Going Ashore Read Free

Mrs. Munn said gently. “She’s a lovely girl.”
    Emma wanted to die. She looked imploringly at her mother, but Mrs. Ellenger rushed on. It was important, deeply important, that everyone understand what a good mother she had been. “Nobody has to worry about Emma’s school, either,” she said. “I teach her, so nobody has to worry at all. Emma loves to study. She reads all the time. Just before dinner tonight, she was reading. She was reading Shakespeare. Emma, weren’t you reading Shakespeare?”
    “I had this book,” Emma said, so low that her answer was lost. The Munns began to speak about something else, and Emma’s mother relaxed, triumphant.
    In truth, Emma had been reading Shakespeare. While they were still unpacking and settling in, she had discovered among their things a battered high school edition of
The Merchant of Venice
. Neither she nor her mother had ever seen it before. It was in the suitcase that contained Mrs. Ellenger’s silver evening slippers and Emma’s emergency supply of comic books. Emma opened the book and read, “You may do so; but let it be so hasted that supper be ready at the farthest by five of the clock.” She closed the book and dropped it. “It must have come from Uncle Jimmy Salter’s place,” she said. “The maid must have put it in when she helped us pack.” “I didn’t know he could read,” Mrs. Ellenger said. She and Mr. Salter had stopped being friends. “We’ll mail it back sometime. It’ll be a nice surprise.”
    Of course, they had never mailed the book. Now, at Tangier, it was still with them, wedged between the comic books and the silver slippers. It had never occurred to Emma’s mother to give the book to a steward, or the purser, still less take it ashore during an excursion; the mechanics of wrapping and posting a parcel from a strange port were quite beyond her. The cruise, as far as she was concerned, had become a series of hazards; attempting to dispatch a volume of Shakespeare would have been the last straw. She was happy, or at least not always unhappy, in a limited area of the ship – the bar, the beauty salon, and her own cabin. As long as she kept to this familiar, hotel-like circuit, there was almost no reason to panic. She had never before been at sea, and although she was not sickened by the motion of the ship, the idea of space, of endless leagues of water,perplexed, then frightened, then, finally, made her ill. It had come to her, during the first, dismal dinner out, that her life as a pretty young woman was finished. There were no men on board – none, at least, that would do – and even if there had been, it was not at all certain that any of them would have desired her. She saw herself flung into an existence that included the Munns, censorious, respectable, prying into one’s affairs. At that moment, she had realized what the cruise would mean: She was at sea. She was adrift on an ocean whose immenseness she could not begin to grasp. She was alone, she had no real idea of their route, and it was too late to turn back. Embarking on the cruise had been a gesture, directed against the person Emma called Uncle Jimmy Salter. Like any such gesture, it had to be carried through, particularly since it had been received with total indifference, even relief.
    Often, even now, with twenty-four days of the cruise behind and only twenty more to be lived through, the fears she had experienced the first evening would recur: She was at sea, alone. There was no one around to tip stewards, order drinks, plan the nights, make love to her, pay the bills, tell her where she was and what it was all about. How had this happened? However had she mismanaged her life to such a degree? She was still young. She looked at herself in the glass and, covering the dry, darkening skin below her eyes, decided she was still pretty. Perplexed, she went to the beauty salon and had her hair washed by a sympathetic girl, a good listener. Then, drugged with heat, sated