The Skipper's Child by Valerie Poore

Author:Valerie Poore
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sunpenny Publishing Group

Chapter 8

Marijke peered anxiously out of the porthole above the stone sink. She could see Arie and Anneke trudging carefully back along the gunwales, but there was someone behind them. The ship was drawing away from the bank now, so it was clear that Hendrik had stopped to allow this person on board, but – who?

As she squinted to see through the gloom that signalled the coming darkness, she thought recognised the slight figure of the boy who had helped them earlier. Dmitri... yes, that was the name Anneke had told her. Just after Arie had come in and said he wasn’t allowed to stay. Jannie had seemed unsure about his name, though.

She wondered now what had made Hendrik change his mind. He’d seemed quite adamant earlier. Something about the boy putting them in danger. Jannie had been crushed, and even Arie and Anneke had looked upset, she thought. She couldn’t see what had been so threatening about him either, but then she was quite sure her family kept her in the dark about lots of things they thought she was too frail to handle. What they didn’t know was that life was just easier this way. Nothing was worth getting excited or worried about, not when life itself could be extinguished in a matter of seconds.

Mostly it was because she didn’t have the energy to care anymore. Her children and her husband were the only things that mattered in her world now, but even so, she knew that the boy Dmitri had touched her.

It was his eyes. They were so huge and so dark. So full of pain, too. And then there was his age. He couldn’t be more than sixteen or seventeen, the same age as her first son would have been had he lived. Marijke sighed and pushed the memories back into the corner of her mind where she worked so hard to keep them. It wasn’t always easy.

Now, though, she would have to see what Hendrik wanted her to do with the boy. Maybe he’d also been moved because of Dmitri’s age and the memories he evoked, but she doubted it. There must have been something else that had changed his mind. She moved back into the saloon area of the roef and picked up her sewing from the chair by the stove.

Perhaps she should just sit down and wait for whatever was going to happen to just happen.

Dmitri met Hendrik’s eyes with a question in his own. The five of them, he, the three Kornet children and Hendrik, were crowded into the cramped confines of the wheelhouse, where Arie and Anneke were busy removing coats and shoes and hanging them back on their pegs. Jannie was gazing with unabashed adoration at Dmitri. Hendrik watched Dmitri for a moment and nodded before turning back to the task of manoeuvring his vessel.

“I expect you’re wondering why I agreed to take you on board,” he said carefully, keeping his attention focused on the river’s winding curves.

“Yes, Mr Kornet. I thank you, of course.

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