Colm Tóibín - Brooklyn

She looked at Eilis again with sympathy. She was wearing make-up and seemed untouched by the ravages of the night.

"What did you have for dinner?" Georgina asked as she set about moving the trunk into the bathroom.

"I think it was mutton."

"And peas, plenty of peas. And how do you feel?"

"I have never felt worse. Did I leave a big mess in the corridor?"

"Yes, but the whole ship's a mess. Even first class is a mess. They'll start the cleaning there and it'll be hours before they make it down here. Why did you eat such a big dinner?"

"I didn't know."

"Did you not hear them saying it when we were coming on board? It's the worst storm in years. It's always bad, especially down here, but this one is terrible. Just drink water, nothing else, no solids. It'll do wonders for your figure."

"I'm sorry about the smell."

"They'll come and clean it all up. We'll move the trunk again when we hear them coming and we'll put it back when they go. I got spotted in first class and I've been warned to stay down here until we dock or I'll be arrested at the other side. So I'm afraid you've got company. And, darling, when I vomit, you'll know all about it. And that's all's going to happen for the next day or so, vomiting, plenty of it. And then I'm told we'll be in calm waters."

"I feel terrible," Eilis said.

"It's called seasickness, duck, and it turns you green."

"Do I look terrible?"

"Oh, yes, and so does every person on this boat."

As she spoke, a loud knocking came from the other cabin. Georgina went into the bathroom.

"Fuck off!" she shouted. "Can you hear me? Good! Now, fuck off!"

Eilis stood behind her in her nightdress and her bare feet. She was laughing.

"I need to go to the toilet now," she said. "I hope you don't mind."

Later in the day they came with buckets of water filled with disinfectant and they washed the floors of the corridors and the rooms. They took away the sheets and blankets that had been soiled and brought new ones and fresh towels. Georgina, who had been watching out for them, pushed the trunk back to its place inside the door. When the neighbours, two elderly American ladies, whom Eilis now saw for the first time, complained to the cleaners that the bathroom had been locked, the cleaners shrugged and carried on working. The second they had gone, Georgina and Eilis edged the trunk back into the bathroom before their neighbours got a chance to block the door from the other side. When they banged on both the bathroom door and the door of the cabin, Eilis and Georgina laughed.

"They missed their chance. That will teach them now!" Georgina said.

She went to the dining room and came back with two jugs of water.

"They have only one waiter," she said, "so you can take what you like. This is your ration for tonight. Eat nothing and drink plenty, that's the key. It won't stop you being sick, but it won't be as bad."

"It feels as if the boat is being pushed back all the time," Eilis said.

"From down here it always feels like that," Georgina replied. "But stay still and save your breath and vomit to your heart's content when you feel like it and you'll be a new woman tomorrow."

"You sound like you have been on this boat thousands of times."

"I have," Georgina said. "I go home once a year to see my mam. It's a lot of suffering for a week. By the time I've recovered I have to go back. But I love seeing them all. We're not getting any younger, any of us, so it's nice to spend a week together."

After another night of constant retching, Eilis was exhausted; the liner seemed to hammer against the water. But then the sea became calm. Georgina, who moved regularly up and down the corridor, met the couple in the adjoining cabin and made an agreement with them that neither side would prevent the other from using the bathroom, but they would instead attempt to share it in a spirit of harmony now that the storms were over. She moved her trunk out of the bathroom and warned Eilis, who admitted to being hungry, not to eat anything at all, no matter how hungry she was, but to drink plenty of water and try not to fall asleep during the day, despite the overwhelming temptation to do so. If she could sleep a full night, Georgina said, she would feel much better.

Eilis could not believe she had four more nights to spend in this cramped space, with stale air and weak light. It was only when she went into the bathroom to wash herself that she found moments of relief from the vague nausea mixed with terrible hunger that stayed with her and the claustrophobia that seemed to become more intense whenever Georgina left her in the cabin.

Since they had only a bath in her mother's house, she had never had a shower before, and it took her a while to work out how to get the water at the right temperature without turning it off altogether. As she soaped herself and put shampoo on her wet hair, she wondered if this could be heated sea water and, if not, then how the ship managed to carry so much fresh water. In tanks, maybe, she thought, or perhaps it was rainwater. Whatever it was, standing under it brought her ease for the first time since the ship had left Liverpool.

On the night before they were due to dock, she went to the dining room with Georgina, who told her that she looked wretched and that if she did not take care she would be stopped at Ellis Island and put in quarantine, or at least given a thorough medical examination. Back in the cabin, Eilis showed Georgina her passport and papers to prove to her that she would not have a problem entering the United States. She told her that she would be met by Father Flood. Georgina was surprised, she said, that Eilis had a full, rather than a temporary, work permit. She did not think it was easy to get such a document any more, even with the help of a priest. She made Eilis open her suitcase and show her what clothes she had brought so that she could select suitable attire for her when she was disem-barking and make sure that nothing she wore was too wrinkled.

"Nothing fancy," she said. "We don't want you looking like a tart."

She chose a white dress with a red floral pattern that Rose had given Eilis and a plain cardigan and a plain-coloured scarf. She looked at the three pairs of shoes that Eilis had packed and selected the plainest, insisting that the shoes would have to be polished.

"And wear your coat over your arm and look as though you know where you're going and don't wash your hair again, the water on this boat has made it stand out like a ball of steel wool. You'll need to spend a few hours brushing it to get it into any shape at all."

In the morning, between arranging to have her trunk carried on deck, Georgina began to put make-up on, getting Eilis to comb her hair out even straighter now that the brushing was done so that it could be tied back into a bun.

"Don't look too innocent," she said. "When I put some eye-liner on you and some rouge and mascara, they'll be afraid to stop you. Your suitcase is all wrong, but there's nothing we can do about that."

"What's wrong with it?"

"It's too Irish and they stop the Irish."

"Really?"

"Try not to look so frightened."

"I'm hungry."

"We're all hungry. But, darling, you don't need to look hungry. Pretend you are full."

"And I almost never wear make-up at home."

"Well, you're about to enter the land of the free and the brave. And I don't know how you got that stamp on your passport. The priest must know someone. The only thing they can stop you for is if they think you have TB, so don't cough whatever you do, or if they think you have some funny eye disease, I can't remember the name of it. So keep your eyes open. Sometimes, they don't stop you at all, except to look at your papers."

Georgina made Eilis sit on the bottom bunk and turn her face towards the light and close her eyes. For twenty minutes she worked slowly, applying a thin cake of make-up and then some rouge, with eye-liner and mascara. She backcombed her hair. When she finished, she sent Eilis into the bathroom with some lipstick and told her to put it on very gently and make sure that she did not spread it all over her face. When Eilis looked at herself in the mirror she was surprised. She seemed older and, she thought, almost good-looking. She thought that she would love to know how to put make-up on properly herself in the way that Rose knew and Georgina knew. It would be much easier, she imagined, to go out among people she did not know, maybe people she would never see again, if she could look like this. It would make her less nervous in one way, she thought, but maybe more so in another, because she knew that people would look at her and might have a view on her that was wrong if she were dressed up like this every day in Brooklyn.