Into Suez Read Online Free PDF Page A

the lower bunk, throwing Nia into hysterics until a Nice Lady in uniform came in and forced another woman to swap her coveted bed with a porthole.
    ‘We shall see the flying fishes, dearie,’ the Nice Lady told Nia, as Ailsa lay languishing.
    Nia glanced away from the powdered, fragrant face to the porthole. In her mind, goldfish swam across the sky.
    ‘Yes, and you shall see the porpoises! What do you think of that? Nice pretty porpoises playing in the blue, blue Mediterranean Sea!’
    The Nice Lady was clearly finding the sceptical Nia hard going. She straightened up, to Nia’s relief, for the heavy bosom and the perfume-waft filled her with inexplicable gloom. The Nice Lady asked the time but no one in the cabin owned a watch.
    ‘Well, never mind. The natives will trade you one for a few ciggies. Don’t let them swindle you.’
    ‘What else?’ asked Nia.
    ‘Pardon me?’
    ‘What else will we be seeing?’
    ‘Oh – well – let’s see. We shall see the apes on the Rock. At Gib, of course. Jolly old Gib.’
    ‘That’s a posting I would really like,’ said one of the women sharing the cabin, and sighed. ‘Brean,’ she added.
    ‘Babs. Bound for Fanara.’
    ‘And talking of rocks …’
    The Nice Lady mentioned rock buns for tea, at which Ailsa retched.
    ‘I’m hardly ever icky,’ said Babs. ‘Seasoned vets us.’
    Whereupon the ship gave an ironic lurch which had them all except Nia heaving over buckets. She pinched her nose between thumb and finger and wished for a peg. It frightened her to see Ailsa, grey and limp, float off beyond the power of tantrums to control her.
    ‘What’s to be done with Tiddler?’ asked Babs. ‘Aren’t you feeling umpty at all, dear?’ She spoke as if seasickness would be a convenient playpen into which Nia could be deposited for safekeeping.
    The Nice Lady said there was no help for it, she’d take Nia with her and keep her occupied. She reassured the mother that she’d soon get her sea legs, in a tone that told Ailsa, Buck up, we’re not even in the Bay of Biscay yet,you’ll wish yourself back in the English Channel before too long, my lass.
    *
    Going to eat rock-buns, they were, up there somewhere. Well, let them go then and leave Ailsa to die in peace.
    The next time Ailsa opened her eyes, Nia was bustling out with her golly under her arm, without a backward glance. She’s punishing me, thought Ailsa, oh well. Once assured of quiet and privacy, she felt more herself and propped herself on a couple of pillows, taking sips of water.
    But then the door opened again. The officious woman with the chins was back.
    ‘What language does she speak, Mrs Roberts?’
    ‘Well – English.’
    ‘What, all the time?’
    ‘Oh yes.’
    ‘Just checking. Funny little character. Cheerio.’
    Ailsa knew what she meant. Nia’s carroty hair and grey-green eyes gave her a fey look. Her eyebrows and lashes were so fair that they hardly showed except when she blushed. Blushes were explosions of blood into Nia’s pearl-pale face. She looked like an albino and talked back in a mixture of English and Welsh that sounded plain daft. Comical at her age, but Joe set great store by what he called ‘well-spokenness’. Even so, Ailsa took umbrage at the woman’s saying like that, ‘Funny little character’, inwardly denying that Nia was a pickle.
    From the first Ailsa had melted at the intensities of Joe’s Valleys lilt. His first language was Welsh, a fact he seemed ashamed of. But you’re bilingual, Joe! Oh no, he’d said, blushing, Welsh doesn’t count, it’s low. She’d made himteach her intimate words to share as the little language of their love. Ti’n werth y byd, cariad carried more emotion than ‘You’re the world to me.’ But in Joe’s mind his tongue betrayed the threadbare poverty in which he’d grown up and the use of the same tea leaves twice over.
    They seemed to be entering, if not calmer waters, a more steady unease. Ailsa fished out Joe’s photograph and