Page 52 of Trouble

Emily wondered where they had put the injured. The dead. Were they still on that beach? Had they been painstakingly carried up the hill and laid out somewhere – in the garden, perhaps, among Mrs Edwards’s asters and roses? Now that the men were drying off a little, it was harder for some of them to hide the fact that they were crying.

Emily considered going upstairs to her room for a moment of quiet, but the number of wet bodies she’d have to push past to get there, followed by the insurmountable challenge of stairs when she was this tired, was too much. She sat down in the drawing room instead, choosing the quietest possible corner, and Akia sat down next to her.

‘I have forgotten how to use a spoon,’ she said thinly.

‘No you haven’t,’ said Emily – but then just in case, ‘It goes in your mouth. And the soup goes in the spoon.’

‘Andthenwhere does the soup go?’ Akia said, but she was too tired to joke in earnest. She took a few mouthfuls and then set down her spoon and closed her eyes. ‘There’s a man dying in the other drawing room.’

Emily put her spoon down, too, and watched the exhausted sailors talk among themselves. They weren’t trying to be quiet, even for her and Akia’s sake. She could hear the two nearest locked in a fierce debate about how likely it was that they would still get paid their prize money. It seemed inappropriate in the extreme, but then, Emily supposed that this was how it all worked – still a job, even when your particularly bad day at sea was a literal wreck. You could not feed your family on platitudes and good wishes and watery soup.

Captain Edwards came up to join them, a bowl of soup in his own hand that he never touched. He used it more like a prop – an excuse to look down, to pick up the spoon, to never quite let it reach his mouth while he avoided eye contact with these officers whom Emily presumed must be his distant comrades. He was sociable, talking to almost everybody, without really saying much at all. He simply exchanged a few words and then let people talkathim while he did his very successful soup miming routine.

She heard a few people remark on his black eye, expressing their concern, and each time he shrugged it off without bothering to explain that he had not injured himself during the day’s events, but rather during a drunken altercation, most likely in a public house.

Emily supposed she could not blame him for keeping them in the dark.

As Captain Edwards walked over to the fireplace, shifting his bowl so that he could shake another hand, a man sitting by the leg of the sofa turned to his companion and nodded his head in the captain’s direction.

‘That’s Edwards,’ he said, his voice a quiet rasp. ‘The one I was telling you about.’

Emily’s ears pricked up. She set down her spoon and glanced at Akia to see if she was listening, but found she was half-asleep over her bowl.

‘He’s the one who—?’

‘Shh,’ said the first man. ‘It’s only guesses and rumours.’

‘You wouldn’t think so, to look at him. Especially not after today.’

‘No,’ said the first man. ‘Those are the worst kind.’

They were openly staring at him, and Emily saw the moment he noticed from over by the hearth. His head barely turned, but he put his shoulders back and stood a little stiffer, guard firmly up.

When Emily got up to resume her duties, she accidentally kicked the man by the sofa in the leg, and ignored the sound of his muffled oaths as she swept from the room.

Chapter Nineteen

‘There’s one in the stables,’ Oliver said to Meera, his voice high and agitated. ‘There’s one in theparlour, sitting at the table and asking for tea.’

‘One of them asked if we could bring the gig around for him so that he could go to the pub,’ Emily added. ‘He would have walked, he said, but he thinks that his leg might be broken.’

‘You see?’ said Oliver. ‘They’re all horrible. They all treat me like they have a corner table at Brooks’s and I’m their personal waiter. This is ridiculous. Either they go or I do.’

‘It’s been one night,’ Meera said, sounding more tired with every syllable. Emily hadn’t seen her sit down since the ship had hit those rocks, and very much doubted that she had been able to get any sleep. ‘They’ll be gone by tomorrow.’

‘Not soon enough,’ said Oliver. ‘Here. Have a sixpence.’

He handed one to Meera, who just looked at it, confused.

‘Why?’

‘Because they can all go andfuckthemselves,’ Oliver said, enunciating every word. ‘I’m off to see to the horses, and if you happen to find a man dead in there once I’ve finished, I’ll thank you to just kick some hay over him and leave him for me to deal with at a later date.’

‘What will you do with the body?’ said Joe.

‘We’re not running that low on supplies,’ said Meera. ‘No dead officers in the stew. I have to draw a line somewhere.’

‘A bold ruling,’ said Akia, ‘but a fair and just one.’