LITMIR.BIZ

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too combative already, she smiled a dismissive little smile and asked Joe another question about what he was going to do when he got to Southampton – or Le Havre? He was happy to keep talking, and Laura found she didn’t have to speak much more, while he was so eager to air his views and experiences.

      As the swell did indeed die down, and the sun appeared weakly, one of the auburn-haired girls, Maisie, joined them. She complained of a headache, but she was still breezy company, one of those people who worked hard to match each anecdote in a conversation with one of her own, so that between the two of them Laura could sit more or less in silence, her fur coat buttoned up to her chin, beginning to feel better as the wind blew over them.

      ‘Florence!’ she called, seeing a tall figure, her hair whipping back, walking along the deck.

      ‘Did I have a bad night …’ Florence said, sitting down heavily beside them.

      ‘Me too.’

      ‘The woman in my cabin was being ill all night … ugh. Listening to sounds of someone else vomiting when you’re trying to sleep … It stinks in there this morning, too.’

      Laura commiserated with her, but Florence seemed less friendly than she had the day before, shrunk into herself. ‘It’s too cold to sit here, how can you stand it?’ she asked and Laura could see her shivering in her cloth coat.

      ‘We did the journey the other way in the summer – much better,’ Maisie said. ‘We went swimming – look at it now.’

      They all looked down at the open tourist-class swimming pool, its water whipped into waves by the wind.

      ‘Didn’t you say that people go over to the first-class side to swim?’ Laura asked, and Joe told them again that he had heard from other passengers that there was an easy way to the indoor swimming pool through the engine room. She found herself unexpectedly intrigued by the idea, and so, clearly, did Maisie.

      ‘We could go,’ she said, glancing at Laura. ‘Not to swim, I suppose – just to look.’

      ‘Are you coming, Florence?’ Laura asked.

      ‘You’ll have to change – you can’t go over in that dress, they’ll see through you in an instant,’ said Maisie, eyeing Florence’s drab dress and worn shoes.

      ‘I’m not going to dress up and pretend to be something – for what?’ Florence said crossly. ‘I’ve got a headache, anyway.’

      ‘Why don’t you lie down?’ Laura said, regretting the words once they were said, for their fussy tone.

      ‘Go back to that cabin? The smell of vomit?’

      Laura was delighted by her next thought, which was to offer Florence her own room, since there was an unused bed in it. Florence accepted without any particular graciousness. All three women got up, and Laura walked back to her cabin with Florence while Maisie went to change, telling Laura to meet her by the engine room. Laura opened up her brown trunk to find a better dress than the one she was wearing.

      ‘You have so many clothes.’ There was a kind of rebuke in Florence’s voice, and Laura looked awkwardly down at the folded piles of jersey and velvet and crepe, cerise and grey and peacock blue.

      If she hadn’t been with Maisie, there was no way that Laura would have crossed into first class. The roar in the engine room echoed in her stomach and almost seemed to lift her into the air. The couple of men at work on the engines did not seem to think it was their job to ask what they were doing, and when the two slipped through the huge double doors on the other side, it reminded Laura of being in a school play and coming suddenly out of the dusty, dark wings onto a brightly lit and confusing stage. Now the ceiling was twice as high above them, and the musty smell of cigarettes and old food was replaced by scents of lilies and polish. The wide, gilded corridors seemed to have been designed by a film director with delusions of grandeur, but you felt as though it had been flimsily realised, as if the marble might turn out to be painted and the inlaid wood just veneer. There were few people around, and they were moving slowly, a couple of elderly men walking with shaky steps down a staircase, a very overweight woman standing uncertainly in a doorway, as if each of them was overwhelmed by the decor. The pool room was the icing on this heavily sugared cake, a sweep of blue lined with multicoloured mosaics.

      Once there, the girls perched on two of the white and gilt chairs by the side of the pool. Maisie got out her cigarettes and Laura found herself imitating the way that Maisie was sitting, with her legs crossed and her hand holding the cigarette out to one side, but it was a poor pretence of nonchalance. She asked Maisie questions about what she was going to do back in London, and learned how she had tried to start a career in the New York shows over the last few years, but things had not gone according to plan. After a while they lapsed into silence, and Laura found her gaze arrested by a woman who was swimming determined laps, up and down, up and down. Eventually she stopped and got out, a tall, straight figure in a belted white swimming costume, who removed her cap to show a bob of almost white blonde hair.

      ‘Who’s she?’ said Maisie. ‘I’m sure I’ve seen her before. Is she in the movies?’ Laura didn’t know. ‘Or is she some society girl?’

      It seemed more than likely. The woman walked to the side of the pool, her chin lifted, her shoulders back. ‘Hughie,’ she called to a tall man, who was reading a newspaper at the bar with a friend. ‘I’m off to the hairdresser. See you for cocktails later.’

      ‘At the bar upstairs?’

      ‘Absolutely not. Come to my suite. The Landers will be along too.’

      Ebslutly naut … Her voice was struck glass, ringing with a brittle tone, and as she walked past them again, her towel trailing slightly on the ground, her gaze hovered about a foot above their heads. Laura could swear she knew they were in the wrong place. She felt that it was time to go back, but Maisie started talking to her again, this time about London, and despite herself Laura started to ask her questions about the city they were steaming towards, which she had never seen.

      ‘Is this yours?’ It was one of the men to whom the blonde woman had spoken, a man with a young face but thinning hair, and Laura automatically shook her head and avoided his eyes. But Maisie was leaning forward, looking at the silver cigarette lighter he was holding.

      ‘No, it’s not mine,’ she said, smiling up at him.

      ‘I say, I haven’t seen you around before.’

      ‘Haven’t you?’

      Laura flushed. The man’s voice had sounded mocking to her and it seemed clear that he knew they were not in the right class, but Maisie was oblivious as she introduced them.

      ‘Are you having a good voyage, Miss May?’ The man sat down next to them, unbidden, and Laura noticed him raise his eyebrows at his friend by the bar, who drained his drink and walked over to them. The conversation between Maisie and the first man seemed to be moving along quite easily. They were even laughing by the time the other man sat down. ‘And we have drinks and you don’t,’ he was saying. ‘Martinis?’

      ‘I’ll have a whisky sour,’ Maisie said.

      ‘I’m fine. I don’t need a thing,’ Laura said, in a voice that was too quiet perhaps to be heard, as the man seemed to take no notice and ordered them all drinks, which came quickly. In Laura’s mouth, the spirits were bitterly strong, but she drank anyway, because it seemed to be expected of her.

      ‘You’re a quiet one, aren’t you?’ the other man said, leaning towards her, and Laura smiled, but it was a tight little smile.

      Maisie and the first man, Hughie, were by now discussing various shows in New York, and he was talking about which of the actresses he had seen had the best shape, as he put it. He looked very obviously at Maisie’s breasts as he spoke, and Maisie arched her back. ‘I’ll tell you who does better martinis than you’ll get at the bar,’ he said and his friend laughed. ‘Mine are the best on the boat.’

      Maisie immediately said something with a double

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