Chapter 7
By the second afternoon of cruising across the Atlantic, Hannah had settled into a pattern, of sorts.
It would take three full sailing days to reach their first stop in the Azores, and then another five days to reach the Caribbean.
When she and Ian had discussed their honeymoon, it had been part of the appeal to have such a stretch of time together.
No work, no family, no external demands…
just them. He’d looked sideways at her when she’d jokingly asked what they’d spend their time doing.
She hadn’t been being completely facetious with her comment.
They’d been together for years; it wasn’t as though they were waiting until their wedding night to get intimate, so the honeymoon wouldn’t be spent exploring one another’s bodies like newly discovered buried treasure. They’d already done all that.
To be honest, after a hectic autumn and pre-Christmas season at the deli, Hannah had been looking forward to having a rest alongside all the traditional honeymoon activities.
Well, as it turned out, she’d be managing to get plenty of the former.
She really did have nothing to do. It wasn’t how she’d envisioned spending the cruising days, but since hiding out in her cabin for a while after her unexpected soul-bearing with Ruth, Hannah had eventually decided to make a little more of the journeying time by seeing what was on offer on board the Ballygowan.
For the second afternoon running, Hannah was high up on deck 9, where she’d discovered a fantastic art gallery.
Not only were there plenty of pieces of quality art displayed for people to enjoy as they wandered around the space, but the director also ran art lessons for anyone on the Ballygowan to join in with.
Art had always been Hannah’s passion. While still at school, she’d volunteered at a local art gallery alongside working in the family deli, much to her parents’ irritation.
It had been a battle to get them to agree to her taking a degree in fine art.
Her father didn’t understand the need, when there was a deli to be run.
But Hannah had always hankered after working professionally in an art gallery or a museum.
She’d dreamed of heading for London, curating art in a gallery or working somewhere like The Wallace Collection.
During her university years, Hannah met Ian and by the time she graduated she was in love, and so staying home and working with her family, staying close to Ian, too, had seemed the obvious path.
Art had been pushed further and further into the background, with work and Ian taking up the bulk of her time.
Now she finally had some spare time, she was more than content to while away a few hours of it working on a still life set up by April, the ship’s resident art director.
When Hannah had wandered into the designated alcove and asked to join the group, the director had been very welcoming.
‘Couldn’t book a nude model,’ April had said, her flowing grey hair fanning out as she leant in conspiratorially over Hannah’s shoulder, studying her initial sketch. ‘Apparently, it doesn’t go down well with everyone, so…’
Hannah was rather relieved, to be honest. For one thing, the arrangement of jugs and citrus fruits – not hugely imaginative, but challenging enough to get right, especially the clear glass jug on the right – was always left in situ.
April had showed Hannah where the art equipment was kept and it seemed she could come and paint whenever she felt like it, not only when April was running a class.
So, Hannah could come and go as she pleased.
Also, the last thing Hannah wanted to be sketching was naked flesh, of whatever gender.
It was always portrayed on TV as being all erotic and exciting.
Usually the model was some gorgeous bloke all the students were supposed to fall for, or it was a young woman who then got taken advantage of by the artist – either way, in Hannah’s experience it wasn’t really like that.
After taking some classes during which she was subjected to watching one particular male model repeatedly scratching parts of himself she’d have preferred him to have hidden with an artfully bent leg, Hannah had decided it wasn’t particularly her bag.
Today, she was firming up some of her initial sketching and was wondering how best to incorporate the view behind the arrangement – the rest of the gallery and large windows giving way to the seascape beyond.
She wanted to include it all, somehow, to mark this grouping of jugs and citrus fruits out from any other.
‘Everything OK?’ April said, making Hannah jump – her concentration had been total, something she hadn’t managed with anything else since she found out about Ian’s infidelity.
‘Absolutely fine,’ Hannah said.
‘Millie wants to have a go, too – is that OK with you?’
Finally, Hannah looked up from her easel. A young girl stood beside April, a pencil case clutched in one hand, a look of insecurity on her oval face as she stared at Hannah, then at her work.
‘You’re really good,’ Millie said. ‘I like your oranges.’
Hannah stifled a laugh. ‘That’s very kind, thanks.’
‘No, I’m not being kind. They are good. Mine always end up lopsided.’
‘Well,’ April said, settling an easel beside Hannah’s, ‘Let’s see if we can do something about your lopsided oranges, Millie, shall we?’
Hannah smiled, turning back to her canvas and settling into the one place where she could truly forget all the negativity that had accompanied her on the cruise.
It was ridiculous, really, but it had taken every scrap of Louis’ determination to phone his father and suggest they meet.
He’d offered his dad a tour of the ship together, and he had seemed politely enthusiastic about the idea.
Although now they were topside, standing side by side and staring out at the Atlantic, stretching in front of them for what looked like eternity, Louis couldn’t think of anything to say.
The epaulets on the shoulders of his shirt, an extra gold line in place to signify his rank – however fleeting his captainship might end up being – riffled in the breeze.
It was almost as though they wanted to be noticed, were trying to do the heavy lifting for Louis, who had no idea how to say the things he really wanted to.
About how he hadn’t ever really understood what it was his father wanted from him, how he’d tried his hardest – or thought he had – and how difficult it had been to deal with his own failures, without having his father piling on the guilt.
He knew only too well what his parents had sacrificed for him, and that, essentially, he’d come up short and let them down.
But more than all that – right at the top of the pile and burning a hole in him – Louis had no idea how to express how sad he was, right now, and had been for months, because his mum was gone and he hadn’t the first idea how to deal with it.
The only thing Louis had ever known was pushing as hard as he could, whether it was with the racing out of Southlands Marina, chasing the Olympic dream, or latterly, pushing his career in cruising so hard it squeaked.
He’d tried his best to please his mum by finding a special woman to settle down with – he knew that was what she’d wanted above all else.
And how it felt to know that even then, even after trying as hard as he could, he’d still failed.
Instead of talking about the glaringly large elephants in their room, Louis pointed out the navigation system, the rotating radar beacon and satellites, the techy stuff he thought his father would appreciate.
In turn, Louis couldn’t fail to notice how stiffly his father held himself, how wary he was with his words, as though he expected Louis to launch an attack on him.
‘And this posting, this captainship, it’s just temporary then, is it?’ Edward said, breaking into his thoughts and not surprising Louis with the negativity laced into his question.
‘Captain Crowther needed a surgical procedure – he’ll be out for a couple of months, so they’re planning to let him take some leave until the next rotation. If everything goes well, I should be in post on board the Ballygowan until spring, and then I’m hoping…’
Louis tailed off. What was he hoping for?
And was it something he wanted to lay bare to his father?
What if his desire to remain captain, even if it wasn’t of the Ballygowan, didn’t happen?
What was the point of telling his father, only to be mocked when it didn’t materialise?
In that moment, Louis was ten years old again, and he’d just been outmanoeuvred during a race.
He’d misjudged the wind and his little boat, an Optimist, hadn’t tacked as well as the boy who’d been, up until that point, behind him.
Back then, his father’s sarcasm had spurred him on to try harder, but now, twenty-odd years later, Louis knew it wouldn’t have the same effect. It was far more likely to escalate into another argument, and he wasn’t going to give his father that pleasure.
‘Well, we’ll just have to wait and see what happens,’ he said, weakly.
His father nodded; his attention taken by something unidentifiable in the middle distance.
‘Why did it take you two days to acknowledge my being here?’ his father said, a hand bouncing on a guard rail as he turned to stare at Louis.
‘I’ve been rather busy.’
It was a weak answer. He should have challenged the assumption that it was somehow his fault – after all, he only knew his father was going to be on board because his aunt had let him know.
They stared at one another for a while, Louis breaking eye contact to greet a few passengers who wished him a good afternoon as they milled about on the deck.
Then his father shook his head. ‘I should have told you I was booking a cabin. My mistake.’
‘I genuinely have got a lot on my plate – I’d assumed you would appreciate that.’
The grunting noise his father made could have been acquiescence; it was hard to tell. It could as easily have been defiance. A wave of exhaustion crashed over Louis.
‘Tell you what – let’s go back via the art exhibition.
There are some beautiful pieces on the Ballygowan this season, some are by that abstract artist Mum really liked.
’ He checked his watch. ‘Then I should really be getting back to the bridge, but we could meet up again. Or I could get one of the engineers to show you the engine room…?’
They wound their way past the rows of teak sun loungers, some occupied by passengers keener than most to get a dose of patchy afternoon sun.
As with so many times before, Louis hadn’t even come close to saying what he wanted, and if his father’s tight-lipped expression was anything to go by, neither had he. But the art did seem to soften some of their hard edges.
‘Your mum loved this stuff,’ Louis’ father said, tilting his head and frowning.
‘Can’t say I ever really understood it, but Mai would go on for hours about the brushwork, the framing of the piece, the way it spoke in unstructured terms about so much more than the colours involved.
’ He smiled – the first Louis had seen for a while.
‘I used to nod and agree, which made her so mad. She wanted me to understand, but I never did.’
Louis smiled too. ‘Nor did I.’
His father pulled in a deep breath. ‘At least that’s something we agree on.’
Before Louis could reply, April approached, her flowing dress and hair wafting as she walked.
‘Captain King, how lovely to see you. Let me show you around our little gallery.’
Up until this promotion, it had been possible to move about the ship without much in the way of notice or recognition – at most a few of the keenest of amateur sailors or regular cruise-takers might acknowledge him.
But this was different. The mention of the word ‘captain’ had heads turning.
This was a level of scrutiny he supposed he should have been prepared for but somehow wasn’t.
‘Lovely to see you, April. I’m sure my father would very much appreciate being shown around.’
Louis would also have benefitted from April’s knowledge about the art in the room, but he’d caught sight of a familiar figure in the small teaching alcove. It was Hannah Maynard – the awkwardness of their meeting on the bridge bit at Louis.
He wanted to go to her, to apologise for his clumsiness on that very first day, but an equally large part of him wanted to leave without her seeing him.
He had no reason for any further contact with Hannah Maynard, could turn and exit the gallery, leave his father there chatting to April, dodge the passengers who were edging towards him, and get back to work.
Then Hannah leant towards the young girl sat beside her, saying something that made the girl laugh, and Louis swallowed a little too hard.
Sucking in a deep breath and excusing himself from April and his father’s conversation, which he hadn’t even been part of, he squared his shoulders and headed for the area April had nicknamed the ‘studio’.