Rupert Thomson: Air and Fire

The sea had turned red overnight.

Suzanne faced into the early morning breeze, her hands curling round the cool metal of the rail. She was standing on the narrow deck above the midship’s house, the funnel towering behind her, a crop of ashes drifting downwards through the air. It was shortly after dawn on the 17th of April. She had been on board ship for more than three months. Her hands tightened on the rail, and she looked down. An infinity of red water, shifting and tilting under a pale sky.

There would be an explanation, of course. Some refraction of the light peculiar to the tropics. Or perhaps they were passing through the grounds of some great carnage: whales slaughtered for their fat, or seals for their skins. Though, strangely, it was men that she could see, an army of men laid out in rows, the blood draining from their wounds, spiralling upwards through the water, until at last each individual vein was empty. Then their skin would shine like snow and the ocean would glow above their heads, red as a basket of geraniums. She faced into the breeze once more, smoke from the steamer’s funnel unwinding across the sky. There would be an explanation. Someone would know.

They were sailing due north now, into the Sea of Cortez, and the southern tip of California had appeared on the port bow, a long talon of volcanic rock pointing out across the water. It belonged to Mexico, though Mexico showed little interest in it; it was a land adrift, peopled by Indians and half-breeds — and now, she thought, by the French as well. She strained her eyes to take in every detail. The soil was the colour of an autumn leaf, somewhere between brown and gold. The ridges looked sharp to the touch. And scarcely a trace of vegetation to be seen. Brown land, red water. Paris had been left so far behind.

Altering her grip on the rail, she thought back to a summer morning the year before, late summer, one of the last days of August. The windows of the drawing-room stood open and she could hear doves murmuring in the garden. She even knew which dress she had been wearing — a white satin gown striped with bands of black velvet. The dress had been a gift from Théo, her husband. He had chosen it on account of its short sleeves which were fashionable that year and which also, so he said, showed off the beauty of her arms.

It must have been a Sunday since they were taking breakfast together at the octagonal table by the window. She could recall the exact moment, her hands closing round the handle of their silver coffee-pot. She could still feel the carved vines against the inside of her fingers as she leaned forwards to fill his cup, as she listened to herself pronounce the words that she had been planning:

‘I’d like to come with you, Théo.’

The curtains shifted as a draught moved into the room. The air smelled of leaves as they begin to decay, that first hint of change.

Théo contemplated her across the table. It was a look that she remembered from their first meeting in the parlour of her parents’ house in Dieppe. It seemed to pause on her face and then pass through; she might have been transparent, made of glass.

Though her announcement had caught him unawares, she could see that he was in no doubt as to what she was referring to. She met his eyes, and her gaze did not waver. She wanted him to know that her request was in earnest.

‘And what do you propose to do about the house?’ he asked, his voice poised, almost light, his alarm exquisitely disguised.

‘I have spoken to Madame Marcelline.’ Madame Marcelline, their housekeeper, had been in their employ ever since they were married. ‘She would be happy to take care of things while we’re away.’

This did nothing to quell Théo’s uneasiness; perhaps he even sensed a conspiracy. ‘It will occupy the best part of a year,’ he reminded her, ‘when you consider the voyages out and back.’

‘Which is a long time,’ she said, ‘to be separated from the man you love.’

Smiling faintly, he let his eyes wander across the cool satin elegance of her dress and then out into the comfort of the room in which they sat.

‘It will be primitive,’ he warned her.

‘Dieppe,’ she said, ‘was primitive.’

Less than a month later she was ordering six gowns, three of foulard, three of mousseline-de-soie, fabrics that would be ideal, her dressmaker said, for a lady living in what she called ‘the torrid zone’. Two months after that, she watched dust-sheets settle on the furniture, imitating the snow that had fallen in the night and now lay on the trees and rooftops that she could see through the window.

She heard a whistling behind her, soft and low, almost the same pitch as the ship’s engines. The cabin-boy’s face rose into view, his eyes scanning the narrow deck.

‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘There’s nobody else about.’

It had become a ritual, to meet him here at dawn, the ropes knocking and tapping against the mast, the cluster of white ventilators breathing their warm steam into the air. Sometimes they would talk; other times they would just lean against the rail and feel the soothing beat of the propellor and watch the water fold away from the side of the ship.

‘You couldn’t sleep, Madame?’

‘I didn’t want to sleep.’ She looked down into his face, his features gathered tightly, almost braced, his dark curls corkscrewing in the breeze. ‘Did you see the water?’

He nodded.

‘What is it?’ she asked him.

‘I don’t know. I saw something like it once before, but that was off Java.’ Only twelve years old, but he had sailed the circumference of the world three times. He seemed burdened by experience, wearied, aged by it. She often wished that she could give him back some portion of his childhood. ‘It could be weed, I suppose.’ He shrugged. ‘You see so many strange things.’

So many strange things.

Two nights ago she had been returning from a dinner in the Captain’s quarters with Théo when a member of the crew scuttled from the shadows, plucking at Théo’s sleeve with fingers that were callused, black with grease. ‘Monsieur,’ he whispered, ‘we’re entering a land where legends are born.’ And then, as Théo prised the sordid fingers loose, ‘You won’t believe your eyes.’

Later, in the safety of their cabin, Théo dismissed the encounter. He had travelled by sea many times before, and he was familiar with the superstitious nature of sailors. They would sit on deck late into the night, he said, and hypnotise each other with tales of planets that dropped sizzling into the ocean and fish with the eyes and breasts of women.

‘It’s all nonsense, of course,’ he said. ‘And besides, did you not notice, the fellow smelt most unmistakably of liquor. Why, he was almost drowning in the stuff!’

Suzanne did not dispute this and yet she had to admit, to herself, not to Théo, that the sailor’s words had thrilled her.

Théo stood by the porthole, frowning.

‘Isn’t it more likely,’ he said, turning to her once again, ‘that we’re simply entering a place about which much remains unknown, a place where the imagination, especially, it would seem, the imagination of sailors, can take hold and run riot?’ He stood over her, his face lit with exhilaration at the clarity and precision of his reasoning.