Abdication: A Novel Read Online Free PDF

rode bicycles with huge trailers packed with cardboard boxes hooked behind them, and the occasional private car nudged its way through the crush, granted special permission to draw up at the water’s edge only because of the importance of the human cargo it had come to collect. May pulled at Sam’s sleeve to stop. A beautifully kept dark blue Rolls-Royce was parked up against the harbour wall. The plantation car that she loved for the freedom and independence it gave her had been one of the hardest things to leave behind.
    Glad to be on land for a few days before the return journey, Sam’s sailor friends were full of good humour, telling the sort of jokes generally too risky to tell in the presence of a woman. They had accepted May as one of them, warming to her on the voyage partly for her brave-spiritedness in the rough seas but also for her unusual and delicate beauty. The ration of rum distributed on arrival in port had induced a friendly boisterousness towards her that bore no resemblance to the threatening, drunken silences that had accompanied Duncan’s lingering looks.
    A couple of the crew offered to help carry their few pieces of luggage and the little group made their way along the bustling fog-drapedpier, to the nearby Pier Head bus station. The timetable for the Crosville Motor Services to London was pinned onto the waiting-room wall and a gas fire was sputtering in one corner, doing its best to warm the cramped space. The room began to fill up with people blowing air into their hands. When the squat green and cream bus drew up outside, just visible through the smeary condensation of the only window in the waiting room, the passengers gathered up their bags and cases. The driver, his mood avuncular, stood at the foot of the coach steps.
    “Come along, ladies and gents,” he said, taking May by the crook of her elbow and helping her up onto the bottom step of the coach. “Mind how you go, my dear.”
    Some of the male passengers saluted as they boarded and the driver returned the gesture of mock-deference, touching his cap, the smartest part of his otherwise shabby uniform. Several of the women around May clutched thermoses, their curlers visible beneath their headscarves. They spread woollen rugs over their knees and soon the driver was swinging the bus out of the station, the large steering wheel sliding easily through his fingers like a seal slipping through a circus hoop.
    May settled back into the velvety moquette seat, tucking her gloveless hands beneath her thighs to warm them up. As a child she had often hidden her hands, not for warmth but in embarrassment, longing for them to turn as pale as those of her brother and mother. Only recently had she accepted the inexplicable, that just like the rest of her body, they would always be a slightly deeper colour than those of the rest of her family.
    The journey to London took up much of the day as flasks of tea were passed up and down between the aisle, and jam sandwiches in little greaseproof packets were offered to those who had come unprepared. May had not eaten since leaving the ship and was grateful when an elderly man gestured to her and Sam to help themselves to his ownsupply. Each time the coach hit an uneven patch of road the man put his hand to his mouth.
    “It’s my teeth,” he explained. “These new ones cost me an arm and a leg and I don’t want them shooting out onto the floor. Might never find them again.”
    Eventually the soothing sway of the coach encouraged sleep. Every so often the coach stopped in a city bus station to pick up and drop off more passengers and twice the coach drew into the forecourt of a public house where a chatty line formed outside the door to the ladies’ facilities, while the men vanished behind the back of the building, whistling. Each time the coach paused, first at Birkenhead, then Chester, and then Whitchurch, the interruption to the motion woke May from her doze. She watched the tiny breath clouds that