”

  His normally somber expression lightened a bit again.

  “How fortunate for us,” he murmured.

  A knock on the door brought Thomas, whose blue eyes widened at the sight of me. He too studied my dress, and I crossed my arms self-consciously. He eyed the pile of clothing on the trunk but said nothing as he set a tray of food, wine and glasses on the table.

  “Thank you, Thomas. Did the captain take the news in stride?”

  “Aye, Doctor. Mr. Sedgewick had been pining for a seat at the table, and the captain was able to accommodate him.”

  “All is well, then. Thank you again. I will pour the wine.”

  Thomas backed out, and I eyed the wine.

  “Oh, I don’t think that’s a good idea for me. Any mind-altering product is probably going to wake me up.”

  “Or send you back through time.”

  “You don’t give up, do you?”

  “Not if I think I am right.”

  I actually joined Daniel in eating while he told me more of his childhood in New York. His father had been a doctor. From his description of his mother’s social activities and a few favorite servants—his nanny and the housekeeper—I deduced that Daniel came from money.

  “And you said that your parents had passed away?”

  “Yes, they died in a carriage accident quite unexpectedly several years ago. Mrs. Griggs, the housekeeper, takes care of the house in my absence. Which, as I mentioned, is often.”

  “Yes, between sailing and your place in San Francisco, I’m surprised you haven’t sold the house in New York.”

  “I cannot. It has been in the family for generations. I would not dare.”

  “Well, maybe you can leave it for your children.”

  “I do not believe that I will have children,” he said quietly.