Stars Across the Ocean

by Kimberley Freeman

  ‘What is it, Mrs Dartforth?’ Agnes asked.

  ‘Don’t you even speak to me,’ Mrs Dartforth said. ‘Come along, Tempie. Up and away. I know what you did last night, and now I know who she is.’

  Tempie was on her feet, pulling on her dressing gown. ‘What? But how?’

  ‘Luckily for you the Misters Glynn have apprised me of the entire situation. Poor Tempie. You fell under her spell. Now pack your things. You are not staying another moment in this room with that …’ Mrs Dartforth’s hostile gaze was on Agnes. ‘That foundling.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Mother. I won’t leave the ship without your permission again. Only don’t take me away from Agnes.’

  ‘I said, pack your things!’ Mrs Dartforth cried. ‘I’ll not have you or anyone I love stay a moment longer with a liar, a woman of questionable background and no future!’ Then she shook her head. ‘Hungarian? Hmph.’

  Tempie began to wail, and so Mrs Dartforth strode forth and began pulling her things out of drawers and stuffing them in her trunk. Agnes watched them leave, numb.

  ‘I’ll never forget you, Agnes,’ Tempie said tearfully as her mother dragged her from the room.

  Agnes didn’t answer. The door closed and all was quiet.

  •

  All that day Agnes sat up on deck in the hot sun, watching as they passed through the canal to Suez. The ship crawled, its movement not enough to create a breeze and cool the oppressive heat. Agnes had only seen the Suez Canal on maps, and it was far narrower than she could have imagined. On one side, nothing but sand. On the other, buildings and camel traffic, and half a dozen urchins who ran along the side calling out to passengers, offering to dive for money. One or two of the passengers threw coins in the water and the urchins dived in and swam right under the ship looking for them. It seemed much too risky for Agnes’s liking, and she held her breath as much as the skinny-limbed children did until they popped up, coins held triumphantly in their dark fingers.

  On one occasion, a plain-faced girl of about Agnes’s age, whom Agnes recognised as one of the first-class passengers, threw in a coin that nobody dived for.

  ‘Well, that’s a waste,’ she muttered.

  ‘Do you not worry that a child will be drowned?’ Agnes asked her.

  The young woman looked at her witheringly. ‘I suppose it only fitting that a foundling would worry herself about wretched heathen children whose parents don’t care for them.’ Then she smiled cruelly. ‘Would you like me to throw some money in for you to dive for?’

  Agnes opened her mouth to offer an insult, but changed her mind. Such coarseness would only confirm the woman’s opinion of her. Instead, she chose to be silent and rise above it. As the young woman moved off, she called her a mardy cow under her breath.

  So, Tempie’s tale of Agnes’s past had started to circulate. Agnes found she didn’t mind so much. She wasn’t ashamed of who she was. If anything, she was proud of how far she had come, given her poor origins. At Ismailia, when they were moored for a little while letting another ship pass, a silk dealer came onboard and Agnes made a show of buying some at a high price, right in front of the first-class lady, who looked on astonished and scandalised all at once.

  They still weren’t at Suez by nightfall, and Agnes retired to her cabin, skipping dinner and the hostile stares of the Dartforths and whoever else they had drawn to their cause. When she woke in the morning, they had entered the Red Sea.

  •

  Any pleasure Agnes took in having a cabin all to herself was immediately taken from her. The heat was crushing, and three times as bad in the airless spaces below deck. She sat up on deck, in the quiet shady spot she and Tempie used to share, and read a little and sewed a little and longed to have a cold bath. She could not imagine such heat was survivable. It seemed to scald her lungs. The sea was very flat and the ship steamed on quickly, but even the breeze it whipped up was hot, like the blast from a furnace when the door is opened. Land had disappeared behind them and was too hazed by distance and heat to be seen either side. The ship seemed the only thing between the brazen blue sky and the wide warm water. Agnes gazed at it, hollow and exhausted by the heat, and understood for the first time how Marianna could feel oppressed by the outside world. Only sea and sky, in the shimmering heat, and she a tiny beating heart between them.

  •

  The dining room was stuffy and the smells of food were trapped within it. Agnes sat as far as she could from the Dartforths, but Mrs Dartforth’s voice and haughty gaze kept finding her. It was clear now that she had turned a dozen or so of the other passengers against Agnes. So, she sat with the Reverend and his daughter, and they were kind to her and asked her no difficult questions. From time to time, she saw Tempie glance at her, and tried to offer an encouraging smile, only to see Mercy smack Tempie’s hand with a spoon. Agnes looked away, not wanting to make life more difficult for her erstwhile friend.

  When talk turned to how anybody would sleep that night in the heat, the Reverend declared his intention to sleep on the deck that night. A dark mutter arose from the Dartforths’ end of the table, and Agnes smiled to herself.

  ‘Would you allow me to join you?’ she asked the Reverend, in a voice loud enough to be heard at the end of the table.

  ‘Of course, Miss Resolute,’ he said, a twinkle in his eye.

  All entertainment in the saloon was cancelled due to the heat, so after dinner Agnes went directly downstairs for a cold bath. Then she pulled on her loosest house dress, slid a pillow under her arm, and climbed up on deck. At the aft of the ship, the deck was covered in prone bodies, quietly chattering to each other. It seemed the entire third class was up there. But here at the wealthy end of the ship, there were only the Reverend and his daughter, and the missionary couple.

  ‘We have saved you a spot, Miss Resolute,’ said the Reverend’s daughter, indicating a space between her and the missionary’s wife, where a blanket was doubled over.

  Agnes lay down on the blanket. She could still feel the hard wood of the deck beneath her, but the air was clear and fresh and warm. Above her, a million stars glowed: some fierce and bright, others small and dim. The sky was cloudless.

  ‘Are you comfortable?’ the Reverend asked, sitting up and leaning over his daughter.

  ‘Aye. Thank you. Thank you for not … thank you for remaining kind.’

  ‘I have spent many years studying the teachings of God, Miss Resolute. I feel God’s love for all His children and I will not judge. But tell me, does their unkindness hurt you and make you sad?’

  Agnes propped herself up on her elbow and shook her head. ‘No, Reverend. I have been judged before, and no doubt will be again.’ She smiled, remembering a detail from his last sermon, one she hadn’t missed. ‘Only God can judge me.’

  ‘That is right.’

  ‘What are they saying about me? Have you heard?’

  The Reverend sighed, and his daughter took up the story. ‘That you are a poor foundling but you have somehow ensnared a rich man to pay for your adventure.’

  Agnes winced. ‘Do they say this man’s name?’

  ‘I haven’t heard it,’ the Reverend’s daughter said.

  Perhaps Tempie had held out, despite pressure from her awful family.

  ‘Take heart.’ This was the missionary’s wife, a warm-faced woman with her long straight hair in a tight plait. ‘All this will be behind you, just as the sea continues to move behind you.’

  Agnes lay down again, eyes on the stars. Only God could judge her, and only God could judge Genevieve. The thought made her smile. She watched the stars and listened to the gentle conversations of the kind folk around her, and slept eventually with the sky for a blanket.

  •

  Three days later, the Dartforths were due to disembark at Aden to meet their steamship to Calcutta. When the Udolpho was mooring, Agnes decided she must say goodbye to Tempie, who had been a good friend to her if only for a short time. She did not fear the Dartforths’ opinions so much as she feared not havi
ng bid farewell to a friend.

  Agnes knocked on the door of their cabin before breakfast on their final morning. Mercy answered the door.

  ‘What do you want?’ she said with a sneer.

  Agnes could see that Tempie had been forced to sleep on the floor. She sat up and said, ‘Agnes?’

  ‘I wanted to say goodbye,’ Agnes said, over Mercy’s shoulder.

  Mrs Dartforth bustled Mercy out of the way and took Agnes by the shoulder, manoeuvring her roughly into the hallway and closing the door. Agnes had to grab the brass rail to stop herself from falling. She could hear Tempie’s muffled, ‘Goodbye, Agnes,’ through the door.

  Mrs Dartforth set her firmly on her feet and took a step back. ‘Please leave my family be. I know you have no mother and that is why you have run wild, but my daughters – especially Tempie – will do better without you around.’

  ‘I am very fond of Tempie. I wanted only what was good for her.’

  ‘You do not know what is good for her,’ Mrs Dartforth said, and for the first time she dropped her haughty tone and seemed to speak from the heart. ‘It is my duty to protect her. To make sure she grows into a woman who is safe in the world. Everything I do for her, I do out of love. I can’t expect you to understand, motherless and without means as you are.’

  Agnes was dumbstruck. She loved Tempie? She insulted her and constrained her, and yet she called this love? Perhaps it made a twisted kind of sense: in Mrs Dartforth’s world, shame was a way to make Tempie stop eating so much. Constraint was a way to make her navigate more easily in a world so difficult for women. Moving her away from Agnes was a way to protect her, not punish her. Agnes was floored by this knowledge, that maternal love could look so ugly and yet still be love.

  Mrs Dartforth nodded once, as though the conversation was at an end, and turned towards the door.

  ‘Be kind to her,’ Agnes said.

  Mrs Dartforth didn’t answer.

  •

  Agnes went up on deck and watched them leave, glad when Tempie sneaked in a wave and a blown kiss, despite the obvious disapproval of other well-dressed folk. Agnes didn’t care. In less than a week, she would be in Colombo, and she could tell Genevieve how it felt to be ostracised. She knew – she knew – that her mother would understand. If Mrs Dartforth had taught her anything, it was that mothers always loved.

  CHAPTER 16

  The RMS Udolpho steamed into harbour at Colombo during the night, and Agnes woke to find the ship at anchor. She had packed everything the night before, added some trim to her broadest-brimmed hat, and barely been able to sleep.

  Now they were here. At last.

  She queued up on deck behind other passengers, her luggage at her feet. A launch was making its way to and from the ship to transfer people to the docks, and the mail – a score of sacks of it – was being unloaded at the other end of the ship. Agnes jiggled her leg as she waited, eager to be off and away. Across the water, she could see low roofs and a profusion of palm trees. The heat was damp, sticky, and she longed for a breeze. She pulled her fan from her purse and fanned herself, but it barely cooled her at all.

  Finally, she was passing her trunks down to a man wearing nothing but what appeared to be a twist of linen around his loins. Agnes longed to be able to wear so little; far more sensible in this heat. She climbed into the launch along with the Reverend and his daughter, and two elderly gentlemen who had joined them in Aden, and they made their way to the wharf.

  Once they were on land, the Reverend turned to her and fixed her in his wise, grey gaze. ‘Goodbye, Miss Resolute. I hope you find what you are looking for.’

  ‘So do I,’ Agnes said, impulsively squeezing him in a brief hug, then offering the same to his daughter.

  ‘There is much that is good in you,’ the Reverend said as she pulled away. ‘I see it.’

  Agnes looked around at the hazy sky, the bright sunshine, the lush foliage, the chatter and sweep of people. She felt alive and hopeful. ‘There is much that is good in the world,’ she replied. ‘Thank you.’

  At a small shop on the wharf she bought a map for a penny, examined the hotel names, and settled on the Victoria Hotel, hoping that anything named after the Queen would be suitable for an English girl travelling alone.

  She struggled along on busy streets, where bullocks instead of horses pulled thatched carriages, and barely dressed locals ran about barefoot carrying rickshaws. She passed rows of small wooden houses, taller buildings with elaborately curved gables, and market sheds with low roofs and rough unfinished beams, packed with fruit and rice and coconuts and bundles of kindling. The women’s clothes captivated Agnes: their shoulders were bare and they wore loose, flowing cloth decorated with elaborate lace borders. Finally, she approached the hotel, a building that wouldn’t have been out of place in London: white stone, arched windows and a neat enclosed garden with rigidly trimmed trees. Under a tree, a group of white women in layers of linen sat on the grass with a picnic. Agnes felt hot, sweaty and red-faced as she huffed past them with her trunks, and finally into the cool interior of the building. Long chandeliers hung suspended from the high ceiling, the walls were pale green and the floor gleaming stone. All of the staff looked to be local; all of the guests were white.

  Agnes engaged a room, but it would not be empty until later that afternoon. They held her trunks and changed some of her money for her, and then she was back on the busy Colombo street. Her heart tapped an insistent rhythm. There was no value in waiting. She hailed down a rickshaw to take her to Genevieve’s Colombo address.

  Agnes felt the distance she had travelled like an ocean in her heart. Stretching back across the miles, to cold grey England, where she had started this journey. How far she was from everything she knew, but how close to the one thing that mattered most. The rickshaw bounced along, though she felt very sorry for the man who had to carry it. They moved away from the main thoroughfares to shadier streets with trees not so neatly planted. Dogs and cats roamed the streets, looking as though they belonged to nobody and everybody at once. The rickshaw came to a halt outside a wooden building with peeling paint and boarded windows.

  ‘Here?’ she asked the driver.

  He nodded, then repeated back to her the address she’d given.

  She climbed out of the rickshaw and looked up at the house. It looked as though nobody lived there and her hope evaporated. She thought about climbing back into the rickshaw and returning to the hotel, but she had to be certain.

  ‘Madam?’

  She turned to the rickshaw driver, who held out his hand. She smiled and paid him, then he lifted the vehicle and ran off to find another passenger.

  Agnes returned her attention to the house, then walked up the two front steps and knocked at the door. It was painted red, the knocker tarnished brass. Nobody came, as she’d feared they wouldn’t.

  Impulsively, she tried the door. It opened.

  Agnes glanced behind her, then back to the house. Tentatively she pushed the door in. ‘Hello?’

  She was greeted by nothing but the smell of animal droppings. A wide entryway with a chequerboard floor lay ahead of her. Agnes stepped in, closing the door behind her. ‘Hello?’ she called again. This time she heard the scurry of clawed feet, and assumed she’d disturbed whatever creature had made its home in here. She moved into the next room. No furniture. The back windows weren’t boarded and one was broken. Leaves covered the floor. A rug was rolled in a corner, sagging and mouldy. Chains that chandeliers had once hung on swung freely from the ceiling. From room to room she went, finding no furniture, no evidence of who had lived here, and when or why they had left. She ascended creaking wooden stairs, the carpet nails in place but the carpet long gone, and wandered through lightless rooms where dust and heat choked her. Nothing, nothing, and nothing.

  Agnes returned to the lower floor, then out into the street. A breeze was stirring off the water, bringing with it the smell of salt and the first hint that the day might cool. Despondently, she made her way
back to her hotel.

  •

  Later in the evening, in her room looking over the gardens to the busy markets, Agnes sat in the window seat and let the soft balmy breeze caress her face. The smell of spices and smoke rose and fell. She had taken a cold bath and dressed only in a linen shift, her fair hair loose about her shoulders. The sea inside her, after weeks, had not yet stilled, but she didn’t mind the sensation. It would pass soon enough, here on the land again.

  Tomorrow she would travel further: a hundred miles or more into the mountains to find the Valentine tea plantation. She cheered herself with the knowledge that there must be someone there, because Valentine’s name was still on the shopfront in Paris. She hoped, of course, that the someone was Genevieve, but her history of disappointments stopped Agnes from hoping too fervently. Tonight, for the first time, the flush of heat that had driven her this far was beginning to cool. She felt it and she feared it, because now she was half a world away from England, and from Julius and Marianna whom she had come to love, and she was small and soft and the world was big and brutal. Yes, tomorrow she would take the train to Kandy, and perhaps … perhaps she would find Genevieve and say to her the words she had rehearsed in her imagination for so long: I am your daughter. You are my mother.

  She said these words aloud now, alone in her cavernous hotel room. But they sounded thin and unconvincing to her own ears.

  How might Genevieve react? With a delighted laugh, a warm hug, a gaze that said, Yes, yes, I know you. I know you. Or would she be dismissive, tell Agnes she was abandoned for a reason, that tracking her down had been a waste of everyone’s time and resources?

  Agnes sighed, leaned her head against the cool brick of the windowsill and closed her eyes. If Genevieve wasn’t there this time, how much further would she go? Another address to find, another door to knock on, another see-saw between hope and disappointment.

  ‘I am in Ceylon,’ she said, because she couldn’t quite believe it herself. Not even in her wildest imaginings of adventures had she thought she would find herself here. This, then, was enough. She had travelled far enough from Perdita Hall now. No matter what she found tomorrow, she had come as far as she could.