Authors: Martha Lea
The tide had long since begun its climb up towards the place where she sat when Gwen heard Edward’s approach over the pebbles. In the last of the gloaming she had stared
intently at the place he would appear from, and regretted not asking him to come earlier. The failing light played tricks, and once or twice she had started, thinking that a shadow among the rocks
was his human form. Now it was unmistakably him.
He greeted her and wanted to hold her, but she asked him to stand still. Suddenly, she was breathless. She didn’t want him to understand her surprise until he could see it. She
didn’t want to let him anticipate what she was about to do. The waves lapped gently, hardly making a ripple as they hit the shore. Gwen could not have hoped for better conditions.
“Are you ready?”
“Yes, though I hardly know what it is I should be ready for.”
“Close your eyes.”
“But it is dark.”
“Close them in any case. Do it for me.”
“Will you tell me when to open them?”
“Count to ten very slowly, facing the water, then open your eyes again.”
Edward began to count too fast. She flung off the coat she had been keeping wrapped about her and ran into the water. She let out a gasp as the chill touched her thighs but she plunged on
further into the water up to her shoulders.
“Gwen! My God, what has happened?” He had run to the water’s edge.
“Be calm, Edward. Look at the water. Look at me.” She ducked her head under and resurfaced, beginning to swim back to the shore. The pinprick sparks of unearthly light, grouping in
thousands, faring in the water around her body like waterborne fireflies had silenced Edward in his cry of panic. Gwen thrashed the water and lunged, throwing up armfuls. “Can you see it,
Edward. Do you see?”
“Yes,” he said. “I am dumbstruck. I have never seen anything like it in my entire life. You have brought the heavens down into the water. There are entire constellations
falling from you. You are lit up, like a miracle, like Venus.”
“Take off your clothes, Edward.”
“What? Oh, no. I couldn’t.”
“Yes. Take them off, come into the water.”
“But the vision of you is so lovely. I don’t want to spoil it.”
“Rubbish. Come in!”
But he would not be persuaded. Gwen swam out in the dark, where the water was colder and where the lights no longer burst so readily about her. It gave her a thrill to be utterly suspended in
the dark water, with the dark night above her. She turned on her back and looked up at the stars coming out in the sky, then, suddenly too cold, she began to swim hard, back towards Edward. The
eerie, bluish lights in the water began to stream into life about her again as she neared the shore, and as she stood up, her legs weak, gravity pushing her down, she laughed as Edward caught her
in his arms, wrapping his own coat about her, pulling her into his warmth.
“I have a towel, Edward. There is no need to make your clothes wet.”
“Look, the light is still falling from you, from your hair and, my God, it is truly astonishing.”
He cannot swim, she thought. That is why he wouldn’t come in, why he did not rush into the water after me.
October, 1860.
Gwen leaned on the rail of the ship and held her head over the water, the spray stinging her eyes. She tried to imagine what it would be like to lean over a fraction more and
then more—and then she tightened her grip. What was she thinking? That she had come unprepared for the boredom as well as the enervating effects of excitement. And where was her travelling
companion? She saw him once or twice a day gripping the rail of the ship with a grim face, and the desperate character of him got on her nerves. That he was so sick at sea seemed such a miserable
outcome. His greenish pallor had settled after a week to a general debilitation and waxiness. It was not fair. The bilious nausea she felt herself on waking was soon dispelled by rising and taking
exercise on deck. When the captain asked after Edward at the dinner table in his scruffy quarters the compulsion to ridicule Edward almost overtook her sense of loyalty towards him. She looked down
at the stained tablecloth and tried to make herself remember how much she had felt about him that had been revelatory in a very different way. Her recollections made her blush at the table, so that
the captain imagined that his conversation was too much, and became solicitous, which made her agony even worse. Trapped in the conversation she wished herself outside. Outside she dreaded seeing
Edward being ill over the side of the boat, the force of his vomiting not strong enough to get past the updraft, sending his expulsions back up to his face. This had happened only once; but it was
the way she pictured him now at every hour of the day. It wasn’t fair.
If she had been his wife she would have asked the captain for advice; or she may have felt obliged to stay at his side. She did neither.
Under her blankets at night the press of the vast water bothered her sleep. The groans of the ship, and the activity of the men who marshalled the wind to her sails and got her across the
unimaginable depths swam with her jumbled memories. She went in and out of sleep each hour, and once she thought that Edward had come into the tiny room. She thought that he had heard her muttered
misgivings, but she couldn’t face him and turned her back to the cramped space and buried her face in her hammock. When she next saw Edward he seemed slightly better. He met her in the
sunshine and blustered out something, but she misheard, or thought that she did, and so they tried to talk until the embarrassment of having nothing new to say to each other was overtaken by
Edward’s embarrassment at having to excuse himself.
When they arrived in New York and spent the day and night there together, Gwen’s spirit was repaired by Edward’s brief recovery. For the rest of the voyage she tried to hold on to
the memory of those hours. But having to dine alone at the captain’s table every evening did test her.
Swithin knew he was ugly. This woman was lonely, and he liked to see her smile. Her husband was in a bad way. Swithin couldn’t get much of a hold on his character. You
couldn’t tell a man’s character from the way he wrote a letter or through the woman he chose. There were moments when Swithin almost became jealous of the fact that this pair were newly
wed. But this eased off, and his sympathy for Gwen came back again.
Gwen had spent as much time on deck, away from her own cramped quarters, as possible. One hour into the voyage she had begun writing in her journal.
This barque is primarily a vessel for goods, for things; & I think that I am but a very small thing amongst the boxes in this makeshift cabin. Despite staring out
to sea for much of my life, the fact of its vastness had somehow, somewhere slipped from my imagination: now I am surrounded by this ever moving, ever changing & never changing grey swell
of fathomless water, without the security of a rock at my back. The wind, a different animal out here, tugs from all sides
—
and I had never imagined how swift the shift in
temperature might be. A penetrating salty chill to the air, even on a day so warm on land
—
Land & the people upon it seemed so insignificant & small very rapidly as we
drew away from everything solid & still. The elements rush us all along on this unknowable voyage. Level with the Manacles & I spent a quiet moment in contemplation and prayer,
strangely wordless, but more prayer than I have ever made, for the souls, past & future whose lives were & are yet to be lost there. Past the rolling breakers, crashing over the hidden
treachery, I could not turn to look at the last view of our small river; instead determining my gaze on the horizon I saw a host of white gannets plummet one after another into the waves at
tremendous speeds. Our course altered very slightly & as we neared the birds, the glistening bodies of dolphins broke the surface all around us, leapt along the rolling push, & I am
sure I could spy as much joy in their dark eyes as there must have been in mine . . .
Edward read this passage two days after it had been written. Looking for Gwen one morning, and finding her little space empty, he’d put his hand into the neatly folded
blankets in her hammock. Perhaps, he told himself, to feel some of the warmth her body might have left behind. His fingers discovered her journal and closed in around the newness of the leather
binding. How could he help himself from opening it? He’d only wanted to see some part of her. And so it was in that cramped space he had first seen that Gwen was happy to find a
substitute.
And now at the end of this journey he watched Gwen with the captain. He was tutoring her on the correct way to use a telescope. Edward watched how Gwen covered one eye with her hand and gave the
captain her full attention.
“The city of Pará is seventy miles up the river of the same name,” The captain spoke with his face close to her ear—he brushed Gwen’s elbow. “Although, as
you will have noticed, there is still plenty of wind to carry us along.” Edward thought of moist breath on her earlobe: the captain’s, then his own.
“Then where is the Amazon river, Captain?”
“In the simplest terms the Amazon proper is two hundred miles, or sixty Spanish leagues from here.”
She fingered the leather pouch at her neck and appeared agitated. Perhaps, thought Edward, she is recalling the scene she had imagined waiting at her destination as described to her by Swithin.
Faced with the enormity of scale, he felt painfully aware of the smallness of the life she wanted to discard.
“The largest river in the world,” Edward forced a cheerful note. He grasped the rails, inhaling deeply and leaning back, trusting his weight. “Good morning, Swithin.”
“A good morning to you, sir. I trust this day finds you well?”
Gwen murmured a greeting and did not look at Edward as he stood beside her.
“Perfectly, thank you.” Edward’s hand slid along the rail and as he clasped her hand briefly, he noticed the appalling state of her kid gloves; they were stained with salty
watermarks, smudges of dark stuff and paint. He suddenly felt that he should have thought of something as simple as gloves. He’d only thought of getting her enough good paper. And then, in
New York, trinkets; he couldn’t remember what. He’d never thought of the look of her hands, only of what they might give him.
Now that they were beyond the reaches of the open sea, Edward felt his nausea vanish. It was strange to be beside her on deck again. It had felt as though they had made the journey across the
Atlantic on different boats.
“You must excuse me, madam. I will leave you in the capable hands of Mr Scales.”
“Your telescope, Captain.” Gwen offered it back, but Swithin put up his hand, glancing quickly away and then back to her. Edward noticed how the captain’s gaze flitted back and
forth, landing on anything except her face. Edward revelled for a moment in Swithin’s discomfort.
“I have another; don’t be concerned. In any case, this part of the river contains no surprises which may be detected by telescope. Besides, that kind of event is to be avoided, I
should hope, by the skill of our pilot there.”
Edward caught her eye and saw the look on her face. He saw the satisfaction in Gwen as she breathed in the knowledge that land was not an impossible distance from her.
The wind dropped slightly for a moment, and Gwen shut the telescope. She opened the small bag at her feet, putting the telescope in there for safekeeping, and took out her paint-box, brushes and
sketchbooks. She sat on a coil of rope and began to make a sketch of Edward’s profile as he leaned on the rail. He let her think that he was oblivious to her endeavours, but he noticed how
awkwardly she sat.
Captain Swithin approached them again to tell them that the
Opal
must wait awhile as the customs officer cleared it for docking. Gwen stopped drawing Edward and held the telescope out
to Swithin, but he declined again, saying, “Please, I would like you to keep the glass.”
“I couldn’t possibly steal a piece of equipment from you, Captain.”
“Please,” Swithin insisted. “A memento of your first voyage across the Atlantic.”
“Jolly decent of you, Captain,” Edward said. “A most essential piece of equipment, indeed. I’m sure it will prove very useful.”
Gwen flushed. “Thank you, Captain. I hope you realise that I will have developed a squint by the time you make your return.”
“That may well be; but I tend to think—and you may agree—that one should always have an alternative view at one’s disposal.”
Pará, Brazil. Late October, 1860.
Just look at him. Seeing Edward prancing about among the crates being landed was something of a shock. It was a wild, bareheaded, leggy kind of dance under the flattening sun.
All trace of his debilitating aversion to open water was miraculously vanished. Only the spikiness of his frame, his bony wrists, jittery as a cranefly, gesticulating at everything and nothing,
spoke of his month-long ordeal on the Atlantic Ocean between Cornwall and here.
Gwen thought, Great men, great thinkers, have suffered the same; and look at him, he’s well again now.
Edward grimaced against the glare and picked his teeth with a long fingernail. Gwen turned away. The telescope in her hands slipped. Her palms were slick against the warm metal; its topmost
section came to a slithery halt as she tightened her fist and sat down on one of the crates.
It was a vast array of collecting equipment—Edward’s announcement of his unfailing enthusiasm and faith in himself and everything he turned his hand to. She remembered the list, four
columns deep and two pages long. Inside the crates were Wardian boxes, elegant insect frames and cabinets, glass jars of all different dimensions. Gallons of formalin. New books.
But Edward’s optimism was infectious, too. And as she watched him again, the pale hair flaming from his scalp, she remembered the lick of fire in her bowels and gut. She stood, feeling her
petticoats clinging to her sweating thighs. Someone, a man, came up to her.