Anne Enright: The Pleasure of Eliza Lynch

Francine has painted my bites with camomile, so I flake and itch. It is very close and still. The boat is full of shiftings, small noises, groans. And in my belly, the child does not so much kick as knock. Does not so much knock as scrabble.

Still, if we attempt, say, three ensembles a day, it will pass the time nicely to Paraguay.

In a sort of revenge for the jacquard waistcoat, Senor Lopez complains of my tight lacing and Francine is set to cutting side vents in my corsets. She threads the new eyelets with pink and blue ribbon, to please me. But they are ruined. I should not have to dress. I should be confined, and I would stay so, but that Doctor Stewart orders me out, to perspire.

He has not examined me yet. Not once. He is supposed to kneel at my feet and put his hand up my skirts and do things. But he has not. Every time I look at him I think of it, and he thinks of it, and sometimes, in expiation, he says,

'Still kicking?'

'Yes, Doctor.'

'Very good.'

My dear friend is impatient. He gargles brandy and spits over the side. They are all impatient, and give me a wide berth. I am unlucky and I am slow. I remind them of too much – of women. Of the act that made me swell. I remind them of hopes that do not come to fruit and lowered voices and things that go wrong in the middle of the night.

When I was sixteen, I think I was beautiful. But that was three years ago. Something has happened to my face now. I cannot say exactly what – but colours that should flatter do not flatter, and everything I do to it is wrong. I am waiting for my hair to fall out, but I cannot remember if this happens before or after the baby is born.

Senor Lopez says I must turn into a slack old Dona in black, with a mouth like a chicken's arsehole. I must go bald except for my upper lip, and order people, especially important people, around. And he must grow cheerful, I say, and round, with a baby pulling at his nose and another wetting his knee. But he is already thinking of something else, and leaves the room.

I will have a parrot in Asuncion, like the one the Clarke sisters had in Mallow. A green one that said Erin Abu! Erin Abu!

But this afternoon: a peculiar advance. Milton motions to me as I lie in my hamaca. He is hunched over a bowl of porridge, and he takes a lump of it and smears it on his britches. I have no idea why he should want me to witness this, but it is certainly done for me. He applies it carefully to the bottom of his drawers; then he approaches, lifts the muslin and tries to assault my person, or, in hindsight, my petticoats, his hands still covered in slop. Senor Lopez comes running at my cry and there is such a ruckus, I am afraid I may lose my new friend to the river. He gabbles ferociously and whines, and suddenly Senor Lopez starts to laugh. He laughs until he has to sit down, which he does, with a thump on the deck, and then he drums his heels on the floor. (I, meanwhile, rearranging my dignity, as best I can.)

Half an hour later, the porridge is dry and his britches stiff as a board. The women of the region use it for starch, and it works wonderfully well. Francine has an order from the cook and by evening my skirts again are five feet wide.

We sit and play cards – for no money still, which is not what I call cards at all. The lugubrious Doctor Stewart and the religious Mr Whytehead, who leans now over the shoulder of the simple maid Francine to point at a three of spades. Senor spits brandy. I sweep and whisper and duck and swish about in my marron moiré and make them all sweat beneath their collars, and I do not care. I commission Mr Whytehead (who learns his languages from a book) to settle my Spanish into verbs and participles, and I flirt terribly, and,

'Are you jealous, my Love?' I say, when they are all gone. Ί think you are jealous of me, and where I look.'

'Am I?' He seems quite surprised. The idea of betrayal is strange to him. It is not what a woman is for. (Or perhaps he will have me simply shot!) He approves the Spanish lessons with Whytehead, and so I take courage and tell him of my secret plan – which is nothing less than a match between the engineer and Francine.

'The maid?' he says.

'When we get to Paraguay,' I say. 'She can be whatever she likes.'

But I have miscalculated. There is something uncomfortable between us. He has gone outside to smoke, though I have no objection, I tell him, to his cigar.

Dresses for tomorrow:

The Bluebottle: a pelisse in that colour called fly's wing, a grey so dark it is black. Tablier of dull peacock sheen. To be matched with my black lace parasol and, I think, green gloves.

The Medea: dinner toilette of blood-red velvet, underskirt pink moiré antique. To be worn with diamonds, when I get them.

The Housey Housey: at-home toilette, in otter-coloured taffeta trimmed with black silk moss, with chemisette of organdie in dusty pink. All very dull.

Doctor Stewart, drunk, tells me that he is an orphan. Double consumption. It happened when he was six. He says he remembers nothing of his mother, not even the smell of her skirts as he knelt to say his prayers.

It seems a peculiar way not to remember your mother. I say nothing, except, 'You must check on the baby, Doctor Stewart. When you have time.'

I will write English, but I will not speak it any more. If I speak in their own language they will see fit to despise me. Not the doctor or the railwaymen, who know how the world goes, but the men. There are fourteen of them, most out of London – one out of Galway, and he is the worst – all the scrapings of some wharfside inn the captain knows.

The captain allows them rum, and tonight they are dancing. Like wild men. The ship shudders to their thumping feet, things fall into the water, and the words of their songs are unspeakable. I know they are singing about me. I would have my dear friend flog all of them – or at least one of them – in the morning. I would have him sail this ship, magically, alone. And marry me! Marry me, my love. I must say it once. I must say it when no one can hear.

But we took an early stroll in the dawn chill; the mist so thick and white, a solid wall that gave way before us. We might have been alone, on the boat, on the round earth. Sometimes, when we are moving, he leans out beyond the questing prow of the boat, as though to say, 'Tomorrow, Asuncion.' And I think that he alone, he alone, could take this ghost ship and fly it home.

Our Spanish lessons commence and Francine is very apt. She sits to one side and sews as Mr Whytehead strolls about the room and occasionally bends to write at my little desk. He will not sit down. I do not think he stands to show his figure. He is neat but he is not vain. He is also quite stern, which looks silly. Truth be told, the lesson isn't much use to her, conducted as it is through English, though we occasionally jump about in French, it being closer as languages go. But she sits and looks pretty enough, and lifts her head from time to time, as though to behold him. It is a very sweet, religious look and I am quite proud of her, in a way.

This afternoon there was an incident: Milton held the swinging hamaca while Francine ladled me in to it, and he went to take his place at the bow. Then a sailor (Goggins, I think) came up behind him and kicked the back of his knees, very neatly, so that they gave from under him. He kicked him again on the floor, while Milton curled up and made a soughing sound, which now I find odd, the silence of it – and all this in front of my very eyes. I shout for help. Whytehead comes running and then stands, inept. Finally, my dear friend, who pulls the men apart and fulminates. He turns to me where I lie, struggling out of my hamaca, like an insect flipped over that cannot right herself again. I am obliged to translate – it is all sullen mutterings, something to do with a native woman the sailor wanted for his own use, until Milton interfered. I do not know how. He is such a slight boy, I guess he cannot be beyond fourteen. But interfere he did, and the woman, who came to look for tobacco, slipped back safe overboard.