The White Empress Read Online Free PDF

yourself down
     here, Ma, on this box, and rest. He’ll be alright.’ He nodded in the direction of herhusband who was now snoring loudly through flaccid lips, his back against a lamppost. ‘There’s something I want to show Cat.’
    Cat dragged her eyes from the disappearing backs of her sister and brother. It had been her intention to take him to task
     over his familiarity with her mother, not knowing it was the usual and polite address given by Liverpudlians to any woman
     over the age of forty, but curiosity again got the better of her and she let him take her arm.
    ‘Where are we going now?’
    ‘You’ll see. Didn’t I tell you on board I’d show you a grand sight?’
    ‘I’ve seen the Liver Birds!’
    ‘I didn’t mean them.’
    They walked along the landing stage to where crowds were gathering. Amongst them scarlet-capped porters could be seen struggling
     from the Riverside Station with piles of baggage. She caught sight of dark-green uniforms frogged with gold braid and the
     sounds of music drifted to her ears. Two burly policemen or ‘scuffers’ as Joe had called them, were supervising the crowds.
     Their faces beneath the conical helmets, that bore a silver-crested Liver Bird, were red from the sun and the heat of their
     high-buttoned tunics, but both were smiling broadly. The music played by the City Band grew louder and the atmosphere reminded
     her of the St Patrick’s Day parade down O’Connell Street in Dublin.
    She tugged at Joe’s sleeve. ‘What’s going on? Is it a parade?’
    ‘Something like that! Look, I promised you a sight and there she is!’
    Cat stopped dead in her tracks, her eyes widened and she gasped. In her entire life she had never seen anything to compare
     with the vision that now confronted her. Tied up at the landing stage was the biggest, most majestic ship she had ever seen.
     Bright sunlight reflected off the towering, white-painted hull and to Cat it looked like a snow-covered mountain, rising up
     and up, reaching almost to the sky. She craned her neck and saw the three, dark yellow funnels, each bearing the emblem of
     a red-and-white-chequered flag. Flags and pennants of all colours fluttered from the rigging and wisps of pale-grey smoke
     spiralled upwards from the funnels into the clear blue heavens.
    All around her people were laughing, shouting and cheering, while those high above on deck were shouting back and throwing
     down brightly coloured paper streamers. She felt a bubble of excitement rise in her. A bubble that grew and grew until it
     reached her throat and she found she was cheering too, caught up in the waves of emotion and ebullience that had engulfed
     everyone.
    ‘Oh, Joe! Joe! Isn’t it grand! Isn’t it wonderful, isn’t it . . . huge! It’s like . . . a huge white mountain!’
    He squeezed her arm. ‘It’s not an “it”, it’s a “she”, ships are always called “she”.’
    ‘Oh, what’s she called?’
    ‘Look up there, it’s painted on her bow!’
    Her excited gaze followed the line of his outstretched hand. The bold black letters sprang out at her, contrastingsharply against the white hull. She read them aloud. ‘
Empress of Japan
’.
    ‘An Empress is even grander than a Queen. She’s the flagship of the Canadian Pacific Line. The White Empress and this is her
     maiden voyage!’ There was pride in his voice and his face was so animated that she hardly recognised him. She noticed, too,
     that the corded muscles in his throat were working, but she understood how he felt for she felt it too. Pride, longing, a
     core of exhilaration that made her whole body tremble. The White Empress evoked all these emotions in both of them.
    ‘Oh, Joe, I wish I was sailing with her!’
    Again he squeezed her hand and laughed. ‘There’s an even bigger one being built at the John Brown yard on the Clyde.’
    She gasped. ‘Bigger! Bigger than her?’
    ‘She’s 26,000 tons, but the
Empress of Britain
will be 42,000 tons!’
    The