Acts of Mutiny. Derek Beaven

Penny was sitting in a different chair, reading – with her book in the lap of her slick, grey worsted skirt and her pince-nez on her nose – when Finlay Coote came in.

      ‘Have you seen either my mummy or my daddy?’

      ‘They left to do some shopping, Finlay. I think they’ve gone to buy a film for their camera, and maybe Mummy would look for some new sunglasses. Or have you tried the cabin?’

      ‘There’s a giant squid. We’ve seen a giant squid. I want them to come and see. Over the side. What have you got on your nose?’

      ‘They’re my glasses, Finlay. They belonged to my great-aunt.’ It suddenly occurred to Penny that the Cootes’ declaration of a little desultory shopping might have been merely a cover. They had exchanged looks. A form of words to screen the fact that they were taking advantage of the children’s daylight absence from their four-berth cabin. She pictured with horror little Finlay opening her parents’ cabin door to find Russell’s half-clothed body working at Clodagh’s flare of floral print across one of the bunks. Incomprehensible. The girl would be terrified. And it would all be Penny’s fault.

      Shocked at the violence of her own imagination, she spoke stupidly to the child. ‘I wear them to scare people away and make me look like an old woman. My boys say I look like a granny. Do you want to try them?’

      ‘You don’t scare me,’ said the girl, trying the glasses on her nose, torn between the fascination of looking through them, and the urgency of her story. ‘Which deck’s the shop on again, please, Penny?’ She tried out the familiarity of a name.

      Penny put the pince-nez on the arm of her chair. She could not but tell her. So Finlay slipped off after her parents. In any case they would be very foolish not to lock the cabin door; and, when she came to think of it, Clodagh was so ethereal and Russell so proper that the couple’s relations had probably been suspended entirely for the duration – that film and sunglasses were devices in no way rhetorical. If indeed their children had not been immaculately conceived in the first place.

      The news of the squid had stirred the occupants of the observation lounge. They were hastily finishing their coffee and tea, their Scotch, their old crosswords, and were fading off towards the decks in hope of viewing the monster. Penny found herself on the starboard part of A deck, where she had first encountered Robert. Nothing out of the ordinary. Except the sea had completely changed colour. It was a rich, nearly opaque green, tinged with pink, underslung with sienna. She looked towards the stern. The pink could be seen tapering to a bright streak behind them in the blue-black – where the wake severed it.

      There was no question, now, but that the ship was moving past a cable of coloured water thicker than any creature’s limb. Yet she could reconstruct how the children, standing on the white bars and looking down over the rail as they liked to do at the sheer of the bow wave, might have caught sight of the change and mistaken it for a long tentacle. And then from their desire of miracles created the squid. After all, they had already seen dolphins, and come in yesterday with a shark alert.

      But what was happening? How should the sea acquire this strange submerged patina? It was nothing to her; and yet she was frightened for a moment. She adjusted the straw bag over her shoulder on its long strap. The sun glittered off the water into her face. Further aft along the rail she saw Mrs Madeley, and moved to join her.

      ‘Apparently, so Douglas says, we’re entering the outfall of the Nile,’ Mrs Madeley explained. Penny stared out ahead, but could see no land yet.

      ‘This far out?’ she said.

      ‘Apparently. So Douglas tells me. He knows about these things.’

      Now the colour below them had all but faded out, and they were reassured; until, yes, after a minute or two another seeming rope of rich underwater mud writhed past.

      ‘It’s rather wonderful, isn’t it?’ said Penny. ‘We’re miles out and the river still hasn’t got mixed up with the sea.’