The Voyage of the Morning Light

by Marina Endicott

  He wrote, “What we climb and drink and eat, it is very tall,” for the coconut, and for the church, “The house of the god who saves us.” Thea corrected him to use G for the one true God, and he looked at her sideways.

  Kay thought he might be wondering what made one god God and all the others gods but did not have the vocabulary yet to ask that. She was just as glad, preferring not to listen to Thea, as she had to Father, on the innate superiority of Christianity over all other religions.

  “What is this?” Thea said, pointing to scribbles on the side of Aren’s work paper.

  “Jiacheng teaches me Chinese,” Aren said. “I teach him ABC, he teaches some Chinese letters me. I teach Kay,” he offered, in case Thea might be angry with him.

  Kay looked over. “What is this one?” A funny little square, with a peak and a squiggle.

  “House, pig inside, see? It is home.”

  She laughed. “Or bathtub!”

  Francis had had his photographs developed in Suva. Kay did not like the way her hair looked streaming wet, but even she could see the joke now—her leaping up out of the barrel open-mouthed, like a whale breaching, and the poor piglet scrambling his sharp hooves at the other edge, desperate to get away.

  Aren put his hand over the pig-house letter. “No more joke.”

  Kay patted his arm lightly, to show that she forgave him. “It was funny.”

  She remembered the exhaustion of listening to another language, watching the rows of children at the school suffering the sharp barrage of English from Miss Ramsay. Nowhere for the ear to rest, nothing to hook onto. She remembered their bird voices, their dusty-dirty hands moving as they spoke, and Thea coming and calling the class back to order, the voices halting, reciting un-English English in rote and rhythmical voices, reeling off a long line of poetry about an incomprehensible English landscape. Men may come and men may go, but I go on for ever . . . She remembered being glad to go into the study with Father because it was silent.

  Aren did not seem to feel that weariness; it was a game to him, one he was good at. The way she was good at Greek and Latin, at solving that puzzle.

  Thea was still examining the Chinese characters ranging down the side of the page.

  “Jia,” Aren said, pointing to home. “One-th part of Jia-cheng, his name.”

  “First part. Yes, I see,” Thea said. She traced the house, and the pig inside.

  It being Easter, they went ashore on Sunday to go to the cathedral in Suva, and there they found a great surprise: Mr. Brimner, assisting with the service.

  As the clergy processed in, Kay saw him, and the surprise was so great that she jumped up, and Thea had to pull on her elbow to make her sit again. She could not even whisper to Aren what the great thing was, but spent the rest of the service anxiously jiggling, unable to bear the wait. If it had not been Easter, if Thea had not been sitting right beside her, she might have called to him or run up to greet him, her friend!

  At Communion she knelt at the rail, hands held out, the right palm properly above the left, but she could not close her eyes for long. Following after the celebrant, who had the Host, Mr. Brimner came along the rail with the cup. His best chasuble swirled about his knees, the one embroidered by the nuns at Wantage, near Oxford, that his dear friend Prior’s mother had given him for his missionary posting. Birds and vines and holy insects on figured gold damask. Kay looked up and held the edge of the gold cup, gold all around her, and God alive again today, in a sudden veil of joyful piety—and Mr. Brimner smiled down without surprise, because of course he had seen them in the congregation. He spoke the usual blessing without ceasing from smiling at her. She wanted to point to Aren, who knelt on the other side of Thea with his arms crossed for a blessing because he was not yet confirmed, but that would have to wait. She said Amen and took a great gulp of wine by mistake, but did not choke.

  After the service, there was tea in the hall. Thea would not be hurried, but Kay managed to thread them a way through the great crowd of every-coloured people to where Mr. Brimner had come out of the sacristy, now in his ordinary grey suit again. Every part of him agreeably ordinary and the same, all these months later: his pale, bony forehead, the slight bulge of his eyes, the comprehending warmth of his whole unselfconscious being.

  She took his hand and held it, as the other people were doing with the other priest, but could not think of anything to say.

  “Ave, quondam pupil,” he said, speaking for her. “What joyful news to be met with your shining face below me as I came to read the Lesson! Dear Mrs. Grant, a great pleasure—you will be wondering what I am doing here. I have not been passed along to Fiji as a reject, I was only sent by the bishop to be locum tenens, the interim replacement for Canon Crake, who was sent to Auckland for a restorative holiday. My duty ends today, and I will be back with my own people at Ha‘ano by the end of April, if I can get a ship before too long.”

  Aren stood beside Thea, one hand grasping the folds of her violet skirt. Mr. Brimner looked down and asked Thea to introduce him to her young friend, and then Francis came with two cups of tea and found them a flimsy table. On her flimsy chair Kay tried to sit still, in an agony of anticipation and frustration.

  “Aren, say good morning to Mr. Brimner,” Thea prompted, and Aren did so.

  “God bless you,” Mr. Brimner said seriously, setting a hand on his head as the priest had done at Communion, and Aren looked as if he was not certain about any of this.

  Francis, going back for more tea, snapped his fingers to Kay to come and help. “We’ll leave Thea to tell the tale of her purchase of this little fellow.”

  At that, Mr. Brimner’s eyes snapped up to Francis’s face, as if he checked for a jape or jollity, but he schooled his expression quickly to one of objective interest.

  Thea drew Aren into her arm so that he leaned against her, saying, “One could not credit how desperate the people were . . .” as Francis pulled Kay away.

  If only they had known Mr. Brimner was here, she thought, they could have been talking to him all these last four days. It made tears rise behind her eyes to think how she had wasted those days. And the saddest thing of all—they might not have seen him at all, for the Morning Light had been loaded by Friday, only ships never leave on a Friday, especially not on Good Friday. Then Thea had asked to stay for Easter service, but they must definitely leave on the early tide tomorrow.

  Francis handed Kay a plate of cake, lifted two more cups and made a channel for them through the crowd like a tugboat in Shanghai harbour.

  “Francis,” she said, hurrying to catch him up. “Francis!”

  He turned with his head cocked to one side. “Mm?”

  She could not remember asking him for anything before. She did not have the courage to ask now. “Never mind,” she said.

  His stern, lipless mouth twitched in amusement. “Never mind, yourself.”

  When they had settled at the table, and as Mr. Brimner addressed himself to cake, Francis leaned across and said, “Now, Brimner, you’re in need of a passage home, and I have need of a Greek tutor for a few days. Shall we do a trade?”

  Mr. Brimner’s mouth was cake-full, but he nodded, beaming without his usual prodigious display of teeth, and behind his handkerchief said that nothing could suit him better, if the Morning Light could let him off at Pangai without divagating too far from their route. Thea said she was very happy too, and Mr. Brimner rose to prepare for second service. He regretted that he could not dine on board that evening, being unavoidably shackled to the bishop for the Easter feast, but would come faithfully at first light with his baggage. “Only a valise, I promise!”

  So Mr. Brimner’s stick legs and grey linen coat and battered hat strolled the deck of the Morning Light again, as they ran out to sea on a light breeze, Francis saying that if this kept up, they might make Ha‘ano in four days rather than five. Which made Kay hope that it would not keep up.

  Without the slightest ripple, she and Mr. Brimner settled back into their routine
, three chairs pulled up to the table now rather than two, with Aren set to copy all the words he knew in a fair hand. Once Thea had sharpened his pencil for him again (he had a way of pressing very hard on the leads that soon wore them to nubs), she went down to turn out Aren’s things and set the upper berth for him in Kay’s cabin, to give Mr. Brimner back his own.

  Kay showed him how far she had got in the Odyssey, and turned the leaves of her notebook over and over to try to find some really good translation.

  Mr. Brimner saw through her. “Fresh fare is what you need. Anyone tires of a diet of dark wine and fire-seared lamb. You need some lighter fare. I have with me Lucian’s Vera Historia, his Hellenistic novel, parts of which are often set as excerpts for young scholars. Other parts of it are laughably unsuitable, but you may safely explicate the Voyage to the Moon.”

  Kay worked all the afternoon, employing her Middle Liddell with industrious abandon, and before sunset was able to present Mr. Brimner with her translation, which she read out loud for his approval. On the step beside the hammock, Aren crouched to listen; between whiles he pushed the rope to rock Thea gently to and fro where she lay reclining, a little wilted after the long, hot, still day.

  “For seven days and as many nights,” Kay read, “we sailed through the air, until we saw a great country like an island, shining and spherical.” She broke off to explain to Thea, who had only come up when the afternoon cooled, “They have gone to the moon, you see?”

  Bending again to her paper, she read, “When we reached it and came to anchor, we disembarked. Exploring the countryside, we found it to be inhabited and farmed. That day we saw nothing more, but many more islands appeared nearby when night came on. There was a land below, with cities and rivers and seas and forests and mountains, and we supposed that it was our world.”

  She looked up at Mr. Brimner. “So they can see the earth from the moon? I think you could not, or at least it would be very tiny, the way we see the moon from here.”

  “You are entirely correct,” he said, and motioned her to carry on.

  She read: “It seemed good to us to travel farther, and we met the Horse-Vultures. Their men ride on great vultures, and treat the birds just like horses. Learn their magnitude thus: each wing was larger and thicker than the sail of a great ship.”

  Aren found this profoundly funny. He laughed, quietly, as he always did, and so much that he had to rock back and forth. All he could say, when she asked why it was so funny, was, “Horse-wing, arm-wing!” which made her laugh too, from his description of bats. He was such a good rememberer of conversations.

  But back to her story: “These Horse-Vultures were commanded to fly about the land and, if they should find any stranger, to bring him to the king. And indeed, taking us captive, they led us to him. When he looked upon us, he guessed who we were from our appearance and raiment, and said, ‘Are you Greeks, O strangers?’ We assented, and he asked, ‘How did you arrive here, coming so far through the air?’ And we told him the whole story. And he in turn told us of himself, that he too was a man, by name of Endymion. He had fallen asleep in our land and was snatched away, and arriving at this country, he ruled it as king.”

  “The moon sleeps with Endymion,” Thea said, and it was such a strange thing for her to say that they all looked at her. She blushed at their regard and sat up quickly, becoming straight again. “It was in a book at school—it is—oh, Byron, or some such.”

  “Shakespeare, I fear,” Mr. Brimner gently put in, to spare her. “Merchant of Venice, and entirely fitting: Portia, discoursing on a calm and lovely night.” He knew all the things, every book and work of art, and all the languages, and Kay wished the Voyage to the Moon of Ha‘apai would take forever.

  Mr. Brimner had been told the story of how they acquired Aren, but he asked Aren about it himself, one hot morning while they sat in the shade under the lifeboat. Seaton’s long mahogany leg, vined with black images, dangled above them in the afternoon sun, twitching from time to time as he dreamed his strange visions.

  Mr. Brimner had a notebook and pencil on his lap. He did not make notes, but simply sat still, his eyes on the dimpled surface of the waves, talking as if it was of no importance, even though he was so interested.

  “What did you do before you came onto this ship?”

  Aren looked up from the brass oarlock he was polishing for Cocker. His eyes roamed the rigging, as if he could scarce remember another life. “I did fish,” he said at last.

  His voice was thrummy and soft, but at her table Kay heard him clearly. She always could hear him, from wherever he spoke.

  “What fish did you fish for?”

  “Not should—” Aren faltered for the word. “Not allow-ed to fish with hook only yet.”

  Kay hoped he would find the proper words, she hated him to be frustrated.

  “Fish, fishing, round hook in—soon,” he said, making a hook shape with his finger. His English had made such leaps that it was odd to hear him fumbling for grammar again. “Teach to fish?” he said, testing it.

  “Learn?” asked Mr. Brimner. “You learned to fish?”

  “Yes,” Aren said with relief. “I learn-d to fish.”

  “What kind of fish did you catch?”

  In answer, Aren leapt to the table and his own pencil, and drew a very detailed picture of a fish with a bumped-up head and a frilly top fin, which Mr. Brimner did not know. Mr. Wright, drowsing at the rail because there was no wind at all to deal with, perked up at the mention of fish and came to inspect it.

  “That’s a blue-lined sea bream, that is,” he said.

  Aren pushed the paper to Mr. Brimner. “This, I am let to fish!”

  “Or perhaps it is a dogfish,” Kay said.

  “And who did teach you to fish? Was it your father?”

  Aren looked at him without understanding. Thea had not taught him that word.

  Kay wondered if she had taught him mother.

  Because Thea asked him to, and of course in accordance with his own understanding, Mr. Brimner agreed to baptize Aren. He did this on deck, at noon on the third day of their sailing, reading the form of service from the prayer book he had always with him. Mr. Wright and Mr. Best, both churchmen, stood godparents, and spoke their responses loud and clear, promising to keep Aren from the World and the Devil.

  Afterwards they had cake, and all the crew toasted Aren’s health with a rum tot. Then, while Mr. Brimner changed out of his surplice and stole, and Aren ran about the deck training Pilot to retrieve a piece of salt beef without instantly eating it, Kay sat with Thea in the hammock, cool and soft in the slight shade its awning made.

  Thea said, “There—I am thankful to have that done.”

  Because Aren’s soul would be safe now, she meant. Kay did not like that. His soul was safe because God loved him, because there was nothing but goodness in him. Not because of the words being said over him, or the holy water. It was hard to see why everyone must be baptized, when we already believe that God will take care of the lilies and the mice in the fields. But Thea had told Kay before that she was not the arbiter of doctrine, and should simply accept the teachings of the Church.

  “Do you remember me being baptized?”

  Thea smiled, enjoying this kind of nostalgia. “No, for I had gone back to finish school in Yarmouth before you were born. But I remember your mother being baptized.”

  Kay was surprised. “When she was a baby?”

  Thea laughed. “No, no, she was a little older than I! But she had lived in the country, you know, and there had never been a chance for her to be baptized, so in our first years at Fort à la Corne, Father baptized her.”

  “And then he married her.”

  “Yes.” Thea was silent a moment. “She was lovely, your mama. Easy to be with. She had a peaceable nature.”

  “Not like me.”

  “No, you take after Father, I think. But she was strong-minded, too. I left for Yarmouth confident that they would deal very well together, although she was
so much younger than he. It was the happiest I had ever seen him, on their wedding day, and I was happy too.”

  “But then she died, and you had to come back to care for me.”

  “No, I had already come back—after normal school I came out to teach at Blade Lake for a year. I was there when she died.”

  “Oh yes, tell me again.”

  Thea’s head tilted to check Kay’s face, but she was patient enough to retell it. “She was tired, after church, and she went up to lie down. She asked me to bring her a cup of tea in an hour—”

  “And when you took it up, there she was, dead.”

  “Yes.”

  A flood of tears pricked at Kay’s eyes, wanting to flow forth, but Aren had come back and was looking at her. Thinking of his mother never seeing him again, she was distracted from self-pity. She got up to run along the deck, her bare feet almost as fast as his.

  In the ideal hour, near the end of the watch on a slow afternoon when the work was done and the men slept or sat carving in the shrouds, low sun brought a lessening of the heat. Everyone she loved was here, Kay thought.

  Silence spread like oil over the unmoving sea. Then up from underneath came a blue-black swell rising in a long arc, longer than thought, unthinking, unknowing, unknown. Kay waited, immensity pressing on her, hovering in the difference between herself and the whale.

  While Thea and Francis took a turn about the deck in the early morning heat, Mr. Brimner asked Aren, “Shall I tell you of Arion of Methymna, a name close to your own, who was carried ashore at Tainaron upon a dolphin’s back?”