Honey Harlot by Christianna Brand

women, as though they had hearts and souls of their own, to be considered and cared for—’
    ‘A ship cannot have a soul,’ he said, austerely interrupting. ‘The soul belongs to God.’
    I was thrown back, out of my foolish eagerness. ‘Well, no, of course. I just meant—’
    ‘It’s true that men think of this ship or that as though she had a very heart,’ he said, continuing on his own way. ‘Or at least a personality of her own which must be respected and deferred to. When my company took over this brig, she had lost her self-respect. We restored that to her, we renewed her pride in herself, we gave her a new dress—’
    ‘And a new name,’ I suggested, and wondered if I should ever learn to keep my stupid mouth closed. But I slid it all into easiness, and I think made the transfer very well. ‘It was an inspiration, taking away the bold Amazon image and giving her a soft womanish name, a whole new change of identity.’
    He caught at it, thankfully I think; and for a long time he walked with me there, talking agreeably as he had talked two evenings before, as he had conversed with my parents in those happier days and won their respect and mine with it. I suppose I had never loved him; to be respectably married, to be provided for and cared for, to perform one’s wifely duties in return—this was the be-all and end-all of a girl’s existence in those days and I had thought, poor child, that I might have a better chance of self-fulfilment away from the repressions of home. I had been filled with thankfulness and relief at his coming; I had looked no further. Now however as he walked and talked with me for the first time in our lives, freed of that inner pressure, I was filled with yet another new hope. In that foolish way of mine, I thrust behind me all the terrors and cares, I looked to some dream magic to invest me at last with practicality and good sense, I chatted away with eager freedom, asking my artless questions, trying to take in the explanations and answers, trying to learn something for a change. When the boy came to say in his cloddish way that the meal was on the table, I felt that for years I had not known such faith and confidence in myself.
    We were well out into the Atlantic now and the ocean had taken on that impression of a boundlessness that to this hour haunts my dreams—as though nothing existed in the wide world but the waste of the rolling sea streaked with white foam, restless, restless, an infinity of heaving grey-green molten glass. The ship rolled with the rolling of the waves as, with a hiss and a rush and a slap, slap, slap of wet hands against her hull, a speck in infinity, she cut her way through. I climbed up the tilt of the deck to the sliding door of the companion-way, my husband’s hand flat against my shoulder supporting me, bent my head to the low doorway, stepping hunched, over the high brass-topped sill and staggering a little, got down the steps and into the saloon. Richardson, waiting for us there, turned his eyes meaningfully to the door of his cabin and hastily averted them as my husband followed me down. He asked, as though the glance were connected with the question, did the captain intend, as he’d said, to take a trick at the wheel himself, after the meal? Two of the men, it seemed, were unwell, they were short of crew…
    ‘Of course,’ said my husband. ‘If I say a thing, I mean it,’ and as soon as dinner was over, went up on deck to relieve the helmsman. Richardson mouthed at me the words, ‘One—hour—at—least,’ and went up after him.
    I waited till the steward was out of the way at last and went and tapped softly at the door. Mary opened it and, smiling, full of fun as though we were two schoolgirls, hiding away to share a stolen apple, took my arm and almost yanked me inside. I was terrified, nevertheless. ‘We’re all right,’ she said. ‘The men are pretending to be sick to give us an hour or two free, I must speak with another