The Ghost of the Mary Celeste (40 page)

What could I possibly need? I said and closed the door. But the look on his face let me know they are afraid of me.

My poor Sophy. I frightened her as well, and she was terrified
enough by the storm. The roar of the wind, the ship nearly vertical climbing each wave bow up, and then, the sea pouring over the deck, stern up, descending. We huddled in the bed together and I held her close to my heart singing the lullabies she likes, but her eyes were wild with terror and she sobbed until she fell asleep from exhaustion.

Benjamin said, Mr. Gilling is lashed to the helm.

And he was pulling on his boots to take the watch. He’d hardly slept at all.

And I said. What did I say?

Did I say, Be careful?

It didn’t matter. He couldn’t hear for the noise. We were sliding down a wave; the cabin floor was uphill.

He fell to his knees before he got to the door, then staggered to his feet and went out. He looked like a walking tent in his waterproofs.

I had Sophy tucked in the curve of my legs and I clung to the footboard as the bed rose up, pushing us steadily down, and then went down, driving us back up, like sands in an hourglass being turned over and over forever.

I heard the hatch open and close. No, what I heard was the bellow of the storm grow louder and then less. And I thought, He has gone out. I felt sick to my stomach and my head ached, but there was nothing to do but hold on.

I heard a shout. I couldn’t make it out. Mr. Richardson’s voice, his cabin door flung open, his rapid footsteps and again the hatch opening, the roar of the wind, and then the shout again, this time from him, and I heard it. I understood it. He had shouted—Man Overboard.

What did I do? My first thought was that it must be Mr. Gilling, because it couldn’t be Benjamin. But then I knew it must be. I leaped from the bed and fell headlong on the floor. Sophy plummeted out behind me and let out a wail. I gathered her in my arms and staggered through the cabin into the companionway, up the steps to the hatch. I struggled to open it.

The men were shouting. Where the sky should have been was a white cliff made of water, dark, yet strangely bright. From somewhere Mr. Richardson appeared, blocking me. Sophy was howling; his face was livid. “Go back down,” he shouted, “for God’s sake.”

“Who is it?” I said.

The stern dropped away and a great sea shipped over the bow, so that we both clung to the hatch rail while water surged over the deck and down the hatch around my legs.

“It’s the captain,” he shouted. “Please go back.”

“No!” I screamed. “Where is he? Let me out.” I tried to push past him but as the ship pitched, my feet went out from under me. I lost my grip on the rail and landed on my back in a foot of water with Sophy clinging to my neck. Mr. Richardson leaped down and lifted us up, counseling me as he helped me to my feet. “We’re trying to find him, Mrs. Sarah. You can help us best by staying below. I’ll come to you as soon as I can.” Then he rushed up the steps, closing the hatch behind him, and I found myself standing in water to my knees, clutching my terrified, wailing daughter in my arms.

I carried her back to the cabin. “We have to pray,” I said to her. “We have to pray so hard for Papa.” I remember saying that.

And I did pray. But God wasn’t listening.

I have lived now four days in this cruel world without my beloved. He is gone, without a word of farewell, without a grave, swallowed by the sea. I can’t realize it.

Last night I saw him in a dream, walking ahead of me. I woke, reached out for him. Sophy turned toward me in her sleep and said, “Papa.” And I thought,
He’s here
.

She keeps looking for him, not fearfully—she doesn’t understand that he’s gone—just expectantly, whenever one of the men passes outside the door or overhead on the deck.

It’s a nightmare from which I can’t awaken.

But wake I must. I must cast a line and hold on to life. I have my darling’s darling, the sweetest child I’ve ever known, and his poor, anxious son, waiting at home, bearing up as best he can, and this unknown, unborn child, whose mother is a widow.

I don’t think I have the strength to bear this test. I can’t say, as Mother Briggs never stops saying, God’s will be done. His will
will
be done.

Is this His will?

Mr. Head is saving his own soul by his great kindness to me. That first day, when I was simply raving—I have no idea what I said or did—he came and took Sophy away to the galley and looked after her, even put her down for a nap in his own berth. She came toddling back in the evening holding his hand. Now she calls him Ed-ded. That night he slept on the settee in the cabin again, insisting that when Mr. Richardson was on deck, he didn’t think it right that Sophy and I should be alone in the stern. He brought me food I couldn’t touch. He took it away without comment.

The storm went on for twenty-five hours: we ran before it. Running away from my beloved, leaving him behind. Mr. Richardson came to me as he promised, within an hour. Sophy and I were flat on the carpet, as it was the only location that couldn’t toss us down. I was praying; I actually had some mad hope that they would pull Benjamin out of the sea, though I’d seen that high white wedge of water, and I knew the only boat we had was lashed across the hatch, impossible to launch in such a fury, and even if they had tried, it would have been more men lost, for there could be no rowing about in the towering mountains of water bearing down on this little ship. Mr. Richardson looked like he’d been beaten near to death; he was pouring off water, his face was ashen. The floor pitched up and swatted him down onto the floor with us. When he got to his knees I saw tears streaming from his eyes. “Mrs. Sarah,” he said. “We couldn’t save him. He was gone so fast. The wave picked him up off the poop; it took him straight up. He was high above us. Then he was gone.”

I felt a hard fist of pain gathering in my gut. Sophy was screaming,
clinging to my waist. “Leave me,” I managed to say. I have no clear memory of what happened next. Presumably he went out and left me howling on the floor.

This afternoon, as I lay on the settee trying to feel anything but dead, there was a knock at the door. Sophy was on the floor trying to teach her doll to talk. She looked up and said, “Papa.” Tears leaked from my eyes. I turned my face toward the cushion and croaked, “Come in.”

It was Mr. Head. He had a brown Betty in a covered pan warm from the oven. I knew what it was because the mouth-watering smell of apples and cinnamon preceded him into the cabin. Sophy got to her feet and rushed to him, saying “Ed-ded, Ed-ded,” joyfully. I turned to face him. He was bending over Sophy, patting her head and saying “Apples, Miss Sophy. I brought you a nice apple pudding.”

“Are you married, Mr. Head?” I asked through my tears.

He looked up, startled, I think, by both my haggard appearance and my evident lucidity.

“Just these six months, ma’am.”

“Ah,” I said. “Just six months.”

“I’ll leave this here,” he said, lowering the dish to the table. Sophy immediately began climbing onto the chair. I pulled myself up and shoved my feet into the pattens on the floor. Mr. Head’s eyes followed me, full of hope and as kind as a mother’s. He will make a dear father to his children, with his gentleness and his cooking. He just wants to see me eat something, I thought, and he won’t rest until I do. I patted my hair down, it felt moist and flat like a mouse’s nest, and wiped my eyes with my fingertips. “It smells delicious,” I said. “Sophy, say thank you to Mr. Head.” She looked from his face to mine and said “Anka.”

So, to please them both, I got to my feet and joined my daughter at the table, where we took up our spoons and ate brown Betty from a pan.

How can I bear it? I’m trying to bear it. I’ve washed my face and changed my dress. I’ve eaten apple pudding. I’ve answered Sophy’s questions about the album and her blocks. I’ve sounded out the letters
P
and
K. K. K.
Kitty. But I won’t go out of this cabin. I won’t go and look at the sea, which is calm now, a light wind moving us along at a good clip. Through the skylight I can see a patch of blue sky. It’s warmer than it’s been since we left New York. Sophy slept all night without a blanket. I don’t sleep but in snatches. When I do, I seem to hear Benjamin coming into the cabin, or I feel him standing by the bed, or I wake because I hear him calling my name.

They are busily running the ship around me. I am the cold, dead heart of it, which the sea has killed, and no one but Mr. Head cares whether I come back to life or not. Well, in truth, they are so shorthanded every man must be on double watches and taking orders from Mr. Gilling, who passes them on from Captain Richardson. I hear Mr. R. going in and out of his cabin. He’s taking his meals in the galley with the others, I presume so as not to disturb me here.

It’s still dark as a dungeon, as the crew hasn’t had time to uncover the windows, though once the sun rises, the skylight sheds a block of white light down the center of the room. Mr. Head opened the skylights yesterday so we are aired out. This morning he looked in and offered to take Sophy up for a walk. She is full of energy and I am a worn-out thing who prefers the gloom, so I agreed. Then he tried to get me to come as well. “It’s a bright, clear day, ma’am,” he said. “It would do you good to walk about. Mr. Richardson is on deck and he charged me to encourage you to come up.”

I was helping Sophy with her shoes. It all feels so automatic, this life. “No, thank you,” I said. “I have some letters to write. And I’d best do it while the desk isn’t pitching about and there’s enough light to see the page.”

“Of course,” he said.

Will everyone look at me with this indulgent pity now?

As soon as her laces were tied, Sophy ran to him, her Ed-ded.
How easily her affections are transferred, lucky darling. It burdens me that she’ll grow to be a woman with no memory of her father. It’s unbearable, actually. He loved her so.

I did have it in my head to begin a letter to Olie, but all I do is write in this book. I am of two minds about what to do. The obvious choice is to cable Mother Briggs from Gibraltar, book a passage on whatever ship I can find, and head for home. But part of me wants to go on to Messina and meet Olie, as we planned—in our tragic innocence, I see that now—and sail back with him on the
Julia A. Hallock
. Or Sophy and I could wait at Gibraltar for Olie to pass through on his ship. Finally, I might simply stay on this ship for the duration. This last, I confess, has little appeal to me. Am I to sew and play our melodeon and interest myself in the rivalry between Captain Richardson and Mr. Gilling, which is in abeyance now, but how long will that last, as the days drag by and every one reminds me that five, six, ten, twenty days ago, I woke in the night to find my darling at my side? I hate this ship.

I will ask Mother Briggs—how does one compose a telegram to tell a mother her son is lost at sea?—I will ask her not to tell Arthur. I will write a letter to him—but how to tell him? He is such a serious child; it’s as if he knew there was a dark cloud upon his future. And he adores his father. I remember Benjamin’s expression, just exactly, the delight, the hesitancy, the pride, the sheer wonder, when he first held his red-faced baby son in his arms. He’d seen, he said, many babies, but none like this one.

How bright the sun is on my page.

I’m not going up there to stand on the deck and look out as far as I can see at the lightly dancing, sparkling waves, or feel the warm breeze rustling my hair, or gaze up into the blinding white of the sails, or receive kind condolences from Captain Richardson as he strides the deck of his first command. What madness. What vanity of men, to sail about in fragile wooden boxes tricked out with sails, putting their lives, their fortunes, their families at the mercy of this ravenous, murderous, heartless beast of a sea. No. I’m not going
up until I can put my feet on land. The sea is my enemy, and it has defeated me.

Last night I dreamed Benjamin and I were running, holding hands and running in a field. It was a bright day, windy, with an October sun, low and confusing. I stumbled and fell. Benjamin let slip my hand, running ahead, not looking back. I called out, but still he didn’t turn. Why won’t he wait for me? I thought, and then I woke up in the dark. Sophy was breathing softly, her damp little hand resting on my shoulder. I could hear the dull
thwack-thwack
of the bow, slapping steadily into the waves. I said into the darkness, “Wait for me.”

Later, at breakfast, Mr. Richardson—Captain Richardson—knocked and asked permission to sit with us. “Of course,” I said. “Come in. There’s coffee in the pot.”

“I don’t want to disturb you, Mrs. Sarah,” he said. “But I thought I should speak with you.”

I felt calm in his presence, but the memory of my dream—it was so vivid—had left me disinterested and bereft of feeling. At once he told me something I didn’t know—where in this world we are. We are south of the Azores, he says; St. Mary’s is six miles distant. We are off course, but Captain Richardson will take advantage of the calm seas and relative shelter of the islands to open our hatches. The one over the hold, which has the boat lashed across it, will be opened in the morning. The crew will remove the battens from our windows then too, if I so wish it.

“How is Mr. Lorenzen?” I asked.

He looked pleased at this question. It showed I was capable of normal human discourse. “Much improved,” he said. “Up and about with his arm in a sling. It will be weeks before it’s healed enough to bear any weight, but he’s on the mend.”

If only, I thought, it was my husband on the mend and Mr. Lorenzen in the sea. This thought vexed me, as if I’d spoken it, though it wasn’t exactly shame I felt at having had it. “I’m pleased to hear it,” I said.

He sat, fidgeting a bit with his watch. Sophy was spooning in her porridge. She starts a bowl and works at it steadily until it’s empty, like an old woman.

He said a few more things, I don’t remember what. He would wire Mr. Winchester on arrival in Gibraltar. To tell him my husband is gone, I thought. Of course. To ask for further orders. “Why are sailors so eager for orders?” I asked Benjamin once. “How else will they know what to do?” he replied.