9308-3953

member of the crew. These were not the sort of odds which normally favored a woman like
Geraldine.
And yet the wall between them lifted. Slowly, steadily lifted.
Years later Geraldine would read a religious tract about the Mormons in America. A
singular group of people with many strange beliefs among them, not the least of which is that the souls
of women are incapable of finding their way to paradise on their own. They need a man to pull them
there, a proper husband to reach through the veil which separates one realm from another and grab
their hand. How her learned friends had laughed at these Mormons. It was bad enough to declare a
woman unequal on this earthly plane, they’d said. But to further deem her incapable of entering
heaven without a man….
It’s just the way they justify having so many wives, Geraldine’s friend Tess would
chortle. Don’t you think so, Gerry?
But Geraldine would be uncharacteristically silent. She would remember this night.
The canvas wall, the hand inching beneath it, the struggle to lift the heavy sail which hung between
them, the slow moving together in the dark. And she would admit that in that moment, Anthony
Weaver truly had pulled her through one world and into another. If not quite all the way to paradise,
then at least to a mysterious new continent, one that no woman – no matter how clever – would ever
have found on her own.
In time, the fuller truth would come to Geraldine as the truth so often does – unwelcome,
and in pieces. She would be forced to remember that she had been lying in Rose’s place on the deck
when Anthony’s hand had found hers. Anthony had watched the positioning of the women so
carefully, had taken such pains to make sure he bedded down at a precise and certain spot on the other
side of the canvas. When he had called out his romantic – but, as it turns out, tragically vague -
invitation of “Darling?” he must have been surprised indeed to hear Geraldine’s voice come back. To
hear her nervous, breathy whispers in place of the low-pitched, rather petulant tones he’d expected.
But he had rallied from the surprise almost immediately – the speed of his recovery perhaps a
predictor of how well he would ultimately climb the ranks of the military, a precursor of his
admirably agile career in politics. For he had adjusted his plan in an instant and spent the starlit
evening not in the familiar arms of Rose Everlee but rather forever changing the fate of Geraldine
Bainbridge.
Precisely how long had the young officer been trysting with his superior’s wife? Had
their affair begun in India, or in England, during the months of leave? What had made Anthony
desperate enough to seek her out along the open expanse of the deck, where any man with a lantern
might have found them? And at exactly what point had he recognized his mistake - that it was
Geraldine and not Rose who rolled toward him, who lifted the canvas and threw back her bedding?
This Geraldine could not answer. She only knew that by the time the Weeping Susan at
last arrived in Bombay harbor, she was in love with Anthony Weaver and that Rose Everlee had
somehow, rather mysteriously, gotten over her headaches.