Sons of Fortune Read Online Free Page B

too!” Walter said. He and John were still on the quayside, with the women between them and the boat.
    Walter was right. Giggling, the young girl lifted high her skirts and turned to face the ship. Several others, also laughing, copied her action. Finally all the women stood facing the men, holding up their skirts and waving the dirty lace they clutched in their hands. It was an unedifying display of frowsty thighs and poxed and pickled carrion, but it brought a vast cheer from the men on the decks. The cheer fetched the captain above. As soon as the women saw him they dropped their skirts and ran.
    A few desultory boos arose but John’s upheld hand prevented them from becoming general. Moments later it was over for everyone except Walter; he stood watching the women dwindle to mere dots of colour near the dock gates. The lust in his eyes was frank and joyful. John wondered how long he could continue to extract any delight from those diminutive images, horrendous even at close quarters. Lovingly Walter watched them until the very last had vanished, draining his illusions to the dregs.
    “There’s still time,” John teased.
    Walter’s eyes even now raked the air that had held the women. “The female gender,” he said tonelessly. “I hate ’em.” He laughed explosively.
    “Hate?” John asked.
    “Yes. You could waste all twenty-four hours of the day thinking about them. Don’t you think?”
    John merely smiled.
    “No, but don’t you think?” Walter persisted; his foxy eyes glistened in his full-bearded face. He squeezed John’s arm, compelling an answer.
    “To each his own,” John said ambiguously.
    “Ooh hoo boo!” Walter made a pantomime of his disbelief. “Old dullard!” His eyes were still searching the docks, as if they hoped the women might suddenly materialize out of the air.
    “Have you thought about death at all?” John asked.
    Walter giggled. When he saw John’s unsmiling face, he laughed. And when John finally did smile, there was no humour in it. Then Walter’s laugh ran out of zest and, for the first time, it was borne in upon him that they were headed for a theatre of war.

Chapter 4
    Nora made her peace with John. Or, she wondered, had he made it with her? At all events a peace of sorts had been declared between them before, as an end-of-quarantine treat, he had taken the boys south to see his ships steam and sail for the Crimea. Hurt though she was, it would have been unthinkable to let him go on such a mission with bad blood between them. Nevertheless he was in no doubt that her acceptance of the fait accompli was very conditional. As far as she was concerned, this school—Fiennes or whatever it called itself—was on trial.
    Her first instinct had been to take Caspar and Boy all the way there in her own carriage. Not that she thought they needed mothering; they were well used to travelling alone by train. But she wanted to see the place for herself. John had been so vague on all matters of the boys’ accommodation and the arrangements for their ablutions, laundry, sickness, playing facilities, and so on, she suspected he had never even asked about such details. It was so like him. With every new railway contract he or his deputies took assiduous care to ensure that conditions for the navvies would be (in her view, as the firm’s comptroller) palatial; but for himself he took no thought. He’d sleep in barns and wash in cattle troughs or drinking fountains if need be. So, naturally, he’d extend the same carelessness to his oldest boys.
    All he had been able to say was that Dr. Brockman believed every boy in the school was due the same care and attention as was traditionally allowed only to the most gifted. That idea was revolutionary enough in itself to blunt the edge of Nora’s anger and to prick her curiosity. And that was another reason for her wanting to go with them to Fiennes.
    But John’s protest, coupled with the urgent pleas of the two boys themselves, persuaded her