Hetty Dorval by Ethel Wilson

Author:Ethel Wilson [Wilson, Ethel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Literary, Fiction, General
ISBN: 9781551991788
Publisher: McClelland & Stewart
Published: 2012-12-31T05:00:00+00:00

EIGHT

To be on the ocean, out of sight of land, on an actual sea voyage, and to be sixteen, was then very pleasant. One regards it now as through the wrong end of a telescope. It is illogically remote and disproportionate. On the first day of this voyage, when you are not yet initiated, you watch with respect the passengers being born into this new world which will shortly detach itself from the land world and move off into oceanic space. Passengers are born into this new world via the gang-plank and are delivered by accoucheurs, stewards and others, to whom this is no phenomenon. These passengers, male and female, wear their best hats and usually their best clothes. The reason for this is that their best clothes take more trouble to pack than their old clothes. Moreover, they are more impressive when the passengers board the liner. The next day, or soon afterwards, you identify some of these passengers, not by their clothes which are different and certainly not by their hats which are as different as possible, but by such slight landmarks as noses and chins, or sometimes by the recognition of a striking and memorable face. All this is familiar to veteran travellers, but not to you. Some of these passengers then become torpid in deck chairs. But you are not torpid, because you are sixteen. You have joined a small mobile aristocracy whose members at first eyed each other speculatively and even with suspicion, but have since quickly become a closed corporation to which admission is the fact of being sixteen or seventeen but you must have some other commendable quality as well. There are usually hangers-on to this aristocracy who are persons of fifteen or less, but they hardly count. Also, you have become mildly in love with a young American girl (if you are a boy), or with a young American boy (if you are a girl), and you forget that the journey will ever come to an end. You are not sea-sick. Oh no. The lurch and plunge of the ship, the walloping slap of the ocean upon its side, and the buffeting winds are part of your delusion and your enjoyment. People who succumb to sea-sickness, usually adults, are negligible to you and worthy of being despised, for you have not yet learned compassion the hard way. The dining saloon is the seventh heaven, and you who have all your life helped with the dinner dishes at home, now gorge yourself in a superior and affluent manner (it costs no more) with the skilled aid of stewards and music. That the journey will end, you do not consider until suddenly it has ended. Life was still like that when Mother and I went away.

As Mother and I, still fellow-travellers, leaned on the ship’s rail watching the other passengers coming aboard and standing about in small talking groups amongst all the exciting weaving sounds of meeting, parting and departing, Mother touched my arm. “Frankie,” she said, “don’t look now, but there’s a woman with a most heavenly profile.

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