Fragrant Flower (8 page)

The Third Class arrangements in the
Orissa
were better than in many of the ships on which Lord Sheldon had sailed, but the passengers were nevertheless uncomfortably crowded.

Low down in the ship the smell of oil and bilge, and the lack of fresh air were very obvious, and only Lord Sheldon’s sense of duty made him enquire personally every day about Mrs. Favel from the stewardess who attended her.

He found her now without much difficulty, a middle-aged woman, looking tired and somewhat harassed as she came out of the cabin carrying in her hands a bowl from which Lord Sheldon averted his eyes.

“I won’t be a moment, my Lord,” the stewardess said as she saw him and disappeared through a door where he could hear rushing water as she sluiced the bowl clean.

She came back wiping her hands and smiling.

Women of all ages and all classes invariably smiled at Lord Sheldon. There was something not only handsome, but also attractive about him, which they found irresistible.

“How is our patient?” Lord Sheldon asked.

“A bit more perky today, my Lord, and very grateful for the bottle of brandy you sent her.”

“I hope it helped her seasickness.”

“I’ve always found there’s nothing like brandy,” the stewardess said, “but unfortunately, my Lord, few people on this deck can afford it.”

“Let me know when Mrs. Favel wants another bottle,” Lord Sheldon said, “and tell her I have enquired after her.”

“She’ll be very honoured, my Lord. She has told me how much her husband admired your Lordship.”

“Thank you,” Lord Sheldon said. “Is there anything else you want?”

“Nothing, thank you, my Lord. I am just praying it won’t be long before we reach a bit of calmer weather. I’ve never known it as bad as this.”

“I suspect that is what you say every time there is a storm,” Lord Sheldon remarked.

The stewardess laughed.

“I expect you’re right, my Lord. One forgets until the next time, thank goodness!”

She spoke so fervently that Lord Sheldon also laughed and turned to go back the way he had come. Then he paused.

“By the way, how are the children?”

As he spoke he noticed for the first time how empty the passages were.

On other visits he had found children running about, quarrelling with each other or shrieking at the tops of their voices with a shrillness that echoed above the noise of the engines and the splash of the waves.

“The baby’s all right, my Lord,” the stewardess answered, “and the other two are with the kind lady that has been keeping them amused for the last two days. She seems like an angel of light to us, I can tell you!”

“What kind lady?” Lord Sheldon asked.

“I don’t know her name,” the stewardess replied, “but she’s a First Class passenger who offered to take the children off our hands for several hours a day. It’s been a blessing. Little devils they’ve been, every one of them, while their parents were ill, making a mess everywhere, and so noisy one could hardly hear oneself think!”

“Where are they now?” Lord Sheldon asked with some curiosity.

“In the Second Class Writing Room,” the stewardess replied. “That’s dead against regulations, my Lord, but who’d want to write a letter in this weather?”

“Who indeed?” Lord Sheldon answered.

There was a scream of “Stewardess!” from one of the cabins and the stewardess hurried towards the door.

“Here we go again!” she ejaculated, and with the basin in her hand she disappeared through an adjacent door. Climbing back to the Second Class deck, Lord Sheldon hesitated for a moment as if he wondered which way he should go. Then he moved towards where he knew the Writing Room would be situated.

The Second Class deck had fewer recreational facilities than the First Class.

In the Second Class Saloon the passengers sat at long, communal tables with their chairs ‘cheek by jowl’ to avoid using too much room.

The Saloon was pleasantly furnished, but with very little space between the sofas and chairs, and beyond it was a small Writing Room which was seldom used except by those who wanted to write or play cards without being interrupted by the chatter of voices.

Lord Sheldon crossed the Saloon towards it, and as his hand went out towards the door he heard a voice saying with pretended gruffness,

“Who’s been sleeping in my bed?”

The voice rose a little.

“And the Mother Bear said, ‘Who’s been sleeping in my bed?’”

There was a pause and then a very high voice went on,

“And the Baby Bear said, ‘Who’s been sleeping in
my
bed – and there she is!’”

There were shrieks of childish delight before the narrator finished,

“Then Goldilocks jumped up and ran down the stairs and back to the safety of her mother’s arms as quickly as she could!”

There was a babble of excitement and very gently Lord Sheldon opened the door a crack so that he could look into the room.

Seated on the floor with a small Chinese child in her arms was Azalea. The child was asleep, his dark eyelashes like half-moons on his little round face.

Seated all around her, cross-legged or half-lying were fifteen or sixteen other children.

They all seemed to be very young and many of them were poorly dressed, but they were all looking happy and even though she had finished the story they made no effort to move.

“What would you like to do now?” Lord Sheldon heard Azalea ask in her soft voice.

“Sing the clap-hands song!” a small boy suggested.

“Very well,” Azalea said. “We will sing the song where you clap your hands, but as Jam Kin is asleep I cannot show you where to clap, so I will raise one hand – do you understand?”

There was a murmur of “Yes” and a nodding of small heads.

“Very well,” Azalea said, “when I raise my hand – clap!”

Lord Sheldon smiled as he saw how ready the children were to do what she suggested.

Very quietly he closed the door, as he had opened it. The last thing he wanted to do was to disturb either Azalea or the children, but as he turned away he stopped suddenly.

Azalea had started to sing and her voice sounded gay. He was sure it was a folk song but – she was singing in Russian!

It had been entirely Azalea’s idea that she should keep the children occupied.

She had expected, once the ship had started to roll, that she would be constantly in attendance upon her aunt, but the P. & O. Doctor was used to voyages which invariably started with a rough and tumble in the Bay of Biscay.

As soon as Lady Osmund began to complain querulously and incessantly about how ill she felt, he provided her with what he called his ‘Soothing Syrup’, two teaspoonfuls of which kept her asleep for most of the day.

The twins, after being extremely seasick, were quite prepared to lie in their bunks talking to each other and make no effort to get up.

They did not want Azalea, and apart from the fact that she washed and ironed their nightgowns, there was very little she need do for them.

When she learnt therefore from the stewardesses of the enormous amount of work caused by the other seasick passengers, she offered to help.

“We can’t allow you to do that, Miss,” the stewardesses said. “You’re First Class and the Purser would have a fit if he thought we were putting on you.”

“You would not be doing that,” Azalea assured them. “I work very hard when I am at home.”

“You don’t have to pay for it,” the stewardess retorted, “and being First Class on the
Orissa
entitles you to every comfort.”

“There must be something I can do,” Azalea insisted.

The stewardess had hesitated.

“You have thought of something?”

“I don’t think as I ought to mention it, Miss. I’ll get into trouble – I know I will!”

“I promise you that will not happen,” Azalea said, “but do let me help you.”

“Well, it’s just that there’s a Chinese lady in the Second Class. She’s ever so nice, Miss, much nicer than I ever thought the Chinese would be, but she’s really sick and she’s got a little boy.”

“I will help you look after him,” Azalea said, before the stewardess could say any more.

“If she could just get a quiet sleep in the afternoons she’d be all right,” the stewardess said. “But you know what a child of a year old is like! Crawling about the cabin, wanting a drink when I’ve just settled her down, asking for this and asking for that.”

“Is she travelling alone?” Azalea asked.

“No, she’s got her husband with her, but he’s very grand! Chinese men! They don’t wait on their wives, they expect to be waited upon!”

“So I have always heard,” Azalea said with a smile. “Let me come and see this lady.”

“I don’t know that you should,” the stewardess protested. But finally Azalea overruled all the difficulties and found herself meeting Mrs. Chang who, to her surprise, was younger than she was herself.

Although she was ill, Mrs. Chang was to Azalea’s eyes one of the loveliest people she had ever seen.

With her hair so black it was almost blue, drawn back from her perfect oval forehead, crows-feather eyebrows, slanting eyes and cupid’s bow mouth, she had an exotic odalisque beauty.

Jam Kin was the most adorable child imaginable.

In his long trousers and little satin coat that buttoned at the neck he seemed to Azalea like a toy, and even when he sat on her knee she could hardly believe he was real.

Mrs. Chang spoke quite good English, and when Azalea sat on the floor of her cabin and played with Jam Kin she soon learnt that Mr. Chang was much older than his wife and a very important merchant in Hong Kong.

She also guessed from the contents of Mrs. Chang’s cabin and her jewellery that her husband was extremely rich, but it was accepted that the Chinese should not presume to travel First Class but should be accommodated on a lower deck. Mr. Chang had, however, engaged three cabins. One was the Sitting Room where, while his wife was ill, he sat alone, and there were two bedroom cabins.

When Azalea suggested that she should take Jam Kin into the Sitting Room so that his mother could go to sleep, Mrs. Chang had been horrified at the idea.

“Jam Kin disturb Honourable husband,” she said. “Velly important have no noise while work.”

Azalea privately thought that Mr. Chang was having a quiet rest by himself, but she did know that a Chinese wife was subservient and self-effacing, and that everything appertaining to her husband’s comfort was of more consequence than herself or her children.

She therefore thought she would take Jam Kin away from the cabin and play with him in the Saloon.

As they went, moving slowly because it was difficult not to be thrown down by the violence of the ship’s tossing, Azalea noticed all the other children playing noisily in the passage.

They were running in and out of their cabins shouting, screaming and squabbling with one another.

She started to talk to them and when they gathered round her she told them a story to which they listened with rapt interest.

A stewardess came by.

“I wondered what was keeping everyone so quiet,” she remarked.

“I am afraid we are rather in the way,” Azalea said. “Is there a room where we could go?”

Finally the stewardess had decided that Azalea might use the Writing Room in the Second Class, even though it was against the regulations for the Third Class children to encroach upon their betters.

“You won’t say anything about it, will you, Miss?” the stewardess asked.

“No, of course not,” Azalea answered and added, “and I hope none of you will mention to my aunt what I am doing.”

She had said the same to the stewardess on her own deck.

“Don’t you worry, Miss, we won’t get you into any trouble,” the woman answered. “That ‘Soothing Syrup’ of the Doctor’s keeps her Ladyship so sleepy she wouldn’t worry about you, even if you were up on the bridge with the Captain!”

“I can assure you that is most unlikely!” Azalea smiled. She could not help wondering about Lord Sheldon.

She had the feeling that he would not be seasick as everyone else aboard seemed to be.

Once she had opened the door onto the deck because she felt stifled for want of air, and she had seen him leaning in a sheltered spot watching the waves break over the bow.

She had gone away quickly. She had no desire to see him again, she told herself, and yet when she thought about it she knew it was not strictly true.

She could not prevent herself from thinking about him and remembering that he had kissed her.

“How can I be so foolish?” she wondered when she was lying awake in the narrow bunk in her small cabin. Foolish or not, it was impossible to forget what had happened and the feeling he had aroused in her.

Besides, she was honest enough to admit he was one of the best-looking and most attractive men she had ever seen in her life.

There had been many handsome officers in the Regiment and, although she had been too young for them to pay any attention to her, she had noticed how well they rode and how fine they looked when they were on parade.

Her father had been good-looking and there had been an irresistible glint of admiration in her mother’s eyes when he appeared in full Regimentals or wore his colourful mess jacket.

“You do look smart, my darling!” Azalea had heard her say once. “There is no one as fascinating as you!”

“You flatter me!” her father answered, “and you know what I think you look like.”

He kissed her mother, but when he had gone Azalea heard her sigh as if she was lonely without him.

‘Will I ever fall in love?’ Azalea reflected as the
Orissa
rolled creakingly from side to side.

Then as she asked herself the question, she remembered her uncle saying, “You will never marry!”

That had been two years ago and she wondered if he still believed that she was so singularly unattractive that it was unlikely that any man would wish to make her his wife.

Azalea knew she had altered. She was not beautiful like her mother – that was impossible! But even though she was dark and not prettily pink-and-white like the twins, she could not believe there was not a man somewhere in the world who would love her.