Free A Greater World by Clare Flynn Page B

fact was she wanted to be with him. Just as she was debating whether to apologise and excuse herself with a forgotten item in her cabin, he looked up at her with a shy grin.
    'Truth is, Miss Morton, I find eating in 'ere a bit of an ordeal. I were used to eating at home with me family or out of a mess tin in the army and at the pit. I find all this a bit much. Having to mind me Ps and Qs.' He gestured around the room. 'S'pose you're used to it?'
    'Not really. I'd never dined in a vast room like this one.' She looked around them at the long lines of wooden tables with the ranks of swivelling polished wooden chairs, each fixed to the floor. 'Not since school. We had long tables there, but I thought I'd left all that behind me!'
    He studied her face for a moment. 'Posh school was it?'
    She blushed. 'I wouldn't say that exactly. But it was a private school. My father was quite wealthy.' She looked down at her lap. 'Not any more though.'
    'It were the village school for me. And then just till I were 11. Then I went to work washing the ore. No time for schooling after that.'
    'Gosh, that's awfully young to be working.'
    'That were the way. We all did it.'
    'Did you mind?'
    'Didn't think about it. Me Da were in the mines too and his father afore him. It were the same for the whole village. And there's worse work.'
    He told her about his life in the mine and his childhood in the dale. She could not imagine a life more different from her own. As he spoke, his face relaxed and he became less laconic. It was as though the dale was in front of his eyes and he was watching the men trundling into the mine.
    'Was it very beautiful up there? When you spoke about it yesterday you seemed to miss it very much? It must have been hard to leave?'
    'Not so hard. Not leaving the mine. But yes the dale is beautiful. Quiet. You could walk all day and never see another soul. It's wild and when you're there, you know it's been the same for centuries.'
    'But not the mining?'
    'That too. They've been digging the lead out of those hills for hundreds of years. Even the Romans mined there.'
    He talked on and she listened, transfixed by words and his face. But she felt he was holding back, slightly guarded, almost suspicious. Yet when their eyes met it was as if she could see right inside him. She liked his face: the still boyish features and the bright eyes and the way his hair was always rumpled as though he'd just got out of bed. She wanted to run her hands through it. She surprised herself with the way she sought out his company: she had never been so forward with any man and had certainly never met or spoken to a working man like him. But it felt right being there with him.
    Lying in her cabin that night she thought of him again. What was she doing? Where was this leading? So much for the promise she had made to herself to close herself off from other people? And what future was there in this? But then she told herself that they would soon be in Sydney and she would never see him again, so what harm was there in spending time with him while they were stuck on the ship? Avoiding him in this confined space was futile. Once they landed, they could say their farewells and go their separate ways.
    The next morning she woke from a nightmare about Dawson. The sheets were drenched with sweat and she ran into the bathroom and threw up. She decided, rather than facing the world, to stay in her cabin and have her meals brought to her by the steward. But it was worse. Stuck in the small space she felt cornered and trapped and every time she closed her eyes Dawson's face was looking down at her. She went up on deck to get some air.
    Returning to her cabin, as she rounded a corner, she saw Winterbourne ahead of her in the corridor, engaged in conversation with a woman. She stopped in her tracks and slid into the recess of the door to the empty smoke room. Leaning out cautiously, she saw him place a hand on the woman's shoulder – Betty, one of the stewardesses.