Free Honey Harlot by Christianna Brand Page B

doing? ‘I like to find out about the ship,’ I said. ‘I like to ask questions.’
    ‘The person to answer questions about the ship is the Master,’ he said. ‘In future, confine your curiosity to my care.’ His dark eye kindled, I think he would have spoken more angrily but that he remembered the violent scolding of yesterday; he had himself always under an iron control. I said: ‘Am I never to speak to the men? I must converse with someone.’
    ‘You can converse with your husband.’
    It was on my tongue to reply that he never conversed with me, but I also must recall the previous afternoon and his efforts to make himself agreeable. I said, ‘You are often occupied
    ‘So are the men occupied,’ he said, ‘or would be if you wouldn’t keep interfering with their work. They should be keeping their minds on what they ‘re doing.’
    ‘Volk was just standing at the wheel,’ I protested. ‘It took no great effort of concentration.’
    He glared at me, bright-eyed, fierce and frightening, with his black, jutting beard. ‘Get down to your quarters,’ he said, and would have turned and gone about his own duties but a flare of hot temper blazed up in me suddenly. I caught at him by the rough serge sleeve of his jacket. ‘Get to my quarters!—like a dog to its kennel? Am I to spend four weeks or more, cooped up down there?—you’ll put me on a chain, perhaps, with a heap of straw—but no, for I might lie down upon the straw and you not there to take advantage of it…’ I think that the colour flared up in his face, I know that it did in mine but I was lost suddenly to all but the injustice of it, the inhumanity of it. ‘I must breathe, I’m a living creature, I must sometimes breathe a little fresh air. If I go forward for it, you tell me to go back to the stern, if I go to the stern the men are there, am I to stand like a dumb fool if they wish me good morning—?’
    ‘Forrard,’ he said, coldly correcting me. ‘And you go aft or astern, not “to the stern”.’
    I don’t know what anger had got into me that I blazed up again at the cold sarcasm of his voice. ‘So I fail again! I don’t know forrard from forward or stern from aft, and why?—because I’m not allowed to learn, because I can’t so much as exchange a greeting with those whose conversation would teach me these things. I shall go through a life of nothing but shipboard and at the end still not know forrard from forward because I must be chained in my kennel and have no chance to discover. And not having discovered, I’ll be a fool, I’ll have failed. And I shall have failed—because as usual no one will allow me to succeed…’ He in turn caught at my arm, with a rough gesture commanding my silence lest his precious crew hear me raise my voice to him, I suppose, as none of them ever would have dared to do; but I tore myself from his grasp and ran, catching at the rail to steady myself, and climbed the tilting deck to the companion that led down to the main deckhouse, and half tumbled down the steps. Richardson was coming out of his cabin into the saloon and put out a hand to stop me from falling. I knew that my husband followed me and was within ear-shot. I said loud enough for him to hear: ‘Don’t touch me, you might find yourself bitten! I’m a half mad dog not safe to be let out of my kennel.’
    My husband came down the companion-way after me. He said sharply to Richardson, ‘Out!’ and as the mate went off, looking back doubtfully, put a hand to my shoulder and I stumbled ahead of him into the cabin. I stood with my shoulders hunched, my back to him; his hand was raised, if I had turned to him, I think he could not have controlled himself from hitting me. But he only stood, rigid, and at last simply leaving me standing there, went out of the cabin. I heard his crisp step across the saloon and up the companion and the swish and bang of the door as it slid-to behind him. I knew better now than to fling myself across