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But I wanted to see India. It was the grand adventure of my generation, and although my parents were
quite tolerant for their time, even they would not allow their daughter to sail, as you say, halfway
around the world to merely ride elephants and study Hinduism.” Geraldine’s mouth narrowed into a
bitter little smile. “But they had every confidence in the fishing fleet, which had been designed for the
transport of upper and middle class white women. The fleet promised safe passage, or at least as
safe as that era allowed, and a host of acceptable chaperones. Far more than any of us would have
liked, as it turned out.”
“And what was Anthony Weaver doing on such a ship?” Rayley asked.
“There were three types of passengers on board the Weeping Susan,” Geraldine said,
leaning back. “We spinsters, of course. Dreadful word. And our chaperones, who were in many
cases our age or even younger. You can imagine how that rankled. The chaperones were most
frequently the wives of officers in the Raj, who lived in constant rotation between their duties to their
husbands in India and the comforts of England. Those comforts in many cases included proximity to
their children, who had most likely been sent home to boarding schools by the time they were six. No
civilized person would attempt to educate a British child in India.”
Geraldine sighed before continuing. “It is only in retrospect that I see how hard it must
have been for the women. At the time it seemed as if marriage to an officer would be a madly
exciting existence, certainly offering more variety and freedom than most wives enjoy. But through
the years I have thought back on how they must have felt constantly torn between two places, ill at
ease and guilty no matter where they happened to be. And ever in transit as well. For the journey
was no easy matter in the fifties, before the canal on the Suez opened and steamers came widely into
service. We sailed on clippers, if you can feature it, all around the base of Africa through the Cape of
Good Hope. Passage took six weeks if luck was with you. Longer if the wind died.”
“Six weeks?” Tom said in horror. “Even the grandest of adventures tend to wear thin
after two.”
“Indeed,” said Geraldine, smiling at her grand-nephew. “My point exactly.”
“You said there were three categories of passengers sailing,” Trevor reminded her. “Yet
you only spoke of the spinsters and their chaperones.”
“The third group was a handful of British officers,” Geraldine said. “Reporting to their
posts, returning home again, going back and forth on leave. Anthony, in fact, was traveling to rejoin
his regiment in Bombay.”
“Six weeks is a long time for a party of strangers to be cooped up together in tight
quarters,” Tom said. “I imagine the ship would come to seem like a world unto itself. Quite apart
from your real lives, wherever they lay, with all sorts of romances, feuds, and complications erupting
among the passengers.”
“But the trip may also have offered an unaccustomed burst of freedom for everyone
aboard,” Emma said, further expanding on Tom’s thought. “The men about to take up military posts,
the married women in respite between their own demanding roles as wives and mothers. And the
unmarried ones…most of them away from the restraints of their parents for the first time, I’d
imagine.”
“You imagine quite correctly, both of you,” Geraldine said. Her eyes had taken on a
dreamy look as she still gazed into the glow of the candles. “Life on board created the most dreadful
ennui and claustrophobia, day after day all the same, and yet at times there were these moments of
mad gaiety, for each of us was determined to seize her small pleasures wherever she could. A world
into itself, just as Tom said. A world which we all knew would cease to exist the moment the ship