Chapter 49

Chapter 49

Violet

Remembered Honeysuckle

Somebody once told her that The Purser spent several years training to be a priest. She can hear it sometimes in the pitch of his voice when he instructs a gathering of stewards: he is a man who can read a list like it is liturgy. She has heard some of the restaurant staff call him The Purser Priest behind his back. She knows no one would say this to his face– not because they are frightened of him, but because he is a man who everyone knows is straight and true, like the creases he likes pressed into his trousers. The only time she has heard him shout was when the baggage steward swore at the bellboy. The Purser Priest is not a man who allows the Lord's name to be taken in vain.

She wonders what he would have been like as a priest. She thinks he would have worn the vestments well and imagines a determined flick of his cassock as he turns to mount the pulpit. The eyes that she sees emerging over the top of the gilded bible bring her daydream to an end. His eyes are not like those of the priests she has known. The priests of her childhood had a different look altogether– one had eyes like a greedy hawk, while another had a watery eye that seemed to be gazing through a film of the Virgin's tears. And there was one who looked at the children as if he would have liked to taste their tears.

The Purser is like none of these. He has eyes that shift from side to side– checking, checking– but when they land on you (and if you are not found wanting), his eyes invite you to share something with him. She thinks that as a small boy he might have kept toffee and string and beetles in his pockets. She suspects he was a boy who liked to share a joke.

It is while she is thinking this (and carrying a plate of scones to a woman who herself looks like a plump cake) that she is approached by a woman in a pale, lemon dress.

‘You will excuse me for asking you,' she says, uncertainly, ‘but you remind me so much of a child I once nursed in Buenos Aires.' She smiles, apologetically, but her eyes are merry– and for a moment she is taken back to a hospital bed in a garden and a blanket of honeysuckle.

The woman turns to the tall, dark-haired man who has joined them, and she wants to ask him if he has brought a snail's shell in his handkerchief as a gift.

Dr and Mrs Merry Eyes are delighted to find that the young girl they looked after all those years ago did not die.

The doctor looks at her in wonder. ‘I remember you so well. I must say, I call this a miracle. We had so little hope– indeed, nohope.' He shakes his head, but he is smiling at her.

She decides not to tell him that her mother calls it a miracle, too, or that he should have prescribed honeysuckle.

The doctor tells her that it was he who insisted she was moved into the garden, because he heard she loved the smell of freesia. As she was dying anyway, he saw no harm in it.

She lingers a little while, not dying but talking.

But she cannot wait long, the cream in the scones is melting and she must hurry on. She does not want The Purser's eye to land on her and find her wanting.