‘I can hook a sail and oil the masts and repair the rigging. I can read both words and maps. I can load a gun with powder, and fireit with reasonable aim. I can speak in the French tongue, sir. And the Dutch, though with less proficiency. I am sound on a night watch. I could go on, sir.’
Mr Furneaux was suppressing a laugh by now. Captain Wallis looked no happier than he had a minute before. In fact, he looked like he seriously didn’t like me now. He began walking away, his velvet coat flapping in the breeze like the sail of a retreating ship.
‘We sail early. Six of the clock, tomorrow morning. We’ll see you harbourside.’
‘Aye, sir, six of the clock. I’ll be there. Thank you. Thank you very much.’
London, now
I am teaching more social history to the class of year nines when Camille walks past the window, like a tormenting dream.
‘In Elizabethan England, no one carried bank notes in their pocket. It was all coins until the establishment of the Bank of England . . .’
I raise my hand instinctively, but Camille doesn’t respond, even though she sees me. Anton watches as my hand falls.
It stays that way the whole week. I am invisible to Camille. Her eyes never meet mine in the staff room. She never says hello when we pass each other outside. I have hurt her. I know that. So I make no attempt to make it worse by talking to her. My plan is simply to see the week out, go to Australia, and then ask to go somewhere far away from here.
Once, though, crossing diagonal paths across the school hall, seeing her looking sad, I can’t help but say, ‘Camille, I’m sorry . . . I’m sorry.’ And she gives a nod so small it might not have been there at all, and carries on walking.
That evening, as Abraham tries to shake off a Maltese terrier a quarter of his size, I stare over at the empty bench and remember putting my arm around Camille. The bench exudes a sadness, almost as if it remembers too.
The following Saturday is the start of the half-term break. I am due to fly to Australia and drop Abraham off at the dog sitter’s the following day but right now I am in the supermarket. I amchucking a travel-size tube of toothpaste in my basket when I notice Daphne, bright-bloused and wide-eyed, behind her trolley.
I don’t want her to know I am going away, so I hide the toothpaste and a bottle of sun tan lotion under a copy ofNew Scientist.
‘Hey, Mr Hazard!’ she says, laughing.
‘Mrs Bello, hi!’
Unfortunately, we get talking. She says she has just seen Camille on her way to Columbia Road flower market.
Daphne’s eyes dance a little mischievously. ‘If I wasn’t your boss –which I am– if I was just your next-door neighbour –which I am not– I would say that, well, Madame Guerin has, for some crazy reason, a bit of athingfor a certain new history teacher.’
I feel the unnatural brightness of the supermarket.
‘But obviouslyIwouldn’t say that, because I am a headteacher and headteachers shouldn’t say that sort of thing. It would be totally unprofessional to encourage inter-staff romances. It’s just . . . she’s been very quiet this last week. Have you noticed?’
I force a smile. ‘Fake news, I’m afraid.’
‘I just thought that maybe you’re the person to cheer her up.’
‘I think I may be the last person for that job.’
There is an awkward silence. Well, it is awkward for me. I don’t think Daphne does awkward. I notice a bottle of rum lying in her trolley, next to a bag of pasta.
‘Having a party?’ I ask, trying to initiate a new topic.
She sighs. ‘I wish. No, no, the bottle of Bacardi is for my mum.’
‘She isn’t going to share it?’
‘Ha! No. Bless her. She’s quite a hog with her rum. She’s in an old folk’s home in Surbiton – her choice, she likes the company – and she always gets me to sneak in a bottle of the good stuff. She’s a bit naughty, my mum. I always feel like a bootlegger or something, like in America during Prohibition, you know . . .’
I remember playing ragtime tunes on the piano in Arizona, a bottle of moonshine on the dusty floor beside me.
‘She’s had a bit of kidney trouble and has had a stroke so she should be off the booze completely, but she always says she’s here for a good time not a long time, though she has been here for a long time, because she’s eighty-seven and she’s a right tough old bird. Ha!’
‘She sounds great.’ I try my hardest to engage in the conversation, but my painful, overactive hippocampus is now making me think of Camille at school. How pale she’d been looking. How she had deliberately placed herself at the opposite end of the staff room to me.
