This statement, innocuous as it was, seemed to turn the woman suddenly from a stranger into an ally, so as Laura got to her cabin she turned to Florence. ‘Will you knock for me when you go up for dinner?’ The way the words came out, there was something needy about the request, and Laura braced herself for a dismissal, but Florence’s assent was so matter-of-fact it reassured her.
Alone in her cabin, Laura still felt self-conscious, almost as though she were being watched. She even found herself, as she put her purse on the bed and took off her coat, composing the first few lines of a letter to Ellen. In her mind, she presented the cabin as having a certain charm – ‘blue as the sea should be! With quite enough room to swing a cat!’ – although in reality it was small and ugly. The fact that all the furniture was bolted down and the room carpeted in a springy felt only added to its claustrophobic feel, and here, she noticed, the reverberations of the engine seemed exaggerated, thrumming through the soles of her feet. Looking for the lavatory, she opened a door in the side of the room. It revealed a tiny toilet and shower stall, which smelt reassuringly of disinfectant. She stripped and got under the shower. For a while it puzzled her that her lavender soap would not lather, until she realised that the water was salt.
After her shower she dressed, but then lay down, and the exhaustion engendered by all the strange new impressions pushed her into a half-sleep, so that when the rap on the door came and she heard the clear voice of her new acquaintance calling through it, she had to ask her to wait while she rebelted her dress. ‘I fell asleep,’ she said apologetically, opening the door, ‘can you wait a second?’
She was looking for her lipstick, clipping on her earrings. ‘Are you the only one in this cabin?’ asked Florence, stepping inside. ‘The boat isn’t even half full, is it?’
‘Actually we booked this whole room.’ Laura explained how she and her sister had been intending to travel together, but how Ellen’s sudden appendicitis had put paid to that plan. ‘Mother was going to call the whole thing off, but I managed to convince her I’d behave myself for three days on a ship …’ Laura paused, suddenly conscious that her mother’s protectiveness might sound ridiculous to this independent woman. ‘She still sees me as a child,’ she said weakly.
But Florence, who was looking at the magazine Laura had left on the bed, hardly seemed to have heard her. It was a magazine about Hollywood stars, and Florence flicked through it for a few seconds while Laura lipsticked her mouth and slid her feet into her patent shoes, and then she dropped it on the floor. ‘Come on, I’m hungry as a horse. Haven’t eaten all day.’
They were early, so that only a few of the tables were taken, but rather than pausing for the waiter to show them where to sit, Florence walked directly to the table she wanted, in the middle of the room.
‘Funny how your magazine puts that actress on the cover and doesn’t say a word about her politics,’ she said suddenly as they were sitting down and shaking out their napkins.
‘Her politics?’
‘She is committed, you know – signed a petition a few months ago for aid for Spain. I guess the studio doesn’t want anyone seeing her as a Red, but even so, they could mention it.’
‘Did you see her last film?’ Laura asked. Here, she would be on familiar ground, since she had seen it and had decided views on it, but Florence shook her head and started telling Laura about some other actors who supported aid for Spain.