Nation

In any case, while I’m waiting for that very unlikely death toll, I might as well do my bit in the service of the empire.”
    “Is there any Society there?” Grandmother could say a capital letter so distinctly that you heard it. Society meant people who were rich or influential or, preferably, both. Although they shouldn’t be richer and more influential than her.
    “Well, there’s the bishop—jolly decent chap, apparently. Goes around the place in a canoe and speaks the lingo like a native. Doesn’t wear shoes. Then there’s McRather; he runs the dockyard. Teaching the native lads to play cricket. As a matter of fact I’m to take some more bats with me. And of course there will often be a ship in, so as governor I’ll have to entertain the officers.”
    “Sun-struck madmen, naked savages—”
    “They wear pads, actually.”
    “What? What? What are you talking about?” Another thing about Grandmother was her belief that a conversation consisted of someone else listening to her talking, so even mild interruptions seemed to her to be some strange, puzzling inversion of the natural order of things, like pigs flying. It baffled her.
    “Pads,” said Daphne’s father helpfully, “and protective thingummies. McRather says they’ve confused hitting the wicket with hitting the batsman.”
    “Very well then, sunstruck madmen, seminaked savages, and the Royal Navy. And you really think I will allow my granddaughter to face these perils?”
    “The Royal Navy isn’t very perilous.”
    “Supposing she marries a sailor!”
    “Like Auntie Pathenope did?” Daphne could imagine her father’s faint smile, which always made his mother angry, but then, so did practically everything else.
    “He was a rear admiral!” her grandmother snapped. “That’s not the same thing at all!”
    “Mother, there is no need for this fuss. I have told the king that I will go. Ermintrude will follow in a month or two. It will do us good to be away for a while. This house is too cold and too big.”
    “Nevertheless, I forbid—”
    “It is also too lonely . It has too many memories ! It has too much silenced laughter, too many unheard footsteps, too many soundless echoes since they died!” The words came out like slabs of thunder. “I have made my decision and it will not be unmade, even by you! I have told the palace to send her out to me as soon as I am settled in. Do you understand? I believe my daughter would!! And perhaps at the other end of the world there is a place where the screaming can’t be heard, and I may find it in my heart to grant God absolution! ”
    She heard him walk to the door, while tears met on her chin and soaked her nightgown.
    And Grandmother said: “And the child’s schooling, may I ask?”
    How did she manage it? How did she come out with something like that, when the silverware and the chandeliers were still jingling with tinny echoes. Didn’t she remember the coffins?
    Perhaps she did. Perhaps she thought that her son needed to be anchored to the Earth. It worked, then, because he stopped with his hand on the door handle and said, in a voice that almost didn’t shake, “She will have a tutor in Port Mercia. It will do her good, and broaden her horizons. You see? I have thought about this.”
    “It won’t bring them back, you know.” That was her grandmother. Daphne put her hand over her mouth in sheer shock. How could the woman be so… stupid ?
    She could imagine her father’s face. She heard him walk to the dining-room door. She waited for the slam, but that wouldn’t be her father. The sharp little click of the door shutting was louder in her head than any slam could be.
     
    At which point Daphne awoke, glad that she had. The broadened horizon was red but the back of the sky was full of stars; she was stiff to her very bones, and she felt that she’d never eaten in her life, ever. And this was very convenient, because the smell coming out of the pot was fishy and spicy and was making her drool.
    The boy was standing some way off, holding his spear and looking out to sea. She could just see him in the firelight.
    He’d piled on even more logs. They roared and crackled and exploded with steam, sending a thick cloud of smoke and vapor into the sky. And he was guarding the beach. What from? This was a real island, much bigger than many that she had seen on the voyage. Some had been not much more than a sandbank and a reef. Could anyone be left alive within a hundred miles?