the river, and he’s concerned that they’ve not got a full crew. He told us to wait. He’ll be back shortly.”
“Yes, crews are a worry just now,” MacGovern nodded. “It’s the influenza. We’re short-handed yet ourselves. I must get back to my ship, so if you don’t mind, I’ll just leave these young ladies with you,” he said, and smartly departed.
“Would you like to sit down?” the schoolmaster asked, a refined voice with some northern accent, not quite Scottish, something else. “Here, Laurie, move over, and make room for the ladies.”
The little fellow, a tow-headed six-year-old, moved aside and offered Sarah his seat.
“No, no, there’s room for us all,” Sarah protested. “I’ll take your wee sister on my knee.”
Seen more closely, the other tot, red headed and freckled, a four-year-old perhaps, had been recently crying. Her eyes were still red-rimmed.
“Have you been in the wars, my pet?”
“We buried her mother yesterday,” Mr Inkster said, his face strained and white at the memory. “My little ones aren’t over the shock yet.”
By the look of him, Mr Inkster wasn’t either. As they settled on the bench, Sarah and Jess wondered how they would feel in his position.
“And you’re still going out to New Zealand,” Sarah asked, “even without your wife?”
“There’s not much else I can do,” he grimaced. “I’ve burnt my boats. I’ve no position back home any more, and now I’ve no money either. The funeral’s taken all I had.”
“Where’s home?” Sarah asked, with the tiny girl nestled in against her breast.
“Shetland, the island of Yell. At least it used to be. And you?”
She told him.
“I suppose things are hard in Ireland now too,” he commented.
“They are when there’s too many girls in the family,” Sarah agreed.
“You’ll be younger sisters then?”
“The fourth and sixth in line,” she nodded. “There’d be no marriages for us in Ireland. Our father couldn’t afford to provide us with dowries.”
“So you hope to find men in New Zealand who’ll take you without dowries?”
“One’s already been found for me,” Sarah replied, finding it easy to talk to this troubled young man, no more than ten or a dozen years her senior. “He’s even paid my fare out there.”
“And your younger sister’s too?”
“Not really. We’ve made it stretch. He sent the money for a cabin passage for me, but by going steerage there was enough for Jess to come too. She’s still under twelve, so she can come for half fare, or nearly so, seven pounds eleven shillings, instead of thirteen pounds eleven shillings and sixpence.”
“They made me pay full tariff in the lodging houses on our way here though,” Jess put in. “They’d not believe I’m only eleven, or at least they pretended not to. That’s why we’ve run out of money, that and the coach fares being too dear.”
“That is a problem,” Mr Inkster agreed with feeling. “At least I’ll be able to earn some more once we sail. I suppose you’ll be anxious to see your fiancé again.”
“There won’t be any ‘again’ about it,” Sarah returned ruefully. “I’ve never met him. It’s all been arranged for us, so the poor man is getting me ‘sight unseen’. There’s a terrible shortage of women in the colonies.”
At that moment a fussy little man, with rimless glasses on a cord, bustled into the office, and went behind the counter.
“Now you’ll be Inkster, I take it,” he said, referring to a bound ledger lying on the counter, “and this is your good lady?”
“Ah, no...no, my wife has died,” the schoolmaster replied quickly. “That is what I’ve come to see you about. She died on the coach coming down here, two days ago. The influenza.”
“And what about you? Are you going to get it now?”
“No. We’ve all had it. My late wife was the last to get it. She couldn’t have been really over it when we set out on our journey,” Inkster explained. “Now I’ve lost her.”
“Yes, quite so. My condolences,” Smithers responded unfeelingly. “So now you have no teaching assistant for the voyage. I had hoped to offer her the post of sub-matron too. The woman already appointed won’t be coming now either.”
“Perhaps I could find another assistant from among the passengers,” Inkster offered.
“Fat hope,” Smithers snorted. “They’re mostly lumbering great country girls. There’ll not be many of them able to read and write.”
“I can,” Sarah interrupted. “We both can.”
“Who’re you?” Smithers demanded, frowning.
Sarah produced their tickets, and Smithers peered at them through his glasses, and compared them to the names on the lists in his register.
“You’re early,” he said sourly. “Passengers can’t go aboard yet. You’ll have to find somewhere else to stay until Thursday.”
“But we’ve not got enough money left,” Sarah pleaded.
“I can’t help that,” she was told. “We must obey the regulations.”
Sarah and Jess looked hopelessly at each other. Beyond the grimy office windows the chill mist swirled dimly in the flickering lantern light.
Two
“If we were crew...” Sarah suggested.
“Even if Mr Inkster here accepted you, the schoolmaster’s assistant isn’t ‘crew’. It’s a passenger’s appointment,” the Dispatching Official retorted.
“Can’t we go aboard to prepare the schoolroom for the voyage?” Inkster asked.
“Schoolroom? There isn’t one. You take the lessons out on deck, or in the great cabin after the meals have been cleared away. No, you’ve nothing to prepare there. If your wife had been here, it would be different. She’d have had the hospital flat to prepare. That all has to be scrubbed out yet, and disinfected.”
“Well, you haven’t anybody now to do that,” Inkster pointed out. “We could do it.”
Smithers looked thoughtful.
“Maybe,” he said at last. “There’s not three days work in it, but there are other problems we might solve. Wait here. I’ve matters to discuss with your captain.”
He busy bodied away again into the gathering gloom.
“Would you have me for your assistant?” Sarah asked after he had gone. “I’d work very hard at it.”
“I’m sure you would,” Inkster nodded. “I’d need to see some of your writing, hear you read, that sort of thing.”
Sarah looked around for something she could read aloud for him. There was the opened ledger lying on the counter, but it would be cheeky of her to touch that. Nearby were some printed forms. It would do no harm to read from those. She turned the top one toward her, and read out:
“MESS UTENSILS TO BE PUT ON BOARD FOR EVERY SEVEN STATUTE ADULTS.
1 Mess Kit with Iron Handles, 2 gallons.
1 Tin Oval Dish with Colander and Cover, 14 inches long, 8 inches deep...”
“Yes, that’s fine,” Inkster stopped her. “You read well. What about your writing?”
Something to write with; something to write on? That was more difficult. Smithers’ iron-nibbed pen lay in a groove on the counter, and an inkwell was set into a hole, but there was no paper she dared use.
“You could show him your diary,” Jess proposed.
“Oh, no!” Sarah cried, and blushed scarlet.
“Perhaps if you chose the passage,” Inkster suggested gently. “Just enough to see the style.”
That might be all right, Sarah thought. Nobody had ever been allowed to see her diary before. It was private; just for her. It had all sorts of things she had thought about, things she wanted to remember, but not things she wanted other people to see. Certainly not! For this man, though, maybe...
Before her courage waned, she fished in her brocaded reticule, the bag she carried on a draw-string looped over her wrist. He wouldn’t laugh at her feelings, the kinds of things she wrote down, her attempts at poetry...would he?
T
he schoolmaster’s assistant, though...she needed the position so badly. After all, there was Jess to provide for too.
She found a place, her description of the steam ferry which had carried them across the North Channel from Belfast to Stranraer in Scotland. Would he think her strange for likening it to an iron duck paddling over the waves?
He looked at her small neat Italic script, black on the cheap greyish paper, crabbed in tight, to get as much as possible on every page. Would he think her mean with the paper?
“What a good description,” he commented. “That’s just what they’re like, those ferry boats, aren’t they. I’m pleased to see, too, that you’re not wasteful. Thank you for showing me that. I’m sure you’ll be a good assistant for me, if the pay suits you. The usual consideration for the assistant is one quarter of my fee for the voyage, payable on arrival.”
“Oh dear!” she said without thinking.
“Not enough?” he asked anxiously. “There are also gratuities for the officers and the special appointments if the voyage goes well. I don’t know how much we might get. That will be decided on our arrival.”
“Oh, it’s not that,” she assured him quickly. “Your offer is quite satisfactory. It’s just that it still leaves us with nothing now. We’ve three days to get through, and the passengers’ comfort fund to contribute to as well. It’ll be a long voyage, if we’ve nothing but ship’s rations.”
“I have the same problem,” he told her. “I’m hoping the captain will advance me something on account. We could share that.”
Waiting for the return of the Dispatching Official, they went on to discuss what Sarah would be expected to do in the school on board, and how she