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husband, “Mr Russell,” the names began to run past us. The Americans were Clifford Adair from New York, dressed in a blinding white linen suit; Edward Blankenship from Iowa, whose evening wear looked borrowed from an elder brother; and Virginia and Harold Wilton, a shy brother and sister from Utah. There were two Australians, nearly identical brothers named John and James Arthur in rumpled tropical suits, who laughed loud and often and who both answered to the nickname of “Jack.”
    Then came the five English travellers in my fellow group of under-thirties. Two of them knew no one onboard: an ebony-haired woman in her late twenties with a knowing look and the unlikely name of Lady Lucy Awlwright, and Harold Mitchell, a very young man headed for a job at an uncle’s business in Hong Kong, whose pronounced Northern accent, spotty face, and off-the-rack suit suggested he would find friendship here an ill fit. Two of the others were travelling together, an extended version of the Grand Tour that signalled their families’ enthusiasm to have them safely out from underfoot for a long time: Reginald Townsman and the Honourable Percy Perdue (“I’m Reggie” “Call me Percy”), both of whom were Eton and King’s College. They were acquainted with the other man, Thomas, Viscount Darley, the fair-haired snob who had so absurdly set my hackles on edge the moment he stepped down from the carriage in Bombay. I resolved to be friendly to him, to make up for the slight.
    On a simple Atlantic crossing, the numbers of young and unattached passengers would have been much higher, but this was the end of the world when it came to wealthy Westerners, thus the population of the Thomas Carlyle was more heavily weighted to married couples in Colonial service, retired Europeans and Americans, and Asians from Sub-continental to Chinese.
    No doubt there were more Westerners onboard, attached or otherwise, but on this first night out of Bombay, nine young men and twowomen drew together like nervous cattle, pulling into their sphere a pair of Japanese women, a delicate lad from Singapore, a stunning Parsee girl whose husband was abed with a sore tooth—and one Mary Russell.
    With a murmur in my ear—“You ‘young things’ are better without me”—Holmes faded away. And it was true: once he had left, the younger men relaxed, their voices growing louder as they began to crow before the women and jostle for superiority.
    In no time at all, aided by the emptying of glasses, the competition had sorted itself out on national lines, with the Australian brothers on one side, the four British men on the other, and the Americans undecided between them.
    Talk veered, perhaps inevitably, into sport: specifically, the kind of football—or as the Americans called it, soccer—they had witnessed in India. At that point, Thomas Darley lifted his glass and said, “To the Colonies, long may they take our cast-offs.”
    American and Australian eyes met, and a common loyalty was declared.
    His indiscreet words, added to the slow and deliberate blink of his eyes, pointed to his being well on the way to drunkenness—which surprised me, as he did not seem to be drinking very rapidly. I kept an eye on him as I listened to the conversation, nodding at random points, and saw the deft way in which he stepped aside to take a drink from a passing tray, then re-inserted himself into the circle next to Miss Sato. He sipped from his glass and made a remark that brought a gust of laughter. A few minutes later, he raised his hand to make another comment. When he lowered it again, somehow it ended up across Miss Sato’s shoulder.
    She gave Miss Katagawa an uncomfortable little smile and tittered into her hand, but the arm remained heavily in place. After a while, he lowered his head to say something into her ear. She replied, he said something else—but at her next response, his grin locked. He drew back slightly. A few moments later, his possessive hand dropped