Between Two Seas Read Online Free Page A

walk across the swaying cabin and the climb up the ladder are almost my undoing. Once on deck, however, the clean sea air revives me. It helps to see the waves as well as feel them. With Jens’s help I find a seat on some coils of rope just before the main mast. Captain Larsen greets me with a cheerful ‘Good morning!’ and then returns to checking his nets. Jens is attentive, however. He goes below, and then returns a few minutes later with a mug of tea and food for me. I refuse the fish hurriedly, but accept the rest. As I sit nibbling the bread and sipping the tea, I’m surprised how much better I feel.
    Occasionally I catch a baleful stare from the first mate, Johannes. He’s as shrivelled as a prune and has a sour face. I can hear him muttering to himself.
    Worse than this are the stares of the man Torben. He’s unkempt and filthy, with broken front teeth. I feel his eyes on me and it makes me uncomfortable. It’s not dislike he shows, more a penetrating curiosity. He comes over and tries to speak to me. The only English words I can catch are ‘fish’ and ‘gin’. I shake my head at him and turn away. I can’t bear the stench of spirits and unwashed body that hangs around him like a cloud.
    It’s cold in the sea breeze, so after a while I go back down to my bunk. Torben is standing in the middle of the cabin watching me. The living quarters are very cramped but Torben makes no effort to move out of my way at all. I have to push past him in my rush to lie down before sickness overcomes me again.
    The air in the cabin is fetid and stinking. As soon as I’m thoroughly warm again, I decide to go back outside. I check that Torben is not in the cabin before I crawl out of my bunk. To my horror, he is at the top of the ladder as I climb up. He takes hold of me round the waist to help me up. I pull away from him and go to my place on deck. Only a moment later, I make the mistake of looking in his direction. It gives him the opportunity to leer at me. Repulsive. He makes me feel unclean.
    I try to put him out of my mind and concentrate on breathing the bracing air. To distract myself, I think about my father. I wonder how easy it will be to find him. Whether he will be pleased to see me.
    My mother often spoke of him. When I was little, he was always my favourite bedtime story. I know that he returned to Denmark before I was born. My grandfather, who was one of the Mablethorpe gentry, didn’t approve of him as a prospective husband. But he and my mother promised to love one another always. He went back to Skagen to earn enough money to come and take her away.
    This, of course, was before my grandfather disowned her. By the time her condition was discovered, my father was long gone.
    It’s a terrible thing to be with child when you’re not married. You could say I ruined her life. Poor mother. I’ll never let that happen to me.
    My mother always told me what a good man my father was. I learned, while still very young, not to ask why he never returned as he’d promised. Such a question would signal the end of our happy story time, and drive the smiles from my mother’s face.
    I hope my existence won’t come as an unpleasant shock to him; I prefer to think that he’ll be happy to know me and to help me. But I wonder how he will explain why he never came back.

FOUR
     
    T he wind has increased considerably while I have been sitting on deck. Dark, ominous clouds are rolling across the sky towards us. All four men are busy, working silently, glancing at the sky. I’m chilled to the bone and beginning to feel seasick once more. I urgently need to lie down. I stumble along the deck towards the hatch, clinging to the steering house in order to keep my balance.
    When I’m at the bottom of the ladder, a shadow falls on me. I look up and see boots appear at the top of it. A particularly violent roll forces me to cling to the table halfway across the cabin to my bunk. And it’s here that Torben catches me, his arms