by the bed and folded forward to put his forearms on the mattress and his head down, tired enough just to listen for a while.
Despite the time, the clack and hiss of hammers and saws came from the docks. Emergency repairs; there was new tarpaulin across parts of the Agamemnon, which was anchored just opposite them, the soldier figurehead right at Joe’s eye level. He glanced at Kite when a crane-load of wood banged down on a wharf, but it didn’t disturb him. He slept flat, one hand resting on his ribs and the other palm up on the sheet. Joe wished he would move; he looked more like a drowned man than a sleeping one. He was breathing just deeply enough for the candlelight to draw moving shadows in the well between his collarbones, but that was all.
The marines were at the table now, playing cards in silence but getting cross with each other in hand signals.
Joe took out Madeline’s letter. He smoothed it out as well as he could against his knee – the pages were suffering now, being pulled from his pocket and thrust back in again – and lit a cigarette.
*
It’s contemptible how quickly hunger can affect one. Alone in a room, with nothing else to think about, another day on bread and water is a prospect of despair even after only a couple of days.
I managed to get out of the window on the third night of that second week. I had no idea where I’d go, but I was already starting to feel dizzy, and I thought that if I was going to get away, I was going to have to do it before I was too shaky to run anywhere. I got down to the ground, but it was a long way across the lawn, and before I’d even gone five yards, a soldier rugby-tackled me, took me back inside, and told me that he was going to Educate me with a distinctly capital E if I didn’t stay put. Once he’d gone, I broke a vase inside a pillowcase and put a shard in my pocket. Broken pottery is not the best Mrs-Beeton-approved prophylactic, but it’s better than nothing.
I stayed awake for the rest of the night, shaking and furious and watching the door and wanting him to come through, because it would have felt better to do something, even if that something was stabbing a man in the neck. I suppose you find it shocking that a woman could be that violent. We are violent creatures, but ours is a rage much more accustomed to suppression than the flabby undisciplined version found in men.
At Herault’s next noon session, Charles had top marks again, and there were more points of interest on the observatory timeline. The rest of us were still on bread and water. A week, that’s all it really took; a week, and I think the rest of us all felt like there was no getting away, and no useful course of action. While Charles huddled into his coat, we all glanced at each other. The other four already looked worn out and strained.
‘But,’ Herault said in his maddeningly cheery way, ‘I thought you might all like some time together. We’ve brought you some coffee.’
I could see what he was doing just as clearly as you do. After a week of bread and water, coffee was a phenomenal luxury. The five of us swung round like bloodhounds. It was bestial. Most of what made our thinking human and logical had eroded away already.
It felt very good to sit down in among the observatory’s pretty couches (upholstered in fleur-de-lis embroidered tapestry in lapis blue no less) and drink the coffee. Herault and the soldiers had theirs at the next table. We were too aware of them, and silent at first, but they ignored us, laughing about something to do with someone’s brother and a pet monkey, and after a while, that invisible wall between tables at teahouses solidified. At last, Frank, the first mate, said,
‘You’re a prick, Stevenson.’
‘I didn’t write very much, I swear,’ Charles said. He was red. ‘I just …’
‘Couldn’t help yourself? Madeline must know as much as you but she’s kept her fucking mouth shut, pardon my French, ma’am.’
‘I think your French is excellent,’ I said into the coffee, and like I’d hoped, a sort of wan laugh went through us all.
William, who had been silent until then, set his cup down on the saucer with a clink.