The Tides Between by Elizabeth Jane Corbett

Author:Elizabeth Jane Corbett [Corbett, Elizabeth Jane]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Odyssey Books

Chapter 15

Bridie didn’t wait for Rhys and Alf to finish their dinner. She barely made it through her pudding. So much trouble, confusion, the still-now sorrow of last night’s story. She shoved her bowl to the centre of the table and made a dash for the hatchway ladder.

Siân sat in her usual place at the base of the main mast, her eyes darkly shadowed. But she held her back straight, as if determined to face the afternoon squarely. Bridie felt no such compulsion. She had no desire to talk to Rhys, or work on her stories. She certainly didn’t want to see with different eyes. Her own were quite enough. Her vision suddenly altered.

She sank down beside the quarterdeck stairs, her mind a roil of memory and emotion. Was it shock? Or disappointment? She had to admit last night’s story frightened her. One minute, Rhys had been talking to Tom Griggs; next, he’d been stoking the fire of people’s fury. He’d regretted his actions almost at once. She’d seen that, and it was hardly surprising. There had been no magic in last night’s story, or life lessons, only a terrible dredging up of memory, along with the cloying heat of steerage. Rhys had been affected too. She’d seen the tremor of his limbs, Siân’s hand snaking out to save him and, now, this terrible tension, much worse than after Lucy’s accident.

‘A dream has ended,

The fire has burned,

A young wife lonely,

A child must mourn.’

Even now, Siân’s words brought a wedge of sorrow to Bridie’s throat. They might have been her own words, written to her own life’s melody, a song for her even-now stubborn ache of grief. Although, her dad had been no martyr. Only a handful of theatre friends had turned out for his passing. Yet today, for some reason, she saw it all clearly, as if through the window of a peep box—the song, the sorrow, last night’s story, bringing each tiny image into focus. She remembered anger and raised voices, the long fear-filled night of waiting, Alf organising a party to search the Boxing Day streets. He’d run ahead, when the men had found her dad, and helped with the medical expenses. But, by then it was too late. Ma’s face was a plaster cast of fury.

Bridie had done her best—raising his head, spooning broth into his mouth, heating bricks and laying them at his feet. But Ma wanted nothing to do with him. She remembered Alf laying a hand on Ma’s shoulder, the grateful quiver of her lips, Ma’s fingers curling around his. Bridie moaned, pressing her hands to her face. Had she known? Or had she only just realised? For this changed everything. Mr trying-so-hard Alf didn’t look so good now, or his boxes of market greens. As for Ma—it was worse, so much worse, than she’d imagined. For not only had Bridie’s dad given up on life, but Ma had given up on him. And, if that wasn’t bad enough, she’d also loved another man in place of him.

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