Stars Across the Ocean

by Kimberley Freeman

  Agnes climbed the ladder and made her way up to the galley. It was a cramped room with a low roof behind the captain’s quarters, near the front of the ship. A long cabinet built into one wall housed the stove and the sink, and a railing stood in front of it, for keeping the cook steady in high seas. The room was horrifically warm, with boiling pots on the go and nowhere for the steam to escape. A slender man stood at the sink, a bag of potatoes at his feet. Agnes cleared her throat and said, ‘Excuse me.’

  The cook turned, and it wasn’t a man at all but a woman of about thirty, dressed in men’s clothes. ‘What is it?’ she said in a thick Scottish accent. She was red-faced and glassy-eyed, and wore an apron smeared with stains over her trousers and shirt.

  ‘I’m Doctor Angel’s assistant. I need to clean this bottle. The infant who’s been drinking from it is sick.’ She took off the teat and held it out as evidence. ‘It’s full of mould.’

  The cook indicated one of the boiling pots with an inclination of her head. ‘Go on, then. Put it in there. It’s just boiling water for these potatoes.’

  Agnes moved closer to the stove, the steam hitting her full in the face. She dropped the teat and the bottle in and stood back. The cook had returned her attention to the sink, and Agnes took a moment to look at her. Her hair was cropped below her ears and slicked back with hair oil.

  ‘I can feel you watching me, you know,’ she said.

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘I don’t suppose you’ve met a woman who dresses like me before, have you? Well. There aren’t many like me.’ She wiped her hands on her apron and offered one to Agnes. ‘I’m Jack.’

  ‘Agnes,’ Agnes said, taking her hand.

  Jack shook it firmly then returned to her task. ‘I suppose you’ll be wondering why I’m wearing men’s clothes.’

  ‘I … yes.’

  ‘I wanted to go away to sea. Didn’t fancy being a whore or an actress. Too stupid to be a nurse like you.’

  ‘But the captain must know you’re a—’

  ‘He’s a good man and he doesn’t care. Has his own quirks that he hides at sea. I started by scrubbing pots in the scullery and now I run the galley and the dining room.’

  ‘How do the crew treat you? The other men?’

  ‘They were a bunch of bastards at first, but they’re used to me now, and I’m used to them.’ She reached for a pair of cast-iron tongs and pulled the bottle and the teat out of the boiling water and dropped them in the sink. ‘Go on, give them a scrub.’

  Agnes picked up a scrubbing brush and scrubbed the mould off the bottle and teat. ‘So, if they know you’re a girl, why don’t you just dress like a girl?’

  Jack gave her a swipe on the bustle with a wooden spoon. ‘What? And wear this kind of nonsense. No, I like my life just the way it is. Open seas. Freedom. You’ll never have that.’ She began to drop the potatoes into the boiling water.

  ‘I might.’

  ‘You’ll be marrying some sir and having his babies before you know it,’ she said over her shoulder. ‘Like little anchors, babies are. Enjoy that.’

  Irritated, Agnes gathered her things and left the galley. Trapped in a stinking hot kitchen, boiling potatoes was hardly freedom and the open sea. She made her way back to the ’tween deck, to drop off the bottle.

  •

  That night, sleep was impossible in her tiny hot cabin. She remembered the steamship, and how some of the passengers slept up on deck. She knew the steerage passengers on Persephone had been forbidden from being on deck at night, and she wouldn’t be welcome among the first- and second-class passengers. Perhaps some of the crew were up there, but the crew were all men. Well, except Jack.

  She tossed and turned, unable to get comfortable, feeling as though her lungs were stuffed with hot cotton, then finally gave up and rose, pulling her blanket and pillow down, and heading up on deck.

  Plenty of men slept up on the aft deck, and she could see a few bodies in the grey starlight up at the foredeck. She hesitated. Already, a big brutish sailor was propped up on his elbow whistling at her.

  ‘Hey, lassie. Plenty of room here next to Old Dom.’

  She walked a little way towards the foredeck, nearly tripping over a pair of legs in the dark.

  ‘Watch where you’re going.’

  ‘Jack?’

  ‘Oh, it’s you. I wondered if you’d come up here.’ Jack lay between two barrels. She inched over and made room for Agnes. ‘They won’t come near you if you’re with me. They know I’ll spit in their food. Or worse.’

  ‘Thanks.’ Agnes laid down her blanket and pillow next to Jack and squeezed herself into the gap. ‘Aren’t I going to make you hot?’

  ‘Not up here. We’ll be fine. There’s a breeze, and look at the sky. The clouds have cleared. It’s magic.’

  Agnes looked up through the rigging. The sky teemed with stars, like another ocean above them. The breeze ran over her then, rattling the ropes and sails, and Agnes sighed. ‘Oh, thank the Lord for that.’

  ‘Aye. I’ll never get used to the heat.’

  ‘How long have you worked on this ship?’

  ‘Two years now. Melbourne, Perth, Colombo, Calcutta, then all of those in reverse again. Back and forth across the line, full of cinnamon and tea one way, full of failed gold miners the other. I hope you’re not thinking you’ll make your fortune in Australia, Agnes.’

  ‘No. Not at all. I’m looking for my mother.’

  ‘Your mother? Did she run away?’

  ‘Aye, but not from me. She never knew me. I was abandoned as a baby, left at a foundling hospital.’

  Jack huffed a bitter laugh. ‘If she’s managed to get rid of you once, she’ll find a way to do it again.’

  Agnes didn’t answer.

  Jack shifted onto her side, propped up on her elbow, her cheek resting in her palm. For all her short hair and her men’s clothes, she was unmistakably a woman. Her nose was fine and slightly lifted at the end, her dark eyes surrounded by thick lashes. ‘Agnes was my mother’s name,’ she said, in a softer tone. ‘It means lamb, you know.’

  ‘I didn’t know.’ Agnes had trouble thinking of herself as something so soft as a lamb.

  ‘That’s what my mam told me. God bless her soul.’

  ‘She’s dead?’

  ‘Aye. Six years now. She was a good woman.’ Jack smiled mischievously. ‘Never abandoned me at a foundling hospital.’

  Agnes flared with irritation, but then realised that this was Jack’s way of making friends with her: through dark jokes. ‘Well, she called you Jack, so she wasn’t all that grand, was she?’

  This made Jack laugh, and now Agnes felt she understood her better. ‘What is your real name?’ she asked. ‘Because I’m certain it isn’t Jack.’

  ‘It is now and that’s all that matters,’ she said, then was defiantly silent. She turned onto her back and a few moments passed before she asked, ‘How are you finding Doctor Angel?’

  Agnes sighed and closed her eyes. The breeze had dropped, and the sweat was pooling under her again. ‘He’s allus drunk, and not pleasantly so either. Drunk and passed out at his desk.’

  ‘He’s been that way as long as I’ve known him. He’s a terrible surgeon. The only place he could get work is aboard this ship. He’s the reason the last Nurse Assistant left.’

  ‘Really? Why?’

  ‘He wouldn’t treat a sick little girl on the run from Perth to Calcutta. He said, “Just give her some salts,” and the nurse tried that and it made everything worse. The lass was dead the next morning. We put her little body overboard that night. The mother wailed and shouted at us not to put her in the sea, that the sharks would eat her. Probably dead right too. The sharks always seem to follow the ship when there’s somebody aboard who’s ailing.’

  Agnes shuddered.

  ‘The nurse left the ship in Calcutta and refused to come back,’ Jack said. ‘She’s gone to work with the missionaries, I think. I can’t bear missionaries. Well, they can’t bear me either. W
e’ve had a few on this ship over the years. If they see me, they call me a devil. I’m not a devil, Agnes.’

  ‘I can see that.’

  ‘Best place for me is at sea. Out of society.’ She turned on her side so Agnes could see her face. ‘Anything goes.’

  Agnes fell silent for a few moments, and the breeze returned. ‘Do you ever miss life on the land?’

  ‘No. Worst years of my life.’

  ‘Because you wanted to dress like a man?’

  Jack smiled ruefully. ‘Because I loved somebody and it didnae work out.’

  Agnes could not imagine Jack being in love. ‘Why didn’t it work out?’

  ‘Because I’m hard to love, Agnes. What about you? Is there a young sir back in England waiting for you to return?’

  Agnes couldn’t hide her smile and Jack pounced, making knowing noises. ‘Oh, aye. A young sir! What’s his name? Go on, tell me everything.’

  Agnes told her about Julius, and Jack listened and made a few crude jokes but smiled kindly the whole time.

  ‘I feel that I must be very bad at love,’ Agnes said, after she explained about rejecting Julius’s offer of engagement. ‘I didn’t know what to say or what to do.’

  ‘Well, don’t ask me, lassie. I’ve no idea. I wear trousers.’ And then she went off into peals of laughter and Agnes joined her. Finally, Jack said, ‘Describe him to me, Agnes. In three words.’

  ‘Only three?’

  ‘There’s the trick. If you need more than three, there’s something wrong with him.’

  Agnes considered for a few moments, then said, ‘Kind and true.’

  ‘Good. But you need one more.’

  ‘Fine-looking. Very, very fine.’

  ‘Too many words,’ Jack said laughing. ‘But I’m glad to know you’ve got some warm blood in you, despite having grown up in the north.’ She tapped Agnes on the top of the head. ‘Goodnight, Agnes.’

  ‘Goodnight, Jack,’ Agnes said, and lay awake watching the sky and thinking of Julius.

  •

  Agnes saw the little boy with his mother up on deck the next morning, and he was much better. A little pink had returned to his cheeks and Agnes gave him the custard apple she had swiped from Jack’s pantry and been benignly threatened over. ‘Now the captain won’t get his favourite dessert,’ she’d said. ‘What sick child could be worth that inconvenience?’

  Agnes had laughed and taken it anyway, and when she saw the little boy eating the soft innards of the fruit on a spoon, she felt a warm glow. She had helped. This wasn’t so hard.

  That first week she saw her fair share of coughs and belly aches. She also stood by as Dr Angel, shaking before his first brandy of the day, set a sailor’s fractured forearm while the poor young fellow howled like a dog. She tended to bruises and abrasions from hatches that hit heads, and elbows that hit floors when the sea was high. Her time was largely free, though, and she spent a lot of it standing in the threshold to the galley, trading light-hearted barbs with Jack. She had never met somebody with such a gallows humour. Jack made endless jokes about how rotten life was and how everyone died in the end, and laughed herself silly at them. Agnes was fascinated by her, and Jack seemed to have warmed to Agnes, sneaking extra food to her cabin and making sure she got the best cuts of meat in her weekly rations. Jack was nowhere to be seen on Sunday mornings for the shipboard service, presided over by Dr Angel, but then neither were a lot of the sailors or passengers.

  •

  It was precisely one week since she first reported for work that Dr Angel told her to go and check on the ‘pregnant lass in berth fifteen’.

  ‘Is she unwell?’ Agnes asked. ‘I don’t know. She boarded in Calcutta, told me as she was being allocated to a cabin, that she’s in the family way, and I said I’d keep an eye on her. Been rather busy, though.’ He spread his palms to indicate the mess of papers and books that had reaccumulated on his desk. ‘Just realised I haven’t seen her since.’

  ‘Certainly, Doctor. I’ll let you know.’

  He waved her away. ‘Fine, fine.’

  Agnes made her way down to the ’tween deck again, and as she passed along between the berths, counting them until she reached fifteen, she realised it was where she had heard the murmuring from time to time. It was dark down here, and hot, and the smells seemed to gather. She could see now the faint flicker of candlelight, and peered into the berth curiously. Two hammocks; the top one empty, in the bottom one, a woman holding a book in front of her face, reading softly aloud to herself by candlelight. Agnes could see from the tattered dust jacket it was a children’s storybook.

  ‘Excuse me, Miss,’ Agnes said.

  The woman put down her book. She saw Agnes and sat up in shock, blinking rapidly. ‘Is that …’

  Agnes jolted. ‘Gracie?’ she cried. ‘Gracie Badger!’

  CHAPTER 21

  In a second, Agnes had Gracie in her arms, the children’s book fallen to the floor. Then she sat back and a million questions bubbled on to her tongue at once: ‘What are you—where have you—how—’

  Gracie laughed softly. ‘Of all the people in all the world, Agnes Resolute. You see, we have been shepherded together by God. That’s the mark of a true friendship, that is.’

  Agnes looked around the dark, stuffy little cabin. ‘But Gracie, you oughtn’t be under here in the dark. You’ll be better off up on deck.’

  Gracie shook her head sadly. ‘With my eyesight the way it is, I’m afraid of going up and down the ladders, or tripping over something on deck.’

  Agnes stood and pulled her to her feet. ‘Come on, then. I’ll take you up and stay by you. Doctor Angel told me to look in on you, so—’

  ‘Doctor Angel? But why?’ Then she took in the white pinafore over Agnes’s dress. ‘You’re the ship’s nurse?’

  ‘Nurse Assistant,’ Agnes corrected her. ‘I may have exaggerated my suitability for the job. But do come upstairs, Gracie. Your clothes are musty and you must be so hot and tired from being buried down here. We can explain ourselves to each other in the cooler air.’

  Gracie hugged close to Agnes’s side. Agnes noticed she wore a grey serge dress from Perdita Hall, and wondered if she had any other clothes. Agnes helped her up the ladders to the deck.

  As soon as the fresh air hit Gracie’s face, she burst into laughter. ‘It’s very bonny up here.’

  ‘Aye,’ Agnes said. ‘Good for you too. You and …’ She indicated Gracie’s belly. If there was any swell or curve, it was hidden beneath her skirts.

  Gracie’s face went bright red. ‘Sorry. I still feel I should be ashamed of it.’

  ‘Let’s find a place to sit and you can tell me everything,’ Agnes said.

  Gracie was right. The ship’s deck was no place for someone who had trouble seeing anything that wasn’t directly in front of her good eye. Too many ropes and beams and barrels and pails. Agnes took her down to the bench at the stern of the ship, and sat with her. The sun blazed on them, but the breeze was stiff and cool.

  ‘You go first,’ Gracie said.

  ‘No, you. I have been wondering for months where you were. Where is Cole? Is he in the men’s quarters?’

  Gracie was already shaking her ginger curls, which were frizzy from the humid air. ‘Cole has gone ahead to Perth. There’s talk of gold. He told me to join him at the end of the year but then I found I was in the family way, and I didn’t want to wait that long to go on the ship.’ She looked down at her tummy. ‘I already feel enormous. And I’ve been poorly the whole time. Aches and pains …’ She dropped her voice. ‘Bleeding.’

  ‘Heavy?’

  ‘You sound like a nurse. No, light. But most days, and always with pain.’

  Agnes’s blood lit up with alarm. If Gracie really was sick, she had no idea what to do, and she wondered if Dr Angel would be any more help. But then, Agnes knew nothing about pregnancy, and perhaps Gracie’s symptoms were normal. ‘I will come to your berth with Doctor Angel tomorrow,’ she said, reassuringly. She would have t
o ask him before he started drinking. ‘I’m sure it’s nowt that fresh air and dry land won’t fix.’

  Gracie sighed, her eyes going to the horizon. ‘That’s the thing. Cole doesn’t know I’m coming. I sent him a letter, but I’ve sent him so many and he doesn’t write back. I hope I’m still welcome.’

  Agnes kept her opinion of Cole Briar to herself. ‘He’s your husband. He has to take you in,’ she said.

  Gracie was already shaking her head. ‘We haven’t exactly got around to marrying yet. When we got to Liverpool, there wasn’t time before the ship left. Then we were in India and we’d already been travelling as man and wife, and it seemed easier to let everyone believe we were married rather than confirm we weren’t and endure the shame.’ The colour had risen in her cheeks again, and Agnes squeezed her hand.

  ‘Still. He has to take you in. You’re having his baby.’

  ‘I do love him. Though there are days I can’t quite remember how we came to this, and he seems vague and not real, like a character in a story.’ Gracie bit her lip, her expression pensive.

  Agnes did not recognise the feeling she expressed; Julius was vivid in her thoughts. She watched her friend for a little while. She thought about Gracie getting off the ship, alone and pregnant, and trying to find Cole in a town so far from home, and she felt almost sick at the thought.

  ‘But tell me your story, Agnes,’ Gracie said. ‘For I am tired of thinking of my own troubles.’

  ‘I would love to,’ Agnes said, ‘but let’s get out of this sunshine before we are both burned alive.’

  Agnes took Gracie up to the place she and Jack slept. Here, tucked against the barrels and beneath the sails, Agnes unfolded her whole adventure, much to Gracie’s delight.

  When she had finished, Gracie said, ‘Do you remember when I said that London was a long way to go to find your mother?’

  ‘Yes,’ Agnes laughed. ‘It did seem so at first, and now it is so far behind me.’

  ‘I do admire you so, Agnes. It’s one of the reasons I ran away with Cole.’ She blushed again. ‘Well, I could never run away by myself. I’d trip over something.’