I was seasick the first day out, but after that I was fine. There was a lot of dancing. I knew how to dance by then; well enough, but not too well. (Never do anything too well, said Winifred, it shows you’re trying. ) I danced with men other than Richard—men he knew through his business, men he’d introduce me to. Take care of Iris for me, he would say to these men, smiling, patting them on the arm. Sometimes he would dance with other women, the wives of the men he knew. Sometimes he would go out to have a cigarette or take a turn around the deck, or that’s what he’d say he was doing. I thought instead that he was sulking, or brooding. I’d lose track of him for an hour at a time. Then he’d be back, sitting at our table, watching me dance well enough, and I’d wonder how long he’d been there.

He was disgruntled, I decided, because this trip wasn’t working out for him the way he’d planned. He couldn’t get dinner reservations he wanted at the Verandah Grill, he wasn’t meeting the people he’d wanted to meet. He was a big potato on his own stomping ground, but on the Queen Mary he was a very small potato indeed. Winifred was a small potato too: her sprightliness was wasted. More than once I saw her cut dead, by women she’d sidled up to. Then she’d slink back to what she called “our crowd,” hoping no one had noticed.

Laura did not dance. She didn’t know how, she had no interest in it; anyway she was too young. After dinner she’d shut herself up in her cabin; she said she was reading. On the third day of the voyage, at breakfast, her eyes were swollen and red.

At mid-morning I went looking for her. I found her in a deck chair with a plaid rug pulled up to her neck, listlessly watching a game of quoits. I sat down next to her. A brawny young woman strode by with seven dogs, each on its own leash; she was wearing shorts despite the chilliness of the weather, and had tanned brown legs.

“I could get a job like that,” said Laura.

“A job like what?”

“Walking dogs,” she said. “Other people’s dogs. I like dogs.”

“You wouldn’t like the owners.”

“I wouldn’t be walking the owners.” She had her sunglasses on, but was shivering.

“Is anything the matter?” I said.

“No.”

“You look cold. I think you’re coming down with something.”

“There’s nothing wrong with me. Don’t fuss.”

“Naturally I’m concerned.”

“You don’t have to be. I’m sixteen. I can tell if I’m ill.”

“I promised Father I’d take care of you,” I said stiffly. “And Mother too.”

“Stupid of you.”

“No doubt. But I was young, I didn’t know any better. That’s what young is.”

Laura took off her sunglasses, but she didn’t look at me. “Other people’s promises aren’t my fault,” she said. “Father fobbed me off on you. He never did know what to do with me—with us. But he’s dead now, they’re both dead, so it’s all right. I absolve you. You’re off the hook.”

“Laura, what is it?”

“Nothing,” she said. “But every time I just want to think—to sort things out—you decide I’m sick and start nagging at me. It drives me nuts.”

“That’s hardly fair,” I said. “I’ve tried and tried, I’ve always given you the benefit of the doubt, I’ve given you the utmost…”

“Let’s leave it alone,” she said. “Look, what a silly game! I wonder why they call them quoits?”

I put all this down to old grief—to mourning, for Avilion and all that had happened there. Or could she still be mooning over Alex Thomas? I should have asked her more, I should have insisted, but I doubt that even then she would have told me what was really bothering her.

The thing I recall most clearly from the voyage, apart from Laura, was the looting that went on, all over the ship, on the day we sailed into port. Everything with the Queen Mary name or monogram on it went into a handbag or a suitcase—writing paper, silverware, towels, soap dishes, the works—anything not chained to the floor. Some people even unscrewed the faucet handles, and the smaller mirrors, and doorknobs. The first-class passengers were worse than the others; but then, the rich have always been kleptomaniacs.

What was the rationale for all this pillaging? Souvenirs. These people needed something to remember themselves by. An odd thing, souvenir-hunting: now becomes then even while it is still now. You don’t really believe you’re there, and so you nick the proof, or something you mistake for it.

I myself made off with an ashtray.

The man with his head on fire

Last night I took one of the pills the doctor prescribed for me. It put me to sleep all right, but then I dreamed, and this dream was no improvement on the kind I’d been having without benefit of medication.

I was standing on the dock at Avilion, with the broken, greenish ice of the river tinkling all around like bells, but I wasn’t wearing a winter coat—only a cotton print dress covered with butterflies. Also a hat made of plastic flowers in lurid colours—tomato red, a hideous lilac—that was lit up from inside by tiny light bulbs.

Where’s mine? said Laura, in her five-year-old’s voice. I looked down at her, but then we were not children any longer. Laura had grown old, like me; her eyes were little dried raisins. This was horrifying to me, and I woke up.

It was three in the morning. I waited until my heart had stopped protesting, then groped my way downstairs and made myself a hot milk. I should have known better than to rely on pills. You can’t buy unconsciousness quite so cheaply.

But to continue.

Once off the Queen Mary, our family party spent three days in New York. Richard had some business to conclude; the rest of us could sightsee, he said.

Laura did not want to go to the Rockettes, or up to the top of the Statue of Liberty or the Empire State Building. Nor did she want to shop. She just wanted to walk around and look at things on the street, she said, but that was too dangerous a thing for her to do by herself, said Richard, so I went with her. She was not lively company—a relief after Winifred, who was determined to be as lively as was humanly possible.

After that we spent several weeks in Toronto, while Richard caught up on his affairs. After that we went to Avilion. We would go sailing there, said Richard. His tone implied that this was the only thing the place was good for; also that he was happy to make the sacrifice of his own time in order to indulge our whims. Or, more gently put, to please us—to please me, but to please Laura too.

It seemed to me that he’d come to regard Laura as a puzzle, one that it was now his business to solve. I’d catch him looking at her at odd moments, in much the same way as he looked at the stock-market pages—searching out the grip, the twist, the handle, the wedge, the way in. According to his view of life, there was such a grip or twist for everything. Either that, or a price. He wanted to get Laura under his thumb, he wanted her neck under his foot, however lightly placed. But Laura didn’t have that kind of neck. So after each of his attempts he was left standing with one leg in the air, like a bear-hunter posing in a picture from which the slain bear has vanished.

How did Laura do it? Not by opposing him, not any longer: by this time she avoided clashing with him head-on. She did it by stepping back, and turning away, and throwing him off balance. He was always lunging in her direction, always grabbing, always grabbing air.

What he wanted was her approval, her admiration even. Or simply her gratitude. Something like that. With some other young girl he might have tried presents—a pearl necklace, a cashmere sweater—things that sixteen-year-olds were supposed to long for. But he knew better than to foist anything of this sort on Laura.